Things are about to take an interesting twist...

Sorry for the long delay, but I was struggling to try to make each chapter represent a different day of their honeymoon, which I successfully did for two whole chapters before it all went to hell. lol So, I'm scratching that, now that the action is starting up, and hope to have more frequent updates, though perhaps rather shorter chapters. In the meantime...enjoy.

-3-

House paced the moonlit room. Back and forth, his cane beating a gentle rhythm on the hard wood floor. Things were going too well. This couldn't possibly be his life. He looked at the bed, Cuddy lay on her back, one leg bent at the knee. One arm rested on her bare stomach while the other was slipped under the pillow beside her head. He envied her ability to practically pass out after sex. He was too keyed up to sleep.

He thought of the stories Quintessa had told them on the way down the hill to Pirate's Cove. She was impressively knowledgeable about the nefarious history of the island. She seemed to quite enjoy the stories of plunder and pillage, of treacherous sea battles and buried treasure. It was something they had in common.

According to Quintessa, Captain Morgan, of premium rum fame, had buried one of his greatest treasure on Isola. "But they say he never returned to reclaim it."

"And why didn't he?" House loved pirates. He had forced Wilson to take him to all three Pirate's of the Caribbean movies. He would have gone himself, but they needed Wilson's nephew to add a sense of legitimacy to their film choice.

"No one knows." Quintessa said ominously. "To this day it remains a mystery. But there is an old map in the library. Mr. Wilde found it when he was building the bridge. He thought it was Captain Morgan's treasure map. But it is nothing more than a tattered old relic." Shortly after saying this, she thwacked him in the head with a tree branch. She claimed it was an accident, but House made Cuddy walk in front of him from then on, so he didn't get to hear any more pirate stories. Once Cuddy and Quintessa were within chatting distance it was all wedding this and wedding that. House tuned out half way through Cuddy's overly long description of the proposal.

House stared at his sleeping bride. Usually he would be quite content to watch her sleep, but he was anxious to see that map. He debated whether he should wake her or sneak off without her. In the end he opted to sneak out. He would be able to get more information without her trailing behind him asking him questions and telling him it was ridiculous to search for buried treasure.

The trek back to the Great House was a long one, but House was happy to stretch his legs. He'd been going stir crazy, pacing the Villa and waiting to wake up from his dream. He still couldn't believe he was married. It was all so surreal. And to Cuddy of all people.

He thought he'd lost her forever. He had been cocky and stupid. He hadn't promised her fidelity, but she was young, and she was naïve, and when she'd caught him in bed with Nurse Nympho, well, he never wanted to see her that hurt again.

She might have forgiven him, if he'd had the guts to face her, but he didn't and they drifted apart. When she called him, ten years later, and offered him a job… he turned her down. He couldn't bear the thought of seeing her every day, of knowing she would never take him back. It wasn't until he was completely desperate, when he couldn't find a job anywhere else, that he came crawling back to her.

House reached the top of the hill and took a moment to huff and puff as he leaned against a tree. He often wondered why she hired him. At first he thought she wanted payback, that she would make his life at PPTH a living hell, but she didn't. She was strangely gentle toward him, almost maternal. That made him think she somehow felt sorry for him. She must have heard he'd been blackballed from every major hospital in the US. She knew she was his last hope.

He'd expected her to make him beg, when he came back to ask for a job. He couldn't imagine what hoops she was going to make him jump through before agreeing to hire him. But she simply smiled and said it was going to be an honor to work with him. It was as if she'd forgotten about their past.

How could she have forgotten him so completely? Sure they hadn't been a couple for long, but he had remembered her. He made it his personal mission to remind her, every chance he got, how he had rocked her world.

"Dr. House?" Adrianna came barreling out of the bushes. "What are you doing here?" She looked guilty, but of what he couldn't quite decide.

"I was heading to the Great House." House tried to huff a little less. He didn't care how far uphill he had walked, he wasn't going to let her think he had no stamina.

"Oh, Mother will be happy to see you." Adrianna smiled and skipped off down an intersecting path.

House wondered why Quintessa would be happy to see him. His curiosity led him onward.

