Jed's Sweet Revenge (7 page)

Thena nodded and tried to be patient. He thought he knew so much. Mainlanders always thought they knew so much.

She inhaled slowly and began. “Tasoneela was a beautiful Indian girl.” Thena pulled her shoulders back. “She was strong and courageous and proud.” She glanced at Jed and found his eyes directly on her. Best to look away from those eyes of his, she thought quickly, and did. “The Spanish held this coast then, and they took anything they wanted from the land and the Indians. One man, a cruel captain named Miguel de Leturiondo, wanted Tasoneela.” Thena arched one brow in feminine disdain. “To be his mistress.”

Jed would have smiled at her melodramatic style, but he was too charmed by it.

“He came to her village to take her, but Tasoneela escaped.” Thena held out both hands to the island. “She traveled to Sancia to hide, all alone. A year passed, and she fell in love with her island. Even alone, she was happy.” Thena lowered her voice. “Then one day she found a badly injured man, nearly dead, lying on the eastern beach. He was a French pirate named Gabel Boisfeuillet, and his ship and crew had been destroyed by Spanish forces.”

She cleared her throat. Despite every intention he had of remaining cynical, Jed felt his pulse hesitate every time she paused for effect.

“Keep goin’,” he ordered.

“Tasoneela was afraid of him, but she couldn’t bring herself to let him die. She cared for him, and when Gabel regained consciousness and looked up into her sweet face, he fell in love. Tasoneela learned quickly that her handsome pirate was a man worth loving in return. Gabel begged her to leave her island and travel the oceans with him, and for love’s sake, she did.”

Thena paused again to take a deep breath of fragrant air. “And?” Jed asked immediately. “What happened?”

Thena repressed a victorious smiled. “Tasoneela loved Gabel, but she missed her island. She was desperately miserable, and Gabel couldn’t bear to let her suffer. He brought her back here and stayed with her. They were going to farm the land.”

Thena stopped talking as she gently shooed a butterfly away from her face. “What happened?” Jed demanded.

“Miguel de Leturiondo learned that Tasoneela and a French pirate were living on Sancia, and he sent a detachment of soldiers to capture them.” Thena pointed to the north. “They trapped Tasoneela and Gabel on the beach near that end of Sancia. Gabel stood in front of her, protecting her with his body, and fired at the soldiers. Several fired back, and a bullet killed Tasoneela.”

She paused again. Jed leaned towards Thena without realizing he was doing it. “Was Gabel killed too?”

Her face somber, she nodded. “He asked the soldiers to kill him. They refused. But they let him carry Tasoneela’s body to a glade she’d loved, and he buried her there. He asked them again to kill him, and this time—touched by his grief, and knowing that torture and hanging waited for him on the mainland—they did. They buried him next to Tasoneela.”

Thena looked quietly at Jed and was pleased to find belief in his expression. Then he began to come back to reality a little, and his dark eyes gauged her with mild suspicion.

“Is that tale true?” he asked, almost smiling.

“It is. I swear.” Thena was sincere. She’d heard the story of Tasoneela and Gabel so many times and from so many people that she had no doubt it was true.

They rode in silence for several minutes, Jed assessing the strange feeling of wonder her story evoked, Thena assessing Jed. The forest floor began to slope downward. Abruptly the horses stepped into a cove surrounded by the dense woodland. Deep, shimmering water beckoned with soft arms of sand. A murmuring creek wound back through the forest from it.

Jed breathed in the cool, sweet air of a heaven on earth. The elves, he was sure, would appear at any minute to greet Thena, their goddess of the woods.

She slipped down from Cendrillon’s back and walked to the water’s edge, her senses acutely aware of every sound as Jed jumped down from JackJaw and followed. She sat in the warm sand and he sat also, very close beside her. Too close. That primitive sexual innuendo again, she thought with a quiver.

“This is it,” she whispered. “This is where Tasoneela and Gabel are buried.”

His heart pounding, Jed twisted his head and
looked at her in surprise. She met his gaze and his pleasant, musky breath touched her face. Her lips parted slightly as she inhaled his life, his nearness.

