At its trainer’s instructions the elephant knelt. Kash jumped off and held up his arms to Rebecca. She decided she could learn to love riding elephants, considering the fringe benefits. She put her hands on Kash’s broad shoulders and inhaled softly as his hands settled on her waist.
The intensity in his eyes hypnotized her as he lifted her down. For one wonderful second she was against his torso as he set her on the ground, with her head tilted back and her gaze locked on his. Nothing else existed except him.
“I will set up lunch,” the owner said cheerfully, untying a bamboo hamper behind the platform’s seat.
Kash let her go, and she busied herself smoothing her lose green shorts and top. When the driver had placed a colorful blanket and the hamper’s contents on the soft forest floor, he made a wai and went to eat lunch with his elephant, tethered a dozen yards away.
She sat down beside Kash and looked hungrily at rice delicacies wrapped in banana leaves, bamboo tubes stuffed with baked seafood and vegetables, and cups of sliced fruit with coconut cream. “This is the most fantastic meal I’ve ever seen.”
He popped a piece of fresh pineapple into her mouth. His fingertips brushed her lips. She forgot about the pineapple dripping sweetly on her tongue and drew her lips together. Without planning it, she sucked his fingers lightly as he pulled them away.
His hand stopped in midair. He looked startled and hypnotized at the same time. Rebecca was captured by the spell between him and her. She stared back at him in wonder, while inside she dissolved into helpless desire.
Kash took a deep breath, then abruptly distracted himself by arranging food on thick linen napkins. “Did Leon ever tell you that you could set his plaid sports coat on fire with a technique like that one?”
She laughed shakily. “No, but one time he said I was a good, clean date with no bad habits.”
“That was the most romantic compliment he could think of?”
“Yes. It pretty much summed up our relationship.”
“You’ve developed some wonderful bad habits since you ditched Leon.”
“I had a great teacher, Mr. Santelli.”
“Me? I said I’d civilize you, not teach you to make naughty with my fingers.”
“And I said I’d turn you into a wholesome dragon. We’ve both failed so far. But there’s plenty of time. Lunch is just getting started.”
“I think I’ll move to the far side of the blanket.”
“Coward. I won’t bite.”
“Your lips are dangerous enough. Don’t bring your teeth into this argument too.”
She leaned toward him. “A brave man loves a challenge.”
He picked up another piece of pineapple and eyed her thoughtfully. The arousal darkening his eyes made her ache to touch him. Rebecca gave him a small, saucy wink. “You asked for trouble. Now what are you going to do about it?”
He exhaled slowly. A dam of restraint seemed about to break inside him. “Feed it some pineapple, and see what happens next.”
He lifted his hand to her mouth.
Trembling, she parted her lips.
And suddenly the day exploded with gunshots.
Rebecca screamed. Bullets zipped overhead, snapping leaves off the trees, tearing bark from the tree trunks. The elephant bolted back in the direction of home, with his lithe owner clambering aboard his neck and clinging desperately.
“Get down!” Kash shoved Rebecca to the blanket and flattened himself on top of her. They lay there, breathing heavily, and listening to the forest. There were no more shots, but birds screeched in alarm. Their transportation had disappeared. Kash cursed softly under his breath, feathering her ear with terse, raw words. “I should have brought a gun. Dammit, I was careless.”
“Shh. This is nuts. Who’d have thought anyone would bother us?”
“I’m supposed to be protecting you. Dammit” She’d never heard such fury and tension in his voice before. She thought she felt his heart beating powerfully against her back. Her own heart pounded a furious rhythm. “You are protecting me,” she joked weakly. “If the elephant comes back, he’ll step on you first.”
“We can’t stay here. We’ve got to find some cover. Follow me.”
He pulled her to her feet. Crouching, they ran down the hillside and leaped onto a terrace. She ran behind him along a narrow strip of land between two small rice paddies. They zigzagged down the hill, splashing through ponds, slipping on the soft, wet earth. Another shot zipped over their heads as they dived into the foliage at the base of the hill.
