Sun. Sand. Sea. Oh, yeah. Nothing does it for me like lying out on a beach. My uncle's got this great raised cottage that sits right in the midst of sea oats smack on Navarre Beach, which is just south of the panhandle of Florida on the Gulf of Mexico. The cottage is nestled among dunes made of the cleanest, almost-white sand that is so soft and fine.

Lots of people I know from New Orleans hate going to Florida in the summer. They can't take lying out in the hot sand and baking in the merciless sun. They'd much rather be at home in air conditioning.

Not me. It can't be hot enough for me. Hell, I even like being in the real tropics in the summer. I don't mind risking the chance a hurricane may come and interfere with my vacation plans - I rather like it, in fact. Keeps the tourist trade low enough that things are slower and cheaper down there.

It's that way along Florida's Emerald Coast, as well. That's what they call this area. They call it that because the water is the most gorgeous blue-green color. It's like somebody dumped a giant vat of Easter egg dye along those white shores.

Easter.

I shifted in the sand and opened my eyes behind my sunglasses. The water glistened to me; I smiled at how great I wanted to believe I felt. Turned on my tummy, grabbed my novel and snuggled in on my towel to read. Glanced up ... recent habit really ... to search for Reggie. There he was, smoking a cigar on the cottage's back deck. God damn, but he was such a man. I couldn't see it, but I knew he had a rum and coke near him as he sat at the glass table under the cooling spread of the patio umbrella.

Great guy, was my Reggie. I think what I loved best about him was that he could make me smile just by being near me with his decadent, affectionate ways. He made me feel special, did Reggie.

I reached for my own rum and coke; to my dismay, discovered it was dry in my sippee cup. Horrors! I giggled to myself. Isn't life more fun when the worst thing to happen all day is to run out of Cuba Libre while you're laying on a beach in Florida?

When I realized I was sweating, I rose slowly from the blanket. Stretched. Waved at Reggie and blew him a kiss. Then strolled, very lady-like and all, into the water. So cool.

Coooooo. 

I sputtered up from the wave I'd dipped under to cool off. Blinked and wondered about sensory memories. Stuff and nonsense, as my mother has said more than a few times in her life. God, but I loved being in water. In another life, I must have been a fish. Or a crab. Or a seashell.

Seashell.

Backstroke into oblivion. Wearing myself out. Letting my mind come back home. Where it belonged. Wondered where we'd go for dinner that night. Needed to make it an early night, for sure. We'd had far too many late nights lately.

Standing in the Gulf's cooling, rolling waters just before where the biggest waves broke before their mad rush to shore. Jumping up to meet the ones that would have swamped me. Loving the tug of the smaller ones ... pulling me back and forth. Exhausting me just to keep upright after a while. I love that feeling of earned body weariness.

Floated toward shore on the next wave. Fought my way through the surf and plopped back down on my blanket. Gave my body up to the sun and only asked that I be dried. A little tanning wouldn't hurt, of course, but as long as it didn't actually burn me, I'd be okay.

"Begging yer pardon, ma'am."

I sat up and blinked at a tall, thin man standing near me. Wearing ecru trousers and dark blue shirt. And carrying black shoes. Hair tied back, probably in a ponytail.

And sorely out of place on my beach.

"Which you'll just be coming with us this very moment and we'll be on our way, I'm sure," said he. An accent that made it too hard to understand his words at first. As he talked, he got this pinched-face look that made him look like an old maiden aunt. His eyes were latched on my boobs.

"Get the fuck away from me before I call the cops. No panhandling on the beach, bozo." I sat up and looked for Reggie. Shit. He wasn't on the deck.

"Which I'm under strict orders, ma'am. Sure and you understand?" he said and this time he actually sounded haughty.

"Look. I don't want any trouble so ..." He was gathering up my stuff! I jumped up, grabbed for my book and yelped at him, "What the hell do you think you're doing? I'm going to scream bloody murder and you'll be very sorry when ... Hey! Stop it! Leave my things alone."

But he was grumbling something about 'bloody landlubbers' ... all the while he was busy folding my blanket; when I snatched it from his hands, he glared at me and then picked up my little beach umbrella.

"Reggie!" I started screeching my way to the cabin. I made it to the deck, with my blanket, my book and my empty sippee just as Reggie came running from inside the cottage. I blabbered loudly at him about being accosted by a thief on the beach. I stood behind Reggie as the man from the beach came bounding up the stairs toward us.

We all started talking at once. I kept saying I was calling the cops. In his big man voice, Reggie was telling him to just clear the hell out of there. I could barely understand the thief. His accent was annoying as all hell and so thick it was like he wasn't even speaking English anymore.

