Beyond Sunrise

by Candice Proctor

  For the first time since they’d met him on the beach, the frown etching lines across Patu’s forehead cleared, and he laughed.

  It was the sounds she would remember the most, India decided; the erotic, pulsing beat of the drum, and the hushed whisper of the warm wind sighing through the feathery tops of the palms, and the crackling fires, all played out against the endless boom and swish of the silver-crested surf breaking against that strange black beach.

  They feasted on prawns and crabs, and raw fish dipped in coconut milk; on taro, and pumpkin greens, and chicken wrapped in the leaves of the purau tree and baked beneath red-hot shingles and sand. Torches of dried palm fronds, wrapped together into bundles some six feet long and as big around as a man, flamed and snapped and hissed, their golden light flickering over laughing faces and bare brown arms and legs, and banana mats piled high with mangoes and bananas and oranges, guavas and baked fei and pineapples. The air was sweet with the briny tang of the sea mingling with the smell of roasted foods and the heady scent of tiare and gardenia blooming in exuberant splendor from the dark edges of the rain forest, or woven with ferns and hibiscus into wreaths.

  India was scribbling furtive notes in her book when Jack’s hand closed over hers, stopping her. “Write about it later,” he said, the firelight dancing warm and golden over the angles of his face as he leaned into her. “But for now, just enjoy it.”

  She glanced beyond him, to where two lines of female impersonators bedecked in white tiare blossoms and wearing grass skirts over their pareus were going through a bizarre parody of a French gavotte, taught to them by some long-ago, well-intentioned, but ultimately unsuccessful missionary bent on replacing the lusty native dances with something considered to be more sedate and proper. “I can record what I’m seeing and still enjoy it,” she said, as the young men, their faces earnest and serious, the fringed pandanus around their ankles and wrists flaring, executed flawless pirouettes.

  “But you can’t write and dance at the same time.” He drew her up with him, her notebook sliding off her lap into the sand.

  “I’m the wrong sex,” she said with a laugh.

  “No, you’re not.” He nodded beyond her, to where a circle of giggling men and women was forming. The serious young men executed their last pirouette, bowed to each other, then broke away laughing. Hands began to beat the hard-packed sand, pounding out an ancient, primitive rhythm joined by the tap of drumsticks of braided husk fiber against blocks carved from coconut trunks.

  “I can’t do this,” India said, her stomach fluttering with panic as he drew her into the circle.

  He slipped a wreath of tiare and sweet ferns over her head, and brushed her lips with a quick kiss. “Yes you can.”

  Hands undulating like the waves of a tropical sea, feet shuffling sideways, the laughing circle of men and women shifted to the right, slowly at first, then faster as the beat picked up, became louder, more insistent. Thrum, thrum went the drums as India circled forward, then back again, Jack at her side, guiding her with a gentle touch, encouraging her with a smile. She felt her body search for the rhythm, find it. She stopped watching her feet. Her hair slipped from its neat chignon to fall in wind-tossed curls about her face, but she didn’t care.

  Turning her head, she watched the man beside her. She watched the way the trades ruffled the worn cloth of his shirt, the way his neck arched when he threw back his head and laughed. The torches cast enticing, mysterious patterns of golden light and dark shadow across the strong bones of his face, and it was as if something shifted within her, and broke free.

  The sand whispered warm and soft beneath her moving feet. The breeze felt gentle and fragrant against her cheek, the air sweet with the scents of sea and rain forest. She drew in a deep breath, drew it all in, until it flowed into her and she reached out to it, became a part of it—a part of the darkly undulating sea and the palm trees waving gently against the star-spangled tropical sky. She was a part of this place, and it was a part of her. She heard the beat of the drums, felt Jack catch her shoulders, swinging her to face him. Their gazes caught, and held.

