Flame of Diablo (17 page)

She stared back down into the valley,

straining her eyes for the distant glint of

water to show where the river crawled

far beneath. She would get a better view,

she realised, if she climbed up on one of

the boulders. Vitas was a little distance

away, his back turned, attending to the

horses. She was about to call out to him

and tell him what she intended, but she

stopped herself just in time.

For

heaven's

sake,

she

muttered

inwardly, I don't need his approval—

and there were certainly no difficulties

about climbing the rock itself. There

were plenty of hand and footholds, and

the summit seemed to provide a ledge

for her to stand on. She wedged her foot

in a crevice, tried it experimentally to

see that it would bear her weight and not

crumble away, then began to climb.

She was almost at the top, her hand

reaching up to grasp the ledge and haul

herself up on to the summit, when she

heard Vitas shout something behind her.

Instinctively she froze, turning her head,

to see him racing across the grass

towards her. He was carrying a machete

in his hand, the sun glinting on its long

blade, and for one terrified moment she

thought he had gone mad. And then she

heard something else, just above her

head—a slither, and a low sibilant hiss.

'Don't move, you little fool!' His voice

was hoarse as it reached her. 'There

could be a snake on that ledge. They

choose such places ...'

'There is,' she said dry-mouthed. 'Oh,

God, there is.'

The machete went spinning out of his

hand to fall a safe distance away. He

said, 'Jump. Jump, and I'll catch you.'

She said very slowly, 'I—I don't think I

can move.'

'Yes, you can,
querida.'
His voice was

harsh and authoritive. 'Just let yourself

go. Trust me.'

Rachel wanted to laugh hysterically at

the very idea, but no sound came from

her throat except a little moan and,

without thinking any more, she did as he

said and dropped off her insecure perch

into his arms. She felt them close around

her as he staggered backwards, knocked

off balance by the sudden impact. The

next thing she knew she was lying on top

of him in the grass, and his arms were

still holding her.

'Did I hurt you?' she asked awkwardly.

She made an abortive attempt to

scramble to her feet.

'Winded me a little, perhaps. There is

more to you than I thought,
chica.'

She flushed and made another attempt to

struggle free of his restraining arms. 'I'm

sorry.'

'But I am not,' he murmured wickedly.

'What were you doing climbing that

rock?'

'I wanted to see the view properly.'

'It was nearly the last thing you ever did,'

he said grimly. 'You are not strolling in

your English Lake District now, Raquel.

And your quiet approach would have

startled the snake. That is when they are

most

dangerous—when

they

are

frightened.'

It embarrassed and unnerved her to be

lying almost completely on top of him,

her face just inches from his. She

lowered her gaze and stared almost

mesmerically at the silver medallion he

wore at his throat. She had thought it

was one of the cheap religious medals

she had seen for sale in Asuncion, but

now as she looked closer she saw that it

seemed to be some kind of animal

instead, almost heraldic in conception,

and she found herself wondering where

it had come from. It looked older and

considerably more valuable than she had

at first assumed too.

'Well,' she said after a pause, with inane

brightness, 'I have to thank you once

more for coming to my rescue.'

'Graciously spoken,' he murmured, a

thread of laughter underlying the words.

'But I was hoping you would express

your gratitude in a more tangible way.'

'Oh.' She hoped it was the fact that she

was lying full-length which was making

it so difficult to breathe suddenly.

'Kiss me,
querida
,' he whispered

huskily.

She said with a little gasp, 'No—you

can't ask that.'

'Oh, but I can—and I do.' One hand came

up and tangled in her hair, propelling her

head forward. When their lips were the

merest breath apart, he paused.

'Well?' he prompted softly.

Rachel was silent, her eyes searching the

harsh planes and angles of his face,

noticing how the black eye-patch made a

sombre slash against the bronze of his

skin. His mouth was firm, its essential

hardness somewhat alleviated by the

slightly sensual curve of his lower lip,

and she could remember—oh, how well

she remembered—how it had felt against

her own—its warmth, its demand. A

long, betraying shiver ran through her,

and she felt his other hand slide a long

sensuous trail down her back to the base

of her spine.

If she wanted to be free of him, all she

had to do was jerk her body sideways

and roll away from him on to the grass.

If she wanted to be free.

'Vitas,' she whispered pleadingly.

'I like to hear my name on your lips,' he

said softly. 'Now let me feel my mouth

there also.'

With a little inarticulate sound, she bent

her head the necessary hairsbreadth, her

lips shyly caressing the firm contours of

his. She would have drawn back again

almost at once, but the imprisoning hand

in her hair held her close. His mouth

was parting, inviting her to a deeper,

more intimate exploration, and she was

powerless to resist him. Sky and grass

were beginning to swing in a dizzying

arc as she fought for her last remnants of

self-control.

