That same little smile tugged at her mouth. She seemed far away again, slowly turning her head away from him. “Even if you handed me a very large stick I wouldn’t be able to lift it. I’ll have to pass on being that take-forty-seven-kicks-in-the-ribs-and-keep-on-going heroine. I don’t think I can lift my head.”
He leaned closer. “Rachael? You’re with me again.” She sounded like the woman who had bashed him in the head.
“Was I gone?” She closed her eyes. “I wish I hadn’t come back. What’s wrong with me? Where did I go?”
“You’ve been rambling. I have no choice, I have to work on your leg.”
“Then get to it. You’re so tired you’r e going to fall on your face if you don’t get it done.” She made an effort to lift her lashes and study his face beneath heavy lids. “I’m not going to blame you if it hurts.”
Her eyes were clear and in that moment lucid. “I don’t want to lose my leg, so by all means, do whatever is necessary to save it.”
Rio wasn’t going to talk about it any longer. Distaste for the ugly task glimmered in his eyes as he bent over her leg. The wound had to be lanced, thoroughly washed, cauterized and packed with more antibiotics. He had perfor med the surgery once out in the field when a friend had been shot and was bleeding profusely and the chopper couldn’t pick them up immediately. Small beads of sweat dotted his body, then ran into his eyes to blur his vision as he placed the blade of his knife in the flames.
Opening the wound to allow the infection to run out set his stomach churning. She screamed when he poured the burning antiseptic, nearly coming up off the bed. He hesitated only a moment, leaning his weight across her thighs, and taking a deep breath laid the blade of the knife against her flesh. The odor was sickening. He didn’t hurry, not wanting to make any mistakes, careful to cleanse and repair, before splinting her leg to hold it immobile in order to give it a better chance to heal.
He couldn’t look at her as he cleaned the bedding and packed blankets around her leg to hold her still.
She hadn’t moved in a long time, her breathing shallow, her skin clammy. Definitely in shock, Rachael was trembling in reaction. Rio cursed softly. He eased down beside her, stretching out along the bed, drawing her close to him, unable to think of anything else to do.
“Rio?” Rachael didn’t pull away from him, instead burrowed against him like a kitten for comfort.
“Thank you for trying to save my leg. I know it was difficult for you.” Her voice was thin. He barely caught the words.
Rio nuzzled the top of her head with his chin, blew at strands of hair caught in the stubble of several days growth. “Try to relax, I can’t give you any more painkiller for a while. Just let me hold you.” His arms tightened with possession. At the same time something was squeezing his heart like a vise. “I’ll tell you a story.”
Her body belonged with his—fit. He curved around her, thigh to thigh, her buttocks pressed against his groin, her head tucked safely against his throat, and she just fit there as if made for him. Her breasts were full and soft and pushed into his ar ms comfortably. He had lain with her before. Not once, but many times. The memory of her body was etched in his brain, in his nerves and flesh and bone.
He rubbed his cheek in the mass of silky hair. It wasn’t all physical. Hefelt something for her. Came alive around her. “That’s not necessarily a good thing,” he said aloud. “You know that, don’t you?”
Rachael closed her eyes, willing her body to stop shaking, wanting the pain to recede if only for a brief space of time to give her a moment to breathe nor mally. Rio was an anchor she clung to, the one bit of reality she had. When she closed her eyes, she saw men contorting, fur rippling over their bodies, eyes glowing a fierce yellow-green. In that nightmare world the sound of guns erupted and she felt the shock of a bullet. She looked into those same intelligent eyes and saw pain and madness. And she heard his voice screamingno . That was all. Simplyno .
“I need to hear your voice.” Because it drove demons away. It drove the scent of gunpowder and blood from her mind, and she loved the deep caressing timbre of it.
“I don’t know a lot of stories, Rachael. I never had someone telling me bedtime tales.” He winced at the gruffness in his voice. It was just that she turned his insides to mush and made it difficult to remember she could have been sent to kill him. He believed in logic, and the way she affected him wasn’t logical.
“I’ll tell you one when I feel better,” she offered.
He closed his eyes. She was like a gift, handed to him. Sent to him in his unrelenting world of violence and mistrust. “All right,” he conceded to please her. “But try to go to sleep. The more you sleep the faster your leg is going to heal.”
Rachael was afraid to go to sleep. Afraid of teeth and claws and the all-encompassing pain. She was afraid she would lose her tenuous hold on reality. As it was, she kept forgetting who Rio was. He felt familiar. She recognized his voice, but she couldn’t remember their life together. When he talked to her, she floated on the sound of his voice. When his hands slid over her hot skin, she felt safe and cherished.
Rio told her some absurd tale of monkeys and sun bears he made up off the top of his head. It made no sense; in fact, it was fairly awful and showed he had no imagination, but she was quiet, slipping into a fitful sleep, and that was all that mattered to him. If the woman wanted storytelling on a nightly basis, he was going to have to hastily hone some nonexistent skills and learn to make up interesting tales.
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 enter ing.
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 star ing 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.
Four
There were nightmares. One simply ran into the next. Rachael felt shelived 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.