The Price of Pleasure by Kresley Cole

  Got her. He wanted to howl his triumph.

  Until he stared in disbelief as the skirt he clenched in his fist stayed there while she tripped forward. The sound of ripping cloth and her cursing him melded together over his own heavy breaths. He gaped as the worn fabric ripped a swath straight up the side of her thigh to her waist before tearing free. And then she was gone once more. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell!

  Anger gave way to frustrated fury. He tore off faster. Catch her. Explain who I am. Put her on the ship. Damn it, just catch her! As he plunged deeper into the jungle, the air grew cloudy with mist. The leaves that slapped at his chest were slick.

  A waterfall of mythic size roared into view, the driving water deafening on the black rocks below. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied her white clothing amid the green.

  Amid the green, across the rushing river.

  "Victoria," he bellowed. Amazingly, she slowed. "I'm here to rescue you."

  She turned and marched into a clearing. Putting her hands to her mouth, she yelled back at him. The words were incomprehensible over the water. "Bloody hell!" She'd have had no better luck hearing him.

  Seeing no way around it, he ran to the bank and dove in, swimming furiously across the sweeping currents. Choking water, scarcely able to breathe, he hauled his big frame onto the opposite shore and staggered forward. He spotted her ahead, but as he returned to an agonizing run, he knew there was no way to catch her, no way to gain. Then he saw it, a chance.

  She was following the path--he could cut through the brush separating them and intercept her. He veered left, hurtling a lazy palm, gaining already.

  Then, strangely, he saw his feet--above his head. Right before he felt the first punch of earth as he plummeted down a ravine.

  Even as he dropped, helpless to stop himself, he knew she'd led him here on purpose. When he caught her...He tumbled one last time and landed on his back so hard, the impact knocked the air from his lungs.

  Before he could focus his eyes, she stood over him, prodding his hip with a stick, sunlight through the canopy haloing her hair. She tilted her head. "Why were you trying to catch me?"

  He fought for breath, fought to speak, but only managed wheezing sounds. He could see her blond brows knit and her lips part to demand "Why?" once more, but she heard his men crashing toward them. She looked back at him, running her eyes over him, thoroughly, slowly, until she leaned in closer to taunt, "Next time you try to run me down, Sailor, I'll drop you off a cliff."

  She turned to stride away. He lunged over onto his front and sucked in a roar of air, breathing in the moisture from the plants enmeshing him. Coughing violently, he reached out a hand, wanting to stop her.

  But she didn't look back. An iguana scuttled in her path, hissed at her, and deepened its stripes aggressively. She hissed back and disappeared into a black-green wall of brush.

  Though she was loath to show it, Tori Dearbourne's heart hurt from fear as she plunged, arms raised above her, through foliage so thick it was like wading through water. She could hear the band of sailors, hear them hooting and laughing, slashing through the undergrowth behind her. She shuddered. Just like the last batch to land here.

  No, at least they'd acted like friends, even saviors, before their heinous attack. Now, this towering giant, with his fierce eyes, hadn't even waited for the boat to reach shore before he charged like a lion after her, then pawed and ripped at her clothing.

  Her fear beckoned worry as well. She just couldn't afford fear, and Lord knew she should be immune to it by now. Fate had tossed her about so much that that part of her simply should have withered away.

  At least she hadn't appeared as terrified as she was; no, she'd just coldly made sure that if he attempted to cut her off, he'd take a spill for his troubles. She'd yelled a warning. For the tenth time, she told herself he'd chosen his own path.

  All she'd planned for this morning was to check a trap in the shallows. A simple, routine chore. She'd been intent on reaching the waterline and rushing back to the canopy, avoiding the burning sun as one would run in from the rain, and hadn't exactly expected company after so many years....

  A rebounding branch slapped at her thigh, startling her with its force, the pain cutting through her thoughts. She looked down to see blood streaming from the slash, staining what was left of the white lawn skirt she wore. Curse it! She might've mended it, but she didn't think the fabric could take another scrubbing before disintegrating.

