Seize the Fire

  "Oh, Jesus…Princess…" He bent his head and kissed the inside of her raised knee, his hands pulling her toward him as he knelt with his folded legs spread wide beneath her hips.

  Olympia felt the renewed contact of his body against the warmth that was opened wide to him. His hardness moved again across that point of hot pleasure, even closer now, more forcefully, slipping easily on the moistness that spread amid her downy curls. Her hands stretched and closed. She could not reach him; she could only moan and clutch at nothing with the agonizing stimulation of each slow stroke. It seemed their bodies were made for this, that his manhood caressed her exactly, slid and pleasured her until she would explode. His breath came harsh and fast. His shoulders and arms were trembling with strain: she felt it as she crushed her legs against him convulsively.

  His head bowed. He groaned, leaning forward with a sudden, hard push. Olympia sucked in her breath when the movement brought a change, a slip and a startling new sensation as his male hardness, instead of sliding across her, pressed into her—and unexpectedly her body yielded, accepting the unfamiliar invasion, stretching and filling with a queer mixture of discomfort and relish.

  "What are you doing?" she gasped weakly.

  He went still, his head down and his muscles shaking. "Making…a mistake." His voice was a muffled croak.

  She could feel him, frozen and tense, except for a sudden throb and shudder of his body—one and then another, just inside her. It felt peculiar…but delicious. She moved her hips in a slow, delighted squirm.

  "Don't!" He gripped her legs. "Oh, Jesus. Don't—do that."

  All she could see of him was the disarray of his black hair and the powerful, taut line of his shoulders. His arms were clenched around her upraised knees, his fingers pressing into her skin.

  "Oh, God," he whispered without moving. "Oh, God, oh, God…"

  She stirred her hips again. She couldn't help it.

  He made an anguished sound. With another shudder, he pushed forward slightly, a heavy fullness inside her. She squeezed her legs against him, tilting her pelvis upward. Sensation hovered: she wanted something; she wanted what he'd given her before, and it seemed that if she would just move in the proper way, she would have it.

  On the stifled moan, he mumbled, "Christ have mercy. Don't move. Don't move."

  She reached for his hands on her thighs, pulling his fingers open. She drew them down, pressing them over the place his thumbs had caressed, arching to meet the exquisite pleasure of the touch.

  He lifted his head. His chest rose and fell in labored pants while his eyes held hers, hot and silver.

  "Please," she whispered.

  He gave her a look that burned her like dragon-fire. Then his dark lashes lowered and he began to move, pushing into her just a little, until the stretch almost became pain, then withdrawing again with a luscious slide of his thumbs against the moist and aching focus of sensation—thrusting again, and again, always only just to the point of hurting, until the faint pain began to seem like pleasure and the dragon's fire blazed through her body.

  She moaned and twisted under his hands, trying to draw him closer, deeper. But he would not come. He turned his face away toward the wall, sliding his fingers across the melting center of ecstasy until she could no longer think of what to do but answer with an arch that brought the pain closer, mingling with elation. She could not breathe for the singing excitement, the queer flooding anxiousness. She was quivering, twitching; unable to stop the growing sounds of frenzy in her throat.

  She gasped his name as he leaned over her with a move of his fingers that sent the universe whirling apart. Her body jerked ecstatically. In the moment of explosion he pulled back and dragged her into his arms, driving them both down full-length onto the furs.

  He held her hard, one arm crushed around her buttocks, his stiff male shape pressed against her abdomen. His teeth scored her shoulder as he thrust his hips against her with a rough, frantic motion. A shudder racked him, a hard throb at her belly. "God!" His cry was hoarse and smothered in her hair and her throat. "Oh, God." He clutched her tighter and shuddered again, his whole body rigid, pressed against her as if he were dying.

  His shoulders trembled. For a long moment he held her enveloped, moaning deep in his throat, her cheek pressed awkwardly against his heaving chest.

  She pulled back her head, seeking air. Something warm and wet slid between their bodies. He sucked in a huge breath and relaxed his hold. A sound escaped him, a whimper like a child's.

