But Dr. Olivia Galpas was, in addition to being young, smart, and possessed of (lovely) breasts and a (strong) heart, the only Hispanic woman in the whole institute. And she’d been the showpiece of every provost cocktail party and university barbecue since she’d hung her MIT doctorate on the wall of her tiny office. Dr. Eames, who was in charge of general funding for the institute, had even taken to tossing her in front of the local and international press to announce important discoveries in the fascinating world of oceanography—something Olivia might have resented had anyone ever bothered to show up at the press conferences. Not a lot of people were interested in minute changes in water temperature in the Indian Ocean. Even the infamous, glamorous El Niño had lost its shine after a year or so.
Olivia Galpas was a novelty in the white male world of oceanography, just as that wide swath of super-heated ocean water had been a novelty when it first showed itself. Olivia had been fervently hoping that everyone would get sick of her soon, as well.
Well, not everyone. She had spent time with Ernesto, enjoying his charm, being proud to be with such a distinguished man. But her heart had never beat even one eighth-note faster. He was dashing, but somehow cold. And now she was learning the truth about him, realizing what a nightmare a life with him might be.
Then there was this bandit—a man whose inner goodness she sensed, no matter what he said about himself. A man who wanted to save her, to nurse her feet, to touch her so protectively.
Engulfed by his tenderness, she leaned toward him. His eyes drifted open partway, and they began a long, slow delicious kiss. She felt his gliding tongue as his two hands folded around her breasts.
A feeling of exhilaration swept through her, and she wondered how she could abandon herself to such a stranger, how she could be swept into a kiss that now was making her feel wild. She wanted to tell him what a good man he could be if he would take on a better profession, but the words came out as small sounds of pleasure and her own hands began to slide over his lean body.
Trying to clear his head, Rafe turned his face away, taking quiet, short breaths.
Be professional,
he told himself.
Keep her safe and nothing more.
But her nearness warmed him, drew him to her, let him for the moment escape the obsession with revenge that for too long had consumed all his heart.
Still in a slow dream of exhaustion, they began to reach under clothes and softly explore. In the cool dim light, their hands touched backs, glided around necks, unbuttoned clothes and folded them back. Each time their lips met, the kisses became harder, teeth bumping, tongues wrestling. They lay on their sides under the low cave ceiling, nearly naked against each other, their mouths melting together, unwilling to pull apart. His hand drifted down her tight stomach, over the smooth hip and down her leg. Working his hand gently between her thighs, he eased his fingers tenderly into her delicately flowing juices, silky and warm.
Olivia groaned as his fingers swam back and forth, then pushed in deeper, kneading what she thought must be the bottom of her heart. She felt his hard erection against her, and she reached to stroke it.
Sliding his mouth down her neck, Rafe sucked first one of her hard nipples, then the other.
“Do you want me,
princesa?
” he murmured, as she began to work her hips back and forth against his sliding hand. “Tell me, tell me what to do.”
Curling over him, she put her lips gently to his ear, then let her warm breath, coming faster now, fill it with an answer that came from animal instinct, not scientific textbooks.
“Yes,” she whispered with a shudder as desire for this outlaw possessed every nerve and muscle in her body. “Yes,” she breathed again, as he writhed his sensitive ear away in a frenzy and their mouths landed back together with new urgency.
He smelled of sagebrush, and she squeezed her eyes closed as his hand quietly worked in her, pushing, pulling, sliding. She clutched him and felt his arousal against her. Lifting her thigh over his, she guided him forward, running her hand between his legs to feel all of him.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, wanting to say something, anything, to let her know his awe, his unbearable pleasure. Fighting temptation to take her wholly, all at once, he pressed his tip through her soft hair and into her folds where his hand had been. He pushed gently, pulled back, then entered farther.
She could feel him begin to fill her, and she took a sharp breath as he pulled back. Her need rose, and she wrapped her arms around him, urging him to give her more.
