“Yes, but—”
“Luke, she is right. Now, please,” Jennie begged, stomping one foot. “Just hold your tongue and let her speak!”
Justina merely chuckled a melodious sound of approval.
“I will not keep my mouth shut and watch you slip from my fingers again. No magic will prevent it.” And he folded his arms, just to further emphasize his determination.
Jennie shot him a look of horror tinged with love. She crossed to him, her hands fisted at her sides. When she neared, he caught the ever-alluring fragrance that was only that of Jensina Sebastian Slayton. In the entire universe, there could be no other being that smelled as delicious as his wife.
“You cannot talk to her that way,” she said in a low voice.
“I will talk to anyone that way who threatens you with another banishment. This time, it’s to be a permanent one. I tell you, it’s not happening as long as I live.” He shifted his stance and chuckled hollowly. “And last time I checked, that queen over there made me immortal, which means I’m not dying anytime soon.”
Jennie sighed and closed her eyes. He could see the pulse thumping in her throat, and he longed to kiss that very spot to still her nerves.
“Queen,” she began, spinning to face her sister. “I beg your forgiveness for my husband’s arrogance and disrespect.”
“I can beg my own forgiveness, babe,” he snarled.
“Now, now.” Justina soaked them both with a slightly scornful look, as if to scold two quarreling children. But it seemed her inborn sense of humor was her best asset as the ruler of a vast realm. She smiled, slow and warm. “Let’s put away the emotions, my two lovebirds, and get back to the important matter at hand. I forgive your Luke—at least this time. Now, as I was trying to say moments ago, you do have another alternative, Jensina.”
Jennie pressed her hand into her belly. “I’m not so sure I want to hear this.”
She frowned almost mockingly. “Well, all right then. You’re both dismissed. Complete your mission by the end of the third day or dear sister, face imprisonment.”
“No, wait!” Jennie and Luke breathed in unison.
She smiled with a knowing nod. “That’s precisely what I thought.”
“Please.” Jennie glided across the chamber and knelt before her sister. She hung her head, suspending her hand out at her side as a sign to Luke to join her in subservience. He sighed and went to her, bowing before the queen.
“I beg of you…” Jennie went on. “Please educate me on my alternative, my almighty queen.”
“Rise, sister, brother-in-law.” She clapped two sharp notes of demand. Her voice rang strong with an edge of harshness. “No need for formalities among family.”
Jennie rose slowly and Luke followed. He grappled with the urge to wrap his hands around the creamy golden column of Justina’s neck and squeeze the immortal life from her.
“You may abort the mission if you so choose. While the very nature of the type of magic used to implement the action cannot be negated from your protégés’ minds, you still have time to back out and begin anew with different subjects.”
“You mean once they are transported back to their places of origination, they will still remember their experiences on Carnal Island?”
She nodded. “It can be a risk for them. The seemingly bizarre experience, particularly for Jewel, could be life--altering to the point of mental devastation. Now, I’ll tell you it seems you’ve misunderstood…you’ve been granted a free trial run, in a sense, not just one do-or-die opportunity. So, if you don’t abort and don’t fulfill the plan, you still have another chance beyond this one.” She breezed past and glided to the archway, looking out over her land. Her voice, so like Jennie’s, held that extra quality of imperialness that Jennie’s did not. No, his passionate wife’s voice had an added sultry note to it not found in Justina’s.
“But,” Justina went on, “if before the end of the third day, they should come together anyway—even if you’ve aborted—per the rules and regulations, you will still be rewarded. But you will only receive half-credit.”
“Let me get this straight.” Luke just couldn’t remain silent anymore. He longed to get this in writing, but chose to accept verbal confirmation. “Removing them from Carnal Island will erase the constraints of the three-day, crucial timeframe, but not their memory of their experiences. However, the clock will still tick on the spell. Once they’re back home, if they should still come together by the end of those initial three days, Jennie will still get credit—in spite of aborting—yet there won’t be the threat of being banished?”