  Her limbs felt weak and watery. She slipped from his arms, panting, and looked up at him in amazement. With one finger, she touched the wetness on her body and then on his.

  He caught her hand and rolled, resting half on top of her, his face buried in her hair. "Well," he muttered, "you're technically still a virgin, at any rate. And don't ever think, damn you," he added, breathing heat on her shoulder, "that I'm not a hero."

  That afternoon she found the penguin he'd been hiding.

  She was collecting nettles to boil, as much because it was an excuse to stay away from him as because she thought they would make a decent soup. Lost in thoughts that brought color to her face and sinking agitation to her stomach, she had wandered out of the tussocks and so far up onto the hump of the island that she could see the rocky beach on the other side. The clouds moved, casting sullen shadows on the shore and burnishing the sea to the color of gleaming lead.

  A gathering of rooks circled and swooped far down the windy slope. Beneath them she recognized Sheridan: a dark splotch inside a gray circle. She almost turned and ran like a scared rabbit before he could see her. But he had to be faced; she had nowhere to hide, and night would come soon enough, forcing them together in the little hut. She watched him from the hill, nervous at first, then with growing concern when he didn't move at all.

  Carefully stashing her nettles in the windbreak of a lone tussock, she pulled her cloak around her and started quickly down the hill. She called to him twice, but the cold wind was against her, whisking her voice into nothing. Drawing closer, she slowed, realizing the gray ring was a rock wall. Sheridan squatted down in the middle of it, his back to her.

  Olympia ducked a wheeling rook and stopped silently a few yards away, wrapping her cloak close in the tearing wind. He did not see her, absorbed in the task of prying limpets out of their conical shells. In front of him a plump, downy ball of silver feathers hopped crazily about, stretching up as tall as his knee on its short legs. Its beak gaped eagerly, dipping and rising as it uttered shrill cries. When Sheridan wasn't quick enough with a limpet, the baby penguin lowered its head and ran around in a drunken circle, waving one flipper and displaying a bandage on the other, composed of a piece of linen and one of Olympia's extra garters that had gone missing three days ago.

  A rook made a dive for Sheridan's head. He swiped at it with his sharpened oar handle and a curse, throwing one arm out for balance as he ducked and stumbled. His handful of limpets scattered, the rooks swooped in and the inflated balloon of feathers hopped around his legs, nipping at his knees and complaining.

  "Ugly brutes." Sheridan stood up, still facing away from her, kicking out at a pair of rooks that went after the waddling silver fuzzball. "Leave the poor chap alone, can't you?"

  The rooks settled for fighting over the limpets, but the baby penguin continued to gaze up at Sheridan, waving its good wing with pathetic cries.

  "Well," he said to it, "I'm bloody hungry, too, y'know."

  The penguin shrilled and flapped. It looked like a furry, excited bladder, toddling up and down in frustration. Olympia put her hand over her mouth.

  "All right." Sheridan shoved his oar at the quarreling rooks, scattering them for an instant. He grabbed for some stray limpet shells, sweeping them up and snatching back just in time to avoid the ravaging stroke of a rook's powerful beak. "Christ! If I lose a hand for this—" He muttered grimly to himself, prying a limpet out and bending to let the penguin gobble it off the tip of his knife. "Ah—kee
p your distance, you feathered football; I need that toe. Bugger you! You little—" He stepped back from an enthusiastic onslaught of silver fluff. "Bite my knee, and I'll muster you into the royal service. Then it's the stewpot and be damned. Her Highness ain't sentimental about making a fellow into cannon fodder for a righteous cause, I assure you." The penguin squeaked and flapped. Sheridan held out another limpet. "Not impressed, hmm? You should be. She's the terror of the upland geese. A desperate cutthroat. She'd have you plucked and roasted before you could say mackerel."

  "I wouldn't," Olympia said indignantly.

  Sheridan jerked upright. He turned. The rooks scattered, then fluttered in again and renewed their bickering over the limpets. The penguin shuffled between Sheridan's legs and sat down.

  His face turned a deep red. "What are you doing here?"

  Stifling a smile, she watched the penguin preen its silver fluff. "I saw you from the hill. I thought you might be hurt."

