Desire in the Sun

by Karen Robards

  "Not much."

  "Drink it anyway."

  He did, and then she showed him how to break off the meat into small chunks so that it could be eaten easily. Instead of finishing hers off, she saved a small piece of meat and rubbed it on her burning nose.

  "What are you doing?" He was looking at her as if she had suddenly lost her mind. She had to smile.

  "There's an oil in the meat that's good for your skin when you've had too much sun. You should rub some over your shoulders and arms. It'll take some of the sting away."

  He grunted, looking unconvinced, and continued chewing unenthusiastically on a piece of coconut. Lilah shook her head at him, and moved closer to perform the chore for him. He suffered her to brush the sand away, and then rub the oily meat over his shoulders and back, and down his arms, but his expression was skeptical. For her part, Lilah tried to ignore the pleasure she got from touching him. Despite the fiery heat left by the sun, his skin was as satiny smooth as fine leather. Finally she dabbed a bit on the end of his nose. He ducked, winced, and swatted at her. She laughed at him as she moved away.

  "Haven't you ever seen a coconut before?"

  He shook his head. "I grew up in England, which, unlike the places where you've apparently lived, is quite civilized. We don't have giant hairy nuts growing on our trees-and we don't have slaves either."

  Lilah met that glittering green gaze, and her good mood died. A sudden fierce flare of resentment sent her surging to her feet.

  "Look, I'm sick and tired of hearing you whine about being a slave! I can't help what you are any more than you can! It's fate, and I'm not responsible for fate, so you can just stop being so angry at me all the time! You should be grateful to me, if anything! I saved your hide at that auction back there in Virginia, Joss San Pietro.

  But if I had it to do over again-I'd have let them nail it to the wall!"

  Sitting there with his back propped against the grassy dune, he had to tilt his head to look up at her as she stood, arms akimbo, shouting down at him. Instead of getting angry in turn, as Lilah expected, his expression turned pensive.

  "Do you know, I think that's the first thing I liked about you: that fiery temper of yours. You cursed when you hit that bush and then when I did the gentlemanly thing and pulled your skirt down for you, you tried to punch my nose. It was charming, especially from such a pretty little thing. I've always liked women who were ready to take on the devil."

  He put the coconut down beside him and got slowly to his feet. The move brought him unexpectedly close, and suddenly it was she who had to tilt her head back to look up at him. Dusk was settling over the island, the sun had set, the moon not yet risen, and the only points of light were his eyes. They glittered at her through the gathering darkness. Lilah took a step backwards in sudden alarm.

  "Afraid of me, are you?" He laughed suddenly, the sound grating. She realized with a shock that he was furious. His hand shot out to catch her by the arm and drag her close even as she took another step away. Feeling that steely grip, helpless to free herself as he pulled her so close that no more than a handsbreath separated their bodies, Lilah was suddenly, frighteningly aware of how strong he was and how helpless she was in the face of that strength. He could overpower her easily…

  "You're lucky my mother raised me to be a gentleman, did you know that? Because we're all alone here, there's no one else on this whole damned island, and I'm sick and tired of playing the slave to your lady of the manor. I'm sick and tired of you looking at me like you could eat me up, and putting your soft little hands all over me under one pretext or another, then jumping away as if I have leprosy if I look back, or dare to lay so much as a finger on you. That's a dangerous game you're playing at, Lilah my dear, and if I weren't a gentleman I'd damned well take you up on it. I may anyway if you keep it up, so I suggest you keep your viperish tongue between your teeth and your haughty little nose out of the air and your eyes and hands where they belong. If I find them on me again, I'm going to give you what they're asking for!"

  He spoke in a dangerously soft voice that was as smooth as silk. Lilah had never heard quite that tone from him before, and at first she stood frozen as he bit the words out at her. But by the end of this speech her initial surge of nervousness was swamped by a combination of humiliation and sheer rage.

  "Why, you conceited beast…!" she gasped. "How dare you imply that I… that I… when we get back to Heart's Ease I'll have you whipped for saying such things to me!"

