Demon Lover (3 page)

I saw a brief flash of white teeth—a smile or a grimace? I heard him whisper, "Buenas noches, Guerita."

Good night, little fair one.

And then an arrow of pain shot from my chin back through my head, and the starry sky imploded inside my skull.

But she wasn't dead!

There wasn’t even much soreness in her jaw where he’d struck her.

He. Who is he?

Julie had been left with a vivid impression of a tall, lean body, much taller than most Mexicans, and as hard and strong as saddle leather. And of course, there had been those eyes.

One thing she knew for certain—he was no ordinary coyote. Most of them were nothing more than petty hoodlums and drug addicts who would sell their own mothers for the price of a bottle of tequila or their next fix. Most often they were recruited from the streets by big–time smuggling rings to run the risks and take the rap, and almost without exception they were clumsy, illiterate and vicious. If she had had the misfortune to fall into the hands of one of them, she would not be waking up with just a headache and a bruise on her chin.

El Demonio Garzo was not clumsy; he had moved like a cat in the night. He could not possibly have known her position until she shouted, which meant that he had been both quick and decisive. His methods of subduing her had been efficient and impossible to defend against, but had employed only the necessary minimum of force. So he wasn’t vicious either. In fact… His voice had seemed curiously regretful when he’d said—what was it?
Good night, little fair one. Guerita
—what an odd word to choose. Why not the more common and much less complimentary
gringa
?

Ah well… Julie stirred futilely, trying to ease her cramped position and restore circulation to her bound hands and feet. So this
demon
was a pro. Why should that surprise her? She’d guessed from the first that this was a class operation, well equipped and well organized, the men disciplined and well trained. And whatever their motive for keeping her alive, she would find it out soon enough.

There being absolutely nothing else for her to do in the meantime, Julie retreated gratefully back into the oblivion of sleep.

* * *

There were voices close by, speaking Spanish, and not quietly. Julie lay with her eyes closed, listening. As fluent as she was in the language, it was not second nature to her, and it was a few minutes before she began to understand. And then her stomach turned and her body went cold, and she opened her eyes wide and stared up at the ceiling of the camper only a few feet above her head.

The camper had stopped. Outside it must have been broad daylight, but inside it was hot, stuffy and gray, like being under a dirty blanket. And just below the small window in the sleeping loft where she lay bound hand and foot, the smugglers were discussing her.

She was thirsty; her tongue felt like an old wool sock, and tasted like it, too. She had lost feeling in her extremities; she was very hungry and in critical need of a bathroom; but none of those physical discomforts concerned her right now. All her attention was focused on the rough voices and guttural laughter coming through the tiny window, and what she heard sent waves of nausea through her that eclipsed everything else. She’d picked up a pretty fair vocabulary of gutter Spanish over the years in the course of her job, but nothing to compare with this.

They had apparently been arguing about her fate. Two of them—Mexicans, by their accents—had been in favor of killing her back in the ravine and were against taking her any farther. The third—and for the life of her Julie could not place his accent—was explaining in incredibly crude but graphic terms exactly why he hadn’t killed her and what he intended to do with her in the immediate future. His companions were finding his descriptions highly entertaining, adding colorful suggestions of their own from time to time.

There wasn’t much of human depravity that Julie hadn’t at one time or another encountered in her job. She’d faced death a dozen times over and couldn’t remember ever feeling this stomach–burning, throat–tightening fear. For the first time in her life she could understand how women in an earlier age might have felt about "a fate worse than death."

But she didn’t want to die. Nothing—no violation or degradation of her body, no matter how disgusting or frightening or painful—was worse than dying. She must remember that. She wanted to live.

Taking several slow, steady breaths to quiet the pounding of her heart, she forced herself to listen to the voices with the ears of a law enforcement officer, not a woman. Now she could pick out names—the two Mexicans were Pepe and Geraldo, and the other was apparently called Chain, although Julie was certain she had heard him called by a much more fanciful name last night. And she had been right about one thing, at least. He was not Mexican.

