"Lovers?” Chase finished for her, his face cast in a steely mold. Wordlessly he staggered from her and picked up the bolo as he left the clearing.
That night they tried to pretend that nothing had happened. Deborah prepared brown rice with tea leaves, while Chase turned his attention to the shirt of mosquito netting he was fashioning. The flare of the burning copra cast a soft intimate light over the small room. Like a couple who had been married for years they talked of unimportant things — the approach of the monsoon season, his sudden craving for fresh cow’s milk, her desire for a mirror.
After dinner he broke out the sake. "Here’s to rescue,” he said, and the two touched their sake-filled, hollowed coconut shells together in a toast.
"What do you plan to do when you get back to the States?” she asked after a couple of sips from the shell.
The sake tasted terrible, he thought, but it was a treat, something special to break the monotony of their days and nights. He allowed himself a small laugh and noted that it startled her. “Do I laugh so rarely?”
Her expression was guarded. “Yes.”
"You won’t believe it,” he said, taking another swallow. "I’m going to use the back pay I’ve got coming to me and open a bank. I learned a little bit about financing from a colonel at Cabanatuan.”
Chase had surprised himself, because until the words were actually spoken he had not really given it that much serious thought. But now, on reflection, it seemed like a pretty good idea. He didn’t know of any other Indian-managed banks. "And you?”
She took another sip of the sake. "I still intend to have a painting career one day. My own one-woman exhibition.” She shrugged and her lips turned upward in a small smile. "We can at least dream, can’t we?” She lifted her shell and said, "Here’s to our dreams — banking and painting,” and gulped the last of the sake.
She knelt to refill her shell, and he noticed the way her cut-offs cupped her small, firmly rounded buttocks. He felt the hardening in his crotch. If rescue was much longer in coming, he told himself, he’d have to seek out one of the stocky Manobo women, though the idea of contributing his head to the headhunters’ soup did not seem worth his body’s demand for sexual release.
Sometime after midnight, when their bursts of conversation began to lengthen with interludes of drowsiness, they finished off the first bottle of sake and retired to their separate mats. But just as Chase was falling into a deep, pleasant sleep, the mosquitos began to attack. He suddenly realized that in his drunken stupor he had forgotten to draw the mosquito net closed.
Deborah was slapping at her arms and face, and he felt like he was being eaten alive by the swarm. His usual natural immunity seemed to have disappeared.
When she scrambled to her knees and headed for the door, he yanked her back. "It’s worse outside!”
He dropped the abaca cloth over the doorway and pulled her back to her mat, cursing as he stumbled over one of the coconut shells. It seemed his feet would not move properly, and he could have sworn the mats were in a different place.
Grimly he eyed the one shroud of netting that hung from the thatched roof, then pulled Deborah inside along with the two mats.
"Just one snow—that’s all I ask, just one good snow,” she mumbled, drowsy with the effects of the sake, as she stretched out on the mat alongside him.
Now that she had abbreviated her attire, he could feel her bare skin against his, and his hands slipped around her waist, touching skin as satiny and dusky as a summer rose. He waxed into heat, the desire igniting in him like a wildfire.
She stirred and stiffened as his urgent hands cupped her breasts, burning her skin through the thin cotton material. His thumb and forefinger captured one nipple, then slipped down the center of her small rib cage to the band of her cut-offs.
In the dimness he could barely make out her stricken expression as the realization of what he intended seeped through the intoxicated haze of her mind, yet he couldn’t seem to slam on the brake. "I thought I’d never make it through the day without touching you,” he rasped, not fully aware it was his own passion-drugged voice he heard. His fingers snapped the waistband open and slid down the soft, flat stomach to entwine in the fine curly hair as his mouth closed savagely over her soft, protesting lips.
She wrenched her mouth away and murmured something about incest. His fingers bit into her arms as she tried to twist free. "Chase, don’t!” she begged. "You’ll destroy us!” But it was too late. He was already past caring. All reasoning was lost in the lust that swept through him.
