Ten minutes later, crouched awkwardly behind the massive roots of a banyan tree overlooking a small beach that was scarcely large enough to merit the name, she admitted to herself that she had exceeded her orders by following Jack Hawkwood and his bikini-clad friend, but the woman in her was outraged by his behaviour.
She raised her camera, propping it against one of the gnarled roots. Get on with it! she silently urged as she squinted grimly through the lens. All she needed was a kiss and then she would leave them to their sordid games. Getting a shot of Jack being unfaithful to the woman he was being unfaithful to his wife with was worth compromising her conscience for. If nothing else such a photograph might help bring poor Serena Corvell to her senses!
A cheesecake shot of a half-naked woman standing alone on a beach wasn’t what she wanted. Elizabeth lowered the camera, wondering where the other half of her composition had gone. She found him, all too quickly—sprinting up the sand towards the stand of trees where she was hiding. The expression on his face was as hard as the rest of him. In contrast the woman he had left was laughing as she turned to jog off along the beach, back in the direction of the hotel. Elizabeth turned and ran.
She didn’t know whether she had been rumbled or not but she wasn’t waiting around to find out. The sandy soil of the island didn’t support a thick undergrowth, and Elizabeth knew that she wasn’t going to get much cover from the slender-trunked gums and pine trees, so concealment depended on putting as much distance between herself and Jack as quickly as possible. She could hear him behind her, gaining on her. It wasn’t coincidence. He might not know who he was after but he was certainly in full pursuit.
Hopelessly disorientated by panic, she stumbled on as fast as she could in her slip-on sandals, hoping for a miracle, knowing that she was being foolish, knowing that he must now be able to see her quite clearly as she darted around the trees.
She screamed softly when she felt the tug on the fluttering tail of her beach-shirt and wrenched away, losing her balance and her shoes simultaneously. She fell, dropping the camera and hearing him hit the ground with an 'oomph' behind her, her momentum carrying her forward, sprawling thankfully out of his reach. She scrabbled desperately along on her hands and knees, preparing to spring to her feet again when she felt a warm iron manacle clamp on her ankle and yank the support from under her. With a soft cry she fell face-first into the sandy soil. She panted and kicked, but to no avail. He flipped her neatly on to her back and literally climbed up her body until he was pressing her down with the weight of his full length, his menacing face a murmur away from hers.
'Well, well, well,' he drawled as she squirmed beneath him, his breath feathering hot and spicy across her angry face. 'If it isn’t the lonesome dove. Voyeurism, Beth, is that how you get your kicks...?' There was no surprise in his voice, only a grim triumph. So he had known who he was chasing.
'I don’t know what you're talking about!' she panted, trying to summon an innocent outrage. 'How dare you? Get off me!'
Her muslin shirt was transparently thin, and underneath all she wore was a
plain black maillot. They might as well both be naked for all the protection their beach attire afforded. Elizabeth could feel every muscle in his body, hot and hard and damp from the fever of the chase. Her breasts were painfully crushed by his thick chest and she could feel every breath he took as if it were her own.
Suddenly Elizabeth was very aware of the stillness around them, the soft whisper of the sea, the sandy ground abrading the back of her legs, the snug fit of his hips as they straddled hers.
'Get off!'
This time her gasp was more of a plea than a demand, but of course he didn’t move. He just lay there, his grey eyes enjoying her obvious helplessness.
In a last-ditch effort to assert herself Elizabeth reached out and grabbed the neat pony-tail at the back of his head and pulled sharply. The jolt should have brought tears to his eyes but to her horror he didn’t even flinch, the corded muscles of his neck hardly registering the sudden extra tension. Instead he smiled faintly and as she jerked her hand away the thin black band that had held his hair in place came with it. His hair loosened across his braced shoulders, slipping caressingly through her retreating fingers like fine, dark silk. A strand fell forward, teasing her parted lips, the feathered tip adhering just inside the moist corner of her mouth.
Elizabeth froze, her eyes dilating with renewed shock as he delicately reached inside her mouth with his blunt fingers to extract the intimate intrusion, brushing the dampened strands tauntingly across her vividly flushed cheek before tucking them safely behind his ear.
'Do you like the way I taste, Beth?'
His mocking murmur was barely discernible through her excruciating embarrassment.
'Get off...please!'
She almost choked on the final word but to her surprise he politely obliged, rolling sideways. When she knelt and tried to get to her feet she discovered the limits of his concession—she was now held by her wrist. He sat up at right-angles to her, one leg drawn up casually to support the arm holding her captive, the other stretched out in front of him. Her ankle still tingled from the power of his grasp and now her wrist began to pulse uncomfortably against the palm of his hand.
'Let me go.'
'Why—so you can seek out another couple to spy on?'
'I wasn’t spying.'
'No? You followed us from the main beach...'
Elizabeth stopped tugging at her wrist and tried not to show her dismay. 'Whatever makes you say that?'
'You're not exactly inconspicuous.'
'Why should I want to be?' she countered flatly. 'I was just going for a walk. Why on earth should I want to follow you and your... little friend?'
In spite of her best efforts at indifference some of her scathing contempt leaked out in the last two words.
'Exactly my question. And not only follow us. Take photographs.'
Elizabeth couldn’t help her eyes darting sideways towards her fallen camera. Unfortunately it lay well out of reach.
'I happened to be taking photographs of the scenery-'