And then all of a sudden he stopped talking. Stood there looking at the top of the stairs and seeming almost pleased in the face of a rather tall, thin blonde man wearing a black jacket and pants with a white shirt peeking through. Some part of his shirt seemed oddly clustered around his neck.

"Which I tried, Doctor. But which she ain't making it easy," the thief said to the other man. "And himself sitting in royal splendor and never having the least concern that others are having to listen to some unholy prating to do his majesty's pleasure. Sure."

"My dear," said the man he had called 'Doctor,' coming up and bowing slightly in my direction. "Jack awaits. He has sent us to escort you to the airport in Pensacola where he is joining us and where we shall make proper arrangements for our travel. We must not lose a minute."

Reggie and I exchanged glances.

"Jack?" I asked. "Jack Stewart sent you? Why? Why didn't he just call? He has my cell number. And if he needed me on a flight, why didn't he just book it on the Internet?"

"No, my dear Ann. Jack Aubrey," the doctor said.

I shrugged my shoulders. "Who?"

The other man's voice squeaked out, like this really offended him, "Captain Jack Aubrey, His Majesty's Royal Navy, ma'am. Lucky Jack."

"I'm sorry?" I said as Reggie put his hand on my arm and started pushing me backwards toward the cottage's rear door. "I don't know anyone by that name except a character in a book. Now, if y'all are here as part of some elaborate practical joke, then the gig's up."

"Surely you remember me, my dear? Stephen Maturin? I visited your home not so many months ago."

The would-be thief piped up, "Doctor Maturin, for all love."

I groaned and grabbed onto Reggie, hissing loudly at him, "Reggie? Do you get it? Doctor Stephen Maturin? Captain Jack Aubrey? You hearing what I am? They're ever-loving fictional characters. Someone's got a hell of a sense of humor."

He nodded at me, reached behind him for the phone. "Gentlemen. Game's over. Leave now and I won't involve local law enforcement. But if I see you around here again, I'll kick your asses. Now git."

The thief looked at the Doctor with genuine shock but at Maturin's nod, he began retreating down the back stairs, muttering darkly the whole way. As he followed him, the Doctor turned to look me in the eyes, "Could you have forgotten? Ah, my dear. I wonder at the physiological woes the stress must have caused you to produce this memory lapse. You do look as though perhaps a good black drought and a blue pill would be indicated. But then, of course, there is not much that such a dose does not set to rights."

Shaking his head slowly, he descended the stairs.

Inside the cottage, Reggie and I watched them get in a waiting taxi up on the highway. "Christ, Reggie, did that just happen?"

"I swear I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't been there. Damn, catin, you weren't kidding, were you? How the fuck did they get here? And how do you suppose they found you?" he asked me, heading off to make us each a nice stiff drink.

"More importantly, why? And, like ... what? He still can't even be around me? So they send Stephen and Killick? Like I'd really go back if that's all I have to look forward to? God, but I hope they bought our little act. I want them to think I've forgotten if he still hasn't forgiven me. Because I do not want them coming back. Though I doubt Stephen will give up if he's set his mind to it. I'd say we should go back to New Orleans but they may have sent someone else there."

"We should stay in a hotel tonight. Just to play it safe. If they come back, they'll think you've gone home. A simple but effective way to evade them." He looked at me hard. "If you think this is really what you want to do?"

He hugged in around me when I went to him for comfort. In a voice stronger than I felt the decision, I told him, "I stick by what I did. No regrets. And I'm not going back like this."

We checked into the small hotel down the road. Got connecting rooms because I felt safer knowing Reggie was close enough to hear me if I called out. Not that I slept that night.

I spent some of the time crying instead. A lot of time cursing in my mind. It hadn't been simple to leave; and learning that I'd done it by going through a portal ... that it had been what I could only think of as an alternate reality ... had left me grasping for answers to questions I didn't want to ask. I just hadn't expected that as a price for what I'd done.

My cousin Reggie was the only person I'd told about the Game. When I left it, I dove into work and was on the road constantly because I just needed to fill my mind with something other than these portal questions that were more and more leaving me feeling empty and so very alone. But when I hit a wall and needed shelter, it was Reggie's house I retreated to.  And then he'd come with me to the shore because it was where I could reclaim myself. It was a self-imposed sabbatical. I'd needed the time. It had been somewhat restorative for me. I kept telling myself that I had the power to make life a blast again.

And now that I'd begun to be more comfortable in my own skin ... now they come back from that other reality in this particular way to destroy even that little peace I had in this one?

Oh, wait. This is too, too rude of me. 

Diary? How have you been these last weeks? May I still call you that? May I still try your patience by addressing this to you? Gosh, I think maybe I've missed you most of all. You have no idea how many times I've sat down and tried to write to you again. I feel a might rusty, but I'll just go on. Okay?

