Eden Burning (21 page)

Chase unzipped the windbreaker he was wearing and slipped it over her shoulders. She looked at him, surprise showing clearly in her pale brown eyes.

“That’s not necessary,” she said quietly. “I’m used to the rain. Hawaiian rains are like sunshine. Warm.”

“Wear it.”

He heard the anger seething just beneath the surface of his voice. With a quiet curse he ran a hand through his hair. Now that he had her alone, he didn’t know where to begin.

How do you ask a woman politely, subtly, why the hell she slept with you?

No brilliant insight came to him.

Fuck subtle.

“Why did you sleep with me?” he asked.

Nicole turned her face up to the rain, accepting it just as she accepted that she had run as far as she could without leaving behind everything she loved. She wouldn’t do that. No man was worth that. Not even Chase Wilcox.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.” Her mouth turned down in a bittersweet smile at her own expense.

“That’s no answer.”

“Why do you care? It’s not going to happen again. Is that what’s worrying you? That I might expect something from you? I don’t. All I want is to be left alone.”

“That’s not—”

“No,” she said, cutting across his words. “You thought I was after Dane. I wasn’t. You apologized. I accepted. That’s the end of it.”

Slowly Chase shook his head. “But it hasn’t ended,” he said, his voice dark, strained. “I hurt you badly. You’re still hurting. I want to . . . heal you.”

Nicole closed her golden eyes and tried to think of nothing at all. “That isn’t possible. You can’t heal a corpse.”

“What?” Chase asked, shaken.

“You’re the one who pointed out that I was like a corpse in bed. You don’t heal a corpse. You bury it and walk away.” She fixed him with eyes that were like tarnished gold. “So walk away, Dr. Wilcox. The autopsy is over, the dirge has been sung, the grave is sealed, the—”

“Stop it,” he interrupted harshly.

With an effort she bit back the scalding flow of words. After a moment she took a deep, ragged breath and wrapped her arms around herself as though she was cold.

Chase watched her with haunted, quicksilver eyes, hearing her words echo, trying to make them fit with the hesitant lover who had thanked him for not hurting her.

“What the hell happened to you before you came to Hawaii?” he whispered hoarsely.

Closing her eyes, she said nothing.

Very gently he put his hands on her shoulders. Beneath his palms her whole body radiated rejection and refusal.

“You haven’t dated anyone, you weren’t after Dane, and you were more frightened than passionate with me.” Chase’s hands tightened on her shoulders. “Why did you do it, Nicole? Why did you sleep with me?”

“Chalk it up to loose morals. I’m a slut.”

“Bullshit!”

Her eyes opened. They were clear and hard. “But that’s what you saw when you looked at me. That’s what I proved when I went to bed with a man I hadn’t known more than three days. As you said to Dane, what ‘paragon of virtue’ would—”

“Don’t do it,” Chase interrupted, his voice low, warning.

“What?”

“Use my words like knives against yourself.”

“But they work so well. Truth is like that. A knife.”

He closed his eyes, disgusted and angry at everyone and everything, but most of all at himself. “Then use it on me. I made the mistake, not you. You’re the furthest thing from a slut I’ve ever met.”

“You thought I was as hot as my hair,” she said. Her mouth turned down again as she remembered another man’s words, another man’s knives slicing her.

The only thing hot about you is your hair.

“I believed you were after Dane,” Chase said, his voice both gritty and patient as he tried to make Nicole understand that it had been his fault, not hers. There was no need for her to look so drawn, so fearful, a woman waiting to be hurt again.

“I wasn’t after Dane,” she said dully. “I wasn’t after anyone. Until you.”

“I believe you, Nicole.” He saw the surprise on her face as his words finally sank in.

“I— All right,” she said. “Good. That’s something.”

“I’ve watched you since we—since that morning. I’ve seen how it really is for you.”

Numbly Nicole turned her face up to the rain and waited to be told again about her failures as a woman.

“At the observatory you ignore the single men,” Chase said, “or you top their sexy innuendos, and you don’t give an inch otherwise. But you used to allow the married men to touch you. A hug here, a pat on the arm there, a slap on the shoulder and a smile. Why? Why them and not the other men?”

“You said it yourself. They’re married. Safe.”

Chase thought of Bobby Kamehameha and smiled thinly. “Not always, Nicole. Not always.”

“They are to me! I would never—” Her voice broke beneath the tension that made her flesh like carved stone.

The need to flee was so great that it was like craving oxygen after spending too long holding her breath. She knew what Chase was heading toward. He was going to make her admit that she had wanted him. Then the depth of her failure as a woman would be even more humiliating.

She didn’t know if she could endure hearing about it from his lips all over again.

And then she knew that she couldn’t bear it.

Yet she couldn’t get away. His hands had slid from her shoulders to her wrists, and he was gently unwrapping her arms from their defensive position around her waist. If she tried to move away from him, the strong fingers would close, holding her in place.

No way out.

Trapped.

Carefully Chase took a breath and thought about what Nicole had said. He had to be certain he understood what she was telling him, what the words actually
meant.
He had learned how much pain it caused when he misunderstood her. He didn’t want to hurt her again. He didn’t think she could take that.

