Linda Gayle (11 page)

They stared, almost comically concentrated, as the screen brightened and she signed on. She could hardly keep her eyes on the keyboard, it was so entertaining to watch their awed expressions. The Internet connection on this side of the island was crap, so she settled instead for pulling up photos from her hard drive. “Okay, this is my family.” She picked a digital image from her mom’s last birthday. “That’s my mom, that’s my brother and his wife, and their two kids.”

She loved her niece and nephew, just four and six years old. A pang of guilt echoed through her. How long had it been since she’d seen them? A few months, at least. She’d pushed them away after the Jack incident. They’d been pretty “we told you so” after what happened, and even though she knew they were right, their attitude stung.

As a result, she’d shoved them away. Pushed everyone away.

Moana touched her knee. “Do you not get along with your family?”

Of course he’d interpret her sudden silence that way. She smiled and shook her head. “No, they’re great. I just haven’t been as good about keeping in touch with them as I should have.” Then a thought occurred. “You guys must not have been able to communicate with your family at all, after… Did they even know what happened to you?”

Rahiti rubbed his hand over the back of his neck and shook his head. “They thought we also drowned in the storm.”

“We watched from the sea as they burned our funeral pyres with no bodies on them.” Moana put his hand on Rahiti’s shoulder. “We tried to find a way to show them what had happened, but they only thought we were dolphins, like any others.”

“After a while, we stopped trying and had to make do with following their fishing canoes. We would lead our brothers to the best fishing grounds—”

“—and guide them home when storms came.”

“But over time, we saw the villages disappear.”

Moana’s brows knit together. “The tall ships came. The explorers. Our people grew sick and died…”

Tall ships, disease… A shiver ran through Lyric. They had to be talking about the European explorers. That would mean they were alive during the smallpox epidemic, hundreds of years earlier. “I can’t even begin to imagine how horrible that must have been for you.”

Rahiti said somberly, “Well, it was a curse, after all. And we suffered for it.”

“We learned to rely on each other to survive. Without Rahiti, I—” Moana broke off, his shoulders slumped. Lyric put her arm around him, hoping he wouldn’t shrug her off. The warriors were proud, and to show this much vulnerability couldn’t be easy for them.

Rahiti’s deep-brown eyes alone told her volumes of how he felt about his friend. “We gave each other purpose,” he said. “We were once enemies, but now I can put up with him.” A small smile curled one corner of his mouth.

Moana snorted and gazed at him sidelong. “And I am learning to tolerate you in this obnoxious human form.”

Rahiti chuckled, and the mood lightened a little. Thank goodness, Rahiti must have sensed it plunging into blackness. She didn’t think she could have stopped from bursting into tears if she heard much more.

Suddenly, her own problems seemed kind of small. At least she hadn’t had to watch her entire family, her whole community, die off while she couldn’t do anything about it. Thoughtful, but returning to her task, she progressed through more pictures, letting the guys try the mouse and the touchpad, enjoying their openmouthed awe over both the technology and the images.

“This is me hang gliding in Colorado,” she said, stopping on a picture of her strapped to a colorful glider, thinking they’d like to see another form of flying.

Instead, Rahiti pointed to Jack, who of course had figured in many of the pictures. “Who is that?”

“That’s Jack the Jerk. The one I was telling you about.”

Moana leaned closer to the screen to peer menacingly at him. “A good spear solves many problems.”

She scruffed her fingers affectionately through his hair. “Thanks, but, as satisfying as that might be, nowadays there are laws against murder.”

Rahiti grunted. “You had no children with him?”

“If she had,” Moana pointed out, “they would be here with you. Our Lyric is too caring to leave children behind.”

“I don’t have kids,” she said, wondering why they thought so highly of her. She hadn’t earned it. “Maybe someday. I don’t know.”

“We would give you strong sons,” Moana said, sitting up straight.