Quintessa was singing to herself in the front yard. House smiled when he saw the small patch of strawberry's she was tending to.

"I knew it!" He exclaimed proudly.

"What is it you knew, Dr. House?" She straightened up and wiped her hands on a small towel.

"I told Cuddy those strawberries were from the island." House felt oddly vindicated.

"If you don't mind my asking, why do you call your wife by her last name?" Quintessa enjoyed people. She liked being around them and learning about all their odd little eccentricities, and she had a feeling this couple had a gold mine full of eccentricities to explore.

"That's her name." House shrugged and plucked a strawberry out of the basket. He popped it in his mouth.

"But her name is also Lisa. Why do you not call her by that name?"

"She's always been Cuddy to me." House hadn't really ever thought about it. He had called her Lisa at some point. Surely he did when she was still in college but, Cuddy just seemed to suit her better now.

"Even when you are…you know." Quintessa made an odd little hand gesture that was meant to represent love making.

"Haven't you been listening?" His eyes twinkled at her.

"I don't know what you mean Dr. House." Was he hitting on her?

"We know you and your daughter can pop in and out of the Oasis whenever you want." He ate another strawberry to make his point less subtle. "How are we to know you don't do it when we're…you know." House made a far less obscure gesture to represent love making.

Quintessa willed herself to blush. "Dr. House! I value my position here far too greatly to jeopardize it by snooping in on Mr. Wilde's guests."

House believed her. It made him feel a bit better. "And your daughter?"

"Adria knows better." Quintessa trusted her daughter.

House realized he was getting side tracked. Cuddy was probably awake now, and pissed that he was gone. "I came to look at that map. The one Damien found here on the island."

Quintessa smiled excitedly. "I knew you would come asking about that map." She headed into the house, assuming he would follow, which he did. "But I'm afraid it is a dead end. Mr. Wilde has tried to find the treasure already, without any luck."

"No offense to Damien, but I'm much smarter than he is." House followed her through the door to the library.

It was an impressive room. Bookcases lined the walls. Even the door was hidden behind a floor to ceiling bookcase when closed. House could have spent days, weeks even, trolling through the extensive collection of dime store crime novels and mysteries. Damien appeared to have every Agatha Christie novel ever printed, and the collected works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. There were Victorian science fiction novels, Gothic horror classics, and obscure horror not even House had heard of. A large bookcase solely dedicated to historical mysteries, everything from ancient Egypt to early twentieth century was well represented.

There weren't many walls on which to put century's old pirate maps, so it wasn't hard to find the one he was looking for. It was the only one in the room.

The map was torn at the corner, and the paper was old and faded, but it was beautifully drawn by hand and with great care. "Seems a bit elaborate," House commented, staring at it.

"Oh, Dr. House, that is not the map you are wanting." Quintessa smiled as she slid open a desk drawer. "That is some phony reproduction. Mr. Wilde liked to tell stories about it to impress his guests." She pulled a small wooden box out of the drawer. "This is the map you wanted to see." She opened the box and removed a small scroll of time stained parchment.

House grabbed the scroll and unrolled it. On the surface of the paper was a roughly drawn shape with the label Isola. There was a lopsided box in the bottom left corner labeled Fort Pointless. "Fort Pointless?" That couldn't be its real name.

"It was Fort Richmond, after the Admiral who first seized the island, but the pirates apparently found it a very pointless fortification." Quintessa chuckled under her breath.

"I'm beginning to really like these pirates," House said, having already liked them, just on principle.

"There is a certain romance surrounding them, no? The rebellious spirit, the fearless drifters with no country of their own, wandering the seas, taking what they can to survive." The Parilla family was said to have descended from pirates. No one near as famous as the legendary Captain Morgan, but that didn't matter to her. It was an honor just to have the pirate blood running through her veins.

"Indeed." House liked Quintessa Parilla.

House noted the location of Pirate's Cove, the river that separated it from the rest of Isola, even the house, now called the Great House, was there, represented by a wobbly little square.

"This house was around then?" He asked the all knowing Quintessa.

"This used to be the Richmond House."

"After the guy who seized the island?"

