“More?”
“Yes, please.” I nodded. That was all the encouragement he needed. His fingers parted my outer lips and he stroked my still throbbing flesh, urging me wider as he pushed again. Nothing happened.
“I think you might be too big, after all.” I bit my lip in an effort to hide my disappointment. “Perhaps we should try again another time.…”
That was the moment in which Nicca—courteous, kind, considerate Nicca—stopped being gentle. Grasping my buttocks roughly, he jerked my body upward and drove himself hard and fast all the way into me. I let out a sound that was midway between a scream and a groan.
“Ow.” I frowned and squeezed my eyes tightly shut.
“I’m sorry.” He kissed my closed eyelids. “Keep still while you get used to it.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who feels like she has had a cricket bat inserted into her.”
“Annie! Must you say the most outrageous things…at the most inappropriate moments?” Nicca laughed, an action that provoked an interesting sensation deep inside me. I risked opening my eyes and gazed up at his face. His expression blazed warmth and desire. I cautiously tightened my muscles around him. He groaned, so I did it again. And again.
“I need to move now, Annie,” Nicca murmured. “If I don’t, I might go mad.”
I lifted my hips to show him that this was a plan I approved of. Then we were moving together in a hard, fast staccato that banished everything else from my mind. There was no sound except our ragged breathing and occasional sighs. Those vicarious, otherworldly experiences had not prepared me for this aching, grinding, wonderful reality. I relished the faint sheen of sweat on Nicca’s upper lip, the rasp of his chest hair on my nipples and the harshness of his fingers digging into the soft flesh of my buttocks as he lifted me so that I didn’t have to bear his weight. My nostrils flared at the musky scent of his body, and I returned to taste over and over the clean, masculine flavour of his skin. Then my other senses gave way to the building frenzy of Nicca filling and stretching me to the point where pleasure and pain met and grew and tortured and shimmered. And then my whole body was shuddering and floating all over again. I cried out in amazement, holding on to Nicca tightly as we both rode the storm, one that was created not by the elements, but by us.
Eventually, we subsided, panting and sated, in each other’s arms.
∗ ∗ ∗
Sometime later, the sea was calm again, but the bed looked like a warzone. I opened my eyes to find Nicca’s clear blue gaze upon me.
“We aren’t dead, Annie,” he said.
“You can never be too careful about these things,” I murmured sleepily, snuggling closer against his chest.
“Most people only get one dying wish,” he stated.
“Does that mean we can never do it again?” I asked. I twined my legs more tightly between his and discovered that this provoked an interesting reaction. Looking down, I studied his erection with interest. “Because, and you can correct me if I’m wrong, there is one part of you at least that seems to be trying to tell me a different story.” I reached down to touch him, but he caught hold of my hand and stopped me. I raised questioning brows.
“Why, Annie?” His voice was hoarse. “I mean, why me? Am I just a warm body that happens to be here? Something to pass the time on a boring voyage?” He drew in a shaky breath. “Or are you using me as Uther’s substitute?” I made as if to bounce up from the bed, but he anticipated my response and caught hold of me. “No, for once in your life keep a lid on that temper of yours, my beautiful firebrand. After what just happened between us, I think I deserve some answers.”
“I’m not questioning your motives,” I said, easing back onto the bed.
“Be serious, Annie. You’re the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve wanted to fuck you for almost as long as I’ve known you. Those are my motives. Now let’s get back to yours.”
He was right, of course. His questions only mirrored my own thoughts of a few days before. It mattered that it was him. Sitting cross-legged on the cramped bed, I tried my best to explain it.
“One day, probably soon, I will have to face Uther again. And I’m scared about how I will react. About the hold he has over me. I want to know that I no longer have that which he prized, that which he assumed was his. I want to hold my head high and know it was my choice to be with a man who is everything he is not. Good and honourable and honest. Light to Uther’s shade. A man for whom I am a reality, not a—” I searched for the right words “—shared memory of a past life. Yes, I want to get him out of my head and making love with you seems to be a particularly effective way of doing that.”
