Bird of Paradise

  She glanced over his shoulder. “Jesus is over there.”

  “Jesus has seen me naked before.” He started nibbling on her neck, pushing aside her wet hair to taste the sensitive flesh beneath it.

  “But…but…”

  “Hero, you are the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  She snorted.

  “To me you are,” he said with a smile, then sat up and ran a palm down her smooth calf. “Look at your legs, look how shapely they are.”

  “They’re stumpy,” she said with a mutinous glare. He bent down to kiss a path down one calf, pausing to nibble on her ankle, then kissing down the top of her foot until he reached her toes.

  “I could never love a women with stumpy legs,” he murmured, sucking a toe into his mouth for a moment. She moaned. “Your legs are long and muscled, and you have stunningly gorgeous heels. I bet men fawn upon your heels all the time.”

  She giggled as he turned back toward her.

  “And your arms,” he said holding out one arm and kissing a wet trail up to her shoulder, “are pieces of art. They are the arms of the Venus de Milo.”

  “The Venus de Milo doesn’t have arms,” she said—somewhat breathlessly, he noted, smiling to himself.

  “That’s because no one else can have arms as lovely as you,” he murmured against her collarbone. “But they have rivals to the title of loveliest limb, because those must go to your legs, particularly your thighs—”

  She squealed and tried to push down the towel as he peeled it off her upper legs. “No, please, Adam, don’t!”

  He bent over her legs, sliding a hand between her thighs, nibbling her soft flesh gently until she shuddered and allowed him to spread her legs. “Your thighs are almost perfect enough to be part of a sculpture, but not quite, because yours are warm and soft and inviting.

  “They are?”

  He heard the wistful tone in her voice and prayed she would learn to see herself as he saw her. “Almost perfect,” he repeated, kneeling between her thighs as he tried to pull the towel from where she clutched it between her breasts. “Let me, baby.”

  “No.”

  “Please.”

  “No.” Her eyes were filling with tears.

  He kissed her long and deep. “Let me see you.”

  Slowly he pried the towel from her fingers and laid it back, exposing her breasts, those glorious breasts, breasts that would make any man’s mouth water. “Oh, Hero, they’re exquisite,” he murmured, his fingers stroking and caressing, then he paid homage to each pert rose-tipped nipple with his mouth.

  “Exquisite,” she moaned, writhing against him, thrusting her breast into his mouth, screaming when he suckled hard. He paid due attention to the other breast, making her gasp with the pleasure, then kissed the warm valley between them as he slid down.

  “But the best part of you. . .” He nudged the towel down.

  “No!” She tried to grab it and cover herself up. He wouldn’t let her.

  “The best part. . . “ He pushed the towel down until her belly button was exposed, pausing to lave it with his tongue. She jerked beneath him.

  “No,” she whimpered, her hands fluttering in his hair.

  “The very best part of you” —he brushed the remainder of the towel aside and gently bit her belly, sliding his hand up her inner thigh until he reached his own personal paradise. “Weeps tears of joy for me.”

  He leaned down until his mouth was against her heated core, his nose inhaling the scent of her, the scent of him, their passion mingled into something earthy and salty and so essential he had to taste her.

  She bucked beneath him so hard that he held her hips still, licking and nibbling her until her back bowed and she screamed his name.

  He lay next to her, twining a finger in her damp hair until she was able to open her eyes.

  “Now tell me I don’t find you beautiful.”

  She slapped a hand on his chest and pushed him onto his back, looming over him with a scowl that would do a misanthrope proud.

  “Just what do you mean by saying that my crotch is the best part of me? Whatever happened to loving my mind, hmmm? Whatever happened to my charming wit and my delightful sense of humor and all the other things you have been praising these last few days? There’s more to me than just my genitals, you know!”

  He laughed and pulled her down over him, and kissed the disgruntled look right off her face. “I was wondering if you were going to say anything about that.”

