"I have to go." Long Shadow said for the fourth time, lifting his head. Then he lowered it, his hands tangling in her hair, holding her still for his kiss. Another long, deep, desperate kiss.
Lying beneath him, Dee could feel the resurgence of his recently depleted erection. She reached between their bodies to stroke it, encouraging its growth. "But I want you to come," she teased, capturing his eyes, drinking the adoration that burned in them. "I want you to live inside me like this forever," she said, and despite his anxious frown, she guided his solid flesh inside herself again, where it was slippery and still hot from their last coupling.
"I'm going to die like this," he sighed, bending his head to kiss her as his hips, naked and glistening from the exertion of their lovemaking, started to move against her.
"So am I," she whispered against his lips. "We can die together."
He paused, his hands tightening in her hair. "You're not going to die," he told her, and kissed her fiercely.
She kissed back, her fingernails biting into his firm buttocks, then spreading to stroke the skin in tiny conciliatory circles. "Did that hurt?" she breathed. "Will I kiss it better?" She stretched, her hands dipping lower to stroke the insides of his thighs as her tongue slid wetly across the top of his chest.
He groaned, his hips moving with new urgency.
"I love your taste," she said, her tongue working its way back up to his throat. "I love what it does to me."
Her head fell back and she stared up into his eyes, the silky curtain of his hair enclosing them in an intimate world of their own. A world where there was no 'outside', only the sound of their breaths, the taste of each other, and eyes. Dee found if she gazed into his eyes as he made love to her, something built inside her. Not just the orgasm that eventually shook her body. But something else. The thing that made her never want to let him go — that made her want to touch him all the time, to stroke his body, to run her fingers through his long hair and to hold him as she was now.
Her hands moved up to his shoulders, her fingers testing the strength of the bunched muscles beneath his burnished skin. "I love the way you feel," she said, still staring into his eyes. "I love the feel of you inside me."
His mouth lowered to touch hers but he didn't kiss her. He was straining to hold back the orgasm she could feel cresting inside him. But she wanted him to come — wanted his pleasure more than her own now. It was tied in with the feeling.
Wrapping her arms around his shoulders, she pulled him down onto herself, his broad chest rubbing against her breasts as she ground her pelvis up into him. "Conquer me," she whispered into his hair. "Make me your woman, Long Shadow."
" Yes. " His back arched, and with a final satisfying thrust, he filled her with the very stuff of life itself. And she clung to him, with her hands, her thighs, revelling in the feel of it pulsing into her. Exhausted, he slumped against her, his lips at her throat.
It should have been a joyous moment, an acceptance of the ultimate gift of his love, but for the first time she felt a pang of sadness intrude on their lovemaking.
This precious seed — genetic template for the beautiful man who lay in her arms, was wasted in her barren womb. She could give him her body but she could never give him a child, and in a flash of insight she understood this feeling that had grown in her with the touching, the caring, and the longing.
A tightness constricted her throat and when he raised his head to kiss her goodbye she could only manage a wavering smile.
"Are you unsatisfied, my love?" he asked, kissing her again.
She shook her head, whispered, "You have to go." But he was kissing his way down her neck to her breasts and despite her sadness she felt the tumult stir in her again. His hair drifted in a soft caress over her chest as his mouth awoke first one nipple, then the other. "Belle's waiting," she said faintly, but he was kissing down her stomach, parting her legs, and she let herself be distracted, writhing under his knowing tongue.
His fierce lovemaking had sensitised the delicate flesh and it responded to the slightest pressure with wild pulses of pleasure that filled her mind until she could think of nothing but the coming explosion.
"You are my woman," she heard him say as she teetered on the edge. "There will be no other."
"Yes. Yes," she panted, her hips unashamedly pushing up for the trigger that would release her orgasm. "No other. Please."
He rose above her and through a haze of arousal he appeared as a dark angel, a messenger from her God delivering his ultimate truth.
She felt a slight pressure as the tip of his penis entered her but his hand, restraining her hips, kept them from pushing up to claim the pleasure she was a breath away from.
"Tell me you love me," he commanded. Their eyes, inches apart, were locked.