But he would not be rushed. He took every kiss, every inch into her, as though it would be his last. In near desperation, she ran her hands down the muscles of his back to his tight buttocks. She pressed her body into him, forcing him to surge forward, to push deeper into her as their legs locked in a tangle. Holding himself back, he could feel her clutch him deep inside, as he began a slow rhythm that she met with her own hips. They kissed each other’s ears, necks, shoulders—rocking faster, harder, whispering words that no one understood. When she was on the edge of hysteria, he cried out with a final plunge and felt her contractions.
As the hours passed, Olivia slept in Rafe’s arms. He carefully pulled her bra and panties back in place, rebuttoned her blouse, smoothed down her skirt and pulled his own clothes back on as best he could. Off and on he dozed, wary that the search for them continued, but smiling at the thought that he could not wait to inform the princess she snored.
Olivia shifted slightly, moving her shoulders.
Ow!
Was she sleeping on rocks? And why couldn’t she move her legs?
She reached out blindly and felt dirt under her hand. Well, for crying out loud, her tent wasn’t made out of…
She sat suddenly upright, banging her head on the hard-packed ceiling of the cave and getting a mouthful of sand. And dislodging the man who had been resting against her.
“Ow,” he muttered.
Her memory instantly cleared. Suddenly, she felt wary at the sight of this bandit who had overwhelmed her so easily.
“What are you doing?” she yelled. She spat sand out of her mouth.
Oh, very ladylike, spitting,
she thought.
Look what I’m reduced to.
“What are you doing?” she repeated when she received no answer.
Rafe lay blinking up at the ceiling, which was steadily sifting sand into his face. He ran his tongue around his teeth. They felt furry, like the roof of his mouth.
What
was
he doing?
He’d been dreaming of her. One of those woozy, heart-pounding erotic dreams he hadn’t had since he was a teenager. His face had been buried between her thighs, and she’d been moaning. He felt a little like moaning himself, he was so aroused.
“Were you asleep?” Olivia asked suspiciously.
“Was I asleep?” Rafe repeated dully.
“How could you fall asleep?” She shifted and tried to sit up.
“How could I fall—?”
Olivia peered out the opening of the cave and gave a little shriek of panic. “Oh, my God! It’s almost dark. What time is it?”
Rafe, still flat on his back, raised his wrist to his face and peered at the glowing dial of his watch. Did he know how to read a watch? He couldn’t remem—oh, there it was. His brain kicked sluggishly into first gear as some of the blood seeped uphill from his groin to his cranium.
“Six-forty-eight,” he answered.
“Six-forty-eight?” Olivia shrieked again. “How long have you been asleep?”
He was going to remind her that she’d been the first to fall asleep, but decided it took too much effort. He tried to lift his head to frown at her, at least, but decided halfway through that
that
was going to take too much effort, too. He closed his eyes again, instead. Maybe, if she’d stop that squalling for a minute, he could get back to the dream…
“Rafael!”
“What?” he snarled.
“I’ve got to get out of this hole!”
For the first time since he’d dragged her out of Cervantes’s party last night, Rafe heard an edge of panic in her voice. The passion that had brought her to a frenzy just hours before was now replaced with another kind of hysteria. Was it fear? he wondered, or a massive change of heart?
He reluctantly gave up the dream and rolled to his side—away from her, in case she could spot his rather embarrassing physical state in the dark of the cave—and peered out the opening.
“Wait here a minute,” he said, his voice husky.
“I can’t wait.” She was crowded up behind him, trying to shove him out the opening. “I have to get out.”
“Settle down,” he snapped. “I want to look around.”
“Well, you’d better do it quick.”
“Yes,
princesa,
” he said, and slid carefully out of the cave.
“You promised not to call me that,” Olivia said after him, wondering at her own exasperation.
Rafe stayed in a squat for a minute, then eased to a standing position, his cramped muscles screaming, his bruised ribs making it painful to breathe.
He listened to the desert for a minute. It was alive with the sound of dusk. A good sign. No growling Land Cruisers to disturb the nightly ritual of animals awakening from the heat of the day.
He leaned over and looked in the crevice.
“Okay,” he said, and Olivia shot out of the opening like a bullet from a gun.