  Forcing herself to slow, she looked back in her wake. She knew better than to leave such a trail--splintered branches and now blood on a broad leaf. After a deep, calming breath, she returned to her task of picking through spiny palm fronds until she reached the trail to their camp. Ten minutes of sprinting up the hillside brought her to the arch of banana leaves serving as an entryway to their home.

  "Men!" Tori gasped as she lurched into the clearing. "Men and a ship!" She bent over, sucking in air, then sank down, her thighs tight against her mud-speckled calves. No one answered. "Cammy?" she called. Nothing. Their hut, supported high in an ancient banyan, was silent. So help her, Cammy had better be in there. How many times had Tori ordered her to remain in the camp?

  And Cammy would've been able to remember if she hadn't begun losing her wits at a spectacular rate.

  Rushing to the ladder, she took two bamboo rungs at a time, then hurried to the door flap made of old sail. She yanked open the cloth to peer inside. Empty. Tori looked away and back as if she hadn't seen correctly. What if Cammy wandered all the way down to the beach this time?

  There were two trails to their little shelf of land on the hillside, one hidden and one more hidden. She'd already run the length of the former, so she dashed over to the latter. Halfway down she found Cammy sitting back against a tree, breaths shallow, face waxy, her lips chapped and cracked.

  Tori shook her shoulder, and after a few seconds Cammy opened her eyes, blinking against the light. "Where is your hat, Tori? Have you been in the sun?"

  Relief soughed through Tori's body like a breeze. Cammy scolding was much better than Cammy sleeping like the dead.

  "With your fair skin, it's just common sense..." She trailed off when she saw Tori's bloodied leg and wet, tattered skirt. "What has happened now?"

  "Men and a ship. After a giant chased me and ripped my clothes, I lost track of the hat."

  Cammy gave her a smile that didn't quite reach her distracted hazel eyes. "We can't be too careful about our complexions, now, can we?" she asked vaguely.

  Vague. That was the best way to describe Cammy now. Before, she'd been a vibrant woman, as vibrant as her fiery red hair, with a crisp, lively intelligence. Now she seemed wilted, and her clarity of mind faded in and out with no discernible pattern.

  Tori mentally counted to five. Sometimes, when Cammy got that unfocused look about her, Tori wanted to shake her. "Did you hear what I said? We're not alone."

  Just when Tori decided she wouldn't understand what was happening, Cammy asked, "What were they like?"

  "The one that came after me had the coldest, most piercing eyes I've ever seen. I had to put him in the ravine to stop him."

  "The ravine?" she asked. "Oh, how I wish I could've seen that."

  Tori frowned at the fresh memory and said almost to herself, "It really is true about the bigger you are, the harder you fall." She shook her head. "The rest of them were slashing at the foliage, getting ready to enter."

  "Sailors combing the brush." Cammy shivered. "History's repeating itself...."

  Both froze when the birds nearby fell silent. "We've got to get to the camp," Tori whispered.

  "I'm going to slow you down. You go and I'll follow."

  "Why, yes, that's just what I'll do," Tori said while wedging a shoulder under Cammy's arm and lifting her. After painfully slow moments, they clambered up the trail. As their home came into view, Tori surveyed it, trying to see it from a stranger's eyes. How odd it would be to have men in their camp, gazing at the shelter, walking
past the rock-ringed fire pit. For outsiders to see the workmanship, or workwomanship, more precisely, that was a testament of their dogged survival. Tori knew it was terrible of her, but she was almost eager for someone to marvel at their work. Her pride would be her downfall, Cammy would say.

  Tori didn't believe in downfalls. It would have happened by now. Nature and Fate united to mete out challenge after challenge, and she and Cammy had beat the odds every time. They lived and lived, and would some more. No, there'd be no downfalls. Tori frowned at her thoughts. Cammy had told her she was proud, but Tori feared that she was arrogant as well.

  But then, arrogant had always served her better than afraid.

  "What direction did they set off in?" Cammy asked.

  "It doesn't matter." Tori's smile was cold. "It will always be the wrong one."

  Two

  Grant limped to meet his crew at the canopy line near the beach, teeth gritted in pain, one arm across his chest, hand clutching his opposite shoulder. Water dripped from his hair and mixed with the sweat on his forehead to trickle into his eyes.

