But still he didn’t. She could feel him everywhere, his thighs hard and hot and rough with hair between her shaking legs, his abdomen hard and hot and rough too against her silky stomach and lower, against the slight protuberance of her femininity, and the enormous, red-hot male part of him she ached for prodding at her with unsatisfying restraint. He was teasing her. . . .
Her eyes flew open. They were a dark, brilliant blue as they flamed at him. Her hands which had been clutching his back turned into claws that dug into his shoulders. “Please, Max, now!”
He smiled then, a slow smile that sent the blood racing through her veins. Lora felt the throbbing inside her intensify until she was sure she would not be able to stand it another second as he slowly, oh, so slowly, lowered his head. His target was her left breast. Lora felt his hot mouth close on the straining nipple, felt him tug the crest of her breast into his mouth to rub it with the rough wet surface of his tongue, and cried out in a frenzy of need.
And in that instant he took her.
She climaxed at once as he squeezed inside, enormous and hard and fiery hot and filling her to bursting. She cried out again, sailing away in a firestorm of brilliantly colored sparks, shaking, gasping for breath, clutching him to her urgently. When it was over, when she came floating back to earth, it was with some surprise that she realized that he was still enormous inside her. Of course, he was still hungry. She wasn’t. Definitely wasn’t. She was so tired, so replete, so completely spent that it was all she could do to breathe. . . .
Then he moved. A little quiver of something sprang to life again inside her. He moved again, pulling himself almost all the way out before slowly, slowly, squeezing his way back in again. Lora stiffened. Despite her exhaustion, he felt good. . . .
His hands braced on either side of her rib cage, he stiffened his arms until his weight was almost completely off her. Their only point of contact was where their bodies joined. Slowly, he moved in, then out, until she lifted her hips slightly with involuntary anticipation every time. Then he bent his head and took her breast in his mouth again.
She groaned.
Lora thought that it would be impossible to equal the desire he had roused in her with his first torturous possession. She was wrong. His slow movements and erotic mouth brought her back to a fever pitch of passion, and this time he came with her. When at last he had pushed her to the point of screaming frenzy, he was there too, and his hoarse shout joined with her cry as they fell over the edge together. It was a long, long time before he could summon up the energy to roll away.
“We’ve got to get back.”
“What?” Lora sat up and stared at him. He was sitting up too, gloriously naked and gloriously masculine against the feminine background of swaying lavender orchids. She wanted to reach over and trace the outline of every ridged muscle and indention with her fingers. But something in his tone bothered her. She looked searchingly at him. He stood up, reaching for his clothes.
“Is something wrong, Max?” The question was quiet. She hadn’t expected a declaration of undying love after what they had just shared, but she hadn’t expected the cold shoulder either. Staring up at him as he stepped into his damp briefs and jeans and squeezed his feet into wet shoes, she felt an absurd hurt begin to seep into her heart.
“What do you mean, is something wrong? Nothing’s wrong. What could be wrong?” He was pulling the soggy t-shirt over his head as he spoke. The action gave him the perfect excuse not to look at her, she thought, but it could not quite disguise the suppressed savagery of his tone. Watching him tuck the pistol into the waistband of his jeans, she began to get angry in turn.
“Silly me. Of course nothing’s wrong. You always act like a lion with a thorn in its paw,” she agreed coolly, standing up and beginning to dress herself. Ordinarily, she would have been shy with his eyes on her nakedness, even after what they had just shared, but temper was simmering in her veins and as it heated it obviated such concerns as modesty. Besides, she realized as she dragged on her own wet jeans with about as much grace as a fat woman getting into a girdle, he wasn’t looking at her. At all.
“For God’s sake, Lora, you’re not one of those women who wants to have a rehash every time she has sex, are you? It was great, okay? But it’s over, and we’ve got to get back now. We’ve been gone a long time.”
