Demon Lover (11 page)

Julie smiled, said, "
Gracias
," then added, "
Hasta luego
," and left Linda standing on the beach, hunched against the wind, a defiant and oddly touching figure.

As she plodded back around the bay, Julie had more to think about than the sand in her huaraches. It was that phrase—sleeping demon. Linda was right. The last thing she needed was to wake up that particular demon. She shared a bed with him. How could she hope to slip away tonight without waking him? With his panther’s body, his predator’s reflexes, he was sure to be a light sleeper. Unless—

The thought brought a flush to her cheeks and a hollow feeling to her middle. Unless she could insure that his guard would be down, that he would be completely relaxed, that he would sleep as if drugged. And without access to drugs, she knew of only one way to do that.

I will have to seduce the demon.

"S
EÑOR CHAYNE ES
mucho hombre, no?"

Julie felt a nudge in her ribs and looked up to find Linda lounging against a post, smiling lazily through the familiar curtain of smoke. She shrugged a noncommittal reply, but her eyes were pulled as if by a powerful magnet back to the scene on the beach.

The fishermen had returned, heralded by a flock of screeching seabirds. From the
ramada
, the open–sided shelter that was both communal dining room and kitchen, the women were watching them bring the boats in and beach them, and unload the catch.

He looks more like a pirate than a smuggler, Julie thought.

Like the others, Chayne wore only tattered jeans rolled to the knee. A red scarf had been tied around his head Indian–style, serving to keep both hair and sweat out of his eyes as he worked. Sweat and spray had given his body a metallic sheen, like a tarnished statue of a Greek hero.

Pirate, or tarnished hero? Make up your mind, Julie.

But no statue could possibly capture the sheer power, the wild and savage grace, of that body. Its pulse–quickening beauty was in its characteristic fluidity and economy of motion—bending, stooping, leaping over the bow, thigh muscles bunching, straining faded denim as they braced against the pull of the heavy boat. If those back and shoulder muscles were cast in bronze, it must be molten still.

There went her stomach again!
What is the matter with me?

That awful hollow void yawned inside her whenever she thought about what she intended to do tonight. She told herself over and over it was just another assignment: escape. A very simple plan, really. No big deal at all. She’d handled more complicated operations. All she had to do was fill up El Demonio with lobster and cerveza and take him to bed. Afterward he would sleep like a log, and she would be free to slip away to the boats. Easy as pie.

Sure. Who am I kidding?

She hadn’t the least idea how to go about seducing a man; she didn’t even know if she could. And what did she know about men, anyway?
Did
sex make men sleepy?

And what if I can’t get him to make love to me?

She already had his personal assurances she was not irresistible.

Oh God, what if I can’t?

She watched in awe as Chayne shouldered a two–hundred–pound grouper, bowing his back while the grizzled and stoic Sebastien helped Pepe and Geraldo steady the load, then strode steadily up the beach toward the shelter amid shouts of encouragement and some good–natured teasing. She bit back a tiny whimper of desperation.

What in heaven’s name ever made me think I could?

He is El Demonio Garzo.

No. Far worse than any demon, he was, as Linda kept pointing out,
mucho hombre
. It never sounded quite right in English, but in any language Chayne Younger was a lot of man. And Julie knew at last that Colin was right: She was afraid of men. Afraid, at least, of the kind of raw masculinity Chayne Younger radiated.

She had to do it. She had to think of it as merely a tough assignment. She’d been afraid before, and it had never stopped her from doing what she had to do.

But it wasn’t only that she was afraid. She really didn’t know how to go about deliberately enticing a man. She had spent her entire adult life suppressing her femininity, becoming just another agent—one of the guys. The affair with Colin was something she’d sort of drifted into, almost without realizing it. He was older; he made her feel safe. Once upon a time, long, long ago, before that jerk Carl Swensen, she had known how to flirt. It had come naturally to her, as it would to any pretty teenager blessed with bouncy blond hair and big brown eyes. But that had been another life, a different Julie.