She beat on him with clenched fists and cursed him. But when he yanked away the clothing that stood between them, she gave up her fight as if prepared to enduring the hard, thrusting ravishment of her body. That single act sobered him. But when he went to move away her arms around his waist and back held him fast to her. With that his passion was unleashed, and he could not but take them both to the brink of heaven and hell.
Later, he went out onto the veranda to cool the fire in his flesh. He could not believe what he had done. One hand rubbed at his eyes, oblivious to the few stings of the remaining mosquitos that had not departed with the swarm. He cast a troubled glance back at her. She lay there, face down, unmoving.
He turned away, both ashamed and confused, for he could have sworn she enjoyed the act. Yet he could feel the hate pulsating within the room. He dropped down on his haunches, thinking, figuring. He sensed vaguely that something was lost, but he could not identify it. "Deborah,” he began, "I don’t — ”
Instinct made him look around. Deborah had sprung to her feet, grabbing at the bolo in her ascent, and rushed at him. In that split second he was reminded of their ancestors whose fierce warrior blood ran in both their veins.
He dodged her first thrust and slid in under her arm and behind her, seizing her about her waist from the rear. She fought and struggled. Her arms and legs flailed the air until she was out of breath and her fury subsided. The bolo clattered on the floor. Chase was sure he heard a strangled sob, but there followed only the muted chatter of the forest’s birds.
"Now listen to me, Deborah,” he said, exasperated. "I’m sorry about what happened. I’d change it if I could. I can’t. But I promise you it’ll — ”
"You bastard!”
She squirmed, and he dropped her, more from surprise than from her squirming. She whirled on him. Small of stature but filled with a regal dignity her anger could not alter, she stood facing him. Her eyes were bright brown stones. "If you had wanted me — for me — it might have been different. But to violate me out of sheer animal lust — when you’ve never gotten Christina Raffin out of your mind, her name still on your lips even — ”
Her anger was raging once more like a second volcanic eruption. She stopped and started again. "You don’t need to promise me anything, because if you so much as touch me, Chase Strawhand, I’ll not rest until your bones are buried!”
CHAPTER 52
The disappearance of Donald the next morning was as good an excuse as any for Chase and Deborah to escape the hut’s confinement as they searched the area’s undergrowth in ever-widening circles. Chase was always careful to keep Deborah in sight but made no effort to break her tight-lipped silence.
He was confused by her anger, for despite the fact he had forced himself on her, he was very aware of her active participation toward the last. And he did not think her anger had very much to do with the taboo of tribal incest. His irritation grew with the passing of the morning. How could she condemn him when she had enjoyed it? How could she bring up his involvement with Christina when she was engaged to Red Bird?
At last he convinced Deborah to give up the hunt, that Donald had probably followed the mosquito swarm the night before in hopes of another insect feast. Reluctantly they turned their footsteps toward the hut. The bleakness in her eyes worried him, but any effort he made to console her he knew would be rejected.
When they arrived at the hut Herrera stood in the clearing, shifting from one fo
ot to the other as Donald pecked furiously at his toes. "Donald!” Deborah cried and ran to gather the duck in her arms.
"Where you been?” Herrera exclaimed. "I lookee everywhere! I told you no leave!” He thrust a pair of field glasses at Chase. "Lookee! Now we have trouble!”
Chase raised the binoculars and looked out to sea. In the gulf armed launches, light cruisers, and other transports, all bearing the flag with the red sun, lurked like sea serpents.
Herrera wiped at the sweat that rolled down out of the fur-lined helmet onto his brown face. "If they land, you must hide. I come back tomorrow. Maybe later, maybe before, and take you another place.”
Both watched him leave, dreading being alone with each other again. Dismally Chase wondered how much longer the two of them could keep their sanity before they tore each other apart. He watched Deborah enter the hut, noting the scornful tilt of her chin, and knew that help had to come soon. He couldn’t sleep in the same room with her without wanting her, without taking her.
