Eden Burning by Elizabeth Lowell Read Free Book Online Page B

started running across the volcano floor.

 
    Nicole finally managed to grab a shower in the washroom behind the Kipuka Club’s stage. Still wet, she wrapped her costume into place and started pulling at hairpins and the scrunchies that kept her braids from unraveling. Impatiently she brushed her hair until it swirled around her like a warm cape.
    Too warm.
    If she hadn’t liked the scent and feel of her hair sliding over her skin, she would have cut off the silky mass a long time ago. But there was something delicious about the texture and weight of her hair and the way it echoed every movement of her dance.
    But why couldn’t it have been black or brown or blond? she asked herself silently.
    Because it’s red came the swift reply—the words that her mother had used every time her tall, skinny daughter complained about her bright mop of hair.
    Cocking her head, Nicole listened to the faint sounds coming from the stage despite the soundproofing. The students were chanting back and forth, ending their act with a dance of their own creation, a hip-twitching mixture of Tahitian and nightclub dance moves that evolved into a dreamy version of Hawaii’s majestic hula.
    She had just enough time to finish dressing. She hurried to a small changing room backstage and pulled traditional wrist and ankle decorations from a drawer. Just as she bent over to pull on her softly clashing shell anklets, the drums began a rhythmic pulsing.
    She froze, knowing instantly that Bobby wasn’t the drummer. This drummer was different. Cleaner. Quicker. More intense.
    Bobby was very good.
    This drummer was extraordinary.
    Anticipation of her own coming dance bloomed in Nicole as she pulled a ginger-flower lei from the refrigerator. The cool petals made a wonderful contrast to the heat of her body. The flowers heightened the golden tone of her skin and deepened the fiery lights in her hair.
    The thick tassels of dried grass she carried in each hand repeated the sunny color of the flowers splashed on her lavalava and halter. A cross between a long, soft brush and a small pom-pom with a handle, the grass tassels rustled and snapped with each motion of her wrists, emphasizing and enhancing the rhythms of the dance.
    Soundlessly she stepped out, closed the door behind her, and went to stand behind the rear curtain of the stage. There she moved to the slow, stately rhythms of the hula, warming her body for the strenuous Tahitian dance to come.
    Instead of accompanying the dancers with a chant, Bobby was playing Bolivian panpipes, an instrument made by natives of the high Andes Mountains of South America. The pure, husky sounds of the pipes tugged at something deep within Nicole.
    Bobby played two pipes at once, each pipe containing half a scale. Harmony was possible. Barely. To get it, he had to move his mouth very quickly and blow in short, sharp spurts. The result was a ghostly staccato that evoked spirits chanting to one another across bottomless mountain chasms.
    Shivers of pleasure coursed over Nicole’s skin as the primal drums and husky pipes called urgently to the dancers. The possibilities of the dance raced through her, making her want to sweep aside the curtain and begin the sensuous movements.
    Applause erupted as the stage vanished into darkness. While she stepped onto the stage through a slit in the curtains, the less experienced dancers streamed by her, leaving the advanced students on the stage. The dancers’ quick comments told her that they had been as excited by the new drummer as she was.
    Impatiently she looked toward the drums, but there wasn’t enough light for her to make out more than the silhouette of a broad-shouldered, powerful man whose short hair was even darker than the nearly black stage. He could have been haole or Hawaiian, old or young or anything in between.
    And his fingertips smoothed a sensual, pulsing rhythm from the drums that raced through her like wine. Each beat echoed in her blood and in her rippling