"I… love you," she said. "From the moment I — "
His lips dived onto hers as he plunged into her and with that first thrust she was there, gasping his breath as the orgasm took her. But he continued to drive into her, the thrusts that followed setting off aftershocks that fed on each other and he was kissing her and touching her and she was delirious with the sensations that all melded into one like a carnival ride where you're screaming so hard you don't even realise it's over.
But finally she did realise it was over. She became aware of Long Shadow's body heavy against hers and the sound of their panting.
She licked her lips and swallowed in a dry throat. "I don't think there's any question of my satisfaction now," she said.
Long Shadow's reply was to roll off and sit with his back to her.
She touched it, unable to stop herself, her fingers gliding over the smooth flesh, wanting to taste it but too limp and sated to raise her head.
"I shouldn't have done that," he said.
She knew what he meant, but answered, "I'm glad you did."
"No… Not that." He turned to look at her, frowning when he saw her smile. "You know what I mean. I had no right to ask for such a declaration. Not then. I made it… meaningless."
She shrugged. "Ask me now."
"You make a game of it."
"I'm serious. Ask me now."
"If you know your reply — "
"I don't know until you ask me properly," she said, "Now, with no distractions."
He looked at her for a long moment, then glanced away, such confusion in his eyes that Dee wanted to pull him down into her arms and forget everything else. But this was important to him. It was important to her too, she realised.
"I don't have the courage," he said finally, and forced his eyes back to hers. "I can kill a man with my bare hands but I don't have the courage to ask for your love." He glanced away again. "I don't even know if I deserve it."
"You deserve it," she said, and pulled him down to her for a deep, sensuous kiss.
By the time they'd finished Dee knew it was only the serious nature of their conversation that kept him from her body. And even as he broke away it was in a series of smaller, abridges kisses.
"You know the tender of my desires," he said huskily. "I have spoken to you of my love."
"Never Land love?" she asked, looking up at him, a sad smile on her lips. "Magic love?"
He shook his head. "There is no magic in my love, save that which I feel in your arms. It is the steadfast love of a man for his woman. A love that will not die with this body," he said and touched his chest.
Dee laid her hand over his. "Then ask me again."
He looked into her eyes. Seconds ticked over.
"Ask it, my love," she whispered, the endearment falling from her lips so easily she wanted to say it again and again.
"Am I… your love?" he asked, his eyes like those of a small boy not daring to believe his wish could come true.
She nodded, thrilled to be able to give him this gift. The gift of her love. A gift she hadn't known she had to give.
"Then will you, Wendee, leave the tribe of Peter and be my woman, to love no other?" His hand held hers tight against his chest, their fingers entwined.
Her heart willed her to say yes — to trust herself to this man whose love for her was strong enough to overcome any obstacles.
But she didn't.
Her smile faded. She blinked. Love no other? Sudden thoughts of Xavion and Christophe, the twins and Skye, even Mack flashed through her mind. What she'd shared with them was nothing like the bond between Long Shadow and herself, but it had meant something to her once, and might again.
Long Shadow watched these thoughts flitting across her face and his hand tightened in hers.
She looked up into his eyes, bewildered by her sudden change of heart.
"You will not give your vow," he said quietly. And after watching her a moment longer, released her hand and stood, turning his back to her.
Dee struggled to sit up, her lethargic body rebelling against the activity. "I want to be your woman," she said helplessly. "I love waking to the touch of your lips against mine, falling asleep with the gentle lull of your voice in my ear. I've never felt so safe."
"But?"
"But…" She hung her head. "I can't… I don't think I can be…" she searched for a word.
He found it for her. "Faithful."
"Yes," she whispered, looking down at her hands, the hands that even now longed to touch his smooth body and bring it alive. But Long Shadow wasn't like her. He had honour. Pride. Dee felt the chill premonition that their time together was at end.
"There is one thing I would know," he said, and she raised her head, daunted by the stiffness of his back. "Do you love me?" he asked with quiet dignity. "Just love. Not commitment."
"Yes, I do," she said, grateful that he'd given her this opportunity. "When I'm with you I feel as though a part of me that I didn't realise was empty is suddenly full. I'm happy… complete. I've never felt that way with anyone else."
"It's not only… sex?"
