Dragons eden, p.11
Dragon's Eden, page 11
Swearing, he scrambled over the last stretch of rocks leading to the source of the stream. The waterfall foamed down in front of him, sending a freshwater mist into the air and obscuring her escape hatch. He stuck his hand through the water and felt rock. He was going after her, and when he found the route to freedom, he was taking it. Twice more he jammed his hand into the water and hit rock, then victory. His arm went through to emptiness, and he followed, cutting through the water and entering another world, one of steaming mist and faint light.
He used both hands to slick his wet hair back off his face. The walls and floor of the cavern were dripping with moisture and covered with an amazing orange-brown slime. There was no sign of Sugar or her passing. He stepped forward, hoping to get a glimpse of her farther back in the cave, but his foot never hit the floor again. There was no floor, only a gaping hole full of mirror-smooth water with his foot breaking the surface. He had enough presence of mind to fill his lungs with air before he went down, flailing for a handhold on the slimy rock, which offered none.
Time ceased to exist under the water. All physical movement dropped into slow motion, except for the pounding of his heart, which jumped into double time as the current sucked him deeper into the hole, into darkness, pulling him down while every survival instinct he had was screaming for him to go up, to regain the surface and life-giving air.
He was scraped against a blunt edge of rock in his headlong flight, but in the middle of the maelstrom there were no surrounding walls, just fast-running water bearing him along. He reached a hand for the surface and encountered a submerged ceiling of solid rock.
True panic set in.
This then was how he was going to die, not as the scornful paramour of the Dragon Whore, nor as the conquering hero of childhood dreams, rescuing fair maidens and dark-eyed beauties, righting injustice and defending the weak, but drowning alone in the dark.
The epitaph no sooner formed than it was disproved. His head came out of the water just as the last of his breath gave way. Lungs burning, he swallowed a gulp of air, then another. His chest heaved with the exertion of trying to catch his breath and keep upright in the swiftly swirling water.
Surrounded by darkness, he fought disorientation by peering into the gloom and using his other senses to fix his location. The sound of rushing water filled his ears. The smell of sweet water overlaid the mustiness in the air, and all around him there was water and more water. He couldn’t feel a bottom and keep his head above the river at the same rime, and he was disinclined to submerge himself again. There was no telling where he might come up, or what he might come up against.
The current rushed along, propelling him into more darkness, heading deeper and deeper into the earth. Cooper had always said impulsiveness would be the death of him, but the impulse to follow Sugar had been undeniable, instinctive, like a cat chasing a mouse. She’d been running away, and he’d felt a compelling need to chase her. He couldn’t have resisted it any more than he could have resisted kissing her.
The river slowed suddenly, as if hitting an invisible wall, and he floated out into a much larger body of water. Ahead of him, across a distance he couldn’t estimate, a narrow circle of bright light beckoned.
He began swimming toward the light, controlling each breaststroke so it barely made a ripple. He didn’t know where he was or what he might encounter. It was a sure bet Sugar hadn’t gone the same way he had, through a hole in the floor. This was her lair, and he’d been caught but good. He just hoped there was another way out. Backtracking his route was out of the question.
He slid through the water, his breath easing back down to normal. Now that death was off the list of imminent possibilities, he was intrigued. The cavern was huge, the ceiling far above him and rustling with movement and noise. If worse came to worst, he wondered if he could eat a bat. He doubted it.
The circle of light grew bigger and brighter, until he could see blue sky and a fringe of greenery around the perimeter. The smell of fresh and growing things cut through the mustiness in the cave. A cloud scudded across the opening. When it passed, a shaft of sunlight pierced the gloom, reaching far into the cavern and reflecting off the sleek form and tangled blond curls of Sugar Caine as she swam silently through the dark pool.
Jackson stopped and treaded water, watching as she reached the opening and pulled herself up onto the ledge. She slicked her hair off her face, shook the water onto the floor, then proceeded to take off her clothes.
A dark thrill shot through him like a streak of wildfire, igniting his mind and body with equal intensity. A nice man would have said something to warn her she wasn’t alone. Jackson just watched, a sinful smile curving across his face.
Her T-shirt came off first, skimmed over her head and off her arms, her every move as graceful as a gazelle’s. Sunlight lovingly backlit the gentle curves of her body and made a halo around her angel’s face.
God, she was beautiful, her breasts small, but full and round and tipped in pink. He swallowed softly, unable to take his eyes off her.
He followed the descent of her shorts and underwear, his body hardening with every inch of skin she revealed in the wake of the yellow cotton. His smile was long gone. She bent over to pull the clothes off her feet, and when she straightened, his gaze went unerringly to the juncture of her thighs. His tongue came out to dampen suddenly dry lips. He’d seen naked women before, but he hadn’t seen Sugar, and something about her made it feel like the first time, the first time for everything. The first time he’d watched a woman undress . . . the first time a woman had opened herself for him . . . the first time he’d slid his hand, and his mouth, and his sex into that magical place.
She raised her arms over her head and stretched from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes, and he almost drowned for the second time.
