Dee was having a nightmare. The world was on fire and she was burning up, her body being eaten by flames and she could hear the beat of the death march.
Boom, boom, boom.
She jerked awake and tried to open her eyes but they were glued together. The booming sound was louder, and after a couple of confused seconds she realised it was inside her head. She felt dizzy. Sick.
"It's all right. You're safe," someone said from beside her. A man. His voice was soft and reassuring but she didn't recognize it.
"Where…? Who…?" she rasped, her voice not working either. In alarm, she tried reach up and feel her throat but her hands merely twitched at her sides. Why didn't they move? And her eyes. She strained the eyelids again. Why didn't they open?
"My… eyes." Panic welled up inside her.
"You have a compress over your eyes," the man said and she felt a touch against it. "You've been weakened by dehydration and exposure. You need fluids."
Something of the calm in his voice seeped through to her but it wasn't enough to quell her mounting terror. When she felt a touch against her lips she flinched, instinctively jerking her head away. The booming grew louder, drowning out every other thought.
"It's only a straw," he said. "You have to drink."
But she couldn't. The pain overwhelmed her and she passed out.
The next time she woke, he was quicker. The straw prodded her lips straight away.
"You have to drink or you're going to die," he said, and Dee felt so bad she was sure it must be true.
She mouthed a couple of times, like a gold fish, and managed to capture the straw. Her throat felt tight and sick but she forced herself to suck, gulping the liquid down before her stomach could protest.
"Small sips," he warned, but she was already drifting off. Her lips slid away from the straw as her head fell to the side, the last mouthful going down in a convulsive gulp as the blackness closed in on her.
Again and again she woke from the nightmare to find the soothing voice beside her, always ready with the straw. She would sip a little or a lot, depending on how long her consciousness lasted. There was no sense of real-time passing.
Gradually, though, she noticed things in her brief periods of awareness.
Her body was covered in something damp and cool — something lighter than the compress that covered her eyes. And there was a musty smell in the air, like drying herbs. Definitely not the antiseptic environment of a hospital.
Was it possible then that she was still in Never Land? It was almost too much to hope for. But she did hope, knowing it gave her reason to live. She needed that now.
She was obviously very sick, but she tried to stay calm. The man was caring for her. There was little she could do except obey his instructions. Drink the water and rest. She did as she was told.
But there came a time when she drank from the straw and felt different. Her headache wasn't as blinding and she could move her hands a little. It was a turning point. Relief flowed through her like a drug.
He must have noticed. "Is that a smile?"
"I'm not…" Her voice was croaky but it worked. "I'm not going to die."
"Feeling better?"
"Yes. But weak."
"You will for a while. But that's good." He was silent for a moment, then said, "Can we talk?"
The urgency in his voice surprised her. "Of course."
"I need to know who did this to you?"
Dee frowned under the compress. "Did what?"
"Don't you remember?" There was another silence where Dee merely waited, having no idea what he was talking about. Finally he said, "I found you tied to a raft, floating out past the point."
"Tied to a raft?" she repeated the words, trying to make them fit inside her mind. They didn't want to. "Why would someone tie me — "
"To kill you."
"To kill me?" she parroted again, unable to grasp the concept. "But… I'd thought I was just… sick."
“At some stage the sail fell and covered you," he continued quietly, as though in deference to her shock. "It protected you from the worst of the sun and probably saved your life."
She shook her head. "Who would want to kill me?"
"You don't remember?"
Dee struggled to, fear driving her mind, but the harder she tried the more her head hurt. Her fingers twitched and she felt the panic returning. "I can't," she choked.
"It's important — "
But the familiar slide into blackness was already starting and she simply let go, spiraling down until the comforting nothingness enfolded her.
The next time she woke, she dutifully drank the sweetened water, then pre-empted his questions by asking one her own.
"This isn't a hospital, is it?"
There was a pause. "No. Not a hospital."
"I didn't think so." She couldn't keep the relief out of her voice. Once had been enough. "Then where — "
"I need to know who did this to you," he cut over her.
"And I need to know where I am," she persisted, frustrated by the compress. "Just tell me. Am I still on the island?"
There was another pause. "Which island?"
Dee was determined to keep her hopes alive. "Never Land," she said bravely, and held her breath. It was a long time before he answered.
"Yes. You are yet within Peter's control."
Her tensed shoulders sagged with relief. "Thank God!"
"You are faithful to Peter." It was half-question, half-observation, but Dee was too euphoric to bother searching his words for motives.
"He's my God," she replied simply, then smiled to herself. "So perhaps I should be saying 'Thank Peter'."