The harsh impatience of his tone was as hurtful as his words. Lora looked down at the clammy bra that she was having trouble fastening, and deliberately took her time about getting each little hook secured before sliding it around and working it up to its proper place. If she said anything before she had a chance to calm down, she was afraid that he might realize just how much his casual attitude was hurting her. They had had great sex, huh? Was that all it was to him? She felt like a slab of prime rib. Nice, when one was hungry, but barely memorable when the hunger was gone. She pulled the water-darkened hot pink t-shirt over her head with a jerk that should have split the seams. Luckily, the garment held together, but Lora was so angry that she didn’t much care either way. The cold wet clothes sent goosebumps popping up all over her skin, but she didn’t care about that, either. Under the circumstances, she thought, sizzling, she probably needed something to cool her off. Before she told Mr. Macho here what he could do with himself and his great sex.
“Come on.”
He barely waited for her to slip her feet into her shoes before striding back toward the lagoon. Lora followed him, glaring furiously at the broad back and tight derriere that looked infuriatingly sexy in the wet, clingy t-shirt and jeans. He walked with an easy lope that made her grit her teeth. Male sex appeal personified, that was him. And she had fallen like a ton of bricks for all that tanned skin and steely muscle, fantasizing about him as a lover, dreaming about him as a lover, yearning for him as a lover. Well, wasn’t there a saying about being careful what you wished for because you just might get it? She had wanted him to make love to her so badly that it had been almost a physical ache inside her for some time now, and she had finally gotten what she wanted. And the sex itself had been great, just great as he had said. Lora ground her teeth, remembering the casual way he had dismissed something that had threatened to profoundly change her life. She had been on the verge of making a drastic error in judgment—but luckily he had brought her back to real life before she could commit the monumental folly of really thinking she was falling in love with him. She ought to be grateful to him, she told herself, not angry. He certainly hadn’t strung her along. He had merely described the situation as he saw it—great sex, indeed!—and she couldn’t be angry at him for being honest. It wasn’t reasonable. It wasn’t fair. To hell with being fair, she thought, and glared daggers at the broad-shouldered form that was climbing nimbly up the shelf of rocks at the side of the waterfall.
They made their way back to the cave with scarcely a word exchanged between them. If Max was aware that she was murderously angry at him, he gave no sign of it. He went on about the business of relieving Tunafish and supervising Minelli’s and DiAngelo’s exercise period as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred. Lora got the job of preparing the supper of bananas and papayas—there was no fish, to Tunafish’s loud disappointment and later razzing comments about Max’s abilities as a fisherman. As she passed around the fruit that all of them were heartily sick of, she gave serious thought to poisoning Max’s. And Tunafish’s, too, if it would stop his needling guesses about what might have distracted Max’s attention down at the pool. Although Max was as cool as that damned escaped fish, Lora felt that their mutual experience must have branded her visibly for life, like Hester Prynne with the scarlet letter. And the feeling maddened her. By the time the meager supper was finished, she had worked herself up into a state of silent fury. And it was no help to lie down on the miserably uncomfortable pallet, tossing and turning for hours as she tried with abysmal success not to relive any part of the day, including the “great sex” that she and Max had shared, and discover that, within minutes of being relieve
d by Tunafish and lying down on his own pallet beside hers, the object of her scorn was sound asleep. And snoring!
Lora lay awake in the dark for a long time, taking some comfort from mentally devising a hundred and one ways to silence a snorer—violently.
XIX
Something warm and dry was sliding over the skin of her arm, touching her softly, slithering. Lora frowned in her sleep, and inwardly muttered a few choice words to the man who, in her dream, was trailing a hard brown finger up and down her arm. He was smiling that unexpectedly charming smile, his black eyes radiating sex appeal as he tried to talk her into bed. . . . Well, she was having none of that. No way was she going to fall for an ungrateful, churlish, violent, insulting, probably mentally disturbed criminal, be he ever so sexy! She opened her mouth to tell him so—and to her outrage he chose that moment to pull her close and kiss her right on her open mouth. She shuddered as she felt the hot touch of his lips, and she had to fight an urge to melt like butter in his arms. Instead, infuriated, she struggled against his steely hold. . . .
