by Jayne Castle
Reva glanced at him sharply. "How did you get Personnel to divulge it?"
"A little pressure applied in the right places can work miracles," he assured her, taking the key out of her hand and fitting it into the door.
"Oh, Josh," she groaned as he pushed her gently before him into the apartment. "I have a business reputation to protect. I hope you didn't do anything . . ."
Her words were cut off as a dark-gray shape, poised in front of the window overlooking the city, moved with a soft growl and padded toward her. Reva flicked on a light and half-smiled as the huge, battle-scarred alley cat came forward to investigate the stranger she had brought home.
"I see you've been well looked after while I was gone," Josh said, hunkering down to stare into the eyes of the big cat, who returned the gaze with interest. For a long moment the two regarded each other silently and it occurred to Reva they probably had a lot in common. Then the cat touched his nose to the tip of Josh's hand, flicked his tail in satisfaction, and walked silently back to his window seat. Josh stood and turned to look inquiringly at Reva.
"That's Xavier," she explained, slipping off her shawl. "He adopted me shortly before I moved here. I told him he wasn't going to like living in a high-rise building, but he doesn't seem to mind."
"Because he's decided home is where you are," Josh murmured, helping her with the shawl. "Cats are highly adaptable. It's a survival characteristic, you see. I understand Xavier's decision completely." Reva saw the warning in his eyes too late.
An instant later she was hauled into his overwhelming embrace, crushed against the material of his jacket as he
wrapped her close against his hard leanness.
"Reva, honey, I've been waiting four months for this moment," he rasped in her ear. "Tomorrow will be time enough to talk out the details. Tonight I must have you in my bed!"
CHAPTER TWO
Reva only barely managed to wedge her hands against his broad chest as Josh once again sought her mouth with his own.
"Josh!" she gasped angrily. "You promised!"
"This won't be rape, little one," he soothed, his lips lazing hungrily over the skin of her cheek as she turned her head to the side. "We're going to make love, you and
"No! Stop it this minute, Josh Corbett, you've already had a
welcome-home kiss and that's all you're going to
get!" Reva stormed. She wasn't really frightened, not yet.
But she was vastly annoyed, and her blue-green eyes dark
ened behind her glasses as she tried to struggle without
creating so much racket her next-door neighbors would be
drawn to the scene.
"That wasn't a welcome-home kiss back there in the car," Josh scolded lightly, his large hands tightening gently but with incredible strength. "That was just a little something I grabbed on the run until I could get the full meal. Don't you know me well enough after those three days to remember that all my appetites are large? I distinctly recall that, once aroused, none of yours were particularly small, either!"
"Josh! What an awful thing to say!" Reva declared
furiously. She grew impatient with his deepening embrace and deliberately dug her fingers into the vulnerable area at the base of his neck. "Now let me go or I'll. . . No!" The last word came out in a small, horrified yelp as he suddenly bent and lifted her high into his arms. It had the immediate effect of causing her to stop the small punishment she had begun with her hands. Instead she instinctively splayed her fingers, clutching to keep from falling.
"That's better," he approved huskily as he felt her automatically cling, and then he was striding across the off-white carpet to sit down heavily on the Chinese red sofa. Reva found herself sprawled across his lap and before she could regain her equilibrium his mouth had at last closed over hers.
Her initial annoyance and dismay at having discovered Josh Corbett was a man of his word had protected her in the car outside the restaurant. She had felt the desire in him then as if it were a leashed panther and had been appalled, wariting only to step back out of reach. But now he was holding her, cradling her the way he had cradled her against him that last night in the jungle, and the heat of his body reached out to enfold her as it had then. Memories of her response on that occasion sprang far too vividly to life. Memories she wanted very badly to forget.
"Reva, my sweet Reva," Josh growled, his voice dark and heavy with undisguised desire. "You can't have forgotten what we had four months ago."
