“And why, may I ask, do you care if I get an infection?” Before he could reply, she held up a hand. “No. Don’t say a word. I already know the answer.” And she spun, leaving him in a cloud of her sexual scent tinged with hot anger.
“Oh really?” He snatched up her broken glasses she’d left behind in her rage and followed right on her trail. “What is my answer?”
“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” She threw it over her shoulder as she followed a bend in the lagoon and moved on out toward the open shoreline. “As usual, you care only for yourself. So, if I should come down with an affliction, it’s not amenable to your prowess. You don’t get to take advantage of me anymore.” Her eyes widened as she whirled on him. “Oh, wait,” she said with sudden false cheer. Her grin spread wide and sarcastic upon her exquisite, moonlit face. “I’m totally wrong, aren’t I? You’ll probably attack me anyway, whether I’m sick or not, just like you’ve been doing ever since we got shoved into this fucking nightmare.”
Now he knew she was beyond pissed. “Fuck” was a word she never used unless highly provoked. But goddamn it, he was pissed, too!
“Attack, you say?”
The briefest flicker of wariness lit her eyes right before she turned and stalked away. “Yes, attack.”
“That’s a damn lie and you know it.” He fell into step beside her.
“Is not.”
He snatched her elbow and hauled her around to face him. In a flash of frustration, he had her in his arms. With careful control, he executed the most devastating, gentle, passion-filled kiss he could muster. She melted against him with a strained cry of surrender. Her fists bunched into the fabric of his loincloth. A slow curl of renewed awareness washed through him, from the softness of her breasts pressed to his chest, all the way down to her trembling legs buckling against his.
Damn if he wasn’t getting a hard-on again. But this wasn’t the time. You’re proving a point here, Vince. Don’t forget it, or you’ll lose ground with the wishy-washy, wily fox.
He moved his hands up slowly to her jaw and pulled her mouth from his. The stunned, drugged glaze in her eyes was all the proof he needed for them both. “Now, do you call that an unwanted attack?”
Her eyes narrowed even as she panted. She stepped out of his arms and started to raise her hand to him. But the sudden flare of the sun had her halting her assault. The moon and starlit darkness had disappeared. As if a light switch had once again been flipped, an azure sky materialized above them, filled with the glowing ball of a high-noon sun. Temperatures soared, baking them in an oven of sweltering heat.
Jewel swayed as sweat beaded on her brow. “Oh shit.” She plopped to the sand and groaned, holding her head in her hands. “What now?”
“I don’t know.” He collapsed and stretched out next to her, one arm thrown across his eyes to shield the bright rays of the sun. “But it’s hotter than the fricking desert, and I’m dying of thirst and hunger.”
Her stomach growled. “Me too. So now what, Tarzan? Got any big, bright, manly ideas?”
“Shh, I’m thinking.”
“Do we just give ourselves up to the sea, or call for help from those stupid genies?”
He peeped at her from under his forearm. “Goddamn it, Jane, watch your mouth. We don’t know what they’re capable of.”
Chapter Six
Luke guided the skiff past the cove toward the slight peninsula. “No, they really don’t know what we’re capable of, do they, my lovely…?”
He paused, still unable to assimilate this Jennie with the one he knew and loved. Now in old-hag, witchy form, she had the power to render him speechless by a mere glance. She wore a wide-brimmed straw hat atop scraggly, gray-streaked black hair that hung in stringy ropes down her hunched back. Her gnarled hands sported long, curled fingernails. Wrinkled skin sagged loose beneath various large-stone rings that winked in the sunlight. On her bony little body drooped a ragged, faded gingham dress from many eras past. He shuddered, relieved the wart-riddled honker, rotten teeth and green-toned skin weren’t real.
“What’s the matter, honey?” Her voice even gave him the willies. Whiskey-roughened and hovering just short of a screech, he sure didn’t want it whispering in his ear during lovemaking. “Black cat got your tongue?”
She cackled, raising her pocked face to the sky as they skimmed along the water. Her voice carried out over the hum of the motor and into the bay as they passed by, scattering a school of wading sea gulls. They cawed in fright as they fluttered into the forest and took cover in a group of date palms.