"No. It's love. I think." She shook her head, forgetting he couldn't see her. "I've never been in love, but…" a sudden memory came to her, "…I know I'd willingly die to save your life."
She saw his shoulders stiffen, then he turned slowly to look down at her, his head tilted to the side, his hair falling over his shoulders to caress his chest the way she longed to. "Is this truth? You would die — "
"Right now, if I had to." She forced her wobbling legs to support her as she stood and took his large hands in hers. Then she ached for the confusion in his eyes.
"But why…?"
"I can't… help the way I am," she said plainly, "but that doesn't mean I can't love you. I do love you. Please, don't ask for more than I can give."
He closed his eyes, raised her hands and pressed her fingers to his lips. Dee looked at his bowed head, wishing there was something she could say to take away the hurt she'd inflicted on him. But there was nothing.
He kissed her fingers and released them. Then he untied his beaded wristband and looked down at it. "My Grandfather, Soaring Eagle, gave this to me when I became a man," he said, one of his large fingers tracing the ancient pattern.
"It's very beautiful," Dee said, admiring the thin multi-coloured strip, imagining an old man giving it to his beloved Grandson.
"Its beauty comes from the spirit that lives in it. The spirit of my Grandfather's love and protection." He looked up into her eyes. "This, I would give you," he said, and after pressing it to his lips, tied it carefully around her neck, turning the knot to the back. "I would ask that you accept this gift as a promise of my love. As I accept your love, without condition."
Dee said the words, "I do," and in her heart she was saying them for the first time.
The moment was too emotional even to kiss. He pulled her into his arms and with her cheek against his chest, she listened to the sound of his heart beating, strong and steady. "I wish I had something to give you," she said.
He held her more tightly. "I have it," he whispered against her hair, and the feeling inside her swelled. Yet mixed with the joy was a sadness, a wish that she could be the woman he deserved. A woman content with one lover. This lover. But she knew it could never be. Just to think of Xavion or Skye… Christophe, was to want them. Even in Long Shadow's arms.
But if it were possible, she knew Long Shadow would be the one she would choose to spend the rest of her life with. And that made it easier to accept the knowledge that she would eventually cause him pain.
"I wish we could be alone together forever," she said, knowing it was a vain hope, a forestalling of the inevitable.
"As do I," he replied, "But I fear our time together will be short. Belle's call…"
She felt him slipping away and held him tighter, her lips brushing against his throat, feeling the tingle work its way down her body. She knew there wasn't time, but she wanted him again. There was no end to her insatiability where Long Shadow was concerned. Neither need there be. He was just as eager as she.
"It's probably nothing important," Dee said, her hand drifting up his chest, her open palm grazing his nipple. "Maybe a check on my safety. For Peter. Didn't you say he was coming back today?"
"This afternoon," Long Shadow replied absently. "But she will not want news of you, my love," he said, and looked down at her, his eyes showing none of the desire she could feel in the reawakening body pressed hard against her. "She thinks you dead."
Dee's hand stopped its stroking of his shoulder. "Didn't you tell her I was here? That you rescued me?"
"No."
She frowned, surprised by his blank expression. "Isn't she in charge of Never Land while Peter's away? Won't she be worried?"
"Not if she's the one who tried to kill you."
"Belle…?" Dee found her mouth hanging open. Snapped it shut. "But, when she finds out I'm alive…"
"She won't. At least, not until it's too late," Long Shadow assured her, stepping away to look for his clothes. "I made sure her eyes here were…" he trailed off.
Dee, who'd been about to sit back down, stilled. "What eyes?"
Long Shadow turned back to her but said nothing.
"What eyes?" she repeated, feeling a coldness insinuate itself between them.
"Surveillance cameras," he said.
"Surveillance cameras?"
She heard herself parroting but couldn't help it.
"Here." Long Shadow reached up and parted the hides in the top of the tepee where the poles converged. Dee stepped forward to look. Mounted between them was a miniature video camera. "And here." He turned and lifted the dream catcher that hung on the wall above where they slept.
The feathers drifted in idle protest, but Dee's attention was drawn to the tiny lens beneath it. "I disabled them when I first saw you on the raft," he explained. "I was worried that whoever had tried to kill you would be monitoring the equipment in DeMartande's absence."