The next morning, Reggie went back to the cottage to case the joint, see if they had come back. Meanwhile, I hung out at the hotel's pool. We'd stay one more night at the hotel, just to be smart, then we could be pretty sure they weren't coming back.

Pool.

She came unbidden to my mind while I did laps. I had to climb out of the pool and bury myself in a book to chase her out.

We were such close friends, even before we'd entered the Game, Diary. Uma and me. I was actually closer to her than any of the others. We were an odd couple, I guess. At one time, we had been determined that the Game wasn't going to divide us. It had really been no one's fault. Just one of those things. And then I thought about the others.

But I was happy. Really, Diary. I was.

They should have left me at peace, Diary.

Peace.

Well, now my peace was just shot, wasn't it? I gathered up my things and stomped off to my room. Part way through the reception area, I caught sight of Reggie striding toward me wearing his bathing suit, his beach towel tucked under his arm and his shades perched on his nose. No sign of them, he told me. Come back with me to the pool, he said. But I was done in for a while and decided to go take a shower and a nap before lunch.

It was actually a letdown, I realized. All this time, they do something this stupid to reach out to me for some unknown reason and then they just give up?

Inside my room, I stepped into a warm shower and felt my muscles relax. Pulses of hard water eased my tension. Someone pounding on the room's door snapped me back to life.

Pre-ordained. Life can be that way, don't you find, Diary? I was halfway to the door, tying my robe shut ... when it felt like I'd walked though a cold layer of air and I felt this deafening sense of déjà vu. And that's when I knew. I could feel what was waiting for me on the other side of the door.

Jack.

My pretty Captain.

I steeled my resolve and opened the door. We looked at each other. I remembered that I didn't know him. That was my cover. Memory loss.

"Yes? Can I help you?" I asked him. God. He looked so good to me. It hurt, a real physical stab in my gut, just to see him. And then ... so unprepared for the wave of irrational anger that coursed through me.

"Who is he?" Jack asked, his voice deep and an edge there that caught me off guard.

"Excuse me? I don't know you. You must have me mistaken for someone else." I tried to close the door but he was through it so quickly; Jack always had been fast on his feet. "Just what do you think you're ..."

"Do not force me to repeat the question, my dear." He shut the door, moved toward me and I backed up in the face of what I saw in his eyes. "Who is he?"

I looked at him. Something was so different about Jack. Yet everything looked the same. His blonde hair caught at his neck, save the rebellious strands the strong shore wind had freed from their binding. Wearing a short-sleeved, unbuttoned white Henley that advertised the chest and arms I remembered so well. His skin bronzed from the sun. Oh God. His neck. I so well remembered burying my face there on too many occasions. The way his manly torso seemed to slip down to his hips. Thighs I first lusted for when they'd been captured in tight breeches were now snug in worn blue jeans.

His eyes. My God. The change was there.

Hard. Determined. Tired of dealing with me. Commanding me to comply with whatever it was he wanted from me.

It had taken me far too long to respond to his question but between taking an unbidden moment just to realize the implications ... he was there with me ... and not being able to figure out how I should keep up the façade I'd decided I'd hide behind ... I was caught immobile for long enough to be noted.

"I don't know you. Get out of my room before I scream." I heard my voice trying so hard to sound tough. He took a slow step toward me. I put my hands up to back him off. Sucked in a big breath, opened my mouth to scream ...

He didn't hesitate. He grabbed me by my wrists, bending them behind me, capturing them against the small of my back. Making me instinctively struggle even as he was shoving his mouth over mine and kissing me with a force that shocked me. He pulled away slightly; I thought I saw a shift in his eyes because I was no longer fighting him. One hand remained holding my wrists where he wanted them; the other cupped my jaw to keep it steady so he could kiss me again. Gentler but still insistent on my obedience. My mouth opened at the slightest request from him. I heard myself whimper.

But then he took it further than I expected. He pushed me firmly against the wall and leaned in against me. I felt his hardness, insistent and demanding. Swoon of heady arousal followed by ... He thought it would be that easy, I thought in this continuing flush of sincere anger that I hadn't even known was there inside me. I squirmed to get away.

His free hand yanked open the belt of my robe and I struggled with him. But he was so strong and so very determined. His hand clutched at my breast and his fingers teased at my nipple until it was peaked and paining for relief. A knee between my thighs and I felt tears escape me that I was betraying myself this way ... I was simply giving in to the sensation of him and spreading my legs for him. His fingers roughly invaded me below and I gasped as I bucked against him in response. I felt my cheeks flame when his lips curled into the slightest smile.

Had I no dignity when it came to how much I'd missed him and how there hadn't been a breath I'd taken for weeks that hadn't been painfully infused with the loss of him?

