Iris Johansen (8 page)

“I thought I’d find you here,” Santine said grimly, from the entrance of the gazebo. Though the black-and-white elegance of his tuxedo appeared as immaculate as ever, his hair was ruffled and he was breathing heavily, as if he’d been running. “Now, will you kindly explain what the hell that was all about back there?”

She didn’t answer as he came slowly forward and sat down beside her. She could feel his eyes on her in the shadowed dimness of the redwood canopy, but for the first time since she’d met him, she was not experiencing that suffocating electric awareness. He was just a presence in the darkness.

“Did you notice how red her fingernails were?” she asked numbly, not looking at him. Somehow those blood-red-tipped claws buried so sensuously in the fur wouldn’t leave her mind.

“Sylvia Waterman’s?” Santine asked impatiently. She could see his shadowed face frown in puzzlement.
“You’ll forgive me if I can’t comprehend what Sylvia’s rather garish manicure has to do with this.”

“Tiger, tiger, burning bright, in the forest of the night,” Janna quoted feverishly, the tears flowing faster now, her throat aching. “So beautiful. But there won’t be any more tigers in the forest, will there?”

“Is that why you’re so upset?” Santine asked, frowning. “Because Sylvia Waterman had the bad taste to buy a tiger-skin coat?”

“Do you know how many tigers had to die to create a coat of that quality?” Janna asked huskily. “To match those stripes so exactly?” Her voice broke. “Do you know how many tigers are left in the world?”

“My God, you’re crying,” Santine said wonderingly. He reached out a hand to tilt her face up, so that the dappled moonlight fell on her brimming eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. “Oh, hell!” Janna felt herself being pulled forcefully into his embrace, her face crushed into the starched crispness of his white shirt. She could feel the strong beat of his heart beneath her ear and the deep, ragged breaths he took. His tone was a curious blend of exasperation and helplessness as he repeated, “Oh, hell!”

Janna’s arms automatically encircled him as she burrowed her head deeper in his chest, conscious only of the warm comfort of his hard male strength. “And they came from Nepal,” she sobbed bitterly. “No wonder it took so long to get them. They have the largest Bengal tiger reserve in the world in Nepal. The poachers would have to be very careful in order to bag that many cats without being caught.” She rubbed her wet cheeks against his shirt, not caring that the cloth was damp with her tears. “But Harry Waterman made it worth their while, didn’t he? I wonder how many crowns
he
would have given for a great auk?”

“I wish you’d quit crying,” Santine said huskily. His large hands, moving gently on her slim back,
were strangely awkward. “God, I can’t stand this.” One hand moved up to massage the tense muscles of her nape. “And what the hell is a great auk?”

“Nothing any more,” she said brokenly, almost to herself. “They were gentle, dignified birds that looked a little like penguins. Their skin became tremendously sought after by European collectors, and by the early eighteen hundreds millions of them had been slaughtered. Finally all the great auks left on earth were on the island of Elderly, in Scandinavia. But they couldn’t leave them alone even then. An agent for the European buyers offered fifty crowns each for their skins, and an Icelandic fisherman took a crew to Elderly to make his fortune.” Her lips curved bitterly. “He searched thoroughly but he found only two great auks on the entire island. He killed them and took their skins back to Reykjavik to collect his reward. He didn’t care that he’d just killed the last two great auks left on the face of the earth.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “And now there are hundreds of species that are on the point of extinction and they still don’t care. No one really cares if all that wonder and beauty disappears from our world.”

“You care,” Santine said hoarsely, his lips buried in the soft hair at her temple. “My God, but you care!” One hand moved to close around the thick silkiness of her braid. “I’m not equipped to handle this kind of thing, damn it. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that Indians are supposed to be stoic?”

“Did I tell you that we had two baby cheetahs born at our own reserve this year?” she murmured softly. The silent tears were falling in a seemingly endless stream. “We were over the moon with joy. Cheetahs refuse to reproduce in captivity, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know,” he growled, with a note of desperation in his deep, gravelly voice. “But I do know that I can’t stand much more of this. What the
hell can I give you to make you stop this infernal crying?”