  “Oh, I’m going to do more than just say something about such a gross understatement of my many charms,” she said, a wicked look in her eye that warmed him to his toes. She leaned over to kiss him, and squeezed a groan out of him as she wrapped her fingers around his penis. “I’m going to do much, much more than say something. I’m going to demand a penance.”

  He tried to capture one of her ripe nipples in his mouth, but she squirmed out of his reach. “What sort of penance? Will it involve whipped cream? Handcuffs? You parading around me in naughty lingerie?”

  She sat back on her heels, then suddenly bent over him and flicked her tongue along the sensitive underside of his penis.

  He stopped breathing.

  “No,” she whispered, curling her fingers around him. “Your penance is that you’re going to have to make love to me again. Right now.”

  “Such a taskmaster,” he sighed, then tried to grab her and pull her over him.

  “No, no, not like that, anyone can make love like that,” she teased, getting to her feet and running toward the water. “We’re going to do it the hard way.”

  “Oh, baby, you have no idea how hard it is,” he grinned as he jumped up and chased after her.

  Jesus lay in a cool spot directly beneath a broad-leafed shrub and watched with interest as Adam hauled Hero to a spot next to the blanket.

  “What do you mean, it’s poisonous? I thought you ate sea urchins? How can you eat something that’s poisonous?”

  “It’s just a mild poison, Hero, on the spine. It's nothing serious. Here, stand on your one leg and let me look at your foot.”

  Hero stood naked, tears pooling around her eyes, her wet hair streaming water down her back as he held her foot up and bent over it. The bottom of her foot stung, but that ominous word poison kept ringing through her head.

  “It’s not bad at all—the spines barely punctured the skin— but even if we left right away it might start to swell up before we made it back to the resort.”

  “I’ve been poisoned by a bloody sea urchin?” She couldn’t believe it. She had medications for every other eventuality, but who knew that treacherous little spiny things lurked under innocent patches of seaweed. She just thanked her lucky stars that she stepped on the little bugger after they had made love, not during. “What are we going to do? I don’t want to be poisoned, I just let you see me. All of me! It’s not fair that I should go through that and then die because of sadistic sea life lying in wait for me!”

  “Hero—”Adam looked at her with an odd expression.

  “What?”

  “There is one thing I can do.”

  “Well then do it,” she said, trying to peer over her shoulder to look behind at her foot.

  “Sea-urchin spines can be dissolved with ammonia.”

  “And you have some?”

  “Well—”

  “For the Lord’s sake, put it on! I don’t want to be puffy-footed; tonight is mambo night! I want to mambo with you! We could get at least two hundred points if we beat everyone else!” Keeping her injured foot of the ground, she hopped toward the picnic basket and gestured toward it. “Go ahead, get the ammonia and put it on my foot. I’m getting tired of standing like a flamingo.”

  Wry amusement and embarrassment mingled in his handsome eyes. “The ammonia isn’t in the picnic basket, it’s in uh . . .”

  “Well?”

  “My urine.”

  She stared at him, her mouth hanging open slightly. “Your what?”

  “Ur
ine. Urine contains ammonia.”

  She continued to stare, sure she must have misheard him. “You want to pee on my foot?”

  His lips twisted into a half smile. “They do it all the time down here. It’s very common.”

  “You want to pee on my foot?”

  “It’ll help dissolve any bit of spine that’s in the wound, and should keep it from swelling. We’ll get you back to the resort and let the medical people have a look at it then.”

  “You want to pee on my foot?”

  He sighed. “It’s the only thing I can do until we get back to the resort.”

  She glared at him for a moment, then turned her back and raised her foot until the sole was facing him. “I am going to pretend this is not happening. I am going to pretend that I am soaking my foot in warm water and Epsom salts. I am going to pretend—Good Lord, man, what are you, a camel? How much do you have in you?”

  He carried her out to the boat a short time later, instructing her to keep her foot out of the water despite her inclination to wash it off in the warm salt water. With his help she shimmied one-footed into her swimsuit, then pulled the cover-up on and resumed her seat by the tiller while he fetched Jesus and the picnic things.

