Season of Storm

by Alexandra Sellers

  She eyed Wilf suspiciously. "I'm always crying when I'm around you," she said. "I never cry."

  Wilf chewed thoughtfully. "Why not?"

  She hiccuped into laughter. "I don't know. I really don't know." She paused and rubbed a damp cheek again. "It's really not so bad, is it?"

  ***

  The telephone was probably not in the filing cabinet, anyway, Smith realized, examining the results of her efforts. The idea had been a product of her angry determination. Chances were it was in Wilf's cabin, because it would be almost criminally negligent for Johnny Winterhawk to take with him their only means of communicating with the mainland. Wilf was in his cabin now. She had told Wilf she was going for a nap, then watched him go down to his cabin before coming to search the study.

  She sank down into the chair behind the desk and gave up. She wasn't going to get into those filing cabinets. She had searched the room high and low for a key. Cursing, and remembering how easily she had once picked the lock on one of the filing cabinets at St. John's, she had spent a fruitless half hour trying to conquer Johnny Winterhawk's. At St. John's everyone had been so appalled by the ease with which she had jimmied the lock that the cabinets had immediately been changed for stronger ones that promised to be more secure. Even in her frustrated anger Shulamith was hoping that the cabinets now housing St. John's company secrets were as difficult to break into as Johnny Winterhawk's, and was making a mental note of the manufacturer's name in case they were not.

  She had tried to pull the cabinets over on one side in the way she had heard about, but the four high cabinets were so heavy she could not even move them. She might have been able to tip them forward on their faces and let them smash to the ground, but unless they broke open on impact, which she doubted, what would have been the advantage in that? The noise would bring Wilfred Tall Tree, and that would be that.

  There was one smaller cabinet at the end, which she could move, and she had dragged it down on its side, but nothing magical had happened to the lock and it was too heavy for her to lift back. Now it lay on Johnny Winterhawk's polished oak floor, mute testimony to her activities.

  Smith sighed. Oh, well, she supposed she would be confined to her room after this. What difference did it make? She looked down to the absent watch on her wrist, a habit she couldn't seem to break, then wandered to the window and stared down at the tiny cove below. How long it would be before he came home?

  She wandered to the bookcase that ran the length and height of the wall that faced his desk. He was right: there were lots of books here that looked as though they might fill the gaps in her social education as far as native rights were concerned.

  I Heard the Owl Call My Name. She had heard of that one. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The Unjust Society. He had shelves full. Conscious of a sense of reluctance, Smith put out her hand and pulled one off the shelf. The Unjust Society by Harold Cardinal. The title didn't bode well for her feeling that someone had been looking after social wrongs while she was concerned with other things.

  "Chapter One. The Buckskin Curtain. The Indian-Problem Problem," she read. "The history of Canada's Indians is a shameful chronicle of the white man's disinterest, his deliberate trampling of Indian rights...."

  Smith closed the book with a snap and put it back on the shelf. "No, thank you," she said aloud. "Anyway, it's not my fault." Restlessly, she moved to his desk and sat. She flicked an eye over the things on his desk top and then pulled open a drawer she had searched earlier.

  The one full of writing pads and notebooks, and a tray of pens and pencils.

  I could keep a diary of this, she thought dryly. Someone might publish it for its curiosity value, especially if I'm killed in the end. Kidnapped people probably go through some interesting mental processes....Dear Diary, this morning I did the laundry and read a book but didn't go outside even though it's a beautiful day; and after lunch I tried to get into Johnny Winterhawk's filing system. I was hoping to find the phone. Last night....

  Smith bit her lip. She didn't want to think about last night, because last night she had been crazy. Last night she hadn't been herself at all, and what had happened was the scariest thing that had ever happened to her.

  Shulamith gazed down at the faint blue lines of a blank notepad. She could hear the soft sound of the waterfall outside the broad span of glass, and all the greenery was glistening and rich.