I felt my lips curve into a smile at the memory and was relieved at the answering light in his eyes. “But I’m not using you as some sort of sexual comfort blanket, Nicca! My God! I wanted you because of you! I’ve been going mad with wanting you these past few days. You know that. Because of these lips.” I touched them lightly with my fingertips, tracking lower across the muscles of his chest as I spoke. “And this body.” I ran the tip of my finger lower and his whole body jerked violently. “You are not second best. And if you think that…” I grasped his hand and held it against me so that he could feel how wet I was. “…think again.”
I sighed with relief—and something more primitive—as his fingers began to move enticingly. Reaching out, I caressed the straining shaft of his cock. “I do think it would be such a shame to let this go to waste just because I only get one dying wish, don’t you? Perhaps we should accept the fact that we are going to live and concentrate on making the most of this instead.”
“Annie, you’re a witch.” He laughed, lifting me across his body so that I could straddle him. “As for dying wishes, I think you’re probably going to slay me anyway.”
“Is that what you call it in England? Because where I come from we call it—”
But I didn’t get to finish the sentence. Nicca, with a decidedly wicked gleam in his eyes, lowered me while raising his hips at the same time, so that I ended up gasping his name instead.
∗ ∗ ∗
From then on, the journey became my personal voyage of discovery. I wanted to spend every minute in Nicca’s arms or with him inside me. I was shameless in my longing for him, dragging him off to bed at every available opportunity. Uther, and the fear of his retribution—or the fear of my own weakness—became a distant memory when I could lose myself in this newfound pleasure.
It was also something of a revelation that, when I began to spend more time in the dining room and the ballroom, I observed Nicca’s considerable popularity among the female passengers. It wasn’t as if he did anything in particular to encourage them, I noticed. Nevertheless, wherever he went, there seemed to be a little fluttering, cooing crowd following him. One pretty widow, who I judged to be in her mid-thirties, appeared to be particularly taken with him.
“Oh, Mr Jago, how strong you are!” Mrs Jenkins exclaimed as, seeing her struggling with her deck chair, he obligingly moved the offending item into the shade. “I do so enjoy seeing a man with muscles.” Playfully, she reached out a hand and tested his biceps through the material of his jacket. “And you certainly do have muscles, Mr Jago.”
Nicca smiled down at her and she drew in an appreciative breath.
“Stop flirting with that poor woman,” I said when she had gone.
“Which woman?” His eyes were half-closed against the glare of the sun, and a lock of light brown hair had flopped onto his forehead. His face was tanned, and because I was looking up at him, my attention was drawn to the firm line of his jaw, the slight cleft in his chin, the beautiful shape of his mouth and the purity of his white teeth. How had I ever thought his looks were unremarkable? It was as if Tenebris had held up its own mirror and made me see him the way it wanted me to. Because it had other plans for me.
I sighed. “You can’t even remember one among the many. I am beginning to think I have been seduced by a practiced Lothario,
” I said in melodramatic accents.
“You might be more convincing, Annie, if we didn’t both know you were the one who did all the seducing,” he said with a grin that made me want to seduce him all over again. Right there and then.
After dinner that evening, Mrs Jenkins, having imbibed several cocktails, weaved her way toward Nicca and, pointedly ignoring my presence, said playfully, “Come now, Mr Jago, don’t tell me this delightful music doesn’t tempt you to take to the floor.”
Casting a rueful look in my direction, Nicca escorted her onto the crowded dance floor. He was actually a very good dancer, I noticed approvingly, managing to steer his partner around while fending off the most outrageous of her advances.
“Good gracious.” Finty and Rudi left the dance floor and paused beside me. “Who is the woman that Nicca is wearing draped around his neck?”
Rudi threw her a warning glance. “You look so much better, Annie.” He kissed my cheek.
“So do you, broer. The closer we get to Suid Afrika the more improved we both seem to be.”
