The Devil and Ms. Moody (8 page)

They rode through a beautiful heavily wooded area that bordered on a rushing river. Edwina took one look at the swirling blue water and wanted to wade in, clothes and all. It wasn’t just her imagination that had overheated. The temperature had been climbing steadily all afternoon. To her fevered brow it felt as if the mercury had peaked out somewhere in the mid-nineties.

Diablo seemed to have read her mind. He broke off from the pack as they pulled into the camping area and headed for a secluded area upriver from the rest of the gang.

“How about a swim?” he said as he pulled the bike into a lush grove of willows.

Edwina wanted desperately to feel the cool water all over her sweltering body, but she didn’t have a suit, and neither skinny-dipping nor a wet T-shirt plastered to her breasts seemed like a safe idea at the moment. Even if he could be trusted—which she doubted—
she
definitely couldn’t be.

“Maybe later, when we’ve set up camp,” she said, slipping off the bike. As she hit the ground, everything protested, from the arches of her feet to the muscles of her inner thighs. She ached as though she’d been riding a horse all day.

Flattening her palms on her hips, she managed a couple of creaky steps—and came nearly face-to-face with Squire. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder, and he was flanked by two other Warlords, men Edwina didn’t recognize.

“I’m gonna need your old man for a while,” he said, speaking directly to Edwina. “We’ve got some hunting to do.”

His eyes flashed a challenge. Even if Edwina had any doubt about his intentions, she couldn’t have missed the rigid authority in his posture, the steel in his voice. He was daring her to defy him. All three of them were. They were waiting, baiting her with bullying looks.

Her stomach clenched, and she turned away, defying the danger signals in Diablo’s eyes. She was beginning to hate the predicament she found herself in a lot. Grown men with beards who picked on small animals, motorcycles that had aphrodisiac properties and a tropical heat wave—she slapped viciously at her arm—complete with mosquitoes.

Edwina met Diablo’s glance and answered his warning with one of her own. His eyes hardened to emerald shards, piercingly beautiful and frightening. Her throat gripped, convulsing on its own movement, but she held her ground. Don’t go, she implored silently.

He flicked his head, tossing black hair. With a quick careless gesture, he dug a red bandanna from his jeans pocket and tied it around his head. He can be cruel, she realized, witnessing the coldness in him. He can kill just as mercilessly as they do, and probably for no better reason than to show off his prowess with a weapon.

“Set up camp while I’m gone, Ed,” he said brusquely. He strode to his cycle, pulled a sheathed knife from his gear, and strapped it on his leg. Edwina shuddered, from both anger and revulsion. How could he do such a thing?

It was close to nightfall when he returned. Edwina had spent most of the day at war with her own emotions and the rest of it in a fruitless quest for anything she could discover about Christopher Holt. It seemed that all the men had gone hunting, and because of her scene with Squire, the women weren’t talking. Even Carmen had been unusually reticent when Edwina posed a few “friendly” questions about the Warlords, making Edwina wonder if Carmen had been ordered to give her the cold shoulder.

Now Edwina had a small fire going and some packaged soup simmering. She’d also found a corn-bread mix that needed only water. Her efforts were more from principle than hunger. The heat and emotional turmoil had robbed her of an appetite, but she wanted it known that she had no intention of eating whatever the Great White Hunter brought back.

He surprised her by striding into the campsite in an uncharacteristically upbeat mood and dropping a gunnysack at her feet. “It’s a jungle out there,” he said, a slow grin breaking as she glared at him.

Edwina glanced at the sack, grimacing as she imagined the contents. “I was hoping the wildlife would get
you
.”

“Is that how you talk to the man who’s just brought you dinner?” He crouched next to the sack and stared up at her, an odd glint of amusement in his eyes. “If you’re not going to cook it, I will.”

“Cook it? Dear Lord!”

Diablo reached for the sack, but Edwina beat him to it. Spurred by sincere outrage, she whipped it from under his nose. “Nobody’s going to cook anything,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. “I’m giving the poor thing a decent burial.”

“You might want to take a look at it first.”

A strange odor filled Edwina’s nostrils, pungent and unpleasantly metallic. “What’s in there?” She opened the sack and pulled out a good-size brook trout by its tail. “You let me think this was a raccoon?” she said, incredulous. “How could you do that?”

