The Hawk and the Lamb

by Susan Napier

  'We are not living together!' Elizabeth rasped hoarsely.

  'Hmm, that does suggest a personal intimacy we haven’t yet achieved,' he agreed tauntingly.

  'Nor ever will!' added Elizabeth emphatically.

  'You think not?' He reached out and touched her trembling mouth with a gentle finger. Elizabeth's lips parted as if stung. He laughed, a low, slow, sexy rumble that brushed across her skin as he leant closer, his hand sliding around into her wind-sifted hair so that his palm possessively cupped the delicate nape of her neck while his fingers interwove with the sun-warmed strands. 'Poor little lamb, your thinking is as woolly and disordered as this soft pelt of yours. That's the trouble with lying, chérie; it gets you all confused, mixes up dreams and reality until you don’t really know where you are...'

  Elizabeth knew exactly where she was and why she shouldn’t be there. The ripping talons of a hunting hawk were not supposed to feel so achingly wonderful to its prey. His second hand joined the first and she struggled against the startling discovery of how sensual a scalp massage could be as his hard fingers dug and kneaded at the sensitive flesh while his mouth glided closer and closer...

  The voluptuous tingling spread from her scalp to the rest of her body, further weakening her feeble re­sistance. She was going to bite him if he dared kiss her mouth, Elizabeth told herself dizzily, but he didn’t give her the chance to satisfy her hunger. His mouth disap­pointingly bypassed hers, the hands in her hair tight­ening to pull her head back so that he could nuzzle at her throat, the warm, moist caress finally settling against the hot pulse just under her left jaw. His tongue was wet and rough as it sanded the betraying leap of blood in her veins. She gasped, clutching his waist as he sucked gently and then bent her head the other way so that he could pay equal homage to the opposite pulse.

  Only then when he had tasted her thoroughly did he seek out her mouth, murmuring thickly with satis­faction as she carried out her mental threat and sank her white teeth sighingly into the satiny curve of his lower lip. The masculine flavour of him exploded through her senses and Elizabeth didn’t realise how rough and un­controlled she had become until she tasted the salt in her mouth and realised what she had done. She moaned and wrenched her head away, looking in horror at the red pearl beading on his lip.

  He licked at it, revealing the small split to her mor­tified gaze. 'First blood to you, chérie.'

  The cool grey eyes flared brilliantly, sending her a smouldering message of savage approval that totally eluded her as she stared, aghast, at what she had done, not in defensive anger as she had planned, but in ex­cessive eagerness.

  ‘I—I'm sorry,' she said, her voice stifled with mortification.

  He let her back nervously out of his relaxed grasp, although his body was tensely alert as he watched her curious reaction to the evidence of her spontaneous passion.

  ‘I’m not, I liked you biting me,' he said in a dark tone that was as soft and rasping against her nerves as his tongue had been against her skin. ‘“Rich the treasure, Sweet the pleasure; Sweet is pleasure after pain.”’

  She was too upset by her loss of control to be im­pressed by his knowledge of seventeenth-century English poetry, or to fully comprehend his meaning. She stared at him in confusion, prompting him to utter the statement of silky warning that had her scuttling down the hillside in ignominious retreat.

  ‘I don’t know precisely what it is you're up to on my island, Beth, but you may as well know now that I fully intend to find out. It would save us both a lot of time and grief if you just confessed here and now, while I'm in a relatively mellow mood. It might help you make up your mind to know that I still have close contacts in my former business, and that sooner or later I'm going to know everything there is to know about you.

  ‘It's your choice, chérie: with me or against me.'

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  ELIZABETH looked with dismay at the huge pile of gam­bling chips on the table in front of her. The croupier was pushing yet another stack towards her and she could feel the other gamblers pressing in, waiting with feverish tension for her to place her next bet so they could follow suit and share the extraordinary luck that seemed to dog her whenever she set foot in the hotel casino.