"DeMartande…" she echoed. Then more faintly, "Pietre," as her mind flashed to an image of Roc handing her over to Pietre at the nightclub in Cairns — his reptilian eyes mesmerising her as he wooed her with the offer of a fantasy holiday. Then the sting in her arm as Mr Black had drugged her in the limousine.
Dee felt as though a balloon had exploded in her face. She looked up at Long Shadow, her voice flat with shock. "These cameras, they're in the caves? At the lagoon?"
"Someone always watches," he reminded her gently. "But not here."
She nodded. "And you knew all along."
"Yes."
She took a moment to assimilate that. "So… my God is a voyeur," she said, and surprised them both with a brittle laugh. "There's irony for you." At last she knew how it felt to be on the other side of the lens — to have her privacy violated.
The depravity of her coupling with Mack, her cruelty to Christophe, the perversity of her liaison with Josh — it all came back to her now in a new and tainted light. She wasn't part of their tribe, the mythical 'Wendee' who would teach them grace. She was a whore brought in to amuse the master.
That was why she hadn't seen 'Peter' since her arrival on his island. He'd never intended to interact with her. Merely to watch.
That thought led her to wonder if she was his first 'Wendee'. She could ask Long Shadow, but as she looked up into his eyes she suddenly didn't want to know — didn't want to hear about other women he might have held in his arms, hearing the words of love she'd thought were for her alone.
"Are you one of them?" She couldn't trust anything now.
"I am employed by DeMartande. But my loyalty is with you," he said, holding her eyes. Dee could see how much he wanted to touch her — could see his constraint — wanted to believe him. But could she?
"What exactly are you employed to do?" she asked. "To act? To pretend to fall in love with me?" Dee wasn't analysing her anger. It just came out.
"No. Only to make love to you — "
"And you got carried away?" she cut in. "You decided to ad lib and — "
"…until I am returned to my normal duties," he finished quietly.
"Which are…?"
"I am new to the DeMartande service," he explained, ignoring her suspicious tone. "But before this fantasy, which is my first…" Dee nodded for him to go on, hiding how much that admission meant to her. "…I was under Xavion's command," he went on, "acting as a body-guard when required. Patrolling the island and the surrounding waters. Boarding intruding vessels to kill their occupants if so ordered."
Dee stopped nodding. "Kill people? You've killed people for DeMartande?"
"Three so far." His face was expressionless.
"Who… What is he? What does he do?"
"He's an international arms dealer."
They stared at each other for a slow five heartbeats, then panic made her lurch into action. She dropped to her knees, scrabbling around the floor for something she could wear. "I'm getting out of here now," she said again, and snatched up the sheet.
She held it for a moment, her fists clutching the thin cotton against her chest. Then she turned slowly back to Long Shadow. "He won't let me go, will he?"
Long Shadow shook his head. "He's never released anyone who might identify him. I suspect he plans to kill you when he tires of the game."
Dee blinked, then sank heavily onto the fur. "I'm going to die." She stared at the dream catcher with its feathers that lifted in the breeze but could never float free, trapped in the web of twine that framed them.
Just as she was trapped.
Long Shadow crouched in front of her and took her cold hands in his. "You will not die," he said. "Not while I live."
She dragged her dull gaze from the dream catcher to Long Shadow, trying to find something solid amid this surreal nightmare. "Do you really love me?" she asked.
"As you love me."
She looked into his eyes. Saw it. "I believe you," she said. Swallowed down a lump of fear. She wasn't alone. "What will we do?"
"Escape." He looked away, searching the tepee, as though for an idea rather than something tangible. "I thought I could do more here without endangering your life, but I was wrong." He looked back at her. "We'll steal the helicopter and leave tonight."
"But you said Pietre was due back this afternoon." Her voice was rising but she could do nothing to control her fear. "We've got to go now." She grabbed his arms. "We've got to — "
"Don't panic, Wendee. Please." He held her shoulders, his voice louder than it had been, but calm.
The tone seeped through to her. "I'm sorry." She forced her clutching fingers to relax. "I'm frightened."
