Wild Rain (8 page)

He sighed, his breath stirring tendrils of her hair. What was he thinking, wanting to be able to tell her bedtime stories? He couldn’t imagine such a ridiculous thing, couldn’t imagine what he was yearning for. A woman of his own? Why? To share a home deep in the forest? To share a life of death and violence? He didn’t know the first thing about women. He needed to get her out of his life as quickly as possible.

Rachael murmured softly in her sleep, restless, fitful. A soft protest against nightmares creeping into her sleep. Rio soothed her with some muttered nonsense, ignoring the ache she brought to his heart. Ignoring the strange memories in his head and the hardening of his muscles. Although his body was exhausted, his brain was alive with activity. Even the normal sounds of the forest didn’t soothe him.

Rio lay listening to her, fear swamping him in waves at the thought of her succumbing to blood poisoning. Her skin burned against his. He bathed her with cooling water, kept the door open with the mosquito net hanging down both at the door and around the bed. The lantern was extinguished to keep the bugs from entering.

The rain persisted, a steady rhythm until the next storm hit about an hour later. It raged with enough force to blow rain through the heavy canopy. Rio slid out of bed, padded across the room to close the door. He stood for a long time staring out into the darkness, breathing in the scent of the rain, the call of the jungle. The chorus of male frogs sang off-key, joyfully hunting mates, adding to the lure of the forest. For a moment the wildness was upon him, beating in him with the need to shift, to escape. But the call of the woman was stronger. He sighed and closed the door firmly, shutting out the wind and rain. Shutting out the heady sounds of his world. He crawled back into bed, pulling the light cover over both of them, wrapping his arms around her and welding his body to hers. He was exhausted, but it took time for his body to relax, for his mind to let go. He fell asleep with a knife under his pillow and a woman in his arms.

Chapter Four

THERE were nightmares. One simply ran into the next. Rachael felt she lived in a sea of pain and darkness where nothing made sense but a male voice pitched low as it murmured soothingly to her. The voice was a lifeline, pulling her from the darkness where teeth and claws savaged her body, where bullets whistled by and thudded into bodies and blood flowed and hideous creatures lay in wait to attack her.

Shadows moved in the room. The humidity was oppressive. A cat made a chuffing noise. Another answered with a gruntlike cough. The sounds were close, within a few feet of her. Every muscle in her body reacted, tightening in terror, increasing the pain in her leg. She couldn’t move her body and when she turned her head, she couldn’t see enough of the room to locate the source of those wild, cat sounds.

Sometimes the wind blew a cooling wave through the room and over her. Always the rain fell. A continual, steady rhythm that both soothed and irritated her. She felt trapped and claustrophobic, confined as she was to the bed.

It was humiliating to have a man see to her every need, especially when most of the time she wasn’t certain who he really was. Sometimes she thought she might be insane as the nightmare images of a man shifting into the form of a leopard replayed over and over in her head. There were moments she knew the man, where she was overwhelmed with love and tenderness, and moments when she stared into a stranger’s catlike, frightening gaze and her heart pounded with terror. Time passage was impossible to know. Sometimes it was daylight, other times, night, but the one thing she counted on was the voice to steer her through nightmares and help her find her way back to reality.

She stared sightlessly at the ceiling, trying not to be alarmed at the sounds of wildcats so close to her when she couldn’t see them. A shadow moved again, across the window, outside on the verandah. Her heart accelerated. The floor creaked.

Rio caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned as Rachael attempted to slip over the side of the bed. He leapt for her, his hands stilling her struggles. “What do you think you’re doing?” Fear made his voice harsh.

She looked directly into his eyes, her fingers clutching at his arms. “They’re here. He’s sent them to kill me. I have to get out of here.” She turned her head away from him to stare eerily into the corner. “They’re over there.”

Whatever she saw was real to her. She was so intent, it sent a chill shivering down his spine. “Look at me, Rachael.” He framed her face with his hands, forced her attention back to him. “I’m not going to let anything hurt you. It’s the fever. You see things because of the fever.”

She blinked rapidly, her bright eyes beginning to focus on him. “I saw them.”

“Saw who? Who wants to kill you?” He’d asked her a dozen times but she never answered him.