He glanced toward the shore and steered the bow of the craft toward the small pier. “I’m sorry, Jennie, but I just can’t stomach you like that.”
She growled low in her throat, and he thought of a hissing black feline on Halloween. “And you think I can stand the sight of you, dear?”
He looked down at himself. At first, the transformation she’d insisted on had scared the crap out of him. Emaciated and void of muscle, he’d been altered drastically to look like her exact male counterpart. It even seemed, he thought as he bumped the stern against the dock and shut the motor down, that he’d lost every ounce of his strength. The thought of being permanently weak and ugly scared him shitless and did frightening things to his ego.
“Eh, can we just get this little lesson over with? I’d really prefer to go back to having an erect cock as opposed to full-body aches and stiffness.” He rubbed his back, tied off the craft and hobbled over the low bench seat. Reaching out a scrawny hand, he assisted her unsteadily up to the pier.
Jennie snorted, very unladylike. He climbed up on shaky limbs and stood next to her. She gazed into his eyes, and gratefully, he saw the beauty of her there inside those amber depths. “Master, I second that. Even now, my wrinkled old pussy is getting wet just thinking about your shriveled up phallus spearing me.”
He gulped. His stomach churned. “Jennie. Please.”
With a toss of her head, she let out a nasally cackle and crossed to the couple who lay on the beach baking in the sun she’d just set into force.
She sobered and slanted him a scolding look. “Luke, we’ve got a job to do here. It includes easing into character when needed.”
“Yes, you’re right, sweetheart. And in this case, it’s definitely needed. That woman is more stubborn than an entire pack of mules.”
“True,” she replied, hobbling through the sand. “But your old college friend there has a bit more work to do, himself. Not nearly as much as Jewel, but he has been unknowingly instrumental in the hardening of her heart. It is now our job to boost along the thawing that has already begun in her soul—er, uh, in her libido, more accurately. But alas! They both need help, and we’ve come to the rescue. I only hope…”
Luke knew that tone well. He gripped her arm gently and turned her, halting her in her painful gait. “Jennie? What is it? What do you hope?”
She looked over Luke’s shoulder at the couple who just now took note of their arrival. “I only hope they can accept their love for one another by the end of the three days. We now near the completion of day one.”
“And if they don’t?”
A tear formed in the wrinkled corner of her eye. “They will live on in loneliness and never know the depth of love and carnality we feel for one another. And I could risk my sister, Queen Justina, banishing me back to the bottle—without you.”
“No.” He gasped it out. Luke had thought all the danger had passed for them. Her almighty Xanthian sister had ordained Jennie as the honorable Goddess of Carnality after she’d completed her feat of the thirteen orgasms. Her mission and fate with Luke had been honorably concluded—thanks to his help—and already encrypted as a hidden destiny in The Book of Xanthus. So naturally, he’d thought they’d be living a carefree eternity on his hedonist island bringing people together in love and lust.
Without further threat of being forced apart.
“Yes.” She looked up at him, and through the hideous face, he sa
w his love with crystal clarity. “This is a serious job we’ve been given, Luke. We must never take its goal or one another for granted. Ever.”
She turned then and tottered away, and Luke knew a fierce love and devotion like never before. He would make Vince and Jewel see the error of their ways; he would make them love one another if he had to tie them up together for the rest of their lives.
* * * * *
“Well it’s about time.” Jewel sat up and watched the old crones shuffle toward them. Their tiny little hunched-over bodies didn’t concern her. She’d caught sight of their boat. Which meant transportation back to the mainland.
“What?” Vince propped himself up on one elbow, shielding his eyes from the glaring sun.
“An old couple’s coming up the beach. Must be fishermen. They have a boat—we’re going home, Vince!”
“I…where? I don’t see a boat.”
“Right…there…” She leapt to her feet and stood on tiptoe, straining to see around the elderly couple. “But…but I saw it, I swear I did. I even heard it, didn’t you?” She turned to look down at him, demanding an answer she knew she wouldn’t be getting. Obviously, he’d been napping and hadn’t heard or seen a thing.
