by Thea Devine
He cursed women; he cursed this gorgeous midnight-black-haired witch who was driving him crazy with a wild need just to see her naked.
"Thanks for the offer, Jake, but this will do me fine."
He thought he heard the words, "Thanks Jake, that will be fine," and that she made a movement to turn and
undress; that she trusted him not to look until she told him she was ready for him to consummate his desire. He thought she had divined that he knew what kind of woman she was, and he was willing to be her prey, as long as she was willing too.
But she made no move and she said nothing, her whole attention fixed on the minimal ablutions she was performing out of one little stinking pot of water when she had the whole wide stream to cleanse her naked body. At that ultimate mind-boggling tormenting gall, he blew up.
"Get your goddamned clothes off and get your ass into that water, Kalida," he exploded, wrenching her up with a jerk. "Do it! Now!"
Her cobalt eyes widened in real shock. "Are you crazy?"
"Are you?" he sneered, pulling her toward the water. "How long do you think you're going to play this whore's game with me, you bitch? You think I'm crazy, letting you flaunt yourself around everyone else and renege on your invitations to me? Or letting that goddamned Deuce fight your way out for you? Oh no, you tease; this time— this time you do it for me." He reached out and pulled at the front of her shirt.
She screamed and beat at his hand, yanking her body backward to try to counteract his superior strength pulling her forward. "You're out of your mind. I never—"
"Deuce doesn't have a clue what you're like," he grated. One button popped open, and then another. He stared at the vee between her breasts. "He never saw you flaunting your body; he doesn't know how you love to play and tease, does he? He doesn't know the goddamned half of what he's in for. But I do . . ." He pulled again and another button flew open, exposing more bare skin.
"God, what are you talking about?" she shouted, dragging herself backward as hard as she could, knowing her reverse tugging would give him better purchase to pull at
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her shirt.
She didn't care; he was out of his mind with some fantasy about her that had no basis in anything real. She had had no idea he was this obsessed about her or anything she had ever said or done with him. What had she done with him to set him off like this?
Their grappling was like a tug of war. He pulled and she resisted, and every tug pulled apart another button to reveal more and more of her nakedness. The sight of it heightened his frenzy. He was almost at the point where mere words would never calm him down.
"Look at you," he growled. "You walk around naked under your clothes and you expect no one is going to notice? Or do you do it because you know everyone is going to notice? What do you suspect, you bitch tease? What do you expect to happen when you do things like that? Or when you strip off your clothes in front of an open window—you expect no one to be looking, do you? Or did you know someone was watching? You know what / think? I think you knew and you wanted it, Kalida. That's the kind of bitch you are. And then you protest your innocence—you never intended it to happen, did you? You just happened to be naked, you just happened to put your breast in the way of my hand, you just happened to ask me to take you back to your deserted home. Who the hell did you think you were gulling?"
She twisted wildly against his overwhelming strength, which was heightened by his frightening determination to bend her to his will. "You have misread everything," she panted desperately. "Nothing you said is true."
"I didn't expect you would say it was," he said archly, and she knew then she could not convince him of anything; he had the story set in his own mind and nothing would change him. And because she let up her guard for just an instant, her taut opposition to him wavered. He grabbed at her shirt one more time and, with a huge,
forceful tearing jerk, pulled it right off her back.
"Now," he whispered, mesmerized by the sight of her gorgeous jutting breasts and her tumbling mane of midnight hair curling wildly down around her shoulders, just above the slope of those enticing mounds. "Oh, now I can look my fill."
His viselike fingers still held her arm, but the moment was stark still as his glittering hazel eyes devoured the sight of her taut tipped breasts.
He shook himself out of his fantastical reverie suddenly and commanded. "Take off your skirt now, Kalida. Slowly, so I can anticipate what is to come."
Her blazing navy eyes challenged him. "You'll have to let go."
"Of course." Obligingly he released her arm while with his other hand he produced a gun in a fluid motion that was almost imperceptible.
Her chin came up as she saw the sun glinting off the barrel. He nodded his head and waved the gun at her. "Oh yes, I mean for everything to be just as I imagined for all this time, Kalida. Take off your skirt."
Damn and damn; her nerveless fingers slid to the waistband and undid the buttons there. She looked at him appealingly, and he shook his head wonderingly. "It is incredible how you have that look, Kalida. I swear, I should have invited Deuce to see you like this. He'd know just what I mean. Take it off, bitch."
He cocked the gun, and she let the skirt slide to her feet to expose her naked torso and her black-clad legs. His eyes blazed up in a passion when her legs were revealed.
"Well, well," he muttered, walking up to her, and then around her, waving the gun and examining her from every angle. "And well, well, well again. Is this how a nicely reared young woman dresses? You look like the show-off tease of a whore you are, you bitch. And you play innocent virgin, with your airs and your righteous looks.
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Your eyes smoulder with passion beneath that guileless look you do so well, Kalida. You're a teasing, tormenting bitch, and I finally have you to myself."
