Desperado (27 page)

“Yeah. Are you happy now? I shot Bambi.”

“That's not Bambi. That's dinner.”

He sliced her a blistering scowl. “I think I'm gonna puke.”

“Oh, Rafe, don't be silly. Killing game for survival is a necessity. It's not like you did it for fun or anyth—”

“Fun? I'm gonna have nightmares the rest of my life about Bambi and reindeer—Oh, God, reindeer have horns, don't they?”

“Antlers, not horns,” she corrected.

“I didn't shoot Bambi. This is even worse. I shot Rudolph. Look at his nose. It's red.”

“That's blood.”

“Wonderful! I really am going to upchuck now.”

She patted Rafe on the back after he dumped the carcass near the front door. “Why don't you go wash up?”

“I'm going to bed,” he announced. “Wake me when it's time to go home. This is the worst thing I've ever done in all my life. . . . well, the worst thing I've done in a long time.”

She laughed. “Did I ever tell you that you're my hero?” she called after Rafe.

He stopped in the middle of the doorway, took a deep breath, then turned around. His blue eyes were wide and vulnerable, questioning.

“It's sort of like a lady sending her knight off to slay a dragon,” she explained quickly, “but you slayed me a deer, instead.” She smiled at him warmly. “My hero.”

“Your hero, huh?” The grin that spread across his delicious mouth could have melted the hardest heart, and hers was as soft as butter for him already.

She nodded, unable to speak over the lump in her throat.

“Good,” he said in a husky voice. “I'll collect my lady love's token later.” He turned again to go into the cabin and threw over his shoulder, “And don't be thinking of offering me any scarf.”

She knew exactly what he had in mind.

F
antasies: food for the sex-starved male . . .

R
afe didn't go to bed, after all. And he didn't jump Helen's bones, either. After three hours of helping her pull out deer guts, skin the carcass, then cut the animal into steaks and chops and roasts and other disgusting things, he'd lost that lovin' feelin'.

Helen knew how to place the carcass belly-up on a slope so the blood would drain away from the meat. She'd shown him how to open the chest cavity by splitting the sternum and taking out the bladder intact so it wouldn't contaminate the flesh. As if those were skills he ever expected to need back in L.A.!
Geez!

“Where did you learn to do all this crap?” he asked, not impressed.

“Survival school. Didn't you learn this, too?”

“You must have gone to a different survival school than I did. My instructor was big on eating grasshoppers and slugs. He never mentioned butchering Rudolph.”

“Would you quit with the Rudolph stuff?”

After a while, Rafe went back to the stream to prospect some more. It was only late afternoon. Although there was a decided chill in the air, he inhaled deeply of the fresh breeze.

The rain that morning had turned the stream bank muddy, but, nevertheless, he sat down and began to swirl a pan from the pile of gravel he'd dug earlier. The dull, repetitive motions gave him time to think, and a warm feeling of contentment passed over him as he reviewed the day's events.

Although he'd complained to Helen about having to hunt game, there was a satisfaction in having accomplished a goal and seeing the product of his efforts. It was probably a male pride kind of thing—man providing for his woman, putting food on the table, that sort of nonsense. Lawyers dealt with paperwork most times. Sure, it was a good feeling to win a case, and he prided himself on his record, but this was a totally different kind of rush.

He liked it.

Helen came out of the cabin, and he watched as she picked up a hoe and began to work Effie's old garden plot with a determined zest. Helen did everything with zest, even making love.
No, no, no, I'm not going to think about that now
. She began working the still-wet ground, and every time she stretched and chopped at the ground, he got a real good look at her backside.

And the beast inside him reared its head—again.

Helen bent over from the waist and picked up some . . .
Oh, Lord, more carrots! Great! Rudolph and carrots. A regular feast
.

And he imagined how it would be to make love with Helen from behind. Maybe even outdoors. Yep, he could stomp over there and say, “I am the man, you are my woman. I am the hunter, you are my prey. Get naked so I can boink you in a garden of mud.”

He laughed aloud, but his mind was on a fast track. He had a clear vision of a bright sunny field and Helen on her hands and knees in front of him. Naked, of course. He would push her shoulders gently down to the crushed, fragrant flowers, and when he entered her, she would scream out his name . . .

“Rafe!”

He blinked.

Helen was walking toward him with a basket, yelling, “Rafe! Rafe! Guess what I found?”

His spirits lifted. “Gold?”

“Don't be silly. No, I found some turnips.”

His spirits dropped.

“I'm going into the woods to see if I can find some more herbs and edible plants to add to our diet.”