She fell into mud and slick, clinging plants. Kash immediately dropped beside her and slid an arm around her waist. “You okay, Corn Blossom?”
Rebecca wiped mud from her lips. “Never happier, Dragon.”
“Good. Let’s keep moving. We’ll take the long way back, and confuse them.
“Look out!”
She shot a hand forward and snatched an orange snake that was coiling near his free arm. Clutching it behind the head, she flung it in a long arch. It landed nearly a dozen feet away.
Kash exploded with anger. “Dammit, don’t grab everthing that moves around here! That snake might have been poisonous.” Then he cupped her head toward him and kissed her grimy mouth.
She gave him a shaky smile. “Grabbing snakes got me a kiss. Sucking your fingers didn’t. You’re a strange man.”
“A crazy man. And it’s your fault. Come on.”
On hands and knees they crawled deeper into the forest, then got up and sprinted through the trees. He stopped her before her breath gave out completely, and pulled her to him. Rebecca leaned against him gratefully. Her face rested against the center of his heaving chest, where his shirt was open enough to allow his sweat and matted chest hair to tickle her cheek. She found the feel and scent of him comforting, and from the way he held her, she suspected he liked the reassurance too.
“Rest. We have a long way to go,” he said softly. “No more running.”
“No more running,” she agreed, tilting her head back and looking at him calmly.
“You aren’t afraid?”
“No. I trust my elephant.”
He began to laugh.
Eight
They arrived at the Vatan estate long after midnight. Bewildered servants stared at them as they trudged through the foyer, exhausted and dirty. Kash told someone to bring food to his suite. To Rebecca, he said, “Why don’t you take a bath, then come to my room? I’m going to make some phone calls.”
She nodded, too tired to speak.
In her room she dropped her damp, muddy clothes and ruined tennis shoes on the floor, then climbed into a hot bath filled with cinnamon crystals and thick white suds. After halfheartedly scrubbing herself, she put her head back on the tub’s wide marble rim and fell asleep.
She awoke quickly when a hand touched her head. Kash was sitting on the floor beside the tub. She could see a black silk robe over his bare chest. His black hair, still a little damp from his bath, glistened in the soft overhead lamps. A thin red scratch ran across the bridge of his nose, giving it a more brutal appeal. In contrast, his fingers were very gentle as he stroked a strand of her wet hair away from her forehead and studied her with concern. “When you didn’t come to my suite, I was worried.”
She glanced down at the suds that covered her like a fluffy white blanket. They lapped at her breasts just above the nipples, a fact she was vividly aware of. “How are you?” she asked huskily. “You must be sleepy too.”
He nodded. “But I have too many questions to ask. I’ve already made some calls to my people. They’ll see what they can learn about what happened today.”
“Do you think the Nalinats are responsible?”
“Probably. They like scare tactics. They’re harmless, but effective.”
“Man, are they.”
“Ready to give up?”
“Nope. I’m scared, not chicken.”
He smiled. “The unsinkable Rebecca Brown.”
“I’m mad too.
I want to meet these Nalinat creeps and ask some point-blank questions.”
He shook his head. “They’d only be insulted. Well have to make some decisions later. It may take time. Nothing happens fast in this part of the world. Try to relax.”
“I might as well. I’m so tired, I can barely think.”
“Me too. That’s dangerous.”
“Or tempting.”
“Both.”
In the silence that followed, she felt as if the water were growing hotter with each second. There was so much she wanted to say to him. Tenderness and gratitude mingled with desire. Her throat was too tight for speech. He remained kneeling beside the tub, his fingers caressing the side of her face. Restraint and bittersweet dilemma radiated from his troubled expression.
“We did well together,” he said in a voice so low she had to read his lips to understand the words. Her hearing aid lay somewhere in the forest near the rice paddies. “You made it feel natural to be a team.”
“Good for me,” she whispered. The breath had stalled in her chest. Every fiber in her body cried out for him.
His lips barely moved. “I should go.”
A broken sound burst from her throat. “Don’t. Please, don’t.”
