Wild Midnight (28 page)

Beau bent to open the back door with one hand, not letting her go. “There’s nobody at your place to take care of you. And you’re not going to be alone until I can locate those damned Murrells. I’m going to put you in a hot bath while I make a few telephone calls.”
 

He carried her up a back staircase in the big house, dark and filled with the faint scent of old wood and carpet and the perfume of fresh flowers. It was a much better place to stay, she knew tiredly, than her own house, at least for a few hours. She buried her head against Beau’s shoulder as he carried her, murmuring that it would be nice to be clean and warm and that she just wanted to go to sleep.
 

“All of that,” he agreed huskily. He touched cold lips to her forehead. “But first the bath.
 

He pushed open a door with his shoulder and they were in a lovely, faintly musty room that smelled as if it had been shut up for a time. The light switch at the door turned on a yellow pool of light at bedside, revealing a canopied bed with starched muslin ruffles and an antique cotton lace bedspread faintly creamy with age. Rachel gave a low moan as Beau’s muddy boots tracked dirt across a priceless Aubusson rug. He carried her into a modern bathroom of cream and gold and pale green, let her slide down his body to her feet, then pulled the camouflage shirt off her.
 

“I’m so filthy,” Rachel said in a dazed voice. She looked down at her breasts and stomach, streaked with sand and marsh mud.
 

“I’ll clean up the bathroom later. Or Eulie will. Don’t worry about it.”
 

The fluorescent lights of the bathroom were unexpectedly harsh. Rachel blinked, seeing Beau Tillson clearly for the first time. There was mud in his hair, and sticking to the jungle camouflage paint on his chiseled nose, brow, and chin.
 

She stared at him stupidly. In her present state this halfnaked man with his glistening torso and wet, gilded hair was still some demon of the night marshes, fearsome and brilliant, Caliban and Ariel both. Lord of the Alligators. She didn’t know why she couldn’t get it out of her mind. She felt hysterical laughter rising inside her.
 

“Rachel, cut it out. You’re right on the edge, honey. Try to take it easy. We’ll get this over with in a minute.” He sat on the edge of the tub while the steaming water ran into it. Rachel stood beside, him, naked and passive while he examined her body with an impersonal thoroughness. He looked at her hands and wrists again, and made her turn her face up to the light so that he could examine her raw lips, where she had peeled the plastic tape away. Then with excruciating gentleness he made her turn around so he could run the tips of his fingers over her mosquito-bitten back. Even more softly he stroked the inside of her thighs with his hard fingertips while he bent and looked for bruises.
 

She stared straight into his eyes when he lifted his head. “You’d tell me if they did something to you, wouldn’t you, Rachel?” he said huskily.
 

His hands held her lightly at the waist. In only the bottoms of his jungle fatigues and heavy boots he seemed alien and dangerous, and still unbelievably beautiful.
 

“Yes, I’d tell you,” she whispered. “If they’d raped me, I’d ask you to call a doctor.”
 

There was a flicker of murderous expression on his face. Then he sighed. “You can cry. You don’t have to hold it in anymore.”
 

Rachel swayed. She wasn’t going to give in to that. It was over. She was alive. That was enough. Now all she wanted was to have him hold her. She closed her eyes for only a second. “How did you find me?”
 

“All the lights were on at your house when I came by, all the doors and windows open. Your station wagon was still in the yard. I knew something had happened. I went looking for you. After about half an hour I thought of Darla Jean. She was at my house, into my whiskey, getting drunk and bawling her head off. But not too drunk to tell me what she and her brothers had been up to. That is, after I helped her with a little persuasion.” He caught her look. “No, not what you’re thinking. I didn’t touch her. I didn’t have to.”
 

She shuddered.
Darla Jean
. Just the sound of it brought back the nightmare and the desolation of the marsh in the blackness. They had tried to kill her. They’d stripped her naked and tried to make it look as though she had drowned swimming in her tidal pool. A wave of terror caught her unawares. They’d been so drunk it was a miracle they hadn’t killed her before they got to the mud bar. She remembered the aimless wallowing of the boat and their slurred words.
 

“Take it easy,” Beau said, watching her face. “Darla’s gone. I only want Roy and Lonnie anyway.”
 

“I need to have you put your arms around me.” Rachel moaned.
 

“Later. Everything later. First you need to get warm.” He leaned over to turn off the tap. “You’re going to have a reaction, Rachel. Delayed shock.”
 

He helped her into the tub as though she were a child, and eased her down into the hot water. “I have to make a few telephone calls. But I’ll be right back,” he told her, and left.
 

Rachel let herself drift. She was too tired to wash; she rubbed a bar of sweet-scented soap against herself halfheartedly, then sank back into the water and closed her eyes. She opened them much later, when his hand touched her shoulder lightly, holding out a cup of some steaming liquid for her to take.
 

“Tea. I remembered you drink tea.”
 

He had gone downstairs to make it while she bathed. She rose, stepped out of the tub, took the cup and saucer, then gulped down the hot liquid while he pulled a bath towel around her and rubbed her whole body briskly. He was in jeans and bare feet now, and his hair was wet and smelled of soap; he had showered and dressed while he was gone. With his arms holding the big cotton towel around her, she was surrounded by his strength, the pungent clean scent of his body and golden skin strongly imprinting the memory of his lovemaking on her mind.
 

She was suddenly shaking uncontrollably. All she wanted to do was get close to him. She couldn’t wait any longer. She looked down at his bent head as he crouched before her, rubbing her legs with the towel, and the screaming need rose within her to be near him. She had to feel his arms around her, her face pressing against his warm skin, that lithe golden body making love to her, or she was going to shake into little pieces.
 