She struggled so hard that she woke herself. Her eyes shot open to discover, to her relief, that it had been a dream after all. The sensation of him kissing her had seemed so real. Her body was still reacting hotly to the imagined contact. She could feel shivers running over her skin. . . .
Lora went very still as she realized that the shivers were not imaginary. There was something warm and soft and smooth moving over the arm that she had flung out of the pallet in her sleep. Almost afraid to look, she was equally afraid not to. Something was crawling over her arm. She moved her head slowly, cautiously, careful to make no abrupt gesture that might startle whatever it was until her outflung arm was within her vision. When at last she had her head tilted back, what she saw was the embodiment of her worst nightmare. The tiny hairs on the base of her neck stood up, and she had to fight a violent attack of the shivers. She had a feeling that if that arm moved much, even as much as it might when in the throes of a violent attack of the trembles, it might be one of the last movements she ever made.
A long, slender snake with alternating bands of coral and black and yellow undulated across the white skin of the underside of her wrist toward the palm of her hand. Lora knew very little about snakes, except that she loathed them. Just seeing pictures of snakes was enough to make her shudder. Watching the reptile crawl across her skin made her want to jump up and run screaming for the nearest exit. But every instinct for self-preservation she possessed warned her not to move. The snake could very well be poisonous. . . . Lora looked at the small sleek head with its darting tongue so close to the blue veins of her wrists and felt a sick shudder start in her stomach that she frantically suppressed. If it was poisonous, and it bit her there, she would surely die. . . .
“Don’t move.” The quiet warning came from above and behind her. Lora was afraid to look, but she would recognize Max’s harsh tones in a dark hole in China. Ridiculously, the knowledge that he was there, that he was aware of her predicament, calmed her considerably. Although there was nothing he could do to help her, she realized. The snake rested almost wholly on her arm now. Only its tail still trailed the ground. Its head was in her palm as it slithered toward her fingers. Lora had to struggle not to clench her fist. She couldn’t bear the idea that the snake was going to slide over her helpless fingers. . . .
“Relax, Lora.” Max’s voice was low and soothing. “He’s not going to do anything if you stay still. He’ll just crawl off your arm and go somewhere else. Just stay still and it will soon be over.”
Lora shut her eyes, letting his words wash over her. She concentrated on that husky, brown velvet voice. She loved the sound of Max’s voice, she realized, with its drawling Texas accent. That was one of the first things that had attracted her to him. That and his linebacker’s shoulders . . . Lora thought of those shoulders, pictured them naked and gleaming bronze, concentrated on the width and breadth and strength of them as the snake slithered across her palm and over her fingers. She concentrated so hard that she wasn’t even conscious of the sweat that was drenching her body. . . .
“Blammm!” The explosion of a pistol almost in her ear sent her screaming upright, her hands flying out from under the snake as she jumped to her feet. Max was there behind her, and she fell against him as she turned with blind panic. His arms enfolded her, holding her against him, one hand soothing as it slowly stroked her back. His other hand held the pistol. . . . Lora shuddered and gasped into the soft cotton of the t-shirt covering his broad chest, the terror that she had managed to hold at bay until now making her quake with tremors from head to toe.
“What the hell?” The yelped question was Tunafish’s as he jacknifed into a sitting position on his pallet, but Lora scarcely heard it.
“Coral snake,” Max said briefly. “I took care of it, go back to sleep.”
“She all right?”
“Yes. Go back to sleep. All of you.” The tone made it an order that was also addressed to Minelli and DiAngelo, who had started up at the sound of the gunshot and now sat staring at Lora in Max’s arms with identical smirking expressions.
“Anything you say, boss.” Tunafish lay back down and ostentatiously shut his eyes. So did the other two, with snorts of disgust. Lora was scarcely aware that they were even present. She could not get the image of that brilliantly striped snake on her white skin out of her mind. She clung to Max as if she would never let him go.
