Wild Orchids (9 page)

She was also helpless to do anything to prevent his eyes from roving where they chose. He looked her up and down, thoroughly, slowly, his eyes lingering on the puckered pink tips of her breasts, the soft belly and thighs and the nest of curling hair at their apex. Lora wanted to squirm beneath the searing regard, but she was afraid that any movement on her part might incite him to attack her. She lay motionless, only her eyes moving as they watched his face, hoping for some change of expression to give her a clue as to what he was thinking. There was none. His face was completely expressionless except for the gleaming of his eyes as they crawled over her body.

Fatalistically, Lora accepted the fact that she could only await the inevitable. Any minute now he would lay his hands and his mouth and his body on her, forcing her… And there was absolutely nothing she could do to prevent him. He could do anything he wanted—rape her, even kill her. Oh, God, why had she not swallowed her impatience and waited for that damned bus to go to Chichen Itza?

He leaned forward, placing his hands on either side of her head and lowering his upper body until his face was just inches from hers and his chest hair brushed maddeningly against the sensitive tips of her breasts. Lora's eyes widened, and her heart speeded up so that its pounding nearly deafened her. It was starting…

"Am I scaring you?" The harsh whisper that he had been using ever since he had closed the trapdoor sent shivers up and down her spine. Once again it occurred to her that this man might get his kicks from tormenting his victims. Sadism— that was the word for it. The man showed a strong tendency toward it…

"I can do anything I want to you," he continued as if he were savoring the possibilities. "Anything at all."

Lora quivered, and he lifted himself a little away from her while his eyes wandered from her face down her body. Her pale skin was dappled with goosebumps, both from the night chill and from fright. With her arms stretched tautly over her head, her full breasts thrust prominently upward, their soft firmness crested with puckered pink-brown circles. In the center of those circles her nipples stood painfully erect. From the cold, of course… His eyes rested on those embarrassingly hardened peaks for a long moment, the lids lowered so that she could not read his expression. Then they crawled further down her body, lingering over her small waist and curving hips and sliding the length of her legs before returning with an equal lack of haste to appraise the curling triangle of reddish hair between her thighs. Lora could not stop an involuntary shifting of her legs as she sought to cover herself.

It was useless, of course, tied as she was. She had to let him look as long as he liked. Do anything he liked…

Suddenly one brown, callous-tipped finger was on her skin, tracing a rough line from the hollow of her throat down the silky skin between her breasts over her diaphragm and stomach to her navel.

Lora froze again, quivering helplessly. There was nothing she could do, nothing she could say that would stop him… Her eyes squeezed shut as she awaited what he would do next. She could only hope that he would not be brutal…

His finger moved back up her body, traced a tiny circle in the valley between her breasts, lifted… Then his hand gripped her chin hard.

"Look at me." The growling voice brooked no disobedience. Lora opened her eyes and looked at him fearfully. He was eyeing her grimly, his mouth set hard beneath that coal black mustache, his eyes dark and narrow on hers. He looked very large and very tough as he bent over her. His hand hurt her chin.

"You ever been raped?"

Sobs crowded in Lora's throat as she stared up at him wild-eyed. Oh, God…

"Answer me. You ever been raped?" The hand tightened on her chin.

Chest heaving with frightened sobs that could find no outlet past the gag, eyes huge as they fixed on his harsh face, Lora shook her head.

"Want to try it?"

Oh, God, why was he torturing her this way? If he had to do it, why didn't he just go ahead and get it over with? She was going to die of fright…

"Answer me!"

Despairingly, Lora shook her head again. If the gag in her mouth had not muffled all utterance, she would have been bawling with terror. Maybe then he would show her some mercy…

He leaned closer so that his hairy chest once again brushed her breasts. The dark mustachioed face with its unshaven jaw was so close she could see the tiny lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes and feel his warm breath on her face.

"Next time you pull a stunt like this one tonight, I'll take it for an invitation." His lips curved in a twisted parody of a smile. "You're lucky I don't go ahead now. I'd kind of like to make it with you. I go for broads with big tits."

And with that he straightened suddenly to stand looking down at her again, his arms folded over that hairy chest and some indecipherable gleam in his eyes. Before Lora could even begin to assimilate the fact that he apparently wasn't going to rape her after all, he stepped away from the bed for an instant and returned with the blanket that he had discarded earlier by the trapdoor. Lora's head whirled as he dropped it over her, covering her nakedness. She thought she might faint with relief… He was not going to rape her…

Lora knew her eyes must have betrayed her feelings. She felt limp all over at the unexpected reprieve. He stood looking down at her a moment longer, his eyes on her face now that the rest of her was decently covered, then grinned maliciously. Moving away, he rescued the plates of food from where Lora had left them by the door. He set one on the bedside table near her head, so that the appetizing aroma wafted across her dilating nostrils. He held the other in his hand, scooping up a mouthful of beans and forking it into his mouth while he chewed with obvious enjoyment.