She could hear the soft clink of metal on metal, the hiss of a pop–top can opening, the rasp of a match and the scuff of boots in gravel, but no other sounds. They had stopped in a lonely place—the desert of Baja California, certainly—and were relaxing with cold cans of Mexican beer—
cerveza
—and cigarettes. So they hadn’t reached their destination yet; they would be going on soon, and when they did—what of her? How long would they let her lie here without water?

Now! The one called Chain was announcing that, as he had driven all night, it was his intention to take a rest—in the back of the camper. This was met with loud guffaws and a few more crude suggestions as to how he might pass the time. Sounds of masculine camaraderie and departure preparations followed. Cans clanked onto the ground, feet shuffled, car doors opened and shut. Footsteps crunched away toward the rear of the camper. The door opened, letting in a shaft of brilliant light and a tantalizing tidbit of fresh air, and the body of the camper quivered almost imperceptibly under the weight of a heavy body.

Up in her loft Julie braced herself, lifted her head and gazed unflinchingly into the face of the blue–eyed demon.

Except that in the daylight he looked less like a demon and more like what he was—a low–life criminal. A smuggler of illegal aliens. A coyote. A quarter inch of dark stubble and a sinister–looking moustache obscured most of his face, and his hair hung in dark, sweat–damp waves on his forehead and collar. The blue eyes that had seemed so electrifying in the starlight now burned with fatigue.

He stood just inside the door, stripping her with his eyes. She felt amazingly calm—suspended, perhaps, in a state of unreality. When she opened her mouth to say something—she didn’t know what—it was a shock to hear his voice instead; it gave an even more nightmarish cast to what he said.

Without changing his expression or shifting his cool, possessive gaze, he gave her a clear, precise command of such stark vulgarity it literally took her breath away.

Even as she gasped in shocked reaction she heard a shout of approval and chortles of laughter from below her window. The smuggler pulled the door shut behind him and casually locked it. The camper’s engine fired, and the cabin rocked as the cumbersome vehicle pulled carefully onto the road. And up in the sleeping loft Julie struggled against mindless terror.

The smuggler moved toward her, ducking his head to avoid the low ceiling. She licked her dry lips and said in harsh, breathless Spanish, "Please…it won’t be necessary to use force. I won’t fight you. I don’t have anything worth dying for."

A brief spark of amusement flared in the bloodshot eyes. "But why should I want to kill you, Guerita?" he replied in a gravelly purr. "You will be so much more entertaining alive."

And in that same harshly sensual voice he described what he expected of her. When his hand came toward her suddenly, Julie gave an involuntary cry and closed her eyes, but to her amazement she found that she had braced her whole body against a touch that never came. Instead she felt the heat of his body and a stirring of breath redolent of beer and tobacco, heard a faint grunt of exertion and the drag and click of the window behind her head being pulled shut. And then, incredibly, she knew that she was once again alone in the loft.

She opened her eyes and stared dazedly at the ceiling for a moment, then lifted her head and hitched herself closer to the edge of the bed. Peering over the side she saw that her reprieve was only temporary. The smuggler was dragging his sweat–stained tee shirt up over his head; his back was burned to a dusky walnut, and the silky ripple and pull of sharply defined muscle was marred by several small, irregular scars.

She must have made a sound, because he jerked his head to look at her as he tossed the shirt aside. For a brief moment his eyes burned her, and then he reached into a cabinet and pulled out a bottle of tequila and turned his back on her, dismissing her.

Julie watched, unable to take her eyes off of him as he took a swallow, tilted his head back and swished the fiery liquid in his mouth, then spat into the tiny stainless–steel sink. For a long time he stood with his head bowed and his eyes closed, and then he straightened, slapped the cap back onto the bottle and returned it to the cupboard.