He knew he couldn’t.

“And the single men?” he asked softly. “You avoid them because they aren’t safe?”

Her shrug was jerky, harsh. Adrenaline flooded through her, yet she couldn’t run, couldn’t hide. Almost frantically she cast about in her mind for weapons, reasons, something, anything that would make him leave her alone.

Suddenly it came to her. Words were weapons. And the most lethal weapon of all was truth.

She should know. The truth of her own failure as a woman had destroyed her like a river of molten rock, burning alive everything in its path, covering the ashes with a thick layer of stone.

But she had survived.

She had even conquered her rocky shell enough to grow again, putting out tentative leaves and flowers of friendship, soaking up the affection that came in return like a plant soaking up warm rain and tropical sunshine.

“As far as I can tell,” Chase continued gently, relentlessly, “you haven’t slept with any other man in the whole state of Hawaii,
so why did you sleep with me?”

Nicole shuddered and turned her face away from him to look at the tiny enclosed garden. “I’ve asked myself that at least a hundred times a day,” she whispered, telling him as much of the truth as she knew.

“And?”

“It’s pretty simple. I have a real talent for trusting bastards. You’re my second, you see.”

His breath came in sharply. Eyes the color of rain probed her drawn face. Pain accentuated her cheekbones and darkened her eyes. Her lips were moving again, but she was speaking so softly that he could barely hear. He leaned toward her intently.

“No, that’s not quite true,” she whispered, listening to her own thoughts, learning from them even as she spoke.

And it was anger she was learning. She had been wrong to trust Chase, but that didn’t give him the right to destroy her.

“You’re different from my former husband,” she said. “Next to you, Ted was a legitimate son of gentle society. He was merely impatient with me and unkind about my shortcomings as a woman. You have a cruelty in you that cuts all the way to my soul.”

She looked at Chase again, her face as calm as her words were bitter. “I hope that cruelty cuts both ways.”

“Nicole,” he whispered, understanding only her pain and the knowledge that being his lover had cost her much more than she could afford. Unconsciously he caressed the softness of her inner arm, wanting to reassure, to soothe, to pleasure her.

“No,” she whispered, shivering.

Her body had come alive with the female certainty of Chase so close to her, reaching out to her. Burning her. His hand was strong and hard, gentle with her softer flesh in spite of the intensity that came off him in waves, like heat.

“Don’t tease me with what I can’t deliver,” she said, her voice shaking. “Despite my past performances, I’ve just discovered I’m not a masochist.”

“I know. You were made for pleasure, not pain.”

As he spoke, he slowly stroked the length of her arm again. He saw her eyes widen in shock and felt the ripple of response racing through her so clearly it could have been his own body trembling, not hers.

She’s turned away all men for years, yet she shivers at my touch.

The realization sent a shock wave of desire slamming through Chase. The force of it surprised him. He had felt nothing like it except the night he had been driven by his own need to take her too quickly, before he knew her.

Before he knew himself.

He wouldn’t make that mistake again. She had been hurt too many times, yet against all odds, all cruel experience, she had turned to him for healing. He would never hurt her again. It was like hurting himself. The next time he held her in his arms, it would be a healing thing. For both of them.

Slowly Chase bent his head and at the same time lifted Nicole’s wrist to his mouth. Her skin was silky, cool despite the frantic pulse beating just beneath her skin. As if she were a flower brought to his lips for a taste of honey, he touched his tongue to her pulse and delicately closed his teeth over her inner wrist.

Nicole’s breath stopped. She wanted to run from his sensuality. She wanted to drench herself in his sensuality. Trembling, she swayed, caught between her own warring needs.

“This time I’ll be good to you when we make love,” he said huskily. “This time I’ll give you the pleasure you deserve.”

Desire and fear fought for control of her. Fear won. She tried to jerk her wrist from his grasp. He was too quick, too strong.

“Make
love?”
she asked in disbelief, her voice shaking. “Are you crazy?”

“Not anymore.” Chase traced the shadow network of her wrist veins with the tip of his tongue, licking up raindrops and the indefinable taste of woman. “Give me another chance, sweet dancer. There’s so much that we can share with each other.”

“I don’t have anything to give a man. Ask my ex-husband. Oh, God, why bother? Ask yourself!”

Nicole wrenched free and bolted back into the club.

Chase could have stopped her, but he was too shocked by what she had said. For long minutes he stood without moving, not noticing the rain pressing his shirt against his chest and making his lavalava cling wetly to his hips.

I don’t have anything to give a man. Ask my ex-husband. Ask yourself!

Chase wished he could forget his cruel summary of Nicole as a woman. He couldn’t. It ate at him like acid.

Even worse, it ate at her. She believed him.

A wave of pain went through him, making him grimace.
Christ Jesus, she believed it.

If she had been a courtesan, his words would have been as true as they were brutal. But she wasn’t a professional toy. She was a woman who had been taught to believe that she had nothing to offer a man.

