Wild Orchids (8 page)

"You don't learn very fast, do you?"

She was still on her knees with his hand on her neck forcing her head back so that she had to look up at him. He loomed over her, the striped blanket he had wrapped around himself to speak with Senora Rodriquez dropping from his shoulders so that he was once again clad only in his underpants. His body was huge and dark-furred and menacing, and his eyes glittered fiercely in the harshly carved face. Combined with the strength of the steely fingers that threatened to snap her neck, the homicidal look in his eyes terrified the wits out of her. The soft voice which had put the question to her only intensified her fear. She sat dumbly, quivering from head to toe as she stared up at him. At her lack of reply, his fingers tightened cruelly on her neck. Lora's hands half rose to grasp his arm in an instinctive effort to free herself of the excruciating grip, but something warned her that any resistance on her part now would be a grave mistake.

"You just exhausted my patience, lady. Stand up." The fingers on her neck dragged her upright without giving her a chance to obey under her own steam. Lora stood with her back to him, her eyes huge, her mouth shaking. He pushed her in the direction of the bed, and she went. His hand never left her neck.

He let her go near the foot of the bed. The relief of being suddenly free of those cruel fingers was such that her knees sagged. Her hand came up automatically to massage the tingling ache as she turned to face him. Her eyes sought him fearfully. What would he do to her now?

"I was just—just trying to ask her about—about a bathroom." Her newfound deceitful instincts rushed to her aid.

He snorted. "Yeah, and I'm Bugs Bunny," he retorted, his face hard. "Get undressed."

Lora stared at him, blanching. He was close, perhaps three feet away. She could feel the anger in him, feel the heat and sheer power of that barely clad body as if he stood mere inches from her. Those glittering black eyes impaled her. The grim mouth barely moved as he spoke. Lora's mouth quivered piteously as the hot sting of tears burned her eyes. It was going to happen now, the rape she had feared; by her own actions she had brought about just the crisis she had most dreaded. Dear God, what should she do?

He was regarding her falling tears without pity this time. Those obsidian eyes were dark and hard as twin coals. "I said get undressed." '

The harsh bite of his voice told her that he would tolerate no further delay. Lora quivered, biting her lower lip, looking at him piteously as her hand moved, slowly, slowly, to the top of the zipper at the back of her dress. He watched her without the slightest softening. She started to pull the zipper down, her eyes never leaving him. Soon she would be naked and vulnerable… Suddenly, Lora knew that she could not do it. She could not submit to this degradation without a fight.

Her hand dropped back to her side, her chin came up, and she met his eyes defiantly while the tears dried on her cheeks.

"No," she said. He stared at her for a moment as if unable to believe his ears. Then his mouth tightened and his face darkened ominously. He moved, and she stepped back nervously.

"If you touch me I'll scream," she warned in a high-pitched whisper. Her knees were quivering with fear, but he couldn't know that.

He stood stock still, staring at her for a long moment without speaking. Then he turned away. Lora sagged with relief. She had called his bluff, and she had won…

"So you'll scream, will you?" He turned back toward her, speaking with a fierce satisfaction. Lora's eyes widened with horror as she saw that he now held the pistol, which was pointed right at her heart. "I don't think so. Not if you want to live to be a day older. Now take off your clothes'"

The last sentence was savage, but not as savage as the light in his eyes. Lora stared at that pistol, and felt the sick horror return. She did not doubt that he would use it if she did not obey. The choice was between submitting to the unspeakable degradation of a sexual assault or dying. Her mouth quivered. She did not want to die. Her hand moved back to the zipper while he watched with narrowed, glinting eyes.