He was entranced. With a powerful kick, he pushed through the water, counting on himself to have enough strength and decency to ask if she’d like to make love before he took her. Then she turned, showing him a luscious backside. That distracted him for the only instant he had to call out and keep her from soaring off the cliff and out of sight.
Watching her fly off the edge cut through his sexual haze pretty damn quick. Five strong strokes brought him to the rocks where she’d left her clothes. He pulled himself up and ran toward the edge, catching himself just before he would have gone over.
A grin broke across his face as he regained his balance. She was already surfacing in the protected cove not ten feet below where he stood, a fair-skinned mermaid in a pool of cerulean blue frothed to white on the edges. He should have known she wasn’t the type to take a swan dive. Hell, he hadn’t been that much trouble. Not yet, anyway.
Without fear to sidetrack him, his thoughts returned to the more pleasant subject of her nudity and what he was going to do about it. Take advantage were the only words that came to mind.
He stripped off his shirt and pulled the drawstring on his pants.
Sugar swam a couple of yards and rolled onto her back to float in the sunshine, but any thoughts she’d had of relaxing in that position were shot to hell when she looked up and saw Jackson. He was poised to dive into the pool, primeval man incarnate, standing tall and strong on the edge of the cliff, a dragon gracing one side of his chest, his long black braid the other. His arms were outstretched, his legs straight, his body as naked as the day he was born.
While a part of her was breathlessly mesmerized, another part of her didn’t know how he survived in polite society, or even impolite society.
She did know the only way he could have gotten into her pool, and that made her grin. The bounty hunter’s heart was probably still pounding from the wild ride through the sinkhole. Served him right for playing possum, she thought. When she’d passed him in the grass, she could have sworn he was sound asleep.
He pushed off the rocks into a dive, giving her no more time to contemplate either his body or his motives. Her fight-or-flight instincts kicked into high gear. She chose flight, beating a hasty retreat to the stretch of sand carved out of the thick, overhanging forest that made up most of her hideaway.
When Jackson surfaced, he was alone in the water. Damn. The woman was like quicksilver, impossible to hold. He scanned the cove and finally caught a glimpse of her making her way through the trees. A path led from the southern shore of the pool, winding up the cliff to the opening in the rock wall.
This was the real wild paradise on her island, a deep jungle of green life tied together by miles of lianas and nearly enclosed by the surrounding limestone. Tree roots grew like writhing snakes down the cliff wall, while vines climbed to the arch above. All the flora was heavy with fruit and flowers, filling the cove with splashes of color.
A flock of scarlet macaws with an albino leading the way flew across the pool and swooped up into the trees, squawking noisily. He’d never seen an albino macaw. He doubted if anyone had, except for God, and Sugar, and now him.
Behind him, the ocean waves broke against the reef, sending only a ripple of their strength into the pool. He lowered his head and filled his mouth with water, then spat it back out. The cove was half-fresh, half-salt, a mixture of two great sources of life made out of the same element. Sun, moon; light, dark; yang, yin; man, woman. His woman, and he could not hold on to her.
He saw her hand reach out from behind a small tree and grab for her clothes. The shirt and shorts were a brilliant shade of yellow, and what with all the fluttering around she did to maintain her modesty behind the tree, she looked like a monarch butterfly.
“Are you decent?” he hollered, still treading water in the middle of the pool.
“Unlike some people I know, I’m always decent,” she yelled back from her hiding place, making him smile.
When Jackson didn’t respond to her gibe, Sugar stepped closer to the soursop tree and moved aside a leafy branch, only to find he’d disappeared. She watched the water for a long time, her curiosity losing ground to worry with each passing second. The man had said he was a good swimmer. Lord, if he couldn’t even manage the cove, how had he expected to catch the Mary Sue?
Concern made her careless, and she pressed too closely into the tree, scratching herself on its spiny fruit. She quickly stuck her hand into her mouth and sucked. The faint taste of blood registered on her senses as she again searched the pool.
Her patience and her caution came to an end at the same time. She readied herself to dive in after him, ducking under the tree’s lowest branch and stepping to the edge. What stopped her was the sight of him climbing up the cliff wall at her feet, hand over fist, using a thick liana as a rope and tree roots for footholds.
He moved with the agility of an animal in its prime, scaling the cliff with purposeful ease. Water and sunlight glistened over his tawny skin and down the free-falling corded braid of his hair. When he reached the top, he looked up at her with a mischievous gleam in his eye.
“Me Jackson. You Sugar,” he said, sounding innocent and looking dangerously sensual, his smile guileless but not harmless.
For an instant she was sucked into the fantasy he offered—one man, one woman, no rules—but only for an instant.
“Me going. You nuts,” she said, backing away from the edge.
“Give me a hand up?” he asked, and she stopped in midstep. He raised one hand toward her, and she couldn’t help but notice what that did to the muscles in the arm holding on to the vine. They tightened, becoming even more well defined.
He couldn’t possibly need help, not with arms like his, but she stepped forward out of a sense of duty. She offered him her hand, and immediately regretted it.