“Give me?” Janna asked vaguely, lifting her head to look up at him in bewilderment. Her wide-set brown eyes were glistening mistily in the moonlight, and her thin, tear-streaked face appeared heartshakingly poignant to the man gazing down at it. “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

Santine gave a rough impatient imprecation and pulled her face back into his shirtfront. “For God’s sake, don’t look at me like that! It wasn’t supposed to be like this, damn it. I’ve never felt like this in my life. What the hell are you trying to do to me?” There was outrage mixed with an odd note of pain in his voice, and he drew a long shaky breath. “Do you want me to break Waterman so that he can’t ever indulge that stupid bitch of a wife again? Would that help?”

“What?” This time she pushed herself entirely out of his arms, to gaze up at him incredulously. “You can’t mean that.”

His lips curved in a grim smile. “Try me,” he said tersely, his powerful hands holding her shoulders as if they were delicate as eggshells, and looking down at her with an intensity that caused her to tremble slightly in his grasp. “I don’t give a damn about Waterman one way or the other. If it would make you happier, I’ll put the skids under him without a qualm. Shall I do it?”

She shook her head dazedly. “No, of course not,” she said huskily. “That would make me as much of a destroyer as they are.” She bit her lower lip in perplexity. “But why would you do that for me?”

“How the hell should I know?” he muttered in exasperation, giving her shoulders a little shake. “I think I’ve gone a little crazy since the moment I saw you last night. Why should I care that you’re so soft that you bleed inside at the sight of a blasted fur coat? Why should I feel your pain as if it were my
own? It doesn’t make any sense, damn it. I don’t want to feel like this toward
anyone
, much less some little starry-eyed idealist who has no more defenses than a day-old kitten.”

Her eyes were wide and startled looking at his hard stormy face, and she instinctively made a motion to move away from him. It was a move that was frustrated immediately by the possessive tightening of his hands on her shoulders. “No, stay where you are,” he said thickly. “I won’t hurt you, little doe. I don’t think I’ve ever known tenderness for a woman before. It feels strange as hell. Come here, Janna.”

He drew her carefully into his arms, and she flowed wearily into them with a strange sense of inevitability. His hands were gently massaging her back in an almost hypnotically soothing motion, all of his former awkwardness gone. “You look so fragile,” he said, “yet I can feel the warmth and strength of you under my hands.” Those hands were exploring the lithe tendons in the small of her back with the curiosity a child might show, yet they generated a slowbuilding heat that caused her to melt closer to him with a little indrawn breath.

He flinched as if the touch of her had burned him, and she could feel his muscles tense and harden against her yielding softness. “Mine,” he muttered softly, his arms tightening around her. “Why do you feel as if you belong to me? I thought I just wanted to comfort you, but all I had to do was brush against you and you’ve got me ready to tear your clothes off and lose myself in that smooth, supple body.” His hands traveled slowly from the small of her back to the soft yellow jersey that covered one shoulder, and bared it with a deliberation that caused Janna to rouse momentarily from her state of languid apathy and try to wriggle away from him.

“No,” she whispered frantically, her hands pushing lightly against his chest. “I don’t belong to you. I don’t belong to anyone. Let me go.”

“Shhhh,” he said tenderly as his lips brushed gently against the soft, vulnerable skin beneath her collarbone. She could feel the flesh tauten and burn beneath the teasing touch of his tongue. “Can’t you see that I can’t let you go? I don’t like what’s happened, but it’s too late to worry about that now for either of us. I think it was too late the first time I saw you walking across the courtyard.”

“You weren’t even sure that I appealed to you last night,” she protested faintly, while his lips moved toward the hollow of her throat, lingering on the pulse that was beating so erratically.

“You appealed to me all right,” he growled softly, his lips traveling up the graceful cord of her neck to her ear and nibbling gently at her earlobe. “I watched you sitting there before me on the ottoman with those big brown eyes gazing at me like an earnest child, and all I could think of was how much I’d like to see you lying naked in my bed holding out your arms to me and pleading with me to love you. I’d never wanted anyone so much before in my life.”

Janna’s breath caught in her throat, and she was beginning to feel an odd aching in her loins. Every word muttered in that sandpaper-velvet voice was escalating the molten heat that seemed to be flowing in every vein of her body. “Yet you didn’t take me,” she said huskily, her head swimming dizzily.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said incredibly, his lips hovering only a breath away from her own. “I wasn’t about to be dragged into an obsessive relationship that I couldn’t control. I had to reject you to prove that I could do it.” His tongue was gently tracing the line of her lower lip. “Open your mouth, Janna. I’ve got to know the taste of you.”

