going to be able to at all.' Her voice was funny, tinny and far away. 'That awful leech is going to just stay there, getting high on your blood. Maybe it's a girl leech and she's going to have babies and they'll all live on your back, sucking your blood. A little leech community. How perfectly lovely.'
He muttered something under his breath.
'And don't swear at me or I'm going to cry. I'm doing my best here and you aren't giving me anything to work with.'
His fingers were gentle in her hair even though he didn't mean to touch her. 'Don't you dare cry.' The thought was more alarming than someone coming at him with a gun. Her tears might turn him inside out. 'The morphine is wearing off, isn't it? I didn't give you very much because I was afraid you'd go into shock.'
A small humorless laugh escaped. She sounded on the verge of hysteria. 'I am in shock. I think I lost my mind. I thought you turned into a leopard and tried to rip my throat out.'
He slipped the tip of the knife between his back and the leech, flicked it to the floor and hastily disposed of it. 'Leopards don't rip throats out. They bite the throat and suffocate their prey.' He dipped a cloth into a cool bowl of water and sponged her face. 'They're tidy killers.'
'Thanks for the information. I wouldn't want to think my death would be a messy one.'
Rio was uncomfortably aware of her gaze studying his face. Her eyes were large, too old for the rest of her. There was something sad in the dark depths that tugged at his heart. Her lashes were incredibly long, spiky from her tears. He actually felt as if he were falling forward into the depths of them, a corny and totally ridiculous notion he was impatient with. His heart began to pound in his chest. Anticipating-what, he didn't know. He deliberately wiped the cloth over her eyes, a gentle stroke to save himself from falling under her spell.
'Are you always this sarcastic, or should I put it down to you being in considerable pain?'
Rachael tried to laugh but it came out a gasping sob. 'I swear it feels like my leg is on fire.'
'It's swelling. I'm going to give you a little more painkiller and splint that wrist for you.' Rio's fingers trailed in her hair, a thick mass of silk. There was a strange color surrounding her body, like a shadow that wouldn't go away. No matter how many times he blinked, or swept his hand over his eyes to clear his vision, the strange surrounding color remained.
'I think you need to take care of yourself,' Rachael said, her gaze drifting over his face. He had the physical sensation of fingers touching him lightly in a caress. She didn't seem to notice the effect she had on him, and he was grateful.
'You look tired. I honestly can't even feel my wrist at the moment, although I think a painkiller is a good idea. Maybe a huge dose of painkiller.' Rachael tried to smile at him, tried to make it a joke. If he didn't find something to stop the pain she was going to ask him to knock her out. He had a big enough fist.
She was shaking beneath the blanket, a sure sign of fever. He had packed the wound with antibiotics earlier, but it obviously wasn't going to be enough. Rio shook pills into his hand and helped her lift her head to swallow them. She pressed her teeth together, but a small sound, much like that of a wounded animal, escaped. 'I'm sorry, I know it hurts, but you have to get these down.' If she had come there to kill him, he was making a hell of a fool of himself, but it didn't matter to him. He had to remove the desperation from her eyes. She looked so helpless it twisted his gut into hard little knots. He gave her another small dose of morphine along with the antibiotics and waited until her eyes clouded over before splinting her wrist. Her skin was hot, but he didn't dare leave his own wounds much longer or they both would be in trouble.
Rachael felt herself drifting away. The pain was there; she didn't want to squirm around and provoke it, but she could handle the intensity floating above it. Rio moved away from her with his curious animal grace. He intrigued her. Everything about him intrigued her. She couldn't keep from staring at him, although she tried to think of other things. The wind. The rain. Leopards leaping at her throat. Her lashes drifted down. She listened to the rain and shivered. Before she had been burning up; now she felt inexplicably cold. The sound of the rain driving down on the rooftop added to her discomfort. She couldn't hear him moving around the house. It wasn't that the storm drowned out the sounds, he was simply that quiet. Like a great jungle cat.
