The Passionate Sinner (19 page)

Tonight he wanted that flame to burn bright and bold —Merlin could see it deep in his eyes, as if his pupils were phosphorescent. As the feasting went on around her, she feasted her eyes on his head and brow, the proud nose with arched nostrils, the mouth and jawline just ruthless enough to be exciting. The island music had a compelling and pagan quality to it, and she could feel the blood stirring in her veins, and the melting in her bones when Paul slipped an arm about her silky waist. She wanted to be possessed by him beyond all thought, all fear of what the days ahead might bring. Within the hard circle of his arm that was strong enough to break her bones, Merlin watched the dragon dance with bated breath; the masks over the faces of the male dancers were fierce and fascinating, and there wasn’t a single doubt that she was being openly courted by her husband. He slipped tiny oysters between her lips and made her swallow them, and insisted that she share with him a cup of rum and pure coconut milk. It was delicious, heady—a lovers’ potion, he told her.

He didn’t seem to mind at all that everyone could see him courting her, and Merlin could see that the islanders were loving his attentions towards her. Embroidered bridal pillows were presented to them, and with a smile Paul ran his fingertips over the tracery of silk letters.

‘What do they mean?’ Merlin asked him.

‘Love’ he drawled, ‘makes ideal dreams.’

‘Oh.’ She caught her breath at the sardonic set to his mouth.

‘Don’t you agree with the sentiment, my dear? You should, when you have the ideal lover who shows you every attention. I’m sure everyone else can see how charmed I am with my moon girl in her silver
kain
I’m sure they can tell that I can’t wait to be alone with you.’

He couldn’t see the passionate gravity of her eyes as she studied his face and tried to read his expression. Her eyes moved upward to the blaze of his hair against his deep tan ... nothing could be more tormenting than loving a man in whom desire and hate were possibly fused like hot metal. He leaned to her and breathed the spicy scent of the ginger flower in her hair.

‘We will be leaving very soon,’ he murmured. ‘But first there will be a certain ceremony as old as this island, and you will submit to it.’

‘Submit to what?’ she breathed, and felt his hand tighten against her side, near her heart. His lips took the edge of a smile, as if he were enjoying her thrust of alarm.

‘A rite that all island brides are expected to—endure.It won’t be too painful, I assure you.’

‘Paul, you’re making me feel scared.’

‘Really, are you more afraid of these uncomplicated people than you are of your
harimau?’

‘My tiger,’ she murmured. ‘Will you really devour me, bones and all?’

‘There’s no telling with a tiger, my
kasihpada.
I wonder what a moon girl tastes like?’ He took hold of her hand and carried it to his face, and a moment later Merlin gave an audible gasp as he lightly bit the flesh under her thumb. ‘You taste of rice ball and honey, of watermelon and rum. I’m hungry to take you home to my Tiger House, but first these people must have their fun with you.’

‘Paul, what do you mean?’

He laughed softly against the palm of her hand. ‘Wait and see!’

Merlin didn’t have long to wait, for all at once a group of laughing dancers came running from among the trees, and after throwing wreaths of velvety jasmine about her neck they carried her away from Paul, and she heard him laughing with the other men, ignoring her little cry of fear as she was lifted right off her feet while several of the male dancers wrapped her from head to toe in yards of rose-coloured silk, cocooning her securely, their lean dark faces and slanting eyes alive with the sensuous fun of the performance.

‘Wh-what are you doing?’ she begged of them. ‘Please —Paul!’

Then she saw the faunish face of Lon leaning over her, the firelight giving his features a smiling, demon look. ‘It is the tradition,
mem.
This way long ago the eunuchs carried the favoured slave girl to the master’s bed. The girls and the young men won’t hurt you, but now they are going to carry you to the
tuan’s
bed—hear him laugh,
mem?
How often can a blind man forget like that his blindness?’

For Paul? Yes, anything on earth for Paul, and with a laugh that was half a sob Merlin submitted to the rite and felt herself carried swiftly away from the bonfires, along the lane of coffee trees, in the direction of the Tiger House. Laughing among themselves, they carried her up the stairs and along the gallery to Paul’s room, where they laid her on the thick silk coverlet of his big teakwood bed ... a princely bed carved all up and down its posts with leaping leopards and twining serpents.