  She thought that nothing could ruin such a fabulous, breathtakingly glorious, stupendously wonderful, marvelous, perfectly lovely day—lovely with only the minor exception of having had the love of her life pee all over her foot—but as she found out, even such a day of almost bliss as they had shared could be crushed until it resembled nothing so much as a stomped-upon sea urchin.

  Chapter Seven

  “I wonder what's going on over there?”

  Adam looked when Hero pointed down the dock. He had just tied up the sailboat and was unloading Jesus and the picnic things, preparing to help Hero hobble to the resort infirmary, but stopped when he saw the group of television people coming toward him. They had the ubiquitous cameraman and sound person in tow, he noted.

  Hero gnawed on her lip and hopped to the edge of the boat, allowing Adam to swing her over the side. She no longer had any doubts that he truly did find her attractive, and with that knowledge came the freedom to love him with every atom in her body. She leaned against him, wanting the warm contact touching him gave her. “Have we kept the boat out too long?”

  “No.” He shook his head, snapping a leash on Jesus and handing it to her as he scooped up the blankets and towels, adding them to the picnic basket.

  “They don't look very happy.” A twinge of guilt streaked through her at the sight of the Eden producer, her assistant, someone sweating profusely in a suit, and a cameraman headed straight for them. She had meant to tell Adam the truth about her participation on the show during the sail home, but somehow they ended up kissing more than talking, and she just hadn't mustered up the nerve to tell him. She would tonight, though. The first moment they were together alone, she'd explain about more or less losing her job, and having one last chance, and the need for her to keep her intentions quiet. Surely he would understand.

  He had told her the truth about himself even before he kissed her.

  She pushed that niggling thought aside and smiled at the approaching people, Adam's arm strong around her waist.

  “Adam Fuller.”

  She felt Adam stiffen beside her and wondered why, then realized the show's producer used his real name, not the name he had assumed for the show.

  “Hero North,” Dara Thompson said with a smile that most definitely did not reach her eyes. “How very fitting we should find you both together.”

  “Is it?” Adam asked smoothly, his arm tightening around Hero. She had a horrible presentiment of what was coming. “Well, I'm afraid that whatever you have to say to us is going to have to wait. Hero stepped on a sea urchin and she needs medical attention.”

  “I'm sorry to hear that,” Thompson said, her eyes expressing anything but concern. “This won't take a minute. Mr. Jenkins?”

  The sweaty man in a suit oiled his way forward. “I'm Robert Jenkins, of Dowitcher, Prog, and Epile. I represent Hawkeye Productions, and the TV show Eden in particular. Mr. Fuller, we have here an affidavit from one Samuel Fife, producer, stating that he received payment of five thousand dollars in order to doctor a legitimate contestant's file in such a way as to admit you to the show in place of the contestant.”

  Oh, Lord, they'd found Adam out. Hero slid a glance at him. He stood beside her, not gnashing his teeth or frothing at the mouth, or doing any of the things she would be doing in his place. Instead he looked mildly bored, as if nothing the horrible lawyer in the suit was saying was of any importance.

  “Further investigation has revealed that you were party to the illegal act of smuggling a live animal onto the island despite the quarantine restrictions.”

  Hero wanted to put her arms around Adam. They'd found out about Jesus, too?

  “As you are aware, such an act carries with it not only a substantial fine, but a jail term, in addition to the destruction of the animal in question.”

  “No,” Hero shouted, surprising everyone, including herself. “That's ridiculous, utterly ridiculous—”

  The evil man held up his hand. “I will attend to you in a moment, Miss North.” He turned back to Adam, pulling out a handkerchief to mop his sweaty brow as he spoke. “Because of your actions, you have been disqualified from the competition. You have an hour to remove your things from the hospitality of the resort. Transportation will be provided to the Mystique Island Airport, whereupon officers of the Commonwealth will be waiting to discuss your violations of quarantine policy.”