He moved away from her now and, still brandishing the gun, gazed at her statue-still nakedness first from the front and then from the back. He didn't touch her, not yet, but the agony was in knowing he would want to and not knowing when. Her fear was becoming palpable; she couldn't see how to escape him. She couldn't see anything except his passion-crazed eyes assaulting her.
He licked his lips thickly as he gazed at her. "I wonder," he said after a while, his voice as thick and muddy as the dirt below his boots, "whether you're sorry you didn't get a chance at the other men. I just wonder if you weren't planning to bathe in front of all those men in the stream in all your glorious nakedness. Whether you were planning to flaunt yourself and tease them the way you've taunted me." The image of her body and other eyes having the privilege of watching her seemed to torture him. He closed his own eyes for a moment, his facial expression hard, almost murderous.
Then he opened his eyes and smiled, a peculiarly cruel little smile. "But that's what you're like, isn't it, Kalida? That's what Deuce-almighty Cavender doesn't know about you." He walked behind her, and she felt the metal head of the gun slide down her spine, chilling her with his cold purpose and his insane intention. "You know," he rasped in her ear, "one part of me would love to see all those men coveting your nakedness. I just would love to see their eyes as they watch you take off your clothes and reveal all your naked charms, and those erotic stockings. I'd let them feast their eyes on you. I'd even let you walk around so they could see everything. And then, my tormenting bitch, I'd kill them all."
Oh my God, her mind screamed in a panic; he was really crazy. He was insane. Something about her tipped
him off and he had become hog-wild insane; she had to
do something, because she was certain he intended to kill
her. It had to be; it was the only way he could keep her
for himself. Her body started shaking and her fear-
wracked brain would not operate. Her cobalt eyes glazed
over and she almost collapsed right where she was stand
ing. t
"Ah Kalida, my closeness makes you tr
emble. You ache for my touch. You want me." The nose of the gun pressed into her back. "Don't you? Why not tell me then? I've been dying to hear you say it."
"Jake." Her voice croaked his name, so clogged with horror she could hardly speak. "Jake — "
"I'm here," he muttered, still standing behind her with the gun a hairsbreadth away from her body. If only she would show him her desire for him, he thought he could put the bloody thing down. Then he would know she meant to share her naked delights with him and only with him.
She took a deep breath. She did not know what to do to reach him through his obscene obsession. Her desperation was turning into sheer animal panic now, and her total nakedness made her feel so vulnerable that she almost gave up because it seemed too impossible to fight him stark naked. The shaking pervaded her entire body as if she had a fever, and she was not reassured that he pretended not to notice it. If anything, he perceived her to be in the grip of a growing, unchecked passion that any moment would explode into the stuff of his fantasies. And how could she combat that?
"Jake-"
"No excuses now, I'm waiting to hear."
Her heart fell to her feet. She just couldn't reach him that way. She didn't know how she could reach him. She swallowed hard, reaching for something in herself that would give her the strength to do something other than
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just stand and be terrorized by him.
Any move she made, he could easily sight her with the gun. She was as good as dead if she even tried an escape. Nor did she think she could cajole him with sweet words. The set of his mind was such that he would see rig at through the false sincerity of her words. If she could even conjure up the right words. No, she couldn't play that game, and she couldn't run away, not straight away. She could not hope that anyone would come looking for her. The best she thought she could do was the water. If she could get to the water, she might have a slight chance to outwit him.
She let out her tightly held breath. "What do you want me to do?" she asked him huskily, turning her head just slightly so she could see his shadow behind her out of the corner of her eye.
He was nonplussed by her question. In effect, she had done what he had dreamt of her doing: She had taken off her clothes and her body was now solely his, for his eyes and anything else he might want. But no, he thought, something was missing—the life in her cobalt eyes; the glowing hot knowledge deep within that told him she knew what she was doing to him, and she wanted to do it. She wasn't teasing him the way he wanted her to, as it was in her nature to do. She was stone-still and terrified, and she wasn't supposed to be scared. She was supposed to want what had happened.
"You do it," he said finally.
She felt a flash of hope. He didn't know. "You tell me," she said carefully, trying to gauge how far to push him.
"You know."
"I don't know," she contradicted him. "I don't even know what this is all about. I came with you to get washed up, nothing more, Jake."
"No, you came because you've been aching to be alone with me so you can seduce me by flaunting your body."
Her heart sank. No hope this way. He could not be reasoned with, and he was becoming edgy with disappointment that she wasn't apparently eager to strut around, revelling in his fixation about her. "Let me wash myself, Jake," she begged him. "And then we'll go back to camp and forget this whole business." She knew the words were futile; she just had to say something.
"No, we're not going back to camp," he said with heavy finality.