She parted her lips, and his eager tongue entered to explore and slake himself on her inner sweetness, his hands rhythmically kneading the muscles of her back while his lips drank thirstily from the bounty that she offered. She heard him utter a deep, animal
groan somewhere deep in his throat, and she could feel his muscles tauten with an almost unbearable tension.

With one swift movement, without even breaking the contact of their lips, he scooped her up and transferred her to his lap, where he cradled her in his arms. She was dazedly conscious, through the thin jersey of her gown, of his hard arousal, and she felt a little frisson of fear run through her. She was suddenly aware of how small and fragile she was in comparison to his virile maleness. He was all massive muscle and aggressive drive. If he chose, he could break the delicate femininity in his grasp with effortless ease. Then, incredibly, she felt that massive body tremble, and she knew it was need for her that had shaken him. Her own fear suddenly vanished in the wake of the surge of joyous power that flowed through her.

His lips left hers, and he buried his head against her throat, his breathing hard and shallow. “God, I want you,” he said thickly. “I was jealous as a schoolboy tonight when I watched you laughing and talking with Dawson. I didn’t want you smiling at anyone like that except me.”

“But you sent me away with him,” she protested faintly as he pushed the yellow gown totally off her shoulder and nibbled gently at the smooth skin of her upper arm.

His teeth suddenly nipped sharply at her soft flesh. “You weren’t supposed to enjoy it so much,” he said tersely. “Next time, you’re not going to be more than a foot away from me all evening.” His hands moved around to her back, and suddenly she felt a cool waft of air as he deftly slid down the zipper. She inhaled sharply when she felt his large warm hands on her naked back, and she stiffened involuntarily in his arms.

“Easy, love,” he murmured softly, and his voice was amazingly tender, completely lacking its usual
brisk abrasiveness. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re such a sweet, wild thing.” His hands were moving soothingly on her back, gentling her as if she were the wild thing he had called her. “I just want to fill my hands with you. You feel like golden silk beneath my fingers.” His hands moved around and were suddenly cupping the fullness of her breasts in his palms. “God, what a lovely, sweet weight they are,” he said hoarsely, his lips pressing tiny hot kisses on her throat and cheeks. “I want to see them.”

His lips covered hers in a hot, liquid kiss, while his hands slowly nudged the bodice of her gown to her waist and then were once more on the peaked thrust of her breasts, his thumbs teasing the nipples into burgeoning hardness. Janna felt her breasts swell and harden beneath that sensuous touch as if they were offering themselves at his demand. She made a tiny little sound that was half plea, half moan, but it was lost beneath the urgency of his lips on hers. Then he was releasing her and pushing her gently away, his eyes narrowed on her breasts with an intensity that was as scorching as the teasing manipulation of his hands. One finger delicately traced the dusky pink nipple.

“Beautiful,” he breathed huskily, his hand lifting the firm mounds in his hands. “All lovely shades of cream and tan and pink. You’re what the primitive tribes must have envisioned as the perfect earth mother.”

His head slowly lowered as if driven inexorably, and his lips brushed a taut nipple in a delicate caress that caused a shudder of sheer, primitive need to run through her. His tongue joined his teasing lips in the gentle salutes to each breast before he glanced up at her, his dark eyes holding hers with mesmerizing intimacy. “Bring me to your lovely breasts and let me suckle, little earth mother,” he said thickly, and almost without thinking Janna’s
hands reached up to curl in the heavy darkness of his hair and pulled his lips to her breasts.

He gave a feverish moan of satisfaction as his lips closed on her engorged nipple and suckled at it with tongue, teeth, and the strong suction of his lips. It was an incredibly arousing caress, and with each tantalizing tug she felt a jolt of heat shoot through every limb. His mouth moved over to the other breast and began the same ritual of burning caresses. By this time Janna could only clutch his silky dark head to her in a bewildering daze of heat and aching need, her breath coming in little gasps and her eyes closed against the wave of desire that was running through her like a rioting river.