Rio ejected the shells from the shotgun, pocketed them and put the empty weapon in a small alcove out of sight. The moment he opened the door, rain lashed at him, piercing his soaked clothing. The storm showed no signs of abating, the wind ripping ruthlessly through the trees. The tree branches were slick, but he moved across them easily in spite of the heavy deluge of water.
Rio knelt beside his backpack to try his radio. He doubted if he could raise anyone there in the dense forest with the storm raging, but he tried repeatedly. He didn’t like the look of her wounds and she was going into shock. The forest had a way of deciding matters and he wanted her safe somewhere under a doctor’s care. When static was the only reply he glanced up at the house with a worried frown, cursed the leopards, the woman and everything else he could think of. Abruptly he gave up, shoving the radio inside the pack before returning to his house.
Rachael thought she must be asleep, caught in the middle of a nightmare, a horror film playing over and over. There was blood and pain and men turning into leopards with hot breath and wicked teeth. There was a strange floating sensation, as if she were removed from whatever was happening to her, but the pain was pushing closer to her, working its way through her body, insisting it couldn’t be ignored. She let her breath out slowly, afraid of opening her eyes, afraid if she didn’t, she would be trapped forever in that nightmare world. And she was tired of being afraid. It seemed she’d been afraid all of her life.
A rush of cold air announced she wasn’t alone. The door closed abruptly. Rachael’s fingers curled around the blanket, tightening into a fist. She lifted her lashes just enough to see, striving to keep her breathing even.
Her attacker dropped a heavy pack beside the sink and rummaged around in it, pulling out several items and laying them out on the table with care. His back was to her as he dropped his jacket near the pack. He wore a shoulder harness housing a lethal-looking gun. Between his shoulder blades lay a leather sheath with the handle of a knife sticking out. He took both weapons and hung them on a peg to the side of the fireplace.
The man turned slightly as he sat down in one of the chairs, grimacing as if it hurt to move. From his boot he pulled another gun, checked the load and placed it on the table near his hand. Only then did he peel off his shirt. She caught a glimpse of a barrel chest, very heavily muscled. He appeared to be an ordinary man. There was no excessive hair, no fur, just blood and bruises. Some of the tension seeped out of Rachael.
He groaned, the sound nearly inaudible. There was a hint of distaste. His chest and stomach carried bruises. There was a raw-looking wound seeping blood across his stomach and a small brown leech attached to his skin. He turned his back to her.
Rachael let out her breath, her stomach muscles clenching. He had scars on his back. Lots of them. And he had another leech. “You have another one on your back. Come over here and I’ll take it off for you.” The thought of touching the leech was disgusting, but it sickened her to see the thing sucking on him like the parasite it was.
His shoulders stiffened. Not a big movement, but one that told her she’d surprised him and he didn’t like surprises. He turned his head, a slow, animal-like movement. Rachael’s breath caught in her throat. His eyes glowed, much like that of a cat in the dark. The flames from the fireplace leapt in the yellow-green depths. There was a long moment of silence. A log hissed and shifted. Sparks flew.
“Thanks, but I’ll pass. I’m used to them.” Rio sounded gruff and abrupt and surly even to his own ears. Hell, all she’d done was ask to help him. He didn’t need to bite her head off. “I think your wrist is broken. I haven’t had time to splint it.” He couldn’t remember anyone offering to help him before. He rarely spent more than a few minutes in the company of others, and her close proximity was unsettling. She made him feel vulnerable in a way he couldn’t understand.
Rachael looked with some surprise at her swollen wrist. The pain radiating up from her leg consumed her to the point she hadn’t noticed her wrist. “I guess it is. Who are you?”
She watched him take his time before answering, pulling the leech from his stomach with the ease of practice and disposing of it. His strange eyes immediately focused fully on her. “Rio Santana.” He obviously was expecting a reaction to his name.
Rachael blinked at him. The intensity of his gaze made her heart pound. She’d never heard his name before, she was certain of it, yet something about him seemed familiar to her. She shifted position and pain knifed through her.
Impatience flickered across his face. “Stop moving around. You’ll start bleeding again, and I haven’t even cleaned up the first mess.”