“Correct, but she will only receive a half-credit. Which will require an extra mission, beyond Vince and Jewel’s, to make this one count as a whole, complete, victorious one.”
“And how many missions does Jennie have to conclude victoriously before she no longer has to worry about the two-strikes-and-she’s-out stipulation?”
“Well…” Justina bit her lower lip. Her long soot eyelashes fluttered. “She only need complete one full and successful mission to be finally left alone without fear of ever being banished to eternity. That means she really only gets one ‘strike,’ as you call it, of failure before meeting with success on the second try. Now, if she should abort, then gain half-credit if Vince and Jewel should unite before the end of three days, then she’s in a sense caused herself to require two successful half missions instead of one whole non-aborted one. If she conquers her second mission, the one following the half-credit one, that is, she need not ever worry about the ‘strikes’ again. You see, one-half plus one-half always equals one, even here in Xanthus.” She grinned almost playfully.
“So my choices are,” Jennie asked, her eyes now sparkling with hope and relief, “to take the chance of uniting them before the three days are up…or abort before that and hope they unite anyway. Which will afford me a half-credit. Which will, in turn, cause me to have to endure an extra mission and another half-credit, in order to be out of danger of banishment forever.”
“An extra successful mission,” Justina corrected. “But, yes. You have the essential law of it correct, in summary.”
Jennie merely heaved a sigh. And Luke silently seconded that. It was really a quite confusing technicality, if you asked him.
“Should Jennie call a halt to this task, can we still use our influences, even though we’re not within the boundaries of the island?”
“Yes, but not genie influences. Magical persuasion of any sort will not be allowed. Once you’ve chosen to negate the three-day spell ahead of time and return them to the very spots where you abducted them from, magic will be prohibited as a tool of influence. You can visit, you can talk and persuade verbally only, but that is the limit of it. The only supernatural forces you may use are for your own movement from place to place, and use of the Xanthian Big Screen. No spells, no magic.”
“So, either we continue on Carnal Island, let the clock run out with access to full genieatic powers and hope for the best before it does run out… Or we negate the initial spell and hope for unity anyway, with a half-point loss—or gain, however you choose to look at it—and no strikeout.”
“Precisely.”
“Must we choose now?” Jennie’s voice held a tone of indecision and anxiety.
Justina shook her head, rising. She looked down at Jennie. “Technically, you have until the final minute of the spell to decide. But not one millisecond longer.”
Chapter Eight
“Where have you been all these years?” Vince laced his fingers behind his head and stared up at the thatched ceiling. One leg slung over the edge of the hammock, he pushed himself with a foot, swinging lazily.
Outside, the winds howled, the outer walls pounded by violent rainfall. Flashes of lightning and deafening thunder raged on beyond their protective shelter. He’d found some candles and matches buried in the trunk, and the room now flickered with dancing shadows upon the walls. The air wasn’t musty at all like he’d expected it to be.
The genies had obviously provided them with cool, pleasant temperatures.
Temperatures conducive to lovemaking…
The faint fishy scent of the tossed sea and wild vegetation permeated the closed room, masked only by that of the still-warm roast pig. Briefly, he wondered if a hurricane could be in the forecast. But somehow, he knew instinctively these four walls would withstand anything, as long as he and Jewel were inside working on their relationship. He’d come to the conclusion that this entire adventure had been devised as nothing more than a matchmaking reunion on Luke and Jennie’s part.
And he no longer had any reservations about that particular plan.
But Jewel did. He slid his gaze over and watched as she huddled on the floor in a corner and tore off a strip of ham with her teeth. She chomped and smacked ravenously, and it brought to mind an uncivilized, beautiful tribal woman reduced to the baser needs. She’d slept for what he’d estimated to be nearly eighteen hours during the course of her infection. Since waking, he mused, hunger and thirst of various sorts had overtaken her.