Her rescuer made no comment on that, so her train of thought continued uninterrupted. As it did, her smile became dreamy. "He sees even the smallest sparrow fall," she said with the authority of complete faith in her voice. "And rather than let it die he sends his angel to rescue it."
She visualized Peter, as well as she could remember him — the hypnotic green eyes — seated on a vast marble throne sending forth this faceless guardian to pluck her from certain death and nurture her in the warmth of his cozy…
The compress frustrated her. She wished she could see.
"That's an interesting interpretation," the man beside her said dryly, "But I'm not an angel, and though you might be thinner for your ordeal, you don't fit the sparrow category either." This last was said appraisingly and Dee wondered which parts of her he was assessing.
She realised then that her temporary sightlessness could be exciting, now that the element of fear had been removed.
"You're from Peter, though," she said, then asked, "Are you to be my Champion…?" before stopping herself. What of Xavion? He was to have been her Champion. Yet someone had tried to kill her, and were it not for this man, they would have succeeded.
Her rescuer obviously had the same thought. "It appears you are in need of a Champion," he said.
"But Xavion — "
"Missing." They were silent for a moment before he added, "Mayhap he died trying to save you."
"No." She shook her head. "He can't have died." That thought was more upsetting than her own near-fatality. Not Xavion. Not her poet-warrior.
"Or, mayhap he's the traitor…" her rescuer speculated.
"No," she said again, louder this time. "Xavion wouldn't hurt me."
"Not even at Peter's order?"
That confused her. "I don't know. Do you think — "
"No. Peter has been away from the island these past few weeks," he reassured her. "But he'll soon return. And when he does, he'll be an angry God."
They were both silent then, nursing their own thoughts before he said, "Peter will want to know what you remember of your ordeal. Can you speak of it?"
She shrugged. "I don't know that I remember much," but she obediently cast her mind back to a starting place. The concentration required wasn't as painful this time. "The last thing I remember clearly…" she said, reviving the scene inside her mind, "…was being with one of the mermaids. Sasha."
Dee waited for some recognition but he merely said, "Go on."
Was it possible he'd never met the mermaids? Skye hadn't known of the Lost Boys. Perhaps Peter kept them all separate.
"You were with a mermaid," her new Champion prompted.
"Yes. Sasha." Dee cleared her throat and he pressed the straw to her lips. She took a sip, then went on, "We were in the pavilion beside the lagoon and she was dancing."
"You were alone?"
"Yes we were." Dee tried to remember the details. "Skye had left in a huff an hour earlier and Zoe, that's Sasha's… friend, had gone outside. I think she was swimming in the lagoon."
"Go on."
"Very well." Dee licked her lips, aware of a heated blush creeping up her chest as she considered the explicit nature of what followed. "Sasha was dancing, as I said," she cleared her throat, striving to keep her voice even, "and I was watching her. It was a belly dance. With veils. And she took them off one by one. I was on a bed of cushions looking up at her while she… moved… above me."
The memory of that sinuous body with its slow gyrations gradually transformed Dee's blush into a different kind of heat. She remembered her infatuation with the dusky beauty. The desperation of her desire. Those kohled eyes, so limpid Dee had wanted to drown in them. And the jewels glittering against her matt, cafe-au-lait skin.
"She was beautiful," Dee sighed, reliving the dance inside her mind, each glide of those perfectly contoured arms, each roll of those bewitching breasts. "Her scent was so exotic it was dizzying. And as those veils dropped I felt the most incredible languor come over me. As though — "
"You were drugged. What did they give you?" he cut in and Dee was startled at the sound of his voice. She'd forgotten he was listening, she’d been so immersed in the memory.
"Some sort of wine," she said, trying to refocus. "But only one glass."
"And the last thing you remember is watching this woman dancing?"
"Yes. No. She finished dancing and…" Dee should have been embarrassed, but the memory of Sasha's voluptuous body beneath hers, the taste and texture of her skin — like licking orchid petals, the way she'd caressed Dee's breasts with handfuls of her thick, lustrous hair -
"You fell asleep?"
Dee found her chest rising and falling. She couldn't think. Her mind was full of the experience of Sasha, the scent of her, the weight of her breasts pressing onto Dee's. "Yes. I… must have," she stammered.
"It's all right," he said softly, obviously mistaking her quickened breathing for anxiety. "You're safe here. We won't talk of it again."
"Good. I didn't…" She swallowed a couple of times, unsure whether her light-headedness was from arousal or impending unconsciousness.
He pressed the straw to her lips and she sipped the cooling liquid.
"I feel dizzy," she murmured, her head lolling to the side.