“You spend a lot of time working on your manners, don’t you?” she observed.
“You tried to bash in my head, lady. I don’t think I need you to lecture me on manners.” He stalked across the room to draw the knife from the sheath.
Her heart jumped, then settled into a steady pounding. Everything about the way he moved reminded her of an animal. The flames from the fireplace made the blade of the knife glow an eerie red-orange as he held it up.
“Stop looking at me like I have two heads,” he snapped, sounding more impatient than ever.
“I’m looking at you like you’re waving a big knife around,” she said. Her leg was throbbing with pain, forcing her to grit her teeth and try to relax. How was she supposed to keep from moving around when it felt as if someone was using a dull saw on her flesh? “And I didn’t exactly try to bash your head in. It wasn’t personal.”
“The knife is to remove the leech from my back. I can’t reach it any other way,” he explained, although why he felt compelled to explain what should have been perfectly obvious, he didn’t know. “And I always take it personally when someone tries to remove my head from my shoulders.”
She made a face. A silly, feminine expression of exasperation. And she did it with little white lines of pain etched around her mouth. It fascinated him, that wholly feminine expression. His stomach did a weird flip.
“You don’t hear me complaining that your little pet chewed off my leg. Men are such babies. It isn’t even that big of a gash.”
He had the urge to laugh. It came out of nowhere, blind-siding him, bursting over him unexpectedly. He didn’t laugh, of course; he frowned at her instead. “You put a hole in my head.”
“You’re going to put a hole in your back with that knife. Stop being macho he-man and let me take that horrible thing off of you.”
His eyebrow shot up. “You want me to put a knife in your hands, lady?”
“Stop calling me lady, it’s becoming annoying.” Pain was beating at her so strongly now that she wanted to throw up again. It was definitely making it hard to think. She kept fear at bay with her usual chatter, but she wouldn’t be able to keep it up for much longer. And she dared not think what might happen then.
“I don’t exactly know your name. Where I come from, lady is a compliment.”
“Not in that tone of voice,” she objected. “Rachael Los...” she trailed off, casting around for a name, any name. She couldn’t think clearly; she’d already forgotten her new name, but it was imperative she hide her identity. Pain throbbed in her head, beat at her body. “Smith.”
If it were possible, his eyebrow went higher. “Rachael Los Smith?” His mouth softened for the briefest of moments, a rusty attempt at a smile. Or a smirk. She couldn’t tell. Her vision was beginning to blur.
Rio moved closer to her, his mouth once more twisting into a frown. “You’re sweating.” His palm settled on her forehead. “Do not get an infection. We’re stuck here without help for the duration of the storm.”
“I’ll make sure I follow your orders, Rio, because I have the power to determine that, you know.” Rachael’s gaze followed the path of the knife as it moved close to her. “If you don’t let me help you now, I don’t think I’m going to be able to at all.” Her voice was funny, tinny and far away. “That awful leech is going to just stay there, getting high on your blood. Maybe it’s a girl leech and she’s going to have babies and they’ll all live on your back, sucking your blood. A little leech community. How perfectly lovely.”
He muttered something under his breath.
“And don’t swear at me or I’m going to cry. I’m doing my best here and you aren’t giving me anything to work with.”
His fingers were gentle in her hair even though he didn’t mean to touch her. “Don’t you dare cry.” The thought was more alarming than someone coming at him with a gun. Her tears might turn him inside out. “The morphine is wearing off, isn’t it? I didn’t give you very much because I was afraid you’d go into shock.”
A small humorless laugh escaped. She sounded on the verge of hysteria. “I am in shock. I think I lost my mind. I thought you turned into a leopard and tried to rip my throat out.”
He slipped the tip of the knife between his back and the leech, flicked it to the floor and hastily disposed of it. “Leopards don’t rip throats out. They bite the throat and suffocate their prey.” He dipped a cloth into a cool bowl of water and sponged her face. “They’re tidy killers.”
“Thanks for the information. I wouldn’t want to think my death would be a messy one.”
