It was only as she walked back to the hotel that the realisation dawned on her.
How was she going to get away?
Chris was not going to let her leave the island; Lissa could be sure of that. He would keep her there by hook or by crook and he would make her marry him. He had disguised from her his nature for so long, but now she could see through the lazy goodhumoured charm to the avid cruelty beneath it.
Chris wanted her. Her blood ran cold at that idea. She remembered the hot metal of his eyes as he reached for her last night, the hoarse sensuality of his voice.
He had been waiting for two years and he wasn't going to be cheated of his prize now. If he had genuinely loved her she might have appealed to that love, but she saw now that it was physical hunger that governed Chris. He lusted for her. Her face burned, she felt sick. It was a vile word and she had never thought she would apply it to Chris, but it was the only one that covered the truth. Lust lay in his eyes, in his voice. She should have seen it before, but she hadn't. Watching him last night as she sang, shredding a red carnation jerkily between his fingers, she had been watching a man convulsed with lust, and she hadn't even known it until now. She had felt something ugly and frightening inside him, but she hadn't known what it was she felt until now.
Chris found the wide-eyed innocence she had always had deeply attractive, but for the worst of reasons. He ached for the day when he would destroy it. He had deliberately held her in it, waiting for his moment, and he would not forgo that pleasure now. He intended to have her.
When she went into the hotel she found Max and Uncle Joey talking to the desk clerk. She smiled cheerfully at them all, her eyes wide and bright. 'Hallo. Where's Chris? I bought a new bikini and I want to show it to him.'
Max gave her a sly sideways smile. 'Gone across the island to see someone,' he said, and Lissa shrugged, pouting.
As she reached her own room her face could relax from that sweet, childlike, artificial smile.
She was appalled by her own ability to lie, to pretend. She was sickened by the necessity, but she had to make them all think she was still the same. She had to maintain that little girl manner, smile as warmly, talk in the same light happy fashion.
Chris must not see, must not guess, the changes which had taken place in her. The moment he did he would move in to the kill.
Sitting down on her bed, she wondered why he had never made a serious attempt before. Looking back over the past two years she could sec that Chris had been' impatient for his final possession of her, but he had never gone beyond the line her own innocence had drawn between them.
Why?
Did he care more for her than mere lust? Or had he known that if once she saw through his charming mask she would run away? Had he been hoping that she would be too deeply in love with him to care any more? Had he been waiting because he sensed she was not yet physically awake?
Over the past couple of days she had felt the constant search of his eyes. He sensed a change in her, although he wasn't sure about it yet. If he once guessed that overnight she had become physically, mentally, emotionally, a woman, he would rush to claim her.
She looked into the mirror, face quite white now. She could not bear the idea of lying in Chris's arms any more.
She sheered away from any admission as to her reasons for such revulsion. It wasn't Chris who had pulled her across the line dividing child from woman, but Lissa refused to let herself dwell on that fact.
The rush of experience, feeling, was confusing her, but under it her mind was working with hard clarity. She had never known just how clearly she could think.
Her first reaction to Luc's unveiling of the sort of world she lived in had been one of distress and anxiety. She had felt a loyalty to Chris which the shock of the truth had battered but left intact. Today that loyalty had crumbled, and she wasn't sure why. She had been thinking all day and as her mind sifted through the various elements of the problem she had slowly come to realise that Chris and the island no longer meant anything to her.
She had always seen herself as Chris saw her. She had fluttered around him like a tropical butterfly whose wings he did not want to damage even though he longed to capture it and hold it between his hands.
Now she knew the image, the picture, had been false. She was not like that. Reality was far distant from the gaudy, fragile dream.
Her own reflection in the mirror showed her a slender girl with clear, hard green eyes and a firm mouth. Her years at the convent had given her a backbone oi' principle. Chris had never been able to dispel the influence of the nuns, however hard he mocked them. Other girls at the school had giggled over their moral teachings, but Lissa had been more open to it. She had accepted it without thinking and she knew it held good now.
The attitudes of the hotel,, the way of life Chris followed, would never have suited her. She had been protected from the full blast of them. Chris had protected her for his own reasons, but he had, all the same, protected her, sheltered her from the slow stain of his world.
She was going to have to walk away from him, from the island. She considered Luc's offer to take her with him and her skin grew taut. She did not need to guess what sort of price Luc would set on his help. He might not approve of Chris, but his own attitudes were hardly admirable. Luc wanted her too. Chris wasn't the only one whose eyes held heat and urgent desire when they looked at her.
Lissa put her hands over her eyes, shuddering. She had never felt the drag of Chris's physical nearness, but every time Luc Ferrier was anywhere near her, her body shivered with reaction.
She wasn't walking out of the frying pan into the fire.
She would have to make her own way somehow. But how? She had little money, Chris had always been very generous to her, but his generosity took the shape of presents: clothes, jewellery, ornaments. He paid her a salary, but Lissa had never saved much of it. She had not realised until now just how financially dependent she was-now she saw that Chris had her more securely than she had realised.
Her act was timed to take place half-way through the dance that evening. She ate with Chris and felt the constant glitter of his eyes as he watched her. She was wearing the black dress, at the request of the guests again. Pierre had teased her about it. 'They really fancy you in it, Liss,' he had said, and she had not had to pretend to blush.
She blushed now as she caught Chris's eye and he leaned over to whisper to her. 'Fix that date.' He was teasing, smiling, but his eyes did not hold any smile at all; they were filled with a liquid heat that dismayed her.
The pressing menace of his desire left slivers" of ice in her veins, 'I'll need a trousseau,' she parried lightly, smiling at him, and marvelling at her own new-found ability to act.
'Name it,' Chris breathed, stroking her arm with trembling fingers. 'Buy what you like tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow?' She laughed, shaking her head. 'I'll need more than one day.'
'Do you know what I need?' Chris was losing the ability to control the heat inside him and she could see it. 'Baby, it's got to be soon. Stop playing around.'
'Next month?' she suggested. It seemed a long time ahead now and by the time it came closer surely she would have thought of a way out?