She tried to turn her head away from him and remain silent. This time he had her face in his hands, holding her still, locking her gaze to his.

“You have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen. Your eyelashes are long. Why do men always get beautiful eyelashes?”

She had a way of throwing him off balance, disturbing his tranquility. He found it so exasperating he wanted to shake her. “Do you know how stupid that sounds?” he demanded. “Look at me, woman. I have scars all over me. My nose has been broken twice. I look like a damned murderer, not some pretty boy.” The minute the words left his mouth, he regretted them. Damned murderer hung in the air between them. His teeth snapped together and he turned his head away from her enormous eyes, swearing silently over and over.

“Rio?” Her voice was soft. “I can see the pain in your eyes. Did I do that? Did I hurt you in some way? I don’t like hurting anyone, least of all you. What did I say?”

He raked his fingers through his shaggy hair. “Of course you have to be perfectly lucid right at this moment. Why is that, Rachael? Two seconds ago you were so far out of it you didn’t know your own name.”

He looked so tortured her heart turned over. “Did someone accuse you of murder?”

Her gaze moved over his face, examining every inch— all-seeing eyes. He was certain she could see into his soul. Fierce anger smoldered, held deep where it couldn’t be seen, burst free, a raging holocaust he couldn’t prevent. She should have been afraid. He was afraid. He knew what he could do with that kind of rage, but her expression was compassionate, almost loving. Her uninjured hand went to his face, fingertips trailing over his lips, sliding around his neck so that she was cradling his head, offering, what? He didn’t know. Sympathy? Love? Her body? Tenderness?

He ignored his first impulse to slap her hand away from him. He couldn’t take her looking at him like that. He caught her fingers instead, pulling her palm to his bare chest, over his wildly beating heart. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Rachael. You shouldn’t look at me like that.” He didn’t know what he felt, a mixture of anger and pain and ferocious longing. Damn it all, he was over that. Over wanting. Over needing.

“You don’t make sense to me.” His voice deepened, sounded almost ragged. “Nothing about you makes sense. Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

She blinked. Those huge chocolate eyes, so dark they were nearly black, eyes a man could get lost in. “I am afraid of you.”

“Now you’re humoring me.”

“No, really, I’m afraid of you.” Her eyes widened in earnest honesty.

“Well, damn it all, why would you be afraid of me when I’ve taken care of you and given up my bed for you?”

“You didn’t give up your bed. You still sleep in it,” she pointed out.

“There isn’t anywhere else to sleep,” he said.

“There’s the floor.”

“You want me to sleep on the floor? Do you have any idea how uncomfortable the floor would be?”

“What a baby. I thought you were a he-man.” She smirked at him. “Be careful of losing your bad-boy image.”

“And what about insects and snakes?”

“Snakes?” She looked around her cautiously. “What kind of snakes? You have kitty cats for friends. I’m hoping you say friendly snakes.”

His mouth softened but he kept from smiling with a small effort. “I haven’t known too many friendly snakes.”

“Where did your kitties come from? And how come they aren’t trained to meet guests properly?”

“I trained them to run off the neighbors. I hate it when they drop in unannounced.”

A lock of midnight black hair fell across his forehead. Without thinking, Rachael brushed it back with her fingertips. “You need someone to look after you.” The moment the words were out of her mouth she was mortified. She couldn’t seem to censor her tongue with him. Every random thought just popped out, no matter how personal.

“Are you applying for the job?” His voice was harsh again, emotions welling up to choke him. It was happening again, that strange time distortion. He felt her hand in his and looked down. His hand enveloped hers, the pads of his fingers rubbing back and forth over her soft skin and he knew every indentation. The very shape of her bones was familiar. There was even a memory of doing the same thing, of her teasing voice skittering down his spine like a caress.

Rachael closed her eyes, but he thought he saw the glimmer of tears before she turned her head away. “Tell me why those cats stay here all the time. They are wild, aren’t they? Clouded leopards?”

Rio looked across the room to see the two cats tumbling around in a mock fight. Each weighed in at fifty pounds, so when they banged against a chair or table, they made a ruckus.

“Are they pets?”