Her hands shook as she pulled the zipper down past her waist as slowly as she dared. When the dress was loose she shrugged out of the narrow straps and let it fall down her body. Staring fixedly at a point on the opposite wall so that she would not have to look at him, she stepped out of the soggy, crumpled circle of blue, and bent to pick it up. Carefully, she shook it out and hung it with his discarded clothes on the footboard. She felt his eyes on her all the while. Unable to resist the compulsion, she darted a quick, frightened glance at him, then just as hastily looked away. His face was predatory as he took in the sight of her clad only in her white strapless bra with the innocent little pink rosebud between the cups that she filled almost to overflowing and the matching panties that circled her slender waist with a narrow band of elastic decorated with yet another rosebud before flaring out to hug her curving hips with silky white nylon. The underwear was newly bought for the trip, and while it was pretty and feminine it was also modest. Or at least, it had been in the department store. Now, dampened, it clung to her skin so that she might as well have been naked. Looking down at herself, Lora was mortified to discover that her nipples, reacting to the chill, stood erect, pressing wantonly against the whisper-thin nylon that seemed to gleam in the flickering lamplight. Their rosy pink color was clearly discernable, as was the darker hue of the circle surrounding them. And, further down her body, could be seen the triangular shadow between her thighs.

"Take that off, too. Everything."

Lora clasped her hands before her, her fingers twining in an unconscious nervous gesture. To strip naked before this monster, this animal who was deliberately forcing her to humiliate herself as a prelude to heaping even worse brutalities on her, was absolutely beyond her. She could not do it… She looked up, directly at him for the first time since she had started taking off her clothes. The cold blue metal of the gun gleamed at her. His eyes were just as hard and cold as they met hers. Would he shoot her? With the Rodriquez family downstairs? If he shot her, he would have to kill them as well. Would he think of that? Would he care?

"Did you hear me?" The quiet rasp was ominous in its softness.

Lora's hands twisted again. She looked up at him helplessly. The gun in his hand terrified her, the man himself terrified her—but the thought of standing naked before him terrified her too.

"You won't shoot me."

"What?" He sounded dumbfounded.

Lora swallowed. She had barely managed to get the words out the first time. It wasn't surprising that he thought he might have misunderstood the hoarse croak.

"You won't shoot me." Her voice was a little stronger this time. He stood staring at her as if she had suddenly sprouted horns before his eyes.

"You have a death wish, or what?" he asked, eyes glittering as his mouth compressed. Lora quivered as the gun came up, pointed while his hand tightened. "I'm giving you one more chance, and one only. Take off those clothes!"

"If you shoot me, you'll have to shoot all of them, too. Downstairs. The police will come, and then they'll really be after you. The whole country will be after you…"

"Goddamn it!" The words were no less ferocious for being muttered. Before Lora realized what was happening, he grabbed her, shoved her against the wall, and pinioned her there with one hand around her throat. He squeezed just hard enough so that she had to gasp for air. Her eyes were wide and terrified as they met his. He was smiling savagely.

"You're right, lady: I'm not going to shoot you, not here. But there's not one thing in hell to keep me from strangling you!" His hand tightened while her eyes bulged, as much from panic as lack of air. His hand loosened just enough so that she could draw breath.

"Give me any more trouble, make one more sound, and that's just what I'll do. Understand?"

Without waiting for her response, he pressed a tiny red button on the side of the pistol, tossed it on the bed, then reached behind her with his free hand to unhook her bra. She quivered as he yanked it from her, her arms coming up to hug her breasts in a gesture of frantic protectiveness. He tossed the bra on the bed beside the gun, then hooked his hand in the waistband of her panties, dragging them down her legs, yanking at them as they entwined her ankles so that she was forced to step out of them.                     

She was naked. Lora absorbed the shame of it, her face crimsoning as she felt the cool texture of whitewashed cinderblock against her back and the body heat of the man who, nearly as naked as she, leaned so close. Lora shrank against the wall, her arms trying to protect her body from him, but he was having none of that. His hand moved around to the nape of her neck again, squeezing painfully as he dragged her away from the wall and shoved her onto the bed. She fell forward, hitting her knee on the pistol. It hurt, and she winced. Then she was rolling over to find him leaning close… She scrambled up the bed in an effort to escape, scooting with her elbows and her feet as she came up hard against the cold iron bars of the headboard. He picked up the gun, hefting it once as he looked at her.

Lora cringed, her eyes running fearfully over the grim face, over the hard muscles and hair-roughened skin of his shoulders and chest to focus with horrified attention on the front of his briefs. Sweat broke out all over her body as she saw that the once soft bulge was growing before her eyes. Bigger and bigger… He set the gun down on the small table, then turned to look at her again. His eyes ran over her shrinking body with deliberate slowness.

