"When I was a kid, I read my dad's Clive Cussler book, Raise The Titanic. That was before *Dr. Ballard found her, but what are the chances of raising a ship, if the stars align and we find her?" Vincent asks after they end a conference call with Elijah and the group from Seville.
"If we're lucky, we might be able to find some timbers but there's nothing left of her after three hundred years in the water. It's getting what was on her that's possible," Damon leans back in his chair.
"But nobody knows what that was." Vincent points out.
"True, but we're a step beyond daydreams now. Something's down there...We got you, Maravillas. We're coming up right behind you." Damon bursts out, looking happy and excited.
"The LiDar scanning should facilitate the search," Elena offers as she empties her coffee cup.
"I'm going to talk to the captain," Vincent states as he stands up. "We need to move the yacht into the Marquesas waters."
"I'll come with you." Damon leans over, kisses Elena's hair and follows after Vincent.
Elena relaxes on one of the deck chairs with a book in her lap. She's watching the sun set on the horizon and the waves roll into the shore. There's nothing like watching the sunset over the ocean. And she thinks of Damon and the time they've been spending together. It's been nothing short of amazing and last night...
"There you are," comes his voice from behind, snapping out of her musings.
Elena looks over her shoulder and smiles as Damon joins her. His sweatpants hang perfectly on his hips and he's a muscle t-shirt. Despite all their years together, she doesn't think she'll ever get used to the way he looks - or the way he looks at her.
"Hi?" Elena says, smiling to herself as he places a soft kiss on her forehead before taking a seat beside her, draping his arm around her shoulders. She snuggles up to him instinctively, enjoying the serenity of the moment.
"I was using your computer to do a little research on LiDAR. I hope you don't mind." Damon looks at her, eyes soft and full of love and awe just for her. "I missed you," he admits softly.
Elena leans over and kisses his cheek. "I don't mind. Does the technology allow it scan the sea floor? Or do we just need an old-fashioned magnetometer?"
"It sounds like it does. It's really state of the art." Damon looks at the book in her lap.
"What's that?"
"It's **Eugene Lyon's story about the search for the Atocha...I didn't want to miss this." She gestures to the setting sun.
Damon's fingers dance along her bare thigh. Moments of silence pass as they sit together, enjoying the beautiful, peaceful scene before them.
"I'm so glad you're here. Finding the treasure won't mean anything if you're not here to share the moment."
"I'm happy to be here too." These last weeks with Damon have been some of the best of their lives.
"Elena?"
"Yeah?"
"When this is all over, I want us to get married again."
"What?"
"You know, married." Damon can't think of anything better than going to sleep with Elena in his arms and waking up with her the same way every day and every night.
Elena disentangles herself from his embrace and stands up, eyes arching incredulously as she runs her fingers through her hair. "You're crazy!"
"Am I?" Damon shoots back. "Think about it. Elena, these last few weeks have been some of the best of my life and it has nothing to do with where we are but everything to do with who I'm with. I love you, and I love waking up next to you and I just—I want you around. I'm better when you're around. You make me happy, Elena. Marry me, again...at least think about it."
Elena folds her arms across her chest and appraises him with narrowed eyes before her expression relaxes, a small smile falling on her face. "I still think you're crazy."
"Only for you, you know that."
"Damon," she sighs. "This is really sudden."
He rolls his eyes and stands up abruptly, gesturing for her to wait. She hears him shuffle around inside and he returns minutes later with something clutched in his hand.
"What is this?" she asks as he places the small box in her hand.
"You tell me."
Elena takes a deep breath and looks down at her hands, and pushes open the box. eyes widening. In her palm is a gold and emerald ring and from the looks of it, it's very old."
"You see," Damon grins, folding his arms across his chest and looking every bit the smug bastard, he is. "It's not that sudden."
"How long have you had this?"
