Wild Orchids (30 page)

Lora looked at him uncertainly. "You're joking, aren't you?"

"About what?"

"About the piranhas?"

"No."

"But I can't go into a pool that's swimming with piranhas!"

"Yes you can. They're not vicious. As long as you're not bleeding somewhere. You're not, are you?"

It took a moment for Lora to register this as the very intimate question it was. Her face burned.

"No!"

"Well, then." He seemed to consider the matter settled.

Lora glared at him, then looked nervously at the pool.

Surely Max would not send her into the water only to be devoured by woman-eating fish! No, he would not. Of course he would not. Whether he admitted it or not, he was just teasing her…

Still, Lora hung back, staring at the water. Then, taking a deep breath, she walked to the edge of the pool and climbed carefully down the shallow rock bank. When she reached the edge of the water, she took one more uncertain look at Max, who was staring at the place where his fishing line disappeared beneath the water with a look of intense concentration. He would not let her go into a piranha infested pool—would he?

Clothes and all, she waded in. Since she only had the jeans and t-shirt and single set of underclothes she had been wearing when they crashed, and the clothes were as filthy as she was, she saw no reason to remove them before bathing. If she was clean while they remained filthy, she would never be able to put them back on. Better to get them soaking wet and let them dry on her. At least they would be clean—and she would not have to worry about him looking at her while she was naked.

"Max?" She was waist deep now, and the cool water felt marvelous, even through her clothes. She just had one problem: soap. She could not get clean if she had no soap.

"What?"

"What should I use for soap?"

"God, you are helpless, aren't you? Scoop up a handful of mud and use that."

Lora stared at him. He was looking down at her impatiently from his perch on the flat gray rock. The late afternoon sun was slanting down through the leaves, its rays just touching his hair. Even unwashed and uncombed, its rough black texture looked vibrantly healthy. So did the sun-bronzed tone of his skin, darkened dramatically since the crash. Even the four days' growth of whiskers on his face became him. Lora decided that he was a man who could turn disreputable into some kind of masculine chic.

She decided he wasn't kidding. He didn't look like he was kidding, and, anyway, he hadn't been much for jokes lately. So she scooped up a handful of mud, stared at it rather dubiously for a moment, and then began to work it into the skin of her arm. To her surprise, she did feel considerably cleaner once she had rinsed it off. Heartened, she scooped up another handful and rubbed her face and neck and hair with it. After all, she reasoned, everyone had heard of mud packs…

"Heyee!" The cry came from Max, and it almost drowned Lora. She screamed, starting, and promptly lost her footing among the slippery pebbles and mud which made up the bottom of the pool, falling with an enormous splash. She floundered beneath the surface, kicking frantically for a foothold. Finally, she found one and shot up, choking. Water streamed down her face from her soaking hair. Her waterlogged jeans hung from her waist as though they were made of lead.

"What's wrong?" Lora dashed the hair and water from her face and opened her eyes to look nervously around the pool and then at Max.

He was scowling at her from the rock, those ferocious black brows meeting in a wide vee over his nose. He was standing instead of sitting, and beside him curled the thin siring of his fishing line, with neither fish nor hook in sight.

"Damn it, you made me lose him!"

"Who?"

"The fish! The damned biggest catfish I've ever seen! On my line—until you yelled and made a splash a blue whale couldn't match!"

"I yelled?
You
yelled first, and you almost drowned me in the process! Don't you yell at me for yelling, you, you—"

"I'll yell at you anytime I damned well please." He was yelling, his fists balled on his hips and his mustache quivering with anger all out of proportion to the subject of the argument. Those black eyes shot fire at her.

Lora, too, was suddenly furious. She was sick and tired of putting up with his ill temper and she meant to let him know it.

"Well, then, I'll yell right back!" she said, yelling herself, glaring up at him with an expression to match his. "Who do you think you are, anyway? You've been sulking around for days—ever since you had that stupid nightmare! If I'd known it was going to make you mad, I would have let you cry all by yourself—baby!"

There was a moment's charged silence.

