Blush

by Suzanne Forster

  Gus dragged on a section of her lower lip with her teeth, sucking the entire thing into her mouth. Not terribly attractive, she imagined. But then neither was this place. The tiers of votive candles were a nice touch, and the nave was misty blue with sandalwood incense, but other than that it was the mission that time forgot. The mudstone and stucco walls were crumbling to brown silt, and the wooden pews looked like a heavy breeze would have turned them into firewood.

  Gus had always thought flies didn't buzz at night. And lizards! There was one peeking at her from behind the brass baptismal font right now. She couldn't seem to escape the crawly things, which made her wonder if they were to be symbolic of her relationship with him.

  It wasn't a relationship, she reminded herself, more like a series of fiery car crashes. And if lizards were symbolic of anything it was something perversely, disgustingly sexual. Why had she had sex with him? Why had she done that? The man was a necrophiliac, a kidnapper, and a blackmailer. And those were just the atrocities she knew about.

  "The priest is waiting, Gus. "

  The gun barrel made its hateful presence known again.

  As motivating as cold steel and bullets were, Gus was almost as compelled by the priest's plight. He seemed so desperate. She lifted her shoulders apologetically, wondering if this was his first wedding ceremony. Of course, it was three in the morning and he had been wrested out of his tiny cot in his tiny cell in the tiny mission by an American psycho, armed and demanding to be joined in holy matrimony with a hysterical woman.

  "All right. " She sighed, comforting herself with the thought that she would have the marriage—and her husband—annulled the moment she was stateside, if the ceremony was even legal, which it couldn't possibly be.

  "The señorita, she say yes?"

  "Yes," Gus snapped.

  "Quiero dar gracias a Dos de rodillas!" the priest whispered.

  Gus had just enough Spanish to know that he was thanking God on bended knee. At least someone was happy. A broad smile revealed his dazzling white teeth and healthy pink gums as he gazed at the two of them beatifically. The near-tragedy averted, he turned a page of the Bible and swung to Jack eagerly.

  "Count me in, " Jack said, checking the luminous dial of his diver's watch, a fashion faux pas with a tux. "Are we about done here?"

  Ten minutes later the pronouncements were over, the papers were signed, and the priest, who had just been paid handsomely for his efforts by Jack, was mumbling another prayer of thanksgiving.

  "There's one little fact you both seem to have missed. " Gus let her would-be husband and the padre have it with a death-be-to-anyone-who-screws-with-me stare. "I'm not Catholic. "

  She swung around to leave, her silvery jumpsuit flying in its own breezes as she double-timed it to the mission's massive portals. The click of her high heels against the uneven stone floor ricocheted like drumfire. She wanted out of this den of blue incense. She wanted to run screaming into the night never to be seen or heard from again. That thought relieved some of the terrible frustration building inside her, even though she knew it was only a fantasy.

  Lizards fled her path as she advanced on the wooden doors. The way her luck was running, she'd get picked up by a gang of bandidos, stripped of her clothing and jewelry, and sold into white slavery. Either that or they'd kill her and broker her vital organs to some unsavory, unlicensed medical clinic. She had no identification. No one would know who she was, what she'd risked to accomplish everything, or more important, that she was the guardian and sworn protector of a five-year-old who needed her. And no one would care if they did know, she suspected. It was the dead of night, and decent, law-abiding folks were asleep in their beds. The priest had been her best bet, but he'd wisely resorted to prayer instead of heroics.

  The rusty iron bar that secured the mission's doors didn't seem to care what Gus wanted, either. It was stuck fast, and she couldn't budge it.

  "Slow down, " Jack said, right behind her. He slipped an arm around her waist, his fingers splaying against her bare skin.

  Gus blanched at the contact, then realized he was simply moving her out of the way so he could open the door. He dislodged the bar effortlessly, but the jammed doors wouldn't give, she noted with some satisfaction. They had come in through a side entrance, a small stone courtyard, and she should have slipped out that way, too.

