Eden Burning

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The audience laughed while the dancers’ movements and Bobby’s chants told of men outwitting gods and one another. People clapped in time to the triumph of men over the sea and watched in taut attention as two lovers were tricked by a jealous spirit into throwing themselves into the lake of lava burning within Kilauea’s black mouth.

  Motionless, Chase watched as intently as anyone in the audience, but it was Nicole he watched, not the other dancers. They simply didn’t exist for him. There was nothing onstage but the woman with burning hair and golden skin.

  Unconsciously he leaned forward even more, trying to make out details of her appearance. He couldn’t. She was too well concealed within her softly waving hip-length hair and the shadows at the back of the stage.

  Gradually the rhythm of the drums changed from the stately dignity of the Hawaiian hula to the playful, sensual rhythms of Tahiti. One by one, all the dancers except Nicole stepped forward to display their skill at this new form of dance. Their movements were graceful, rapid, and demanding. Tahitian dance required as much strength and stamina as it did coordination and grace.

  Soon bodies began to gleam like polished gold or mahogany. Away from the spotlights, darkness throbbed with the rolling thunder of drums. The rhythm increased in speed and intricacy, challenging the dancers to equal its driving presence. Those who couldn’t keep up with the constantly increasing pace drifted to the side of the stage and sat like participants at a feast. From there they called out praise and subtle taunts to the remaining dancers, spurring them on.

  The number of people standing on the stage shrank to five, then four, then two—Nicole and a young Polynesian scientist named Sam Chu Lin. He was barely as tall as Nicole’s five feet ten inches. Like her, he wore a short lavalava. Unlike her, that was all he wore. As he faced her, his superb physical conditioning showed in every rippling muscle of his body. He swayed provocatively, tauntingly, daring her to equal him.

  For the first time Nicole stepped fully into the spotlight.

  Her hair blazed suddenly, vividly, drawing a low sound of awe and pleasure from the audience. Swaying rhythmically, she answered the male dancer’s challenge with movements that exactly echoed his.

  Bobby gave a short cry of encouragement and shifted the rhythm into an even more rapid pace.

  Sam answered with sinuous, repeated, powerful movements of his hips. The motions were as difficult as they were frankly sensual. With each intricate movement, he inched closer to Nicole’s teasing, gleaming body.

  She didn’t retreat. She moved her hips in a figure-eight motion that was so quick the print of her lavalava blurred into a halo of color around her hips. Her hair flew out as she spun and turned her back on Sam, giving him a clear view of her wildly gyrating and perfectly disciplined hips.

  Then she smiled over her shoulder at him. It was a smile as old as Eve, a feminine challenge as fiery as the flame-colored hair that enhanced each fast, sensuous movement of her body.

  Beneath Bobby’s flying hands, driving rhythms pulsed out of the drums. It seemed impossible that anything could match them, but the dancers did.

  As Nicole turned to face Sam again, he leaped into the air. When he landed lightly on the stage, his urgently moving body was closer to hers, so close that her hair licked over him like fire and clung to his hot, gleaming skin.

  He smiled at her, an elemental male smile whose intent was as unmistakable as the potent motions of his body.

  She answered with a swift, impossible quickening of her dance, her body burning brighter than her hair.

  Chase felt like he had taken a fist in the gut. His breath went out with a thick sound that was almost pain. Blood raced through him until his own arousal pounded with the insistent beat of the drums. Each hot movement announced that in Tahiti, dance was an erotic ritual where both partners displayed their physical lures to a potential mate—strength, stamina, grace, and an elemental sensuality that was literally breathtaking to watch.

  Chase would have given a great deal to be the man on the drums, driving the primitive rhythms to their inevitable climax. He would have given even more to be inside Pele, deep inside, driving that hot, beautiful body of hers higher and higher until she screamed with pleasure.

  As the drumbeat thickened and increased yet again, Nicole and Sam danced toe to toe, their bodies moving so rapidly that individual motions were a blur. Taunting, provoking, challenging, dance and dancers were an eruption of sexuality that stunned Chase. There was no sound but the rapid, primitive thunder of the drums and the soft thud of bare feet meeting wood with each shift of the dance.

