He had been in a deep sleep but was awake in an instant, and he turned around to face her. She was smiling.
"Good morning," she said, her voice husky.
If her face was beautiful, her body was gorgeous. Her skin was a soft, olive color, her shoulders tiny, her arms long and delicately formed. Her breasts were small, the nipples already erect, and just below the slight roundness of her belly, her jet black pubic hair had been partially shaved… evidently so that she could wear a very brief bikini. Her legs were very long and lovely.
"I'm surprised you're here, like this," Carter said. He reached out and caressed the nipple of her left breast with his fingertips. She shivered.
"I am not," she said. "The moment I set eyes on you on the back veranda, I knew that I would be… with you."
For a long time they just looked at each other. Gabrielle's eyes were very large and shining, her lips full.
"Was it very bad with him?"
"Yes," she said softly.
"Why… how is it you came to be with him?"
For a second or two Carter didn't think she was going to answer him, and he started to ask her a second time, when she began.
"I am a criminal," she said. "It was either go to jail or come with him to this place."
"What did you do?"
"I killed a man. A very bad man who raped me."
"When was this?"
"Years ago," she said. Tears were forming in her eyes, and she pulled away and started to get out of the bed, but Carter pulled her back.
"Tell me about it, Gabrielle," Carter said gently. "Get it out of your system."
She was shaking as she lay back, her hands on her stomach. Carter propped himself up on one elbow beside her.
"I was little — eight years old — when my father was killed in Africa. I am Algerian. After that happened, my mother moved us from Algiers to Paris. The next year she met Henri, a Frenchman, and they were married."
Gabrielle turned her head so that she could look directly into Carter's eyes. "I was nine then. When I came home from school one afternoon my mother was out shopping, and Henri was there.
"He waited until I had gone upstairs to my room to change my clothes. He came in wearing only his robe, and I was in my panties."
Tears were filling her eyes now.
"I asked him what he was doing in my room, but he just smiled at me and said it would be all right. He just wanted to talk to me… father to daughter.
"I told him to leave, but he made me sit on the bed with him, and he started telling me about how sometimes my mother didn't kiss him enough — that was how he worded it, I remember — and that made him sad and angry. And when he was sad and angry he might be forced to hurt her very badly.
"But he said it didn't have to be that way if only I would help him."
Carter knew what was coming, of course. It was not a new story. She had been used by that man and then later by Rondine.
"That first day he only made me…touch him. I was so ashamed, but I was so afraid that he would hurt my mother, or do something very bad to me, that I did not tell. Each time he came to my room I told myself it would never happen again, and mat soon I would tell what he made me do. I was just a skinny little girl and he was a big man — with a temper."
"You don't have to go on…" Carter started to say, but she kept talking as if she had not heard him.
"Later he would make me take off all my clothes, and he would fondle me as I was playing with him. It made him happier, he told me. Made him less likely to hurt my mother.
"Then, about a year after it had started, my mother almost caught us, and it stopped for a long time. Until I was thirteen or fourteen, and had begun to look like a woman.
"It started the same way, only this time it progressed much faster."
Gabrielle shut her eyes.
"I came home from school one afternoon — my mother worked during the day at a cafe, and Henri worked in a factory at night. He was there in my bed, naked.
"I told him I would call the police, but he said they would never believe me. And even if he did go to jail because of me, when he got out he would kill me and my mother.
"I was standing near my bed while we were talking, and when he saw me glance toward the doorway, he leaped up and grabbed me. Henri was a very strong man…"
Gabrielle's chest was heaving as she relived that time.
"When it was over he went into his own bedroom and went to sleep. I went down into the kitchen, got the biggest knife I could find, and came back upstairs and killed him. I kept stabbing him over and over, and there was a lot of blood.
"My mother came home an hour later, and I told her everything. We left that very night for Algiers, where we hid in a very bad section of the city."
"Rondine was there?" Carter asked.
Gabrielle opened her eyes and nodded. "He was the consul there. My mother worked as a housekeeper in his big mansion. There came the day when the police in Algiers were notified by the police in Paris to be on the lookout for me. My mother didn't know what to do, so she went to Albert and told him everything.
"I was brought to see him, and he immediately agreed to help. My mother and I were sent out here to these islands. Albert joined us a year later, and within two months my mother became ill and died. Albert said I was to be his wife, and if I tired of that he would send me back to France to stand trial for murder."
She shuddered. "I could not stand it any longer," she said. "And now I do not want to go back to France."
"You won't," Carter said. "Nor do you have to go to bed with me to get my help."
She managed a smile, and she reached out and caressed his cheek. "I am not here because of that," she said. "I am here because you will be the first man I have been with whom I wanted to be with."
This was all wrong. Carter thought. She was a very vulnerable woman, and for a moment he felt as if he were taking advantage of her, no matter what she said. But the feeling lasted only a moment as she sat up and pushed him back gently.
"Relax," she cooed. She kissed his eyelids, then his nose, and finally his lips, her right leg moving against his.
At first he just lay there, but soon she was kissing his neck, and behind his ears, her breath warm and close and lightly scented with cinnamon, and he began to respond. He drew her close, crushing her breasts against his chest, and they kissed deeply, his tongue exploring hers, his hands on her back, then down the incredibly long, soft small of her back to her lovely derriere.
"Oh… God," she breathed. "Oh… God…"
Carter eased her over on her back, and kissed her breasts, taking the nipples in his mouth and using his tongue to stimulate her.
Her chest was heaving now, her legs spread, as she moved against him.
He kissed the spot between her breasts and then worked downward to her navel, and even lower, his hands on the mounds of her buttocks.
She wanted to scream as she moved back and forth; he could feel it as a vibration in her entire body, her legs around his shoulders, her hands grasping his head.
But then she was pulling him away, up, on top of her. She reached down and grabbed him, guiding him inside her, her long, lovely legs wrapped tightly around his waist.
Carter forced himself to slow down. He looked down at her. She was staring up at him, a half smile on her full, sensuous lips.
He began to move then, carefully, deeply, and with each movement she rose up to meet him, a half moan escaping from her lips with each thrust.
"This is…the way it is… always supposed to be, mon chéri," she breathed.
Carter kissed her eyes, and her lips.
"I have always dreamed of this…"
He sensed that she had been on the verge from the very beginning. Her breathing was even more shallow, much faster, and her eyes shone.