That frisson of caution rippled through her again, and once more, Rahiti came to her rescue. “Moana, Lyric has made it clear she cannot stay with us.”

Confusion skated across Moana’s face, but then he turned to Lyric. “I’m sorry. I…think too much sometimes.”

“We have had too long to think about this day,” Rahiti said, rolling onto his back. He stretched, his arms and legs hanging off the sides of the bed, showing all those glorious muscles. “This bed is softer than any hammock.”

Moana apparently wasn’t ready to let go of the kid idea so soon, though. “Why do you not have children?” He waved toward the laptop and the picture of smirking, too-handsome Jack. “Did you and Jack not fuck?”

His blunt question made her want to cringe, but then again, she supposed this was part of the new world, too. “I take a pill—an herb type of thing every day so I don’t get pregnant.”

Moana put his chin on his fist and contemplated this. “Do you not want children?”

Rahiti yawned and said, “Of course she wants children. She is a woman.”

Lyric barked a laugh. “Not so fast. Lots of women don’t have kids now. Or they don’t get married. Or they don’t get married, and have kids on their own, without a husband.”

“If they don’t need a husband then what purpose do men serve?” Moana asked.

Good question—one she’d been thinking about herself recently. “Did women in your time only have sex after marriage?”

Rahiti scratched his belly idly. “No, we were a freely loving people. But if the seed took root then the man whose seed it was took the girl as wife.” He sighed. “My father had four wives, and I had four sisters and three brothers. We were a small family.”

“Four wives!” she exclaimed. “How’d he keep up with all of them?”

“Once a woman is married, she can find other lovers,” Moana said casually. “Love is a blessing, to be shared, the way the gods intended.”

Taken aback, Lyric said, “So if you got married, you wouldn’t have a problem sharing your wife?”

If she hadn’t been watching so closely, she might have missed the tension in Moana’s glance as he looked sideways at Rahiti. “Some wives had more than one husband.”

“It’s true,” Rahiti said. “My aunt had three husbands. And how she kept them in line! Like a hen scolding the roosters.”

Moana laughed, and the tension dissipated again. “If they had tried to find other women, she would have cooked their balls in her stew pot!”

“Wow, and I thought my family was tough.” Lyric rolled her eyes but smiled.

Rahiti ran his hand over her thigh. “Family is whatever people build together.”

“What about…” Lyric didn’t know quite how to ask, but considering what they’d done together already… “What about men…together?”

“It was not forbidden,” Rahiti said, gazing at Moana thoughtfully then looking at her. “Inside everyone there is energy that is male, energy that is female. Often, Moana and I would follow sailors who had snuck away to be together. We overheard their conversations, how afraid they were to be caught in each other’s arms. We did not understand this fear for a long time.”

“Our bodies are gifts from the gods,” Moana murmured, his fingers following the lazy path Rahiti’s hand trailed up her thigh then coasting over Rahiti’s hand when he returned it to her knee. Just that—just the sight of their fingers slipping over each other—was enough to make her sex grow heavy and needy.

“I”—Rahiti cleared his throat, seeming unable to speak for a moment—“I myself never knew another man in my before-life.”

Moana chuckled wickedly. “I was more fortunate. There was a beautiful
mahu
in my village, slender and sweet. We managed to slip away a few nights here and there, under the stars, on the beach.”

“Moana, you are full of surprises.” Rahiti’s hand clenched on her thigh as he pulled himself up to stare at his friend.

His cheek on her shoulder, Moana smiled dreamily. “I had to keep some secrets from you, or you would grow bored with me.”

The bigger warrior grunted and slapped his friend’s hand away when he tried to restart their gentle play. “That explains a lot.”

Moana caught Rahiti’s fist and uncurled it to twine their fingers together. “You spent too much time polishing your spear. You should have gotten out to play more.”

Lyric tipped her head so that her cheek rested against Moana’s silky hair. “What’s a
mahu
?”