  The beat increased as relentlessly as Chase’s reckless hunger for the redheaded dancer. He didn’t try to fight his need, because he didn’t even know it was there to fight. He wasn’t aware of himself any longer. He knew only the vivid, pulsing sexuality of Pele.

  Sweat gave Nicole’s skin an iridescent quality, as though she was burning from within. Her partner was working even harder. Drops of sweat gleamed, gathered in golden rivulets, and ran from Sam’s body. His breath came in harsh gasps as he fought to keep pace with Nicole’s incandescent dance.

  But no mere man could match the goddess of fire.

  With a hoarse cry, Sam dropped down among the dancers who were sitting on the stage.

  Nicole’s dance never even paused. With a provocative snap of her hips in Sam’s direction, she turned and held out her hands to Bobby, inviting him to replace her exhausted partner.

  Bobby answered with another quickening of the pounding beat of the drums.

  The new rhythm swept through Nicole, exploding into passionate movements of her body that were both dance and something far older, as deeply rooted in the human soul as life itself. Fiery hair flying, body gleaming, smile flashing, Nicole gave herself wholly to the hot, sensual dance.

  Bobby’s hands became a dark blur over the drums, yet still he could not keep up with her. He held the violent rhythms at their peak for a long instant. Then, with a hoarse sound, he threw up his hands and surrendered to the woman who burned wildly in the center of the stage.

  With a throaty, triumphant cry, she danced on alone, accompanied by only the wild beating of her heart and the audience calling “Pele! Pele!” as they celebrated her victory.

  Without warning, the dance ended.

  Nicole stood alone within the blazing spotlights, her breasts rising and falling rapidly, her arms held out as though to an unseen lover, her skin shimmering with heat, her hair the color of Pele’s own burning lava fountains.

  The room plunged into darkness.

  The audience clapped and shouted for Pele, but no one answered. After a few minutes the lights came up. Men and women settled back around their tables and began talking again. Between the words and phrases, currents of excitement still echoed through the room where the fire goddess had danced.

  Chase felt like he was on fire himself. He was grateful that the light level in the room stayed low, for his own savage arousal was all too apparent. Silently, uselessly, he cursed his body for its betrayal. The only thing that answered him was the hot drumming of blood through his veins.

  He told himself that it would pass, he had been aroused before and life had gone on just fine. He could thank Lynette for that; she had taught him that sexual hunger was preferable to living in yoked misery with the wrong woman.

  Slowly he let out a breath, then another, then another, until the vise of sexual need began to loosen. With narrowed gray eyes, he searched the faces of the other men in the room, wondering how many of them were grappling with their own stark arousal. He saw a variety of expressions—pleasure, excitement, humor, appreciation—but nowhere did he see a reflection of his own violent response to Nicole’s sensual dance.

  His only consolation was that Dane, while he had obviously enjoyed the performance, hadn’t been aroused.

  “Is it time to say I told you so?” Dane asked smugly.

  “Just what did you tell me, little brother?” Chase’s voice, like his t
houghts, was raw and rough.

  “That you’ve never seen anything like her.”

  Chase smiled thinly. “Outside of a red-light district, no, I can’t say as I have.”

  “Chase Wilcox, closet Puritan!” Dane hooted in disbelief. “Say it again. I still don’t believe it. Tahitian dancing can be a little sexy, sure, but it’s a long way from smutty.”

  “Couldn’t prove it by watching the red-hot redhead. I’m surprised the cops haven’t shut this place down.”

  Dane realized that his brother was serious. “What are you talking about? Look around you. The Kipuka Club is rated PG.”

  After a moment Chase forced a smile onto his lips. He knew that his brother was right. There were families gathered around tables all through the supper club, enjoying the food, drink, and professional conversations that were the Kipuka’s hallmark.