  "Oh, will you now?" he growled, and then he was jerking her all the way against him and his mouth was crushing down on hers. The force of his kiss thrust her head back against his shoulder; the fury of it parted her lips as he staked a harsh claim to her mouth. Shocked and furious, she struggled wildly in his grasp, but he was too strong for her and controlled her struggles with ridiculous ease. She was panting, her breath filling his mouth, while he was as little disturbed by her frantic fists and feet as if she'd been a small child in a tantrum. He wrapped his arms around her, surrounding her with hair-roughened, sweat-dampened bare flesh and the scent of man. One long-fingered hand went up to thread through the thick tangle of her hair, cupping the back of her skull, pulling her head back to allow him easier access to her mouth. Then, shockingly, his tongue was thrusting its way in between her teeth and filling her mouth…

  Never in her life had she been kissed in such a way! It couldn't be right, it couldn't be proper, it couldn't be the way decent men kissed ladies they cared for, or respected… A thrill of pleasure shot through her loins as his tongue touched hers, and then Lilah panicked completely.

  She bit him. Right on his encroaching tongue. Bit him so hard that he yelped and jumped back, his hand flying to his mouth.

  "You-little-bitch!" he ground out, withdrawing his hand from his mouth and looking down at his fingers to find traces of blood on them. His eyes came up to lock with hers. The look on his face was furious enough to give brave men pause, but Lilah was too angry to be afraid.

  "Don't you ever dare touch me like that again!" she hissed, and while he still stared at her with that evil look in his eye she whirled, snatched up her petticoat from where it had been serving as a seat on the sand, and marched off into the night.

  XX

  Lilah spent that night and the next huddled under a palm tree away from the promontory. How Joss spent his nights she neither knew nor cared. Savagely she hoped that some giant land crab would crawl up to him while he slept and drag him away. Realistically she knew that that was too much to hope for. He was too blasted big for any such happy occurrence. But oh, with how much relish did she await rescue! He would be singing a different tune when he was her slave again! Though she wouldn't really have him whipped-no slaves had been whipped at Heart's Ease for as long as she could remember. But she would certainly exert her power over him to the fullest! How he would grovel at her feet when she was restored to her proper place!

  The third morning on the island dawned bright and hot and clear. Lilah ate another coconut, drank from the pool that was really more like a puddle now, and washed her face with the dampened end of her petticoat, all the while keeping a wary eye out for Joss. He didn't seem to be anywhere on the beach, and she was wondering if perhaps she had gotten her wish and he had been dragged off by a land crab when she spied him standing up to his thighs in the bay, a sharpened stick in his hand. As she watched him in puzzlement, he thrust the stick into the water with a lightning-fast movement. When he pulled it out she saw that he had impaled a squirming fish. Grinning with triumph, Joss headed for shore with his prize.

  Lilah climbed down her side of the promontory before she could be seen. God forbid that he should accuse her of eating him with her eyes again! Just remembering his coarse insults and the disgusting way he had kissed her was enough to make her burn with anger, and her anger was enough to steel her against the delicious odor of roasting fish that soon wafted her way. Curiosity, not hunger, she told herself, was what drew her to the top of the promontor
y, where she dropped to her belly and looked down at him with as much stealth as if she were an enemy scout. He had somehow managed to get a small fire going, and was roasting the cleaned fish on two flat rocks set in the middle of the flames. The thought of a hot meal made her mouth water, but she vowed that she would starve to death before she asked him for so much as a morsel. There were plenty of coconuts on the island. She could make her own way!

  The rest of that day they passed as they had the previous one, on their separate sections of beach with the promontory between them as a sort of neutral territory. By late afternoon the freshwater pool was nearly dry, and Lilah knew that on the morrow she would no longer be able to put off going into the interior of the island to search for more. She didn't much like the idea-the thought of invading that thick undergrowth, especially with bare feet, was not inviting-but it would have to be done. The one comfort was that Joss was almost out of water, too. Maybe he'd be the one to step on the poisonous snake instead of herself.

