“Want some now?” He pried the plantain off the rock and put it on a plate.
I looked at the wrinkly peel and back at the plate. Damian shrugged and popped a piece into his mouth. He lay back, elbows out, fingers interlaced under his head, looking at me. I took a tentative bite. It was warm and sweet and gooey, and so, so good.
“Better than cake?” he asked.
“What’s cake?” I smiled and stretched out next to him.
We alternated between dessert and trying to guess where the next star would appear, as the blue velvet of night unfolded over us.
“Tomorrow,” said Damian.
“What about tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow’s the day I visit MaMaLu.”
“You think it’s safe?” My arms tightened around him.
“They’re looking for Damian, not Esteban. Esteban disappeared a long time ago, and there’s nothing to connect him to me, nothing to trace MaMaLu back to me. I don’t think they’ll be staking out the gravesite of a woman no one remembers.”
“I remember,” I said. “You remember.”
He laced his fingers through mine and we listened to the song of the waves. “Why does it feel like we are the only two people in the world right now?”
“Because right now, we are.” I slipped my arms inside his jacket and around his back.
“Do you know what I remember?” he asked. “I remember thinking that MaMaLu’s lullaby was about a beautiful little piece of sky, something that dispelled all the darkness. Then we came to Casa Paloma, and I felt like it was about you. Cielito lindo.”
“And I always thought she was singing about you. I imagined mountains, dark and black, just like your eyes.” I kissed Damian’s eyes and his eyelashes, his straight brows, the row of scars from his stitches.
“I’m going with you tomorrow,” I said, sliding the jacket off his shoulders.
“I know.” He flung it aside.
MaMaLu bound us together. The fact that Damian was willing to share her with me, in death as he had when she was alive, made me love him all the more.
“No wind today.” I unbuttoned his shirt and trailed my hand down his hard, smooth belly, to the trail of male hair that disappeared under his pants. “No sand.” I ran my tongue over it.
“Let me see.” He rolled me over and returned the favor, his lips taking full advantage of my exposed back. “Mmmm. You’re right. Not a grain. Just smooth, silky skin.”
I squirmed as his fingers slid under my dress, raising it higher, until it was wrapped around my waist.
“God. This ass.” He pulled my panties down and kneaded the flesh. “No sand here either,” he mumbled, leaving teeth marks on my skin.
I kept my shoes on. And the necklace of seashells. Damian let me ride him. I think he liked the sight of me like that, in the moonlight. He kept his hands on my hips, trying to control the rhythm, and I kept slapping them away. We went back and forth for a while until the games dissolved, until passion overtook and we began moving as one.
The roughened pad of Damian’s thumb found my clit and he flicked it, on, off, on, off, like a switch that allowed me sharp, spiky peaks of pleasure, and then took it away. Each time I moaned, his mouth fell open, as if we were connected by some invisible thread. Damian was focused on my face, my body, like he was recording every moment, every movement. His strokes pushed me closer and closer to the edge. I rocked against the hard length of him, driving him just as crazy, reaching, reaching, reaching, until we exploded in spirals of liquid fire. I collapsed over him, heated and flushed, my heart hammering in my chest as he wrapped his arms around me.
We were both quiet in the aftermath, at a loss because it was at once beautiful and scary—beautiful because when we were together, we were whole and complete, and scary because we knew there was no turning back. We were too far gone to take any of it back.