A husky gurgle of laughter drew her gaze back to where Linda lounged against one of the posts that supported the ramada’s thatched roof. Linda, she was sure, would know exactly what to do. There was an aura of sensuality about her that was as tangible as steam. It was just
there
, in the lines of her body, the curve of her mouth, in the sleepy, sooty eyes. She seemed to adopt those suggestive poses without conscious thought, and although Julie realized some of them—the undulating walk, the revealing clothes—were only the tricks of her trade, so to speak, Julie was aware what Linda had went much deeper than that. She had tried to put a name to it—awareness, confidence. Whatever it was, it was probably innate. She doubted very much it could be taught.

She drew in her breath in a soft sigh. Confidence—that was what she needed. Maybe she was the one who should tank up with cerveza.

She couldn’t, of course, even if she really believed that beer could make her less scared. She needed all her wits for this campaign. But the thought did give her an idea. It might not be a bad idea to appear to drink too much. It would help make her sudden change in attitude more believable.

Believable
. There was a word! Could it be applied to any of this? She had spent the better part of the day coldly plotting to get a terrorist to make love to her. Surely it would make a lot more sense to begin right this minute to get roaring, stinking, obliviously drunk!

She had spent the day making plans, laying the groundwork for her escape. After leaving Linda on the beach, she had gone back to the camper, taking advantage of the men’s absence to complete a thorough search of the vehicle, inside and out. The search had failed to turn up anything useful except for the bra she had stuffed into the crack in the booth the day before. She’d used the last of the water in the tanks for a tepid wash, scrubbing her underwear clean with a sliver of hand soap.

In the early afternoon hunger had driven her back to Rita’s adobe. She felt a certain reluctance to face Rita again after that morning, but she still had to learn where the food and water were stored, and make provisions for securing supplies for her voyage. She had no way of knowing how long she might be at sea.

The hut was empty, but the sound of voices led her to the long, thatched–roofed cooking shelter. There she found Rita standing before one of the wooden tables, up to her elbows in flour and cornmeal, making tortillas. Beside her, her thick coronet of salt–and–pepper braids barely reaching the younger woman’s shoulder, stood a tiny round woman with a flat, seamed face, sun–bronzed to the color of adobe clay. The two pairs of floury hands flew, making a dry, slapping rhythm that was punctuated but not interrupted by the laughter and conversation that erupted sporadically.

The busy hands hadn’t paused at Julie’s arrival, either— not until the tortillas in progress had achieved the desired thinness and been transferred to the growing pile on the table. Then Rita filled a plate with cold fish smothered in green chili salsa ladled from a large pot simmering on an open fire. After introducing Julie to Sebastien’s wife, Juanita, Rita had gone to stir the pot of pinto beans bubbling aromatically on the fire, giving Julie a look of puzzled compassion that made her feel obscurely guilty.

Old Juanita’s eyes had been sharp and shrewd. She had studied Julie with that frank appraisal bordering on rudeness that is the privilege of the very young and the very old. Later, in silence and with infinite patience, she had taught her how to make the cornmeal tortillas that, along with the deceptively simple and delicious
frijoles refritas
, were the staple of every meal.

As her hands struggled with the rapid motions that, properly executed, would turn a blob of cornmeal paste into a perfectly round and uniformly thin pancake, Julie’s eyes roamed the shelter, cataloging the galvanized washtub draped with wet gunnysacks, which was the beer cooler, the airtight plastic barrels that held dry staples, the collection of cooking implements hanging from nails in the rafters. She hoped to find a knife, anything that could be used as a weapon, but the closest thing she could see was a soup ladle that might be employed as a club. These men would not be so careless, but old habits were hard to break.

By the time the last tortilla had been placed on the stack on the table, Julie’s arms were aching and Linda still hadn’t put in an appearance. It didn’t surprise Julie that the woman would manage to avoid the cook shed—it was hard to imagine that sultry, indolent creature immersed in domesticity—but she really did need to find her if she was going to take her up on her offer of a more alluring costume. She hated to ask directions from Rita, knowing how she felt about the other woman, so she brushed cornmeal from her arms and lap and went in search of Pepe’s cabin.