"Sleep now. We can talk again later," he said, and she felt herself drifting off. But it wasn't the slide into blackness she'd come to expect. This was a floating feeling. A not-quite sleep. A limbo.
And through it she heard faint noises, felt the covering being taken off her. Cold air touched her skin and she felt her body shiver.
"It's all right, my little waif," he crooned, as though to a cat. Or to someone he thought was unconscious. "You won't feel a thing."
But she did. She felt a cold touch on her stomach, followed by the warmth of a large hand.
"I just need to soothe this sunburn," he murmured as he worked some sort of cream up over her ribs and onto her breasts. Even in her dream-like state, the sudden shafts of pleasure arrowing from behind her nipples caught her off guard. She made a whimpering pleasure noise.
"Too hard?" he said to himself. "I'll have to be gentler."
Dee was sure if his touch was any lighter she'd faint from the amount of excruciating pleasure it produced. Her head was clearing rapidly but she kept the knowledge to herself, straining to breathe evenly as though asleep.
A faint scent of coconut drifted up to her as his fingertips smoothed the cream over her breasts and up to her shoulders. It stung and felt like so many little flames licking at her skin. Then the exquisite torture slid down the length of her arms to her hands.
She concentrated on her breathing.
"Rope burns are healing," he observed, carefully avoiding her wrists, but Dee barely heard him. The sensation of cream being massaged between her fingers and into her palms made her toes curl. She moaned again.
"Still hurting?"
Dee knew he expected no answer.
His hands slid back up to her shoulders, where he stroked the delicate skin of her neck, moving up onto her face where his large fingertips were surprisingly deft. His thumb brushed some cream across her cracked lips and she felt the tingle shoot straight down to her loins where it stirred up all manner of volcanic reactions.
Another dollop of cream landed on her stomach and she tensed. He spread it over her hips, heading down her legs, gliding, massaging, all the way to her ankles. It was all she could do to keep her breathing shallow and quiet.
Then he massaged cream between her toes and she started to squirm. She couldn't help it. Her nipples were so hard they hurt.
"Nearly finished," he said softly, but Dee didn't want it to finish. Her head pounded, but below it her body throbbed. Between her thighs was hot and liquid, and every touch of his hand was transferred there along her tingling nerves.
Working the cream back up her legs, his fingertips strayed to the sensitive skin behind her knees. She saw sparks behind her closed eyes and realised she was panting. There was nothing she could do to stop herself now. She'd be begging soon if he didn't…
His hands were sliding back up her thighs, the fingertips curved outside her hips, the thumbs trailing the inside of her legs, and it was too much for her. The unexpected intimacy of his touch and his belief that she was unaware of it, was a fantasy within the fantasy and she gave herself over to it.
An inarticulate noise welled up in her throat — a primitive signal of her need. Somehow she managed to part her legs. A little. Enough to catch his attention.
His hands stopped and held, right where they were. Just short of where she wanted them to be, where the pounding need was louder than the pain behind her eyes. She felt delirious.
"Hot," she managed to murmur, all pretence forgotten as she waited on his reaction.
The silence in the room throbbed and Dee held her breath, her heart pounding almost as loudly as her head. How would his massage end? It was obvious by the confidence of his touch that this wasn't the first time he'd taken such liberties with her body.
"I know what you need, my little wanderer," he said, and she felt one large hand begin to slide up the last few inches, so slowly it felt as though time halted to watch its passage. Her body was taut, like a drum waiting for the first Congo beat.
Then his thumb eased into the pulsing vortex and she shuddered, her breath catching in her throat. "I won't let you go hungry," he said, and Dee gasped in approval. A moment later she was moaning. He was good. He knew exactly where to touch and how.
The pain in her head was completely forgotten as her body responded to his masterful touch. Within the space of a minute she was over the top. Fireworks were exploding inside her mind and she was spiraling down into the darkness again.
This time, with a smile of gratitude on her lips.
Long Shadow sat back pensively, watching her for minutes before he reached forward to recover her with the sheet. His body felt light like the smoke of a fire, swirling with the winds of excitement she'd awoken in him. But his heart was heavy with the knowledge that he’d misjudged her.
This woman was not a manipulative whore, and neither was she a knowing accomplice of DeMartande's. She appeared to be nothing more than a victim. And DeMartande, like a crack dealer reeling in a junkie, was binding her to him by the addictions he'd fostered in her. Addictions he had total control over.
Worse, she appeared to be a willing victim. An acolyte to her 'God'. The same God who had hired Long Shadow as his token 'Redskin' — to service her sexual needs. Soon DeMartande would discover there were many levels to his 'play', and not all of them to his liking. Until then, Long Shadow knew he must act with caution. Yet the days of caring for Wendee had stirred in him a very incautious sentiment.