She had to see his face now. She wondered whether she had it in her to be the tempting tease he seemed to think she was, whether her attitude would make the difference in whether she escaped or not. Her fear only made him irritable; he expected something of her she was not delivering, and her participation in this crazy fantastical idea he had of her had to be what it was. If that were true then, her cooperation would gain her time. Since he had not made a move to touch her, she had to assume his real purpose was only to look, and that her job was to entice him by displaying her charms.
He had taken care of that part, she conceded angrily, and now she had to decide whether it was worth risking herself with the other.
All of this went through her mind in the space of several seconds. She made her decision as quickly and whirled around to face him. "All right, Jake. You've got it right. It was all just a game to torment you." She smiled, and she knew it was a nasty little smile born of her growing contempt for him. It fed her attitude, her stance, the expression on her face — especially when he reacted to it, and positively. She was disgusted by the way his body tightened up attentively and his eyes burned with a strange little light.
He was waiting for her to prove her words to him. She sent him a scornful look, with her heart thumping wildly at the chance she was taking. But it was what he wanted.
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She was astounded to read it in his face.
And he had known it: She had been putting on a performance for him—just like her, just what he expected. The tension in the hand that held the gun eased a little and he lowered it slightly, waiting for her to tell him more, his eyes feasting on her tempting curves now that she evinced her willingness to drop her pose of resistance.
Her eyes flashed as his arm lowered just that little bit. Yes, and if she could say the next right thing to get it down a mere inch or two more, she was going to run for it.
What did he want to hear? What would a woman, driven to taunt a man like that, say to hold his interest once everything else was revealed? Would she, perhaps, want to know if she pleased him?
Her cobalt gaze grazed his consideringly. His eyes were fixed on her quivering breasts. The moment could not have been more perfect. She only hoped she could get the right amount of archness in the tone of her voice.
She moved her hands slowly to cup her hips, murmuring, "Do you like what you see?" and hating herself for the sly playfulness that crept into her voice, which was exactly what he expected to hear.
His glazed eyes moved upward to meet her bright-eyed gaze. "Very much. I just don't know why you made me force you."
Her cool blue eyes narrowed. "Because," she said slowly, in a petulant voice that came from someplace she did not know, "you needed for me to do that." Kalida was saying words she could barely believe were meaningful, and yet they seemed to have meaning for him, even though they spewed from some part of her that understood what he understood without knowing she knew it.
The gun came down still further. "Yes," he murmured, "you have it exactly right. It's all a game, isn't it, you bitch temptress? When I get my hands on you . . ."
And those were the dangerous words that set her off. She whipped around and bolted straight for the water— the wobble of a stream that was just deep enough to cover her-cursing her dark stockings, her night-black hair, her smooth white body that would show under its clarity like a reflecting mirror.
Two shots rang out behind her as she leapt into its cold depths, in and tlrider in one headlong dive that could have killed her if anything hard had gotten in her way. She heard him faintly behind her screaming, "You goddamn stinking bitch tease whore," and shots ringing out wildly overhead that sounded muffled beneath the two or three feet of water she was immersed in. She paddled forward very slowly. The mountain stream was frigid, and her hands and feet were already feeling numb. His voice and the gunshots began to recede altogether, and she made her way limply to the far side of the stream to take stock of where she was.
Her streaming black head popped out of the water. She was downstream a considerable number of yards away. Jake was a small ridiculous figure now, hopping up and down in frustration at both her defection and that of his weapon, which she saw him hurl into the water.
Ahead of her was the bend of the stream, around which the rest of the crew supposedly had been performing their morning ablutions. She wondered whether Deuce were seeking her now, if Bruno had told him where she h
ad gone. If he were totally out of patience with her for causing this disastrous, unnecessary delay.
She had no sense of how much time had elapsed since she had walked off with Jake, nor any idea of what she should do next. Except get out of that water and dry off before she froze in the warm spring morning. How incongruous. She pulled herself over onto the opposite bank beside the stream and huddled there in the sun. Reaction set in and she began shaking in earnest, as much from the
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cold as from her narrow escape. There was nothing there to warm her, but she couldn't conceive of trying to get back to camp without some kind of clothing.
She couldn't have been gone longer than an hour, she reasoned. It was just possible the night crew was done resting and had come upstream for their wash up. It was even likely that one or two of them were bathing and their clothing might be lying someplace close by; she might even be able to "borrow" a shirt on the sly. Anything was possible, she thought.
Anyway, she ought to be walking rather than sitting hunched up, and if she could find some clothing in the bargain—well, all to the good. She hoisted herself up painfully and stretched her cramped arms and legs with the stupid stockings that shrouded them like a second skin. God, the ideas she had! She began walking slowly, berating herself for her obtuseness and the self-centered-ness that had precipitated everything that had happened.
How was she ever going to explain to Deuce why she had returned stark naked and where her clothes were!
That not-so-very-amusing thought kept her company as she tentatively proceeded downstream along the muddy bank. As she rounded the bend, she heard voices and the splash of water. She drew in a tight, deep breath. It might still be okay, if she could just figure out how to filch a shirt without being seen.