A devilish grin broke on his face, and Edwina couldn’t help herself. He
was
cruel—cruel to make her believe he’d killed an animal, and crueler still to make fun of her distress. She took a backhand swing at him, fish and all. He ducked gracefully, dodging again as she tried a forehand. They both knew it was futile. He was much too fast for her, and that knowledge, with his hoots of laughter, drove Edwina crazy with frustration. She wanted to get the bastard so badly, she could taste it!

Occasionally the Fates take pity. Whatever the reason on this occasion, they smiled down on Edwina’s plight with a certain poetic elegance. The very gunnysack that Diablo had brought the fish in became the instrument of his downfall. Literally. As Edwina menaced him again, his boot-heel caught in the slippery burlap. His feet flew out from under him, and despite an impressive effort to save himself, he sprawled on the ground.

Hard-packed clay. A large man. It was a nasty collision.

Edwina’s surprise surfaced in a hiccup of laughter. Of all the fatal diseases and black curses she’d wished on him that morning, she’d never thought of having him slip on a bag and land on his fanny. She walked over and gazed down at him, knowing she should ask him if he was hurt. Unfortunately a different impulse came over her.

“How does it feel, Great White Hunter?” she said, placing a foot on his chest and dangling the sacrificial fish over his nose. She was pressing her luck, and she knew it. Whatever state of grace she might have enjoyed up to that point was rapidly ending. Even the Fates would have blanched at the wicked glint in Diablo’s eyes.

“How does it feel?” he said. “You tell me.”

He yanked her foot ferociously, and hop though she might, Edwina couldn’t keep her balance. The fish landed in the river behind her, and she landed on Diablo.

Without divine intervention, she didn’t stand a chance against him. He flipped her on her side, facing away from him, and pinned her arms behind her back before she could even think about struggling. “You need some lessons on being a Warlord’s woman,” he said, his breath hot near her ear.

Locking her up against his body with an arm around her midriff, he elaborated. “Lesson number one: Don’t ever laugh at your man, Princess.”

“You deserved it. You let me think that disgusting thing was a raccoon ...”

His laughter was ironic. “What’s this?” he said. “Edwina Moody, protector of all living things, doesn’t love a fish?”

“It’s not the same,” she said. “Fish are ... fish.”

He brought her around to face him, green eyes sparkling as he recaptured her hands behind her back. “Could the trout help it he didn’t have big brown eyes like a raccoon?”

“Now you’re championing fish? You, who just killed one?”

They stared at each other for a long moment, both smelling pungently of fish oils and musky heat, and then they began to laugh. Softly at first, and reluctantly on Edwina’s part.

“Lesson number two, Princess,” he said, his voice shimmering with ardent undertones. “The clothes come off.”

“What do you mean?”

He gripped her wrists tighter when she tried to pull free. “A swim in the river. We both smell pretty ripe.”

Edwina could feel every inch of his “ripe” body against hers, and the smell of fish was the last thing that concerned her. She knew unquestionably that if she took off her clothes and went into the river with him, it would escalate into the most abandoned interlude she’d ever had.

She knew it because she’d felt it beginning from the first time he’d trapped her in his hot green gaze. She’d felt it all, the rising tide of awareness between them, the swift and paralyzing intimacy, the building toward something inevitable. She couldn’t even ride behind him on the bike without fantasizing what it would be like to make love with him. How would she ever survive the river—naked?

“I’ll make do with a sponge bath.” She remembered her shoulder and spot-checked it. “I don’t want to mess up the tattoo.”

“That tattoo,” he said, his voice grating softly, “is
my
mark.” Rolling her onto her back, he pinned her arms above her head and raked swiftly over her body with his eyes. Edwina nearly had heart failure as she imagined his intentions. The ground was rock hard against her shoulder blades, and she could feel the weight of the leg he’d dropped over hers, trapping her.

He studied her for another long moment before he released her. His eyes continued their indolent scrutiny, brushing over her with an intimacy that felt as physical as a stolen kiss. He scanned her breasts, lingering as her breathing quickened. And then he caught her lips in his gaze.