“All I see,” he amended as he rose, “is the old couple. No boat.” He dismissed her as if she’d suffered heat-induced hallucinations, and strode forward. “Hello! And where did you fine folks come from? Taking an afternoon stroll up the beach?”
The hag slowed her steps and turned, fisting the neckline of her ragged dress when the wind whipped around her. She raised one silver brow. “Strolling? Eh! If you want to call it that.”
“Been ‘strolling’ for decades trying to find our way home.” That from the old man. His stooped body, stiff gray mop of hair and tissue-paper skin told Jewel he wouldn’t be strolling much longer.
“For decades?”
“Oh yes, lass.” The woman shuffled across the sand leaving behind a pair of long ruts. She approached and Jewel got a potent whiff of body odor and foul breath. Her eyes snared Jewel, pale gold swimming in tanned leather wrinkles above sagging jaws. A shiver raced up Jewel’s spine when those eyes blurred and appeared to turn to the very color of her own, as if she looked at a reflection of her future self. “Put here by a pair of dim-witted genies way back when we was a-young’uns, mm-hm, that we were,” she nodded, smacking her lips.
The old man chuckled, followed by a fit of coarse coughs. “Oh yeah. But it’s all her fault. Stubborn old witch, she is. Caused us to be damned to this place forever, and all because she ain’t got sense to just face what’s deep inside her.”
“Shut up, you old bastard!” The hag turned on him, snarling, as murderous hate gleamed in her eyes. They’d turned back to pale brown, Jewel noted, and she briefly wondered if she’d imagined seeing herself in the woman’s gaze. “Ha! Ignore the damn geezer. Always blamin’ me when he’s the one who wouldn’t give in to fate all those years ago. I’m just reactin’ to his obstinate ass. You see?”
“I see.” Vince merely stood back and studied the two, his arms folded with guardedness.
“Yeah, um, we get it.” Weirdoes, Jewel thought.
“Now ya happy? They got it, ya old crone.” He continued on, sidestepping the pounding surf. “Let’s keep a-movin’, keep on with this never-ending stalemate.”
The woman nodded and started out after him. But she paused and turned then, boring her eyes into Jewel. Hobbling forward, she grasped a long silver chain that hung around her skinny neck. Unfastening it from her nape, she hooked its ends together and reached up, placing it over Jewel’s head. A ruby-encrusted, two-inch-long key dangled from the thick chain and nestled into her cleavage above the knotted quilt. It twinkled in the sunlight, the silver shining as if it had been recently polished.
“What…what are you doing?” Jewel ran her fingertips along the smooth edges, the sharp stones. Warm, soothing vibrations shimmied up her arm.
“Giving you the key to your heart.” She smiled then, a mass of grooves and pocked flesh. “I cain’t seem to use it to find mine. Hopefully, you’ll have better luck than I did.”
Jewel glanced at Vince, then back at the woman. The old man was already ten yards up shore. “Well, I…I thank you—ma’am.”
“Eh! You thank yourself when you find your way off this blasted island. We never could, but hopefully, you two will…”
“Are you saying we could be here indefinitely?” Vince’s voice held a trace of irritation and panic, which caused the heavy dread in Jewel’s abdomen to tighten.
The woman’s eyes riveted to him. She crossed then, to stand so that she looked up at him. The contrast made Jewel think of a giant looking down upon an elf. She removed a ring from one gnarled finger, its wide silver band winking by the rays of the sun. With a tremor of weakness, she reached out and clutched Vince’s large hand. Though the ring had just been removed from her bony index finger, it slid onto his finger with ease and fit as if it had been made for him.
“The key to my heart?” he asked her, a sardonic grin on his handsome face.
She nodded and stepped away. “Aye, the key to your heart. Now, I must be on my way. This island isn’t getting any smaller, you know.”
With a tottering gait, she turned and followed the old man. He vanished first beyond a bend in the shoreline. Within a minute, so did she.
“What the hell do you suppose that was all about?” Jewel held the key in her hand, the chain still around her neck. Tearing her eyes from the spot where the couple had last been seen, she turned the key this way and that, studying its intricate, antique pattern.