Now that he knew that, everything about that night changed. Her responses to him had been generous and sweet and trembling with her potential for intense sensuality. A potential he had first ignored, then scorned.

A potential he would kill to have offered to him again.

“She dropped this,” Bobby said laconically.

Slowly Chase focused on the rain-wet exterior of the club.

Bobby stood in the doorway, a dripping windbreaker in his huge hand, watching while pain pulled Chase’s face into bleak lines.

Automatically Chase reached for his jacket.

Bobby jerked his hand, taking the jacket out of reach. “Stay away from her, haole son of a bitch.”

“No.” He took a sharp breath and said harshly, “I can’t. Don’t get in my way, Bobby. Two people hurting is enough.”

After a moment the other man smiled oddly and lobbed the windbreaker at Chase, letting him push past the doorway into the club’s dimly lit interior.

The room was full of refugees from the university and the observatory. Chase nodded to the people he knew but didn’t stop to talk with anyone. Bobby hadn’t delayed him for long, but it had been enough: Nicole had already slipped behind the stage curtain.

Savagely Chase threw his windbreaker into an empty chair. With angry motions he stripped off his dripping shirt, dumped it over the back of the chair, and went to the rear of the stage. Behind the curtain he took his position at the drums and waited motionlessly, his mind churning.

She’s afraid of men, afraid of sex, yet she slept with me a few days after we met.

Why did she trust me?

Even as he began to drum, calling the dancers onstage, the question ate at him. It gave a hard edge to his playing, as though the drums themselves were asking questions of the night.

When the curtain rose and students stepped onto the stage, no glorious flame stood in the wings, waiting to burn. Nicole’s absence drove into Chase, making him want to cry out at the pain he had given in place of the pleasure she deserved.

Why didn’t I trust her?

The memory of a snapshot of Nicole came to him, a woman standing on a black-sand beach, her hair a glorious swirl of fire around her, and Lisa laughing among the flames. He had held that snapshot in his hand and stared at it until he was raw with hunger.

He wanted Nicole before he even knew her name.

He wanted her before he ever saw her lush body.

He wanted her before he saw her fiery dance.

A single look at a snapshot and he had turned his life upside down and flown to Hawaii. He had told himself that he was worried about Dane, that no man could stand against the temptation of Nicole.

Was that how it was for her? Did she look at me and want me enough to come to me despite her fear?

There was no answer but the primal beat of the drums speaking darkly beneath his hands.

I was so certain that Dane was in danger. Why?

That answer was simple. Chase didn’t believe any man could look at Nicole and not want her enough to throw over everything to have her. If he had sat down and thought about it rationally, he would have known that no woman could affect every man the same way.

But he hadn’t thought. He had looked, wanted, and been certain in his gut that every man would feel the way he did.

One look.

Consuming desire.

The rhythms of the dance radiated from the drums, but beneath the complex beats the shadow of Chase’s barely restrained emotions prowled through the darkened room. He had been in such a rush to taste the honey that he had crushed the blossom, and in the end had tasted only bitterness, given only injury.

Christ, if I’d only known . . . !

Sound poured out of the drums in a relentless thunder that pounded through the night, calling up a darkness that had nothing to do with a lack of light.

The students couldn’t keep up with the furious rhythms. One by one, dancers sank to the stage floor, completely spent. They didn’t even try to chant encouragement to the remaining dancers, for they didn’t have words or legends to equal the drums’ raging soliloquy of injury and regret.

Nicole came and watched from the wings, and her heart beat as wildly as the drums. Before Chase began to play, she had told Bobby that she wasn’t going to dance, that she was going home.

Then the drums had spoken to her from the darkness, telling her things mere words couldn’t describe.

She hadn’t been able to refuse the seething rhythms of anger and isolation and regret. They spoke to her so exactly, so perfectly. She could no more turn away from their dark, syncopated violence than Kilauea could turn away from its own searing heart of molten stone.

With quick motions she took down her hair and stepped onto the stage. A murmuring swept through the room, a low wave of sound that was her other name.

“Pele.”

From the first step, the first thud of bare heel on wooden floor, the dance was different. There were no flashing smiles, no teasing, flirting hips, no graceful fingers describing languid invitations. Tonight Pele’s body described an anger that equaled the drums’ wild discontent. She wasn’t a laughing girl dancing her suitors into the ground. She was a goddess scorned, and every quick movement she made shouted her raging emotion.

Quick, graceful, dangerous, untamed as all fire is untamed, Pele claimed the stage, burning fiercely within the violent lament of the drums.

Neither drummer nor dancer noticed when the last student got up and slipped away from the stage. They didn’t see Bobby lift his pipes to his lips once, then put his hands down before he blew a single note.

Though Nicole refused to look at Chase, had refused since the first instant of the dance, she knew nothing but him. She didn’t have to look at him. He lived in the blazing center of her soul. He was the blood hammering wildly in her veins. He was the fire turning her body to shimmering gold.

Chase felt, understood, and accepted the transformation from wounded Nicole to furious Pele. He watched her intently, his glittering eyes reflecting both the savage regret of the drums and the searing accusations of the woman who called to him with every movement of her body.