  The huge doors groaned with Jack's weight as he rammed them with his shoulder. A second hit popped them wide open. The sudden rush of chilly night air was fragrant with the rich, almond scent of virgin's bower, a flowering vine, and the lingering residue of fried fish, probably caught fresh and cooked earlier in some neighboring sea shanty. It was dark outside, so dark Gus could only make out the swaying hovels of the oceanside village by the lonely glow of candlefire still burning in a window or two. She shivered, wishing she had something more to wear than a skimpy, translucent jumpsuit.

  "Don't make any more sudden moves," he warned her, ushering her toward the battered Jeep he'd had to buy at the airstrip because there had been no rentals and no taxis. "I'm not anxious to have somebody knock me over the head again and run off with you. "

  Gus sliced him a disdainful look, which he probably couldn't see because it was so dark. "Why don't you just bind, gag, and handcuff me?"

  "I'm saving that for the honeymoon."

  "Oh, charming" she said through barely moving lips. "I can always count on you for a good time."

  "Ask me nice, and I might let you use the toilet."

  Gus made sure he saw her disdain this time. The car was parked in a sizzling patch of moonlight. As he opened the passenger door for her, she shot him a look that was designed to wither all forms of biological life down to the lowest order of toad. It was a sample of the runway attitude she'd been perfecting her whole career, apparently just for this moment. She'd used it on mashers, paparazzi and Ward McHenry, the Featherstone's trust officer. Roughly translated it meant eat dirt and die.

  Unwithered, he gazed upon her scorn as if she'd just issued a challenge that might hold some interest for him. Apparently no one told you to play with people your own size, his dark smile seemed to be saying. So let's see what you've got, babe.

  His call slid over her like hot syrup over fluffy egg waffles, climbing ridges and pooling in crevices. By the time its liquid heat began to concentrate on the dimpled curves of her mostly bare behind, he'd left her little in the way of illusions about what was on his mind.

  She turned her back on him and slid into the car, scooping her silvery remnants after her with a sniff, and not a moment too soon. The door slammed as she gathered in the fluttering hem of her palazzo pants. Moments later as they drove away from the mission, jolting over every bump and pothole on the donkey trail that passed for a dirt road, she brought up her concerns again, speaking loudly to be heard over the rusty creak of the springs.

  "Why are you doing this?" she asked him. "If it's more money you want, something can be arranged—"

  "It's not money."

  "Then what do you want?" That look again. As if he were going to have her for breakfast, with or without syrup. "What have you got?" he asked.

  "A burning desire to rip out your heart and stomp on it?"

  He smiled. "Not what I had in mind."

  The Jeep lurched into a rut, its rickety suspension giving up shrieks of pain. The jolt forced Jack's attention back to the road, and Gus was just as glad. She'd had more satisfying conversations with her stepsister's horses. He had nothing to say that she wanted to hear anyway, but she had noticed something interesting about her interaction with him. She didn't seem to stammer as much—or at least she couldn't predict when she would—which fascinated and disturbed her since she'd struggled for the greater part of her life to control the hesitation in her speech. It was probably because she was either in a state of rage or terror around him, she reminded herself. She was too busy surviving to be self-conscious, which didn't say all that much for his salutary effect on her.

  As they d
rove on through the dark, traversing the rugged, desertlike terrain, she had plenty of time to shiver in the cool early-morning breezes and contemplate her situation. He'd mentioned a honeymoon, but surely he wasn't serious about consummating this marriage of monumental inconvenience, not after the way he'd forced her out of the shower in the shack. She'd never had the chance to ask why he had done that incomprehensible thing, why he sent her away. His ferocity probably wouldn't have permitted her to anyway, but she wouldn't quickly forget it.

  Something persuaded her to look at him now as they drove through the oil-black night. What little light there was in the cab flickered gingerly over his strong features as if it, too, were searching for the man inside. His hair was as dark as his eyes, and the military cut lent him the kind of tough guy glamour that made screen action heroes so appealing, but that was where the resemblance ended.