  Joss had managed to construct a serviceable-looking hut for himself out of palm fronds and vines, she saw. Looking from her own crude shelter-more chunks of driftwood leaned up against the trunk of a coconut palm-to his sturdy structure set beneath an overhanging jacaranda, Lilah felt her annoyance rise to a new pitch. She had spent the last two nights shivering with cold, even with her petticoat wrapped securely around her shoulders and her knees drawn up to her chest. Amazing that days so blazingly hot that she had been compelled to shed her stays as well as her petticoat, leaving her in the wildly immodest costume of thin dress and even thinner chemise, could turn to nights so cold. The brisk wind that blew nightly off the ocean swept clear through her ramshackle quarters. She had the feeling that he was as snug as could be…

  She would not torture herself with such thoughts. Instead she would treat herself to the one luxury of her day: a bath. Heading down off the promontory, she set the water-filled shell inside her shelter and gathered up the rest of her makeshift dishes. Then she headed toward the bay.

  "Lilah!"

  The sound of Joss's voice yelling her name when they had not spoken for two days brought her head up in disbelief. There was a note of urgency in his shout. She stood up from where she had been rinsing her coconut dishes in the sea-she had already washed her hair, body and clothes by the simple expedient of wading in fully dressed and scrubbing herself from head to toe with sand-and looked in the direction of his end of the beach. Of course she had chosen to bathe where the promontory blocked his view of what she was doing, so in consequence she could not see him either.

  "Lilah! Damn it, where are you, girl?"

  There was no mistaking the urgency this time. Suddenly he appeared at the top of the promontory, looking wildly around for her. Obviously he was whole of limb, and so she turned her back on him, and continued to clean her dishes in the surf.

  Moments later she heard him splashing through the surf behind her. Before she could so much as turn to glare at him he snatched from her head the petticoat shed bundled around her hair to keep the wet strands off her neck.

  "You give that back!" Lilah raged, but Joss was already heading back through the surf with her petticoat in hand. "You come back here with that this minute, you bounder!"

  Stamping her foot, she started after him, fury surging through her veins. To steal her petticoat was the outside of enough-if he had need of an extra piece of cloth that was just too bad! Perhaps he was tired of having his chest and back constantly exposed to the sun and meant to fashion a crude shirt for himself. But her petticoat was hers, and she would fight to the last gasp before she gave it up! With her fair skin and blonde hair, she needed protection from the sun more than he did, anyway. What did he think he was about…?

  She had not quite reached the shore when he raced to the highest point of the promontory and started waving her petticoat madly over his head. For a moment Lilah stared, wondering if the sun had turned his brain, but then she understood at last.

  "A ship!" she screeched, and picking up her skirt raced up the side of the promontory in his wake.

  "We're here, we're here!"

  She skidded to a halt beside him, jumping up and down and waving her arms in the air and screaming madly just as he was. Though it was a sure bet that the ship whose sails just graced the horizon could not hear so much as a syllable.

  "We're here!"

  Joss waved her petticoat overhead like a flag. The ship passed majestically down the horizon, silhouetted against the pink and crimson and orange of the dying sun. Impossible to tell if they had been seen or not, but the ship did not seem to be heading their way.

  "If only I could get up higher…!" Joss looked around distractedly, but he stood on the highest point along the beach. Lilah tugged at his arm. The prospect of rescue had erased all her animosity toward him for at least the moment.

  "Lift me up on your shoulders!"

  He blinked at her for an instant, then nodded. Lilah had expected that he would kneel down and let her climb onto his shoulders that way. Instead he caught her by the waist, and lifted her up. Her skirt was an obstacle. Without more than the briefest consideration of modesty she hitched it up around her thighs so that he could lift her over his head. Once seated on his shoulders, her bare legs and feet dangling down the front of his chest, she grabbed the petticoat from his hand and waved it frantically. The ship was farther in the distance now, but there was still the off chance that someone might look their way. A sailor in the crow's nest, perhaps…

  "They're leaving! They don't see us!"

