Free The West Wind by Morgan Douglas Page A

strength, only less free
Than thou, O Uncontrollable! If even
I were as in my boyhood, and could be

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed
Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.
Oh! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!
I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!

A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowed
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.”
     
    His voice changed as he recited the poem, his volume rising and
falling. Some parts were quiet, sorrowful, and others hopeful. The whole
delivery was rife with longing and made Hero’s heart ache. She could see how he
felt affected by each line, almost as if he were the poet instead of some
teenage boy sitting on a stairwell a couple hundred years and thousands of
miles away. It was nothing she had ever experienced. She had heard people read
poetry in English classes in school, but the rhythm was never as fluid. Even
from her teachers it was devoid of passion in comparison. Passionate, she
thought, was the perfect word to describe Xander. Everything he did, he did
with passion. It made her think about kissing him and what it would be like to
feel his lips on hers. If it was anything like his dancing or the way he
recited poetry, there wasn’t going to be much hope she’d ever want anyone else
in her life again. She remembered the charge at the end of their first dance,
the feel of him during their tango, and began to imagine his mouth leaning down
to claim hers.
     
    Hero looked up to find him watching her in silence. Apparently
she’d been lost in thought for a while. She blushed under his stare, a little
embarrassed. He raised both eyebrows, amused.
“You look pretty good in red. Matches the strap on your dress.”
    She blushed harder. “Shut up!”
    He laughed and gestured with his head through the doorway. “Come
on, this is my room.”
    Hero climbed the last few steps and stepped into the room. Where
the library had bookshelves, the cupola had windows. A thick air mattress and a
suitcase rested on the floor. That was it.
    “You don’t have any curtains,” she noticed.
    Xander laughed. “No, we haven’t hired an interior designer yet. We
wanted to get the renovations done first.”
    “Doesn’t that make it hard to sleep in?”
    He nodded. “Yeah, but I don’t mind. We get up early to work on the
house anyway. Plenty of time for sleeping in when the work is done.”
    “Can I do it?” Hero asked. Interior design was one of her dreams.
    “Work on the house? You could help if you wanted to. . .” he
trailed off.
    “No, silly. Choose your curtains. Help decorate. You obviously
need a woman’s touch,” she said with a wink and a smile.
    “Oh.” He paused. “Yeah, sure. Up here at least. I get veto power,
though,” he said the last words suddenly. Visions of lacy pink curtains floated
through his head.
    She grinned wickedly, reading his thoughts from the expression on
his face. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure it’s appropriate for a boy’s room, promise.”
    “Check this out,” he said out of nowhere and flipped the light
switch.
    The room went dark, but outside the windows she could see everything .
She gasped. The moon was bright, nearly full and played on the ocean out to sea
as if it were painting the waves by hand before sending them to shore. The
lights at La Hacienda were dark, but other homes on the island made tiny fires
in the darkness and the town created a night sky of its own as it stretched out
into the hills and across the shoreline.
    “Is there anything in your life that isn’t breathtaking?” she
breathed as he came to stand behind her and she leaned back against him.
    “No,” came his simple answer in the dark, its meaning obvious. She
immediately turned and embraced him, flattered. He wrapped his arms around her
and held her close, resting his cheek lightly against the top of her head. She
had never felt more