Despite the precariousness of his own position, he found himself wanting to champion her, not only against whomever had tried to kill her, but against DeMartande himself. He wanted to rescue her. To rehabilitate her. Which was beyond madness.
Exasperated with himself, he turned to look out through the opened doorway of his replica hide dwelling, into the darkness beyond.
He was losing his objectivity.
The strong protective urges that had seen him serve honorably as a bodyguard would be fatal in this environment. He had to remember his purpose, to remove a threat that endangered a multitude. That far outweighed his responsibility to this one. He must forget the tapes Xavion had shown him of her encounters with DeMartande's 'Lost Boys'. Watching her come alive in the arms of one lover after another… No man could help but be moved by the rawness of her sexuality, yet even as he'd watched, a subtle revulsion — a thought that she was nothing more than a wanton sensation seeker — had overlaid his fascination.
Until he'd seen her with DeMartande's young technician, her 'gypsy boy' Christophe. A gentleness had come over her then, a tender regard for the boy's obvious infatuation that had moved Long Shadow deeply. She had looked on the boy as though he was more precious to her than life itself, and at that moment a longing like the lonely cry of the wind through the trees had filled Long Shadow's heart.
Before he’d even met her he’d ached to have her look at him that way. And yet he’d feared it. He feared her eyes.
They were covered now, but as he turned back to her he still felt the sexual pull she exerted, even in sleep. Despite her disheveled appearance — or perhaps because of it — her whole being, even at rest radiated sensuality, as though her addiction was externalized to advertise its needs.
Her lips were softly pouted and seemed purpose designed to close over a man's sex. Her skin was hungry, drawing the touch. And the way she'd responded to his caresses had stirred him.
Dangerously.
He imagined himself lying over her and spreading her legs, thrusting himself into the slippery softness he'd explored. She'd told the truth when she'd said it was hot there. Hot and hungry. The avaricious flesh had closed over his fingers like the lips of a fellatress, sucking at them and warming them to her feverish level, coating them with her own essence, tricking his mind into thinking it was not his fingers they had captured, but the hard flesh that even now pressed insistently against his breech-clout.
Through the thin sheet he could see the outline of her breasts and the slight mound that fell away to parted legs. Her breaths were gentle, rhythmic, her body limp like a life-sized doll. A doll that for a short time was his to do with as he chose.
As long as she remained unhurt, he could satisfy himself with her in ways only limited by his imagination.
One possibility saw him ripping the sheet off to grind her into the fur on which she lay, but Long Shadow knew his body would resist that temptation, powerful though it might be. He wanted it to be different between them, for their lovemaking to be of the senses, the intellect, the soul, not the mere production of involuntary muscle spasms DeMartande had hired him for. Yet that would require a vulnerability that once offered, would bind him to her in ways that terrified him.
When his mission was completed he would leave. There was no question of that. As would she, but not with him.
To Wendee, he was just another fantasy. A 'redskin' lover to pad out her adventure. For his sanity's sake, he'd do well to remember that.
The sensible path would be to keep her at arms length. To fulfill his job description by satisfying her sexually, and perhaps it would be best to continue exactly as he had begun, with no involvement of his own arousal. The denial would be bittersweet, but the alternative was the carving up of his soul. He couldn't allow himself to fall in love with her. It would be suicide. Literally.
But as he stood and moved to the entrance of his lodge, he heard her sigh behind him and the sound held him inside. He imagined her moving in her sleep, her lips parting at a pleasurable memory, those soft lips that were so familiar to him he already knew how they would taste.
And how that savoring would affect him.
He should resolve never to taste them. But if he turned back now, if he removed the sheet and lay with her, those lips would be his to devour. The body would invite him to pleasures he knew he'd never find with another. And her eyes, the eyes of his dreams, would give him the peace his aching soul demanded.
Agonising seconds ticked by as he lingered at the opening, searching himself for the courage to step through it and walk away from her. It seemed all but impossible, yet he did it, and by the time he'd reached the nearby stand of trees he felt some reassurance that he had control — that his legs wouldn't turn him back and make a lie of his resolutions.
But the relief of his escape would be short lived. Tomorrow, she would be well enough to rise. The compress would come off, and the true test of his inner strength would begin. He'd have to become the whore he'd thought her to be, touching her body with no feelings other than that of a duty fulfilled.
Such was his destiny, but the knowledge of what could have been between them tore through the emptiness of his heart with such pain that he thought it would break.