It wasn’t hard to find. Except for Geraldo’s cabin, which she already knew, and the larger and more permanent adobe surrounded by animal shelters and derelict machinery the old people shared, it was the only hut with an air of occupancy. She had found Linda sprawled on a rumpled bed, painting her nails, squinting through the trail of smoke that snaked upward from a dangling cigarette.

"So, gringa," the girl drawled, slowly waving her blood–red fingertips. "I suppose you have come for the clothes." She blew on her nails, watching Julie from under straight black lashes. "It takes more than clothes to make a man wake up and look at you. You don’t walk like a woman. You don’t even use your eyes! How you ever made a living I don’t know. No wonder you so skinny, even for a gringa."

"You offered me some clothes," Julie retorted, then added in bold challenge, "What’s the matter? Don’t you think you can work miracles?"

Linda laughed, a husky chortle of approval, and examined her with mixed skepticism and interest. "Well, you do not have much to work with, but I will see what I can do. Pay attention to me, gringa, and I can tell you—El Demonio will not sleep tonight!"

Julie had smiled, hoping the sudden flip–flop her stomach had executed didn’t show in her face. The last thing she wanted tonight was a wakeful demon.

Now, as the men drew nearer she was beset by shyness and uncertainty, a confusing morass of feelings and fears that engulfed her like a thick, impenetrable fog. Outwardly she knew she must appear to the others as just a woman waiting for her man, full of that particular tension and anticipation that was the natural distillation of shared intimacy. It was acknowledged and accepted that Chayne Younger was her man—or, more accurately in this man’s world, that she was his woman. Only she and Chayne knew they weren’t lovers.

He was still a stranger to her in every way, a complete enigma. But whatever else he was, he was certainly a dangerous, even deadly, man. She
was
afraid of him. And even more, she was in awe of him, which was something she had never said of anyone else in the world. And it didn’t help at all that he was the most attractive man she’d ever met. Just his presence was enough to turn her wits to wool and her will to gelatin. When he was near her, she didn’t even recognize herself.

And that, she realized, was what frightened her so much: that she might be igniting something in herself she wouldn’t be able to reconcile or control. That she, Julie Maguire, was about to find herself holding a tiger by the tail. A tiger… or a panther.

Or a demon.

Julie hung back, waiting in the shadows, watching the other women for her cue. She had become part of a primitive society, as if she’d been dropped in a time machine and hurled backward uncounted centuries.

How did one behave toward returning "hunter–providers"? She was as nervous as any bride. What would she say to him? She hadn’t spoken to him since that morning, and it seemed much longer—a lifetime. So much had happened since he’d walked out of the hut, wishing her a good day and calling her Blondie. Her knowledge of his activities, her own plan to escape—they’d all made things different, somehow. It was hard to believe.

She had to keep reminding herself of the incredible fact that she’d shared his bed last night. That only last night he had kissed her, touched her intimately, branded her with his mouth.

Her stomach recoiled, and she lifted trembling fingers to the purple mark plainly visible just above the edge of the neckline of her borrowed red tank top. It had earned a low whistle and a smile from Linda, who treated her with more respect from then on. The woman had also expressed admiration for Julie’s long, well–muscled legs, and had insisted she show them to advantage by wearing shorts. Of course the skimpy black garment, which hugged Linda’s curves like a second skin, draped over Julie’s tautly muscled derrière "like the robes of a nun," according to Linda. But the girl had agreed grudgingly that the woven belt made her waist look impossibly tiny, and the tank top did mold and define her high, round breasts. And, of course, it showed off that mark.

And now fear had given her skin a satiny sheen of perspiration and brought her nipples into sharp relief under the scarlet jersey. Julie thought wryly:
If I don’t look sexy now, I never will!

At first, though, it seemed to Julie she might have saved herself the effort because, along with the other women, she was completely ignored. The men carried in the enormous fish and deposited it on one of the long wooden tables. The grouper had already been cleaned and the offal thrown to the scavenging seabirds; now Sebastien was left to cut it into fillets while the younger men returned to the boats for the lobsters, which would be kept alive in tubs of seawater for tomorrow’s dinner. The little boy Carlos darted about under the feet of the men, and the women hurried to lay the table and prepare the heavy iron skillets.