  Poetry had been a closed book for years, she had given all that up during university. But she suddenly felt almost feverish in her need for some sort of activity.

  "Quite often practice makes perfect," Johnny had said. There was only herself and the blank page. And she had to do something.

  Fourteen

  You are a nomad

  Desert dweller

  Your eyes

  Hot with thirst

  Your eyes

  It is not me you see

  It is the reflection of your desire

  In the burning sky

  I have no water for you

  My throat also is dry...

  Why do you burn me?

  Your mouth is a naked flame

  Why do you put naked flame to a dry wood?

  Life dies when forests burn

  Your mouth is a naked flame

  I said I loved you

  I do not love you

  It was the shape of your head

  Against a window

  Some primordial template

  Meaningless...

  Shulamith threw down her pen, ripped yet another page from the pad and crushed it in one irritated hand. Johnny Winterhawk. She didn't want to write about Johnny Winterhawk! She didn't feel anything for him, it was stress messing her mind. There was a lot more than him burning in her—why couldn't she get to it?

  She sat back in her chair, idly balling the paper in her hand as she gazed sightlessly at the discarded sheets that now littered the kitchen table, the new blank page in front of her.

  She had forgotten what hard work poetry was. Over the past few years she had been remembering that brief period of serious writing as being filled with a stream of flowing creativity, but the hard labour she had just put in gave the lie to that. The process was familiar to her, but after so many years it was a distant, difficult familiarity.

  Or perhaps it was just that she was resisting?

  She had wanted to convey the nameless, formless longing that she felt from time to time, but it kept coming out clothed in a yearning that was too immediate, too specific. Somehow that old familiar longing had fixed itself on the last man in the world she could fulfil it with—her kidnapper.

  Smith dropped the crushed page onto the table and slowly stood up, moving towards the window to stare out over the balcony and the treetops to where the sun glinted on water in the distance. There was a languor in her limbs, as though the poetic process had been erotic. She clenched her jaw briefly. Well, the creative process was erotic, of course it was. Of course there was something almost sexual in the act of pulling out your own deep responses and submitting them to the light of day....

  Anyway, the writing's crap, she told herself. What did you expect? You're a timber merchant, not a poet!

  Smith collected the discarded sheets of her writing and impatiently stuffed them into the garbage bin. Then she moved out onto the balcony.

  It was a hot day, she discovered with surprise. Very hot. The house, protected by trees, was cool without benefit of air conditioning, and the heat that beat on her now as she stood in the sun-drenched square of afternoon sun surprised her. They must be in for a heat wave.

  She moved toward the chair that he'd sat in last night, telling her that story of terrible beauty. Did he really imagine that he and she were some kind of reincarnation of that distant ancestor and his foreign lover? That what he felt was a kind of compulsion from the spirit of the man called Tree By Itself? It was crazy! Wasn't it? And if so, what was supposed to be driving her? Was she supposed to believe that the red-haired woman who had come out of the sea
had fallen in love with a stranger in a strange land who—what? Rescued her? Or simply considered her his property? Snatched her up and....

  The way Johnny Winterhawk snatched you?

  She did not love him. It was hallucination.

  Smith put out a hand to the smooth wood of the chair back and her stomach knotted, as though Johnny Winterhawk had left some trace of his desire behind to reach for her now with invisible hands.

  "I will teach you to like it," she whispered, and felt the sun burning on her hair, her breasts, her thighs. It was too hot; it was making her feel faint.

  Below her, the Pacific sucked and pounded in the rocky gorge, and suddenly Smith was running, down the steps and over the rocks as though someone chased her, to follow the steep narrow trail that led deep into the forest cool, down and down toward the sea.

  "There's a bit of sand beach down that path," Wilfred Tall Tree had explained when she caught sight of the faint trail from the kitchen window. "It's a good place to beach a canoe." He laughed, and she knew he was laughing at her.