  Everything else about him took her right back to the day he kidnapped her. He'd nearly terrified her that morning with the dead glare of his eyes and the low, burnt-out shudder in his voice. She had never questioned that he was capable of killing her, or anyone, for that matter. It was only after she'd seen the scars on his body and the anguish in his face as he worked out that she realized he was vulnerable, human.

  Now, shadowed by moonlight, he was that stranger again, that deadly stranger. His eyes were icy and remote as he glanced at her, his expression unreadable, even faintly cruel in its intent. Instantly she began to question what he had in mind and where he was taking her. The murky, mountainous terrain they were driving through warned her that they probably weren't heading back toward the airstrip. They seemed to be on a cross-country route, headed toward the opposite shore, the Pacific. They also seemed to be going south rather than north, which would take them even deeper into Baja.

  "We are going back to Los Angeles, aren't we?" she asked. Then, a little less confidently, "We are... aren't we?"

  "And skip our honeymoon?"

  "You can't be serious!"

  "There's a villa waiting for us in Scorpion Bay that's the equal of any honeymoon suite at a four-star hotel. It should take us another hour to get there by car. Sound serious to you?" He didn't take his eyes off the road as he spoke.

  "Really?" Fear made her lace the words with a lethal dose of sarcasm. "A four-star villa? At least I'll get to endure my human bondage in first-class surroundings. "

  "Oh, yeah. " He laughed evilly. "First class all the way. I'm going to see that you get it all, Mrs. Culhane, everything you so richly deserve. "

  The car hit a rut and Gus skidded forward, stopping herself with a hand propped against the dash. The Jeep had no seatbelts, and a silk jumpsuit on slick vinyl upholstery didn't provide much traction, but the moment she got herself squared away, she spun around to confront him.

  "So that's what this is about?" She wasn't shouting only because she didn't want him to pull a gun and shoot her, but Lord, how she longed to give vent to all the terrible frustration she felt! "Revenge? You got caught napping, and now you're desperate to find some way to soothe your injured male ego? I can't believe—"

  "Believe it, " he said, switching on the radio as if to tune her out. His fingers drummed the console in time to a mariachi band. "My injured male ego wants plenty of soothing. It wants you, in bed. "

  She switched the radio off. "You've already had me, in the shower!"

  "It wasn't the same. You weren't my wife. "

  "Are you crazy? Do you know what you're doing to my life? Do you know what you're doing to my plans?"

  "Putting a little kink in them, apparently. What are your plans anyway? I'm curious what drives an already-wealthy woman to have herself kidnapped. "

  "Never mind. " Already wealthy? She was on the upper-class equivalent of welfare. If it hadn't been for her modeling, her personal income would have been at the poverty level, which was one of the reasons she'd continued to live at the mansion—that and her niece. All-too-familiar concerns flooded her at the mere thought of Bridget. That was another reason she had to get free of this man and get back home. The little girl would be worried. They would all be worried and with good reason.

  "Must have been some grand scam you were cooking up, " he said, clearly curious as he looked her way. "Never mind. "

  She went smolderingly silent, aware of the angry jolt and creak of the car springs as she busied herself with what she should have been doing before, making plans to escape. Surely there would be some way to ditch him when they got to the villa. He could hardly keep her captive with help a telephone call away. But then there was the little problem of blackmail. One phone call to the media and he could ruin everything he hadn't already ruined. It wasn't a question of getting away from him, she realized. This was a question of doing away with him.

  She stared out the front windshield, still outraged, and unable to keep quiet about it. "I can't believe you would destroy someone's life, their future—their dreams!—just to prove you can still get it up. "

  "I can get it up fine, Gus. I just can't get it off. "

  "Don't!" she said, raising her hand. "Don't remind me."

  "I thought maybe we'd work on that problem on our honeymoon. I thought maybe you'd want to be the one to make a whole man of me again. "

  She clapped her hands over her ears and began to hum something, anything!—"The Battle Hymn of the Republic"—whatever it took to block him out.

  "Can you hear me, Gus?"

  "No!"

  "Did it ever occur to you, " he persisted, "that I might be doing this for the same reason that men over the centuries have been marrying women?"

