As he stepped into the water, she said: “What about the crocodiles?”
“They won’t bother us. There aren’t enough of them left to bother anybody. I wish there were.”
Serenely he sank beneath the surface, then burst into the air, shaking bubbles and spray from his beard. He was as brown as a manatee, and so large he seemed to bridge the creek. Edie was unprepared for the sight of his body: the lodgepole arms and broad chest, his bare neck as thick as a cypress trunk. The baggy army fatigues had given none of it away.
“Coming in?”
“Only if we can talk,” she said.
“What else would we do?”
Edie thought: There’s that damn smile again. She asked him to turn around while she took off her clothes.
He heard her slip into the creek. Then he felt her slender arms and legs; she was clinging to his back. As he moved into deeper water, she wrapped herself around his thighs.
“I’m a little scared,” she said.
“Haw! You and I are the scariest beasts in the jungle.”
Edie’s mouth was at his ear. “I want to go back to Miami.”
“So go.”
“But I don’t know the way out.”
The governor was treading against the push of a strong tidal current. It cleaved around their bobbing heads as if they were dead stumps in the creek.
Edie’s breath quickened from the thrill of being in fast water. She said, “From the minute you and Pol-lyanna showed up at the house, I knew it was over. Snapper’s gun-it meant nothing. We didn’t kidnap you; you kidnapped us!”
“Nature imposes hierarchy. Always,” Skink said.
Edie, in a taut whisper: “Please. Show me the way out of here.”
“And I was so sure you’d be angling for that suitcase.”
“No way,” she said, although it fleetingly had crossed her mind. Instead she’d decided to concentrate on getting out of the Keys alive.
A small silver fish jumped nearby. Playfully Skink swiped at it. He said, “Edie, your opinion of men-it’s not good. That much we share. Christ, imagine what Florida would look like* today if women had been in charge of the program! Imagine a beach or two with no ugly high-rises. Imagine a lake without golf courses.” He clapped his hands, making a merry splash.
Edie said, “You’re wrong.”
“Darling, I can dream.” He felt her lips feather against his neck. Then a tongue, followed by the unsub-tle suggestion of a nibble. He said, “And what was that?”
“What do you think.”
When she kissed him again, they went down. The saltiness burned her eyes, but she opened them anyway. He was smiling at her, blowing bubbles. They surfaced together and laughed. Carefully she repositioned herself, climbing around him as if he were a tree-hanging from his rock-hard forearms and shoulders, bracing her knees against his hipbones as she swung to the front. All the time she felt him easing toward a shallower spot in the creek, so he could stand while holding her.
Now they were eye-to-eye, green water foaming up between them. Edie said, “Well?”
“Weren’t you the one worried about crocodiles?”
“He’d have to eat both of us, wouldn’t he?”
“At the moment, yes.”
“That means he’d have to be awfully big and hungry.”
Skink said, “We should be quiet, just in case. Certain noises do attract them.” He sounded serious.
“How quiet?” Lightly she brushed her nipples along the lines of his ribs.
“Very quiet. Not a sound.”
“That’s impossible.” She felt his hands on the curve of her bottom. He was lifting her, keeping her in a gentle suspension. Then he was inside her. Just like that.
“Hush,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“Yes you can, Edie.”
They made love so slowly that often it seemed they weren’t moving a muscle. All sense of touch and motion came from the warm summer tide that rushed past and around and between them. In the mangroves an outraged heron squawked. More silver mullets jumped toward the shallows. A long black snake drifted by, indifferently riding the slick of the current as if .it were floating on jade-colored silk.
Edie Marsh was good. She hardly made a sound. For quite a while she even forgot the purpose of the seduction.