He looked up at her as she trembled, wild-eyed. “Hey,” he said softly. He quickly took the cup and saucer out of her hand and put it down on the bathroom sink counter.
 

With a whimpering cry Rachel threw herself against him. “Hold me,” she tried to tell him, gurgling with terrible spasms of laughter. She had to tell him about the Lord of the Alligators and all the other terrible things. She climbed frantically against him, her bath towel falling away, hands clawing desperately, knees bumping his as he straightened up.
 

“Rachel, honey—wait,” he tried to tell her.
 

But there was no waiting. She wanted him. She needed him. She dug her fingers into the satiny skin of his shoulders, then his hips, trying to pull him even closer.
 

He couldn’t understand what she was shrieking. “Rachel, what ‘gators? There are no alligators that are going to—”
 

Her desperate mouth cut him off. She tried to clasp him with her legs, utterly wild now, trying to burrow into his hard, smooth body. He was the one who had saved her. The Lord of the Alligators. Coming through the marshes to find her. He was going to find Roy and Lonnie Murrell and kill them. There were no limits to his power. And she was totally, completely his.
 

There was nothing he could do but lift her up in his arms and carry her to the bedroom and to the bed. He fell on it heavily because she would not let him go, her arms wound tightly around his neck. He bent his big body over hers and tried to ease her under the covers, but she held onto him. She was weeping and laughing that he was Lord of the Alligators and she would never let him go because it was better, actually, than the Frog Prince.
 

“My God,” he muttered. He tried to unwind her arms from around his neck. “Rachel, you’ve got to get some sleep.”
 

“I’m having a reaction,” she managed to gurgle. “Delayed shock. What you said.”
 

“Yes,” he agreed. “Just take it easy, sweetheart, I’m here. I’m not going to leave you.
 

Between laughing and crying she tried to tell him about the dark bodies that had come slithering down off the mud bank in the darkness. Thousands of them. Until the Lord of the Alligators came wading through the flood to order them away.
 

“Okay, I believe you,” he murmured through her frantic kisses. He lay heavily stretched on top of her, not able to get away, and his body was responding to hers tensely.
 

“I need you to love me.” She wept and wound her legs around him, her mouth glued first to the warm, damp silky skin of his face, then his shoulders, then the musky hollows of his throat.
 

His face was wary, concerned, as he tried to hold himself away. “Baby, you’ve had enough excitement for one—” He groaned when clawing hands found the front of his jeans. “Oh, Rachel, sweet—love,
don’t
.”
 

But her relentless mouth captured his, devouring it, her free hand clutching in his thick hair. After he’d made love to her, she’d go quietly. “Love me,” she begged. His body jerked when her fingers found the zipper of his jeans and pulled it down.
 

“Christ,” he breathed. He pulled her hand away quickly and dragged it to the back of his neck. His taut body quivered against her, barely under control. His eyes so close to hers were no longer opal flames but dark, dark as the dangerous flood plain. “I thought I’d lost you,” he muttered raggedly. “You don’t know how long it took to find you. There’s miles and miles of water out there, it’s like trying to find a needle in a goddamned haystack. And not a word out of you until you suddenly started yelling. I was going nuts.”
 

“Kiss me, love me,” Rachel sobbed. She had her hands at his hips again, tugging down his jeans. She wanted to block out everything except making love to him.
 

Lying heavily on her, he worked with one hand to get his jeans all the way off. Even then she held him tightly with both hands tangled in his hair. He turned back to her, pressing her down into the soft bed, one muscled thigh moving between her legs.
 

“We shouldn’t be doing this, you need to rest.” But he was aroused, his hard probing flesh against her thigh, wanting her fiercely now.
 

“I need you!” she cried. “Please—oh, please make love to me.”
 

He groaned. Then with a hard, shuddering contraction of his big body he entered her with a wildness that stunned them both. He couldn’t seem to stop. He plunged into her as though he were the one consumed with a need that bordered on insanity. And then she was moving with him, frantic and strong, clasping him to her as though her flesh would melt around him, seal him with the ache of impossible pleasure and weld him to her forever.
 

As Rachel shrieked her too-quick release he went out of control, frenziedly driving to possess her beyond reality, beyond everything. On the black borders of her mind she acknowledged the powerful demands he was making on her body. He ground his face into her shoulder and cried out hoarsely as the final explosion racked him.
 

The tremors echoing through him went on for a long time as Rachel struggled for breath. Her heart was still racing. Their heat, their wildness, their utter losing of themselves in each other, still whirled through her head. The incredible firestorm of this night had swept away everything except that they belonged to each other. She loved him in that moment so much that she felt she might begin to weep again.
 

She felt his body relax finally. He dug his face into her shoulder. “Rachel ... oh, hell, I didn’t mean for this to happen.” When she put her arms around him he groaned. “I tried to stay away from you. This past week, these few days, I swore I’d leave you alone. And you know why.”
 

“No.” She followed him with her body as he pulled away from her, drawing the edge of the sheet over him to partly cover his legs and lower body. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured.
 

“Oh, hell yes, it matters.” His eyes were closed, his chest still rising and falling rapidly. “I don’t want to drag you into the mess of my life, and I’ve already done it. I’m sorry. So very sorry.” He paused for a moment, then said in an altered voice, “It’s a damned miracle for me to say that much. Can’t we just leave it at that?”
 

She put her hand against his chest and spread her fingers, feeling the hard pounding of his heart in the cage of his ribs. “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured. “Not now.”
 

His hand lifted to find the top of her head, his fingers feeling for the shorn mass of her hair. “Did Roy and Lonnie do this to you?” The question was so gentle she almost missed the deadly meaning in it. “What else did they do to you, Rachel? I want you to tell me.”