Bird of Paradise

  “Isn't this a wonderful place? How was your room? Mine looks over the salt-water pool. This is Greg, he's from Chicago.”

  They exchanged pleasantries for a moment before Sally added, “Come sit with us at dinner, unless you have someone else you'd like to sit with.”

  Hero looked over Sally's shoulder and noticed Adam and his cat bearing down on them, a grim look on his face. She knew she shouldn't say yes, she knew that although she liked Sally, it wasn't for the sake of a friendly face that she wanted to agree. She couldn't even begin to pretend to herself that her true motivation was not in the fact that wherever Sally went, Adam was sure to follow.

  Since there was no use denying it, she might as well give in.

  “I'd love to join you, if you truly don't mind,” she said with a grateful smile, and followed them past a barrage of cameramen into the brightly lit ballroom. It was a bit unnerving knowing that her every movement was likely to be caught on camera, a fact that had her checking obsessively in the small mirror in her bathroom to make sure that she didn't have a spot or something horrid hanging from her nose, or that the back of her tiered gauze skirt was tucked up into her knickers. She tried not to look at the cameras, and took a chair next to Greg. He was grinning right at one, flexing his thigh-sized arms.

  He probably ate steroids for lunch.

  A minute later Jesus was deposited on the chair next to her, Adam taking the seat beyond that. “Evening everyone. Sally. Hero, you look lovely. Hi. Name's Marsh,” he said to Greg, leaning across Jesus and Hero to hold out his hand. “And you are…?”

  She blinked at him as Greg introduced himself. Sally sent him a menacing glare, then ignored him, putting her hand on Greg's huge arm to draw his attention back to where she wanted it.

  “Notice you have a cat,” Greg said casually, but casually in an I don't want you to see just how interested I am sort of way. Hero wondered if Greg, noticing Adam's interest in Sally, was preparing to go territorial.

  Adam's lips twisted wryly. “He's a bit hard to ignore, but yes, he's my cat.”

  “Brought him through quarantine, did you?”

  Hero froze, not daring to look at Adam. How would he handle the question?

  “Yes,” Adam drawled, apparently unconcerned. Hero let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding and glanced over at Adam. He was scratching the cat's chest, much to Jesus's satisfaction. “Spent six months in there, poor old fellow.”

  Greg tapped on the side of his plate with his fingernail. “Rather odd, isn't it, to put your cat through six months of quarantine for a six week vacation?”

  Adam smiled, showing a great many white teeth. “Not odd at all. I'm hoping to settle in the area, and once your animal has cleared through one quarantine in these islands, they can travel to the others with immunity.”

  “Huh. Is that so?” Greg replied, a shuttered look to his eyes.

  Hero wondered if what Adam had said was true. It didn't sound right, but then, she knew he was lying. It might very well do as a cover story.

  “So,” Adam said, smiling at her and not too noticeably changing the subject, “what's the game plan for this evening? Dinner and then a group date, eh? What sort of a date will it be, do you think?”

  Hero nudged the small card in front of his plate toward him. “The card says tonight will be an icebreaker date. I imagine that means silly party games.”

  Two more people wandered over, introducing themselves. Sally greeted them, her smile almost as bright as the arc lights shining down on them. Immediately two cameramen honed in on them, one camera on Sally, the other on Jesus who was sitting at the table with a serious expression on his face, looking for all the world like a guest who had been invited to a dinner party. The gecko was still perched on his head. Hero stared at it for a moment, then glanced up at Adam.

  “Thought he needed a bit of sprucing up,” Adam whispered to her. “Jesus and I have our evening clothes on, so thought it was only right Gecko should fancy himself up, too.”

  She looked back to the cat. She had to admit Adam was right. The gecko did look much more festive with a bright red bow around his neck. Jesus wore a different collar from the one she'd seen him in earlier. That was plain brown leather—this one was hot pink with little black charms dangling from it. She looked closer.

  “They're mice. Friend of mine made it for him just for the dinners,” Adam said. “Makes him feel like he's dressed up, too.”

