Sea Fire (40 page)

Through the thin material of her petticoat, she could feel the heat of his bare chest burning against her breasts. She heard a sound, a low, aching moan, and realized that it came from her own throat. Blindly she pressed closer to him, feeling his hands begin to move over her body as if he couldn’t get enough of the feel of her. One of his hands slid from her back to cup her breast. . . .

“No!” The protest was torn from her as he thrust her harshly away from him. “Jon . . . !”

He stood for a moment staring at her, his chest heaving as he fought to control his breathing. His fists were clenched into hard balls at his sides.

“For God’s sake, go to bed!” he muttered thickly, sounding as if he could hardly get the words out. “Before I go completely crazy!”

“But I want. . . .” Cathy began, all thoughts of pride banished by the heat of her longing. She might as well have saved her breath. Even as she spoke he had turned on his heel, pivoting and striding away into the night.

“Where are you
going?” she wailed after him, stomping her foot. Her every pore seethed with rage and frustration. He didn’t answer.

Cathy spent the better part of the next hour pacing around what was left of the campfire. Virginia was sound asleep, settled down for the night, and there was nothing to distract her attention from the flames that still licked at her body. He had wanted her too, she thought furiously, and yet he had thrust her away! What ailed him? If he thought that it was too soon after Virginia’s birth, then it was time she disabused him of the notion. She was fully recovered now, and she was a grown woman with a woman’s need of him. His misguided concern for her welfare was doing her more harm than his possession ever could! Blind, stubborn idiot! She would like to wring his neck!

Eventually she crawled into the shelter and tried to sleep. After tossing and turning for what seemed like hours, she gave up, and crawled back into the open air again. This is ridiculous, she thought furiously. And she wondered where Jon was. She was beginning to feel worried about him, and this infuriated her almost more than anything else.

Finally, without ever consciously deciding that she was going to, she found herself climbing the path up the side of the cliff and then walking along the trail that Jon had hacked through the forest. She would walk down to the pool, she told herself, and then come back and go to sleep. And she tried not to think that the pool where he fished was a very likely place for Jon to be.

It was dark going through the forest, a heavy black darkness alive with sounds. Cathy, her bare feet moving rather gingerly over the coolness of the vines covering the ground, refused to allow herself to speculate on what might be causing the various noises. Jon would be livid, she knew, at the idea that she had dared to walk through the jungle by herself. Even during the day, he refused to allow her to venture off the beach without his protection. While as for at night . . . !

Just when Cathy thought
she would have to turn around and go back, she saw the silvery gleam of moonlight on the dark waters of the pool. Breathing a sigh of relief, she approached on noiseless feet, stopping before she was out of the protection of the overhanging foliage. This way she could see, and not be seen.

As she had more than half expected, Jon was there. She was immediately aware of that. He was in the pool, his dark head cleaving the surface like a seal’s. As she watched him, he executed a shallow dive, and disappeared beneath the water. The moon touched the long length of his body as he twisted in the dive. Cathy’s breath caught in her throat, and her heart speeded up, as she realized that he was swimming naked.

fifteen

C
athy stepped out into the moonlight. Jon, surfacing, saw her standing there, and the passion he had been battling all evening flared anew. The moon turned her hair to shimmering silver-gilt fire. Bathed in its light, her skin seemed incandescent. Her eyes looked huge and mysterious in her small face, deceptively quiet sapphire pools that a man could drown in.

He opened his mouth to call to her, but as he saw what she was about the words died in his throat. Her hands caught up the hem of her petticoat, lifting it over her head with a single graceful movement and letting it drop to one side. For a moment she stood there, her lovely pale body glowing against the whispering dark background of the jungle surrounding the pool. Then she stepped into the water.

Jon, watching her wade toward him, her breasts and hips and thighs gleaming above the rippling night-dark water, felt his heart begin to thud in his chest. His mouth went dry with the force of his longing. God, she was beautiful, and he wanted her . . . !

