Dragon's Eden (10 page)

“It’s not too hot for this one.” He poked at
the pile, and something indeed moved, quickly, humping up the
decomposed vegetable peelings and garden litter.

She swore, a startled sound, and stumbled
trying to get away. Jackson automatically slid an arm around her
waist, catching her, and her hands grabbed onto him, grappling a
hold on his shoulder. Her eyes were wide and locked on the compost
heap, her breath short. Their hearts pounded close together for a
few glorious, eternal seconds before her common sense reasserted
itself, much to his regret. For a second he’d thought his luck had
changed.

“Sorry,” she said, still somewhat
breathless, and disentangled herself from his body. “Don’t know
what got into me.”

He complied with her need for space by
relaxing his grip, but be didn’t completely let her go. He kept her
under the protection of his arm, and when he poked the pile again,
she relaminated herself to his side, her arms slipping around his
waist and her legs, those sweet legs, coming up against his.
Suddenly he had a whole new insight into the Adam and Eve story.
He’d bet anything that Adam had asked God to put a snake in the
garden, hoping to get Eve sidled up against him. It wasn’t anyone’s
fault that Eve had proven to have more chutzpah than she’d been
given credit for having.

He gave the pile another poke.

“Stop doing that!” she cried. “You’re going
to get it all stirred—” She ended on another softly sworn expletive
as the animal responded with a sideways motion of considerable
magnitude, sending a wave rippling through the debris like a
six-point earthquake. The compost shifted twice more, rippled again
for an interminable minute, then was still.

They were quiet for a long time, staring at
the compost as if they were waiting for it to do something, either
twitch or explode.

Jackson was damn impressed, and curious as
hell. If the choice hadn’t been between tracking the animal down or
holding on to Sugar, he’d already be in the brush.

“Did you ever read
Dune
?” she asked, her knuckles white around handfuls
of his shirt.

“Yeah. Twice. The giant sandworms of
Arrakis.”

“Kind of looked like that, didn’t it.”

“Yeah.”

“Did you actually see it?”

“No, but it moved like a snake, a big one.”
He felt a shiver course down her spine and turned to see her face.
“You’re not afraid of snakes, are you?”

“No,” she said, releasing him with a shaky
laugh. “Sorry about that, grabbing onto you, I mean. It just
startled me, that’s all.” She eyed the undergrowth warily. “I’ve
never seen a snake here before.”

“No indigenous species?” He let her go and
missed her the moment she stepped away. He’d liked holding her,
feeling the aliveness of her in his arms. He’d liked making such a
basic human connection.

“No. None,” she said, and tucked a stray,
damp curl behind her ear.

He’d never seen anyone quite like her. She
was both woman and cherub, with her little blunt nose and big gray
eyes, with that mass of pale blond curls framing her face like a
halo, and a mouth made for love, for kissing and being kissed, soft
and slow, hot and deep. She wasn’t curvaceous, but the curves she
had, at her breasts and hips, beckoned to him.

It seemed as if he’d been alone for years
instead of months, away from family, friends, and old lovers who
were still good company. He had a few of those in his life.
Suddenly he missed them all, everybody, but not quite as much as he
missed holding Sugar. The fact was intriguing and disconcerting.
The thought of holding her again was arousing.

Even streaked with dirt, she had an
elemental and erotic appeal. Her T-shirt and shorts were soft
cotton, her skin warm and softer still. He wondered again if Shulan
had given him some sort of truth serum designed to make him spill
his fantasies, then trapped him here with the only woman who could
conceivably make him want to stay.

He wouldn’t stay. He would continue to do
everything in his power to escape—but the idea had some merit. Who
wouldn’t want to live in a tropical Eden awash with sunlight and
sea foam, and spend his nights making love with a strange and
wondrous woman named Sugar Caine?

For if he stayed, that’s what it would come
down to, sooner or later, and probably sooner. The attraction he
felt for her was strong, irresistibly promising. They would become
lovers, and he didn’t know if that would be a disaster or a
blessing.