  Reluctantly he admitted that if he found Nicole’s dance violently arousing, the problem was with him rather than with the dance itself. He had seen Tahitian dance performed before, had enjoyed the saucy rhythms, the curve of breasts and hips, and none of it had raised his heartbeat worth mentioning.

  But that was before the fire-haired goddess.

  All Chase could think was that the men in the club must be as blind as stones not to see the wildness in her, the hunger, the sexual heat.

  My God, the sheer heat.

  On the heels of that thought came another, one that made Chase’s mouth curl slightly beneath the thick black sheen of his mustache. The women must be blind, too, or they would grab their men whenever Pele came onstage and take off like bats out of an erupting volcano.

  “When does Nicole make her rounds of the tables?” Chase asked idly.

  “Make her rounds?”

  “Yeah. You know. Go to each table and smile and press the flesh and get tips stuffed into her lavalava.”

  Dane shook his head. “You’ve been keeping the wrong company, bro. You keep acting like this is a strip joint and Nicole’s some kind of exceptionally well coordinated tart. If you try to stuff money in her lavalava, you’ll lose your hand.”

  “I don’t notice Jan dancing here,” Chase pointed out.

  “Try next Wednesday. That’s amateur night. But if I catch your hands anywhere near her lavalava, I’ll hire three men and break your arm.”

  Chase tilted his head back and laughed, really laughed, releasing some of the tension that had coiled so explosively inside him. The sound of his laughter was contagious. Nearby people looked around and smiled at him for no other reason than their pleasure in hearing him.

  “I’m glad to see you have enough sense to be jealous of Jan,” Chase said finally.

  “Just cautious. Women fall into your hands like sun-ripe fruit. Jan makes life very comfortable for me. I don’t want her too close to your lethal charm. After fifteen years of staid married life, she might get itchy and wonder if she missed anything by marrying real young.”

  Like you’re itchy? Chase asked his brother silently. Aloud, he said, “Women trample me to get to you. You’re so damned civilized and elegant you’re almost pretty.”

  Dane grinned. “Yeah. Ain’t it grand?”

  As long as it isn’t Nicole chasing you, yes.

  Chase knew there was no way his brother could have a very discreet, very meaningless affair with Nicole and then go back to Jan a wiser man. But Dane didn’t know that, and he wasn’t listening to his older, wiser brother.

  Chase felt like leaning over, grabbing his brother’s shirt, and yelling, Listen to me, damn you! You’re going to screw up a wonderful marriage and never know it until way too late.

  Even as Chase wanted to pound on his brother’s stubborn head, he knew that there wasn’t much hope of words getting through. When their crotch was on alert, men were exceptionally vulnerable. Stupid, even. Shortsighted, certainly.

  Except for Jan, Chase had never known Dane to react to a woman the way he did to Nicole. Open affection, pleasure, admiration. Full-on arousal couldn’t be far behind.

  If Chase had thought that shouting at his brother—or hammering sense into his thick head—would get through the testosterone blindness, he would already be shouting and hammering. But those direct approaches had never worked with Dane. Chase’s charming brother did things his own way, in his own time, and to hell with the rest of the world.

  Words wouldn’t get through to Dane. Action would. A very special kind of action. The kind that would prove to Dane that he didn’t know Nicole very well at all.

  “Does Nicole do anything but dance?” Chase asked after a moment.

  “Like what?”

  “Work for a living.”

  “There speaks a man who’s never tried Tahitian dancing,” Dane said. “If that isn’t work, what is? Didn’t you see Sam Chu Lin? He was sweating like ice in a sauna, and it wasn’t because he’s out of shape. Hell, if I had his muscles, I’d burn mine.”

  Chase made a sound that could have meant anything or nothing. His wintry glance roved the room restlessly, searching for a flash of fire and grace and supple female strength.

  Pele. Nicole. By either name, by any name, she was a woman to match the burning mountain.

  “Nicole is an artist,” Dane said.

  Hardly able to believe what he had just heard, Chase gave his brother a sidelong look. “Oh, yeah, right. That’s what all the exotic dancers say.”

  Dane fought a smile. “Could be, but I’ll bet they don’t strut their art in a bona fide gallery.”