  "And what reason is that? So they can own the cow?"

  "Go ahead, make fun of the institution, but I'm serious. A man marries a woman because he wants a wife, a companion for life, and a mate with whom to have children. "

  He actually sounded serious, and Gus thought she must truly be losing her mind. She removed her hands from her ears just in time to hear his voice go faintly husky, and if she wasn't mistaken, suspiciously ironic.

  "A man marries a woman because he loves her. " He geared the Jeep down, sending the creaky car into shuddering fits as they began to descend a steep, rocky incline to a shimmering bay below. "Did any of that ever occur to you?"

  "No," she said, perfectly horrified at the thought. She had thought necrophilia was his most disgusting personality trait, but it wasn't. He also had a sick sense of humor. "No, it didn't! Not for one second. "

  "There's a law against what you're planning to do."

  "What am I planning to do?"

  "It starts with R and it rhymes with ape. And there's a law against it. I don't care if we are married. "

  Jack Culhane's dark smile bounced at Gus from the panel of mirrors that lined the opposite wall of the villa's bedroom. One of his eyebrows was slanted at about forty-five degrees of wry interest as he gazed beyond his own reflection at hers. He'd just undone the cuffs and collar of his dress shirt. Now he was working on the bone buttons that were embedded in two rows of narrow pleats running down the front. To be fair he hadn't actually winked or leered— yet.

  "Maybe I was going to take another shower," he said.

  "Probably the best idea you've ever had. Go ahead." Gus mimed a pushing gesture. "I'll wait for you. "

  "And dig a pit in the floor? I'm not letting you out of my sight unless it's to lock you in a closet. "

  Gus left him to his unbuttoning ritual and took visual inventory of her surroundings. The Scorpion Bay villa he'd reserved made her think of a millionaire's hideaway in Portofino or the south of France. The spacious, sweeping affair overlooked moonlit water, with several sumptuously decorated rooms. The main salon was filled with dramatically striped couches and chairs, marble tables, and ceramic vases of freshly cut flowers. A patio that ran the entire length of the suite had a terraced pool and a short flight of tiled steps leading to a private beach.

  The decor was lavish, but Gus had had little chance to enjoy any of it. The moment they'd arri
ved, he'd uncorked the magnum of Dom Perignon that was chilling in a silver ice bucket, grabbed the two champagne flutes that flanked the bucket, and led her into the spacious bedroom.

  She'd passed on the champagne and wandered over to the French doors that opened onto the terrace, where the honeyed heaviness of frangipani floated in on balmy trade winds. She'd been lingering there ever since—to avoid him more than anything else—watching the luminous full moon roll out a carpet of silver across the mysteriously becalmed Pacific Ocean. The shimmering path of light ran from ivory shore to cherry-black horizon, and its forbidding beauty had sparked an idea. It had suggested a way to evade this man—her new "husband"—and his apparent obsession with the marriage bed.

  Now he was standing by the carved Spanish four-poster, undoing the waistband of his pants, his shirt hanging open. His silk tie and tux jacket were draped on the finial of the foot post nearest him, much the way a cowboy would hang his holster and six-shooter. Symbols of ownership, Gus thought. I claim this bed as mine. I claim this woman as mine.

  Uncomfortable with the way her pulse had quickened, she glanced down at her hands. Dazzlingly red nails, freshly manicured for the fashion show, were reminiscent of tiny, blood-tipped daggers. Men and women, she thought. It was all so damn primitive still. Twentieth century or not, the male of the species had failed to evolve when it came to territorial pursuits like war and sex. They too often reverted to cave and club.

  And women? She could only speak for herself, but this particular male had stirred something uncontrollably sexual in her during their stay in the desert. Not at all like the pleasant little flutters she felt with Rob. This was deeper. Worlds deeper. It was true physical longing. It had drawn on her stores of vital energy, depleting her. It had tugged at her until she ached. She wasn't proud of it, but there it was, the bare, libidinal truth. Other men had piqued her curiosity, but none had ever made her feel as if she might languish and die if she didn't have sex with them. He had done that to her.