Cathy felt the cool water rise to cover her hips, her waist, and finally, when she
was nearly to Jon, her breasts. What she was doing was shameless, she knew, but she didn’t care. If she had to seduce him, then so be it. After all, how many times in the past had he seduced her?

His eyes were fixed on her, and even from where she was, still a yard or so away, Cathy could hear the stentorian rasp of his breathing. She smiled, her hands reaching toward him through the water. His eyes glinted silver as they stared at her. For a moment she thought he would resist, but then he was reaching for her, his hands closing around her wrists, pulling her hard against the jutting contours of his body.

“This is stupid,” he growled against her throat, his hands already running over her slender curved back as if he couldn’t hold her closely enough. Cathy laughed, the sound husky, seductive. As his mouth lifted from its ravagement of her neck, she tilted her head back so that she could see into his face.

“I love being stupid,” she whispered, and saw his eyes darken almost to black before he bent his head and his lips took her mouth.

Cathy’s mouth opened to him endlessly, hot with desire, returning his kisses with a feverishness that fanned the flames of his passion to a white heat. She was on tiptoe, feeling weightless in the buoyant water, her hands locked behind his strong neck. The iron wall of his chest was crushing her breasts; she could feel the roughness of his body hair scraping her soft skin, and she moved sensuously against the rasping pelt, loving the feel of it. Jon was shaking. She could feel the long tremors that racked him. His steel-muscled arms and legs quivered with the force of his wanting. Cathy pulled her mouth free of his to press soft, adoring kisses along the strong lines of his neck and shoulder. Beneath her ear she could hear his heart beating like a kettle-drum.

“Oh, God, I want you,” he groaned, his voice unsteady. Cathy brushed another line of nibbling kisses down his chest, her tongue licking over
the curling hairs that tickled her nose and chin.

“Then take me,” she breathed, her fingers sliding down to follow the trail blazed by her mouth. When they reached the surface of the water, her hands did not stop. Instead, they moved deeper, touching him, arousing him to the point where he was in actual physical pain. When she reached up finally to kiss his mouth, he was groaning.

“Take me,” she whispered again, and his eyes opened to blaze down into hers.

“I have to,” he muttered as if it were a death sentence. Then his arms were sliding beneath her knees and around her shoulders and he was lifting her, wading with her to the edge of the pool. Cathy’s own arms were locked tightly around his neck. He was kissing her devouringly, and she felt as if she were drowning.

Gently he lowered her to the vine-covered bank, following her down. Cathy felt the cool, slippery surface of the leaves beneath her back, saw the overhanging foliage enclosing them like a shadowy green cave. Then his big body was moving over hers, blotting out everything except himself, and the way she wanted him.

His hands were on her breasts, his fingers unsteady as they caressed her quivering nipples. Cathy arched her back as he replaced his fingers with his mouth. The hot, devouring warmth of his kisses on her breasts made her wild with desire. She was writhing snake-like under his expert hands, her eyes shut tightly, a low sobbing moan coming from deep in her throat. Her hands clutched at his broad, sweat-filmed back, trying to pull him down.

“If I hurt you, tell me. I’ll try to stop,” he growled in her ear. Cathy, gasping, her nails digging punishingly into his back, barely heard. Her whole being was focused on the hairy thigh she felt parting her legs, then the hot, throbbing staff that was probing her softness.

When he possessed her
at last, Cathy cried out with the sheer ecstasy of it. Immediately Jon froze, still deeply imbedded in her flesh.

“What is it? Did I hurt you?” he demanded hoarsely, lifting himself up on his elbows and staring down into her white, passion-contorted face.

“No. Oh, no! Oh, God, don’t stop. Please don’t stop!” She clutched at him frantically, her eyes opening to stare blindly into his.