His caressing hand freed her shirt from

the waistband of her jeans and slid

beneath to rest against the warm skin of

her back. She made a little sound deep in

her throat as his hand began to move,

stroking, teasing, discovering every

sensitive spot along her spine until she

moved, pressing herself convulsively

against him. His own response was

immediate and unequivocal, giving her

potent evidence of the desire she had

aroused in him in her turn. With one

swift, lithe twist of his body, he moved

so that she was lying beneath him, their

mouths still pressed together as if they

would drink each other dry.

His other hand disentangled itself from

her hair to stroke her cheek and the

curve of her jaw, and then move slowly

but inexorably down her throat to the

neckline of that primly buttoned shirt.

Without haste, he began to unfasten the

buttons.

A voice she hardly recognised as her

own said, 'No!' And her hands came up

to thrust against his chest and push him

away from her.

'What's the matter,
querida?'
His voice

was husky with that hint of laughter in its

depths, but his uneven breathing

betrayed him. 'Does nudity in the

afternoon also disturb you?'

If he undid one more button then she

would be bare to the waist, and he

would touch her breasts and kiss them,

and she would be totally, utterly lost.

'It's your technique that disturbs me,

senor'
she said bitingly. 'Don't you think

it's getting a little shop-soiled by now?'

She felt the blaze of anger in him and

tensed, but his only reaction was to roll

away from her, his hands releasing her

as if they had been touching something

unclean.

'An interesting theory,
senorita
.' His

voice was quiet, but there was a note in

it which seemed to sear its way along

her nerve-endings. 'You'll be given

every opportunity to test it out

completely when we get to Diablo.'

He got to his feet, brushing dust and

blades of grass from his clothes, and

walked away to where the horses were

waiting, leaving her, crushed and

desolate, to stumble to her feet alone.

CHAPTER SIX

Rachel could hardly believe her eyes

when she saw the thin trail of smoke

rising out of the trees in front of them.

Civilisation, she realised incredulously.

Or at least civilisation of a type. Her

spirits rose, but there was little else they

could do, she thought wryly. Certainly

they couldn't sink any further than they

had done already after this hideous,

silent day in the saddle.

The silence between them as they rode

had been an almost physical thing,

brooding and full of hostility. More than

once she had begun to wish she had

never said what she did, but at the time it

had been an urgent necessity to stop

Vitas making love to her for all kinds of

good and sound reasons, which still

applied, she reminded herself.

Well, she'd succeeded in part at least.

He'd stopped making love to her, but she

hadn't managed to deter him from his

ultimate aim of possessing her, and that

was going to be the really damaging

consequence.

He had frightened her, she thought.

Frightened her by the way he could make

her feel, by his controlled strength when

he touched her and that strange

gentleness which had seemed to restrain

his passion as if he sensed he was

leading her down paths which she had

never trodden before.

Well, she had killed all that stone dead,

she thought drearily. And what could she

expect in its place? A soulless taking,

she supposed. To be used until his anger

and the desire that drove him were

satiated. And if his love-making had

frightened her, then the thought of being

the toy of his sexual expertise drove her

to the edge of panic.

She found herself wondering what

would have happened if she had yielded

to each clamouring instinct back there on

the mountainside and surrendered to him.

They would probably still have been

there together, she thought, or if they had

decided to continue with their journey,

then the silence between them would

have been a very different thing. And

maybe they would not have been

planning to spend the night at the
finca

they were approaching—she had already

caught a glimpse of its roof among the

clustering greenery—but would have

pitched the tent somewhere and slept in

each other's arms in its cramped interior.

Her throat tightened ominously and she

found she-was blinking back tears. Oh

God, she thought, this can't be happening

to me. I don't want it to happen. I came

here to establish that I was my own

person, that I was in control. That I'm

more than just a face and a body and a

mass of jangled emotions. I wanted to

prove to Grandfather that I could cope as

well as a man if that was what he

wanted. And I can't even pretend he

didn't warn me, although he can't ever

have imagined my landing in a situation

like this.

Not that she'd ever imagined it herself.

In a way Leigh's Ice Maiden taunt had

been a defence behind which she had

been content to hide and lick her

wounds, and tell herself she didn't have

to be ashamed because she was not

promiscuous. What nice safe illusions

she had harboured about herself! she

thought bitterly. Until temptation existed,

how much did anyone know about their

own weaknesses?

One thing she knew now. If Leigh's

lovemaking had ever kindled within her

one spark of the flame which consumed

her at Vitas' lightest touch, then she

would have been his mistress long ago.

As it was, she'd let her own indifference

fool her into accepting the image he had