An agonizing trip back to the coast. Every bump shot pain through my chest wall.
Night was falling when we reached the village. By the time we finished dinner—if sweetened milk from various plants and animals can be called dinner—the pain in my ribs had eased, but try as I might I could not draw a full breath.
Which meant my initial assessment had been on the money: the odds of my making a dive to thirty feet tomorrow had been slim without a broken rib; now they'd moved into the million-to-one neighborhood.
So I sat inside the door of my hut feeling miserable as I watched moonshadows migrate across the sand. Then a shadow stopped in my doorway.
Maya. She stood silhouetted in the moonlight. She wore a simple cotton shift and carried what looked like a large jar.
“I have something for you,” she said, holding it up.
“Does it allow you to breathe underwater?”
“It is a healing unguent,” she said, her voice soft as she came toward me. “An old Mayan formula.”
“‘Unguent.’ There's a word you don't hear much these days. But no salve can heal a broken bone.”
“One never knows. Take off your shirt and lie back on that blanket.”
I did as I was told and she knelt beside me.
“Show me where it hurts.”
I laid my hand across the bruised, tender swelling of my left sixth rib. “Right here.”
Maya moved my hand away and began gently applying the unguent. It had a warm, creamy feel, slightly oily, redolent of rich soil and growing things. The inside of the hut began to smell like the jungle. Her fingers moved in slow circles, sliding over my ribs, leaving to dip into the jar, then returning to spread the unguent over a wider and wider area.
She hovered over me and brought her other hand into play. Now she was massaging my pectorals and shoulders, then my abdomen. Tiny electric shocks ran from her fingertips down to my groin. I felt myself becoming aroused.
“Turn over,” she said, her voice husky.
I winced with the jab of pain from my rib as I rolled onto my belly, but it subsided quickly as her hands ran over my back, kneading the shrinking, wasting muscles and massaging the unguent into my skin.
When her fingers reached my belt line she whispered, “Loosen your belt.”
More pain as I complied, but I didn't care. I was afloat, enveloped in a warm wet haze. Maya's hands slipped immediately under the waistband to massage my buttocks. Then she was tugging on the pants themselves. I lifted my hips to let her slide them off. And then I was naked and she was coating the backs of my thighs, behind my knees, then down to my ankles, an ancient priestess anointing a corpse for burial.
“Onto your back again,” she said.
I hesitated—I was fully erect against the blanket beneath me— but then I figured she had to be expecting that. So I turned over and felt myself become even harder as I jutted into the air.
Maya began working her way up from my shins, to my knees, up my thighs. Then her hands trailed away and I wanted to cry out, to beg her to touch me, please, just once. I didn't have to. She returned and gripped me with both unguent-laden hands, coating my aching erection.
I moaned, a low, almost pained sound bursting from the deepest part of me. I couldn't help it. It had been so long and her hands felt so good.
And then Maya was lifting her shift and straddling me. She was hot and wet inside, and I was greased like a Channel swimmer. I dove into her and began stroking, clutching the tops of her thighs and arching against her in a mad, frenzied rhythm while she held still, leaning on me with her hands on my upper arms. I was wildly out of control, completely at the mercy of the ecstatic pressure building in my groin and perineum. I erupted within her, my legs kicking and spasming as I released a hot, rapturous, pulsating stream that seemed to flow forever.
It took me a moment to catch my breath. I looked up at her, still astride me. She couldn't have gotten much out of that. Probably next to nothing.
Then she released a sigh, almost like a sob, and gently pounded her fists against the sand on either side of me—twice . . . three times.
I sensed her frustration. “I'm sorry. It's been so long since—”
“It is not that.”
“Then what—?”
She pressed a finger against my lips. “Hush. Never mind. And it is not over yet.”
Maya lifted her shift over her head and tossed it aside. She took my hands and placed them over her breasts. Then she began moving her hips. I was still inside her, but a lot smaller and flabbier than when I'd entered. The feel of her nipples hardening under my fingers, and the almost ceremonial way she was rotating and thrusting her hips began working their magic, however, and I was soon back to full tumescence.
And now it was Maya's turn. She leaned forward and gripped my shoulders, digging her nails into my flesh and moaning as she rode me. Finally she gasped and stiffened, rising and arching her back. I could hear her breath hissing through her teeth. As she made a highpitched keening sound I thrust further into her and detonated for the second time. We hovered there, not quite on the ground, yet not fully off it, for I don't know how long before collapsing into a sweaty, panting tangle.
I took Maya's face between my hands and kissed her.
“You just fulfilled a condemned man's last request.”
I kissed her again and tasted salt on her cheeks.
“You are not going to die,” she whispered. “I will not allow it.”
I wrapped my arms around her bare back and held her as tightly as I dared without jostling the splintered ends of my fractured rib. I felt rather than heard her sob, and I wanted to cry myself.
Oh, Maya, I thought. I wish you had the power to offer me a reprieve. Because now that I've found you, I don't want to leave you.
Never had I met a woman so antipodal to me and yet so like me. We seemed to disagree on everything, and yet never in my life could I remember feeling more sympatico with another human being, not even Annie.
The tumor itself was unfair, but to find a soulmate who could make life so worth living just when I was riding an express train to death's door was unbearably depressing.
I wanted to say more, but my eyelids were drifting closed, and suddenly I was dropping like a stone into sleep's ocean . . .
. . . dropping like a stone . . .
. . . seeing the stone hit the surface . . . watching a slow-motion splash, seeing the ripples spread as the stone sinks into the clear depths . . .
. . . sinks . . .
. . . like a stone . . .