"It was such a short time, Josh," she protested weakly, striving desperately to summon her common sense. "We hardly knew each other then and . . . and we know each other even less now!"
"That's not true," he retorted coaxingly, holding her with one hand and stroking her curving body with the other. His mouth nuzzled the soft, sensitive area behind
her ear. "We hid nothing from each other during those three days. And it's only you who are trying to hide things now. But I know too much about you to believe the cool, remote little facade you were attempting to erect between us in the restaurant. That might work with boys like Tanner, but not with me." His hand stopped moving back and forth from her shoulder to her thigh and instead paused to lift the glasses away from her face, setting them down cautiously on the polished lacquer table nearby.
"I thought it was women who were supposed to be guilty of... of romanticizing brief encounters," Reva tried to say mockingly, holding herself stiffly but no longer actively fighting him. Something told her that physical resistance at this stage would simply be ignored by Josh. It wasn't that he was the sort of man to enjoy forcibly overcoming a woman, he just wouldn't find her attempt at battle very important. Not when he was so certain in his own mind that they both wanted each Other.
"Romanticizing! Is that what you think I'm doing, woman?" He abruptly laughed, a deep sound from far down in his chest. "Let me tell you exactly how I remember those three days and you tell me if you honestly think I'm guilty of romanticizing them. First off, I distinctly recall that the only bath either of us had during the whole time was one quick dip in a river on the second day. I also vividly remember you complaining about being hungry most of the time. . . ."
"I did not!" Reva felt obliged to defend herself against the accusation. Her neat brows drew together in a quelling frown.
"Yes, you did. So much so that in order to pacify you I was forced to stoop to 'liberating' a few chickens, several eggs, and bartering my watch for some milk!" The lion gaze gleamed humorously down into her upturned face.
"You were just as hungry as I was!" she shot back tartly. But against her will she was remembering that he had kept her fed during those three days. Even if she'd been able to catch the chickens by herself she wasn't at all sure she could have killed and cleaned them. Her only contribution to their meals had been cooking and serving. It was Josh who had calmly disappeared in the brief hours before dawn and returned with food from sources he refused to specify.
"Oh, I was hungry, all right," he agreed, toying with a lock of sun-streaked hair which had fallen across her shoulder. Then his eyes swept the slender shape of her body, taking in the small breasts and narrow waist outlined beneath the glimmering silk sheath. "But you don't look as if you've been eating as well lately as you were when I was responsible for feeding you," he noted. "Hell, woman! I can feel your bones!" He ran probing fingers lightly over the shape of her hip and frowned. "Are you sure you haven't been pining away for me?" he added.
"Not in the least. I've been dieting. The only reason I had more weight on me when you saw me last is that I'd been vacationing for several days and I always go on a binge during vacations!" Reva fixed him with a look of hauteur.
"You didn't look as if you were dieting tonight," he remarked.
"When I eat out I enjoy myself. But I have to make up for it by watching calories the rest of the week," she sighed, wondering how in the world the subject of the conversation had become her eating habits.
"Trying to stay fashionably ski
nny for boys like Tanner? Well, you won't have to worry about that around me. I already know you have a healthy appetite and I wouldn't
mind in the least if you increase by a couple of sizes. I doubt that it's even healthy being this slender."
"Josh! Will you kindly talk about something else? My diet problems are my own affair!" Reva snapped. Very delicately she attempted to straighten slightly in his lap but without a word he simply tightened his hold and she was forced tenderly back against him.
"What was the original subject?" he mused thoughtfully. "Oh, yes, your concern that I may have overromanti-cized our encounter four months ago. Let's see, what else do I remember?"
"Okay," she groaned in resignation, "So you recall some of the difficulties involved. But you're missing my whole point, Josh, and that is that you seem to have developed some sort of fixation about me which probably came about because of the drama of the moment. You stayed behind and I came home to the normal world. You can't just return four months later and expect me to still be caught up in that drama!"