"Ah, my little dear. There you are. I am not so easily dissuaded as Stephen and Killick, you see? You know me and you will tell me so."

"I don't know you and ..." I tried to get it out but it was no more than a losing moan.

His thumb moved against my little nub ... rubbing lightly and then picking a faster, more insistent pace as his fingers pumped just so in and out of me to give me no chance at resistance ... I began to feel it happening and fought it hard ... until I felt myself gush over his hand. I closed my eyes and gave in. He'd overwhelmed me with a brutish display of his mastery of my body and mind.

"Let us now try the question one last time, sweetheart," he said in a low growl. "Who is the man you are with? Is he your newest lover?"

Deep swallow. "He's my cousin."

"Very good, my dear." I felt his face come next to mine. His lips kissed into my neck. Soft. Warm. Wet.

Oh, this couldn't be happening. Here with me at last. But for the wrong reasons apparently.

I felt myself sagging against him. Turned my face to his neck and breathed him into me. Whispered hoarsely, choking on every feasible emotion in this moment. "Are you here just to torture me with the knowledge I'll never have you again?"

His fingers stroked along my jaw and I felt my wetness on them. Opened my eyes and fell into his.

When he kissed me, it was with a lingering dominance tinged with passion that took my breath away. Every time ... since the first time with Jack ... his kisses had captured me and never let me go. This one was one I'd remember forever. It scared me for its intensity. And for the way I responded to him in this new way he had with me.

From my lips, his mouth traveled to my chin, down my throat and into the valley between my breasts. It was nothing for his mouth to then capture first one nipple and then the other. His softness with them seemed to me the strangest counterpoint to the meanness of his hold on my wrists. But when he let my wrists go, I felt adrift.

I never believe anymore. When did that happen?

My hands went to his face and I just held it steady so I could stay within his eyes. There were things there I simply didn't recognize. But they were so alluring to me. Like he'd come back to me but I wasn't sure I knew him anymore. Maybe I really didn't. Those eyes. They drew me in so deep that I never wanted to come back out. It was like remembering why I loved him at the same time I wondered why I'd never loved him enough to see this before.

"Tell me you have spent as many long moments missing me as I have spent missing you, amorata," he whispered to me, the want of me heavy in his voice.

Not real. I said it to myself. It couldn't be real. I felt at war with the inability to believe. 

Slowly, haltingly, telling him the only thing that seemed to be wanted to be said between us: "Every morning, I wake up and hope this will be the day you'll come to rescue me. And every night, I wonder if you know how much I need you. Every day, I feel this old world of mine killing me a little more. It's the thing with the Portals, isn't it, Jack? It's what I finally understood Cort meant about what he learned through his own Portal. We don't belong in our old worlds anymore because our new world has changed us too much."

His hands touched my belly and then slid inside the edges of my open robe and up my back. Still I clung to his face and tried to find a way to believe he was there and ... my fingers touched his brows, stroked around his eyes, traced over the edges of his lips. Recommitting him to my memory.

This sense of Jack washed over me and I remembered for a fleeting second the way our senses had been affected through his Portal. The way our senses of smell, touch and taste seemed heightened there. I realized I didn't feel that affect and yet ... there was something. A different kind of intensity between us.

His hands under my arms and somewhere in this world, he was lifting me smoothly up the wall. And I was wrapping my legs around his waist. Somewhere in this time, he was forcing me to come back to his reality.

I started shaking in his arms. "You hate me for what I did," I told him in a voice of defeat that I recognized from my nights alone. "And I hate you for leaving me."

He buried his face in my neck and I felt his arms grip me harder. I slipped my arms around his neck and held on. Don't let go, I kept begging him inside my mind.

Completely done in when he whispered to me. Words of fierce emotion ... about the sense of loss he'd felt to have returned from the Surprise and to have found me gone from New Orleans ... about his determination to put things right between us ... about his belief that he would have gone through any danger to find me again. It took my breath away. I could feel my tears in my chest. Unable to process what he felt and how I felt in response.

It took all the fight out of me. I thought he might comfort me. I thought he would make things better. 

All that and more. I had seen it in his eyes. He was the very person I needed. He was there for me.

"Oh, Jack, I've needed you so badly," I whispered against his neck, my voice showing the awe of this reality. "What are you doing here? Please tell me I'm not dreaming."

"We have a great many things to say to each other, amorata. None more important than this - I have missed you so very, very much. I love you more than I can find words worthy of the emotion. "

We hugged each other so tight. Like we thought we might disappear on each other. He held me until I was spent of tears that had overtaken my ability to even speak.