"Yes, yes." He caught on quickly. "Archibald Richmond was a British admiral. A cruel man, he came to Isola and slaughtered the natives. Even those who begged him for mercy. He showed them none."

"People lived here?" He didn't mean to sound insensitive, he just usually couldn't help it.

"There were not many, but yes, they came from the other islands when the Europeans started taking them over. They were convinced that no one would want Isola, and they would be able to live here in peace." She sounded sad. House could understand why. It was a sad but all too common story of the history of man.

"What happened to Richmond?" As touching as that tale was, there wasn't much he could do for the long dead natives of Isola.

"One night, Captain Morgan crept into the Richmond's house and murdered him in his sleep. Several of the servants claimed to have hidden to avoid being murdered themselves, but one of them finally confessed that they had all lined the hallways and guided the fearsome pirate to the Admiral's room. And they cheered when they heard their master cry out as he was brutally killed." She was getting quite into the story, but stopped and calmed herself. "Admiral Richmond was not a liked man," she said rather matter of factly.

"Clearly." House smiled at the story. He had known plenty of Admiral Richmond's in his day. Many of whom he would have loved to murder in their sleep, and for most of them he would have had a cheering audience watching him do so.

"I…" Quintessa was stopped by the ringing of a phone. "Excuse me Dr. House." She vanished through the bookcase door.

House returned his attention to the map. There was no X marking any spot. Instead a series of lines linked roughly drawn images together.

Quintessa rejoined him, holding the phone. "It's your wife."

"Tell her I'm not here," House whispered.

"He is not here," Quintessa said into the phone. She listened carefully then looked at House. "She wants to know what you are doing here."

"I just said I'm not here," House whispered again.

Quintessa frowned at him. "But you are here, Dr. House. I am talking to you."

House gave up and grabbed the phone. "Hi Cuddy."

"Hi. What are you doing up at the house?" Cuddy didn't like waking up and finding him gone. She'd grown rather fond of having him around.

"I'm searching for buried treasure," he said excitedly. She was going to find out eventually.

"Fine, don't tell me," she sighed.

"You can join me, but don't think you're getting a share of the booty…"

"House, I'm your wife now. What's yours is all mine." She smiled into the phone, he could hear it.

House sighed heavily. "Fine, sixty-forty, but you're doing all the digging."

Cuddy took a moment to ignore him. "I am going to go take a walk up to the top of the waterfall. You can join me if you'd like." She was only saying it to be polite. She didn't imaging hiking was House's thing.

House looked at the map. There was a line that went directly to the lake at the top of that cliff. "Meet me at the bridge."

"You want to come?" It wasn't that she didn't want him around, but she could just imagine her two hour walk becoming a six hour slow crawl with a lot of complaining and probably some bickering. So much for a peaceful afternoon.

"I always want to come with you." He said with a quite pleased with himself smile.

"I'll wait for you at the bridge." She ignored the entendre. If she responded to every bit of entendre that escaped from his lips, she'd have little time for anything else. "But I'm not waiting all day House." Knowing him he'd get distracted by something on the way there and never show up.

She changed into some jeans and made her way to the bridge. She was only waiting there about five minutes when House came stumbling through the palm fronds. "I brought provisions." He smiled.

"Actually, I brought them," Adrianna said, walking up behind him with a small basket. "It is a picnic lunch."

"I can take that from here," Cuddy said, taking the basket from the nubile young girl. "Thank you." She smiled politely, hoping she didn't come across too harshly.

"You are very welcome Mrs. Dr. House. But I can carry it if you'd like…"

"I've got it," Cuddy snapped quickly. House smirked. She was adorable when she was jealous.

"Well, then, have a nice walk." Adrianna was unfazed. She turned and hurried back to the house.

"You don't like her much, do you?" House said teasingly.

"She's fine." Cuddy said dismissively.

"She certainly is," House responded with a tint of letch in his voice.

"Shut up," Cuddy shoved him then headed off toward the cliff.

"You're always telling me to shut up," House tottered along behind her.

"Because you're always talking."

"I'm not always talking. You just don't like to hear the truth."

"I'm not jealous House." She knew that's what he thought, and she was determined to prove him wrong.