Again for a moment she saw the dark face of Lon leaning over; his eyes were leaping with devilish, silent laughter. Then he was gone and she was left helplessly bound in silk, a gift-wrapped package for Paul to come and unwrap. Suddenly she gave an irrepressible laugh; it was an absurd game and yet at the same time an erotic one, and she tried to imagine it happening in England, where marriage was treated so matter-of-factly.

The laughter was still on her lips when Paul came to her, when he leaned down and found her silk binding with his strong, sure hands. ‘They really had a game with you,
meisje,
eh? You didn’t
mind
too much?’

‘No, but can you get me out
of
this cocoon?’

‘Let me see—ah, I keep asking for that, don’t I? Here we go, you are coming free of
the
wrapping—like a present for the tiger, eh? A nice little bone for him to get his teeth into.’ Paul tossed aside the length of silk and suddenly his hands were upon the
kain
and the little jacket of lace. ‘These next, I think.’

Merlin looked up into his face and saw that physical hunger was taking possession of him, but she was unafraid ... there was too much love in her heart and her body f her to be able to resist his touch, which became relentless as he tossed aside the
kebaya
and with urgent fingers tore the silver silk that enclosed her. The fragile straps of her slip were pushed from her shoulders so he could reach her soft warm skin. Softly vibrating, he laid her back on the bed, and unaware in his blindness that the lamps were alight he stripped swiftly to his skin, and Merlin ran her gaze over his golden torso, his strong frame that had a sort of ruthless magnificence as he stood over her a moment, and then reached for her.

She gasped with sheer joy as she felt the strength in his shoulders and sun-burnished arms, so tanned that the crisp hairs on them felt like tiny gold spears.

Her skin was milky in contrast to his, and her lips smouldered beneath his. ‘You are lovely,
liefje,
put together with the perfection of a young cat,’ he whispered. ‘Do you mind very much that I cannot see what I can only feel?’

‘There is nothing to mind, Paul, not if you are pleased with me.’

‘Ja,
I am pleased.’ He put his lips to her throat. ‘Can’t you hear me purring? Come close, close, little one. Let me feel your heart, for tonight this is where you belong.’

Close, so fused to him that she felt the movement of his heart ... the heart made lonely by months of celibate darkness now breaking into flame as Merlin clung to him, giving of herself with an abandon from her very soul. She melted into him, and her little moan of surrender was primal music, prelude to the sweet pain and rapture, his beautiful name on her lips ... Paul ... Paul ... oh,
Paul.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MERLIN awoke to find herself in Paul’s arms, entwined and part of him. He moved and her lips pressed his shoulder, his name a breathless whisper. They had seemed to share the same heartbeat, the same life spring, the same moment of shattering response.

‘I could die in you,’ he whispered. ‘You make me see— for the space of moments I seem to break free of this pall of darkness. You are my little white witch—you cast a spell over me and all I want is the feel of you and the pleasure. You make a sybarite of me. I might very well say to the devil with everything and settle for this.’

‘Some time we have to eat, Paul.’ She moved her hand along the smooth skin of his shoulder, feeling the muscle and bone under her fingers. ‘We can’t live on—love.’

‘But what a way to die!’ He buried his lips in her neck. ‘I have you at my mercy, you realise that,
liefje?
If I don’t let you out of my arms, how will you get away?’

‘Being a witch I shall mutter an incantation and in a puff of smoke I shall be free to eat scrambled eggs and toast.’

He laughed against her throat. ‘Did I really imagine that being blind made me less of a man?’

‘You?’ She moved her hand against the muscles of his back. ‘You’re a marvellous lover—heavenly—I feel so good! I thought—well, you know how some women talk, as if it were the most agonising experience of their lives. It wasn’t like that for me. I—I loved my wedding night— and morning.’ Merlin felt no shame in confessing the pleasure he had given her—she wanted him to feel ten feet tall, not only because she loved him but because with him the transition from girl to woman had been sheerest bliss and she felt as if her body was made of gold and gossamer; she floated and yet was alive to the very core of her. If for the briefest moment there had been a stab of pain, it had swiftly vanished in the thrilling, sensual, sweet-mad joy of giving herself and being part of him.