He set me down and then led me to the bed. I crawled up toward the backboard, assuming he was coming with me, to hold me, so we could figure out where we were going from here. Surprised to realize that he had sat instead on the edge of the mattress, too far from me to make me feel sure of what was happening between us.

I'd never once said the important words to him, the ones I'd owed him in the wake of breaking his heart. I'd once had the chance to do it right. I'd blown it and I'd never gotten another one. All those nights since then, seems I'd fallen asleep saying the words I wished I'd told him.

"I was so wrong, Jack. Before we talk of anything else, can I please just tell you? What I did, it was done with the best of intentions but it was done from weakness. I felt like it was all I could do, like I owed it to Terry for all the times he'd let me use his strength. And because I loved him and was devoted to him. I thought I was the one person who could help him in that awful time he was facing. I let myself believe what I did would have no real impact on you and I. But of course it did. If nothing else, it damaged your ability to trust me. I so need your forgiveness. I need to know how I can rebuild your trust in my words to you."

Jack wouldn't look at me. I could feel tears leaking and I rubbed them away, angry with myself for crying at this moment. 

"I know I deserved losing you. I just didn't want you to always hate me, Jack. Because despite what you thought, I always loved you."

He shook his head and glanced at me ... too swift for me to read his eyes. "When I came back from the Surprise and found you were gone ... When I learned what you had done ... It seemed the cruelest of ironies. For you see, my dear, I came back knowing what a vile scrub I had been to have let anger and hurt leave me with such a cold heart."

And here's the thing, Diary. From the moment he'd refused to come home ... from those days spent in LA aboard the Rose, hoping he'd come back and I could explain ... I had so much time to think about all the advice I'd gotten from everyone. And if I just had the guts, I knew there was only ever one way I might actually stand a chance of putting things right with Jack.

Bud told me Jack needed me to make a sacrifice for him that was bigger than the one I'd made for Terry. Uma said I needed to remember Jack was a man of a different time and would not be so introspective but would want to take action. Roo said such men of Jack's time would appreciate it if I was willing to allow him to pursue me even if we both knew I'd never once wanted to play such games. Cort said I should never give up, that I should fight for Jack. Lachlan said Jack loved nothing so much as mounting a battle plan. Egan told me to never stop believing that Jack loved me. Dino told me that it wouldn't take long for Jack to realize he was missing me every bit as much as I missed him.

"Jack?" I whispered to him, touched him on the arm and sighed as he dropped his head. "I never wanted to leave that world. Never. I only did it for you. I feared you wouldn't come back as long as I was there and I believed with all my heart that you needed to be there more than I did. And then when I was here, I understood for the first time the intensity of what happens to us when we go through our own Portal ... why we can be damaged in ways we just never foresee."

 "Yes, we may go back searching for something we believe we can only find in our past only to learn it is an illusion. But, amorata? You did that for me? Left everyone only for me? Surely, once you were here, why then you must have realized you needed to return. Why did you not contact anyone? They would have brought you back through your Portal."

"As much as I knew I shouldn't stay here, I would never have asked to come back. All I could do was cling to my belief that you would come to bring me home. I want to go home, Jack. Truly I do. But only if you've forgiven me."

"We say many things when we are sure we've lost another's love. Or perhaps that we never had it." He leaned in on his knees, his head lower still. "I hope that you can be more forgiving of me than I was of you, my love. My actions and my heartless words were in the heat of what I felt was going on. I thought ..."

"You thought I was really going to make a choice. I know. I wanted to explain ..."

One hand reached over and smoothed along my legs, this tender caress that seemed to convey his sadness. "Do you remember telling me that time would be the teller of all tales? I think of that often, amorata. Time has told me another version of what I thought I knew."

"I treated you so shabbily. I should never have put Terry's needs above yours."

Eyes up at me finally and he shook his head slowly. His hand stroked my cheek and he gave me the smallest smile. "I would wish with all my being that you had made another decision, but how like you to have stood up to do what you thought was right. And in that moment, my dear, perhaps you were right. Perhaps he really did need all that you gave him."

"Oh, Jack. If you only knew." I choked on it ... the emotion, the wishes, the reality. Tears clouded my vision and this time I never even tried to stem them.

"Amorata. Here is a chance for you to put my needs first. Just this once, turn to me instead of another. It is what I have most needed from you. To be the one. First in your heart and first you would reach for when you need comfort or guidance. Let me in."

Should I be ashamed of how quickly I crawled to him and let him nestle me into his hold? I probably didn't deserve it. But I took it from him anyway.

"My little dear, since the first moment I saw the two of you together, I knew there was a great deal of you that Thorne had claimed before I ever came into that world. I knew why he had turned to you, amorata. I ignored what was going on for as long as I could." His hand stroked my hair and I felt him lay his cheek against the top of my head. "But, my love, I was never truly angry with you over that. If I had gotten my hands on Thorne, I would have ripped his heart out with my bare hands for the way his actions hurt you."