“Oh man, oh man,” she was muttering. “Okay, this is the deal.” She was looking around rather wildly. Rafe stared at her, nonplussed. “I haven’t gone to the bathroom since last night, and I really have to go. I’m not particularly interested in you watching me, of course—”
The gracious, imperturbable Dr. Galpas was babbling; it was a fascinating thing to watch, Rafe thought. “—but then again, I don’t want to get bitten by scorpions tromping through the cactus, either. So I’m going to go right behind that clump of brush right there, and I want you to turn around and promise you won’t look.”
Rafe turned around obediently, smiling. “Okay,
princesa.
”
She hissed a well-seasoned swear word in English at him, making him chuckle. “You said you wouldn’t call me that anymore,” she said.
“That’s true. But it’s such a temptation.”
“Resist it.”
“I’ll try, but I haven’t been very good at resisting temptation with you.” He scratched thoughtfully at the beard on his face. “I may be reaching my limit again.”
“Ha!”
“You don’t believe that?”
“I don’t believe you’ve resisted temptation much where anything’s concerned. Smuggler.”
He chuckled evilly. “You don’t know what nasty things I’ve been tempted to do to you, Doctor. Since the moment I saw you come out of the little bathroom last night.”
Olivia stopped trying to smooth the wrinkles from her skirt and stared at his back. She didn’t want to think about the things he could do to her.
“I need to wash my hands,” she muttered crossly. “I need to wash my hair.”
Rafe turned around. “I imagine the facilities are not what you’re accustomed to.”
She put her hands on her hips. “You know, you are not required to make a snide comment every single time I open my mouth.”
“Probably not. But I enjoy it.”
She scowled at him. “And you’re just a naturally happy person.”
“That’s true,” he conceded.
She came out from behind the chaparral. “Uh-huh.” She looked around. “What are we going to do, now?”
“We’re going to wait for Bobby.”
“What time is it?”
Rafe glanced at his watch again. “Straight up seven.”
“Do you think—?”
“No. I don’t think. Look, now you turn around.”
Olivia glanced down at him. At least, he wasn’t sporting that enormous bulge anymore. She’d thought she was going to have a heart attack when she crawled out of that wretched little cave to have
that
staring her in the face.
She whipped around when she realized she was staring. To her mortification, she heard Rafe chuckle again.
“I wouldn’t be laughing if I were you,” she remarked over her shoulder. “I’ve seen a lot of movies about the conditions in Mexican prisons.”
“I’m not going to prison.”
“Drug running is a federal offense in Mexico,” she reminded him. “As is kidnapping.”
“I didn’t kidnap you, Olivia,” he remarked reasonably. “You kidnapped you.”
“Whatever. Are you finished?”
“I’ll tell you when I’m finished. Unless you want to watch me?”
Olivia blushed. “No, thank you.” Finally, she heard a
zip.
“Okay. You can turn around now.”
She turned, kept her eyes steadfastly on his. “Look, I hate to ruin what is probably the first jolly mood of your life, but you do see this is a pretty impossible situation you’ve gotten us into, here?”
“You got us into it. I would have been happy to finish the whole thing last night.”
“You would have wound up in a pool of your own blood on the floor of Ernesto’s bedroom, you idiot!”
Rafe smiled. “I didn’t say it was going to finish well. I just said
finish.
”
Olivia growled in frustration. “Okay—one, stop smiling. You’re making me nuts.”
“What does that mean, ‘making me nuts’?” he asked, just to watch her spark. His imprudent good mood was really starting to get out of control, he thought happily. He couldn’t logically think of a single reason he should feel this cheerful. Except that Olivia Galpas, who
snored,
was in his clutches.
“If I didn’t know better, I would think you knew,” she mumbled in English. She tossed up her hands. “Never mind what it means. Let’s try and concentrate on how we’re going to get out of this mess.”
“What mess?”
“What mess?” She gaped at him. “What
mess?
I’m starving, thirsty and filthy. I have missed my flight home. For all intents and purposes, I have been kidnapped from the home of a prominent local law enforcement officer. If my boss finds out…good heavens, if my family finds out, I’ll never be let out of the house again.” She pointed accusingly at Rafe. “And you
say
you’re stealing drugs from a man who, from what I witnessed last night, would like to kill you with his bare hands.”