  Hero stared in horror at the man.

  “I understand,” Adam said, his voice rumbling around her, drawing her eyes to him. He looked nothing more than mildly annoyed. He understood? She didn't understand! And she certainly wasn't going to let some nasty little solicitor push Adam around.

  “I believe that even on Mystique the accused is allowed to face his accuser,” Hero snapped at the man. “Just who exactly tattled on Adam?”

  Jenkins turned to her. “Ah, Miss North. Who exposed Mr. Fuller is not at issue here.”

  “Isn't it? I think it is, although it really is a moot point. There's only one other person here who knows who Adam is—Sally Simmons.”

  “Miss Simmons reluctantly verified information, yes, but she did not bring the initial complaint to our attention. That was done by a Mr. Gregory Barstow.”

  Greg! Greg of the thigh-sized arms. Hero's eyes narrowed as she recalled him questioning Adam the night of the first dinner. And Sally knew she was a journalist—had she told that to Greg as well? Hero couldn't help but being hurt, even though the man had said Sally was reluctant to verify the truth. She had liked Sally, how could she be so cruel to Adam?

  “Miss North, I have here a copy of your application to participate on Eden, and a notarized statement concerning your background. Nowhere in it does it state that you are currently employed as an investigative journalist for a British newspaper.”

  She felt Adam twitch next to her, and crossed her fingers behind her back, praying that she had the time to talk to him before he thought the worst of her. If it wasn't too late, that is…

  “Would you like to explain this oversight?”

  She raised her chin. “Explain it? No, I would not like to explain it, but I will nonetheless. I was employed by a newspaper, but as of three months ago, I was forced to take a leave of absence. I am no longer on the payroll of the Revue.”

  “Do you deny that you applied for a spot on the show with the intention of using your experiences here in an article to be published by Sentinel-Revue at a later date?”

  “That was my intention, yes.”

  “And you willingly provided false information to the show's producers that would mislead them into believing your sole interest was in participating in the show in good faith?”

  What must Adam be thinking of her? She shuddered to think. “No. I did not provide false information.”

/>   “You did not reveal your recent employment by a British tabloid known throughout England for its outrageous and often fantastical and inaccurate stories. You do not consider that providing false information?”

  “I assume there is a point to this?” Hero asked, wanting to lean into Adam, but unsure of his reception to such a move. “My foot hurts. If you are going to throw me off the island, too, please say so now so that I might see the doctor before I have to leave.”

  The man nodded, mopping at his face again. “You are also disqualified from the show. You have one hour to remove yourself from the Crescent Moon Resort. Further, you will be hearing from the Hawkeye Productions legal department regarding the falsifying of statements on your applications.”

  Hero wanted to tell the man where he could stick is falsified statements, but the camera was on her and Adam, so she just smiled instead.

  “Do you need me to carry you?” Adam asked as the group turned around and left without further word. Hero wanted to look at him, wanted to assess the damage the fact that she'd lied to him had done, but hadn't the nerve.

  “No, I can walk,” she said, her head down.

  “Hero.”

  His hand on her arm stopped her.

  “What?” she asked into his chest, ashamed and embarrassed and close to tears with the knowledge that her stupid plan had hurt the one man she loved more than anything else.

  He raised her chin and looked down at her with eyes so blue they looked like the brightest sapphires. “You could have told me.”

  “I know. I'm sorry, so very sorry, Adam. I didn't mean to not tell you, but there never seemed to be a good time, and I didn't want you to think badly of me, and I didn't know how you feel…felt…and I was going to tell you tonight, but now you probably don't even want to hear me out—”

  He leaned forward until his breath was warm on her lips. “Honey, it would take more than a little thing like this to change how I feel about you.”

  She blinked back her tears, shivering despite the warmth of the day. His eyes were so warm, so full of love, she wanted to do a few back flips down the dock despite the fact that their world was falling apart. “It would? What would it take?”