  Slowly, their gazes still locked, they moved as one, hands clutching hands, hips undulating erotically, suggestively together. The features of his face were sharp, stark, the glow in his eyes fierce, almost predatory. She heard the drums pound louder, faster, their beat primeval, insistent, with a savage sexuality that entered her blood, pulsed through her, through them both. His hands tightened around hers, swinging her halfway about to pull her sharply back against him, her spine pressing against the hard length of him, his arms folded across her breasts, holding her close. Over her shoulder, her gaze met his again. She saw the flash of his smile in the flaring of the torchlight, felt the warmth of his breath against her cheek. The beat of the drums mingled with the crash of the surf and the haunting, unearthly wail of the conch shell. And she thought, This is life. This is life as in the past I might have recorded it, written about it. But I never lived it. Not until now.

  “I want you,” he whispered, his lips just inches from hers.

  “Yes,” she said simply.

  Gently, his hands cradled her cheeks, urging her around until she faced him. She thought he might kiss her. Instead he said, “There’s something I want you to see,” and his lips twitched up into a lopsided smile that creased his cheek and stole her heart all over again.

  Chapter Thirty

  THEY CLIMBED THE hillside above the village, following a hibiscus- and fern-shadowed path worn smooth by countless centuries of bare feet.

  India kept teasing him, trying to worm out of him what it was he was taking her to see, but he only ducked his head in that Aussie way he had of smiling up at her with his eyes, and saying nothing.

  The path led to a low, moon-bathed headland that curved out into the darkness of the ocean and protected the bay below from the worst of the surf that crashed itself into a white froth on the rocks of the windward cliffs. On its gentler, leeward side, the promontory was mostly of grass, with only scattered tamanos, and here and there, the vermilion blossoms of the delicate, fern-like poinciana trees, just coming into flower.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, going to stand on the far side, where the land fell away in a dizzying precipice to the sea-bashed rocks below, and the trades blew wild and free, and she could see nothing but the black undulations of the sea and a universe of brilliant stars that seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Yes, it is.” He came up behind her, his hands warm on her shoulders as he urged her around to face the end of the cape. “But that’s not what I brought you to see.”

  She saw it now. Bold and proud and unabashedly masculine, it jutted up from the very tip of the cape. As she drew closer, she could see that it had been carved— deliberately, skillfully carved—from a hard red granite, its head swollen and round and cloven like a devil’s hoof, its shaft long and straight, thrusting some eight to ten feet up into the air.

  “Good heavens,” said India, pausing at its base. “It’s a giant phallus.”

  She walked all around it, careful not to get too close to the cliff’s edge, then twisted to look back at him. “However did you find this?”

  He came to stand beside her, his head tipping back as he stared up at the statue’s huge, red head. “Patu told me about it this afternoon. He figures the Reverend Watson must not know about it, or he’d have had the islanders toss it into the sea by now.”

  India sighed, her head, like his, tipping back as she stared up at the monstrous erection. “It’s one of the things making my investigation into the origins of the Polynesians so difficult. Most of the ancient stone statues have been smashed, or at least thrown down. And it’s even worse on those islands where the carving tradition was in wood. There, they simply burned everything.”

  She wanted to reach out and touch the stone, but found she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it. Instead she said, “Does Patu know what it was used for?”

  Jack shook his head. “No. Navigation
, maybe?”

  India nodded. “The ancient Greeks had signposts they called Hermae, after the god of travelers. At first, actual statues of the god were used, but eventually they were simply stylized into straight pillars.” A naughty smile curved her lips. “Only the peculiarly male portion of the god’s anatomy continued to be rendered realistically.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Jack, his gaze no longer on the statue, but on her. “It pointed the way?”

  India laughed. “Yes, it did. Unfortunately, the early Christians went around and defaced every Hermes they could find.”

  “I think the word you want is castrated.”

  India looked at him. He stood with his back to the wind, so that it molded the worn cloth of his shirt about the hard, strong length of his torso and fluttered the ends of his dark hair against the tanned skin of his throat. He was smiling at her, the kind of smile that barely curved his lips, but warmed his eyes with an inner glow that spoke of a man’s admiration, and a man’s desire.

