Jessi sighed. “I agree.” She ran the back of her hand over his jaw. “I loved the way his beard tickled my inner thighs when his mouth was between my legs.”
“Ditto, sweetheart.”
Tommy broke out into a wide smile. “Are you two trying to seduce me again?”
“Heaven forbid,” Jessi said with a demure bat of her eyes.
Normally, he would have pulled Jessi and Angel into the bedroom, but they didn’t have much time before they needed to leave for the airport, and he wanted to feel the warmth of the ocean again. “Let’s have one more swim before we have to go.”
The three of them ran down the length of the beach and shed their clothes along the way. When they reached the shore, they were completely naked and dove under the crystal-clear water. They ended up on the platform again, flat on their backs, soaking up the sun. The brief swim left Tommy with more reservations about leaving their secluded hideaway and returning to civilization. He shielded his eyes with his forearms and let out a contented sigh. “I wish we could stay here forever.”
“We can always come back,” Angel said.
“Or take a later plane,” Jessi suggested.
Tommy propped himself up on his elbows and stared across the horizon. The water was a sheet of cobalt glass. He shifted to the edge of the platform and looked down into the aqua water. He had a clear vision all the way to the ocean floor. A stingray floated by like an underwater angel, and a giant starfish sat spread-eagled on the sandy bottom. “This place is magnificent, but there’s so much more to see in Fiji. We’ve been on this one island the entire time.” He shielded his eyes with his hand and searched the horizon. “Let’s stay an extra two days on one of the other islands.”
Angel smiled back at him. “What a wonderful idea!”
“We’re really going to stay an extra two days?” Jessi asked. “I was only joking about taking a later flight.”
“Yep. It’s settled. We’re staying another two days.”
Tommy watched the clouds drift slowly by like white fluff suspended in the air. After two weeks in paradise alone with Jessi and Angel, and now with plans to start a family, he was on top of the world – literally. He pushed his hair behind his ears and laced his fingers through Jessi’s hand. She was on his right and Angel sat across from them in one of the large captain chairs in the private jet.
Jessi leaned across to join his gaze at the sheet of white clouds floating across the skyline. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Gorgeous. This part of the world is heaven.”
Angel turned from the small window to face Tommy and Jessi. “I’m not sure which I love more, the clear, blue water that rivals the color of your eyes, or the deep blue of the sky that mimics their intensity.”
Angel, the hopeless romantic, always had a prolific vocabulary in which to profess his love. It set Tommy’s heart, and his crotch, on fire. The small private plane they chartered to take them from Viti Levu to Taveuni offered enough privacy for an erotic encounter with his wife and husband, but he resigned himself to wait until they landed and checked into their private cottage. They had been in enough trouble recently with an impromptu rendezvous that took place during the Australian tour, in a bathroom stall at the Sydney Kingsford Smith airport.
The small plane dipped and Tommy felt Jessi’s hand tighten around his fingers. She looked pale, which surprised him, because she wasn’t usually a nervous flyer. “You okay, hon?”
Her throat moved. “Yeah. My stomach just flip-flopped. I’m not used to flying in a plane this small.”
Angel reached across and patted Jessi’s knee. “We have an experienced pilot who came highly recommended. It’s a short flight. Try to relax.”
The plane dipped again, erasing the confidence and reassuring look on Angel’s face. Tommy couldn’t suppress a lighthearted laugh. “Look at the two of you.” He clutched Jessi’s hand a little tighter and touched Angel’s leg. “You act like you’ve never hit turbulence before. Remember the flight over Vegas? We joked that it bounced up and down more than Jimmy’s bunk on the tour bus.”
Both Jessi and Angel smiled back, a little more relaxed.
“Let’s think about our extended honeymoon.” Despite his own suggestion, instead of envisioning the next few days on a sunny beach, Tommy reflected on the last few years of whirlwind tours, promos and writing music. Riffs and chord progression automatically started forming in Tommy’s head. There was no restraining the creativity once it blossomed, which is why he always took a guitar with him. He left his seat to retrieve his Les Paul from the storage compartment above, in order to bring life to the melody singing in his head. The plane rocked just as he opened the latch, and his guitar case flew out and landed in his arms.