Rio smiled and buried his face in the valley between her breasts just to inhale her scent. She always seemed to smell of flowers. He was certain it was the soaps and shampoo she made from the petals and herbs in the forest. His tongue swirled over her nipple, a lazy, leisurely movement. Life was perfect at dawn. He breathed her in. His Rachael. His world. There in their secret world with the light filtering in through the high canopy, Rio found strength and passion and everything he would ever need to exist and live.
He nuzzled her breast, swirled his tongue over her tempting nipple a second time and drew soft flesh into his mouth, suckling gently. Rachael stirred, shifted to bring her body more aligned with his, to arch her back a little more to offer her breasts while her arms crept around his head to cradle him close. He loved her reaction, that first drowsy offering of her body to him. He knew when he plunged his finger deep inside her to test her readiness, she would already be hot and wet and welcoming.
Making love to Rachael was always an adventure. They would be so tender together it would bring tears to his eyes, or they would be rough and wild and totally uninhibited. Rachael would rake his back, dig her nails into his flesh or ride him with wild abandon. Sometimes he spent an hour just loving on her, feasting on her. Her body was so familiar to him, yet he was full and hard and bursting to be inside her, so eager his body was painful. Like the first time. Like each and every time he touched her.
His hands moved over her body, warm, soft flesh, tantalizing, tempting, a delight he could hardly believe was his. He lifted his face to hers, fastened his mouth on hers, a hard, possessive kiss that took their breath so that they had to exchange air while the world rocked around them. Her mouth was hot and sweet and achingly familiar.
For just a moment, there in the dawn when it didn’t matter, when he didn’t have to have a veneer of civilization, he always allowed his wild nature to rise. Possession, jealousy, a dark predatory need to claim Rachael for his own rose up as it always did. The beast, always so close to the surface, rose with him, untamed and roaring for her, wanting her with every fiber of his being. His skin itched as he tasted her acceptance of him, ropes of muscles contracting as he dragged her closer, his thigh moving over hers to pin her beneath him. It never bothered her when the beast was so close to the surface, even if she felt the brush of fur on her sensitized skin. She always accepted him, always wanted him, always welcomed him.
She laughed softly into his mouth as he devoured her, fed on her, kissing her over and over without restraint. He wanted her so much, wanted to be buried deep inside her where he belonged, where the world was always right. He wrapped his arms around her while her hands explored the muscles over his chest. There was possession in her touch as she skimmed his belly and found the hard length of his erection. She closed her fist over him tightly and he gasped with the pleasure and the pain of it.
“I want to taste you this morning,” he whispered. “I can’t wait to feel you squirming the way you do, your fist yanking at my hair, telling me to hurry, hurry, hurry.” He kissed her chin, her throat, the soft swell of her breast.
“Oh really.” Her voice was a teasing lilt. “And here I thought I was going to drive you out of your mind this morning. Can’t you just imagine being in my mouth? I think it’s my turn, we were rudely interrupted last time.”
Her fingers danced over him, the way only Rachael could do, teasing and stroking, small caresses designed to drive him mad. If she took him in her mouth he was going to explode, a heady, wild eruption that would make her laugh and demand satisfaction. He knew her so well, yet not at all.
Rachael—his lady, his reason for existing.
He shifted his weight and dragged her body beneath his, his knee sliding between her legs with expert precision, opening her beckoning heat to him. He settled over her, into her, pressing against her tight opening, already anticipating the pleasure he would give her. He moved away from the temptation, sliding down, his tongue swirling in her sexy belly button, his teeth nipping at her flat stomach. His thigh pressed against hers in demand, shifting her leg to the side.
Rachael screamed, a cry of terrible unrelenting pain, curling up in the fetal position, curling away from him. Her cry set the monkeys in the trees chattering and the birds scolding. She choked off the sound quickly, breathing deeply to regain control.
Rio’s perfect world shattered. “What the hell am I doing? Damn it, just damn it.” Groaning, he rolled off her onto his back, both hands covering his face. “I’m sorr y, Rachael, damn it, I’m really sorry. I don’t know what happened. I swear, for a minute, I was someone else. Or you were someone else, or we were the same but different. Hell! I don’t know what I’m saying.” He pulled his hands from his face and looked at her, his expression grim. “Are you all right?”