"I know." He kissed her and she clung to his lips, wanting the reassurance. "But we have to wait," he said when he could pull away from her, "Night is safer," and he sat her back onto the fur. "Now I must go to Belle or she may send another messenger. Fortunately, I was outside when the last one came or you might have been discovered. We can't risk another intrusion." He reached for his clothes.
Dee didn't want to, but she had to ask, "Who was the messenger?"
He paused for a moment, the muscles in his forearms tightening before he stood to pull on his leggings. "It was the boy. Christophe," he said over his shoulder.
Dee looked down at her lap. Bit her lip. She asked, "Was he… all right?" wondering how she could worry about Christophe when her own safety was so tenuous. Perhaps as Josh had said, it was the mother love. Long Shadow would never believe that.
He turned to her. She saw his feet but couldn't bring herself to look up.
"He had a bruise on his cheek. Welts on his back."
Dee closed her eyes. Put her hand over her mouth to still any words that might escape.
"He'd come from Belle," Long Shadow added, and Dee needed no other explanation.
Remembering Skye's experience with Belle and her riding crop, Dee felt sickened — more so when she recalled her empathy with Belle and her desire to experience the torturer's high for herself.
"Poor Christophe," she said, then pressed her lips together to stop her grief emerging.
"I know you care for the boy," Long Shadow said stiffly from the doorway, "but I will not help him. Your life is all that's important to me."
She nodded, tried to pull herself together. "I understand." Then looked up at him bravely. "What are our chances?" she asked. "Realistically?"
Long Shadow relented and came back to her side, crouching again to kiss her face as two tears she couldn't contain slid down her cheeks. "DeMartande is a monster," he conceded, "with more corpses in his life than you've had students. But I have a plan — "
" Students?" she cut over him, so stunned her body contracting on itself to escape his touch. His hand on her shoulder fell away. "How do you know I've had students?" she demanded, then she waited for him to say it was a guess or a mistake, but he was looking away and his silence was like the shedding of a mask. "Who are you?" she whispered. Was there no-one she could trust? It had to be a dream. A bad dream.
His continued silence scoured any sense of peace she’d had, eating the comforting cotton wool of her denial like acid. Finally he said, "I know who you are, Wendee Williams, and I will not let you die." His face was close to hers, his eyes burning determination into her soul but it was too late. She was past reassurance.
Still she asked, "Who are you?"
"A man who loves you more than life. More than honour," he said simply, and he stood to look down at her. "You must trust me."
Dee knew she was a long way from trust but she nodded blankly. If DeMartande was a monster she had no choice. Her eyes followed Long Shadow as he walked to the doorway.
"I think you should try to sleep. We have a long night ahead of us," he said, then he was gone.
Dee sat staring at the closed door-flap for a long time, realizing that the fantasy was over. Reality jarred, and her sudden re-entry into it muddled her mind. She tried to think, to discern the exact point when she'd stepped over the edge. Had it been when Billy had first come to her? Or when he'd died? Her purchase of Roc's services? The night in the Crocodile Club when she'd fallen under Pietre's control? Her first coupling with Xavion?
All of these things had flowed naturally, one into the other as though fate had decreed them. She couldn't pick one out as the catalyst. But somehow they’d taken her from the security of her career and her marriage into obsession, depravity and almost certain death. She wanted to go back. To understand, but her thoughts kept jumping around — Billy — Christophe — Roc — Skye — Long Shadow.
Her mind felt unhinged so she lay back on the fur and closed her eyes. A moment later she reached for the thin cotton sheet and covered herself with it. The air around her was balmy but she shivered, missing Long Shadow's body. There was nothing more she could do. Long Shadow had told her to sleep and her brain was so scrambled no coherent thought would come into focus so after a time, mercifully she did. But it was a troubled sleep full of murmurs and twitching. She ran, fell, got up and ran again, but still monsters chased her, monsters with luminous green eyes.
It seemed as though she would never find safety. Never be able to rest. She looked everywhere for Long Shadow but he'd gone back to his people. The dark woods frightened her with their malevolent shadows and she was about to cry out when a dull sting in her arm penetrated the foggy layers of sleep.
She made a noise, a sigh, and was finally able to relax into a deeper oblivion.