Well, next to making love to you on all fours in a field of flowers, edible weeds are right up there on my top ten
. “I don't know if that's a good idea, Helen, especially with the bears nearby.”

“I won't go far, and I'll take a gun with me. Don't worry. I'll be just beyond the lagoon if you want me.”

Oh, I want you all right
.

“And if I can find some wild onions,” Helen was continuing to babble on from across the stream, “we can have liver and onions for supper tonight.”

He narrowed his eyes. She couldn't possibly have guessed what he'd been fantasizing about. Could she?

F
or four days, Rafe managed to resist Helen's allure. She didn't overtly try to tempt him, but he was a screaming mass of unfulfilled testosterone. Helen standing in a loose flannel shirt
and baggy pants, asking him what he wanted for breakfast, “Venison or venison?” was enough to set him off.

Well, Zeb and Hector should be back in two or three more days. Surely he could hold out that long.

“So, are you going to help me get the honey?” Helen asked as he finished up his breakfast of bread and—
what else?
—venison. Helen had told him the day before about a beehive in a nearby tree. She had a plan—
Helen always had a plan
—for him smoking the bees out of the tree and her climbing the tree to get the honeycomb.

“It would taste really good on fresh-baked bread,” she coaxed. “I have a little sourdough left.”

Had he ever eaten fresh honey? He liked honey. Yep, he could taste it now. Drizzling on a piece of bread. Drizzling on . . .
Oh, no, here I go again . . . on Helen's breasts. She's naked, of course. Maybe up in that tree getting the honeycomb. Yep, she climbed the tree, naked. And when she comes down with the waxy thing in her hands, there's honey drizzling down her chest, over her breasts, those luscious champagne breasts with their raspberry tips. And she says, “Rafe, darling, my hands are full. Could you lick off this sticky stuff?” And he, being naked, too, of course, and a real helpful gentleman, hoists her up against the tree trunk and uses his tongue to lap the delicious peaks. Some honey even drizzles down on his . . .

“Rafe, you're daydreaming again.”

He grumbled something about spoilsports and turned away so she wouldn't see the evidence of his perpetual horniness. He wondered idly if lust could be terminal.

“Will you help me with the honey?”

“Okay.”

Boy, was that a mistake!

They smoked the bees out of the tree with lit, pitch-filled, undried evergreen limbs, escaping with only one or two stings.
Rafe kept an eye on the swarm, which hung around in the vicinity but didn't seem threatening. And Helen climbed the tree with ease, up about twenty feet.

She wasn't naked, but that didn't matter much to Rafe's overactive libido. Her straining breasts in the flannel shirt, her curvy bottom in the camouflage pants, were enough to set his blood humming. No, no, no. Forget humming. His blood was singing a full-blown opera.

Helen wrapped a big honeycomb in a piece of oilcloth she'd brought with her and threw it down to him. He laid it on the ground, waiting for her and watching the bees. She left a chunk of honeycomb for the bees so they wouldn't be too mad. Then, climbing down carefully, Helen set off one of those sudden erotic fantasies that he was prone to these days.

Helen living in the jungle. Swinging from the trees. Wearing only a skimpy leopard skin—fake, of course, for political correctness
. He chuckled.
Were they Tarzan and Jane? Nah, that was too easy. She was Tarzette, and he was the famous Harvard anthropologist, come to study the beautiful woman living amongst the apes. They had some unusual sexual practices, those apes did, and he wanted firsthand knowledge of . . .

“Rafe, would you stop that daydreaming and help me?” Helen snapped. She was hanging by both hands from a limb about ten feet off the ground. “Catch me,” she demanded.

He grinned. Hey, she wasn't wearing a leopard skin, and he wasn't carrying his Harvard notebook, but what the hell! He moved in for the kill.

“Rafe . . . Ra-afe! What
are
you doing?”

“Checking for bee stings.” He was unbuttoning her flannel shirt, spreading the fabric, exposing her chest, about eye level. Rather mouth level. With a sigh, he took a hard nipple between his lips and began to lick. It tasted sweeter than honey.

Moaning, she arched her neck back between her upraised arms, thrusting her breasts forward.

He fingered one breast and suckled at the other. Her booted foot inadvertently rubbed against his erection, and his knees almost buckled. A prickling sensation began at the back of his neck, probably an approaching climax, and . . .

Prickling?

“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, realizing that some bees were setting up camp on the back of his neck. Quickly, he told Helen to jump. He caught her, and they were out of there, grabbing their booty. When they were back at the cabin, laughing over their escapade, Helen examined his neck and found only a few stings. Nothing serious.

Another close call!