  When she emerged from the forest to find herself nearly at the water's edge she couldn't see the house to get her bearings and the trail was lost in the rocks. To her left the way looked too rough, especially for feet protected only by moccasins. Smith turned right, climbed up onto a promontory that dropped abruptly to the sea on one side and on the other, she saw as she reached the crest, to a small cove and a sheltered strip of greyish sand.

  The sand was dry and hot, and Smith kicked off jeans and shirt and lay back to bake a little in the sun. No one would disturb her here. The island was totally private. Wilfred, if he did catch sight of her, would leave her alone, and Johnny...Johnny Winterhawk wouldn't be back for four hours yet. Not that she was counting.

  ***

  The water was so cold it took her breath away. But the contrast between the icy water and the burning sun on her skin was a powerful sensual pleasure, and Smith rolled and stretched in the waves, floating on her back to offer her naked body up to the sun's heat with a luxurious abandonment that was slowly washing away the unending stress of the past year, first in her work in Europe, then over her father's health, and now...

  Her long hair floated around her body as the water tugged each strand loose, and she felt the freedom in her scalp and closed her eyes on the sensation with as much pleasure as if she had spent the past year in prison.

  When the cold began to reach her bones she headed in to shore and stood up amid the froth of the small breakers and felt the sun like a sacrament on her chilled, invigorated body, a holy wine warming body and soul together.

  She moved forward through the waves, the hot sun beating down to warm her, the water alternately pushing and pulling at her slim thighs with a force that staggered her until, after a few steps, she found firmer footing.

  Oh, this was glorious. This was the most perfect moment she had experienced in years. Even the weight of her hair pulling back from her scalp and hanging long down her back was a new sensuous excitement, as were the insistent motion of the water against her legs and the texture of pebble and sand underfoot.

  When she reached the beach she dropped to the sand and lay out of reach of all but the strongest waves, so that every now and then she was startled by a silken touch of water sliding up the warm sand under her legs and hips.

  Bending one knee, she dug her toes into the wet sand and closed her eyes and smiled....

  When the shadow fell across her she knew there could be no cloud in the blue clear sky. Her eyes opened lazily and with a tiny gasp she met the hungry gaze of the dark man standing over her. And that too, was as it should be.

  He was naked except for the blue jeans that covered his hips and legs. His muscled chest was smooth and his arms hung easily, almost helplessly at his sides. All his energy was in his dark look, black flames licking out over her skin to scorch her into awareness.

  "Johnny," she whispered, half pleading, half inviting, all aware.

  He looked at her as though he did not hear her voice, but only saw the movement of her lips, as though the sight of that stirred him unmercifully. She felt a whole series of tiny sparks against her skin then, running upward from her feet to her shoulders; her fingers clenched in the thick gritty sand at her sides, and she felt water run down over her knuckles. Water, she realized in erotic amazement. The look in his eyes had made the touch of water an electric shock on her skin. She looked at his strong hands then and wondered distantly if his caress would scorch her to death.

  She felt a shiver in her breasts as under his gaze her nipples suddenly contracted, hardened; and Johnny Winterhawk watched with a look of pleasure that was nearly pain.

  "Johnny," she whispered again. But his hands had already moved to his waist, and she watched the smooth hard line of hip and thigh emerge as he stripped off the worn denim with mounting hunger. Her breath caught in her throat as he stood straight and tossed the jeans onto the sand. He was watching her watch him, and when her tongue flicked involuntarily between her parted lips she heard the intake of his breath.

  He dropped to the sand beside her, not taking his eyes from hers, an intent in his gaze that she knew was answered in her own.

  Johnny Winterhawk's hungry mouth came down on lips already parted in need, and her small stifled breath of response was abruptly transformed in her throat into a growl of deep, erotic, animal need that destroyed Johnny Winterhawk's restraint at a stroke. His hands closed in her wet hair, on her arm, her breast, with a grip of such naked hunger that she tore her mouth away from his to cry out her passionate response to it.