They left just before Nicca returned to me. I regarded him thoughtfully. “Hmm.” I reached up to straighten an imaginary kink in his tie. “What a pity for Mrs Jenkins that she is not going to be the one to make your hair—and certain other parts of your body—stand on end later tonight,” I said. I could hear a trace of acid in my own voice.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “I’d be most interested to hear what you plan on doing to achieve that result, Annie.”
I stood on tiptoe and whispered a few words in his ear. When I stepped back, a slight flush had tinged Nicca’s cheeks. “The problem is that, while people tell me I’ve inherited Bouche’s beautiful mouth,” I said, pouting slightly to draw his attention to it, “I just don’t know if it can do all those things. What do you think, Nicca?”
He drained his glass in one swift gulp. “No point in hanging around here,” he said, grabbing my hand and marching me swiftly out of the bar and along the deck toward our cabin. “Time for you to live up to your promises and find out just what that pretty mouth is capable of, Annie van der Merwe.”
Later, as I lay in his arms in the familiar cramped bed, the words I knew he had been desperate to say were dragged from him at last. “I love you, Annie. I think I fell in love with you the first time I saw you in the rose garden at Tenebris. Which is a bit worrying given that I thought you were a boy.” I didn’t answer. “But you already know that, don’t you?”
I shifted my position slightly so that I could look up at him. The only light in the room was the dull gold glow of the gaslight, throwing his face into shadow. “Yes, I know it. And knowing it is the best thing I have in my life.” I bit my lip. I wished—oh, how much I wished—I could say it back to him. “I don’t know if I love you, Nicca. I think I might, but I can’t be sure. I thought I loved Uther, you see, and look how that turned out. I do know I need you. And I really enjoy making love with you. Can that be enough…for now?”
“No,” he said bluntly, jerking me hard against his chest again. “But I suppose I’ll just have to put up with all the lovemaking while you work it out.”
Chapter Eleven
All too soon the distinctive flat-topped mountain with its tablecloth of white mist came into view. Since the unification of South Africa twelve years earlier, Cape Town had become a city without an identity. The old colonial certainties were at an end. The grand buildings remained, but the power had moved elsewhere. There was gold in the Transvaal and the Cape Province had been relegated to the status of poor relation. It was still a staggeringly beautiful city, however, with its distinctive gabled buildings and colourful gardens. This was not the end of our voyage, but we went ashore just to feel solid ground beneath our feet once more. I strolled around the picturesque harbour with my arm through Nicca’s and tried to pretend that I was taking the air with my swain. I wasn’t fooling myself, or him. We were biding our time, waiting for the awful reality of Uther’s arrival. After all, there was good chance that when it happened, I would push Nicca aside and launch myself into his brother’s arms without a moment’s hesitation. Even if he happened to be pointing a gun at my own brother’s head at the time.
“How long will it take him to catch up with us?” Finty asked, looking nervously out at the expanse of the Indian Ocean as we set sail once more on the following morning.
Nicca shrugged. “I can only give you my best estimate. If I’m right about Wilson’s death, I would expect Uther to have stayed in London for the inquest. He will want to find out what information the police had about the murder. Don’t forget, at that point he would not have known that we were gone. We can thank the lack of a telephone system in the village at Athal for helping us in this instance. Even if he tried to contact Annie by letter, he will not have had a response, but that won’t have rung any alarm bells. I think Arthur Wilson probably bought us another week.”
“From now or from when we left?” Rudi asked.
“From now. Uther will have to have figured out where we’ve gone, but that won’t take any great leap of his imagination. He’ll find the wreck of his desk and work it out pretty quickly. And, of course, the servants at Athal House will tell him when we set off and that we were all together, although he may not know that Finty and I have accompanied you to Africa. He is likely to make for Southampton, as we did. There are other ships that sail for the cape from other British ports, but these Union Castle sailings are the most regular and the easiest on which to get a last-minute passage. If he’s lucky, and weather permitting, Uther will get a ticket for the sailing on Thursday this week. The journey will take him just over two weeks, so he will arrive in South Africa in about three weeks from now. I would expect him to disembark in Cape Town and begin his enquiries there. That will slow him down further.”