"Why you little—" He bit off a word, but his eyes said it for him. They spat anger at her like twin black machine guns. His hands were no longer balled on his narrow hips, but hung at his sides where the fingers flexed and unflexed as if they itched to close around her throat. Beneath the short-sleeved white t-shirt, the brown muscles of his arms tightened until they resembled rolling hills. He looked as if he was about to explode.

Lora knew that she had hit below the belt by referring to his nightmare, but she didn't care. It was about time Mr. Macho Stud was brought down a peg or two.

"Crybaby!" she said, taunting. The absurdity of the nursery school name did not even occur to her. She wanted to make him mad, and she knew with unerring accuracy that that was the way to do it.

She was right. She could practically see steam come out of his ears. His fists clenched at his sides, and she could see the muscles of his thighs bulge against the material of his jeans as his whole body tensed.

"Shut up, Lora." The command was a grim warning, uttered through clenched teeth.

Lora lifted her head and looked him squarely in the eyes. "Crybaby, cry, stick your finger in your eye," she sang softly, and with a bellow he was diving off the rock into the center of the pool, his big body splitting the water as cleanly as a knife. She barely had time to consider the depth of the pool before he was surfacing just a few feet from where she watched, wide-eyed.

He stood up, one large brown hand coming up to sluice water and lily pads from his face, and fixed her with eyes that glittered like jet. Lora instinctively took a step backward, only to lose her footing again on the slippery bottom and fall down. He was upon her in an instant, hauling her out of the water by her shoulders. As she surfaced, spitting and gasping, and shedding as much water as the waterfall, she caught a glimpse of his face and thought she would almost have rather stayed beneath the surface.

"Say it again. I dare you." His lips barely parted to reveal the glinting white teeth through which he spoke. Lora felt his hands hard on her upper arms, saw the murder that glittered in the black eyes, and for an instant was transported back to when they first met and she had thought he was going to kill her every other minute. He looked as frightening now as he had then… only now, she remembered, she wasn't afraid of him.

"Not so brave at such close quarters, are you, lady?" he sneered.

The sneer was a mistake. It reminded her of her grievances with him. She straightened her spine and glared at him through the trailing, dripping strands of her hair. "Crybaby!" she said again in a soft, goading tone.

He stared down at her as if he couldn't believe his ears. His hands tightened on her arms so that his fingers dug into her soft skin, and he gave her a warning shake.

"Shut up."

"Crybaby!"

"Shut up!"

"Crybaby!"

"Argghh!" It was a growl much like a tiger's, and like a tiger he looked ready to spring. One hand tightened ferociously on her arm while the other lifted, hovering open-palmed in the air. Looking up into his rage-infused face, Lora was certain that he meant to strike her. Every instinct for self-preservation that she possessed urged her to keep quiet, but something, some unnamed thing like a thorn in her flesh, was driving her on… '

"Crybaby!" she cried, glaring up at him defiantly, her eyes daring him to do his worst.

He growled again, deep in his throat, and she could see the hot blood throb in the artery in his neck. His black eyes glittered with it. But he did not slap her. Instead, the hand that had been poised above her face shot to the back of her head and grabbed a handful of soaking hair. Then he was jerking her toward him, eyes still glittering with murder as his face came down.

His mouth descended on hers like an avenging fury, assaulting and punishing as it forced her lips apart. Lora felt her lower lip split as he drove it back against her teeth, tasted her own blood in her mouth, felt the harsh rape of his invading tongue. Stunned, she hung in his arms like an sack of flour, too shocked to fight. His fist gripping her hair hurt. His arm that had slid around her shoulders to crush her to him hurt. The hard, unyielding body that bent hers backward hurt. Even his mouth hurt. But she didn't fight him, didn't even want to fight him. Dimly, with some still-functioning part of her brain, she realized that this was why she had goaded him. This was what she wanted…

"Oh, Max," she groaned into his mouth, and then she was responding to that rapier tongue with a passion that even in his fury he couldn't mistake.