Vince twisted the ring around his finger, still staring up the beach. “I have my suspicions.” He shrugged. “But who knows. Probably just a couple of loons.”
“Well, now what? Do we keep the jewelry?”
He spun and strode into the dense woods. “Yes, we keep them. In this situation, we keep everything, because you never know what might come in handy later. And we keep going, too, just like the old couple.”
They followed the shoreline just into the edge of the forest. For what seemed hours, she trailed along behind him, batting aside the drooping limbs and moss. As the minutes and hours crept by, her mouth became a pit of dry, parched sand. The scent of her own sweat permeated the balmy, stifling air around her nostrils, while streams of moisture dribbled down her back and chest. Her entire body ached, and she talked herself out of the vague waves of nausea that started to plague her belly. The scent of cassia edged with the faint odor of soil carried heavy in the damp air.
“God, what I wouldn’t do for an ice-cold bottle of water.”
Vince finally pushed through a tangled mass of vines. He stopped so abruptly she nearly crashed into his back. “Well, I can’t guarantee there’ll be water inside, but it looks like we’ve found new shelter.”
“Oh, thank—what?” She stepped around him and looked up at the massive structure. “Oh my God. It’s a giant tree house.”
“On the ground, in a tree, in the sky.” He crossed the small clearing to the base of the massive trunk. “I don’t really care anymore. I just want shelter, a place to rest and a home base for a chance to go hunt up some water and food.”
He tested the strength of the bamboo ladder and, satisfied, climbed upward until he reached a trap door. Grunting, he flipped it inward. He slanted a look down at her. “You coming?”
She tore her gaze from the rippling tan sheen of his body. His raven-dark hair stood wild and mussed upon his head. With the loincloth tied around his narrow hips, he appeared every bit the jungle man, primal and fierce. In that instant, her heart fluttered with a primitive need that forced a violent shudder through her. Flames smoldered in her loins, heating her juices to the boiling point.
She swallowed, struggling to catch her breath. “Coming? Um, yes, of course.”
Inside, the structure was about the size of her confined room at the convent. She noted one hinged window on each wall, and a pitched, bamb
oo-beamed ceiling covered with thatching. The windows were closed to the high tree branches and sultry heat. Other than those few openings, Jewel determined, the door they’d just crawled through appeared to be the only entrance. She looked about and took in the few stacked crates along one matting-covered wall. Next to them were several corked bottles and jugs, and two hammocks tied to centrally located bamboo poles.
Relief washed through her, but it came tinged with a faint stab of disappointment at the sleeping arrangements. Crossing to the crates, she opened the first one, set before her on the slatted wood floor. Peering in, she sifted through various toiletry items. She eyed the shampoo and toothbrush with longing. Thank you, Luke. With a grateful sigh, she closed the lid and moved on to the next chest.
“What do we have inside?” He knelt and worked on the rusted lock of another trunk.
“The one over there contains some much-needed toiletries, soap, toothpaste, stuff like that. And this one…” She groaned. “Is empty.”
“Let’s pray there’s food in one of them. I’m so damned starved, I could eat a whale.” He wiggled the latch loose and raised the lid. Hinges squeaked, grating against Jewel’s eardrums. A musty cloud rose to assault her senses.
“Empty, too.” In a frantic rush, he opened another, then another. The final chest inspected, he slammed the lid shut, clapped the dust from his palms and stood. Hands on hips, he moved around the room. “Looks like all we have to eat is fucking shaving cream.”
“No…” She fell back on her rear. “This can’t be. It just can’t. I-I need water, food, I…”
“Jane!”
Her head snapped up. She watched as he bent down on his haunches and grasped her ankle. The slight touch nearly made her jump out of her skin. “Ouch!”
“Your ankle. Why didn’t you tell me it’s gotten worse?” He scanned it, this time moving his head rather than her foot. “It’s red, swollen”¾he pressed his fingertips to the large pink circle surrounding the wound¾“and hot. And there’s pus coming from it.”
Me Tarzan, You Jewel Page 10