  She knew next to nothing about gambling and had only chosen roulette because there didn’t appear to be any concentration or skill involved, nothing to distract her from her covert surveillance of Jack and Serena. Tonight she had been even more distracted, her whole being committed to a course of action that was totally against every principle she possessed.

  'Mesdames et monsieurs, place your bets, please...'

  Recklessly Elizabeth pushed all the chips in front of her on to the layout. If she could lose everything perhaps all these people would lose interest and stop staring at her. The last thing she wanted was an audience for the performance to come. She wasn’t playing with her own money anyway, since all her chips were the legitimate offspring of the complimentary five-thousand franc casino voucher provided in each guest's room.

  ‘I want it all on number one,' she told the man standing impassively at the end of the table, moistening her dry throat with the martini that sat at her elbow.

  A concerted gasp spread around the table, followed by a flurry of whispers.

  'You wish to place all your chips on a straight bet?' The croupier was well trained, his face expressionless. 'Do you wish this bet to be in addition to your existing standing bets?'

  Elizabeth's violet eyes glittered with a feverishness which had nothing to do with gambling. She picked the olive out of her drink and nibbled it, to disguise the fact that she didn’t know what a standing bet was, let alone that she had one.

  She shook her head. ‘I want everything to go on number one,' she said firmly.

  'You've got guts, I'll give you that, little lady,' mur­mured the pudgy, sweating man on her left admiringly. He was an American who had watched her erratic betting at first with condescending amusement and then with envy as she had totally demolished the house odds. ‘I'd love to know what your system is.'

  So would Elizabeth.

  She took another slug of her martini, her eyes sweeping the room as the croupier had a whispered conversation with a white-jacketed colleague whom he had sum­moned with a glance.

  Where in hell was he?

  Normally Jack was doing the rounds of the casino at this time, but tonight of all nights he seemed to be no­where in evidence.

  'Another martini, mademoiselle?'

  A waiter appeared like magic at her elbow, a drink already poised on his tray. Elizabeth took it and ab­sently dropped a handful of chips in its place. The waiter's eyes widened, and he was practically bowing as he backed away.

  With a jolt in her chest Elizabeth finally spotted him. He was at the twin-columned entrance to the casino, his dark head bowed as he listened frowningly to the urgent conversation of one of his employees.

  Her tension tightened another notch. After several days of fruitlessly trying to escape the attention of him and his league of minions she was once again turning the tables and stalking him. The knowledge of what she was going to do when she caught him made her palms sweat.

  She tried to whip up the anger that was essential to her bravado. He deserved everything he got for his ac­tions this past week.

  True to his word, he had made her very conscious of the fact that she was at the mercy of the absolute dic­tatorship on Ile de Faucons. He'd had her watched so closely that she was swamped by over-zealous service wherever she went. Although the door between their ad­joining suites had, against all her suspicions, remained firmly closed he still somehow managed to seep into every crack and crevice of her awareness.

  In fact his invasion of her privacy was so absolute that he had even begun to invade her dreams and almost seemed to know her plans before she did.

  In desperation she had been forced to join group tours pony-trekking, or picnicking or cruising around the island, but Jack had merely pulled rank and ta
gged along, effortlessly under-cutting the protection a group provided by making sure everyone knew that Elizabeth was the real focus of his devoted attention. Once that was established Elizabeth had found her hastily ac­quired new acquaintances all too eager to curry favour with the management by playing Cupid. And the ap­palling truth was that if she hadn’t known that he was doing it for the express purpose of harassing and hu­miliating her Elizabeth might well have found him irresistible!

  He was charming and worldly, amusing and intel­ligent and he was so...all right, he was so sexy. Touching her only with his look and his smile, he managed to make her feel a treacherous thrill of desire that disturbed her by its potency. While she could fend off any attack on her intelligence with confidence her senses were not so easy to subdue.

  Normally when she was anxious or nervous Elizabeth was quiet, but around Jack that wasn’t even an option. He would just needle at her until she responded out of sheer fury, and once she was talking his provocative re­plies made it impossible to curb her desire to have the last word. She rarely succeeded.