It made me pause. I wasn't sure I understood. "Then why, Jack? If it wasn't ... I know I hurt you. Give me a chance to apologize."

A curved finger under my chin and drawing my eyes to his. "Did you truly believe, Ann, that Lucky Jack loves equally whatever of the women in our group he is with? That I was such a scrub as to have lied when I said you were first in my heart?"

"Oh, Jack! But I said that in a moment of weakness, when I was unsure of everything."

"This Game is only possible for me as long as you are the one person who is my home." His thumb stroked along my cheek. "I have come to bring you back with me. But when you return, there will be some things different between us, Ann. We will begin to make demands on the other."

"Jack, I  ..."

"We will."

"Jack ..."

"You really have no choice, sweetheart. And I believe you know it just as surely as I do." His voice was harder. This was the voice of Capt. Aubrey in command of the Surprise. The voice I'd heard him use with his men, issuing commands that would be followed as if choice was never an option. "When I was gone, Stephen helped me understand that I could no longer fit in my old world because I am not that man anymore. Without you, it was not where I wanted to be. When I returned and you were gone, they helped us go through the portal. I came to find you, to claim you and to bring you back. And return, we will. But with a new understanding between us. One I will convince you is in your best interests as well as mine."

I felt him shift my body and he came crawling over me, gently but resolutely pushing me to my back atop the crumpled remains of the bed.

His arms gathered my body to him as he rested on his elbows. He watched me and I am sure he could see the struggle. I touched his cheek; he turned his head to kiss into my palm. This Jack ... so complicated, so full ... the romantic who'd first swept me off my feet ... the gentle master who'd never felt the need to control my every action ... the ruthless commander who'd hidden from me but was now taking over in this moment of importance ... the lusty seducer who'd come to me in dreams but had been only in my arms when I'd been with him on the Surprise ... the fullness of Jack I'd only captured in my vision and had wanted ever since. Here with me at last.

"Let us talk only of us, just for a moment, amorata. Shall we? I am about to kiss you to find your answer to these questions. Listen carefully with your heart." Serious face, his eyes steady on mine. I'd missed his voice. I'd missed his touch. I'd missed his scent. I'd missed his presence. I'd missed myself with him. "Do you forgive me? And will you accept my forgiveness in return? Will we start anew? And will we truly be first in each other's hearts? I search your lips for a 'yes' to each of those. Give me what I desire, my love."

For whatever reason, it was in this moment that I began to believe again. I could not have taken another breath unless it was with the knowledge that I could have Jack back in my life.

"Yes, Jack." I smiled into his eyes and felt my whole life shift in just that one moment. "I believe you forgive me. And that you never really stopped loving me."

He dipped down to me. A soft glow of a buss across my waiting mouth. And then this gentle sucking nibble of my top lip. When I sighed, he sighed into a deeper kiss, taking both my lips with his. Then opening me to him so that I could receive the sensation of his mastery of me. His tongue soft with mine then growing more ardent as I felt his entire body seem to move into intimacy. His lips left mine as if reluctant to have to withdraw. I felt I'd given him every scrap of me in that kiss.

"Ah, yes, you do smoke it, do you not, amorata? I could always find the truth in your lips." He nuzzled into my neck with his nose and then his mouth kissed with increasing pressure into the curve of my neck. His mouth went closer to my ear to tell me, "Do you know how many nights I have held you in my dreams, my little dear? The ways I have loved you. The ways you have loved me in return. Oh, my love, I have missed you. Let me show you how very much."

He shifted onto his side and pulled me into his embrace. One hand grazed along the underside of my breast. It felt so familiar, so welcome. His breath along my neck sounded heavier. It made me shiver in anticipation. His fingers ran along my scalp, moving my hair from where it had fallen across my face and shoulder. So gentle. "Tell me what you remember most about making love with me."

Swift smile and my eyes closed. "The little things you did that made me feel like a woman."

Warm lips at my temple. Trailing down my cheek, sliding softly across my lips, careful over my eyes, resting along my neck.

"Yes, Jack. Like that, beloved." And the sense of Jack encased me and the words I gave him were exactly right, for once. "When I can tell that every single touch, every kiss, every look, every word, is being given to me alone. That it's more than just the physical between us. It is the most erotic gift, Jack."

Jack and I making love ... it had always been a battle between our abject desire for the other and our wish to make it last as long as we possibly could because every second seemed that important.  There have been, and still are, other wonderful lovers in my life, Diary. But with Jack, it is a thing apart, a separate truth. And this is what is truest about me and Jack: I am never ashamed to just want his body to be with my body. And I think this is because Jack has always understood that, to me, the joining of our bodies means more than any words could ever make sense of. When we join, it isn't just our bodies, you see, Diary. It is the essence of us that we share. And we never have needed words to explain that to us.