"Scream and I swear I'll strangle you," he hissed through clenched teeth, and then he was on the bed beside her, catching her in his arms so that she was pressed close against his chest. Lora was terrifyingly aware of the immense heat of him, the roughness of his body hair against her own smooth skin, me hard, rippling muscles crushing her softness, the smell of rain-wet man. Then he was on top of her, his big body completely covering her smaller one, the weight of him forcing the air from her lungs so that she couldn't have made a sound louder than a grunt even if the thick pelt of hair on his chest had not been crushing her nose and mouth. She could feel the hot satiny texture and dampness of his skin with her every pore… The hard muscles of his arms and legs had her pinned helplessly beneath him. Against her soft thighs, she could feel the cloth of his briefs. And beneath the cloth was the rock hardness that told her what was to come.

Her brain shut down, leaving only instinct to respond. Her body bucked frantically, trying to throw him off her. Caught by surprise, he shifted so that she was partially free. Twisting, she clawed for the side of the bed, her nails sinking deep into the pile of blankets and her feet kicking desperately at the unyielding strength of his legs that still imprisoned hers. He grabbed her, grappling to hold her, one hand clamping over her mouth that had opened to scream regardless of the consequences as he crushed her to him with his other arm around her waist. His hand spread out over the curve of her round bottom, his fingers digging painfully into the soft flesh.

The intimacy of his grip galvanized her. Frenziedly she kicked and writhed, but it was like trying to kick free of an octopus; his hold on her was unbreakable. Unable to escape, she swiveled toward him, her nails going for his eyes as her knee came up hard, aiming for his groin. He grunted, ducking just in time. Her nails missed his face, raking harmlessly across the blanket instead. Her knee made jarring contact with solid hard flesh—too solid and hard; she had managed to knee him in the thigh. He grunted again and his grip shifted so that she was once again pinned helplessly beneath him. He raised himself slightly so that he could look down at her. The expression on his face was diabolical. Lora quivered with reaction. He must have felt her tremors and taken them as a signal of surrender because he slowly lifted his hand from her mouth. Staring straight into his eyes, Lora waited until his hand had moved down before opening her mouth with terrified abandon. Threats or no, she would scream loud enough to knock the house down… She managed only to draw a lungful of air before he crammed something, a soft roll of cloth, down her throat, gagging her.

"You goddamn stupid little bitch, I ought to beat hell out of you. I ought to take my belt and wrap it around your windpipe and pull till your neck snaps. I ought to…"

He was straddling her now, his face crimson with rage, his eyes alive with it, his mouth tight with it. Those massive shoulders loomed over her, casting an enormous shadow across her quivering form. His hands were painfully tight around her wrists. She kicked and twisted beneath him, trying frantically to spit out the cloth that was threatening to suffocate her. He tightened his grip on her wrists until she whimpered into the muffling gag, and lay still. Then he transferred both her wrists to one of his big hands, crushing them ruthlessly as he reached behind him. His hand came back holding the leather thong. Lora's eyes widened with horror as she realized what he meant to do. She twisted again, kicking and squirming, but he was ready for her now and her struggles did not appear to bother him in the least. In just a matter of minutes he had her hands tied together above her head to the iron bars of the headboard, and her ankles wound up in her panties and secured by his shirt to the footboard. Her naked body, quivering with a combination of fear, outrage and shame, was stretched helplessly between.

The roll of cloth in her mouth—one of the towels that Senora Rodriguez had given them—had been supplemented by her bra, which he had passed between her open jaws and tied securely behind her head. She was trussed as securely as a hog for the slaughter—or a virgin sacrifice.

He gave a final tug to the knots holding her ankles and got off the bed to stand looking down at her with grim satisfaction. He was sweating; perspiration stood out in beads on his temples and the mat of dark hair on his chest was damp with it. The broad bronzed shoulders and corded arms gleamed in the flickering lamplight as if they had been oiled. Muscles formed a ridged wall across the breadth of his chest all the way down to his flat abdomen, where his navel peeped over the waistband of his briefs. If Lora hadn't been so frightened, she might have appreciated him for the magnificent male animal he was. Under the circumstances, however, all she could think of was that she was naked and helpless to do anything to prevent his raping her…