  "I'm not."

  "No." She tilted her head. "I see that."

  He was positively crimson. Olympia observed him with interest. She'd never seen Sheridan Drake embarrassed.

  "I found it," he said with a touch of belligerence. "The rest of the flock's all left. These damned rooks try to tear it apart whenever it comes out of that crevice in the rocks." He slashed at the big, gull-like birds with his oar. They dispersed for an instant, then fell to pecking and feuding again.

  The penguin tilted back its head, looked up at him and uttered a long cooing shrill of admiration.

  "A hero again," she said.

  "I suppose I just can't help myself," he said tartly. "I do try to be a cad."

  Olympia looked at his tall, windblown figure in the frayed peacoat. He stood with the oar planted as if it were a lance: a tattered knight with a huddle of silver feathers that nestled in absolute trust on the top of one boot.

  "Sometimes," she said softly, "I don't think you try very hard."

  Sheridan glanced down. The penguin shifted and settled, blinking round black eyes and then closing them with a sigh of contentment.

  "Don't I?" he asked. "Then I'm sure I'll live to regret it." He stabbed at the rooks with a sour grunt. "I always do."

  A week later Olympia sat back on her knees, panting, and watched Sheridan as he attacked the icy ground with a broken barrel hoop. They worked in the howling wind not far from the hut, Sheridan digging and Olympia pushing the loosened sand and rock up out of the trench with the tin pail.

  The pit was to house their signal fire, which would not stay lit in the increasing winter gales. Sheridan straightened for a moment, wiping the sweat from his face with one arm. Olympia looked quickly away, hoping he hadn't caught her staring at his body. The way she felt was still too new, even after a week of his intimate touch; his lessons in the spark and fire between a man and a woman, in the pleasures her body was made for, were too amazing, too raw and throbbing—like a new wound that was passion instead of pain.

  But he didn't even look at her. He was watching the crowd of rooks that sat staring from the sidelines, just out of rock-throwing range, their dark feathers ruffled by the freezing wind.

  The arrival of a baby penguin in camp had brought no particular hardships beyond an excess of the big, quarrelsome birds and the neccessity to collect a few extra limpets every day. The rooks loitered around the hut, always alert to steal scraps, but the penguin seemed to draw them in more enthusiastically greedy numbers. A door of canvas kept them out of the hut itself, where the penguin was penned, but the rooks sensed possible prey.

  "Bastards," Sheridan muttered, and flung a rock, dispersing the feathered band for an instant before he went back to digging. As he moved in the downstroke, his elbow caught for the fifth time on the handle of his knife, which protruded from its sheath on a sealskin strip hung around his neck and arm. He cursed and threw down the barrel hoop.

  "This isn't going to work." He yanked the knife over his head and tossed it aside.

  "I was afraid it wouldn't," Olympia said, retrieving the loop and sheath and laying them on a boulder. "I'll make it another way."

  "Do that."

  He went back to digging, having delivered this suggestion in biting tones. Olympia ducked her head to hide a smile. The design had been his suggestion, carried out with a sail needle and twine by Olympia after a spirited argument over the various merits of several other ideas she'd proposed to protect the single most vital item they possessed. Her pocket scissors were of use in some situations, but nothing would replace the strong, curved blade of Sheridan's big Malayan parang, which chopped driftwood and cut peat and whittled delicately through whalebone with equal facility.

  She held her hair back against the wind and tilted her head, looking at the rhythmic rise and fall of his shoulders, thinking of the night before: his face in the firelight, his chest and arms, the way his muscles moved and his throat worked in ecstasy as he pleasured her and himself. The things he taught her brought heat to her cheeks; it was as if she became someone else when he touched her, someone without shame or inhibitions. It was impossible to be guilty and abashed with him; he simply said he had no patience with silly missishness and kissed her until she could not think.

  He was rather good at that.

  And he minced no words: her education had included some clear and very physical instruction on female matters. He explained the meaning of her monthly cycles, the token barrier that kept her a virgin; he gave her warnings, told her what was natural and what to do to any chap who had the insolence to suggest she participate in what wasn't; he lectured her on the signs of pregnancy and demonstrated—with masculine pleasure—several methods to protect her.