“I don’t keep pets,” he said gruffly. “I found them. The mother had been killed and skinned. I backtracked her and found them. They were very young, still needing milk.”

She turned her head back toward him, lifting her lashes so her gaze nearly devoured his face. The smile lighting up her pale face nearly took his breath away. “You bottle-fed them, didn’t you?”

He shrugged, trying not to be affected by the way she was looking at him. There was that dazzling admiration, a look he didn’t deserve. No one ever looked at him, saw him, in the same way she did. It was disconcerting, yet gave him a rush. He spent a great deal of time trying not to allow his body to react, or his heart. He dropped her hand as if it burned him, stepping away from the bed quickly.

She laughed at him, a soft inviting sound that felt like fingers playing over his skin. He was beginning to feel desperate. She lay in his bed, her body lush and tempting, her silky hair spilling around her head like a halo. He wished it were just the allure of her body. That would at least make sense to him. He hadn’t been with a woman in a long time. Womanly curves, soft flesh, heat and the fragrance of the forest were a heady combination and he could be excused for his body’s fierce reaction to her. But it was far more than that. Knowledge of her body. Memories of her laughter. Whispers in the night, a secret world they shared. His mind and heart reacted to her. And damn it, if he were a man who believed in such nonsense, he would think his soul recognized hers.

“Didn’t you?” Rachael persisted. “You found some baby kittens and you brought them home and bottle-fed them.”

“I don’t believe in skinning animals,” he said tersely.

She watched the dull red creep up his neck into his face. The man wasn’t in the least embarrassed about traipsing around in the nude but he turned red admitting to an act of kindness. She found that blush endearing. “Why are you always running around with no clothes on? Did I stumble into a secret nudist colony? Or do you think I enjoy staring at you in the butt?”

“You do enjoy staring at me.” Rio smiled in spite of himself. She was very open about her appreciation of his body.

Rachael answered him with her usual candor. “Well, I’ll admit you’re beautiful to look at, but it’s beginning to make me uncomfortable. Why do you do it?”

His eyebrow shot up. “It makes it so much easier to shift into leopard form and go running in the forest.”

She made a face at him. “Ha ha, are you always this funny? I suppose you’re never going to let me live that down. I think it’s perfectly logical to have nightmares over men turning into vicious leopards after what happened.”

“Vicious leopards?” He rummaged through a small wooden closet and came out with a pair of jeans. “Leopards aren’t vicious. They might be natural predators, but they aren’t vicious.”

“Thanks for making that distinction. I had no idea there was a difference. It felt the same when they were chewing my leg off.”

“That was my fault. I was focused on the idea of someone waiting to kill me.”

“Why would someone want to kill you?”

He laughed softly. “Now don’t you think it seems more logical for someone to want to kill a man like me than a woman like you?”

She wanted to look away from him, but she was fascinated by the play of his muscles beneath his skin. Her breath caught in her throat as she watched him step into the jeans and casually pull them up the strong column of his thighs and over his narrow hips. He carelessly buttoned a couple of buttons and left the rest undone as if it were too much of a bother.

She moistened her suddenly dry lips with the tip of her tongue before she could speak. “Rio, this is your home. I’m the intruder. If you’re more comfortable without clothes, I can live with it.” It touched her that he would cover up for her—and part of her didn’t want him clothed. There was something primitive and sensual about the way he padded so silently through the small tree house, barefoot, in the nude.

“I don’t mind, Rachael. You’re stuck in bed and I know you hurt like hell. I appreciate that you don’t complain.” He let a heartbeat slip by. Two. “Much.”

“Much!” She glared at him. “I haven’t said one word about shooting your precious little kittens when I get off this bed. But I’m considering it. You spoil them rotten, by the way, and it shreds your image of a tough guy all to pieces.”

The cats, in the midst of the rough-and-tumble game, slammed into the edge of the bed and all of Rachael’s hard-earned bravado disappeared completely. She gasped with alarm and lunged sideways away from them. Rio, standing beside the small closet, covered the distance between them with one leap, pinning her down, his green eyes suddenly a blazing yellow-gold. His face was inches from hers. Rachael stared up at him, clutching the blanket to her bare breasts, looking frightened, trying to look brave, tempting him almost beyond his endurance.