If Edwina had been standing, she would have buckled at the knees. There was a quality of rough seduction in his gaze that left her utterly weak. Lethargy crept into her muscles, saturating her with its soft ache. And yet she was trembling by the time he released her. Trembling with sensations so vibrant, they hurt her with their brightness.

He smiled faintly.

If ever a man knew he could have a woman, this one did, Edwina realized. And yet he didn’t act on it. He combed his dark hair back negligently and rose to his feet, standing over her. With a quick motion of his hand, he brought her to her feet, his eyes flashing over her body with one last scorching look before he broke away. Edwina swayed unsteadily as he left her, as though the forces holding her up were being drawn off in his wake.

She could do little but watch him as he walked away—long, long legs and lean hips melting into the darkness. Once he’d disappeared, she sagged onto a log near the fire.

Gracious
was all she could think.
Good gracious
. It was her mother’s phrase, so ridiculously old-fashioned and yet oddly appropriate to the moment. Her heart was hammering, flooding her body with blood and heat and relief. She should have been grateful.
She should have been down on her knees, thanking the heavens for her deliverance.

And yet ... she didn’t feel grateful exactly, did she?

She stared at the fire, and as her heart quieted, her mind quickened. What was happening to her? Why was she responding to him so unrestrainedly? He was threatening to her in so many ways, but she seemed to be attracted to the danger he represented, perhaps even to seek it out.

He wasn’t the man she’d always dreamed about. He was the man she’d never
allowed
herself to dream about. The man she must have known instinctively would be her undoing. And yet how to explain these sweet, crazy stirrings inside her? Did she want to be undone?

She certainly didn’t want to be one of those repressed women who melted helplessly under a man’s touch, but that seemed to be exactly what was happening to her. Even now, in the aftershock of her immediate relief, she felt a warm listlessness stealing over her. She drew in a breath and held it, closing her eyes. Crazy, crazy woman—she wanted to be with him!

The admission flooded her with sweet stimulation. She rose to stare restlessly at the river, and within seconds, she was as softened and achy inside as a dreamstruck kid. It was true. She wanted to be with him.
And she wanted it badly.

Conflict rose inside her as she gazed at the river. She hadn’t come to this place for a reckless fling with a biker. She had a mission to accomplish, a man to find, a family to salvage.
Obligations.
Edwina Moody had obligations.

Remembering brought the full weight of her responsibilities down on her. She could feel them settling on her like a heavy coat, and at the same time, a kind of pain welled up in her. The truth—the naked, frightening truth—was that she wanted desperately to shed that suffocating coat, even if only for a moment. She wanted to ride on the back of Diablo’s bike, her hair flying in the wind. She wanted to swim naked with him in mountain rivers.

Impulsively she went to the river’s edge and slipped off her shoes, wading in up to her ankles. The water was so deliciously cool, beads of perspiration broke out along her brow and upper lip. She searched the river’s silvery swirls and ripples for any sign of him, afraid she might find him,
afraid she might not.
The memory of his touch filled her with a sweet, aching longing, and at the same time, she dreamed of the water’s coolness against her burning skin.

She began to wade upstream, more aware with every step that she was spurred by something deeper than conscious control. She needed to find him, that was all, and if she let herself dwell on what would happen when she did, she would lose her courage. She continued upstream as the water swelled and swirled around her, and within moments, the river’s currents had strengthened dramatically against her movements. She rounded a bend, and the river sent up a roar. Opening onto a turbulent section of white water, it foamed and flashed in the moonlight.

It was a breathtaking sight. Under other circumstances Edwina might have stood there, entranced, for hours, but the currents pulling and tugging inside her were even more compelling. Unable to wade any further, she returned to the shore where she rounded an outcropping of rocks, climbed a grassy rise, and found herself staring at one of the most beautiful feeder pools she’d ever seen. Even in the moonlight the water’s jeweled tones were evident—cerulean blues and Egyptian greens.

The water looked so irresistibly cool and inviting to Edwina’s overheated sensibilities that she longed to plunge in. She even touched the zipper of her jeans, but her fingers froze as the water began to ripple and swirl across the pond. A small whirlpool of suction drew her attention, and then a form broke the surface, spewing geysers of water into the gleaming night.