"Mmmmm, this is great." He looked down at her again as he forked in another heaping mouthful. "Hungry?"

Eagerly, Lora nodded. He wasn't so bad after all. He hadn't raped her, despite scaring her half out of her wits, and he was going to feed her…

"Isn't it too bad that I had to tie you up? You won't be able to eat," he said with apparent regret, wolfing another forkful. Lora's eyes widened with outrage as she realized what he was doing: teaching her a lesson. First, he had frightened her worse than she'd ever been frightened in her life, and now he was eating his meal—and hers, too!—right in front of her starving eyes as a lesson in obedience. The filthy swine! He had not raped her, no, but he had terrorized and humiliated her and now he was starving her while he stuffed himself.

Lora glared at him furiously. He grinned at her, finishing the food with a loud, aggravating and probably purposeful burp. He then patted his stomach and set the empty plates aside and took a healthy swig of whatever drink was contained in the bottle. Lora's mouth was already painfully dry from the gag, and she longed for the liquid in the bottle almost more than she longed for food. Glaring at him ferociously as he drank again, Lora mentally called him every filthy name she had ever heard.

Finally, he set the bottle down, yawned widely, and leaned over to blow out the light. Then the blankets beneath her were dragged free, not without some effort, leaving her lying on a cool, rough woven sheet. He spread another blanket on top of the one that already covered her. Then Lora heard him move to the other side of the bed, felt the mattress sink beneath his weight, rolling her slightly toward him.

The blankets moved. Lora felt the hard, hot length of a hairy leg brush her, then a shoulder settled just millimeters from her upstretched arm. She could feel him next to her, smell him, hear him breathing. He shifted, and the bed shifted with him. If she had not been tied, she would have rolled against him. His weight made a considerable valley on his side of the bed. As it was, her hands and ankles pulled painfully as they held her body in place. He moved again, and she could hear the faint thump of a pillow being shoved into place.

"Pleasant dreams," he murmured just inches from her ear.

Lora jerked, and she could have sworn she heard him chuckle. She lay there, seething with anger and something else she refused to acknowledge as his body heat wafted all around her. Tied as she was, she could not escape the occasional brush of shoulder or arm or leg as he shifted position. His skin was so hot… With every pore of her skin she was maddeningly conscious of his body next to hers—and her own nakedness. She hated him, feared him—but she could not for the life of her get the image of him as he had looked earlier, clad only in his underpants, out of her head.

He shifted again and his hair-roughened thigh brushed her hip. Lora gritted her teeth, feeling as though hundreds of centipedes with fiery hot feet were swarming out all over her body from that central spot. It was no use, she might as well admit it to herself. He was getting to her. She could not forget the way the lamplight has emphasized me muscles that rippled and played beneath tanned satiny skin; (he dark hair that formed a wedge on his chest to trail past his navel and then disappear into me snag white briefs; the linebacker's shoulders tapering to a narrow waist and hips; the hard, strong arms and thighs that had crushed her beneath him, the calloused hands…

Lora swallowed. She must be going out of her mind. He was a sadistic animal who had enjoyed scaring her to tears earlier, who had reveled in denying her food and was probably even now delighting in the knowledge that she was suffering miserable discomfort from the way he had her tied. He was a criminal guilty of God knew how many vicious acts, he had threatened her with rape and he was quite likely to murder her before this nightmare was over. How could she let herself be excited by his body? It was insane. Nothing like it had ever happened to her before. Not even for Brian had she felt this aching physical awareness—and Brian had always been a perfectly satisfactory lover. It was not as if she was sexually frustrated or anything. She enjoyed making love with Brian. This man had scared the hell out of her, humiliated her, caused her physical discomfort, as her stretched taut arms and legs that were already falling asleep reminded her. How could he possibly excite her? Sheer physical chemistry, perhaps? She had read about the irresistable pull of one particular set of glands for another in romance novels, but she had never really believed it could happen. At least, not to her. Not to sensible, level-headed Lora Harding. But
something
was happening. Was she the only one to feel it? Was he experiencing this unwelcome attraction as well?

A faint but unmistakable snore put an end to Lora's speculations. She stiffened. The no good son of a gun was asleep! So much for mutual chemistry, she fumed, squirming angrily in an effort to find a comfortable enough position so that she could imitate his nonchalance and fall asleep herself. Temporary insanity was more like it. And she meant to fight it for everything she was worth!

Chapter VI

Stockholm Syndrome. That was the answer. Lora awoke from a miserably uncomfortable sleep with the words flashing like a neon sign in her brain. She had read about it, of course. A psychologist had documented cases where hostages had begun to identify and even fall in love with their captors. It was some sort of defense mechanism designed to reduce the stress of an otherwise unbearable situation. Anyway, it perfectly explained her otherwise incomprehensible reaction to the brute who still snored blithely beside her. She was not attracted to him at all; her mind was merely playing tricks on her in an effort to keep her from fully experiencing the horror of being kidnapped by a violent stranger.