But that night he found he did not have to worry about his raging lust, for chills and fever claimed his body, racking him and leaving him weak. It had been almost three months since his last bout with malaria, and he had hoped he had licked the disease with the quinine tablets Spec had gotten for him. Just maybe Deborah would, indeed bury his bones.
* * * * *
Deborah could hear Chase groan and toss on his mat. Even from the distance of inches that separated them she could feel the fever that flared off him like heat off a copra torch. Touching his scalding skin, she despaired.
She took the precious water she had boiled to desalt it and another patch from her trouser bottoms and bathed his forehead. He shook with the chills. There was no blanket, and she could only lie next to him, holding him close and cursing — him, Christina, Greg, the Japs, and everyone she could think of.
As soon as dawn came Deborah set out from the hut, leaving Chase in a restless, drenched-sweat sleep. She recalled that the bark of certain trees, particularly those with fragrant flowers like lilac blossoms, were used to make quinine. It was worth a try, she thought. She could not let Chase suffer even though she despised the bastard.
So many of the trees had fragrant flowers, but she settled on one old tree with a wrinkled bark. As she peeled away a section with the bolo, she heard distant voices — speaking in Japanese. They had come ashore during the night!
As quickly as she could run with the entrapping undergrowth, she returned to the hut. Donald hissed a welcome, but she ran past him without stopping to pat him. Chase was awake but looked much worse. Beneath the flush of the fever his usually swarthy skin was a pasty white. "We’ve visitors! The Japanese!”
He fell back on the mat. "Shit!” He opened his eyes and fixed her with a cold glare. "Get out! Now!”
She planted her hands on her hips. "No. I’m not leaving without you.”
"I’m coming,” He sighed. "But I’ll hold you up. And there’s things that need to be done here first.”
"Then I’ll do them,” she said stubbornly. "But before that I’m hiding you. Let’s go!”
"Get out of here, you dumb slut!” he roared.
She did not flinch. "I’m not leaving unless you do. I don’t give a damn about your hide, Chase Strawhand, but I need you if I am to survive in this hellhole. So the Japanese might as well take me now.”
He cursed her with every name he could think of as she half-dragged, half-pulled him down the steps and out of the clearing into the tangled web of leaves and vines. Leaving him in the concealment of a bamboo thicket that bordered on the channel of a mangrove swamp, she hurried back to the hut and collected everything that pointed to recent human habitation — the bolo, fresh fruit, sacks of rice and tea leaves, clothing. Panting, she made several trips. On her last trip she scooped up dirt and threw it in a fine spray over the floor.
In the clearing she used brush to erase the footprints. She took one last look at the place. She hoped it looked as if it had been in disuse. Her teeth tugged at her bottom lip. It had been a place, a space out of time, that she would remember until she was a very old woman who knew all of life’s secrets.
She turned to leave, and Donald, quacking, came from beneath the hut to follow her. "Oh, you silly duck!” she cried, gulping back the knot in her throat. She stooped and held it in her arms. "I can’t take you, you’ll give us away.” She buried her head against its soft feathers. "Did I tell you what delicious eggs you make, Donald?”
Relinquishing the fat duck, she began to run toward the spot she had hidden Chase. Creeping vines and sharp branches tangled about her, scratching her face and arms, and she welcomed the pain. It took her mind off Donald, and the dinner he was going to make for some Japanese soldier. Roasted duck. She thought she would throw up. That would be something she would never eat again . . . if she ever had the chance to eat again. From behind her came the muffled crashing of leaves and grass underfoot. The patrol was making its rounds back toward the beach.
"Chase?” she whispered. “Chase!” She recognized the alcove beneath the bamboo thicket and heard his groaning. She pushed away the overhanging vines and knelt beside him. He was burning up with fever and delirious again. "Oh, Chase,” she despaired. "Not now. Not now.”
From the direction of the clearing she heard Donald’s sudden indignant squawk followed by laughing shouts. "Oh, God, no!” she whimpered.
The noise increased in volume, and Deborah knew the soldiers were coming toward the hideout. And Chase was still groaning, talking about a march now. She knelt beside him and covered his mouth with hers. She could taste the saltiness and the heat.
