Demon Lover (17 page)

She made her way down to the beach and walked a little way, kicking at bits of flotsam with her huaraches: seaweed and brush, broken shells and sea gull feathers—casualties of the storm from both land and sea, all mixed together. The sun was warm on her bare legs; she had put on only the soft loose shirt and it was already beginning to dry. She walked toward the water until she reached smooth wet sand and stopped, hugging herself.

I feel good. I feel wonderful. I know I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do.

She frowned, puzzling it out. She wasn’t a person for whom mystical or poetic expression came naturally, but she felt as though she were…
newly born.
As though in the night, in the storm, in the cave, she had come through some tremendous struggle and had emerged a different person. She wasn’t sure yet—it was all still too new and confusing—but she thought perhaps…

I think I’m happy. I shouldn’t be, but I am. It’s a beautiful new day, and I’m happy.

Footsteps stirred the sand behind her. Julie turned, gave a sleepy, sunny smile and went blindly into Chayne’s arms. It was a natural action, one not precipitated by thought; if she had stopped to think she would have lacked the confidence to be sure of her welcome. But in a manner as natural as hers, Chayne’s arms enfolded her, and his cheek came to rest on the top of her head. She put her arms around his waist, lacing her fingers loosely together at the small of his back, resting her forehead against his chest and inhaling the warm familiar smell of his body.

They stood that way, not moving, not speaking, for a long time. Finally Chayne bumped her head gently with his chin and said in an odd, gravelly voice, "Good morning."

"Good morning," Julie whispered back.

"It’s sure a nice morning."

"It’s a beautiful morning."

"How are you?"

"Fine. I’m fine."

"Sore?"

"No. No, I’m fine. Maybe a little stiff."

"Stiff?"

"From sleeping on the ground."

"Sleeping?" His chest bumped against her cheek as his fingers took her chin and lifted it. Eyes of fierce, crackling blue searched every centimeter of her face, boring deep into her own eyes. And for once she wasn’t afraid of that electric contact but clung to it, looking just as far into his soul as he did into hers. And in that long, searching look something passed between them—a covenant, an understanding, an acceptance.

The dark, rather forbidding face relaxed into a grin. "Stiff, huh?" Chayne took her by the shoulders and held her a little way from him, then slid his big hands up to grasp her trapezius muscles. He began to knead gently, moving his hands slowly upward until his fingers were massaging the base of her skull. "I can help that," he said softly. "If you want me to."

"I…um." Her neck had lost its ability to support her head, which rested like a plucked chrysanthemum in the basket of Chayne’s hands. "Uh…what?"

He chuckled and kissed her upturned face, brushing her eyelids with his moustache, then her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and finally her breathlessly parted lips. She stood with her hands at her sides and drank from his mouth with the trusting abandon of a thirsty child.

Presently Chayne lifted his head and said huskily, "My God, I’ve created a monster. What’s this, Julie—are you
blushing?"

She tried to pull away and was instead gathered back into his arms. "Well, don’t you think I should? All you do is touch me and I behave like a shameless wanton."

"How Victorian that sounds. Shameless? Absolutely. And wanton? God, I hope so!"

"Chayne…stop that."

"You don’t want me to stop."

"No,I don’t. Oh God, does this mean I’m addicted?"

"To what?"

"Sex."

"I hope so."

"You’ve turned me into a junkie?"

"A sex junkie!"

No—a Chayne junkie.
She thought, but didn’t voice the words.

They were giggling like kids, foreheads touching, breaths mingling, hands roaming in random explorations. Now the laughter died in a sighing expiration as Julie pulled back a little to let her eyes devour him, beginning with the wild curls of dark hair on the walnut forehead; the fine black brows and heavy lashes; cobalt eyes; craggy features and shadowed jaws; the sensitive, gently smiling mouth she could still feel as a lingering tingle of cooling moisture on her own.

With shy fingers she traced the dimple–like scar in his chin, then let her hands follow her gaze down the whisker–roughened neck, over the ridge of his collarbone and across the furred planes of his chest. And then, inevitably, her eyes were pulled downward to what had been invisible and forgotten in the dark—that terrible scar on his belly. Awed, fascinated, she reached with trembling fingers to touch it.