"Have you been sleeping with Tanner?" he asked coolly.
"What!" Reva was startled by the question. She had been involved trying to argue her side of the matter and here he was asking a totally unrelated question. "That's none of your business!"
"A simple yes or no will do, Reva," he told her quietly. "Have you been sharing his bed?"
"No!" she grated, not altogether certain why she was bothering to answer the impertinent question. "I've only known him a month, Josh!"
"You only knew me three days," he pointed out, the edge of his mouth turning upward.
"That's a terrible thing to say," she accused, flushing under the impact of his gaze.
"I'm trying to make a point. I knew the minute I saw you in the restaurant with him that you weren't sleeping with him," he told her with satisfaction.
"Then why bother to. ask?" she hissed, and then spoiled the retort by tacking on, "How did you know?"
"I could tell by the way you smiled at him. Friendly and remote. And he didn't put up any fight at all when I took you away." Josh shrugged as if the case were open and shut. "But the reason I asked was to make you aware of something else. Tell me the truth, Reva Waring, has there been anyone since me?" The honey eyes suddenly narrowed and she felt his fingers harden briefly around her rib cage where he held her.
"I've... I've dated several people since I returned," she began quite bravely and winced as he gave her a slight impatient shake.
"That's not what I'm asking, little one, and you know it. Tell me, Reva!" The riverbed voice was still soft but very, very determined to have an answer.
"No," she muttered honestly. "It's none of your damn business, but, no, I haven't slept with anyone since I came back!"
"And there's been no one else for me since I put you on that plane," he told her, a slashing smile moving into place on his hard features. "You see? Even if you weren't conscious of it, you were waiting for me!"
"That's not true!" she blazed, alarmed at his deduction. "It just so happens that I don't engage routinely in affairs, and don't give me that line about there having been no one else for you, either! If that's the case it's only because you've been isolated in that jungle for four months. Which brings me right back to my initial statement. You've got some sort of fixation on me because I was the last woman you were with! As soon as you've had a chance to readjust
to civilized society and meet people you'll feel differently. I'm surprised you haven't learned that about yourself by now. Surely this isn't the first time you've come back to the States on ... on leave. . . ." Her words trailed off a iittle at the end because she wasn't absolutely certain what to call a mercenary's time off, and while Josh Corbett seemed a bit different from the way she had envisioned such men, she was fairly sure that was his occupation. What else could account for his presence in that terrible situation or for the way he'd been armed and at ease with the business of survival? Furthermore, he hadn't returned with her on the plane when he'd had the chance. Instead he'd walked back into the jungle with his weapons.
"Of course I've come and gone several times, little one," he smiled affectionately. "But I'm well aware my reaction to you was totally out of the ordinary. Do you think I normally go to all this trouble to track down women with whom I've shared a night or two?" He moved his hand along her thigh, shaped the contour of her waist, and then, with bold hunger, cupped a small breast. The lion eyes darkened as he bent his head and just before his mouth covered hers, he whispered hoarsely, "You're mine, Reva. I brought you safe out of that revolution and sent you home to wait for me. Now I've come to collect you!"
"Josh, listen to me . . ." Reva tried desperately, but it was too late. Her pleading words were silenced as his lips moved warmly on hers. She was clamped almost fiercely against his chest, helpless in the velvet-covered steel of his arms. His unsubtle, plundering mouth preyed hungrily on hers, forcing apart her lips and eagerly ravaging the honey behind them. She felt his tongue seek out hers and engage it immediately in a little duel of yin and yang, male and female.
Reva was profoundly aware of the explosive intent in
his hard body. He had tired of the arguments and explanations and attempts at reasoning. He told her with his hands and his lips and his possessive hold that he was here to claim the woman he felt belonged to him. Somehow, Reva told herself as the sensuous assault swept over her, she had thought she had more time. She had thought she could talk rationally to him for a while longer before giving up and throwing him out of the apartment.