“There are snakes all over the West Indies,
just none here,” she said, explaining further, obviously oblivious
to the track his mind had taken. “I don’t like to think where one
might have come from.”

He looked out past the vegetable garden, to
where her wild plants grew on the other side of the clear, warm
stream formed by the waterfall, and the reason for the concern in
her voice became clear. Every chance he had depended on winning her
over to his side, and he’d just been handed an opportunity.

“Where do you get your plants, the
endangered species?”

“Mostly the Amazon.”

He nodded and absently poked at the compost.
He wasn’t going to be making love with her. He was going to leave
her and her island as fast as he could figure a way off. “Well,
you’ve pretty much got your pick, then.”

“A young boa,” she offered.

“Or the tail end of an anaconda.”

“Fer-de-lance.”

“If you’re lucky. A bushmaster if you’re
not.”

“Maybe it just looked big.”

He laughed. “Right, and maybe Jen and I
better go on a snake hunt.”

She caught his gaze. “I wouldn’t trust you
and Jen to go on an Easter-egg hunt together, and there’s no
hunting allowed here, not even for renegade snakes.”

He laughed again, reaching out and cupping
her chin, taking care to be gentle. Touching her skin was like
touching satin. Her breath caught, redirecting his attention to her
mouth. He watched, fascinated, as her lips parted.

“The only one on this island you can’t trust
me with is you,” he said, attempting to give the words a humorous
edge, but failing. His voice had grown too husky to be teasing.

He traced the delicate line of her jaw with
his thumb, and her eyes darkened. He was tempted, so damn tempted
to take a taste of her mouth. The only thing that stopped him was
knowing one taste wouldn’t be enough, and that more than one taste
would be suicide. The pleasure she offered was of the addicting
kind —hot, sweat-slickened skin sliding against his, her scent
infusing his senses, and the chance to explore a woman unlike any
he’d ever met.

She was ripe with longing. He felt it every
time she looked at him. It was part of the mystery of her: why she
was alone, how long she’d been alone, how it would feel to ease her
loneliness away. It didn’t take much imagination to see himself
getting lost in loving her, and then losing his opportunity to
escape. It was a chance he couldn’t take.

The sky darkened around them, warning of the
rains to come. Still he hesitated before forcing himself to release
her, letting his hand fall back to his side. The first drops hit,
splashing warm on his head and shoulders.

“This seems to be happening earlier and
lasting longer every day,” he said, watching the light of
anticipation fade from her silvery eyes. She’d wanted to be kissed,
and he hadn’t done it. He didn’t know which one of them was the
bigger fool.

“We’re coming up on the full moon.” Her
lashes lowered and she turned her head away. “The rains on Cocorico
follow a lunar cycle. On the night of the new moon, there’s no rain
at all.”

“More science fiction?” he asked, thinking
the place was wondrously strange.

“More science fact.” Rain splattered her
shirt, molding it to her breasts and making his mouth go dry.

“We might as well give it up for the day.”
She finger-combed her hair, slicking it back off her face. The
curls were already damp and growing wetter with every passing
second.

He was about to agree, when the skies opened
up and dropped a flood. He instinctively reached for her and broke
for the trees, her hand gripped in his. They both slipped on the
suddenly rain-wet grass and had to fight to gain the protective
cover of the forest. Without a word, they headed for the same spot,
under the leaves of a giant philodendron growing in the shadow of a
châtaignier
tree.

It wasn’t until they were in the shelter
that Jackson realized she was swearing. She had a pretty small
repertoire, but then he’d spent a lot of time on docks with men who
made regulation sailors look like Sunday-school children.

“If you ever get tired of saying
dammit
, I could teach you a couple of new words,” he
offered, wiping the water from his face.

“No, thank you . . . dammit.”

“I could teach them to you in French.” In
his experience, women liked French. They responded to it.

“No.”

“I can’t believe you’re sulking over rain.
It rains every day.” He finished wiping his face and began
squeezing the water out of his shirt.

“This is more than rain,” she said
cryptically.

“Monsoon?”

She shook her head.