  "No, stop! Come back! We're here!"

  Holding on to the top of Joss's head for balance, Lilah managed to get one foot on his shoulder and stand up. He grabbed her ankles, holding her as best he could. If she was to wave her petticoat, she had perforce to let her skirts drop. She did, and they fell down over his head, obscuring it from her view and blinding him. Teetering wildly, she waved the petticoat from that precarious vantage point while he held on to her ankles with a grip like death and tried his best to keep them both upright.

  "Come back! We're here!"

  Still the ship receded. Lilah raised herself on her tiptoes…

  "Christ!"

  Joss had taken a step backwards to compensate for her antics on his shoulders. Lilah teetered, and then he was slipping out from under her like an eel…

  "Help!"

  Lilah shrieked as she tumbled toward the ground, landing with an oomph bottom first, right in the middle of his abdomen.

  "Arrgh!"

  Joss, who fortunately for Lilah had hit the ground first, groaned loudly as she crashed down on top of him. Thankful to have been spared an injury, Lilah shifted around so that she could see his face.

  "What happened?"

  "I tripped over a damned rock-what were you doing up there anyway?"

  He glared at her from his position fiat on his back in the sandy scrub grass. She glared back at him from her seat in die middle of his stomach. Then, suddenly, his lips twitched and he grinned. Then chuckled. Then laughed out loud. Lilah, at first affronted, finally had to join in.

  "Oh, my," she said finally, shifting off her perch to kneel beside him. "Did I hurt you?"

  He looked at her, his eyes twinkling. "I doubt if I'll ever eat again. My stomach must be permanently bruised."

  "I don't weigh that much!"

  "You weigh enough, believe me! If I can stand up I'll be surprised."

  He grinned at her, and she could not help doing the same. Then he sat up gingerly, one hand pressed to his stomach.

  "That's the last time I'll ever put you up on my shoulders."

  "That's the last time I'll ever stand on your shoulders! I could have been hurt!"

  "I was hurt!"

  "Baby!"

  That epithet brought another grin from him. Then he looked toward the horizon and sobered.

  "I don't think they saw us."

  Lilah looked toward the horizon as well. "No."

  "If one ship sailed
past this island, another will. We'll be rescued before long." He sounded more hopeful than convinced.

  "Yes."

  They both stared at the now empty horizon for a long moment. Then Lilah looked at Joss. His whiskers had developed into what was very nearly a full beard, and his cut had healed over so that it was no longer so raw and red-looking. His skin was more bronzed than red. He was leaner, she thought, and if possible even more firmly muscled. The only parts of him that she would recognize without a second glance were the brilliant emerald eyes.

  "I didn't mean what I said about having you whipped," she said abruptly, her voice low. "When we are rescued, you don't have to worry. Nobody's whipped a slave on Heart's Ease for years."

  His eyes sliced to hers. "I'm not worried. Because I don't have the least intention of being a slave on Heart's Ease, ever. When we're rescued, I'm going back to England."

  She blinked at him for a moment, dumbfounded. "But you can't!"

  "Why can't I? I don't imagine we'll be rescued by anyone who knows us, do you? Unless you tell whoever rescues us about what happened in Virginia, they won't have any reason to suppose that I'm anything but a free man. Which is just what I intend to be."

  "But-but…"

  "Unless you mean to claim me as your property the minute someone finds us," he added, a considering glint in his eyes as they fixed on her.

  Lilah stared at him. He was right. When they were rescued, unless it was by someone who knew his history, there would be no reason for anyone to imagine that he was a slave. When he was dressed and shaved he looked every inch the English gentleman-he had been raised as an English gentleman. She had it in her power to set him free…

  "Don't get me wrong, I'll see you in safe hands, but I'm not going to carry this farce any further. When I'm home in England again, I'll send you your hundred dollars."

  "I don't care about the money…" she began, still at a loss.