  This morning Elizabeth had thought that she had finally managed to outwit the master of cunning. The previous evening she had loudly booked herself on today's shopping and sightseeing tour of the mainland. Then, while Jack was off on his early morning jog, she had sneaked out along the beach to the pier where the hydrofoil which took the weekly all-day trip to the Phare Amedée was moored. The Amedée lighthouse was at the entrance to the encircling reef and Elizabeth had wanted to visit it anyway before she left New Caledonia... or was deported in handcuffs!

  Elizabeth had persuaded the young crewman who was the only person on board so early in the morning to let her go straight on to the boat instead of waiting for the duly appointed boarding time, flagrantly misusing Jack's name to convince him that it didn’t matter that her name wasn’t on the booking list.

  It was only when they were safely twenty minutes out to sea that she allowed herself to go up to the roof-top observation deck and breathe the sweet salt-air of freedom. She had done it! Eight hours from now she would have to return to face Jack's displeasure at being outmanoeuvred, but for the interim she would en­deavour to relax and forget about the entire wretched St Clair problem.

  Her mind blissfully emptied, she gazed out towards a blurred column of light which was fading in where sea and sky imperceptibly blended. She had put on her straw hat but still had to put a shading hand up to the brim as she squinted across the shining waters.

  It wasn’t the beacon, but the lighthouse itself shining, proclaiming its dominance over the sea, Elizabeth realised as they neared their destination. The tall, graceful white column perched on the small coral cay was reflecting the rays of the sun to dazzling effect.

  The cay itself was tiny, an irregular circle of white beach enclosing a few small buildings among a twist of trees and low shrubs and the lighthouse itself. Their tour party had exclusive visiting rights for the day so the sense of relaxation and isolation was complete and Elizabeth revelled in the pleasure of being an ordinary, unencum­bered tourist.

  It only took ten minutes to make a circuit of the com­pletely flat island, after which Elizabeth decided that she would try the water while most of the others were in­vestigating the tiny souvenir stall or climbing the lighthouse.

  She couldn’t help feeling exposed as she left the small changing-shed clutching her towel around her. She had been in so much of a rush when she had fled the hotel that she had forgotten to pack her beach-shirt. Fortunately there were only a few children and elderly couples already settled on the pristine white beach so she didn’t feel as self-conscious as usual as she shed the towel and plunged joyously into the water. Its silky warmth and buoyancy were delightful, and by the time she walked back up the beach most of the rest of the party were spreading themselves out along the shoreline.

  There were the usual male double-takes at the vol­uptuousness of her pale-skinned figure in the wet suit, but this time she forced herself to ignore them. She wasn’t going to allow a few leering idiots to spoil her precious day of freedom. In fact, she had been a fool to deny herself the pleasure of frequent swimming and sun­bathing at the hotel just because she wasn’t as slim and tanned as most of the other female guests under forty seemed to be. Judging from the wealth of their clothes and jewellery, they probably didn’t have to work for a living and could afford the time and money to pamper themselves into the right shape.

  Her determination not to let her acute self-consciousness get the better of her led Elizabeth to stretch out on her towel to dry off, curtly fending off an eager offer to fetch a sun-lounger from one persistent drooler. When she felt she had asserted herself enough for one morning she pulled her roomy thigh-length ‘I-shirt over her dry suit and headed for the lighthouse.

  Standing on the bare floorboards and looking up the centre well of the iron staircase which curved around the inner walls, she almost lost her nerve but, having paid her fifty francs, Elizabeth's thrifty nature bolstered her wavering pride.

  She made sure as she climbed that she kept very close to the wall, her grip on the handrail white-knuckle tight. She had to rest several times before she finally panted out on to the narrow open-air platform that circled the crown of the lighthouse.

  She was glad she had waited until last to explore the view. It was like being alone at the top of the world, lord of all she surveyed, three hundred and sixty degrees of cobalt sea and sky, flat, featureless and almost in­distinguishable from one another except where the rim of white surf outlined the curve of the reef. The view to the beach below was nauseatingly quick to make her feel dizzy. Elizabeth stepped back against the rough-cast wall, closing her eyes and breathing deeply before she dared open them again.