  She wanted to tell him that he was the only man on God's green earth who would think of his cat's feelings during a dinner date, but the camera was pointing at her now so she just smiled and murmured something non-committal.

  Dinner was a bit of a trial. She realized midway through the escargot that the dinner in itself was an event—the food presented had to be the most challenging to eat politely in public. Each place setting had an appetizer fork, shellfish fork, salad fork, and main dinner fork, not to mention two spoons, two knives, and something that she thought was a tool to eat escargot, but might possibly be a gelding device. She giggled at that thought…until the snails were placed on her plate.

  She slid a covert glance around the table. Everyone was laughing and eating and chatting quite amiably, and no one blinked an eye at the thought of eating escargot. Except Adam. He stared at his plate in horror, then looked up and caught her eye.

  The urge to giggle was strong. “I'm from a working class family,” she leaned over Jesus to whisper. “Where I come from, snails are destroyed in the garden, not eaten.”

  A look of profound relief lit his eyes. “Thank God for you. I thought I might actually have to eat them.”

  “Do what I do when faced with something I don't wish to eat—say you're allergic to them.”

  “I have a better idea,” he said with a wicked grin that lit all sorts of little fires inside of her. He picked up the gelding device and clamped it around a shell, then dug around inside until he pulled out the meat, and with a quick look to make sure no cameras were on him, placed the food on Jesus's plate. The cat sniffed at it, batted it around a bit with one heavy paw, then finally chewed on it with an indescribable expression on his face. Hero and Adam watched him carefully.

  “He's going to spit it back up.”

  “No he's not, he likes it. If he didn't like it, he'd knock it on the floor. There, you see? He ate it. Your turn.”

  They got rid of most of their snails in that manner. By the end of the meal Jesus was curled up on his chair, looking sated and sleepy. The gecko, evidently warmed by the cat below him, was quiet as well. Only occasionally did he rouse himself to flick his tongue, capturing an unwary moth or fly that flew too near the duo.

  One cameraman or another was lurking around their table during the entire meal, making Hero feel even more nervous than she would in normal circumstances, but since most of the time the cameras were either on Sally, the three other women, or Jesus, she started to relax. Perhaps the party games wouldn't be so bad after all.

  “Oh, how naïve I can be,” she muttered a short time later as she and ninety-nine other women paraded around two lines of chairs that had been placed back-to-back. Loud Caribbean music blared throughout the ballroom. Lights from the ring of cameramen around them caused beads of perspiration to form on her brow. “Naïve and downright stupid. Of all the silly things I agreed to do—”

  The music stopped suddenly. She lunged for the nearest man, plopping herself down on his lap even as she excused her herself. “I do hope you don't mind if I—oh, I am sorry. I didn't realize that was your…erm…yes. I'm sure it won't cause any permanent damage. You weren't planning on starting a family right away, were you?”

  He didn't return her tentative smile.

  Despite wishing she hadn't been so quick to find a free lap in the embarrassingly intimate game of musical chairs, she stayed perched on her unwilling host until the ten women unlucky enough to find themselves without men to sit on were excused, and another ten men and chairs were removed.

 
The music started again. She made it through three more excruciatingly embarrassing rounds, then finally was excused and returned to her table to watch the rest of the game with Adam's cat and the tablemates who were also unlucky enough to be caught without a man's lap to sit upon.

  During the second round, in which the women sat on the chairs and the men raced around them, she was surprised to suddenly find Adam in front of her.

  “Do you mind?” he asked with a wry smile.

  Some of the smaller women, afraid of being squashed by larger male companions, had taken to scooting over to inhabit a tiny fraction of the chair, thus leaving the men room to park themselves on a corner, but Hero was no tiny woman. She filled her chair. During the two rounds before, both men who had claimed her had sat on her without the slightest qualm. She couldn't help but be a little touched that Adam asked permission first.

  Then again, he was a very large man.

  “No, be my guest,” she said, moving her hands from where her fingers were laced across her stomach. He sat down on her carefully.

