Desire in the Sun (22 page)

There, in a crater carved out of the black rock, bubbled a small lake. The water frothed and foamed, obviously fed by a powerful underground spring. From the steamy miasma that hung about it, and the abundance of lush green flora that grew around it, it was clear that the water in the lake was as hot as that in the stream.

“What the devil …?” Joss asked, staring.

Lilah looked over her shoulder at him, smiling at his evident astonishment. “On Barbados we call it a firewater pool. This island must be the tip of a volcano, and the spring is heated by the molten rock deep underground. Most of these islands have them, I would imagine. The water’s perfectly good, you know. We can drink it. It’s just hot.”

She pushed the curtain of vines aside, and stepped
out onto the moss-covered rock surrounding the pool. Joss followed her, looking doubtfully at the water.

“If you want to swim, this is the place,” she told him. “A firewater pool is like a giant natural bath. Betsy and I used to play around in one near Heart’s Ease all the time when we were children. We were strictly forbidden to, of course, but we did all the same.”

“One more barbaric custom?” he said with a crooked grin.

Lilah laughed. “If you must put it that way, yes. Would you mind turning your back?”

“What? Why?”

“Because I’m going to have a bath, that’s why. This will be the first hot bath I’ve had in a month, and I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“You’re joking.” He regarded her, narrow-eyed.

Lilah lifted her eyebrows at him. “No, I’m not. Why should I be?”

“You actually mean to take off your clothes so that you can take a bath in this—cauldron? Here and now?”

“Yes, I do. Now would you please turn around?”

XXV

“A
ll right, you can look now!”

Lilah called to Joss from the center of the pool. It was not very deep, in its deepest spot not over her head, she estimated. At the moment she was covered to her shoulders. The frothing water was impossible to see through, though she had left her chemise on for modesty’s sake. Her hair floated on the water around her, and her arms floated at her sides to help her keep her balance against the undertow.

“Are you decent?” he asked, turning cautiously. His eyes found her, and she thought he looked relieved to see just how decent she was.

“Come on in. It feels wonderful!”

Joss looked at her for a long moment, crossed his arms over his chest and shook his head.

“Not right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t feel like a bath,” he said with an edge to his voice, and sat down on a rock by the side of the pool as if he were prepared to stay there all day.

“Be grumpy, then, see if I care.” Lilah then devoted her attention to getting herself thoroughly clean for the first time in weeks. She scrubbed her face and body with sand, then worked sand through her hair. Finally she rinsed by the simple expedient of holding her breath and
going beneath the surface, then swimming underwater to the far side of the pool. When she surfaced it was to find Joss on his feet at the edge of the pool with his eyes alertly scanning the surface. She skimmed the soaking hair off her face to discover his eyes fixed on her with an ominous glitter.

“You scared the hell out of me!” His furious tone was matched by the fists clenched at his sides.

“I’m sorry. I was rinsing my hair.” She smiled at him, and that seemed to make him angrier. He continued to stand by the edge of the pool, glaring at her.

“All right, you’ve had your bath. Now come out and let’s get going.”

“But I just got in! I’m not ready to get out yet.”

“Suit yourself, but if you stay you’ll be here alone. I’m leaving.”

“Joss!”

“I mean it. Now are you coming out, or are you staying here alone?”

“That’s blackmail,” she said, and pouted prettily, one eye on him to see how he reacted. He looked even grimmer than before. In fact, his grimness was so out of proportion to the situation that she began to find it amusing, sure she knew what was annoying him so mightily.

“Oh, all right.” As he showed no sign of softening she capitulated with an aggrieved sigh, and started to walk toward where he waited at the pool’s edge. She hadn’t taken two steps when a small drop-off caught her unawares. Her foot slipped, and then she plunged like a stone beneath the surface of the water.

“Lilah!”

Hearing him shout her name as she went under gave her the idea. Chuckling inwardly, Lilah swam down to the bottom of the pool and held herself there, gently releasing bubbles of air that floated to the surface. As she had expected, far less than a minute passed before she heard an enormous splash. She surfaced, still grinning,
to find him swimming with fast economy of motion toward the spot where she had disappeared.

“Joss!”

At the sound of her voice he stopped swimming and looked around. Lilah grinned at him as his eyes found her. Though she could not see through the water, she guessed from his posture that his fists were planted on his hips. His head was cocked just slightly to one side, and his eyes were glittering ominously as they fixed on her.

“You were faking, weren’t you?” The question was calm, especially compared to the look on his face. Her grin widened, but she prudently shook her head.

“Liar!”

He started toward where she waited for him. Lilah waited until he was almost upon her, then dived beneath the surface and came up on his other side, splashing him playfully.

“So you got me in here with a trick and now you want to play, huh? All right, then, I’m willing! Anything to oblige a lady!”

He grabbed at her. Laughing, Lilah half swam and half ran away from him. When he caught her and pulled her around to face him, she was still laughing even as she shook the hair back from her face.

“You’d better take a deep breath, my girl, because you’re going un—” he started to say, when she reached out to tickle his ribs. Caught by surprise, he clamped his elbows to his sides and lost his grip on her. Lilah swam around behind him, trailing teasing fingers over his broad back as she did so.

“Come back here, you!” Joss whirled, grabbing for her again. A grin was beginning to lurk around his mouth, banishing the scowl with which he had started after her. Lilah dived beneath the surface, running a tickling finger down the length of his arm. This time he
caught her, his hand clamping over hers, and pulled her to the surface.