  The arch of Chase’s left eyebrow rose in a silent question.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” Dane grinned. “Nicole does line drawings and watercolors that are accurate enough to illustrate scientific texts and original enough to be sold as art throughout the islands.”

  Chase signaled a passing server, pointed at the two empty beer bottles on the table, and returned his attention to Dane.

  “But don’t take my word for it,” Dane said dryly. “You’ll see for yourself. She’ll be working with you on your Islands of Life project.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You asked me to find an illustrator. I did. Nicole.”

  “She’s really capable of scientific illustration?” Chase asked in disbelief. Since the perfection of the thirty-five-millimeter camera, not to mention the newest digital models, few artists had the desire, the ability, or the control required for painstaking re-creations of nature such as Audubon had made famous.

  “Did you see the Volcano Portfolio the national park put out a year ago?” Dane asked.

  Chase nodded.

  “The illustrations were all Nicole’s.”

  “She’s that N. Ballard?” Chase asked before he could stop himself. The last thing he wanted to be was impressed.

  But he was.

  The amount of talent, drive, and discipline that were required for someone to perfect both a gift for drawing and the more physically challenging gift of dance was impressive. He remembered the drawings for the Volcano Portfolio. He had been struck by the artist’s ability to capture both the scientific facts of an erupting volcano and the more elusive emotional truth of a volcano’s awesome reality.

  A chill slowly condensed in Chase as he measured the clear pride and appreciation in his brother’s blue eyes while he talked about Nicole’s accomplishments. He sounded like a doting parent—or a man falling in love.

  Christ, Chase thought wearily. What chance does Jan stand against a woman like Nicole? Intelligence, artistry, and the kind of fire that burns a man to his soul.

  Pele incarnate.

  Hoping that he was wrong, afraid that he wasn’t, Chase began to question his brother in earnest about Nicole Ballard. Everything he heard made the chill inside him deepen.

  “She’s great with kids,” Dane said warmly, glad to see that his brother was finally really listening. “Takes them on long hikes nearly every weekend, back up to the kipukas on Kilauea’s slopes where nobody else goes.”

  “How did she
find the kipukas? Or are you telling me that she’s an explorer and volcano crawler along with all the rest?”

  Dane laughed. “Nope. Bobby’s kid showed her a batch of kipukas, and it was love at first sight. Same goes for the kids and Nicole. Love at first sight. Lisa follows her around like a gray-eyed shadow. Nicole is teaching her how to draw.” The flow of words became a groan. “Oh, hell, that was supposed to be a surprise. Forget I said anything.”

  Great with kids, huh? Yeah, right. Lynette made a lot of noises about motherhood, too. You’ve picked a real winner, Dane. Just like your butt-stupid older brother.

  The anger that had corded Chase’s throat while he listened to Dane run on and on about the poor, sexy dancer who had just happened to catch the eye of one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii made it difficult for him to talk. He had to swallow some beer before he could trust himself to say, “So Nicole hula dances and paints nature.”

  “You make it sound so . . . ordinary.”

  Chase shrugged. He had to find a way to convince Dane that his redheaded saint had feet of wet, sticky clay. Otherwise Dane was about to make the worst mistake of his life.

  Like Chase had when he believed Lynette’s lies about love and family and marriage.

  “Sounds like a hand-to-mouth way to make a living, dancing and drawing here and there,” Chase said.

  “She wasn’t born lucky, like we were.”

  “Lucky? As in rich?”

  Dane nodded. “I’d guess that Nicole pays her bills and not much more.”

  “Too bad. That’s a hard life.”

  “She’s not losing any sleep over it. She likes her life the way it is.”

  Chase bit back blistering words. Don’t you believe it, little brother. She’s setting you up to clean your pockets right down to the lint in the seams.

  But, hell, that’s just money. There’s a lot where it came from.

  Self-respect is harder to replace. I don’t want you to have to look in the mirror and see just how many kinds of fool you were, to hate yourself every time you think about how an innocent child paid the price of your stupidity.