“A boy raised as a woman to honor the gods.” Rahiti turned on his side again and kissed her bare thigh. His mouth was set in a stern line, but she noticed his cock had begun to swell. “I preferred girls. And I did not need to polish my spear myself!”

Moana snickered, and Lyric realized there was an awful lot about ancient Polynesian culture she needed to learn if she was going to keep up with these two.

“I like women, too,” Moana admitted. “The gods gave us one another so we wouldn’t be lonely. We are meant to love freely, give our hearts without fear.” He placed a feather-light kiss on her shoulder, just the tip of his tongue leaving a bit of moisture on her skin. “Their soft breasts”—he lifted his and Rahiti’s joined hands to drag their knuckles over the nipple puckering beneath her thin tee—“their lips”—he raised his head to brush his mouth over hers—“their cunts.” He dropped their hands to her parting thighs and slid them over her sex, which grew wetter under her shorts.

Catching her lip between her teeth, Lyric leaned back on the heels of her palms. “Where’d you pick up language like that?” Not that she really cared. All she wanted was more of their touch.

“Sailors, remember?” Rahiti said, his lips curling up in a sly grin.

Lyric chuckled and slid off the bed, though it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to do. Her body ached to lie between them, to let them love her, but if she didn’t have the strength to walk away now, she wouldn’t later when she had to walk away for good.

Chapter Eight

They slept late the next morning, almost past noon, Lyric on the couch despite the men’s protests, and the two of them in snoring heaps on the big bed. She woke up after a night of hot dreams then looked in on them in the golden late-morning sunshine streaming through the window. Leaning on the door frame, she had to smile. Their tousled heads lay on opposite pillows, but they faced each other, and even in sleep, their hands touched on top of the sheets.

So, the big question—did she still believe they were dolphins, now that she’d had a good night’s rest?

She hadn’t gotten back on the bed with them last night, knowing what might happen—what
would
happen—if she did, but they’d stayed up until the wee hours talking, and yeah, after listening to everything they told her about the past and their history and what they’d seen over the centuries, she was pretty damned convinced. How it could be, she didn’t know, but it seemed she’d walked into the middle of something magical, and now she was a part of it.

On top of that, she was still pretty fucking astonished that she’d gone as far as she had with them the day before. She hadn’t been sure how she’d feel today, but if the excitement curling low in her belly was any indication, nothing had changed. If anything, she couldn’t wait for them to wake up. Still, even though she figured they’d wake up with mouth-watering boners, she wasn’t going to touch them. Today was for getting to know them. If they really were who they said, they’d respect that.

Besides, they really couldn’t keep running around naked or draped with flimsy towels. She had to do something about that situation before poor old Maria stopped by to check on her and had a heart attack when she saw two naked warriors on her beach.

She started making breakfast in the bungalow’s little kitchen. The small fridge had come stocked with basics, and she’d picked up a few things at one of the island stores on her way in. There was enough to make pancakes, something they’d probably never had. While she cooked, Lyric knew she had a silly smile on her face, and her ears caught every little sound coming from the bedroom. Her excitement rivaled Christmas morning, only this time she couldn’t wait to unwrap two yummy men.

Rahiti was the first one up. He peered out of the bedroom, hair sticking up endearingly, and smiled sleepily at her. “Lyric! You were not just a dream.”

“Good morning.” She waved her spatula and bit the corner of her lower lip as heat flushed through her body. Mmm-mmm. He looked just as good first-thing as he had yesterday. Better even. His cock jutted up, but he seemed more interested in rubbing the sleep from his eyes than he did in fixing that issue at the moment. “Hungry?” she asked.

His gaze roamed her from head to bare feet and back again, and he nodded then yawned. “I have not slept like that since we were men before.”

“Do dolphins sleep?”

“Not like people do. We have to surface to breathe, so we’re always a little awake.” He ran his hands over his chest wonderingly. “I still can’t believe…” He spied his erection and smiled ruefully. “I forgot the towel.”