  Blindsided. That's what he'd just been. Thoughts racketed in his head. Why would she run in the first place? More important, why the hell had he chased her like a dog after a carriage, and about as mindlessly? Why, if he had to do it over, would he run after her again?

  "Grant, you look like you tussled with the wrong feral girl," Ian drawled. "Round one to Victoria. Or maybe not," he said, with a pointed glance at the soaked cloth still bunched in Grant's free hand. Grant felt his skin flush before he could grab his pack from Dooley and stuff it in.

  "Congratulations, Cap'n, you've found a survivor!" Dooley cried, his face creased in a baggy smile. "I knew you would."

  Where Dooley's unwavering confidence in Grant came from, Grant had no idea.

  Ian slanted a look at Grant. "Ah, but wasn't finding her supposed to be the hard part?"

  Grant swung a lowering look at his cousin, then barked to the crew, "Get some more supplies. Just enough for one night. And scavenge as much food as we can hold for the trip back."

  Though Dooley appeared delighted to have a chore, for the first time his sailors hesitated at their orders. They looked up at Grant with the ever-constant fear, but now he saw confusion as well. Their emotionless captain, who worshipped logic, had bolted like an animal after a girl.

  Grant decided to reassure them. "Move," he said in a tone lacking feeling or inflection of any kind. "Now."

  He almost had to laugh when they spun around and fled in various directions. Most of his crew were more afraid of his controlled demeanor than of his brother Derek's infamous rants. A boisterous, lusty lot, they couldn't understand someone who behaved as he did. They reasoned that sooner or later a man as cold as Grant would simply...snap. Still waters run deep, he'd heard them whisper to each other in warning.

  Ian snorted. "One day they'll realize you won't slit their throats in the night. Then where will you be?"

  "Retired." Grant yanked off his sopping boots and ruined shirt, then snatched dry clothing out of his pack. After he changed, he found Ian gathering a machete and canteen from the pile of equipment. "You're gearing up as if you're going in with me. Let me make this clear--this is a jungle. There will be no revelry, no drink, and no women of your...distinct caliber."

  "Understood, Cap'n." Ian shouldered the canteen. "But I'd still like to go. If, of course, my shore dress is acceptable to you," he said, a jibe no doubt referring to the time Grant had sent a sailor back to tar the ship because his shirt had been untucked.

  "Nothing about you is acceptable to me."

  Ian's face split into a satisfied smile before he turned to the nearest opening in the jungle wall.

  Grant shouldered his own canteen and machete, then exhaled a long breath, drawing on some deep inner well of patience. As he followed, he reminded himself that though Ian was twenty-six, he was a young twenty-six. Then he wondered what would happen when the well went dry.

  "So, what are we looking for?" Ian asked.

  "A trail, footprints, a campsite. Anything," Grant answered curtly, hoping to stem a conversation with Ian. He didn't want to talk--he wanted to think about what had just occurred and sort through the last unbelievable hour of his life. He shook his head, still unable to grasp that he'd found her. Or that she'd turned into a wildcat.

  Blindsided. Tricked, misled--literally--and attacked. By a girl.

  He didn't like surprises, mainly because he'd always reacted so poorly to them. He let out a pent-up breath. Concentrate on the task at hand, Grant. And the task really was very simple when he boiled it down: Get the girl into the boat.

  "Do you think the island was deserted before?"

  Grant exhaled. "I have no idea. This one's bigger than the others. There could be a bloody metropolis here for all we know."

  Ian slowed and turned, assuming a thoughtful expression. "Grant. You know I would never criticize you in front of the crew--"

  "Yes, you would."

  Ian waved an unconcerned hand. "In any case, what got into you back there? I've never seen you behave like that. It was as if you'd been possessed."

  He scowled, though Ian was right. Grant did nothing without careful consideration, never acted without plodding examination. "I've waited a long time for that moment." His explanation sounded weak to his own ears. He had felt possessed. Impulses had fired in him and for the first time in memory, he'd obeyed them without question. "I wouldn't have chased if she hadn't run."

  Ian eyed him shrewdly. "Maybe you're more like your brothers than you think."