Chayne sucked in his breath audibly and caught her wrist. He held her hand poised away from his body, and in that frozen silence the sound of distant voices carried on the clear morning air, reminding them both they were not, after all, alone on the earth.

"We could both use a swim," Chayne said.

Though the gentleness in his voice softened the abruptness of the withdrawal a little, Julie was chilled by the harsh austerity in his face, in his eyes. As they walked to the water he hooked an arm around her neck and drew her close—an awkward gesture of silent apology, an unspoken plea for understanding.

But I don’t understand him. I don’t know him. I don’t understand what he’s doing to me.

Even as her fingers moved to the buttons of her shirt she was thinking,
Why? Why am I doing this? Am I under some kind of spell?

To her body he was no stranger; he knew every inch of it. Removing her clothing and standing before him there in the sunshine brought a warm blush to her cheeks, but it was a blush of excitement, not shame. And just the touch of his eyes was enough to bring her breasts to tingling fullness.

But I don’t know him.

He was a strange enigma of a man, this smuggler–terrorist–pirate named Chayne Younger. Was that even his real name? Perhaps, after all, the Spanish nickname was best:
El Demonio Garzo.
Something not quite real. Something unknowable.

He tells me he’s just a man, but he won’t let me know him. And why do I want to know him?

The lazy surf of the Sea of Cortez pushed and pulled at her knees as she watched Chayne step out of his ragged jeans and stride naked into the water. Except for one strip of paler skin, his entire body was that dusky walnut tone, adorned with the masculine pattern of dark hair that seemed only to accentuate and outline its symmetry. She watched the play of muscles beneath gleaming skin, marveling again at the strength and grace of his body. His awesomely beautiful, flawed body.

The flaw he will not let me touch.

Because he didn’t want her to get close to him—to get to know him. He must be aware, just as she was, that the covenant between them was limited to the here and now. Aware that when they left this place, when the real world intruded upon them, the covenant would be null and void. She would once again be committed only to his destruction, and he—would he eventually have to choose between her life and his own freedom?

Whether they had been brought together as a result of an accident of fate or by a capricious devil, their need for each other had been real and compelling. And out of that mutual need had come an understanding. Someday, when the real world did intrude, U.S. Agent Julie Maguire would have to face the person—this Julie she didn’t even know—who had accepted that arrangement. This stranger in her body who had so readily accepted intimacy with a man who was the antithesis of everything she believed in.

Someday. But not now.

Chayne’s big hands curved over her naked shoulders. He pushed her, laughing and protesting, into the gentle waves. She surfaced sputtering and aimed a hefty splash at his grinning face.

The specter of the future clutched at her insides like a cold, cruel hand, but if the haunting showed in her eyes he didn’t notice.

"I
T DOESN’T LOOK
too bad—not as bad as I expected."

"It’s a good thing the tide was out," Julie murmured, reflecting even as she spoke that the remark was a very good indicator of how much she’d changed in the last few hours. How much she had
been
changed.

They were standing on the rocks that separated the settlement from their private cove, surveying the destruction. The beach below was littered with palm thatch; the only roof still attached to its dwelling was Sebastien’s sturdy one of corrugated tin, firmly nailed down. Carlito was scampering up and down amid the wreckage, waving palm fronds and screaming like an Indian on the warpath while the dogs yipped and cavorted about him.

The cook shed had blown down. Rita was stirring through the ruins in a desultory way, salvaging cooking utensils and the watertight canisters of staples and adding them to a growing pile.

Old Juanita was stooped over in the middle of her garden patch, stoically nursing what the chubasco and the goats had left of her vegetables. The animal pens had been another casualty of the storm; the goats had already been retrieved and were placidly nibbling whatever they could find at the limits of their tethers. Sebastien, Geraldo and Pepe were chasing chickens, laughing and shouting, making a lark of disaster, like schoolboys on a field trip. Sebastien already had a brace of birds in hand, suspended upside down by the feet and flapping and squawking their outrage. As Julie and Chayne watched, Pepe took a flying leap after an escapee and dove belly first and empty–handed into the sand, to his own disgust and Geraldo’s delight.

