quiver at her touch.
Gently she lifted his legs and he rolled easily on to his side, exposing
the sickening abrasion that wrapped itself angrily across back and
shoulder. She touched it with a light exploring fingertip and knew that
it needed attention, but she sensed that rest was what he needed more.
She stood back and for long seconds gave herself over to the pleasure of
looking at him. His body was fined down, he carried no fat on his belly
or flanks; clearly she could see the rack of his ribs below the skin,
and the muscles of his arms and legs were smooth but well-defined, a
body that had been cared for and honed by hard exercise. Yet there was
a certain denseness to it, that thickening of shoulder and neck, and the
distinctive hair patterns of the mature It might not have the grace and
delicacy of the boys she had known, yet it was more powerful than that
of even the strongest of the young men who had until then filled her
world. She thought of one of them whom she had believed she loved. They
had spent two months in Tahiti together on the same field expedition.
She had surfed with him, danced and drunk wine, worked and slept sixty
consecutive days and nights with him; in the same period they had become
engaged to marry, and had argued, and parted, with surprisingly little
regret on her pan - but he had had the most beautiful tanned and
sculptured body she had ever known. Now, looking at the sleeping figure
on the bunk, she knew that even he would not have been able to match
this man in physical determination and strength.
Angel had been right. It was the power that attracted her so strongly.
The powerful, rangy body with the dark coarse hair covering his chest
and exploding in flak bursts in his armpits - this, together with the
power of his presence.
She had never known a man like this, he filled her with a sense of awe.
It was not only the legend that surrounded him, nor the formidable list
of his accomplishments that Angel had recounted for her, nor yet was it
only the physical strength which he had just demonstrated while the
entire crew of Warlock, she among them, had watched and listened avidly
over the VFH relay. She leaned over him again, and she saw that even in
repose, his jawline was hard and uncompromising, and the little creases
and lines and marks that life had chiselled into his face, around the
eyes at the corners of the mouth, heightened the effect of power and
determination, the face of a man who dictated his own terms to life.
She wanted him, Angel was right, oh God, how she wanted him! They said
there was no love at first sight they had to be mad.
She turned away and unfolded the eiderdown from the foot of the bunk,
spreading it over him, and then once again she stooped and gently lifted
the fall of thick dark hair from his forehead, smoothing it back with a
maternally protective gesture.
Although he had slept on while she lifted and covered him, strangely
this lightest of touches brought him to the edge of consciousness and he
sighed and twisted, then whispered hoarsely, Chantelle, is that you?
Samantha recoiled at the bitter sharp pang of jealousy with which
another woman's name stabbed her. She turned away and left him, but in
the day cabin she paused again beside his desk.
