"That sound. It dropped out of the tree. I'm used to them."
Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness and she could see Damien shrug, returning to the bench in front of her. He was wearing a dark T-shirt that blended into the night, but she could see the outline of his body, see his face lighter and brighter above his shadowy shoulders. The story Anna had told her rose in her mind. She could picture Damien's ancestor, his Damien predecessor in the nineteenth century, out here in the swamp, gathering up his cottonmouth collection.
There was no fear from Damien, instead a nonchalance, a total simpatico with his surroundings.
"Death's Door," she whispered.
His head turned slowly. "What did you say?"
"Death's Door. That's what Anna called the Damien who gave her great-grandmother that house. She said he got the nickname by defying death, that he was reckless and unafraid, and buried bodies after a cholera epidemic." Marley loosened her grip on the wooden bench. "I was thinking that he must have looked like you."
"Perhaps."
"What's it like to know this is yours… that your family has been here for two hundred years?" She found herself envious of that sense of tradition, that total understanding of who and what you were.
"There is pride, and yet there's a sense of hopelessness. That I can't hold on to this forever, that eventually the house will collapse and the land will have to be sold."
Marley hadn't thought the future was so precarious for the plantation. She had assumed Damien would keep it, nourish it, pass it down to the next generation. "But why? Don't you want to give it to your children?"
Damien gave a bitter laugh. "Do you see any children, Marley? There's only me, and a big empty house."
"You're not happy, are you?" Of course she had known that, she had sensed it from the first day, felt that his pain surrounded him, kept him cut off from everyone else. Now she knew that his wife had died when he was way too young to have known so much loss and she knew it was a stupid question to ask. He obviously wasn't happy.
"Not particularly. But then most people aren't. And by the way, you should sift through whatever Anna tells you. She loves to tell a good story, and it's not always true."
"Are you telling me Death's Door didn't exist?" At the same time he was very smoothly changing the subject.
"No, he existed. And he did some truly insane things. I think that he wanted to die. But he didn't. No matter what risk he took, he didn't die."
Marley suddenly understood why Damien threw his adult parties. It kept him firmly standing in that careless existence, defiantly selfish, living only in the moment, never having to face the future.
"You'll have children someday," she told him. "And they'll be grateful you kept this house."
He gave a soft laugh. "Marley Turner, you are bleeding compassion again. Maybe I don't want children. Maybe I think they're all time-sucking, whiny brats who grow up, throw you in a nursing home, and steal your money."
"And maybe I think you're a lousy liar."
"And I think if you had to drag me into the swamp at eleven o'clock at night the very least you can do is make it worth my while."
That was a tone she recognized, and a fissure of excitement raced up her spine. "How could I do that?"
"You could give me a kiss."
As the last word left his mouth, his lips covered hers, with that dominating, dauntless possessiveness he had used on her before. That confidence, arrogance, that she would like what he was doing, would welcome his touch. He was right, of course. His kiss took her in, dragged her under, lifted her up and out of herself to where the only thing that mattered was her, him, and the way he made her body come alive with desire.
Damien's tongue moved deftly across hers, his fingers in her hair, his knee pushing hers open, out, so he could move between her legs. He didn't try to touch her anywhere else, and they blended their mouths together for several hot, thrusting minutes. Marley marveled at his restraint, at his skill in waiting, waiting, building the tension between them higher and higher. She was already growing clumsy in her technique, mouth slipping in her desperation, fingers grasping at his chest, hips pushing forward trying to gain contact.
Instead of appeasing her, easing her ache, taking them to the next logical step, Damien pulled back, wiped his lips. "That was worth coming into the swamp at eleven o'clock. Thank you." He settled back on the opposite bench with perfect nonchalance, even if his breathing was a little labored.
"That's all you want?" she said with no attempt to hide her dismay. Okay, there was teasing, and then there was just insanity. He couldn't get her all revved up like that and then not take her for a spin.
"Are you offering more?" he asked, voice silken, erotic, forearms on his knees, expression dark and dangerous.
"Yes." That was why she was out here, to forget about Lizzie, forget about responsibilities, to just do what she wanted to do for once. And she wanted to do Damien.
"Good. But maybe we should head back. I don't think a boat is the best place for what I think we both have in mind."
"Why, what could happen?" Granted, it might be hard to maneuver on a wooden bench, but doing it in a boat seemed sufficiently wild to satisfy her feverish need to be free of constraints.
"We could capsize. We could float into the reeds and get the motor tangled. We could drift too close to the bank and get stuck."
"Couldn't those things happen anyway?" Marley glanced around, but she couldn't see the shore. It was too dark to see much of anything.
"Mais non, not when I'm in control. But if I'm on the floorboards with you, I'm not in control."
That sounded kind of pleasing. "So if we get tangled up and stuck, do we languish out here indefinitely, shriveling up and dying of dehydration?"
Damien gave a soft laugh. "No. We use my cell phone and call for help. Or if we're close to shore, we get out and walk home."
"Hmmm." Marley supped her butt down onto the floor of the boat to test stability. It rocked ominously from her movement. She looked up at the midnight sky, inky black and dotted with stars. "I guess we'd better go back then. All this thinking about it has spoiled the moment anyway."
He didn't say anything, but he didn't move to start the motor either.
"Do you ever wonder if any of this is real, Damien?" Marley stared up and up, her neck straining as she looked past the leaves of the trees, the dripping Spanish moss, to the endless expanse of sky. She stretched her arms to the sides of the boat. "How do we know we're really here?"