  “Am I too heavy?”

  “No, although I will admit this is a novel experience for me.”

  “Never had a man sit on you before, eh? What a sheltered life you must lead.” He grinned. She wanted to grin in response, but knew she shouldn't give in to his patently false charm.

  But it was so very hard, especially when he was sitting sideways on her with a wicked glint in his eye, and an even more wicked grin curving those warm, soft lips. He looked like a rogue, a devil, a man who was the sort of trouble every woman loved. She doubted if very many people were allowed to see this Adam, the real Adam.

  “I shouldn't humor you,” she told him sternly, feeling her own lips twitch.

  “Sure you should. I love to be humored.”

  “Heaven only knows if I do, it might make your nipples explode in delight.”

  The grin faded from his face. Hero wanted to kick herself the minute the words left her mouth. How stupid could she be? With a few ill-chosen words she had reminded him of the true nature of their relationship—blackmailer and blackmailee.

  He opened his mouth to say something, but one of the show staff came up to tell her she had to relinquish her chair. She walked back to her table, reminding herself that this whole idea was hers, and she had no one to blame but herself.

  It didn't help.

  Adam lasted a few more rounds, giving her a curious look when he returned to the table, but other than asking her quietly if he had been too heavy for her, he said nothing.

  Until the orange incident.

  “I'm sure most of you are familiar with the orange game,” the Eden host, Asterisk, said a lead-in to the next event. Short, balding, famed for his comedic roles, he seemed to enjoy performing before the crowd of contestants, cracking all sorts of terrible puns and jokes riddled with double entendres that had the crowd howling and applauding wildly.

  The cameras filmed every moment of it.

  Asterisk held up an orange. “The object of this game is to pass the orange from one person to another—without using your arms or hands, and without letting the orange touch the floor. Each table will form a line, man, woman, man, woman, and pass the orange from one person to another. Points will be awarded to each contestant who does not drop the orange. So here's your chance, ladies and gents, to get a head start on the point count. Ready? Maestro, mambo music please!”

  Loud pulsing music poured out from the speakers overhead. Cameramen and sound people moved into place as each table obediently formed a line. Hero stood behind Adam (who, to her surprise, did not hurry to take a place next to Sally), and in front of a man with a skull-and-crossbones earring and tattoos of flames licking up his wrists.

  It was going to be a long night.

  True be told, she admitted to herself a few minutes later, it was an amusing game. The first person in the line held the orange under her chin, while the man next to her more or less embraced her in order to get close enough to try to take it from her. She giggled as he nuzzled her neck, trying to capture the orange under his own chin, he laughed when she writhed against him, trying to push the orange toward his neck, the cameraman tightened his shot on the two in a seemingly very intimate embrace; and Hero watched it all with her breath caught in her throat. Her eyes turned to where Adam stood in front of her, applauding when the man finally retrieved the orange. She was going to have to take the orange from him. She was going to have to stand very close to him, her arms on his, her jaw brushing his to take the orange.

  She had to be mad.

  The next woman in line was Sally. She gave it a game shot, but dropped the orange. So did Greg, but Hero suspected that was because he had no neck to speak of, and thus no way to hold the orange. A short strawberry-blonde woman took up the orange next, and giggled in Adam's ear as he doubled over to try and retrieve the orange from her. With some careful maneuvering, he managed to get it without too much trouble, and turned to face Hero with the orange clamped between his chin and collarbone.

  “You can do it; it's easy,” he encouraged her, his words somewhat slurred because he couldn't move his jaw. She stared into his glittering blue eyes for a moment, and wondered if the laughter she saw in there was directed at her, or at the silly situation. It didn't matter, she told herself as she stepped up to him, placing her hands on his arms as she leaned into his chest. All that mattered was that she get the points. The points were everything. She couldn't afford to be left behind, not even with Adam as a ringer.