T
hat afternoon, he worked steadily. He even found several nuggets the size of marbles, so he was feeling optimistic.

Belting out an old Jerry Reed country music ballad, he sang, “She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft.” It didn't matter that he couldn't carry a tune. Singing set a rhythm to his work.

Life was good. He was starting to get a little more gold—they had several thousand dollars worth so far, not a lot, but a start—he was in love, soon he and Helen would be back in the future, they could make love like Energizer bunnies until his battery—or something else—wore itself out.

Yep, life was good.

St. Augustine must be real proud of him. He was handling celibacy better than he'd ever expected. Maybe in another life he'd been a monk.

He smiled.

Until he got a gander at Helen.

She was walking up from the lagoon, where she'd apparently just taken a bath. Wearing only a T-shirt and his black silk boxers—she'd taken a real shine to his underwear—she stopped momentarily to dry her hair with a linen towel. When she bent forward and shook out the drying curls, fluffing them with her fingers, the hem of the shorts rode up. And he got a clear view of her tatoo.

He lost it then. He really, really lost it.

He cradled his head in his trembling hands. Craving inflamed his senses and turned his blood molten. His muscles engorged and throbbed.

“To hell with the condoms,” he raged. Throwing down his pan, he sloshed through the water, overcome with his need for Helen. A man could only take so much. If temptation was good for the soul, he'd been a saint. But every man has his limits.

Helen was already at the cabin when he caught up with her. “Rafe, what's wrong?” she asked with concern, dropping her towel.

“Not a damn thing,” he said huskily, lifting her by her waist up against the log wall. His lips came down hard on hers, and his arousal grew, hurtling him toward a mind-blowing meltdown.

She took his face in both hands and forced him back a bit, trying to understand. “Rafe, what . . . Oh, my God, don't do
that
!” He was tonguing her ear with a feverish rhythm. “What's going on here? What changed your mind?” she choked out disjointedly.

“You, baby. You changed my mind.” He ripped out the words.

Meanwhile, his frantic hands were busy sliding off her shorts and palming her bare buttocks. As he began to unzip his pants, he murmured, “I love your ass.”

“Rafe, stop a minute and think. What about birth control?”

“I'm comin' in bareback, babe. Damn the consequences.” He released his erection with a cry and surged into her before she had a chance to question him further.

This was going to be the quickest “quickie” in history if he didn't slow down soon.

Helen was confused by Rafe's about-face. And extremely aroused. Her inner folds shifted to accommodate his size and rippled around him in reflexive welcome.

“Helen.” He said her name as if she were a dream come true. His heavy-lidded eyes were wild and luminous with his need for her. “Help me,” he pleaded in a guttural voice. “Love me.”

“I do,” she whispered, placing a caressing palm against his face.

Locking her legs around his waist, Helen urged Rafe to begin the strokes that would give them both relief.

“Oh, hell! Oh, damn. O-o-oh . . . I . . . can't . . . I . . .” He grew even larger inside her. Still unmoving, he threw back his head, arching his neck with anguish. His eyes were squeezed tight, and sweat beaded his forehead.

She would have begun the movements herself, but her lower body was pinned to the wall, impaled, by Rafe's heavier weight.

“Rafe, look at me.”

At first, he refused to open his eyes. Perhaps he couldn't. When he finally did, his blue eyes appeared unfocused, pleading.

“Move, damn it! Now!”

“I can't,” he gritted out. “Just wait.”

“No,” she cried out, and reached a hand between their bodies, skimming her own silky curls, damp with arousal. Then she took the base of his hard sex between her fingertips.

He let out a keening groan and jerked, as if burned, and
pulled out, then instinctively eased back in, one excruciating millimeter at a time. The friction was so intense, she screamed. Or maybe it was Rafe.

She moved her hands up to his shoulders and let Rafe take over then as he allowed his passion to rule the play. Cupping her buttocks, he drove into her with increasingly shorter and harder strokes. He buried his face in her neck and nipped at her soft flesh. She felt his heartbeat thud against hers.

“NOW!” Rafe yelled and slammed into her one last time. His big body shuddered against hers as he released his seed. “HEL-EN!”

Blood drained from her head, and tingles of exquisite pleasure swept her skin, catapulting her in huge spirals upward and upward, culminating in a series of convulsions so fierce she shook.

They both fell to the ground, unable to stand on their seemingly boneless legs any longer. Their mingled breathing was harsh and loud in the still air.

She was lying on the ground at his side, her face pressed against the red flannel covering his chest. His arms were thrown over his head, and his bare legs were parted as far as they would go in the slacks that pooled at his ankles.