“The forty-day-and-forty-night thing with
Noah?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?” he asked.

“When it rains like this within a week of
the full moon, the mist gets really heavy around the island,
especially at night and early in the morning.”

He didn’t bother to mention his
science-fiction theory again. “There was mist the morning I came.
It didn’t seem so bad.”

“I’m talking about heavy mist, fog. Mist so
heavy—” She stopped when the deluge ended as suddenly as it had
begun. Raindrops still fell from the sky, but they were separate
from each other, distinct, not part of a downpour. She looked out
from underneath the green shelter, then crawled forward and rose to
her feet. When she was free of the large leaves, she looked back at
him. “Maybe I was wrong this time. Don’t worry about it.”

He hadn’t planned on worrying about the
mist. He could have told her fog was at the bottom of his current
list of problems, but she didn’t wait around long enough for him to
say anything.

* * *

They finished their dinner as the sun was
setting to leeward, cassava with a tomatillo sauce,
zucchini-and-cheese pie, peach palm, and watermelon. Afterward
Sugar made a fresh pot of coffee and carried it out with two cups
to the porch table.

“Would you like to try your coffee with
coconut milk?” she asked, carefully modulating her voice into a
monotone of perfect calmness. He’d almost kissed her, but he
hadn’t, and she’d been crushed. Foolish heart.

“Please,” he said.

The deluge had been the last straw. When
she’d first come to the island, the depth and weight of the rare
fogs had frightened her. They had been so unexpected, so
overwhelming. Gradually, she’d come to accept them, even look
forward to them. Their unpredictability made them seem like
divinely inspired gifts, a small meteorological remembrance from
God to let her know she had not been forgotten.

Jackson would not see it in the same light.
He already felt trapped. She didn’t want to imagine how much worse
it might be for him when the heavy mist settled like a suffocating
blanket of white over his world. She had hoped to spare him the
experience. He had enough reasons to hate Cocorico and her.

Most of the world didn’t know she existed
anymore. Jackson Daniels, though, would never forget the woman
who’d held him captive in the name of his half sister. She had
hoped that sometime, somewhere, he would be able to remember her
with more than resentment, or anger, or fear. She had wanted to
think he would carry one good memory of his time with her back into
the world, but the chances of that were growing slimmer all the
time.

Kisses and remembrance. He made her want too
damn much.

He thanked her as she set his coffee down,
looking up from where he was braiding his hair. The thick strands
he worked with were still damp from the shower he’d taken after
their work in the garden. The moisture gave his hair an iridescent
sheen, making it seem almost blue in its blackness. “Where’s
Jen?”

“He’s been taking his meals at his
campsite.” Which was where, if she was smart, she would be taking
all of her meals. The man couldn’t even do the simplest grooming
chore without fascinating her.

“Is that what he calls it?”

She let out a short laugh, as much at
herself as his question. “I don’t know what he calls anything. He
hasn’t spoken one word to me, not one, but he bows a lot.”

“Yeah. I think he bowed to me just before
the first time he coldcocked me.” A grin teased his mouth as he
caught her gaze.

Much to her disgust, she blushed. She should
tell him not to smile. It was unnecessary overkill. She was already
charmed senseless.

She hated to think she’d throw herself at
any man who happened to land on her shores. True, she hadn’t been
attracted to any of the scientists who had come, but they’d been
there for such short times, a morning or afternoon, a full day at
the most. They usually came in groups of two or three, half of them
were women, and they worked nonstop to gather as much information
out of her gardens as they could in their allotted time.

They had not spent hours silhouetting
themselves against the seas and skies, looking ever outward as if
pure longing could set them free. Jackson Daniels tore at her
emotions and her guilt. She felt a responsibility for him, and that
responsibility made him seem like hers. Every time he touched her,
she felt like she’d been born to be his, a bit of fanciful
romanticism that branded her as more foolish than she would have
thought possible a week ago.

“Is that why you call this place Cocorico?”
he asked, running his finger through the stream of creamy milk she
was pouring into her cup. “Because of the coconuts?”