The Devil and Ms. Moody (9 page)

The scene seemed to hesitate before Edwina’s eyes. The moonlight crystallized to silver strands, and water droplets hung in the air like icy gems. The form flew upward, roaring and shaking, a rocket from Atlantis, a sea creature in imminent flight. Even before the water had cleared, Edwina knew it was he.

He shook off the excess water and threw his head back, flinging wet hair off his face. It cascaded down his back like heavy black satin, streaming water, deflecting light. Residual water defined the contours of his body, drenching muscles and body hair. Standing in the pool, sunk in reflected moonlight up to his hips, he was an awesome sight.

Edwina ducked back into the cover of the rocks and pressed a hand to the frantic noise in her chest. She had found what she was looking for. The question ringing in her head was what did she do
now?
She felt weak, almost faint, at the thought of approaching him. He was too wet, too naked, too male. She was losing her nerve. She hated herself for it, but whatever part of her had fantasized this moment was totally overwhelmed by the reality of it.

She waited until he sank back into the pool and began to swim lazily, rolling and submerging like a sea animal at play. The strongest impulse inside her was to leave, to run like crazy.
Now—while she still could.
If she disappeared around the rocks while he was under water, he would never know she’d been there. Her heart soared as she hesitated. She imagined herself slipping away soundlessly, vanishing into the darkness, running. And yet she didn’t move.

He surfaced again, to a soft gasp of sound. His? Or her own? She couldn’t run now. She was caught. He hadn’t seen her yet, but he soon would unless she could become an inanimate as the rocks, unless she could slow her crazy heart and still her breathing.

She’d never done anything like this before—watch a man swim naked in the moonlight. A man who didn’t know he was being watched. She’d never even seen a man undress, for that matter. What little furtive groping she’d done in high school and her one fling in college had all been accomplished in murky parked cars. Nothing like this. Nothing so stark and real. Nothing so beautiful.

The crazy excitement inside her made it almost impossible to continue looking at him, painful somehow. And yet she couldn’t drag her eyes away. As he shook his hair and rose to his full height, Edwina realized he was coming ashore. Her stomach wrenched, and she averted her eyes as he waded out of the pool.

He wasn’t twenty feet from her, water still streaming down his body as she looked up. It was unavoidably evident that he was built well, everywhere: long-limbed, superbly muscled, and ridiculously well endowed. He picked up his jeans and stood a moment, as though letting his body dry in the night air before he put the jeans on.

Edwina was helplessly fascinated by his apparent comfort with his nakedness. She found her eyes returning again and again to the spear of dark hair that knifed toward his groin—and lower, to dark male parts that gave her a thrill of fear.

Her heart began to pound almost violently, and finally it was too much for her. She couldn’t look at him any more than she could force the image of him from her mind—his body glistening in the moonlight, sensual and pagan.

When she turned back, he was gone.

She scanned the area nervously, thinking that the flickering light must be playing tricks. When it became evident that he was really gone, she came out of the shadows. She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

She walked to the pool, staring at the lustrous sheet of light, and wondered if she would ever feel free enough to strip off her clothes and plunge into the water, or into life, with such abandon. She’d never been inclined toward self-indulgent pleasures in any form. They’d always seemed selfish somehow, even decadent. And yet Diablo seemed content to go where the wind blew him—no strings, no responsibilities, answering to no one. Was that self-indulgence? Or self-fulfillment?

Kneeling at the pond’s edge, she filled her cupped hands and splashed cool water over her face and arms. She ached to feel that coolness trickle over her sticky breasts and midriff, but even If she’d had the courage, there wasn’t time. He was undoubtedly heading back to their campsite, and he would wonder where she’d gone.

The moon seemed to flash with a peculiar brightness as Edwina rose to her feet. She hesitated, staring at the reflections in the pool, her own and—

Spinning around, she smothered a gasp as she saw him. He was standing near the outcropping of rocks where she had stood. And he was watching her just as she’d watched him.

“You knew I was there all along,” she said, hardly able to speak.

“Turnabout’s fair play, Princess,” he said softly. “You had your stripshow. Now I want mine.”