"I’m surprised there hasn’t been a flood down through here," Julie said when the laughter had subsided.

"The flood channel is over there, the other side of that ridge," Chayne told her, pointing toward the south. "In fact, that’s why Sebastien came to this cove. There used to be quite a settlement over there—a mission, the whole thing. The ruins of the church are still there—or were before this last storm. If they haven’t washed away, I’ll show you sometime."

"What happened to it?"

"Flash flood. Wiped it out. Everyone left except Sebastien and his family. They have a big family—all gone away now, gone to the mainland…to the city. Sebastien built all these houses for his children, but none of them wanted to stay."

"Sad," Julie said. But she could sympathize with the young people’s flight from this place, even while she understood why the old ones would love it. Baja was as lonely and cruel as it was beautiful.

"I guess we’d better see what we can do about finding a new roof," Chayne said dryly. There was an odd note of reluctance in his voice, and he made no move to descend to the beach. Julie wondered if he was as loath to rejoin the company as she was. The privacy of their little rocky cove seemed precious now.

"Besides, I’m hungry." He put his arm around her and drew her against his side, a gesture that was becoming familiar to her. It brought a curious ache to her chest. "Aren’t you?"

"Yes. I guess I am. Starving." Julie looked up at him, waiting.

He grinned down at her. "Ready?"

No. No—can’t we stay here forever?

"Sure. Let’s go." She took a deep breath, mentally squared her shoulders—then remembered. There was no longer any reason to be on her guard; the playacting was over.

In spite of the havoc and destruction wreaked upon it by the typhoon, or perhaps because of it, there was an almost pastoral mood in the little settlement. There was a closeness among them that Julie hadn’t felt before; they were no longer a nest of smugglers and outlaws so much as fellow survivors, orphans of the storm. They were too concerned now with the immediate necessities of life—food and shelter—to think beyond the here and now. There was no time for deadly plans and nightmare visions of violence and terror. The sun shone, and the breezes blew warm and sweet, and they all laughed a lot and worked at the tasks of cleaning up and rebuilding in companionable harmony, like good friends on a camping trip.

As usual, though, the division of labor was sharp and clear. The problem of food preparation was left to the women, while the men saw to more weighty matters. They took it for granted that a meal would be provided for them even in the midst of chaos, and so of course it was.

Almost as soon as they reached the camp, Chayne left Julie and went to join the other men, who by this time had completed the chicken roundup and were engaged in a solemn inspection of the roofless adobes. Accustomed to things by this time, Julie went to offer her services to Rita, who welcomed her with a quick, searching glance and then a smile. She looked almost gaunt, with dark smudges around her eyes. Julie thought with a pang of guilt, What a terrible night she must have spent, while I…

While I was in another world, with Chayne.

There was still propane, and the gas stove in Rita’s hut was big enough to accommodate the coffee pot and the big iron skillet. Fillets salvaged from the giant grouper were fried with onions, green tomatoes and peppers that Juanita brought from her ravaged garden. The men were served picnic–style on the beach. The women, of course, ate by themselves, indoors.

Linda arrived about the time the work was done, looking sullen and cross, like a child in a temper. Clearly the storm had been a bit more than she’d bargained for. Julie had no idea what her arrangement was with Pepe, but she was sure it hadn’t included hurricanes and roofless adobe huts. But even she pitched in, once breakfast was out of the way, to help carry salvaged supplies from the wreckage of the cook shed to one of the unoccupied huts.

The tub that had held the lobsters had blown full of sand and the lobsters had vanished. No one could imagine what had become of them, but Julie had a whimsical vision of a conga line of lobsters dancing through the torrential rain to the sea. Since dinner had absconded and the men were too busy with other things to make another fishing trip, two of Sebastien’s chickens were sacrificed and consigned to the cooking pot for the evening meal.