"Of course not." House watched her hips sway as she walked ahead of him. She really did have no reason to be jealous, but it was fun watching her be anyway.

House filled her in on the map as they made their way along winding trails.

"If Damien didn't find the treasure, what makes you think you can?" She held a sharp branch out of the way to let him pass.

"Then you think there is a treasure?" He thought for sure she would have laughed the whole thing off.

"No."

"Well you're wrong, as usual."

"I am sure numerous treasures were buried here at one time or another House, but I'm pretty sure they have all been found by now."

"Pretty sure…not positive." House was oddly optimistic about this.

"House, you're not the first person to try following this stupid map." She took it out of his hands and looked at it. "There's not even an X."

"Nope." House seemed oddly proud of himself.

"How can it be a treasure map without an X?" She handed it back to him.

"Now you see why the treasure hasn't been discovered in 300 years?" This was his boyhood dream, discovering a pirate's booty. He used to dig up the back yard of every military sanctioned house his parents had moved him to. He'd never found more than a few broken toys or dead pets, and he'd gotten into more trouble than any of his discoveries were worth, but he had never given up hope.

"If you say so." She sighed and kept walking. Let him have his fun. She knew he needed to channel his energy somewhere. He needed a puzzle, at all times, to keep his mind busy. She wasn't sure what he was always running away from in that brain of his, but she would always help him in any way she could.

"You're lost," House announced, stopping the trek to lean against a tree.

"If I am, then so are you." Cuddy gladly put down the basket and took a long drink of water.

"Am not." He'd been following her. It wasn't like his map was to scale or even accurate.

"Then where are we House?" She handed the water bottle to her huffing and puffing husband.

House pulled out his treasure map, as if that was going to help. "We're…" he looked at the map, then around him at the thick trees. Then he pointed at the map. "…here." He was as surprised as she was that he'd found their location.

Cuddy shook her head and rolled her eyes. "You just made that up."

"Did not." He was insulted. "The trees are getting denser, and this little bunch of squiggly lines, they're clearly meant to represent a little forest."

"Brilliant deduction Sherlock. So, which way to do we go to get out of the bunch of squiggly lines?" She was getting hungry, and wanted to settle down and eat by the lakeside, if they ever found it.

"This way!" House pointed randomly then began to tread with purpose in that direction. Cuddy, having no other valid options, followed him.

"Ever make love in a forest?" House asked, feeling quite confident that he was on the right path.

"Yes."

"Really?" She'd never mentioned this to him.

"Twice, I think." She was thinking about it. Glen Godfrey…yeah, it was definitely twice. She grinned.

"You're a whore!" House was appalled that his wife had forest sex without him.

She hit him hard in the forearm.

"Ouch! Spousal abuse, spousal abuse," he called out into the silence.

Cuddy rolled her eyes again. "I will abuse you if you don't get moving." She shoved him.

"Is that a promise?" He stood his ground.

"Do I have to give you a blow job to get you to move?"

"It certainly wouldn't hurt." Things were definitely looking up.

"And it's certainly not going to happen." She brushed past him and kept walking. "I'll swing by and check on you on the way back." She gave a little wave over her shoulder as she hurried forward.

House waited. She was going to turn and come back. He waited. She was going to drop that basket and jump him. He waited until she was almost out of sight then hurried off after her. "I can't believe you were going to leave me alone in the woods."

"I can't believe you thought I would go down on you in the woods."

"Why not? You've done it almost everywhere else."

"You ass!" She walked faster.

"You love my ass," he hurried off behind her.

It was another twenty minutes before they found their way out of the woods. The journey became easier when they started to hear the distant rumblings of the falls. Following the sound as it grew louder and louder, they made their way to the waters edge. It was not at all what either of them had expected.

The lake sat silent and still, like liquid glass. It was such a deep, rich blue that Cuddy thought it couldn't possibly be real. A high ridge lined the far side of the lake. Based on the map he was carrying, House deducted that beyond that ridge was nothing but ocean.

"It looks like a giant crater." House was the first to speak and disrupt the tranquil beauty of the place.

Cuddy nodded and pulled out her camera. She knew that photos wouldn't do the place justice, but she wanted some just the same.

"Want one of me?" House hammed his way into frame.

