Rachael shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Give me time to get dressed and get out of here. Go meet him before he gets here.”
Something dangerous shifted inside him. “I don’t think so, Rachael. You can’t even walk on that leg. If you try running around the forest with those puncture wounds, believe me, you’ll pick up another infection fast. Just sit there and let me work this out.”
Rio’s eyes had narrowed into that glassy, focused stare she associated with predatory hunting. There was a soft underlying growl to his voice that sent a chill down her spine and the hair on the back of her neck rising. Rachael turned her face away from him, biting down hard to keep from lashing out at him. She was good at keeping her expression serene, even in the worst of times, but she still had trouble controlling her runaway tongue. She didn’t need nor want him to work her problems out. People stepping into her life tended to die way too young. She didn’t want to carry the guilt of another death around, thank you very much. Rachael smoldered with a mixture of anger and fear, feeling vulnerable and helpless with the injury to her leg.
She was surprised at the intensity of her emotions. Her fingers even curled as if she wanted to rake and claw and scratch something. Or someone. The need burned in her, a startling discovery she wasn’t very proud of. What was
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happening to her? Sometimes when she lay in bed with her leg throbbing, there was something stirring inside of her, a heat and need she put down to her admiration of Rio’s anatomy.
Rachael swept a hand through her hair. She had a normal, healthy sex drive, but ever since she’d arrived, in spite of the terrible injury she suffered, need crawled through her body, an ever-present unrelenting ache that refused to go away. In the middle of pain and a life or death struggle, it seemed demeaning to her that she couldn’t control such an urge. Worse than that was the edgy, violent mood swings, going from wanting to lash out at Rio to wanting to tear his clothes off.
“Rachael? Where did you go?”
“Obviously nowhere.”
“I’m going to call Kim in.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s a tribesman, Rachael. He knows I’m on the bandits’ hit list. He signaled to me who he was and he’s waiting for an all-clear signal before he comes on in.”
“Do you have to give it to him?”
“He’ll come in fighting if I don’t, I told you, he’s a friend.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I need clothes. I don’t want to sit around in your shirt and nothing else in front of your friends.” She was hastily buttoning up the front of the shirt, hiding her generous breasts from his view.
Rio didn’t comment on the quarrelsome note in her voice. He simply pulled the blanket from the bed and tucked it around her. “Kim’s father is a medicine man, very good with herbs. He taught me quite a bit, but Kim knows far more than I. Hopefully he can help both you and Fritz.”
When she didn’t look up, Rio hunkered down beside her. “Rachael, look at me.” When she didn’t respond he caught her chin and forced her head up. The last thing he expected to see was heat and fire glittering in her dark
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eyes. Raw hunger stared back at him with an intensity that made him groan, push his brow into hers. “Don’t. I mean it, Rachael. You can’t look at me like that and expect me to function properly.”
She had the craziest desire, no need, to squirm and rub herself all over him, much like a feline. It was a heat wave rolling through her that shook her confidence. “If I could help it, do you think I’d be making such a fool out of myself?” Scratching his eyes out seemed a better alternative than rubbing her body against his at that moment. She let him see that too.
His face was inches from hers. He was catching fire from touching her skin, feeling the crackle of electricity arcing between them. Her eyes held a challenge he couldn’t resist. Rio caught the nape of her neck, cupped the back of her head and dragged her mouth to his. There was no resistance at all. She fused with him instantly. Hot. Electric. Wild for him. Climbing into his skin, wrapping herself around his heart so tightly he felt it like a vise. Devouring him just as eagerly as he was devouring her.