He straightened and looked around the parking lot. Not a soul in sight. He waved his head toward the back seat. We got in and shut the doors. No kissing for openers this time. Our bodies molded together like spoons stacked in a drawer. This time it was like he was trying to calm me, caress me into thinking this was the most important happening in the world, and it would go on forever. There was nothing else.
And I wanted it to go on forever.
After, we slumped in the seat, draped over each other in a protective cocoon. The heat, the climax, the extremes of the day overtook me, and I fell into a delicious half-doze with Zach wrapped around me.
“Claudie.” He whispered in my ear. “You okay?”
“More than okay. Can’t you hear me purring?”
He kissed my ear. I turned over to face him. We smiled lazy smiles at each other. He cupped by neck and caressed my cheek with his thumb. I sighed many unsighed sighs. A sea breeze from the open windows flicked over my hot skin, cooling some of the slick sweat that covered us both.
“Want more?” he said to me, his face a whisper from mine.
I nodded.
Cramped as we were in that back seat, the thought that someone might find us at any time and the shear wantonness of what we were doing added to the thrill. We took our time and used our mouths and bodies to work out the seductive chemistry between us until we were both spent once more.
“God, you are incredible,” he said in a husky voice.
I traced the outline of his lips. “So are you.”
The crunch of footsteps going by outside the car gave us pause. Zach looked up over the seat. The footsteps kept going, unaware of two lovers in the backseat of a Honda SUV.
“Want to sit up?” he asked.
“Okay, sure. I don’t know how the two of us managed all that in this back seat, being the size we are.”
“We didn’t think once we got started.”
He helped me into a sitting position, and I pushed my hair from my eyes. My top knot had come undone, and my hair fell around my face and shoulders. He swept his hand through my hair, pulling it off my shoulders and planted a kiss on my neck.
“Maybe,” I said, “we should rent a hotel room and get this out of our systems.”
“I don’t know if that’s possible. You have the most luscious body I have ever had the pleasure of lusting after.” He passed my shirt. “Not that I want to stop, but there’s a couple coming up from the beach, and it looks like they might be headed for that car.” He nodded in the direction of one of the two other cars in the lot and passed me a bottle of water, warm but thirst quenching.
The sunburned couple got in the car and left, never noticing us, intent upon their own life, their own pleasures. The few bathers still on the beach were packing to leave.
We sat, sharing the bottle of water, looking out to sea. Zach placed his arm around my shoulder, and we watched in silence together. The steam in the back seat of the rented Honda SUV gradually dissipated.
“Doesn’t it look like diamonds,” I said, “the way the sun catches the light on the water?”
“Yes, millions of them.”
“That has always been Cyprus for me, the diamonds, the breathtaking blue of the sea, the gentle waves. The endlessness of it. Always changing, always the same.”
“You waxing poetic on me?”
I laughed. “It’s a state of mind I escape to sometimes.”
“You are more breathtaking than the sea,” he said and kissed my temple through my hair.
“You want to go for a swim?” he asked after we sat for a while longer enjoying the silence and the sea and each other.
“Sure. The beach here is rocky. We’ll need to be careful.”
“I know.”
My bikini was wedged under the front passenger’s seat, and I wiggled into it. Zach found his Speedo suit and slipped it on.
We walked barefoot to the beach, treading carefully on the pebbles. I spotted a clear path through the seaweed and rocks out to open water, and we swam out together. The shock of the cold water cooled my body and my brain.
Rolling over onto my back, I looked at the beach. The tops of the buildings in the distance marked where the main street ran parallel to the beach. Above the roofs of the houses and stores the dim outline of mountains rose like a mirage. The lighthouse near the Forty Column Castle loomed on the south horizon. The sun moved lower in the sky in its never ending cycle, the shoreline remained unchanging, the rocks and waves coupled in an eternal dance with the sea. The beautiful scenery hadn’t changed, but I had.
Ten
“Where to now?” I asked after we had dried off and dressed by the car. We were the last to leave the beach.
“Let’s walk over to the ruins and get a drink at the harbor. We still need to kill some time before we make our round of calls. We can blend into the tourist crowd. You hungry?”
I smiled. “Starved. You kidding? After all that exercise?”
He smiled back, and the glow in his eyes told me he had had as much fun as I had.
We could see the tops of the arches in the Forty Column Castle from where we stood. The walk was short. The evening, lovely. We could watch the sun set. I was putting a romantic spin on the whole affair, wasn’t I?
He held out his hand, and I took it, still glowing from the intimacy we had shared. Don’t overdo this I warned myself. Enjoy this for what it is. Let it go when it’s over.
We walked south along the goat path that wound through rocks and over the beach to the ruins of the Odeon, an amphitheater that dated back to the 2nd century AD. We stopped, so I could show Zach how the acoustics worked. I stood center stage. He sat halfway up the amphitheater. I talked in a normal voice and gave a blow by blow description of our lovemaking session in the car. He heard every word and clapped in appreciation. Those Romans knew how to build a theater.
We headed for Saranta Kolones, Greek for the Forty Column Castle, not one column of which was still standing. Only a few arches and the massive walls remained of the Byzantine fortress, destroyed by an earthquake in 1223. On our way we passed the tents of the archaeological dig at the ancient Roman villa where they had uncovered spectacular mosaics. The tents served to protect the excavation and the diggers. When I had helped, one of the archeologists had splashed water on the mosaics to show how the colors came alive. Photos in books did not do justice to the real mosaics.
The sun set, the breeze died. The light was clear and low horizon clouds made the western sky glow with gold and crimson. We walked in silence for most of the way, hand-in-hand when the path was wide enough.
A kaleidoscope of images tumbled through my mind — my aunt gripping the bars in the jail cell, the interlude in the back seat of the car, the bottoms of the shoes lying in the garden at the safe house, Zach’s naked body standing in the waves of Lara Bay, the rifle crack of flying bullets, the message to kill the man who was with me. The images were at odds with the peacefulness of the scene through which we now strolled.
Where was my aunt? What was she doing and how would I ever help her? I hoped she was safe, but when my mind replayed the frightening images of the last two days, fear spiked through me again and scorched my nerves.
As we passed the castle I shivered, remembering the excavators’ stories of how they had found people buried in place as they fell inside the castle during the earthquake. They had lain as they had fallen all these years. Stories abounded in the local community of lost treasure yet to be found. As far as I knew it was all myth and rumor. That all was so very long ago and so very far away from my predicament. No one was hanging around the site. Work had stopped for the day. Not that I had entertained hope of finding the American couple around the dig.