"I found it diving a few weeks before you left and filed for divorce. It's 22 carat gold and a Colombian emerald. Marcel told me that he could tell by the clarity of the stone and it's worth a pretty penny...Do you remember that night before it all went south? We went out to eat, you excused yourself. I found you outside on the patio; you were standing there just looking up at the moon and stars. And then I wrapped my arms around you and asked if you wanted to go home and..."
"I told you I was home," Elena finishes for him, smiling.
Damon nods his head.
Elena looks down at the ring in her hand and then back up at the man who turns her world upside down in so many ways.
"So, what do you say, Elena? Will you marry me again?"
Elena stands on her tip-toes and presses a soft kiss against Damon's lips before she gently caresses his cheek. "Put it on me." She hands him the ring.
Damon's face lights up like a firefly as he slides the ring onto her finger. "There's no hurry setting a date or a year, I just want to know that you'll be with me when all this is done."
"I love you," Elena murmurs softly as she stares at the jewel on her finger.
And then his arms are around her. She feels the surging tide of warmth that leaves her limp. Damon bends back her head across his arm and kisses her, softly at first, and then with a swift gradation of intensity that makes her cling to him as the only solid thing in a dizzy swaying world.
His insistent mouth is parting her shaking lips, sending wild tremors along her nerves. And before a swimming giddiness spins her round and round, she's kissing him back.
"You're taking my breath away," Elena whispers, trying to turn her head.
Damon presses her head back hard against his shoulder and she has a dizzy glimpse of his face. His eyes are wide and blazing.
"I want to make you breathless," He groans softly, low in his throat...
Elena wakes up the next morning snuggled against Damon; his chest providing a pillow for her head, and both of his arms are wrapped around her.
Falling asleep in his arms has always felt good. She moves slightly now, feeling his morning erection against her tummy. A wave of scorching heat floods through her, settling between her legs, creating a vicious ache.
She attempts to get out of the bed and barely shifts before Damon's arms pull her back against him. All her thoughts of getting out of bed vanish when he strokes a hand down her side, before resting it on her hip and caressing the elastic of her pajama shorts.
Elena holds her breath as his hand inches upward and over her tank top. He mumbles something and slides closer to her as his hand closes gently over her breast. The memory of last night is enough to make her nipple pucker beneath his palm.
His fingers twine with hers. She can feel his soft puffs of breath against her neck. He pumps rhythmically against her, their bodies moving together in some age old, instinctive dance. He ends where she begins. He completes her in a marvelous way, fills her up so that there's no room for emptiness at all. She clasps him closer, seeking out his lips for a kiss and falls into the swirling, blue depths of his eyes.
Elena closes her eyes and breathes out as he scrapes his thumb back and forth. She can no longer hold back her moan.
He presses his hips against hers and she rubs her backside against him.
"Morning," Damon murmurs indulgently.
He turns her over so she is facing him. They stare at each other for a moment, before he leans in and kisses her. When he pulls back he runs a thumb across her cheekbone. The adoration in his gaze and the tenderness of his touch makes her feel as if her chest is expanding with warmth.
"As much as I'd like to sleep in, we have work to do. Elijah and Rebekah are returning today."
"I know," Damon rolls off of her and rests his forearm over his eyes as she throws back the covers and gets up.
"I'm going to shower to take a shower," Elena stands up and pads across the carpet and into her bathroom.
Elena is relaxing beneath the steamy spray of the shower. When the frosted doors slide back and Damon climbs in with her, she turns into his arms with a sexy smile.
"You like?" Elena teases in an innocent voice as she brings her hands up over her breasts Biting her bottom lip, she watches the flames begin to flicker in his eyes.
"Very much so..." Damon's heated gaze follows every movement of her fingers as he slides the door closed.
While scanning the bottom, Damon spots a gold rope. It's deep in the reef, almost invisible except when shafts of sunlight catch the woven strands of gold being held in place by the intricate weaving. His trembling hand reaches into the reef and pulls. The rope is stuck, wrapped around a rock, perhaps, or covered with stones. He withdraws his hand and shakes his head at Elena.