Her brain mocked her body. There they were, facing possible discovery and death, and already her insides were quivering with the excitement that only Chase could kindle in her.
At last Deborah raised her head, shaken and spent by the passion, a passion that Chase’s lips did not echo. Apparently the soldiers had passed by unaware for in the distance now she could hear their shouts and laughter. Still, she stayed with Chase in the cave of leaves, not daring to venture out.
With a stone she ground parts of the bark she had chipped from the tree and mixed the powder with a little of the sake in the bottle’s cap. The mixture seemed to quiet Chase, and toward evening she noticed that the fever was abating. He slept the entire night, though she did not, for fear of the soldiers’ return.
With daylight she left Chase and returned to the clearing. From behind the trunk of a large mahogany tree she watched the hut, listening, waiting. When she thought it was safe, she moved into the clearing.
Suddenly a loud noise disturbed the trees and leaves behind her. Deborah spun around. Her heart hammered against her rib cage. She saw nothing. Then the leaves rustled again, and Donald waddled out of the undergrowth. "Donald!” She gathered up the quacking duck. "You weren’t dinner for them!”
By the time she returned to the hideout with the news that all was safe, Chase was sitting up, drinking the sake. "That does it!” he said. He looked at her flushed face, her heaving breasts. "We’re getting out of here! If we have to, we’ll live with the Manobos.”
She raised a brow. "What about Herrera?”
Furrows ridged Chase’s brow. Weakly he rose to his feet. "We’ll wait for his next visit. Then we move out.” Reluctantly he accepted the support of her shoulder. Between his touch and her fear of the Japanese, she didn’t know which was harder for her to endure without giving way to silly woman-weakness.
* * * * *
Those next few days were agony for Chase. Deborah’s nearness was as bad as the malaria. She had only to bend over, exposing the shadow of her cleavage, and he would break out in a sweat. The fresh, delicate scent of her filled the room, as overpowering as the jungle flowers. It was worse now that he had had her and knew of the passionate responsive woman inside her.
She knelt to light the kerosene tin, and he began to shake. One more second and he would take her like a tom panther stalks and mounts an unwill
ing feline.
Fortunately she rose, stretching and holding her arms up, hip thrust to one side. "Next time Herrera comes, let’s see if he can’t get us a wireless radio,” she said with a yawn.
Diligently Chase turned his attention to the bolo he was sharpening. Sleeping was going to be hell.
But the next time Herrera showed his helmeted face was to be the last. It was shortly before dawn, and Chase had come awake instantly. He listened and though he heard nothing, he knew something was outside. When Donald began to screech like a siren, Deborah jerked upright. Chase covered her mouth with his hand. They sat in the darkness, straining to hear, tense.
From below came, "Where are you? We go. Now. Time to go. Damn fucking duck! Hey, where are you?”
Chase began to laugh so hard his lungs seemed on the verge of collapsing. Tears of laughter streamed down Deborah’s cheeks. They staggered to the veranda. Below Herrera was kicking at the duck, which flapped its wings viciously at the intruder. "Come,” Herrera called up to them. "Hurry. We leave. No come back.”
* * * * *
When Deborah learned that an American submarine was lying offshore in the high tide, waiting to take them on, she had a sudden moment of panic. Could she face civilization again, the pressures, and the questions . . . and giving up Chase, although she knew he had never really been hers?
But she had been able to be with him, to reach out and touch him, to share those magical and miserable moments of isolation. When they left Mindanao, her relationship with Chase would not be the same as when they had come to the island. He had come as her brother and would leave as her lover.
She looked at him to find his deep black eyes regarding her. Was he feeling the same . . . or was he anxious to return to battle with the Anglo, to battle for Christina Raffin? "Let’s go, Deborah,” he said gently. "We’ve nothing to take with us.”
"Wait,” she said and pulled away. She stooped beneath the hut where Donald had retreated. "Can we take Donald with us, Herrera?” she asked, kneeling near the nesting duck.
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