“So, by the time he gets to South Africa, we will already have been at home—at Sonskyn Kraal—for several weeks,” I said.
“Does Uther know where your grandmother’s kraal actually is, Annie? Have you ever given him any clue to its exact location?”
I had already wracked my brains about this, but I was sure I had not. Uther had never taken any great interest in my background, other than occasionally ribbing me about my accent, and, when he and I were alone together, idle conversation had never been a priority for us. My cheeks flamed at the thought. “No, he will not find us easily.” I was adamant. “South Africa is an enormous country, and Natal is a vast, sparsely populated province. If he starts looking for us in the cape, he could be there forever, and van der Merwe is a common name in South Africa.”
“But you are twins. And you, at least, Annie, are not easy to forget.” Nicca grinned at Rudi. “No offence. He’ll employ help of some sort in the task of finding you. The passenger list from the ship will be useful, if he can get access to it. I’ve tried to ensure that he can’t, but money talks in these situations. I don’t imagine that Uther will come dashing up to the front door and enact the role of the wounded suitor, anyway. He won’t be expecting a warm welcome. Confrontation is not Uther’s style. He is more devious than that.”
I thought of the poison bottle in his room and of Arthur Wilson, stabbed to death and left in a burning building. I hoped that Tristan and Eleanor would be safe, but I suspected that Tristan had Uther’s measure. He, of all people, knew what the Jago darkness could do.
“Will he come at all?” Finty asked, again the intensity of the fear in her voice surprised me. But, of all of us, she had seen at first-hand what Uther had tried to do to Rudi. “Why bother when we all know what an absolute bounder he is? Perhaps he’ll just slink away into the shadows.”
“He will come.” The three of us answered together, effectively dispelling the look of hope that flared briefly in Finty’s eyes.
But the question that I couldn’t ask aloud, because it was only half-formed in my own head, remained. Would that other presence, the one that linked us both so indelibly to Tenebris, come with him? Could the Jago darkne
ss be untethered so that it could travel across continents? And, if so, what harm was it capable of once it left the confines of its Athal home?
∗ ∗ ∗
I tasted dust like red-hot paprika hanging in the baking air and smelled the rustling, heated grass and the sweltering scent of the animals. This was South Africa’s heart. My Natal. My home. Tears stung my eyelids, and I blinked them rapidly away. Could I ever have seriously contemplated not coming back here again? It was proof of how powerfully Uther had affected me. I cast a sidelong glance at Nicca to see what effect the cruel, fiery beauty of the open veldt was having on him, but his eyes were on my face.
“Sonskyn Kraal,” I said proudly, leaning forward to get a better view as we wound our way down the narrow mountain road. The rocky amphitheatre encircling the kraal allowed the light to illuminate the scene no matter what time of day it was.
“What does it mean?” Nicca asked.
I turned my head to look at him and was shocked by a sudden, overwhelming desire to kiss him, there and then, in front of everyone. What was wrong with me? “Sonskyn means ‘sunshine,’” I said, reluctantly dragging my eyes away from his mouth. “Which is ironic because—”
“Tenebris means ‘darkness,’” Nicca finished the sentence for me. “Perhaps it is more symbolic than ironic that Rudi, the true heir of Athal, should come from a place that means sunshine. Lucent in tenebris. Perhaps the legacy of darkness may come to an end at last.”
“Don’t say those words!” I begged. Something about the Latin motto of the Jagos always resonated deep inside me, calling to something that I did not want to examine or acknowledge.
Set in a basin, surrounded by mountains, the main farmhouse at Sonskyn Kraal was an all-white building, long and low, wrapped all the way around by a wide veranda, or stoep. To the rear, the thatched, circular cottages that housed the farm hands and servants formed a semi-circle around the main house, and in front was a wide lawn—which Ouma constantly battled to keep green—with flowerbeds bordering the dusty path.
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