Rio was uncomfortably aware of her gaze studying his face. Her eyes were large, too old for the rest of her. There was something sad in the dark depths that tugged at his heart. Her lashes were incredibly long, spiky from her tears. He actually felt as if he were falling forward into the depths of them, a corny and totally ridiculous notion he was impatient with. His heart began to pound in his chest. Anticipating—what, he didn’t know. He deliberately wiped the cloth over her eyes, a gentle stroke to save himself from falling under her spell.
“Are you always this sarcastic, or should I put it down to you being in considerable pain?”
Rachael tried to laugh but it came out a gasping sob. “I swear it feels like my leg is on fire.”
“It’s swelling. I’m going to give you a little more painkiller and splint that wrist for you.” Rio’s fingers trailed in her hair, a thick mass of silk. There was a strange color surrounding her body, like a shadow that wouldn’t go away. No matter how many times he blinked, or swept his hand over his eyes to clear his vision, the strange surrounding color remained.
“I think you need to take care of yourself,” Rachael said, her gaze drifting over his face. He had the physical sensation of fingers touching him lightly in a caress. She didn’t seem to notice the effect she had on him, and he was grateful.
“You look tired. I honestly can’t even feel my wrist at the moment, although I think a painkiller is a good idea. Maybe a huge dose of painkiller.” Rachael tried to smile at him, tried to make it a joke. If he didn’t find something to stop the pain she was going to ask him to knock her out. He had a big enough fist.
She was shaking beneath the blanket, a sure sign of fever. He had packed the wound with antibiotics earlier, but it obviously wasn’t going to be enough. Rio shook pills into his hand and helped her lift her head to swallow them. She pressed her teeth together, but a small sound, much like that of a wounded animal, escaped. “I’m sorry, I know it hurts, but you have to get these down.” If she had come there to kill him, he was making a hell of a fool of himself, but it didn’t matter to him. He had to remove the desperation from her eyes. She looked so helpless it twisted his gut into hard little knots. He gave her another small dose of morphine along with the antibiotics and waited until her eyes clouded over before splinting her wrist. Her skin was hot, but he didn’t dare leave his own wounds much longer or they both would be in trouble.
Rachael felt herself drifting away. The pain was there; she didn’t want to squirm around and provoke it, but she could handle the intensity floating above it. Rio moved away from her with his curious animal grace. He intrigued her. Everything about him intrigued her. She couldn’t keep from staring at him, although she tried to think of other things. The wind. The rain. Leopards leaping at her throat. Her lashes drifted down. She listened to the rain and shivered. Before she had been burning up; now she felt inexplicably cold. The sound of the rain driving down on the rooftop added to her discomfort. She couldn’t hear him moving around the house. It wasn’t that the storm drowned out the sounds, he was simply that quiet. Like a great jungle cat.
RACHAEL forced her eyes open to keep him in sight. She felt dreamy, disconnected with reality. Rio stood several feet from her, close to the stove. Casually hooking his thumbs in his wet jeans, he eased them from his hips, slowly exposing his firm buttocks and his long, muscular back to her. She tried not to gawk as he washed up, using hot water from the stove. He was thorough about it, his muscles flexing as he worked. He reminded her of the statues she’d seen in Greece, the defined muscles and well-proportioned ultra-masculine body. It occurred to her that he was completely at home without clothes. He seemed to have forgotten she was in the room, displaying no modesty whatsoever.
He lit a match and held it to the needle he’d used to sew her leg before performing the same task on his arm. Rachael heard him swear when he doused his hip with the same evil liquid he had used on her. Evidently he kept large supplies of it to refill his little vial. He turned slightly as he sewed his hip and she got a frontal view. Twin columns for thighs and looking every bit as good or better than the anatomically correct statues.
“You have a beautiful body.” Rachael would never have called attention to the fact that he was naked. The words slipped out before she could censor them, or maybe someone else said them. She looked around to see if they were really alone. She had said it after all, and she meant it. The honesty in her voice didn’t even make her blush or turn away when he looked over at her with his penetrating, focused gaze.
Rachael stared at him openly, inspecting him the way she might a beautiful sculpture. She smiled dreamily. “Don’t mind me. I think it’s the drugs talking. I’ve just never seen a man with a body as beautiful as yours is.”