We lay together for long minutes, our hands touching but without insistence at first. But it swiveled on us and we both felt it when it happened. Like a spark lit the space between us and he moaned out to me even as his body rubbed on mine.

"I need to feel your skin's warmth, beloved," I whispered to him, wondering why my voice sounded so husky. But, Diary? No wonder I felt this way. I was basically nude, lying entwined with his limbs and the only garment on me was my open robe. He, on the other hand, was still entirely clothed.

Rising from the bed to shed his remaining clothes; serious, slow, sensuous show just for me. Then coming back to me as I slipped the robe from my arms so I could offer him my body. His thigh went between mine and he nestled into me. And he began kissing along my body; warm words to tell me the next place he would kiss, the next place he'd missed in the time we'd been apart. Leaving me soft and trembling by the time his inquisitive mouth tasted me below.

Oh, Diary. Such an intimacy between a man and a woman in those moments. When you've opened yourself and he takes your gift to return it to you as something only he can bring to you.

Coming in his arms ... I'd stopped believing in happy endings. I'd stopped believing I'd feel this way again. Even when I forced myself to dream that this moment might come, I'd always figured we'd never feel this way together again because I thought the awful words and actions between us would have stood in the way.

Isn't it amazing, Diary, what the act of forgiveness can do for you?

I whispered in his ears as he held me, his fingers still inside me, feeling me clutch at them, stroking in the slickness of my desire. Telling him that needing him had been the one thing that kept me from slipping too far away. That my want of him in that moment knew boundaries I couldn't see.

He was kissing me hard, spreading my legs wide, coming over me. Letting me feel his hardness as he shifted against me ... hushing me when I babbled to him, suddenly worried that ... that maybe I was still not good enough for him.

When his cock broke into my body, I gasped at the invasion and tensed in response.

"Amorata," he groaned in this husky need that I felt echo inside me. "Open to me. Do it now, my little dear."

No words from me. I was too absorbed in what his voice ... those words ... what they made me feel. It had been too long. I was tight but insatiably eager for him in that moment. Reveling in the feel of him edging his way totally inside me.

And then he was driving into me hard enough for me to hear only the sound of our rutting. As if every grunt, every wet echo, every groan ... as if nothing else in the world existed.

In my own ardor, I couldn't approach being still, of course. And then, he began thrusting so deep and I was panting out my focused need to be coming hard. My neck arched and I was looking out through my eyelashes into his eyes. Coming at the look I found there. A fire in him. Passion focused only on me.

Crying out to him. Hearing his unintelligible wordless noises of release as he shot into me. The feel of warmth cascading throughout me and then leaking out in little spurts as he slowed.

Such a comfort coming in the arms of someone to whom you can give deep emotions, Diary. And this was what was different in me, then. Because my ability to engage my emotions in this act had fled weeks before. There is nothing as satisfying as feeling freedom. This was the freedom I wanted. Freedom to feel that the strings between us, though fine as spider's webbing, were yet so inviolate they could give without ever breaking.

This time healed so much between us. Reminding us of what we nearly lost. Reminding me of the reasons I had loved the Game because it was what brought me Jack and the other men. And my friends. How we shared relationships far too complicated to be explained; how if I was to ever play again, I had to remember how to exist in that world.

Jack. He had come there only to save me and he was the only one who would have realized what I needed. The one man who would forgive me with such fullness that he would make such a sacrifice for me. I would have waited forever for him. He was giving me back my place in the only world in which we could be together. Restoring my reason to seek answers.

Reminding me of my ability to believe in my vision. 

"You were the one sent to me, Jack," I whispered against the sweat of his neck after we'd both come screaming in each other's orbit. "It was the one thing I wanted to tell you. You will fulfill me. We were meant to find each other. Even if we had to come out of our own worlds and meet someplace that is still so hard for me to believe exists."

We made it into Miami just before 6 p.m. Landing at the smaller Opa-Locka Airport aboard the corporate jet that Jack had arranged to fly us in from Pensacola. It took us about forty-five minutes to make it to the hotel.

I really ... honestly ... truly ... did not want to be there. And, then again, I was so thrilled to be there. Ah, Diary, I am so completely hopeless, am I not?

It wasn't like I'd purposely forgotten what this day was. I just erased it from my mind when I'd begun to fear Jack might never come to save me in time.

But Jack reminded me while we took a shower together. Just as he was pressing me into the coolness of the tile and showing me how his hands would always be my favorite washcloth. Telling me we didn't have any more time to waste or he'd have me yet again. I wasn't listening very well until he talked about the help he'd gotten coming through the portal into my world.