"We'll have to break up the reef to get at the rope. We need something to bang against the coral, and as pieces break off, you set them aside." Damon points to the surface and they swim up to see if they can find a tool.
They rest for half an hour. Damon lays on the cabin roof, warming in the sun.
"Let's go." He touches Elena's shoulder with a finger, and a circle of white appears on her pink-brown skin and fades away. "You better slather on some sun screen."
"I will," Elena picks up a bottle and rubs some on her.
They go overboard—Elena with a net bag, Damon with a crowbar.
The work on the reef is slow and, because of the diminishing light, difficult: every time Elena rams the nose of the air lift into the coral, a cloud of fine coral dust rises from the broken piece forcing Damon to grope blindly.
The gold rope is wrapped around the base of a large oval rock, most of it underneath the rock—as if it had fallen loosely into the reef and been forced, by centuries of wave and tide action, into every crevice and cranny around the rock. Damon wants to use the crowbar to tip the rock but he can't. The rope might be snaked around the back of the rock, too, and tipping it will crush the soft, fine gold strands beneath the sand.
It takes them an hour to widen the hole. Now Damon can put his head and arms and shoulders into the hole and guide the mouth of the air lift along the gold rope, gently prying it free, inch by inch, as the sand is sucked away. Pearls are set at three-inch intervals along the rope.
Elena counts the pearls already free—seventeen. If her research is correct, if there are thirty-eight pearls per rope, there are five more feet of gold rope still needing to be freed.
The work becomes dreamy, unreal: encased in water, hearing nothing but the sound of their own breathing and the distant chug of the compressor through the air hose...
Damon finally frees the last two inches of gold rope. Gathering the rope in his right hand, he backs out onto the reef. The light is fading fast, but in the blue-gray mist he can still see Elena and the reflections off the air lift and the outline of the reef.
Assuming that they would keep digging for more gold, Sanders opened his wet-suit jacket and stuffed the gold rope inside. He stuffs the rope inside of his wetsuit and swims toward Elena to go back to the boat.
"It's incredible, Damon," Elena gushes as she runs the chain links through her fingers.
"Just like you." Damon lowers his chin so his lips can sink down on hers, his fingers grip her hips, pulling her into him. He parts her lips with his tongue and as he slips it into her mouth, she raises her other hand to cradle his face so she can hold him tight.
Heat settles low in her belly; goosebumps pebble her flesh despite the evening chill in the air.
He suddenly pulls his mouth from hers, taking all of the air from her lungs with him. His eyes are dark, his smirk in position as he runs his thumb over his bottom lip.
"What was that for?" Elena gasps, her eyes wide and her heart thrumming chaotically inside her chest.
Damon brushes the back of his fingers against one of her flaming cheeks. "I needed it..."
Thank you, all. You're the best.
Chapter title: Back Where You Belong by 38 Special.
*Robert Ballard is an American retired Navy officer and a professor of oceanography at the University of Rhode Island who is most noted for his work in underwater archaeology: maritime archaeology and archaeology of shipwrecks. He is best known for the discoveries of the wrecks of the RMS Titanic in 1985, the battleship Bismarck in 1989, and the aircraft carrier USS Yorktown in 1998. He discovered the wreck of John F. Kennedy's PT-109 in 2002.
**Historian Eugene Lyon had a knack for finding things that other researchers have overlooked. In 1970, while studying crumbling, handwritten historical documents in a Spanish library in Seville, he discovered new information about the Atocha, the $300-million Spanish treasure galleon that salvager Mel Fisher had been trying to find. From data he uncovered in colonial Spanish archives, Lyon was able to help Mel Fisher locate and identify the sunken ships Nuestro Senora de Atocha and the Santa Margarita in the Florida Keys, bringing fame and fortune to the late treasure hunter Fisher.
Have a fabulous day.