  Feeling suddenly shy and a little anxious, she glanced again at the huge red phallus. “It’s very big,” she said, her throat so tight, the words quivered slightly on their way out.

  “Does it scare you?”

  She met his gaze. She heard the surf break against the rocks far below, an endless crash and boom that mingled with the primeval beat of the drums drifting up from the luau on the beach. The wind gusted around them, its caress a warm, sweet whisper of all things wild and exotic and unknown. And still their gazes held, and it came to her that never had she felt closer to anyone than she did to this man, in this moment; that no one had ever known her—really known her—the way he knew her, the way he had always known her.

  Reaching out, she took his hand, and put it on her breast. Her gaze never left his. “I’m not afraid,” she said, and smiled.

  He undressed her slowly, standing there at the cape’s end, where land met sea and sky in a tumult of crashing breakers and gusting wind. He unbuttoned the tucked front of her man’s shirt, his fingers trembling slightly when he eased the fine linen from her shoulders and arms.

  “You’re shaking,” she said.

  He laughed, his breath warm against her ear as he reached for the waistband of her split skirt. “I’m trembling with impatience. What I’d like to do—” He shoved the tartan down over her hips. “—is tear every last stitch right off you.”

  “You can’t.” She kicked away her boots and stockings. “I don’t have any other clothes. If I lose these, I’ll be reduced to wearing one of the islander’s grass skirts.”

  His lips curved into that rascal’s smile she loved, the one that lit up his face and made her feel all warm and tingly and naughty inside. “Don’t tempt me.”

  Wearing only her chemise and drawers, India took a step back. She was trembling now, as well, every fiber of her being aware of his hard, hot gaze upon her as she tugged open the ties at the front of her chemise and pulled it over her head. The warm trade winds gusted around her, caressed the bare, moonlit flesh of her arms and breasts. She hesitated only a moment, then loosed the waistband of her drawers and let them fall in a soft white flutter to her feet.

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispered, his chest lifting as he sucked in a deep, half-hitching breath. And in that moment, she did feel beautiful. Beautiful and desirable and very much a woman. His woman.

  “Now it’s your turn,” she said, her voice husky, hushed.

  He went to work on the buttons of his shirt, his cheek creasing with a crooked smile as he glanced up at her. “You’ve seen me before.”

  “I know. But in the past, I always tried not to look.”

  “Huh.” He stripped off his shirt, the muscles of his arms and chest bunching beguilingly as he went to work on his trousers. “That’s not the way I remember it.”

  She laughed, because while it was true that she had tried not to look, it was also true that she hadn’t succeeded as well as she ought. She watched him shove his trousers down over his lean, naked hips, watched the muscles in his bare brown back flex as he straightened again, and the laughter died on her parted lips.

  He reached for her, his palm cupping the base of her head to draw her into him. She went to him, her naked body pressing close up against his, her face buried into the curve of his neck as he hugged her close and held her for a moment. Just held her.

  He smelled of the night, and the sea, and himself. Her hands gripped his shoulders, then opened, her splayed fingers and palms gliding over smooth, tanned skin, hard muscle. She touched him with reverence, awe even. She was greedy for the feel of him, wondrous with the delight of touching, and being touched.

  For as she touched him, he touched her. He touched her everywhere, with his hands, and his lips. And then, laying her down on the pile of their clothes, he touched her with his tongue, touched her where she’d never even touched herself. He sucked her breasts into his mouth, and smiled up at her with his eyes when she gasped, and gasped again. Then his dark hair slid across her belly, and she lost herself in the magic of his tongue and his lips and the gentle, probing knowledge of his fingers.

  When he finally lifted his head and stared up at her, she found the sharp, hungry look of arousal on his face frightening, and yet exciting at the same time. A deep and powerful longing filled her, the need to join her body to his, to join herself to him, to hold him in her arms. To hold him in her life, forever.