“Please. . . .” she begged, beyond knowing that she was doing so. His eyes darkened, and then he was bending to her, his mouth taking hers in a way that set her to shaking helplessly. He was moving, gently at first as if trying not to hurt her, but as she sobbed, and writhed, and moaned, gentleness flew out the window along with all of his good intentions. She was exciting him wildly, beyond anything he had ever imagined, and he was losing control. . . .

“I love you,” he groaned in the last earth-shattering moment, the words torn from him before he could stop them. “Love you, love you!”

“Darling,” Cathy breathed, and then she was spiralling away, claimed by her own shuddering rapture.

Jon lay across her for long moments afterward, his breathing slowly resuming a more normal rhythm. Inwardly he was cursing himself with a steady, scathing stream of profanities. His final, mindless confession haunted him like an avenging ghost. Damn it, he’d known it would happen, and should have guarded more closely against it! Now she knew beyond a doubt how he felt about her; he had condemned himself out of his own mouth. She could laugh at him, mock him, torment him at will, and it was only what he deserved for being so damned loose-tongued!

“Darling, I adore you, but could you shift yourself? You’re crushing me,” she murmured from beneath him. Jon, recalled to the present, obligingly rolled onto his side. He lay flat on his back, unspeaking, staring
up at the intertwining branches above them, his hands crossed behind his neck. He felt immensely tired, sated—and wary.

Cathy propped herself up on one elbow to look down into his dark countenance. His eyes flickered once over her small face, then returned to their contemplation of what he could see of the sky. A small, satisfied smile curved her lips; he thought savagely that she looked like a smug little cat about to finish off a particularly plump mouse.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked gruffly, partly from concern and partly to stave off the discussion he was sure was coming.

Cathy shook her head, her eyes dreamy, that infuriating little smile still hovering on her mouth.

“Ummm, no,” she purred. Her free hand came out to gently stroke his bare chest, idly twisting the sweat-drenched black curls. “So you love me, do you?”

Jon stiffened as if from a blow. His eyes returned guardedly to her face. It was shadowed, hiding much of her expression from him, but as he watched he could see an unmistakable dimple quiver in her cheek. Grimly he sought for some glib answer that would save him, and could think of nothing.

“Yes,” he answered, the word sounding almost angry. Above him he could see Cathy’s smile widen. His stomach muscles tensed, and he gritted his teeth. So she found his humbling amusing, did she? Very funny, in fact! Ha, ha!

“It’s about time you admitted it, you fool,” she whispered, bending close, and before he could make sense of that remark she was kissing him, her little mouth sweet as honey. Jon kissed her back because he couldn’t help himself. To his chagrin, he felt his muscles tighten hungrily once more. All right, he told himself, all right! Now that you’ve made an utter ass out of yourself, you may as well make the most of it!

This time his taking of her was merciless, almost brutal. He was angry, at himself as well as her, and it showed in every movement he made. Cathy didn’t mind in the least. His violence touched off
an answering fierceness in her. They coupled like a pair of savage tigers, Cathy clawing and biting and hissing, Jon spearing her time and again with his passion. When at last the explosion came, it was as a flame-streaked frenzy, a gasping, fiery kind of death.

They both fell into an exhausted sleep almost immediately afterward, worn out by their labors. When Jon wakened, it was still dark, the night-sounds loud around them. A chill breeze caressed the right side of his body, and he shivered. His left side, with Cathy curled snugly against it, was toasty warm. Like him, she was naked, her slender body defenseless in sleep. Mentally Jon compared her to a tired child; then, with another look at her tempting curves, revised his description.

“Cathy.” He shook her gently, knowing that they had to get back. They had been away from the shelter too long already, with Virginia left there alone. Cathy stirred, muttered, and as he removed himself from her curled into a tight little ball. Jon, looking down at her, felt a wave of possessive, rueful tenderness. She had led him a merry chase, but he had caught her again at last. And he meant to keep her. Woe betide anyone who tried to wrest her from him a second time, and that included Cathy herself!