A
STRIPSHOW
? Edwina stepped back, her bare heels sinking into the gently lapping water. “That’s not funny.”

“Who’s laughing?”

“But we have a deal,” she said, thinking quickly. “Hands off? No questions? It was
your
idea, remember?”

Diablo slipped his thumbs into the belt loops of his damp jeans, the only clothing he wore. The effect was to drag the unsnapped jeans lower on his hips, revealing a line of white skin that hadn’t seen the sun. Edwina hadn’t noticed it before, and in some strange way the sight was even more provocative than his nude body had been. Especially now that she knew what was inside those jeans.

He began to advance, and Edwina had the choice of backing more deeply into the water, standing her ground, or trying to outrun him. None of these seemed advisable, given the predatory glint in his eyes.

“Hands off, remember?” Her voice cracked, desperate. “If you break the agreement, then so can I.”

“Who said anything about handling you? All I want is a show. I think I’ve got that coming, don’t you?”

Edwina’s pulse was frantic. This wasn’t part of her fantasy at all, and yet something was riveting her in place, just as before. She couldn’t have outrun him if she’d wanted to, but that wasn’t what was holding her. It was the reason she’d come in the first place. It was what he represented—a chance to feel something that was free and uninhibited. Freedom was a frightening thing, she realized.
And irresistible.

“Let’s get the show on the road, Princess. Strip.”

His rough command jolted her into action. She touched the strap of her T-shirt and averted her eyes, unable to look at him as she realized that she was going to do it.
She was going to take off her clothes.
She began to draw the strap off her shoulder, and the warmth of her sensitive skin brought her an unexpected shock of awareness.

She gasped softly as the hot sensation ran down the length of her arm, electrifying everything in its path—skin, sensory nerves, delicate bones and tissue. In its aftermath she felt raw and burned to the touch, as though she’d been exposed to the sun too long.

Dear God
, she thought,
I don’t think I like this
.

But her body didn’t seem to care whether she liked it or not. Her skin was responding to the flood of nervous agitation with a tingling urgency. Warm and vibrant, her breasts seemed to be growing heavier by the second, lush with hormonal stimulation, her nipples rapidly contracting.

Edwina’s next breath came too quickly, and her fingers froze on the strap. As much as she might want to go through with it, the prospect of exposing her
aroused
body to his eyes was almost painful to a woman as modest as she.

“We haven’t got all night here, Princess.”

He
could
be cruel, she thought. Couldn’t he see how difficult this was for her?

She drew the strap off her shoulder and anticipated another electric shock, expecting the jolt of current like a child who’d just touched an open socket. She held her breath as it hit, a beautiful, wiry kind of pain that was almost unbearable. Her lungs spasmed, seeking air.

She shook her head, not looking at him.

“What’s wrong?” His voice was taut.

“I
can’t.”
There was a plea in her shaking declaration. Dizziness swept her as she tried to look up. Her mouth went dry, and her breath flooded in and out so fast, she couldn’t tell if she was inhaling or exhaling. It might have been too much nervous stimulation or too little food. She hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and yet it didn’t feel like faintness.

Watching her from his vantage point, Diablo tossed back his damp hair. What the hell was she up to? She looked as if she were about to faint, and yet moments before, watching him from the rocks, she’d been devouring him with her eyes. He figured she had finally decided to come out and play, but maybe he’d been wrong.

Some women were difficult to read. This one was deadly. Her big brown eyes were full of erotic messages:
Take me,
they said.
Make wild love to me, drown me in passion.
And then whenever he got near her, she went limp as a baby. She was waiting for someone to sweep her up and take her to heaven. He’d known that from his first good long look into her enormous eyes, but he’d made up his mind
not
to be that man. The hell of it was that she’d been making him regret his decision ever since.

She brought a hand to her forehead, and he thought he saw her falter. “Edwina?” He reached her in seconds, hooked an arm beneath her legs and scooped her up. “It’s all right,” he said, wading into the pool with her. “I’ve got you.”

