She made a little sob of pleasure when he was fully housed; begged him to stay there. He didn't move. Just kept his place, her body enclosing him so tightly she could feel the tick of his blood. At last, she began to move; just a tiny motion at first, but enough to send a shudder through him.
"You like that?" she whispered.
He replied with a short expulsion of air, almost a grunt, as he pressed his sex back into her, and the next instant withdrew it almost entirely. She let him do so without protest; the emptiness was delicious, as long as she knew it was only temporary.
She reached up and put her arms around his neck, knotting her fingers at the base of his skull. Then, oh so slowly, she preempted his return stroke by raising her hips toward his.
He spoke again. This time she heard what he said.
"Oh Lord in heaven…"
Slowly, slowly, she took him into her, both of them tender from a night of excesses; the line between bliss and discomfort perilously fine. As she rose he started down to meet her motion, and the image of him she'd had in her mind's eye lost its particularity, his substance dissolved in the wash of pleasure. The gleaming darkness of his limbs spread behind her lids, filling her thoughts completely. He was quickening now. She urged him on, her urges incoherent. No matter; he understood. She didn't need to tell him when to redirect his pressure, she'd no sooner formed the thought than he was doing so. And before he lost control of his body and came, she was distracting him from his crisis, slowing her own motion so as not to have their pleasure end too quickly.
So it went on, for two hours, almost three: sometimes a contest-jabs and sobbing; sometimes so quiet, so still, they might almost have been asleep in one another's arms. They made no declarations of love; at least nothing audible. They didn't even speak, not even to call out one another's name. There was no failure of feeling in this; just the reverse. They were so entirely immersed in one another, so entirely joined in their bliss, that for a short, sacred time they imagined themselves indivisible.
Not so, of course.
The illusion passed when their bodies had been wracked to exhaustion. They lay beside one another shivering in their sweat, gloriously satisfied, but returned into their own skins.
"I'm hungry," Rachel said.
They hadn't gone entirely without sustenance since boarding The Samarkand. Though Galilee had returned the fish to the sea as an offering to Kuhaimuana-all thirty fathoms of him-he'd opened cans of shucked oysters and brandied peaches in the middle of the night, which they'd eaten off and out of one another's bodies, so that the satisfying of one appetite didn't interrupt the satisfying of the other.
Still, it was now midmorning, and her stomach was complaining.
"We can be back on land in an hour," Galilee said.
"I don't want to go," Rachel replied. "I never want to go. I want to stay out here, just the two of us…"
"People would come looking," he said. "You're still a Geary."
"We'd find somewhere to hide," she said. "People disappear all the time, and they're never found."
"I have a house…"
"You do?"
"In a tiny village in Chile, called Puerto Bueno. It's right at the top of the hill. A view of the harbor. Parakeets in the trees."
"Let's go there," she said. Galilee laughed. "I'm serious," she said.
"I know you are."
"We could have children…"
The amusement left his face. "I don't think that'd be wise," he said.
"Why not?"
"Because I'd be no use as a father."
"How do you know?" she said, putting her hand over his. "You might find out you really liked it."
"Bad fathers run in our family," Galilee said. "Or rather, one does."
"One bad father out of how many?"
"One out of one," he said.
She thought he'd misunderstood what she was saying. "No, I mean, what about your grandfathers?"
"There aren't any."
"You mean they're dead."
"No, I mean there aren't any. There never were."
She laughed. "Don't be silly. Your mother and father had parents. They might have been dead before you were born, but-"
"They had no parents," Galilee said, taking his eyes off her. "Believe me."
There was something faintly intimidating about the way he said believe me. It wasn't an invitation, it was a command. He didn't wait to see if she'd obey it or not; he just got up and started to dress. "It's time we went back," he said. "People'll be looking for you."
"Let them look," she said, sliding her arms around him from behind, and pressing her body against him. "We don't have to go yet; I want to talk; I want to get to know you better."
"There'll be other times," he said, moving away from her to pick up his shirt.
"Will there?" she said.
"Of course," he replied, not turning back to look at her.
"What was it I said that offended you?"
"You haven't said anything," he replied. "I just think we should get back, that's all."
"Last night-"
He stopped buttoning his shirt. "Was wonderful," he said.
"So stop being like this," she said, irritation creeping into her voice. "I'm sorry if I talked out of turn. It was just a joke."
He sighed. "No it wasn't. You meant it or you wouldn't have said it. You'd like to have children…"
"Yes," she said, "I would. And I'd like to have them with you."
"We scarcely know one another," he replied, and started up the stairs to the deck.
She went after him, angry now. "What about what you said on the beach?" she demanded. "About watching for me? Was that just a way to get me here?" She followed him up the stairs. By the time she got on deck he was sitting on the narrow bench beside the wheel, his face in his hands. "Is that all this was about?" she said to him. "And now we've had the night together you're just going to move on?"
He kept his face buried. From the sound of his voice, he might have been dead. "I meant nothing by any of this," he said. "I just got caught up in the moment, and that wasn't fair to you. It wasn't fair. I thought you understood…"
"Understood what?"
"That this was just another story," he replied.
"Look at me," she said. He didn't move; his face remained hidden from her. "Look at me and say that!" she demanded.
With great reluctance he looked up at her. His face was gray; so was the expression in his eyes. "I meant nothing by any of this," he said steadily. "I thought you understood this was just another story."
Her eyes pricked, she heard the whine of the blood in her ears. How could he be saying this? Her vision began to blur as the tears came. How could he sit there and tell her it was all just a game, when they both knew, they both knew, surely, surely, that something wonderful had happened?
"You're a liar," she said.
"That may be."
"You know it's not true!"
"It's as true as any story I ever told you," he said, looking down at the deck. She wanted to quote him back at himself on the subject of what was true and what was not, but she couldn't remember the argument he'd made. All she could think was: he's running away from me. I'm never going to see him again. It was unbearable. Ten minutes ago, they'd been talking about his house on the hilltop. Now he was telling her nothing he'd said was worth a damn.