  She had no idea what brand of aftershave he used, but she highly approved of it. The scent of him, part spicy aftershave, part something uniquely Adam, teased her senses as her jaw brushed his. She angled her head to capture the orange under her chin, ignoring the fact that her breasts, pressed up against him, were on fire with the contact. His breath was hot and rapid in her ear as his hands came around her waist to steady her. She could see the pulse beat rapidly in his neck. The scent of him, the heat from his chest touching hers, the slight abrasion of his whiskery chin against her neck, and the nearness of his mouth to an ear suddenly turned into a highly erogenous spot almost undid her, but the flicker of light as the cameraman moved to a better angle reminded her that they were being filmed.

  She bit back the desire to lick the pulse point on his neck and clamped her chin down on the orange. Adam groaned slightly and lifted his head to release the orange, but her grip wasn't as good as she thought it was. The orange slid from beneath her chin and started to drop. She shrieked and slammed herself against Adam, rocking him backwards. He regained his balance, his hands tight on her arms.

  “Of all the ignominious positions,” she grumbled into his chest. She was half crouched, the orange caught slightly above her breasts, pressed into his stomach.

  “Are you all right?” Adam asked, his hands warm on her shoulders.

  “Yes, fine, the bloody thing is on my…it's between my chest and your stomach.”

  The others in their line called out encouragement and advice.

  “If you slide down slowly you should be able to catch it under your chin again,” Adam said, holding her firmly to him. She knew it was so the orange would not continue its downward path and not because he wanted her body pressed against his, but she couldn't help enjoy the contact.

  “Is that the only way?”

  “It'll be easy. Just move slowly,” he told her.

  She nodded into his chest, took a grip on his waist, and started to slide slowly down him. She almost had it under her chin when Adam jerked and yelled, “Jesus, no!”

  The orange dropped six inches. She caught it by pressing it against Adam with her cheek. Breathing heavily with the effect of being so close to him, and the spurts of adrenaline that shot through her every time the orange dropped, she rolled her eye to the side to assess where she was.

  Her face and the orange were pressed against his crotch.

  “Oh, Lord,” she swore into his genitals, wondering if her life could get an
y worse.

  “Jesus! Sit! No, damn it, that does not mean come here, it means sit! Sit!”

  A loud crash indicated a chair was turned over, but it was the laughter and calls of the people at her table that told her what was going on behind her back. Adam had tied the cat's leash to the chair while he was participating in the games. Jesus didn't seem to mind since he was curled up asleep after his meal of snails, but evidently he had woken up and suddenly felt the need to join in the fun.

  He dragged the chair over to where Hero was face-to-genitals with Adam. She sighed.

  “Any brilliant ideas how I'm to get it now?” she asked him, her words slurred because of the orange pressed against her cheek. She absolutely refused to look at his crotch. She refused to notice how strained his zipper looked, or acknowledge that his fingers were biting into her arms and his breathing was just as erratic as hers.

  “You're going to have to turn your face a little so you can get it under your chin,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Damn it cat, I told you not to come over here.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment, ignoring the people laughing at her, at the cat, at everything, and tried very hard not to dwell on what turning her face toward Adam's groin was going to mean. The points, she needed the points. The points were everything. She had to do this.

  A hard head butted her hip where she knelt before Adam.

  “Leave her alone, cat,” he growled above her. Jesus paid no mind his owner and rubbed himself along Hero's thigh in an obvious attempt to get her attention.

  She ignored the cat as she warned Adam, “I'm going to take the orange now.”

  A second cameraman joined the first. She ignored them as well.

  “Carefully,” Adam pleaded.

  She smiled a grim little smile to herself and simultaneously rose a little and turned her face inward until her mouth was pressed against his belt, and the orange held firmly against her voice box. She lowered her chin carefully. Behind his zipper, Adam twitched. She stopped for a moment, feeling an answering twitch within herself, deep down where the heat pooled uncomfortably in her womanly parts. Deciding it was best to pretend the twitches never happened, with careful movements she clasped the orange between her chin and chest and pulled slowly away from him. The orange remained solid under her chin. She gave a heartfelt sigh of relief, and with one hand on Adam's belt for balance, started to rise to her feet.