She was filled with the breathless miracle of love-making; of being at the side of this man she had loved from a distance, across a chasm there had seemed no way of bridging. Destiny had made this moment; had spun it from gold threads interwoven with black ones. Merlin lived for this alone, of having Paul’s arms around her, of feeling his vibrant body a part of hers, his face somehow made younger because last night there had been someone to share the darkness with him, and the rapture that still hummed in their limbs, her smooth slim legs intertwined with his powerful ones.

The dear feel of him was beyond words, and with an incoherent murmur she kissed his throat, his cheek, his beloved eyes ... oh, it might be merciful if she died right now of what she felt. Like other girls she had listened to the marital talk of other people, but it had never been like this whe’n they had spoken so cynically of feeling nothing; that men had the best of it and women merely reaped all the pain and none of the pleasure. Paul had not just taken her, he had made certain that she reached with him the very heights of sensation and wonder ... Merlin hadn’t dreamed that her body could feel not just pleasure but an ecstasy of every nerve, every portion of being, so the thrill of it was still there in her body and her bones. She could have died in Paul, and she had to close her mind to what might be lurking in the shadows when the intoxicant of making love to her wore off for him.

It was too terribly true what she had said to him, they couldn’t live on love and had to leave each other’s arms before very long.

With a sensuous hunger she was cradled to his body and he kissed her lips, lingering over their curves, moving his mouth against their softness until her hands were gripping him with the gratification of it. ‘My moon girl, my fire,’ he murmured. ‘Lovely soft-skinned little devil. Long silky hair of a witch.
Mijnevrouw, zoet, zoet!’

He pressed his brow to her and it was suddenly hot and restless, as if the torment had come back that he couldn’t see her. She held him and yielded herself completely, totally, letting him feel the love she didn’t dare speak of in case he flung at her that she had been the one who had made him blind. She was his and had no existence apart from him ... he’d sworn he would have no children because he couldn’t see to guide them, but Merlin had a feeling this was too intense and beyond Paul’s control for a child not to happen ... she hoped for it, wildly. When she was the mother of his baby he might forgive her, just a little, if he had evidence that she was the nurse around whose neck the noose had been flung and which in her despair she had made no real attempt to remove. She had let them throttle the protest in her aching throat and had walked from that hospital with all the blame on her young head.

The crying out against it now rose in her throat and suddenly the scream was there. ‘Paul... oh, God, I didn’t —I didn’t!’

He lay very still, his face buried where her heart wildly vibrated under her soft skin.

’You did,’ he murmured. ‘Darling, you did!’

Her head spun ... the world fell apart ... her face was pale with tension against her unbound hair as he raised himself and she met the unendurable gaze of his blind eyes. There in her side like a knife she felt the passionate pain, and then he gave a laugh that held the shadow of a sigh. ‘ “Since first the Devil threw dice with God”,’ he murmured. ‘You have read Swinburne?’

‘Yes.’

‘He had a way of putting it into words, eh? Ironic, is it not, that I burn with desire for you? My body aches with it. I want to kill you, and at the same time I am maddened by you and I actually want to love you I damn you to hell for coming here! Why did you come? To try and make reparation? You always looked a witch, moving about that surgery with those sensuous eyes of yours on all the men—‘

‘Oh, God, Paul, what are you saying?’ She began to twist about in his arms, suddenly desperate to get away from what she longed to be part of—but not like this, the hatred suddenly let loose in him.

‘Damned little hedonist!’ The words were brutal, scorching, and his face had closed to her, as if the muscles were of iron. She lay there in terrified silence, unable to understand what he was saying—hedonist? She? He had her all wrong—totally wrong!

‘It isn’t true, Paul.’

‘It’s true, all right! I had other things to think about in those days, but now it’s different, I’ve nothing else but
this
to think about. Well, you have me for what it’s worth, you scheming little bitch! And it will serve while I want you, and you certainly know how to make a man want you!
Ja,
I had heard from my fellow doctors what a treat you were in the car park, but I never dreamed you were this good—that any woman could be this maddening. And if you are wondering,
mijnvrouw,
why I bothered to marry you, it’s because I didn’t receive Hendrik’s wire about you until almost the moment of our marriage, and the priest was there, waiting to perform the service in the salon. Call it my Jesuit upbringing. Call it total cynicism that I should take for my wife the woman who made me blind.’