He intended to revive her. Instead the chill water hit Edwina’s overheated skin with a rush of cold that nearly threw her into shock. She clung to Diablo dizzily as the mountain became a carnival ride and everything began to swirl and blur around her.

“You okay, Princess?”

Edwina had no idea how much time had passed when at last the world stopped spinning and his voice wafted down to her again. “You okay?” he repeated, sounding husky and concerned.

She shook her head. “I don’t ... like ... this.”

He didn’t quite smile, and the slight compression of his lips was infinitely sexier than if he had. “Let’s see if we can fix that.” Cradling her gently in his arms, he knelt and settled her weight on his bent knee, immersing them both to their shoulders in the pool.

Using his arm as a backrest, he began to work gently and steadily on the taut cords in her neck. Water pooled and eddied with his slow, rhythmic movements, and the combination of warm fingers and cool liquid flowing against Edwina’s skin seduced her muscles into a state of thick, dreamy languor.

“Let me know when you like it,” he said.

She gave a little gasp as he began working his thumb into taut shoulder muscles. “What happens when I do ... like it?” she asked.

“Anything you want.”

“You’ll put me down?”

“If that’s what you want.”

A warning went off in Edwina’s head. He had the tone of a man who was much too sure of himself and his sexual power over her.

“In that case, I do like it,” she said. “Now, if you’ll put me down ...”

He moved a little deeper into the pool, releasing her in water that came up to her breasts. Edwina clutched at his arms, unsteady on her feet as she touched bottom. The pool floor was studded with small rocks, and she still felt a little woozy.

He caught her elbows, anchoring her. “Are you okay?”

She nodded, aware of the husky texture of his voice and, more gradually, of her fingers gripping the muscles of his upper arms. As the water lapped at her breasts and ribboned between her legs, she realized she was staring at the damp, downy whorls of hair that patterned his chest. A beautiful pattern, she thought, like wings. Her fingers tightened on his arms.

A peculiar thing was happening to Edwina as she stood in the water opposite him. Her body was cooling on the outside and warming on the inside. There was a flowing of sensation in the vicinity of her female parts that was uncannily similar to the cool stream of water around her, but it was several degrees warmer and somehow tender. It made her think of a bruise just beginning to swell, exquisitely sensitive to the touch.

Was it starting all over again? she wondered. The soft aching, the dreamy urgency that had brought her here? In a few more seconds, would she want him so badly she’d be lost?

“What if I wanted to leave?” she said. “Right now.”

“Are you asking if I’d stop you?”

“Yes.”

“Then the answer is no, I wouldn’t.”

Edwina searched his features. Would he really let her go that easily? Without a struggle? She saw the low-glowing wattage in his eyes, the muted charge of sexual energy, and suddenly she understood. He was willing to let her go because he knew she wouldn’t go. He understood her weaknesses better than she did. Oh, she hated him for that. She hated him for knowing she didn’t have the strength to walk away from him.
She hated him for knowing how urgently she wanted to be with him.

She glanced down, shaking her head in self-reproach.

“I wouldn’t stop you, Princess,” he said. “But I might try to persuade you not to leave.”

She felt him take her by the shoulders, and a sigh welled up in her throat. In her determination not to look at him, she was startled by the sight of her own soaked T-shirt clinging to her breasts. Wet cotton was stretched thin as tissue over her creamy flesh. Her nipples budded before her eyes, tingling almost painfully. She might as well have been naked, except that this was worse somehow, sexy glimpses of half-drenched skin that fed the imagination. Her head snapped up, and she caught him looking at her there too.

His dark lashes fanned upward as he raised his eyes slowly to hers. “Ever heard the phrase ‘beautiful when wet’?” he said.

“I think that’s
‘slippery
when wet.’ ”

“Even better.”

As Edwina registered the sexual meaning of what she’d said, the warmth inside her became heat. Taut, scarlet heat that stained her face as well. She ducked her head, reluctant to cooperate as he brought her face back up to his.

“Do something you’re afraid of, Princess.” He cupped her chin and stared into her eyes. “Just once. You’ll live the thrill a thousand times in your mind.”