“If I stay, I’ll—”
“You’ll make me happy. And I’ll try to make you happy.” She laid a hand along the side of his face. Emotion glistened in his eyes. “Give me a chance. Give yourself a chance.”
They moved together, she reaching up, he reaching down. She rose out of the water to put her arms around him as he lifted her over the tub’s pale gold rim. Suds slid down her naked body and were absorbed by his black robe. He was already kissing her by the time he laid down beside her on the richly carpeted floor. She opened his robe, then pressed herself to his bare chest.
His fingers drifted up and down her side, stroking her from shoulder to thigh, then flattening around the indention of her waist to pull her closer. She mewled into his hot, searching mouth, as sensations gathered inside her like a star about to burst. Exploring his chest with trembling hands, she stroked the hard points of his nipples, traced the corded muscles along his rib cage, then drew her hands upward and clasped them behind his neck.
His chest hair was as soft as lamb’s wool against her tender breasts, and his thighs, covered in the robe’s silk magic, tantalized hers with each small flexing of his body. When he smoothed his hand over her water-slick hips, she quivered wildly. He drew back and looked deeply into her eyes as his hand caressed her, moving under her, cupping her, touching her intimately with such perfect skill that each stroke of his fingers made sensations shoot through her womb.
“Becca,” he murmured roughly, his voice a compelling invitation. His face was flushed and savage with restraint, but his eyes glowed with infinite patience.
Her feminine instincts welcomed him, her sighs, her body’s smooth, sleek yearning under his hand, the frantic kisses she placed on his chest and neck. They settled on their sides, facing each other. Untying his robe, she watched one side slip down. The other she pushed with tantalizing slowness up to his lean, angular hip. Then she smoothed her hand on the taut skin and let the silky material cascade down behind him.
Her first sight of his uncovered body brought a sense of wonder. His golden, masculine beauty combined with the primal thrust of his arousal to make her reach for him in awe, her hands feathering over his stomach and down his abdomen, while the rough cadence of his breath told her he was on fire.
She cuddled his hot satin hardness in her palm, marveling at the contrasts. Touching him made her light-headed with anticipation. He tilted her head back, then kissed her with erotic abandon, as if he wanted to taste all of her through her mouth. She cried out with delight.
Need and affection pulsed together in a slow, breathtaking rhythm between them. He got to his knees and bent over her, pulling her into an arch, with his hands under her back. His mouth descended on the taut skin of her stomach. She writhed happily and helplessly under the sweet sucking motion of his lips.
Rebecca thought she’d die with pleasure as he covered her body with those same sensual kisses, lavishing them on her breasts, tickling them across her thighs, then, finally, when she was already losing control in a storm of desire, parting her thighs and delving between them.
She cried out in astonishment at the most searing pleasure in the world, more exquisite than anything she’d ever imagined. It stole her thoughts and consumed her with waves of primitive hunger, and at the same moment, blinding joy. She whispered Kash’s name over and over. He swept her into his arms while she was still calling him, then lifted her and stood.
He strode into the other room, darkened except for faint starlight gleaming in the window. “Becca, hold me,” he urged hoarsely, as he placed her on the bed. “I’m so broken up inside that I don’t know what I’m doing. Nothing’s ever been so perfect in my life before.”
“You’re doing just fine,” she answered in a voice that vibrated with love. “And I’ll hold you so tight, I’ll keep you together.”
He stripped his robe off and lowered himself into her outstretched arms. Slowly easing his body between her thighs, he brushed kisses over her mouth and made promises with careful caresses. His larger, more muscular body hinted at the power to hurt, to take selfishly, to control. But she wasn’t surprised by his gentleness, by the way he reassured her with his gracefulness while exciting her with his size and strength.
Trembling again, she stroked his hair and looked up into his face as he cupped her hips to him and posed on the threshold of joining.
“I never thought I could make love to anyone,” he murmured. “But now I know I can.” A single tear slid down his cheek. She moaned softly and arched her head up to kiss it. “Don’t stop,” she ordered gently. “You’re a natural.”