He seemed almost to have forgotten she was there. Next he poured a meager sinkful of water from a plastic five–gallon container on the counter and began to wash; she watched avidly as he took handfuls of the precious water and splashed his face, his head, his neck and torso. Droplets sparkled like tiny diamonds in his hair and ran in rivulets into the waistband of his trousers. Julie licked her lips and tried to swallow, but her throat felt like sandpaper. At that moment she could have licked the water right off of his skin. She would have been glad to trade her "virtue" for a drink; she realized with a little chill that she might have to do just that.

The smuggler turned back to her, his chest glistening with moisture as he toweled his face and hair. From the folds of the towel his eyes regarded her thoughtfully, as if he was trying to decide just what to do with her.

It occurred to Julie there was something puzzling about his behavior. If it had not been for the language she had heard him use, she would have thought that her presence discomfited him in some way. She felt her courage come stealing back.

"I’m very thirsty," she croaked, and wondered again at the odd look that crossed his face. Surely not guilt? "If you don’t have enough water to spare, I wouldn’t object to some of that tequila. Also," she went on, emboldened by that strange expression, "is it really necessary to tie up both my hands and my feet? You’re much bigger than I am, and this vehicle is moving. I’m not crazy."

He grunted and gave his head a little shake, but went on toweling himself dry. Julie watched him tensely, wondering whether that was a refusal or merely an acknowledgment of her request. His belly, she noticed uneasily, was scarred even more noticeably than his back—one irregular weal that slashed diagonally across the washboard muscles between ribs and navel. She wondered what activity could have produced such an injury. An accident? War? Or merely the hazards of his profession?

"Please," she croaked, trying again. "May I please have a drink of water?" Her voice cracked, and she hated herself for begging. For God’s sake, was he mute? Stupid? Drunk? But she had heard him speak—much too clearly, in fact—and had seen the gleam of intelligence in those blue eyes. Whatever he was, he was certainly no great talker.

But even as she formed the thought, he was throwing the towel aside and reaching into his pocket, taking out a very ordinary–looking pocket knife and stepping forward to saw at the heavy tape that bound her ankles together. Julie, following his movements with mixed apprehension and hope, noticed for the first time that her feet were bare. For some reason she didn’t have time to analyze, that fact jolted her.

The smuggler reached behind her for her hands, throwing her roughly onto her face as he pulled them closer to him, and a moment later she felt the tension in them give. Still without saying a word, he stepped back, folded the knife and tucked it into his pocket, then turned to take a paper cup from a cupboard over the sink.

Julie rolled over slowly and sat up. The tape hadn’t severely impeded the circulation in her hands and feet, but lying for so long in such a cramped position had put them to sleep. She shifted her legs to allow her feet to dangle over the side of the loft, rocking slowly back and forth with the waves of pain that swept her with the return of feeling. She was staring down at the chunks of wood that her hands had become, when the smuggler wordlessly thrust a cup of water under her nose.

Julie glanced fearfully at his scowling face and lifted one hand, trying desperately to make the fingers work, but the whole arm felt hot and cold, hollow and tingly, and its motor function seemed to have been disconnected from her brain. She let it drop heavily into her lap and stared miserably at the lovely cool water. She could actually smell it.

"I can’t do it," she said in English, her tongue rasping across her lower lip.

She heard a faint noise of exasperation, and then a hand closed on the back of her neck, steadying her head as the cup was raised to her lips. Julie knew she ought to be repelled by his nearness and his touch, but as she closed her eyes and drank she was conscious only of profound relief.

"Gracias," she murmured, and opened her eyes to find the smuggler’s dark face only inches away from her own. In spite of the water she had just drunk, her mouth went dry. How could she have forgotten, even for a moment!

"Uh… look," she began, lapsing into English again. She rubbed her hands together, trying to work out the numbness, and started again in slow, deliberate Spanish. "I know what you want from me. I heard what you told the others. I told you, I won’t fight. You don’t have to hurt me. I definitely don’t want to die, so…" Her voice trailed off, and she took a deep breath and blurted, "But please—can I just use the bathroom?"

Again there was that flash of something in his eyes that she couldn’t identify. He stood back to allow her room to jump down from the loft and waved her toward the lavatory with a bow that was a parody of courtliness.