A Game Of Chance

Something moved in the sand near his feet. She thought she would faint. Her vision dimmed and narrowed until all she saw was the snake, perilously close to his left boot. Her heart leaped, pounding against her ribcage so hard she felt the thuds.

She had no sensation or knowledge of moving; time took on the viscosity of syrup. All she knew was that the snake was getting bigger and bigger, closer and closer. Chance looked around at her and stepped back from the plane, almost on the coiling length. The snake's head drew back and her hand closed on a coil, surprisingly warm and smooth, and she threw the awful thing as far as she could. It was briefly outlined against the stark rock, then sailed beyond a bush and dropped from sight.

'Are you all right? Did it bite you? Are you hurt?'

She couldn't stop babbling as she went down on her knees and began patting his legs, looking for droplets of blood, a small tear in his jeans, anything that would show if he had been bitten.

'I'm all right. I'm all right. Sunny! It didn't bite me.' His voice overrode hers, and he hauled her to her feet, shaking her a little to get her attention. 'Look at me!' The force of his tone snagged her gaze with his and he said more quietly, 'I'm okay.'

'Are you sure?' She couldn't seem to stop touching him, patting his chest, stroking his face, though logically she knew there was no way the snake could have bitten him up there. Neither could she stop trembling. 'I hate snakes,' she said in a shaking voice. 'They terrify me. I saw it—it was right under your feet. You almost stepped on it.'

'Shh,' he murmured, pulling her against him and rocking her slowly back and forth. 'It's all right. Nothing happened.'

She clutched his shut and buried her head against his chest. His smell, already so familiar and now with the fault odor of grease added, was comforting. His heartbeat was steady, as if he hadn't almost been snakebitten. He was steady, rock solid, his body supporting hers.

'Oh my God,' she whispered. 'That was awful.' She raised her head and stared at him, an appalled expression on her face. 'Yuk! I touched it!' She snatched her hand away from him and held it at arm's length. 'Let me go, I have to wash my hand. Now!'

He released her, and she bolted up the slope to the tent, where the towelettes were. Grabbing one, she scrubbed furiously at her palm and fingers. Chance was laughing softly as he came up behind her.

'What's the matter? Snakes don't have cooties. Besides, yesterday you said you weren't afraid of them.'

'I lied. And I don't care what they have, I don't want one anywhere near me.' Satisfied that no snake germs lingered on her hand, she blew out a long, calming breath.

'Instead of swooping down like a hawk,' he said mildly, 'why didn't you just yell out a warning?' She gave him a blank look. 'I couldn't.' Yelling had never entered her mind. She had been taught her entire life not to yell in moments of tension or danger, because to do so would give away her position. Normal people could scream and yell, but she had never been allowed to be normal.

He put one finger under her chin, lifting her face to the sun. He studied her for a long moment, something dark moving in his eyes; then he tugged her to him and bent his head.

His mouth was fierce and hungry, his tongue probing. She sank weakly against him, clinging to his shoulders and kissing him in return just as fiercely, with just as much hunger. More. She felt as if she had always hungered, and never been fed. She drank life itself from his mouth, and sought more.

His hands were all over her, on her breasts, her bottom, lifting her into the hard bulge of his loins. The knowledge that he wanted her filled her with a deep need to know more, to feel everything she had always denied herself. She didn't know if she could have brought herself to pull away, but he was the one who broke the kiss, lifting his head and standing there with his eyes closed and a grim expression on his face.

'Chance?' she asked hesitantly.

He growled a lurid word under his breath. Then he opened his eyes and glared down at her. 'I can't believe I'm stopping this a second time,' he said with a raw, furious frustration. 'Just for the record, I'm not that noble. Damn it all to hell and back—' He broke off, breathing hard. 'It isn't a clogged fuel line. It must be the pump. We have other things we need to do. We can't afford to waste any daylight.'

Margreta.

Sunny bit her lip to hold back a moan of dismay. She stared up at him, the knowledge of the danger of their situation lying like a stark shadow between them.

She wasn't licked yet. She had four days. 'Can we walk out?'

'In the desert? In August?' He looked up at the rim of the canyon. 'Assuming we can even get out of here, we'd have to walk at night and try to find shelter during the day. By afternoon, the temperature will be over a hundred.'

The temperature was probably already well into the seventies, she thought; she was dying of heat inside her heavy sweater, or maybe that was just frustrated lust, since she hadn't noticed how hot it was until now. She peeled off the sweater and dropped it on top of her bag. 'What do we need to do?'

His eyes gleamed golden with admiration, and he squeezed her waist. 'I'll reconnoiter. We can't get out on this end of the canyon, but maybe there's a way farther down.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'Look for sticks, leaves, anything that will bum. Gather as much as you can in a pile.'

He set off in the direction she had gone earlier, and she went in the opposite direction. The scrub brush grew heavier at that end of the canyon, and she would find more wood there. She didn't like to think about how limited the supply would be, or that they might be here for a long, long time. If they couldn't get out of the canyon, they would eventually use up their meager resources and die.

He hated lying to her. Chance's expression was grim as he stalked along the canyon floor. He had lied to terrorists, hoodlums and heads of state alike without a twinge of conscience, but it was getting harder and harder to lie to Sunny. He fiercely protected a hard core of honesty deep inside, the part of him that he shared only with his family, but Sunny was getting to him. She wasn't what he had expected. More and more he was beginning to suspect she wasn't working with her father. She was too… gallant was the word that sprang to mind. Terrorists weren't gallant. In his opinion, they were either mad or amoral. Sunny was neither.

He was more shaken by the episode with the snake than he had let her realize. Not by the snake itself—he had on boots, and since he hadn't heard rattles he suspected the snake hadn't been poisonous—but by her reaction. He would never forget the way she had looked, rushing in like an avenging angel, her face paper-white and utterly focused. By her own admission she was terrified of snakes, yet she hadn't hesitated. What kind of courage had it taken for her to pick up the snake with her bare hand?

Then there was the way she had patted him, looking for a bite. Except with certain people, or during sex, he had to struggle to tolerate being touched. He had learned how to accept affection in his family, because Mom and Maris would not leave him alone. He unabashedly loved playing with all his nephews—and niece—but his family had been the only exception. Until now. Until Sunny. He not only hadn't minded, he had, for a moment, allowed himself the pure luxury of enjoying the feel of her hands on his legs, his chest. And that didn't even begin to compare to how much he had enjoyed sleeping with her, feeling those sweet curves all along his side. His hand clenched as he remembered the feel of her breast in his palm, the wonderful resilience that was both soft and firm. He ached to feel her bare skin, to taste her. He wanted to strip her naked and pull her beneath him for a long hard ride, and he wanted to do it in broad daylight so he could watch her brilliant eyes glaze with pleasure.

If she wasn't who she was he would take her to the south of France, maybe, or a Caribbean island, any place where they could lie naked on the beach and make love in the sunshine, or in a shaded room with fingers of sunlight slipping through closed blinds. Instead, he had to keep lying to her, because whether or not she was working with her father didn't change the fact that she was the key to locating him.