"No." She shooed him off with her arm.

"Well," he humphed as he picked up the basket and placed it on a nice flat bit of land, perfect for a picnic. "Hope Chef Pierre made us something good."

"I'm sure he did," she said, having forgotten how hungry she was in the presence of such sublime beauty.

"Oh no he didn't!" House's face lit up.

"What?" Cuddy took one quick candid shot of House laying out the picnic goodies then sat down.

"This is jerk chicken!" House put three pieces on his plate and the last small, sad little piece on Cuddy's. "And a fresh, handmade mango salsa." He put a huge scoop on his plate and a little dropping on Cuddy's. "And pineapple chutney."

"Hungry?" Cuddy looked at his full plate with a smirk.

"Ravenous." House took a huge bite out of the chicken and was forced to talk with his mouth full. "You ever have jerk chicken?" It didn't really seem like her kind of food.

"I don't think so." Cuddy took one of the pieces from his plate and put it on hers. "But it smells great."

"Oh, it is." House watched with a frown. What did she think she was doing?

"You have got to try it with some of the special sauce." House made sure to pour a heavy dose of the spicy sauce onto the chicken she had stolen from him.

Cuddy groaned. "Fine, take it." She pushed it off her plate and back onto his.

"You don't trust me?" He asked pointlessly.

"Not since I met your twin brother Steve." Their first encounter hadn't gone entirely well, so when they met again, House introduced himself as Steve, and apologized for his barbaric brothers behavior at the party the other night. He hadn't anticipated that she had done her research on him and knew Gregory John House was an only child.

House tried to scrape some of the hot sauce off before it got too ingrained in the tender meat. It would have been great to see her face when she bit into the extra hot sauced chicken, but he was happy just getting his third piece back.

"Is this really how you want to spend your honeymoon? Searching futily for a buried treasure?" She had finished as much as she could eat and lay down in the grass, resting on her elbows as she watched him finish his abundant meal.

"My god woman!" House looked as offended as his acting skills would allow. "I can't have sex with you ALL the time."

Cuddy tried not to laugh. "Believe me, I've noticed."

House glared at her. "Maybe you're just not stimulating me enough," he said in his own defense.

"Most of the men I've been with…"

"And how many have their been?" He knew of at least half a dozen, but surely there had been more.

"I don't count them," she exclaimed, leaving out that there might be too many to count.

"Can't count that high?" He retorted quickly, putting the last of the chicken bones in the trash bag Quintessa had so thoughtfully provided for them.

"How many women have you been with?"

"Hookers included?" He asked laying down on his side beside her.

"Okay, hookers included." It's not like that would up his score much. As far as she knew he kept going to the same one.

House counted in his head, slowly, enjoying the memory of about half of them, cringing at the memory of a few, and blanking on a couple names. "Eight."

"That's all?" Cuddy was surprised.

"Yes, that's all."

Cuddy did her best House impression, staring at him for a moment before asking, "why are you lying?"

"I'm not lying." He knew it was a low score, but he was going for quality, not quantity. He wondered if she'd buy that.

"You've only been with eight women?" She knew he'd been with her, Stacy, at least one hooker, Nurse Nympho back in Michigan, that blonde gynecologist at the convention in San Jose… it was hard to believe he'd only been with three other women in the ten year gap between college and Stacy.

"Sorry I'm not a slut." He didn't have to say she was, he was implying it with all his might.

"No, you're a prude," she chuckled, taunting him.

"I am not a prude," he protested, sliding one hand along her denim covered thigh.

"Care to prove it?" She was challenging him. She took his hand and slid it up under her shirt.

"Do I care to prove it…" he scoffed. "You better believe I care to prove it." With one sweeping movement he had her on her back, hovering over her as his hand pushed the loose shirt up over her warn skin.

"This ought to be interesting," she said mockingly.

"Oh, it's gonna be." House bent down and kissed her stomach.

"More interesting than your little treasure hunt?" She teased.

"Mmmmmaybe." He tried to tease her back, but it was a bad move.

Cuddy pulled her shirt back down right as House was about to maneuver his way into her bra. "We'd better go find that treasure, before Black Beard comes and steals your booty." She pulled herself to her feet and dusted off her jeans.