  She reached for him, drew him up to her, her knees bending and falling apart wide as he covered her with his hard man’s body. Much of his weight he took on his forearms, his elbows bracketing the sides of her head as he brushed her hair from her sweat-dampened forehead, and kissed her cheek, and whispered sweet endearments in her ear. God, I love you. Love you, love you . . .

  He shifted his weight, and she could feel his hardness pressing smooth and hot against her. She saw his jaw tighten, saw his lips curl back from his clenched teeth. Then he pushed himself inside her.

  She gasped, then let out a soft whimpering noise when he drew himself partially out and thrust in again, harder, deeper, stretching her, filling her. “Easy, sweetheart,” he whispered, his body stilling as he held himself poised above her. He kissed her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her lips. She could feel his rapid heartbeat, thundering in his chest, hear the jagged catch of his rough breathing. “Does it hurt?”

  “No,” she whispered, although she was, in truth, in a breathless torment. Yet this was not the dry, tearing pain she’d known in the past, but a burning, clenching ache that was more like an unfulfilled need, a wanting that was curling up tighter and tighter, deep within her. She slid her hands around his bare sides, held his body close to hers. “Don’t stop. Please . . . Don’t stop.”

  His gaze locked with hers, he began to move, a slow thrust and drag that stole her breath and made her heart swell with a love so tender, it brought tears to her eyes. Then he dipped his head, and his lips took hers in a sweet and gentle kiss that caught fire as the tempo of their bodies increased. Above them, the night sky reeled in a breathless swirl of sparkling stars. She heard the distant, savage beat of the drums, and the violence of the rock-dashed surf, far below.

  With a groan, he tore his mouth from hers, his hands twisting in her hair, his thumbs tipping her head back so that he could kiss her neck, and she had to bite her lower lip to keep from screaming with pleasure and need. Somehow, her fingers interlaced with his, her arms stretching high over her head as she reached, reached for something she didn’t even understand, something that kept eluding her, enticing her.

  Squirming, she wrapped her legs around his waist, drawing him deeper, deeper within her. She felt his breath blowing against the sweat-dampened flesh of her throat in quick, harsh gasps. Felt his hand reach down between them, his palm pressing against her woman’s mound, pressing her between the hardness of his hand and the pounding hardness of his man’s body. And the pleasure was so exquisite then that she did scream, her hands clutching his sweat-slicked shoulders as he w
hirled her away to a place where pleasure and pain exploded together in a pounding, pulsing, endless rush of ecstasy.

  The morning sunlight, spilling across the ocean from the east, awakened her.

  India opened her eyes, a smile touching her lips as she found herself staring at Jack’s hard, tanned chest, lifting gently with his slow, even breaths. She lay with her head nestled in the curve of his shoulder, his arm holding her close, her body pressed against the warm length of him. They had fallen asleep here, at the very tip of the cape, with the moonlight soft on their naked bodies and the trade winds warm about them. She knew that he had slept, slept soundly in her arms, because once, during the night, she had come awake and propped herself up on her elbow so that she could look at him.

  She had stayed like that for the longest time, letting her gaze rove over the sharp, beautiful bones of his face, the curve of his lips. She had looked at him, and felt a sweet ache swell within her, an ache that was part wanting, and part the sadness that comes when the soul glimpses something it secretly yearns for, yet knows can never be.

  She’d been so lost in her own thoughts that it had been a moment before she’d realized that his eyes had opened, and he was looking at her. “What are you doing?” he said, his voice a soft caress.

  “Watching you sleep.”

  He smiled, and reached for her. “I’m not sleeping anymore.”

  And so she had gone, again, into his arms. And he had shown her that there was still much she had to learn about the joys shared between a man and a woman. She’d learned that she could give pleasure as well as receive it, and what a heartwarming delight that could be. She’d learned that lovemaking can be hot and hungry, as well as sweet and tender. And she’d learned that she could hold this man in her arms for the rest of eternity, and it wouldn’t be long enough.

  Now, with the sun shining down warm and bright upon them, she twisted around so that she could look over the bulge of his strong arm, toward the bay where the Sea Hawk lay at anchor far below.