"And we had not a moment to lose. When we did not find you in New Orleans, I called your uncle but he would tell me nothing. It told me everything, my dear, for I knew that meant you were running from what you had found upon your return. We began looking in the places I knew of until we ran out of the ones that seemed most promising. Only two other places occurred to me as likely - either you had gone to Lafayette to be near your mother's family, or you had come here. I traveled to Lafayette and Stephen led the search here. When Stephen called to say he had found you, I had been sure you would come with him. I chartered a jet to take me to Pensacola because I did not want one wasted moment before I could see you. But when I arrived, it was to bad news. Stephen said you had no memory of us but I simply would never believe that. And, as you very well know, Stephen is a devious soul when faced with a challenge. He was the one who knew to trail your cousin to the hotel."

"But why the time crunch?" I knew he didn't understand that bit of slang. Smiling at him as he turned off the water and brought a bath towel around my shoulders: "I mean, why were you in such a rush? Just couldn't wait to see me?"

"Oh, but, my dear! Today is the beginning of the vacation. We are to meet the others in Miami by tonight. Tomorrow, we fly to the British Virgin Islands. Surely you have not forgotten? After all, you drew up the itinerary."

"The vacation?" Trying to keep my voice neutral. "Um. Yeah. I had forgotten."

Pirate's eyes at me; his hand on my cheek; not believing a word of it. "Think of it, my love. Two weeks upon the sea in which to make our amends to each other. Warm, tropical air." A little growl in my ear that turned me to liquid. "I shall make love to you under the stars. I shall lie with you on a deserted beach. Remembering how you enjoy making love aboard a boat has me all ahoo, sweetheart. Do not even attempt to resist this temptation, for you are powerless to tell me no."

"Oh, Jack. That's not fair. We've just found each other again and ..." Losing my concentration in the face of his deepening kisses along my neck. Feeling him licking up the drops of moisture my towel hadn't yet dried. "Are you trying to seduce me, Captain?"

"It has been my only aim, Ann. Will you deny me?"

And I already knew. Far too practical for my own good. It had already been arranged. I didn't stand a chance of resisting. Jack was to captain the huge sloop that Dino had rented for the trip. They were all going to be there and I'd missed them ... well, most of them.

 "They miss you, my little dear. They want you to come along," he told me. And to tell me he registered my hesitation: "All of them."

"How odd it feels, Jack, to be going back to that world and to be actually seeing everyone in one place. Just don't leave me alone," I told him with a little smile. Looking in his eyes and knowing he knew there would be awkward moments for me.

Then again, could I have not gone? I had Jack back and I didn't want to let him go even for a few minutes. Even the amount of time he left to go and get Stephen and Killick in the lobby. As Killick packed my bags while I fussed at him, Jack made me go to the pool and tell Reggie I was leaving. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done but I did it without a word to Jack.

We went to the cottage so I could gather up other items I might want on the trip. Woefully unprepared for a cruise as the only wardrobe I had with me were mostly shorts and t-shirts. I told Jack that I'd go shopping in Tortola for any dressy things I'd need.

And when I was packed and as ready as I could be, I used my laptop to go online and hoped Jack was right that there was a message waiting for me there.

Found the email and grinned at Jack with such relief. We held hands, the four of us. I pressed the hotlink. I clicked on the green 'yes' icon. Felt the rush. Blinked away the feeling. And knew it had happened again.

I had found a way back in. Returning to the only world in which I belonged anymore  Tamped down an unexpected sense of unease over that realization.

And then we were driving to the Pensacola airport where the small jet was waiting on us. Jack and I talked of many things on the trip to Miami; our heads close together so our words could remain private from Killick's overly-inquisitive ears.

I made only one promise to Jack in the wake of that discussion - that I would be on my best behavior on the cruise and that I would let no personal discordance with any other in our group be evident to others. No sense making anyone uncomfortable or letting any friction be a crimp on the group's ability to have a good time, I agreed.

Sure, sure. We both know, don't we, Diary? This seemed destined to be a promise made to be broken, even if I gave it my best shot.

In Miami, a limo bore us to Miami Beach. If Jack looked at his watch once, he studied it a thousand times. By the time we checked in at the hotel, he was beside himself because he cannot stand being late for an engagement. And the first firm appointment of the trip was that evening. This was when we were supposed to be meeting everyone for a drink at the hotel's beachside bar to watch the sunset and toast our coming adventure.

That night on a boisterous strip of the shore of Miami Beach, I watched the glory of the sunset give way to jewels in the darkened sky as Jack's head lazed in my lap.

And felt the gratitude to be back among family. The immensity of knowing I was with the love of my life.