“It’s over now,” he murmured into her hair, his head bent so that his mouth was pressed somewhere near her ear. “The snake’s dead, and you’re safe. It’s over.”
“It felt so—warm,” she gasped, shivering. “I always imagined a snake would feel—cold.”
“It must have been lying in the sun when something disturbed it. Put it out of your mind. It’s over.”
“Oh, my God, I’ll have nightmares for the rest of my life. I hate snakes.”
Against her hair she felt a movement of his face that made her think he was smiling.
“So do I. They give me the creeps.”
That so surprised her that she pulled a little away from him to look up at him. He was smiling, she saw, a crooked, boyish smile that charmed her utterly. When he was like this, she found herself thinking, it was easy to imagine that he was someone she could love. . . . Her eyes widened with horror that she could even in her wildest imaginings couple that word with this man. Of course she couldn’t love him—she didn’t even like him. Or at least, not often. It was just a case of her perfectly normal female hormones responding as they were meant to to an inordinately sexy hunk of masculinity. . . .
She pulled away from him, her hands on the hard muscles of his bare arms setting him at a little distance. He looked down at her inquiringly, and she found that she had to look away from that too-aggressively masculine face. He disturbed her on every level.
The body of the snake, its head shot off, caught her eye, and effectively banished Max from her mind. She shuddered again, feeling her stomach heave. All at once she knew she was going to be sick. . . . She ran for the entrance to the cave and fell to her knees on the crumbly rock in front of it. There, with small shaggy bushes tickling her cheeks and green leafy treetops almost at eye-level, she vomited until there was nothing but clear liquid left inside her. When it was over, she sat weakly back, to find Max beside her. She didn’t even care that he had seen her at her repulsive worst.
“Here,” he said, passing her a bit of gauze bandage that he had hastily doused with water. “Wipe your face, you’ll feel better.”
“Thanks.” She took it from him, shakily, and passed it over her face and neck. The cool wet cloth did make her feel better.
“Rinse your mouth out, then take a couple of sips,” he ordered next, passing her the empty whiskey bottle which he had pressed into service as a canteen. Lora obediently took a swallow from the bottle, swished it around her mouth and spat. Then she took a couple of sips as he directed, and handed him back the bottle.
&nbs
p; He let her sit there for a moment, soaking the warmth of the sun into her shock-chilled system, then he pulled her to her feet. She clung to his forearms, her eyes lifted to study his face. She didn’t know it, but the newly risen sun caught the tangle of curls that framed her face, turning it a bright and shiny gold that glinted and glittered with life. All her unaccustomed outdoor activity of the day before had left her normally pale face flushed with rosy color from the sun. Her mouth was a deep rose, too, and her eyes were a dark, denim blue. The shocking pink t-shirt hugged her from shoulders to waist, and even though she was wearing a bra the contours of her soft, round breasts with their upthrusting nipples was unmistakable. And the tight jeans revealed no less of her curvaceous hips and long, long legs. . . .
Max’s face tightened as he looked down at her. All the warm caring, all the tenderness and concern vanished, to be replaced by a craggy mask harder than the rocks they stood on. Those black eyes glittered down at her unreadably, and that hard mouth tightened into a straight line. Even the silky black mustache seemed to change: it was no longer charmingly masculine, but intimidatingly ferocious. Lora stared up into the ruthless face of the man who had first kidnapped her, and felt her eyes widen.
“Max?” His name was a soft, puzzled question. She didn’t understand what had caused him to change so quickly. He’d been kind and gentle, and now . . .
She felt his forearms tighten under her hands. “Go back inside. I have some things to do. I’ll be back later.”
“Max . . .”
“Tunafish!” he roared over her head. “You’re on!”
“Got ya, boss!” came the answering shout from inside the cave, and then Max turned his attention back to Lora.
“Go on,” he said, stepping away from her so that her hands fell to her sides. Without even looking at her to see if she obeyed, he turned and started down the crumbly rock face of the cliff. Lora stared at the back of that black head, at the broad back and those long, jean-clad legs until they disappeared into the dense jungle below.
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