But something had gone wrong. Here she was, cradled helplessly against him, every nerve aware of his questing, proprietary hands. She tried to protest and only a soft, kitten sound came from her throat. The tiny mew seemed to please him enormously and she felt herself gathered closer to his warmth and hardness.
The thing about Josh Corbett, Reva was reminded with stark clarity, was that he made love with total honesty. And she rediscovered what she had learned that night four months ago. For her there was nothing quite as captivating, nothing quite as dangerous as this man's utterly elemental approach to the act of love. It bypassed all the games and innuendoes of society, all the tricks and practiced seductions. For a woman like her there was nothing as incredibly seductive as this man's uncompromising and unhidden need. She had been a fool to let him come into the apartment.
"I don't think it's gratitude you're feeling tonight, little one," Josh husked against the lips he had lightly bruised. She heard the satisfaction in his voice and wanted to object but there was more than pure male pleasure in his words. There was desire and want and something else. Something gentle and almost pleading. Reva knew a sense of wonder that such a hard and seasoned survivor as Josh Corbett could plead for a woman's response. Almost without conscious volition, she lifted a hand and thrust her fingers
through the graying hair of his temples and into the rich dark-brown mane beyond.
"Ah, Reva, Reva," he growled heavily, "I knew you couldn't have forgotten." And then his lips were moving to the corner of her mouth, dropping small, biting little kisses there and tracking upward to do the same at the corner of her faintly slanting blue-green eyes. As the tiny, stinging caresses descended, Reva's lids closed tightly and she felt a tremor of desire course the length of her body. She shifted her legs languidly as they lay across his thigh, arching her well-shaped feet in response to another faint shiver. One shiny black sandal came off and tumbled to the thick carpet, unnoticed.
Everything was different this time, Reva tried to tell herself as the spin of her emotions increased. This apartment was no abandoned hut with a dirt floor, she had not spent the day in fear for her life, and she had dined on fine veal, not stolen chicken. The man with her was wearing a wool suit instead of stained khakis and he didn't have a gun within arm's reach. And his face was clean shaven and smelled faintly of a tangy. aftershave that combined potently with the natural male scent of his body.
Yes, everything was
different but it didn't seem to matter one bit to the primitive, feminine core of her which ignored all the trappings and responded only to the masculine lures Josh was dispensing with a bold and generous hand.
"Josh, please," she began on a tiny, agitated wail, "I don't. . ."
"Honey," he interrupted thickly, his teeth tugging gently on her earlobe as his fingers worked to unbutton the small, elegant fastenings of the glimmering silk dress, "Don't ask me to go without you tonight! I've waited so long, dreamed about coming back to you so many sleep-
less nights! I couldn't bear not to satisfy my need of you now that you're finally in my arms. Tomorrow we can talk all you want."
His words came to a jagged halt and Reva heard his sharply indrawn breath as his fingers slipped inside the open bodice of the dress to palm the gentle curve of her breast. Nor was he the only one who reacted to the contact by sipping air, Reva gasped at the touch and turned her head into the material of his jacket. Instantly his mouth found the vulnerable nape of her neck and he kissed it as he toyed in increasing urgency with the hardening nipple he had captured between thumb and forefinger.
Reva trembled at the dual assault, striving frantically to regain some control over her own emotions before it was too late. Already her fingers were shaking slightly as she clutched the lapel of his jacket. The temptation to search out the buttons of his shirt, undo them, and seek the crisp, curling hairs of the smoothly muscled chest was rapidly becoming irresistible. For some reason Reva opened her drugged eyes and her gaze fell on the brilliant material of his tie. Grimly she focused on it.
"I've longed for the feel of your hands on me again, little Reva," Josh whispered with a sigh of eager anticipation. He moved and Reva thought he was going to get to his feet and carry her into the bedroom. She had to act now or it would be too late. Her rapidly disintegrating common sense warned her that if she let him go any farther she would be unable to stop him.