“Here?” he murmured.

Thena’s nerve endings felt stretched by the magnetic pull of his gaze, and suddenly she knew she’d made a terrible mistake by telling him the lovers’ story. Not only had the story captured him, it had captured her as well. Her pulse raced, and the insides of her thighs, already made sensitive by Cendrillon’s coarse hair, tingled.

“Here,” Thena said breathlessly. “Sometimes … sometimes I hear them laughing … I think they made love here.” She couldn’t stop looking into the seductive depths of his eyes. “I’m going to call you Jedidiah from now on,” Thena whispered.

A look of bewilderment and delight came into his face at the abrupt announcement. “I’m too ordinary to be a Jedidiah. Jed suits my plain nature better. But thank you.”

Thena shook her head very slowly, never taking her eyes from his. “No, Jedidiah. You see yourself through harsh eyes. I don’t.”

“Oh, gal, you’re sweet talkin’ me for this island’s sake.”

“No.” Her eyes shamed him with their rebuke. “I don’t play flattery games. I don’t know how.”

Jed lifted his chin proudly. “I don’t know how either.”

“Then believe me. I see the beauty in you, Jedidiah.”

Jed did the only thing a man in love-at-first-sight could do, given such encouragement in such a romantic setting. Lost in her serious eyes, lost in the flowerlike scent of her body and her gentle insistence that he was beautiful, he leaned forward and settled a kiss on her startled mouth.

The warm, firm feel of his lips pressing tightly to hers was a foreign sensation that stunned her. Thena kept her mouth clamped shut, and she knew—or at least she thought—that she wasn’t kissing him back. But she felt herself succumbing. Perhaps she was Tasoneela, reborn under another identity to fall in love with a reborn Gable Boisfeuillet who came to her in the guise of this weathered horseman.

She came to her senses and started to move away. Jed’s hand rose to her cheek and his callused fingers touched her skin almost reverently. Despite his aura of implacable calm, his fingers trembled. A puzzling sense of pleasure filled Thena as she realized that he was trying to calm her, that he was telling her that he meant her no harm. She wanted to trust this Wyoming pirate. She wanted to keep kissing him.

Rational thought left her as the skillful movement of his mouth sent shivers down her spine. A mixture of surprise and confusion made her heart race wildly. Thena had no idea a man’s kiss could be this overwhelming. None of the prim lip contact that passed for kissing in the old movies she rented had prepared her for the hot, liquid feeling that threatened to burn her from the inside out. She pursed her lips against Jed’s tentatively, and he encouraged her response by moving his mouth over hers in a capricious series of caresses.

Her mind blank, her eyes squinted shut, she ducked her head to escape the intriguing smell and taste of him. For a second her mouth was free, and she gasped for breath. Her voice came out crisp and rebuking. “The aggressive male tendency to dominate is a sign of—”

“Pure friendliness,” he drawled softly. “I’m not tryin’ to dominate you, I’m tryin’ to kiss you.”

Thena’s head jerked up at the teasing sound of his voice. She met his hazel eyes and found them darkened by sexual urgency. This cowboy knew how to look at a woman with disarmingly honest need, she thought dimly. He was just a lusty, basic example of mating capabilities—and she was going to sit very still and let him kiss her again.

Which he did, and this time his tongue slipped forward and nudged the center of her lips provocatively. What did he want? she puzzled. Thena’s hands, clenched in her lap, jumped with alarm as she understood. French kissing. She’d read about it in the sex manuals she’d bought when she was trying to unravel the secrets of Nate’s resistance.

Oh, no, she didn’t know how to kiss like that, and she wasn’t going to make it obvious. Part of her simply didn’t intend for this laconic Lothario to be amused at her clumsiness, and part of her ached with humiliation, knowing that she didn’t have the skill to give him the pleasure he sought.

Thena scooted away from him, her chest heaving with sudden anger. His fingers trailed away from her face and hung in the air for a moment, as if reaching for her. He frowned mildly, looking concerned by her sudden change of heart.