  The thrill became a throat-tightening sensation of doom as her eyes cautiously lowered from sky—to sea­t—to pier... where a second boat was tying up alongside the hotel transport. A boat which was appallingly familiar.

  And there was the pirate himself, dressed in his favoured white, striding off the pier on to the sand, lifting a hand in greeting to the cries of welcome from the small band of caterers and entertainers who had mingled with the guests to travel to the island.

  Elizabeth watched, hypnotised, as the black head tilted and he looked up, almost as if he knew exactly where she was. He couldn’t identify her hat-shaded head, surely, not from that distance. She tried to convince herself of it, but as soon as he began to move towards the lighthouse she decided she would not, could not, just stay up here waiting. If she had to meet her fate it would be with solid ground under her feet!

  Twenty steps back down the iron stairs she knew she was in deep trouble. Going up had been strenuous and nerve-racking, but going down was terrifying. There was nothing in front of her but the sheer fall of steps spinning around the open central shaft. The metal railing sud­denly felt horrifyingly insubstantial in her sweaty grip. She froze, both hands gripping the rail, visualising herself free-falling forwards down the hundreds of lethal iron rungs. Her knees trembled and her sandy toes curled inside her canvas shoes. She teetered on the brink of black panic.

  'Eliza-Beth?'

  The deep voice curled up through the cavernously dim centre of the lighthouse, reverberating through her frozen horror.

  'Eliza-Beth? Are you coming down or do I have to come up and get you?'

  The idea was such sheer bliss that tears rushed to her eyes. Her first try was such a pitiful croak that her second over-compensated into a harsh scream that sounded graphically like a taunt rather than a desperate plea, 'Come and get me.'

  A very explicit string of French swear-words rose like music to her ringing ears then there was the distant sound of steps striking metal, hard, rapid, angry steps, ac­companied by a litany of threats that she only hoped she would live long enough for him to carry out!

  She kept her eyes resolutely shut for what seemed an age, the echo of his magnifying footsteps confusing her senses until she wasn’t sure whether he wa
s coming or going. Suddenly they stopped altogether. Visions of his body floating through the air to smash on the boards far below peeled back her lids.

  'Jack? Jean-Jacques?'

  He stood on the curve of the staircase just below her, breathing deeply yet silently, a faint sheen of sweat coating his darkly flushed face.

  ‘I’m here, Eliza-Beth.'

  He remained motionless and she swallowed at the murder in the stormy grey eyes.

  'And I am not happy,' he added redundantly in that calm, threatening voice. He held out his hand, palm up. 'Come. You have made your pointless gesture of de­fiance and forced me to fetch you. I have ascended to your level, now you will descend to mine.'

  If only she could. But her feet were glued to the shallow metal tread. ‘I-'

  'Don’t argue with me, chérie.' He interrupted her feeble attempt to overcome her speechless horror with dangerous softness. ‘I am in no mood to be trifled with. Be thankful I have chosen not to send you down by the scenic route.'

  Elizabeth's uncontrolled shudder nearly overbalanced her. She clutched the railing even more fiercely, her face blanching, and the fury that smoked his eyes flared sud­denly into a blazing awareness.

  'Beth?'

  She looked at him dumbly.

  He leapt up the three steps that separated them in one bound and she shrieked in combined fear and rage at his recklessness, abandoning the rail for the more sub­stantial bulk of his body, her clutching hands making him curse as he swayed, gripping the opposite rail with one hand while his other snapped around her waist.

  'For God's sake, chérie, are you trying to kill us both?'

  Her face went milk-white as she buried it in his chest, knocking her hat off her head. He made a grab at it as it whispered beyond his reach, drifted down into the dimness of the centre shaft. 'Don’t,' she gasped. 'Don’t move.'

  'How can I, with you practically crawling inside me? Calm down, chérie, I'm not going to let you go-'

  'Yes, you are-'