Desire in the Sun (28 page)

“Lilah.” The single word, uttered in a soft, compelling
voice, brought her eyes up to meet his. Her blush deepened, heated. Her lashes fluttered down to cover her eyes on the ridiculous hope that if she couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see her.

“Stop being so idiotic, will you please?” At these distinctly unloverlike words, Lilah stiffened and her eyes flew open. Her cheeks were still flushed the same hectic wild rose, but as she met his steady gaze some of her embarrassment faded. When he reached for her wrists she allowed him to pull her hands away and then, when he let go, kept them at her sides. Chin high, she stood before him without flinching, bare to the waist. He smiled faintly at her, then looked at her breasts and frowned in concentration. Only the deepening color of his eyes told her that her nakedness affected him in any way.

“If you’ll hold your arms out to your sides, we’ll see what can be done.”

Lilah did as he instructed. Joss then took the torn strips of petticoat and wrapped them around her chest, trussing her up like a mummy and flattening her generous curves.

“It’s too tight! It hurts!” she protested as he jerked the two remaining ends into a hard knot at the back. “Ouch! Can’t you make it a little looser? Please?”

“Let’s see how it looks,” he said, ignoring her plea as he picked the shirt up from the ground and handed it to her.

Shifting uncomfortably as she tried to ease the pressure of the bandage around her breasts—to no avail—Lilah pulled on the shirt and buttoned it with many an uncomplimentary mutter. Joss stood a few feet away, regarding her critically.

“Well?”

After a long moment he nodded grudgingly. “Not good, but … better. Now twist your hair up on top of your head.”

Lilah held her hair up while he ripped a large triangle from the seat of the breeches and wrapped it around her head bandanna-style. He tied the coarse black material so low over her forehead that it nearly obscured her vision, then tucked it in the back so that it completely hid her hair. When he was done, he stepped back and inspected her. Finally he shook his head with evident disgust.

“Maybe they won’t find us, and we won’t have to worry about how I look,” Lilah offered hopefully, discouraged by this latest evidence of failure in her disguise.

“We can’t take that chance,” he said, his eyes moving over her with disconcerting slowness. Suddenly intent, he caught her arm, holding her still while he bent to scoop up a handful of dirt. While she gasped a protest, wriggling, he rubbed the dirt over her face and into the skin of her neck,

“Joss! Stop it! What do you think you’re doing?”

“A good layer of dirt will help camouflage that female soft skin of yours.”

By the time he was done with her she was so filthy that she felt like a walking dung heap. Her skin was caked with grime, and the shirt and breeches were so dirty that if she’d taken them off they could have stood up by themselves.

Standing a little back from her as she shook mud from her fingertips, Joss eyed her again. This time he didn’t shake his head.

“Better?” Lilah asked.

“Better,” he affirmed. “Walk around for me, would you?”

Scowling, Lilah walked. When she came back to him he was frowning again.

“What now?” she asked with a sigh.

“Could you try not to wiggle your bottom? That seductive sway will give you away in about two steps.”

“I do not wiggle my bottom, and I do not have a seductive sway!” The words were a growl.

“Is that so? Walk, will you please?”

Lilah walked while Joss watched critically. Although she concentrated on keeping her body motionless as she moved, he was still dissatisfied.

“Here, put these on,” he said, picking up red-beard’s boots. Before he handed them to her he dropped a good-sized stone into one. Taking the boots, Lilah frowned at him and automatically started to fish the stone out.

“Leave it,” he ordered sharply. “It’ll make you limp.”

She left it. The boots were huge on her small feet, but the stone seemed to have an uncanny knack for wedging itself under the tenderest part of her sole. This time, when she walked for him, he pronounced himself marginally satisfied.

“You still don’t look like a man, but I guess this is the best we’re going to be able to do. Just pray the pirates don’t find us and we don’t have to worry about it.”

“Don’t worry, I will,” she answered fervently. And she did.

XXXIV

L
ilah and Joss spent the next three days dodging the search parties that scoured the island for the missing pirates. From the intensity of the search, Joss concluded that at least one of the men was extremely valuable to the ship. Which one, or why, he could only speculate.

Lilah was chronically miserable. The brackish-smelling mud that Joss insisted must always be smeared over her exposed skin itched and drew tiny biting flies that left her itching even more. Her breasts ached constantly beneath the strips of cloth that smashed them flat. In the layers of clothes she was forced to wear—Joss had ripped up her dress to form a crude jerkin, which, worn over the outsized shirt, further disguised her sex—she was also hellishly hot. Her misery was compounded by the fact that they had to keep constantly on the move.

Only after nightfall did they dare retreat to the relative comfort of the hut and relax their vigilance. The pirates had proven to be a cautious lot, made nervous by the disappearance of two of their number. As night approached, the search parties headed for their ship, not to be seen again until the sun was well up in the sky the next day. Clearly the men did not care to risk the dangers of tramping about an unknown tropical island by torchlight. From what Joss and Lilah saw and overheard, most of them didn’t appear too keen on it even in the
bright light of day. They searched for their shipmates under strict orders from their captain, but they were unenthusiastic and so avoiding them was not as difficult as it might have been.

During the day Lilah followed Joss’s lead as they played hide-and-seek with the pirates. As long as they kept their wits about them and their eyes and ears open, she did not think they would be captured. At least, she hoped not. But the threat of discovery was ever present. Despite the brave face she kept up for Joss—he was lavish in his admiration of her courage—Lilah was frightened a good deal of the time. She knew that if they were discovered, their chances of surviving were not good. And that was if the pirates were convinced that she was a male. If they saw through her disguise, both she and Joss were doomed. He would fight to the death to defend her, she knew, while she … well, the fate the black-haired woman had suffered would be worse than death. To be at the mercy of the pirates was a horror she could not contemplate without shuddering.