“Got you!” he said, exulting openly as he pulled her up beside him. She tried to tickle him again, but this time he was ready for her, dodging and catching her hand. He pulled both hands against his chest, grinning down at her in triumph. Lilah laughed back at him, content to be caught.

“Aren’t you glad I made you get in?”

“You
were
faking!”

She nodded, her eyes twinkling. His black hair was now as wet as her own and slicked back along his skull to curl around his neck. A full beard had grown to cover his lean jaw. The water hit him two-thirds of the way up his chest, so that his shoulders and the tops of his muscular arms showed above the frothing surface. He held her hands nestled half in and half out of the water, her fingers pressed against the silky wet pelt that covered his chest.

“You’re playing with fire, my girl.” He still held on to her hands even as he shook his head at her.

“Oh?” Lilah moved a little closer, smiling bewitchingly. His jaw clenched, and he let go of her hands. Her eyes never leaving his, she slid her palms up his chest to rest on the warm wet skin of his shoulders. Touching him like that was intoxicating. Unable and unwilling to stop, she ran her fingers lightly over the tops of his shoulders.

Joss caught her hands again, pulled them down. His eyes were a deep, fathomless green as they bored into hers.

“Do you have any idea what you’re inviting?” His voice was hoarse.

Lilah looked up at him, the smile leaving her lips. Wordlessly she nodded.

His eyes widened, then narrowed. “No, you don’t. You don’t even know how to kiss properly. You bit me.”

She had to smile at that despite the sudden wild drumming of her heart. “You can teach me, can’t you? And I bit you because—because you were scaring me, and because I thought that—people don’t really kiss like that most of the time, do they?” She ended on a note of interested inquiry.

“I’m afraid so.” Her naive question wrung a slight, wry smile from him. “If they’re lovers, that is.”

Her eyelids flickered down, then up again. “Lovers. I always expected to have a husband, but never a … lover.”

“Well-brought-up young ladies usually don’t think along those lines.”

“But … once we’re off this island you’ll go back to England and I’ll go home to Barbados and we’ll never see one another again.” Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.

“That’s occurred to me.”

“I’ll miss you, Joss.” She was not looking at him now, but rather had her eyes fixed intently on his Adam’s apple.

“I’ll miss you, too.” The words sounded as though his throat was constricted. Lilah looked up at him then, only to be helplessly caught in the emerald depths of his eyes.

“Couldn’t we just … be lovers, then—just while we’re on the island? Just for a little while?”

For a moment it seemed as if he’d stopped breathing. Then his hands clenched on her waist, and he closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his jaw was taut.

“You don’t realize what you’re asking,” he said at last. “Sweetheart, from my point of view there’s nothing I’d like better than to be your lover. But you—there can be consequences for a woman.”

She frowned. “What kind of consequences?”

“Babies,” he said tersely, and took a deep breath.

“Oh.” Lilah thought about that. She’d known, of
course, that babies resulted when people married and shared a bed. Somehow she hadn’t applied that knowledge to what she felt for Joss.

“But there are—things we can do. Things that won’t make a baby.” The words sounded as if they were being forced out of him against his will.

“Does kissing cause a baby? The—the kind you did with me the other night? When I bit you?”

Again his lips curved in a reluctant half-smile. “No.”

“Then you can kiss me like that, and teach me everything else that doesn’t cause a baby.”

“Christ.” He shut his eyes again, swallowed, then opened them to regard her intently. “Lilah, are you sure?”

She nodded. His tongue came out to wet his lips.

“All right.” It was scarcely more than a hoarse whisper. Slowly, as if giving her time to change her mind, he dipped his head toward hers, his mouth just grazing her lips.

“Put your arms around my neck,” he muttered, and she did. Her heart was pounding and her knees were weak. As her arms slid around his neck she took a step closer to him—and looked down in shock.

A large, protuberant something was poking at her belly. The murky water kept her from seeing what it was, but she already knew. It was that mysterious part of him that she had caught just a glimpse of as he had walked out of the sea the night before.

“I left my breeches on the bank,” he said, correctly interpreting her look. Knowing that he was naked made Lilah’s throat go dry. Her hand slid from behind his neck down over his chest to dip beneath the water and find that intriguing part of him. She touched it, found it hot and hard and swollen as her fingers stroked lightly along it.

“Whoa!”

His hand caught hers, pulled it away from him, held
it. Looking up at him, she saw that there was a wild glitter in his eyes.

“Shouldn’t I—touch you there?” Her voice was husky.

He nodded once, curtly. Then he bent his head and kissed her slowly and gently, his tongue just barely meeting the line separating her lips. She pressed against him, quivering.

Joss lifted his head abruptly, taking a deep breath, while she leaned against him, looking up at him with huge, languid eyes.

“I think you had the right idea after all,” he muttered, and brought her hand back to him again.

XXVI

H
e guided her fingers as they closed over him, then showed her how to please him. Lilah moved her hand, at first slowly and then faster. His eyes closed, and he gritted his teeth almost as if he were in pain. Lilah felt a strange tightening at the place where her thighs joined, felt her breasts swell against the wet fabric that covered them. Then all at once he groaned, and groaned again, and the thing she was holding quivered and jerked in her hand. She dropped it, shocked, but whatever she had done to him it was too late to undo. Joss shuddered all over. When his eyes opened again she was regarding him in wary surprise.