Chapter Three
RACHAEL forced her eyes open to keep him in sight. She felt dreamy, disconnected with reality. Rio stood several feet from her, close to the stove. Casually hooking his thumbs in his wet jeans, he eased them from his hips, slowly exposing his firm buttocks and his long, muscular back to her. She tried not to gawk as he washed up, using hot water from the stove. He was thorough about it, his muscles flexing as he worked. He reminded her of the statues she'd seen in Greece, the defined muscles and well-proportioned ultra-masculine body. It occurred to her that he was completely at home without clothes. He seemed to have forgotten she was in the room, displaying no modesty whatsoever.
He lit a match and held it to the needle he'd used to sew her leg before performing the same task on his arm. Rachael heard him swear when he doused his hip with the same evil liquid he had used on her. Evidently he kept large supplies of it to refill his little vial. He turned slightly as he sewed his hip and she got a frontal view. Twin columns for thighs and looking every bit as good or better than the anatomically correct statues.
'You have a beautiful body.' Rachael would never have called attention to the fact that he was naked. The words slipped out before she could censor them, or maybe someone else said them. She looked around to see if they were really alone. She had said it after all, and she meant it. The honesty in her voice didn't even make her blush or turn away when he looked over at her with his penetrating, focused gaze.
Rachael stared at him openly, inspecting him the way she might a beautiful sculpture. She smiled dreamily. 'Don't mind me. I think it's the drugs talking. I've just never seen a man with a body as beautiful as yours is.'
There was no come-on in her voice, no deliberate seduction, just simple honest admiration. And that was what made it so damned sexy. He hadn't even been thinking about sex. Or soft skin. Or full breasts. Or silky hair. She smelled like a damned bed of flowers. He hurt like a son of a gun. He was tired and edgy and he didn't understand what was happening to him. And now his body was reacting to her voice. Or her words. Or her smell. Who knew? Need punched him in the gut and hardened his body like a rock. He was furious with her. With himself. With his lack of control. Now he had a hell of a hard-on and a sick woman in his bed. And damn it all, if he had to endure it, she could just look at it.
He finished stitching his hip, all too aware of her unwavering gaze. It didn't seem to bother her that he was primed and ready and they were completely alone. Her eyes were overbright, her skin flushed with heat in spite of the continual shaking. Fortunately, the pain from the ugly gash on his hip drove the heat from his body so his lust wasn't so brutally exposed to her.
Rio didn't look at her but he felt her eyes on him. Hot. Staring. Devouring him. The thought made him ache all over. He swore again. Even with the pain of stitching his own wounds, her gaze, staring at his hardened body, set jackhammers tripping in his head and his temples pounding.
'Are you going to stare at me all night?' He growled the words at her. A threat. A promise. Retribution in the lines of his body. He turned his head then faced her down, allowing naked desire to flare just to scare the hell out of her.
She smiled serenely. 'I'm sorry. Was I staring? It's just that you're the most beautiful man I've ever seen. I thought if I did die, you might not be such a bad thing to take with me as a last image.'
She disarmed him just like that. The power she wielded was frightening. Nothing touched him the way she managed to. With a look, a single word. Just the tone of her voice. He was drowning and it made no sense. And it made him angry. He just wasn't sure whom he was angry with.
She was still staring, her eyes huge. Rio stalked over to her and pressed his palm against her forehead. 'You're burning up.'
'I know.' He was standing right up against the bed, his groin level with her eyes. Rachael thought him extraordinary. She floated in a dreamy haze, where nothing seemed very real. Except Rio and his incredible body. She reached out to touch him, not believing he could be anything but a dream.
Her fingertips brushed the head of his penis and nearly sent him through the roof. Her touch was feather-light, barely there, but he felt it vibrating through his entire body.
'You are real.' She sounded awed and her breath was warm along his shaft, tightening every muscle in his