  In a week, she'd become as worldly-wise as any professional streetwalker—as he'd informed her with a dry grin. When she'd frowned at that, his look changed to complete innocence and he added that he'd understood her to say streetwalking was her ambition in life.

  She never knew what to make of him.

  A sudden squawk and flutter made her glance aside. She squealed in dismay, scrambling up and lunging toward the pair of rooks fighting over the glittering handle of the parang.

  Both birds retreated in haste, but amid the thrashing takeoff, the sealskin loop tangled and caught in a claw. The bird rose, wings beating powerfully, carrying the knife just out of Olympia's frantic reach.

  Sheridan bellowed. A rock went hurling over her head, but it missed as the thief tilted and rode the harsh wind upward, knife and sheath dangling. The bird circled, heading down the coast. Sheridan outdistanced Olympia instantly in the chase, leaving her to hike her skirts and run awkwardly after. Her heart rose when the rook landed, but it took off again as soon as Sheridan came close, the knife still twisting and bobbing in midair.

  She fell farther behind, and finally came to a panting walk after losing sight of both Sheridan and the rook. She sat down, staring toward the steep headland that marked the end of their beach. A long time after she'd regained her breath, she finally saw him again—a silhouette at the top of the headland. She watched anxiously. When he leaned out over the edge of the steep cliff, looking down at the sea below, she bit her lip. Then he moved back, making a vicious heave toward the sky with his arm, and walked out of sight.

  Olympia closed her eyes against the cold wind and wondered how they would survive without the knife. She could think of a hundred things that she'd taken for granted—cutting tussock grass, fashioning utensils, prying limpets from the rocks for the crucial nourishment that kept them alive when all their other luck was out. Even something as apparently inconsequential as Sheridan's stubborn insistence on shaving, which she'd begun to suspect was critical for him to maintain his steady morale—and therefore hers—depended on the razor-sharp blade of the parang.

  She covered her eyes in despair. Such a small thing, such a silly thing: a villainous bird and a moment of inattention, and suddenly life became more precarious than ever.

  Sheridan returned, striding with his jaw set. He di
dn't even stop when he saw her, but just snapped, "Come along. I need you," as he passed.

  She jumped up and followed him. "Is it gone?"

  "Likely."

  His tone discouraged further questions. Olympia felt a flood of guilt. She should have been watching the knife. She should have put it safely inside the moment he took it off. It was her fault.

  At the hut, he gathered all the rope they had from the rigging on the pinnace. She watched, a dismaying suspicion growing in her mind. It strengthened and flourished as she followed him back the way he'd come, all the way down the coast and up the rocky slope of the headland.

  She was huffing by the time they reached the top, where the lumpy tussock grass gave way to a windswept table of black rock. Sheridan led the way to the edge and took her elbow. "Have a look."

  She peered over the brink. Far below, amid huge fallen boulders, waves crashed in green-and-white glory. She squinted against the sharp wind, searching—and then saw it. A third of the way down the rugged face, the knife hung on a protruding rock, still sheathed, twisting and swaying in the air.

  She pulled back, holding onto his arm with a tight grip.

  "Now," he said over the sound of the surf, "we have to go get it."

  She wet her lips. "On that rope?"

  "Unless you've got wings." He shifted the coils off his shoulder. "I just hope to God there's enough."

  She frowned at the flat surface they stood on. "There's nothing to tie it to."

  He looked at her, his eyes steady, deep with gray shadows. "One of us anchors it. One of us goes down."

  "But that won't do," she exclaimed. "I can't support your weight!"

  He shrugged and smiled dryly. "On the other hand, I'm confident that I can handle yours."

  "Oh, God," she said weakly.

  He just stood looking at her, a faint lift to one dark eyebrow.

  Olympia drew in a desperate breath. Hate rose suddenly and sharply; she wanted to curse him for his cowardice, but in the same moment reason intruded its cold facts. He was right. There was no choice. One of them had to go, and there was no hope that she could play the part of anchor with Sheridan on the other end.