To his shock, Rachael turned back, gingerly, carefully, and tunneled her fingers in his hair. “I don’t break, Rio. I could have said no to you. For a moment there, I was someone else too. I knew you intimately, belonged with you and had for a long time. I was so comfortable, so complete. I think I would have been very happy to be that other person, but my leg changed my mind for me. I’m the one who’s sorry.”
“I frightened you.”
She tugged at his hair and the gesture was strangely familiar. “Did I seem frightened to you? I thought I was very cooperative. My leg hurts when I move, otherwise, I would have been all over you.”
He rolled onto his side, propping his head up with his hand. “Why, Rachael? Are you afraid to say no to me?” He couldn’t quite get his breathing under control and his body was hard and painful and aching. More than anything he wanted to kiss her again, wanted her body to belong to him. Wanted her to belong to him. “I know you must feel vulnerable alone with me like this, especially injured, but I swear, I don’t force myself on women.”
“Rio, you’re being silly. We’re physically attracted to each other. I’ve been staring at your body for days now. How could I not be attracted? If you tried to force yourself on me and I wasn’t in the least receptive, I would have hit you over the head with something.” She grinned at him. “And you already know I’m perfectly capable of it. At the moment my leg is injured and you can’t tell, but I have had a bit of self-defense training. You were very vulnerable there for a time in your… er… aroused state.
Bad leg or no, I could have managed to injure you.”
“When I’m with you…” Rio struggled to find the right words. “It’s as if I’ve always been with you, as if I’ve always known you, as if I’ve always made love to you. I swear sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell the difference between what’s real and my imagination. It’s crazy.”
He leaned into her, close, so that the tips of her breasts pushed against his chest. Immediately the feeling was familiar, perfect—a coming home. He sighed. “I’m not used to being around people for any length of time, it makes me uncomfortable, but with you, I can’t imagine you not being with me.” His hands framed her face. “I want you so bad I can taste you in my mouth. I know exactly what you’re going to feel like when I’m inside you.” His fingertips slipped down her neck, over her shoulders to trace the swell of her breasts. “I know your shape, every curve, as if I have a map in my mind.”
Rachael knew she was no thinking person when his hands were on her body, shaping her breasts, his thumbs sliding over her taut nipples sending bolts of lightning through her bloodstream. She wasn’t an ordinary woman with a chance at love. She could have a brief affair, but she would have to move on, leave him behind. Every moment she was with him endangered him.
Her lashes hid the expression in her eyes from him, careful not to let him see the heat and fire his touch awakened in her. “I feel different. I have since I first came to the rain forest. I feel fully alive, as if something inside of me is trying to break free.” And she felt highly sexual. Ever since she had come to this house, this place, was near this man, in spite of the fever or maybe because of the fever, she was in a continual state of arousal. She burned for him, thought of him night and day, dreamed of him.
“Rachael, you know the birthmark low on your hip? I knew it was there before I ever saw it. I know exactly how you like to be touched.” He sat up, pushed his hand through his hair in agitation, leaving it tousled and wild, as untamed as he. “How can I know those things?”
She knew his likes and dislikes intimately too. Sometimes her fingers itched to stroke his chest, to run her fingertips down his flat belly. Teasing and caressing, her tongue swirling in the wake of her fingers until he cried out for mercy. She knew the exact note that would be in his voice, the husky ache in his tone. Just thinking of the need and hunger in his voice sent ripples of fire racing through her body.
Rio sighed. “Let me take a look at your leg. Between the cat jumping on it and me hurting you, it probably needs a repair or two.” He looked at her, dark curly hair spilling around her face, lips slightly parted, almost in invitation. Her long lashes lifted and he was staring into her eyes, seeing her need.
Seeing the same smoldering heat in her that burned so hotly in him. He swore under his breath and reached beneath the cover for her ankle, guiding her leg into the open.
Rachael felt his fingers on her skin. There was a proprietary feeling to his grip. The pad of his thumb swept back and forth over her ankle in a small caress, each stroke sending flames dancing up her leg to the junction of her thighs. His hand slipped lower, over her foot, began a slow, heart-stopping massage.
“It looks far better this morning, Rachael. No red streaks at all. It’s still very swollen and the two punctur e sites are draining again. I’m going to take the dressing off and leave them open to drain.”
She made a face. “How lovely. The sheet is going to be a mess.”