At night, in the privacy of the hut, was the only time Joss would allow her to discard her disguise. In truth, he was not overly enthusiastic about it even then, but after more than fourteen hours of relentless discomfort Lilah was not going to listen to his nay-saying. If she did not get some relief from the itching she would go mad! To add to her woes, the tight binding had caused a heat rash to break out along her back and beneath her breasts. Joss soothed it by applying the creamy juice of a plant Lilah knew from Barbados, and had discovered growing wild on this small island. Each night, as the cream did its work, the rash would disappear, only to return the next day to drive her out of her mind anew. So as the sun blazed relentlessly down on their tropical paradise, Lilah scratched, and despaired.

Bliss was discarding the filthy clothes she wore by day and washing with the water Joss fetched for her in coconut
shells. With her skin clean, she would pull the concealing kerchief from her hair, wash the encrusted strands as best she could with the small amount of water available, and comb it dry. Then she would climb into her own chemise—the only whole female garment she still possessed—and suddenly she was herself again. Unbound, her chest would ache, but she was so happy to be back in her own skin again that she barely noticed the throbbing discomfort.

Joss, who could not seem to fully comprehend the misery she found in being filthy and evil-smelling, observed these time-consuming ablutions with interest and a quizzical half-smile. He would watch her, his green eyes alight with humor and something that might have been appreciation. He would grin at her, and she would go into his arms, curling beside him, resting her head on his shoulder, her hand on his chest.

In the magical dark hours betwixt dusk and dawn, they learned all there was to know about each other. Joss taught her about her body and his own, and she learned how to please him and how to be pleasured. Afterwards, she would lie in his arms and they would talk, lovers’ nonsense mostly, but also about their childhoods and families, their deepest secrets, their fears. The one thing they didn’t talk about was the future. It was too uncertain, too painful to look ahead. The truth was that if they were ever able to resume their normal lives they didn’t have a future. Not together. With the part of her that was practical Lilah knew that. But her heart—her heart grew more enchanted with every hour that she passed in his company.

During those nights in Joss’s arms, Lilah fell ever more deeply in love. He was tender and gentle with her even in the throes of a passion that drove him to wake her again and again from the exhausted sleep to which his lovemaking reduced her. He could make her laugh even while she trembled with need, and once or twice—
only once or twice!—she caught herself thinking how wonderful things would be if they could only get off this island, if she could only take Joss by the hand to her father and announce that this was the man with whom she had chosen to spend her life.

The fantasy was impossible, of course, on every count. Number one, it was seeming ever more likely that they would never get off the island, alive or otherwise. Number two, even if they did, her father would never in a million years accept Joss. His ancestry forever precluded that. Lilah knew that, and tried to put the fantasy from her mind. It hurt too much when compared with cold, cruel reality.

But when she lay in Joss’s arms, her head on his shoulder, his fingers lightly stroking the bare skin of her arm as they talked about everything and nothing, the only reality was the two of them together. She loved him, and she thought he loved her though he never said the words, and she didn’t push for them. She was afraid that if she did, those words would precipitate the discussion of their future that she dreaded. She had come to realize that Joss for all his strength was a hopeless romantic. He couldn’t seem to comprehend just how huge was the obstacle between them.

Since there was no happy solution, Lilah resolved to put the whole horrible mess out of her mind for as long as she could. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” as Katy Allen would have told her, and Lilah decided to live by that. Until something happened that made it impossible, she was going to love Joss with all her heart.

Lilah’s modesty with Joss faded too, gradually but inexorably. By the morning of the fourth day she was largely unself-conscious in her nakedness with him. Before dawn broke each day she had to don her hated disguise. On that fourth morning, while he watched, propped on his elbow with a fugitive half-smile lurking
around the corners of his mouth, Lilah braided her hair and twisted it up, then pulled the chemise over her head, A proprietary gleam came into his eyes, and he caught her hand as she picked up the cloth to bind her chest Sitting up, he stilled her with a hand on her arm, and dropped a light kiss on each soon-to-be-flattened nipple.

“Let me,” he said, taking the cloth from her hand.

“Sadist!”

He chuckled, and kissed her mouth this time before turning his attention to the business at hand. Grimacing, Lilah lifted her arms. Joss wrapped the strips tightly around her chest, transforming her in the space of a few moments from seductively curvaceous female to flat-chested youth. While she donned the rest of her disguise, he pulled on his breeches and went outside. When Lilah emerged from the hut, he was standing at the edge of the clearing, frowning toward the interior of the island.

“What is it?” she asked, coming to his side and staring out at the lush panorama of entwining trees and vines that met her eyes as far as she could see. Thin fingers of sunlight were just beginning to poke through the canopy overhead, but the world before them remained deep green and shadowed, with steam from the forest floor rising like lazy fingers of mist. Besides the few threads of sunlight, only the screeching birds gave evidence of the coming of day.

“Hear the birds? The pirates are up early this morning, and it sounds like they’re headed this way. We need to get moving.”

The birds were far louder than usual, Lilah realized with a shock. Alone, she never would have noticed. The familiar surge of fear tasted like metal in her mouth as Joss closed his hand around hers and pulled her after him through the undergrowth, away from the warning cries of the birds.

The tedious, familiar game of playing hide-and-seek with the pirates was begun anew.