"There's only one booty I'm interested in right now." He reached out for it, and, catching his finger in a belt loop, pulled it back down beside him.

"You always say the nicest things," she breathed between kisses.

House pulled her shirt back up and started drawing lines with his finger. "Each line on the map is a different color."

Cuddy shot up, about to protest, but he pushed her back down. "Keep still, I'm thinking."

"You're tickling me," she said laughing as he drew a line down her side.

"Now, if we follow this trail…" he let his fingers walk down the center valley of her stomach. "We reach…"

"An impenetrable fortress," she said as his fingers stopped at the waistband of her jeans.

"Your pants are hardly impenetrable." He knew her much better than that. "It's just a matter of finding the right way to get in them."

"You think you know the way to get in my pants?" She asked, knowing the answer was a loud and resounding yes.

"Of course. First I remove the obstacle in front of me…" His little hiking fingers jumped up and unbuttoned the one silver button.

"But you have only run up against another obstacle." She felt his hand grip the pull of her zipper. "Now what?"

"Now…" he had been studying the map as he spoke. This wasn't just foreplay. He really was trying to unlock the secrets of the map. "we slowly push our way against the current…" a river? Could there be a river somewhere that he needed to go down?

"He looked at the map. There were several blue lines. One was clearly the river that separated the Oasis with the main island. Another seemed to wind its way along the ridge to the lake they were now fooling around beside. But there was a third that he didn't remember seeing on their hike. He should have. As a matter of fact, it should have been right under them at one point.

"It's underground!" House had an epiphany.

"What's underground?" Cuddy groaned, realizing she might be going home very dissatisfied.

House slowly peeled off her pants. "There's a hidden river, under the island. "His hands ran down her legs, separating them as much as the tight denim that now pooled just beneath her knees would allow. "It runs deep inside Isola." He let his fingers slip down along the deep chasm between her legs. "It's where we will find our X." He sunk his fingers gently inside her and felt her respond as she always did.

"This river…how do we find it?" She asked as he worked his magic.

That was the part House hadn't quite figured out yet. "Shhhh," he said, slipping his tongue between her legs. He found that keeping himself busy helped him think, and he couldn't think of anything he'd rather be doing than going down on his beautiful wife in a beautiful field beside a beautiful lake with the pounding sound of a great waterfall in the distance…."Thhh wafull," he said as he regained custody of his tongue.

"What?" Cuddy took his hand and put it back in place. He was not getting away with leaving her half finished.

"The waterfall! It's under the waterfall!" House was excited, elated, and his enthusiasm spilled into his current activity. With renewed energy he went down on her again, this time giving her his full attention. His hands cupped her perfect buttocks and thrust her closer to him. Her legs, trapped in the constricting jeans, didn't give him much room to navigate, but he found the challenge exciting as he had to push his way into the dark cave of her thighs.

As soon as he felt the tremors of relief flow out of her, he pulled himself up and gathered the map. "We've got to go back to the grotto."

"Thanks, it was good for me too," she snotted, zipping her jeans back up.

"Oh, sorry," House held out his hand and helped her to her feet. "I will make it up to you, I promise."

"No you won't." She knew him better than that. He'd forget and think he'd just rocked her world, and would expect her to return the favor tonight.

"You're right. Let's go."

The walk back wasn't nearly as long. For one thing, they didn't get lost this time, as House had his face buried deep in his map, which proved more accurate than originally suspected. Second, he knew he was right. They were on their way to find a buried treasure, or maybe just a hidden one. It didn't have to be buried. Maybe that's where the other hunters had gone wrong. Maybe it was hanging from a stalactite or hidden under a rock. No, scratch the rock thing. He didn't want a treasure small enough to be hidden under a rock.

"House?" She tapped him on the shoulder. "Which way?" They had come to a fork in the worn trail. They couldn't keep going forward as there was a huge banana tree in their direct path. To the left was a clear path made of warn dirt and broken branches. To the right was a less clear path of patted down leaves and bent branches. She knew which way she'd go.

"To the right, obviously." And she knew which way he'd go. Luckily they both wanted to go the same way.