  Grant's whole body tensed. "I am not like my brothers. I'm staid, respectable--"

  "I know, I know," Ian interrupted. "You've mastered yourself. You have limitless control and restraint." He tilted his head. "Or perhaps it's like the crew says--you've carved any lust for life from yourself until you're like a stone."

  Grant slowed. "They say I'm like a stone?"

  "They say worse, but that's all I'll divulge."

  "Then just shut up, Ian." He marched faster.

  "But you weren't like a stone today, that's for sure." Ian caught up and confessed, "I'm glad you chased her."

  Grant gave him a long-suffering look. "For what possible reason?"

  "You showed you're still human. For once, you weren't ruled by cold logic. And maybe the woman brought it out in you."

  "My reward for finding her brought it out in me. The fact that she's a woman is incidental."

  "And the fact that she's a beauty?" He raised his eyebrows. "Well, I'm sure you've scared the hell out of her. You're not a small man. Yes, she's probably huddled somewhere crying right about now." He made a tsking sound. "That's one thing you did not inherit with your Sutherland blood--a way with the ladies."

  Grant willed the irritation from his face. As usual, his cousin baited him. As usual, Grant restrained himself from reaction. Ian's impulsive, volatile personality ran as opposite to his own as possible, and if Grant had been less guarded, they would have been at each other's throats for seven months now.

  An uninvited passenger, Ian had run aboard minutes before they cast off in London. For the hundredth time, Grant regretted taking on his ne'er-do-well, rakehell cousin. He swore under his breath and surveyed Ian squinting up at birds, happily snagging and eating a banana. Ian, for all his faults, for his uncanny ability to irritate, for his laziness, for his--Grant stanched that interminable train of thought, admitting to himself that for all his faults, Ian was like a brother. If Grant had to do it over, he knew he'd repeat the mistake of taking him on.

  During his harried race down the docks to the Keveral's berth, Ian had been looking over his shoulder, eyes wide.

  He was quelling the temptation to remind Ian of his nonpaying and nonworking status on board when Ian snapped his fingers. "Just thought of something--this means Victoria's grandfather isn't mad."

  "Some of us never thought he was." That was a disingenuous answer at best. Grant had wondered about the
sanity of Victoria's grandfather. Edward Dearbourne, the old earl of Belmont, was considered insane among polite society and by all connected with London shipping. What else could you call a lonely old man who longed for his lost family so fiercely that he imagined them alive and unfound for all these years? Even after he'd commissioned failed search after search throughout the South Pacific, impoverishing himself?

  Grant knew what to call him. Right.

  At least about Victoria. Grant remembered his first meeting with the earl. Tears had tracked from Belmont's filmy eyes as he'd explained the history of his lost family. Uncomfortable with the emotional display, Grant had offered him platitudes. The three are gone. Best to accept it and move on. They're in a better place.

  Yet against all reason, the man had continued to believe. Grant frowned. Against all logic.

  He gave a sharp shake of his head. The earl's intuition or "gut feeling" that his family lived wasn't what gave him hope. Grant knew the man had hope because the alternative was unendurable....

  "Imagine the look on his face when we bring her back. Hell, the look on everyone's face." Ian's normally languid eyes were snapping with excitement. "And here I thought we were the fools accepting a fool's errand."

  "We?"

  Ian looked affronted. "I believe it is you and I out here, hence the we."

  Grant glared and passed him. For the next three hours, he made good headway until another blister gave way beneath the sweat-dampened handle of his machete. He hissed in a breath through clenched teeth. When Ian trailed farther behind, Grant stopped, put a mud-coated, bloody hand against a tree, and leaned in, fatigued to his bones.

  The inner island was like an oven--gone were the soothing breeze and powdery sand. Here mud and fallen plants congealed into a pulpy floor, hungry with suction and grueling to slog through. He drank water, fighting not to guzzle, and took note of himself. Lacerations crisscrossed his skin and blisters the size of crowns pocked his hands; a reddening band spanned his upper chest.

  "Grant, this isn't a race." Ian wheezed as he reeled forward. "Are you trying to cover the entire island this afternoon?"

  Grant had no pity for his cousin. "I warned you."