“I didn’t bring you here to … to spoon with you,” she said firmly.

“Spoon with me?” His mouth widened in a flat smile at the archaic term. “Spoon?”

Thena’s face flushed with embarrassment. It was a word she’d heard Jimmy Stewart use in
The Glenn
Miller Story
a few nights earlier on TV. Cloistered here on her island, she didn’t know the current slang for what Jed had just done. Now she knew it wasn’t spoon. “Whatever you want to call it, I didn’t intend to make you think I’m interested in a physical relationship with you,” she retorted.

What Jed lacked in verbal skills, he more than made up for in solid instinct and observation. He could read a horse’s mood just by looking into its eyes. It was the same with women, and he knew that this island wildflower, for all her protests, had enjoyed his touch, his kiss. He didn’t know if he could tease her into caring about him, a cowboy with too many rough edges, but the kiss made a good start in the right direction.

“Do you have a man?” he asked bluntly.

Her eyes narrowed in defense. “No. Should I?”

“Well, most gals put a high value on us handsome devils.”

“I find value in things other people don’t understand,” she informed him. “I paint pictures of sea life with a detail most artists don’t care about. I’m also an amateur scientist. I spend a lot of my time making intricate notes about the island flora and fauna. I send them to a biologist at the University of Georgia.”

Thena sighed dramatically. “I just don’t have time to indulge in superficial sexual encounters. Sexual attraction is nothing more than a complex interaction of hormonal chemicals, anyway. It’s been tested many times in laboratory experiments.”

Jed grunted. “When I kissed you, wildflower, your lips weren’t thinkin’ about white mice.”

“My chemicals were simply reacting to yours.” She and Nate had discussed this subject in great detail. Jedidiah Powers couldn’t confuse her.

“Uh-huh. Like a volcano. You were scared to kiss me back the way you wanted to.” His eyes held enormous self-satisfaction. “Guess you thought your chemicals might boil over.”

Thena decided to take the offensive. “Do you have a woman?”

“Not lately.”

“Well, I refuse to fill the temporary gap in your lurid sex life.” She was surprised to see a wounded, soulful look pass briefly across his face. Thena kicked herself mentally. This man didn’t fit her idea of a lecherous playboy, despite his bold attentions. He looked as if he’d spent most of his life on the outside looking in at everyone else’s happiness. She was a loner too. She understood.

Thena’s anger faded. “Jedidiah,” she murmured, her musical voice putting beautiful inflections in his name, “you’re a very handsome man. And I have no man in my life.” He looked askance at her frankness, then his eyes filled with intense respect for it. Respect, and affection. Thena’s lips parted in a melting reaction to such rapt attention. For a moment she simply stared at him, feeling a little giddy. Finally she forced her eyes away from his and continued. “But I’m just … just too old for romance, you see.”

He nearly choked on a restrained laugh. “You look mighty fine, granny.”

“In here,” she said plaintively, as she pointed to her head.

“Whew, that’s a relief,” he teased. “I thought maybe you’d put a spell on me so I couldn’t tell that you’re about a hundred and toothless, with pruney lips.” His amusement died as he saw all the pain behind her silver eyes. “Why are you too old?” he asked gently.

Thena forced herself to ignore the effect his rumbling, tender voice had on her emotions. “I never had a chance to make many friends my own age. I went to elementary and high school on the mainland, but I didn’t really fit in. I was too quiet, and I liked to read all the time, or paint. I was very close to my parents, and I spent a lot of time on Sancia with
them and various colleagues of theirs who’d drop by here to do research. I went away to college for a year, but I decided I could learn more on my own than in class so I came home. Now I know that was a mistake.”

She pointed to her head again. “So … I’m old. I like to watch movies, I like to read, I like to be alone. I’ve never been on an airplane, I’ve never been to a rock concert, and I’ve never watched MTV.”

“You haven’t missed much on any of those three counts,” Jed observed wryly. He paused. “But even a sweet little old lady like yourself needs those chemical reactions you were talkin’ about. What about your friend? I bet the professor didn’t think you were over the hill.”