She slid her hands down his back. He listened ecstatically as she told him with eager caresses and soft, half-spoken words that there was nothing but pleasure in his slow, careful merger with her body.
Rebecca was lost in the beauty of that fulfillment. She held him as tightly as she had promised. She kept him together body and soul. In the enchanted moments that followed, he showed her how a man could be more than he’d been born to be, and all that a woman could want.
The morning air was kissing him. Warm and smelling of cinnamon, it moved across his dreamscape, feathering his lips, making him smile. Luscious memories crept back. Glimmers of a long, emotion-filled night of passion. He remembered intervals of blissful half-sleep mingled with torrid awakenings, caressing hands learning to please him more each time, sweetness surrounding him, pulsing with his own life force, soft cries of feminine delight echoing his own masculine ones.
He also remembered the relaxed conversations, whispered in the darkness. He had given away pieces of himself that he’d been unwilling to share with anyone before. They were so simple and yet so fragile. Daydreams. Hobbies. Small human likes and dislikes. All night the dreamer beside him had listened, then trusted him with her own delicate whimsies. Now she was telling him it hadn’t been a dream after all.
Rebecca. Becca. He loved her. The words for it were encased in a cold shell inside him, and he didn’t know if he could ever tell her. He doubted he could ever tell her why it was impossible. If he told her, the innocent bond between them would never be the same.
But for now, as the morning kissed him with such easy devotion, hope was too tempting to resist. He pushed aside the darkness and opened his eyes.
“Good morning,” she whispered, gazing down at him from under sexily tousled brunette hair. Her blue eyes were sleepy and sultry, filled with the night’s memories and the day’s anticipation. Desire rocketed through him.
“Great morning,” he corrected. “The best.”
Her pleased smile made happiness rise in his chest and took the raw edge off his surge of arousal. There would be no turbulent rush to join together this time, though it had been like that once or twice during the night, whe
n the mood was wild. This time would be infinitely slow and spiritual, a long sigh of harmony instead of a shout.
“Be still,” she ordered mildly. Resting one hand against his cheek, she lightly brushed her fingertip over his lashes. He watched her study them with fascination, then grin. “I couldn’t do this in the dark. I’ve been wanting to touch them for days.”
“Why?”
“Because I love the way the tips curl. Like a little boy’s.” She scrutinized them solemnly.
Kash wasn’t the kind of man who wanted to hear that his eyelashes were boyish. If anyone else had said so, he’d have scowled in secret embarrassment. “And all this time I thought it was my incredible body you wanted.” But he couldn’t keep from chuckling.
“Well, they’re attached to your body. I want everything.”
Kash felt the darkness again. That’s what I’m afraid of. But he ignored it by taking her in his arms and abruptly rolling her over. He lost himself in the love glowing in her eyes. “Now, let me take a good, long look at your eyelashes. Then I’ll work my way down.”
“Hmmm, I like that plan.”
He began kissing her, brushing his lips over her eyes, causing her to make a noise halfway between a chuckle and a sexy purr. “How are you this morning?” he asked. Carefully he slid his hand down her belly, cherishing her small quiver and the way she arched to encourage his caress.
“Wonderful,” she whispered.
“But maybe a little tender?”
“Filled with the most incredible tenderness,” she answered huskily.
He nuzzled her neck but gave her a rebuking look. “I meant the other kind. Be honest. I tried very hard to remember that you’d never been with a man before, but I’m afraid I was, hmmm, overwhelmed by your enthusiasm.”
Though she grinned at him, he felt her move gingerly when he stroked his hand over the soft mound at the top of her legs. “Okay, pardner, you caught me,” she intoned in a comical cowboy drawl. “I confess.” But her blue eyes didn’t have any humor in them. They watched him worriedly, “Don’t run scared, pardner. I may be a little saddle sore, but I’m still the best bronco buster this side of Bangkok. Bangkok. If’n I was a tenderfoot, I’d make a joke about that there name. But hey, I ain’t a tenderfoot. What’s tender is about a leg-length higher up.”