He thought now as he watched her below lowered lids that she looked like Tarzan’s Jane might, if there were really such characters. Vince remembered a much prissier Jewel than the one he saw now. And the hunger that drove her to devour the meat with such zest, made him all the more determined to assist the genies in completing their little plan. They would get back to civilization soon, he vowed. She would never again be reduced to a heathen state of existence, not if he could help it.
“Um, hello?”
Jewel’s head snapped up. Her mouth and chin glistened with grease. She spoke around her food. “Hmm? What?”
“I said where have you been all these years?”
“Oh.” She swallowed, swiped the back of her hand across her mouth. “Vermont. Teaching.”
“Vermont? Why’d you choose to move from Denver to such an out-of-the-way state as Vermont?”
Jewel plucked up a banana and peeled it with quick precision. Just watching her hold the fruit in her hand brought to mind her cream-soaked pussy. A vague, underlying tingle of desire swept through him. But first things first, he thought.
She bit off a large hunk and chewed, her eyes watching him with guarded interest. “To get as far away from you as I could, why else?” Her sharp words sliced precise and to the quick. But he’d recently come to the conclusion they were merely a defense against the strong feelings she had for him. Feelings she wasn’t quite sure what to do with. And that delighted him to no end.
“Ah, I see.” He flexed his hands behind his head, causing his biceps to tighten. Just as he’d planned, her gaze wondered to his arms, his naked chest.
She tore her stare from him and yanked the peel down further. “Teaching the children in the convent school is only the beginning. I intend to…to become a…a…”
“You’re kidding. A convent?”
Jewel tipped back a coconut shell and drank. “Nope. Not kidding.”
“Why? Why not just a regular public school like you taught at in Denver?”
He’d always admired the fact that she was a dedicated teacher with a knack for getting through to the most difficult student. But he could hardly see her using that talent in a strict convent. It seemed already obedient children would not challenge her nearly as much.
“To become familiar…with the setting.” She avoided his gaze and suddenly made herself busy with cleanup.
Vince suppressed the urge to rise and go to her, to tip up her grease-splattered chin so that those emerald jewels had no choice but to look him directly in the eye. No. He’d silently vowed he’d wring everything from her tonight, and intimidation, for the moment, would only prove counterproductive.
“Familiar for what reason?” He chuckled hollowly. “To become a nun or something?”
Her head swiveled around lethal-fast. He saw in her eyes a conglomeration of indignation, awkwardness and surprise. They locked stares for a long moment before he spoke.
“No, don’t tell me,” he groaned with a shake of his head. “You went to Vermont to teach in a convent, because you’d planned to become a nun? Fiery, sex-kitten Jewel Dublin, a nun?” He tried, but he couldn’t stifle the laughter that rolled from his throat.
Jewel rose slowly. Her eyes drilled him with hatred. “You are an asshole.”
He ducked when she winged the banana peel at him.
“Uh-oh, those kids are in for it. A potty-mouthed, violent nun. Hmm…” He stroked his chin, shaking his head with mock confusion.
The rims of her eyes glittered with tears. “This is precisely why I left you, you jerk.”
Ah, now they were getting somewhere. “Because I’m being honest in admitting I can’t see you as a nun? I mean, it’s not meant as an insult, babe. It’s just that, even though you have a big heart, that doesn’t mean you’re nun material. Don’t you know…nuns are celibate?”
“Of course I know that!”
Wary of her temper, he studied her closely as she made herself busy by snatching up dates, mangoes and empty coconut shells. Instead of firing them at him, she shuffled them into a semblance of order, her movements quick and jerky. Despite remaining safe from her wrath, he could have sworn an electric jolt of her anger reached out and slapped him right across the face.
Determined to approach this interrogation productively, he laid back and stretched out again in the hammock. Clasping his hands behind his head, he watched as she struggled to keep her gaze from his near-naked body. “Jewel,” he shrugged. “It’s noble of you to try, but I’m sorry to say, you’re plainly not nun material.”