  A long wave rustled up the beach under their bodies, frothing over their legs and hips and setting her hair afloat all around them. She shivered as the icy touch made its own contribution to her sensual joy, arching her head back into sand and foam, and Johnny kissed the fluttering pulse of the throat she offered up to him.

  His mouth was fire and ice. She was trembling, almost shuddering, with passionate need of him. Nothing in all her life had ever affected her like this. His touch was meat and drink to her, and she sobbed with need. She arched her breasts up to meet his mouth, her sex against his enclosing hand.

  Then her arms were empty, and it was the sun, not his chest that burned her. She moaned her dismayed loss, her arms reaching to draw him back down against her. But he slipped out of her hold and a moment later the heat of his mouth and tongue scorched between her legs. In the sky above, a pair of hunting hawks echoed her wild, surprised cry.

  She could hardly lift her head against the torrent of sensation that rushed from her centre to every nerve of muscle and flesh and bone. The sight of the dark head at her abdomen, sunlight glowing on his thick black hair, the hot caress of his mouth and tongue against her, the hands that clasped her hips to lift her body up to his hungry feast, sent a scorching liquid pleasure though her that she had never even dreamed possible.

  "Johnny," she cried. "You—you—oh, don't!"

  He lifted his mouth and his black gaze burned into her across the length of her body.

  "You don't like it?"

  His hand moved to push her thighs further apart, and her head fell back, her eyelids drooping in sensuous response. A moment later she felt his tongue find her flesh again and pleasure beckoned her on to the feast.

  Suddenly it was there within reach. Her legs stretched wide, her body arched up against his mouth, seeking, seeking, and her fingers closed in his hair as, openly, wantonly, she showed him what she needed from him. Never had she been so free. She pushed up against his mouth, all her energies devoted to finding the answer to the deep need he had created in her.

  The pleasure exploded in her, rich and hot and satisfying, her body heaving and trembling with the heat that radiated through every nerve, every cell. She cried out her surprise and joy and, over the hillside above, on the hunt for his own prey, the hawk also cried.

  Johnny looked into her eyes and noted her sleepy satisfaction with one dark raised eyebrow.


  "Yes?" he queried softly, and behind his eyes she saw that his own need had been ramped up to fever pitch with the pleasure he had given her.

  "Yes," Smith acknowledged.

  "Good," said Johnny Winterhawk, and the muscles of his jaw clenched as deliberately, easily, he slid over her body and sank into the nest of her hips.

  Fifteen

  Shulamith lay exhausted on the sand, one knee raised, one arm above her head, her wet hair caked with salt and sand.

  She was devastated, utterly drained. He had dissolved her with passion, had reduced her to the most basic element of her soul, had shown her, through her passionate response to the touch of his body and hands and mouth, all the shape and texture of her own animal nature. Under his hands she had surrendered to pleasure, had tossed aside guilt and shame, and all the shields of the social veneer that had kept her from knowing who she was.

  When, at long last, his passion had burned itself out, she had no more strength than to curl up at his side, while the late sun dried the sand and salt on her body and a faint breeze stirred the wild tangle of her hair.

  And then a hand. Johnny Winterhawk raised himself on one elbow and stroked the hair from her face and forehead with a tender featherlight touch that, after the wild ferocity of the past hour, distantly surprised her.

  "Hello," he whispered, gently turning her, and she curled up against his body, instinctively seeking the warmth of his body and arms. Hot tears surprised her eyelids as his arms wrapped her, and then she was crying, sobbing wildly against Johnny Winterhawk's chest in some nameless release she could not understand.

  He held her and gently stroked her as the sobs shook her frame. And when it was over and he wiped her cheeks and mouth with a firm, loving hand Smith knew that there was nothing she need ever hide from him, nothing that need ever shame her in his presence. She felt the gentlest of kisses on her cheek. Johnny's arms tightened around her, strong and protective, and he raised himself on an elbow and looked down at her.