He took hold of her hand and pulled at the same time as he pushed off from the rock wall, sending them both out over the water. Sugar instinctively stretched her body into a dive position, and he did the same, but he didn’t let go of her. When they surfaced, she spluttering and he grinning, he still had hold of her.
“You—you got me wet.” She would have called him something awful, but he defied description.
“You were already wet,” he said, his smile broadening in a flash of white teeth.
“I was halfway dry.” It was a bit of a stretch, but close enough. “And I could have been hurt with you dragging me off the cliff like that.”
He laughed. “Halfway dry is about as good as it gets on Cocorico, and I held on to you so you wouldn’t get hurt.” He clearly wasn’t taking the blame for anything. He began swimming toward the shore, pulling her beside him.
“You can . . . uh, let go of me now,”
“No, I can’t,” he said, cutting through the blue-green water, his movements sending tiny waves lapping against her throat and chest.
“Why not?”
“Because the only reason I pulled you off the cliff was so I could hold you.” He found his footing on the bottom and drew her into his embrace within the shadows of the overhanging palms. “After going to that much trouble, it would be a shame not to take full advantage of the opportunity.”
She wanted to disagree, despite what her heart felt was the truth. Yes, it would be a shame to waste such a golden opportunity for holding each other, but being that close to him in broad daylight made speech impossible. Her pulse was beating too quickly, and her thoughts were moving too slowly.
His mouth was so beautiful, wide set with lips softer than they looked, and teeth so white they fairly shone against the darker color of his skin. A woman would give up a lot to explore a mouth like his, especially when the woman already knew what sensory magic he could conjure with his kiss.
“Sugar?” He spoke her name softly, his voice husky with the changing tension in the air.
She lifted her gaze to meet his and felt an ache build inside her chest. His mouth was no more beautiful than his eyes. Or his hair. Or his body.
Or his warrior’s heart with its tenderness and easy laughter. She couldn’t resist him forever. She could only give him fair warning of the truth.
Nervously wetting her lips, she forced herself not to falter under the weight of her words.
“If you kiss me again, Jackson, I swear I’ll never let you go.” Her lashes lowered before the last word was out, a minor concession considering what she’d just confessed.
He was quiet for a long time, holding her against him, the gentle rise and fall of his chest the only movement she could perceive.
“Do you mean that?” he finally asked, his voice full of the hundred other questions he hadn’t asked.
She nodded, afraid to say more.
“You’re thinking about letting me go?” He didn’t sound as if he believed it, but she wasn’t going to reassure him with even a gesture. She’d already given away too much.
“But not if I kiss you,” he repeated, then swore roundly, his hands tightening on her waist. “Somebody should have taught you when to cut your losses. I can’t—”
Whatever he was going to say next was lost in the drone of a low-flying seaplane banking into the point, headed for the beach below her home.
He swore again, a word much nastier than her own vehement damn.
“Looks like somebody has saved you again,” he said, not sounding any too happy about it.
“What do you mean?” She didn’t feel saved, she felt invaded. No one was scheduled to come. Shulan had told her three weeks.
“What I mean”—he captured her chin and turned her face up to meet his glowering gaze—“is that you have greatly underestimated how much you mean to me.”
His mouth came down on hers hard and forceful, demanding a response she was incapable of hiding.
Jackson cursed himself again and again, even as he sank deeper into the kiss, into the taste and feel of Sugar Caine, the woman who would be his doom.
Ten
He was lost, more lost than he’d been in Shulan’s gilded Hong Kong prison. There, it had only been his body in a strange place. On Cocorico, with Sugar in his arms, he was racing down uncharted paths of the heart.
He lifted his head to place another kiss on her lips, loving the luxury of being able to leave and come back for more. There were no tears this time. She was as fascinated as he was with the sweet melding of their mouths.
When next he lifted his head and looked, her wide gray eyes were dazed with passion, her cheeks flushed with color. Relief and satisfaction filled his breast. Sometimes she tried too hard to be indifferent to him, coolly in control, and he didn’t want her cool where he was concerned. He couldn’t have borne her manufactured indifference, not when he was drowning in a whirlpool of emotion.
Holding her face in his hands, he kissed her again, simply pressing his lips to hers and breathing in the same air. She was his woman, like no other woman, made for him to be hers.
The sound of the plane engine ended abruptly, warning him it had landed on the other side of the arch. If they’d come to take him, they were going to be disappointed. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Stay with me,” he said roughly, kissing her ear, her temple, her brow.
“I can’t stay here, Jackson, and neither can you.” She tilted her head back, away from his roaming mouth. Her expression was serious despite the flush still suffusing her cheeks and the lambent light in her eyes. “They may not have seen us, but they know about this cove. They’ll search every inch of the island until they find you, unless I throw them off your track.”
“Do they know about the caves?”
“No, but the seaplane will give them access to this place. You can’t stay here.”
A hint of desperation shaded her voice, taking away its soft lilt and impressing upon him the depth of her feelings for him. Either she’d been telling the truth and she wasn’t going to let him go—or let anyone take him —because he’d kissed her, or her concern for him had suddenly won out over any loyalty she felt she owed Shulan. He considered the change good joss, regardless of her motives.