"Lora…" Her name was a tormented whisper as he kissed her harder, fiercer than before, as if he was starving for the taste of her mouth. She twisted in his arms, not trying to get away but to work her arms free… She managed to push them up through his crushing hold and lock them around his neck. He groaned deep in his throat, and she groaned too in protest as his mouth suddenly left hers. He was looking down at her, his breathing heavy, a wild glitter in his eyes. Lora lifted one hand from the corded nape of his neck and lightly stroked the rough, wet edges of his hair.

"Kiss me, Max," she whispered, her mouth reaching for his even as she spoke. Plastered against him as she was, she felt him shudder. She heard the sudden, harsh indrawing of his breath as she touched his mouth with hers. Still, he held himself a little away from her; she could feel the beginning of resistance in his body and it galled her that she should have to be the one to encourage him. Where was her rapist now? she wondered hazily, remembering how she had feared him that time that seemed like eons ago but was actually little more than a week. She had known him just one day more than a week…                                     

"Please." And she was begging for him. She, Lora Susan Harding, a "nice girl" who had never, ever done anything like this in her whole life, was begging this man to kiss her. To do more than kiss her…

"Oh, God," he groaned as if he was being condemned to eternal hell fire, and bent his mouth to hers again.

It was a kiss so devouring that Lora closed her eyes and surrendered her soul.

His hand came up to crush her breast, and at the heat and strength of it burning through the flimsy cloth of her wet t-shirt and bra, Lora trembled. Her knees quivered, and she felt them give beneath her weight. He was bending her back over his arm, both of them thigh-deep in gleaming green water, his mouth locked to hers and his hand on her breast sending shuddering jolts of electricity through her body. Her nipple was stiff beneath his cupping palm. When he found it with his fingers she gasped. Even through the cloth, his touch made her shiver and bum… Only her arms around his neck held her upright as he abandoned his hold on her waist to cup her breasts with both hands. His mouth ate hers greedily as his hands pushed up beneath the wet cloth of shirt and bra to find her bare skin…

Lora felt as if she were falling. She
was
falling. She was slipping down into the water, her knees no longer able to support her, her arms around his neck losing their grip. Tremors coursed through her like electric shocks and she could no longer bear it…

His arms were around her again, lifting her, carrying her. She opened her eyes to find his face hard and taut, his eyes still glittering with that dangerous wildfire as they looked down into her face. She knew her own eyes must be heavy lidded with passion, drugged as Tunafish's were after he made use of the dope. Because that's how she felt—as if she were lost in a thick, unbearably sweet fog from which she might never escape. Little slurping noises sighed a protest as the water released Max's sneaker-clad feet. Then Max was scrambling up the bank with her cradled tight against his chest. She grasped his neck again, holding tightly as he slipped on the wet rocks, not even caring if he dropped her as long as they fell together. But he didn't, he made it safely across the rock shingles and then he was walking through the knee-high patches of flowers, bending and lying her down in a bed of orchids. Lavender and cream orchids, higher than Max's knees so that they closed around her as he put her down, enveloping her in perfume so exotic that it was intoxicating. She was intoxicated by the heady scent of the orchids and the surrealistic green beauty of the jungle canopy overhead, by the softly filtered sunlight and the muted cries of birds, by the meandering flight of purple and gold butterflies as they flitted from flower to flower, and the sibilant rustle of the flowers' slender green stems and leaves…

And she was intoxicated by him. By Max. Her heart pounded as he dropped to his knees beside her, uncaring of the fragility of the exotic blooms he crushed beneath him, uncaring of everything except her and the passion that arced between them like great bolts of lightning crashing to earth and then roaring back to heaven. On his knees beside her, he stared down at her for a moment, his face with its ferocious mustache and eyebrows and harsh blade of a nose and square, unshaven jaw aggressive even in passion. She looked at the linebacker's shoulders straining against soaked white cotton, at the tufts of curling black chest hair just visible in the hollow of his throat, at the corded muscles in the sun-bronzed arms, and felt the quiver in her belly that had started with that first kiss expand and grow until she was quivering all over, visibly shaking from head to foot like a lovestruck teenage girl. Then she looked again at the strong brown arms that were supporting his weight as he stretched his length beside her and saw that he was trembling, too.