She tore her gaze from him and began to pace in the small confines of the room. Her curvaceous shadow moved across the thatched wall behind her. As she strode back and forth, turning with quick, irritated twitches, her breasts jiggled and bounced. The clean scent of soap and shampoo wafted over to tease him. He watched as her slim, bare feet trekked across the wooden floor. Just seeing them so made him wonder what it would be like to suck those long toes, to lick her arches and massage those strong ankles. The bandage on her wound reminded him of how close she’d come to a possibly deadly infection…and made him very aware of some fierce, protective feelings welling up inside him. Before arriving here, he’d never taken such detailed, emotional note of her. New ways to care for her, to worship and seduce her bombarded him at every turn. Every inch of her body, every nuance of her personality, seemed sharper and more defined than before.
Had he taken her for granted all those years ago? Had their tamer sex life back then been the catalyst that had prompted her to leave him? Just wondering if it could be true bruised his ego. If it were true, she’d flung her insults at him correctly. He’d been a self-centered asshole, just like she’d said only minutes ago.
He inhaled deeply, redirecting his suddenly paranoid mind. Don’t jump to conclusions, Vince. Keep up your line of questioning. Your sex life had been great back then. Not nearly as spicy as it has been since arriving here, but you still knew how to please her. There’s got to be more to her leaving you than just the possibility of bland sex.
“Okay, so you’re going to be a nun and—”
“Was,” she cut in.
“Was? So you’ve changed your mind.”
She stopped in her tracks and he watched as one lone tear rolled down her cheek. “I could hardly hold my head high and be holy when my body burns for you. Which was precisely why I chose it in the first place, to try and purge you from my system. Only now I see it’s…it’s…”
Her declarative words, though spoken with contempt, made him want to climb to the rooftop and shout his joy. Instead, he remained calm. “Not possible?”
Jewel plopped down next to the roast and covered her face with her hands. Angry sobs tore from her chest. “Oh Vince, you rat! You’ve totally ruined my future plans. Now what am I going to do with myself? I might as well just say screw it all and become a hooker!”
He chuckled, even as his heart spilled over with affectio
n for her. And he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. He crossed and knelt in front of her. Despite her strangled cries and stiff resistance, he gathered her into his arms and felt the hot tears roll off her cheeks onto his chest.
“You’re going to teach, Jewel. It’s what you do best. What you were born to do, honey.” He stroked her back, closing his eyes when she finally relaxed against him. The forceful sobs died to soft whimpers. He inhaled, taking in the womanly scent of her. His hands moved over her skin, and he marveled at the contrast of its satiny texture against his rougher palms. With a surge of tenderness, he kissed her hair, her forehead, her wet cheeks.
Holding her face between his hands, he studied her, noting the necklace the old crone had given her now nestled in her cleavage, while he still wore the ring on his finger. He glanced up and looked hard and steady into her tormented eyes. “Why, Jewel? Why all the changes? You’ve cut your hair.” He stroked his fingers through the thick golden tresses. The candlelight danced and shimmered on the strands as he combed and petted. It was like raking his fingers through pure silk, he thought, fascinated. “And I don’t even know…are you a natural brunette or a true blonde?”
“The dark hair was from a bottle. This is my natural color.”
“I like it this way,” he decided.
“You do?” The tone of surprise in her voice accompanied a flash of astonishment in her eyes.
He tipped and turned her head, studying her hair and face, caressing her with his eyes. “I do. I love the way it’s been kissed by the sun, the way the moon made it shine with a gloss when we traveled through the patchy forest. I love the way the sun’s lightly bronzed your skin—and the no-makeup look. I really like it on you,” he nodded, finally looking into her eyes. “All that time, all those years ago, you must have been hiding your true beauty from me.”
She pressed a hand to the back of his. Her gaze circled his face, searching, hesitant. “You mean it? You’re not just saying that to appease me because I cried like a brat?”
He smiled. “Well…you can be a brat at times, but no. I mean it.”
Me Tarzan, You Jewel Page 14