Wild Orchids Read online

  “Señor! Que pasa?” The woman sounded as if she didn’t much care if they were having trouble.

  With a swift glance at the man beside her, Lora frantically weighed her odds if she decided to risk the gun and call for help. Should she? Her captor must have sensed what was in her mind, because he tightened his grip; she felt his body hot and close against her side as the hard nose of the gun prodded deeper into her stomach.

  “Smile!” he hissed, his voice deadly. Lora smiled. His closeness was overwhelming. She was aware of him with every nerve of her body; the strength of the muscles that enfolded her against him; the heat that emanated from him like a stove; the smell of sweat; the hardness of his arms and chest; the dampness of his bare skin where it touched her and the prickling of the hairs on his chest against her arm. . . .

  “Nada, señora, gracias! No problema!” he called back, lifting the hand that was not holding the gun in a careless wave.

  Lora tried frantically to signal with her eyes that something was wrong—she didn’t dare do anything else with the gun and the man pressing ever closer—but the woman apparently saw nothing out of the ordinary.

  “Adios!” She waved once, the children grabbed hold, and the truck was underway again. Lora watched forlornly as it rattled down the road and out of sight.

  “Smart girl,” he approved then, removing his arm and the gun simultaneously.

  Lora shivered as he stood. She cast a quick, resentful glare up at her captor as he stood over her, his shirt in one hand and the gun in the other.

  He left her, returning to the car and to work. Lora watched as his head and shoulders disappeared under the hood with a piece of hose. She was struck suddenly by how well-proportioned his body was. When he had first crowded into the VW beside her, she had thought that he was almost as stocky as he was tall. Now she saw that that was not true at all. His shoulders were wide and heavily muscled, but his torso was lean and sculpted. Sweat gleamed on the bronzed skin of his shoulder-blades, then trickled down his spine to disappear into a spreading patch of wetness at the waistband of his jeans. Her arm still tingled from contact with the wedge of curling black hair that covered the muscular planes of his chest. He was leaning into the engine, so most of his chest was out of her sight. But his backside was not . . . His hips were narrow, his legs long and straight. As her eyes ran back up over them she could not help but notice that his rear was small and tight in the faded jeans that fit him like the advertisements promised they could. All at once he straightened, turning to look directly at her. Lora realized with a stab of acute discomfort that she had been staring—and where. Dear God, had he seen? Would he take it for encouragement?

  “I think I managed to fix it.” He was coming toward her, still moving with that slight limp, wiping his hands on a rag as he spoke. She was relieved to see him put on his shirt, carelessly doing up the buttons with one hand. He would not put on his shirt if he was intent on rape. . . .

  “Goody.” Her response was distinctly unenthusiastic.

  He grinned then, a real, human, honest-to-God grin, and Lora stared. Amazing what a swathe of white teeth and a crinkling of black eyes could do for a face! He looked almost—handsome. No, not handsome, with that too aggressive face and villainous mustache, to say nothing of the remaining smears of blood from the wounds she and the jungle between them had inflicted. But attractive, which was not the right word, either. Lora was a stickler for the right word; as an English teacher, she demanded it of her students in their compositions and she would not now accept less of herself. And that word was, she reluctantly realized, sexy. The man was sexy as hell. She shuddered away from the thought. Under the circumstances, how could she possibly find him sexy? Was she crazy? Masochistic, maybe? If so, she had never recognized signs of it in herself before now.

  He was behind her, his hands on her wrists as he untied the thong. She flinched from even that impersonal touch. His fingers seemed unbearably hot against her soft skin. . . .

  “Come on, let’s go.” He caught her upper arm to help her to her feet. Lora jerked away from him reflexively, and he let her go. She could feel his eyes boring into her back as she walked ahead of him to the car. She was suddenly, frighteningly aware of his blatant masculinity, and in self-defense tried to suppress the natural feminine sway of her hips, with what success she couldn’t guess. He stood watching until she was installed in the driver’s seat, then got in himself before handing her the keys. Taking them, she was careful not to touch his fingers. His glittering black eyes on her face gave her the shivers. . . .

  “Don’t try any more tricks,” he warned softly as she started the car. The gun lay across his lap, gleaming starkly in the bright sunlight pouring in through the windshield. Lora flicked a quick, nervous glance down at it. His hand on the grip seemed idle, but the nose was pointed directly at her. “I’ve been very patient with you so far, but don’t push your luck. Remember, you’ll be okay as long as you do exactly what I tell you. If you don’t—I’ll do what I have to.”

  Lora swallowed, and nodded without speaking. Carefully, she depressed the clutch, put the car into first, and pulled out onto the highway. That unprecedented stab of sexual awareness she had just experienced toward him had unnerved her completely. Never in her life had she been so aware of a man as a man . . . She shifted into second; there was an ear-shattering grinding sound as the gears crashed. Lora winced, and he grimaced. The car jerked off down the road as Lora awkwardly manipulated the stick shift and tried to remember when to step on the clutch and when to release it.

  “You can’t drive worth a damn, can you?” he said when at last she had managed to wrestle the transmission into fourth gear and the car was moving more or less smoothly down the highway.

  “Would you like to drive?” she demanded irritably before she thought.

  “Then I wouldn’t need you, would I?” he answered, his voice very soft. “But you never know, I may decide that the off-chance that the police will pull us over isn’t worth putting up with your god-awful driving. Then where will you be?”

  Lora cast him a quick, nervous look. He was staring out at the road, and his face was as unreadable as stone. She quickly looked away again, but the image of that grim profile was etched indelibly into her memory. Sexy or not, he would kill her if he had to. She had best not make the mistake of forgetting that again.

  III

  They drove without stopping until long past dark. Lora grew increasingly anxious as he made no attempt at conversation, merely shifting in his seat with growing restlessness as the sun sank beneath the horizon and mile after mile of blacktop highway passed beneath the wheels. He was uneasy, she could sense it. His shoulders and legs filled his side of the small car; she was acutely aware of every movement he made. When he leaned forward to scan the road ahead of them, or turned to survey cars approaching them from behind, she could feel the tautness of his body, as if he was waiting for something, expecting something to happen. Watching for the police, perhaps? She had no doubts that he was a criminal; clearly he was on the run from the law, or maybe from his fellow criminals—or both. The questions was, what would happen if he was caught while she was with him? With the police, it would just be a matter of making them understand that she was his victim, not his confederate—if they could be made to listen before bullets started flying—but with criminals as desperate as her abductor she might be dispatched along with him whether she was an innocent victim of circumstances or not. She hoped against hope that it was the police he seemed so desperately wary of—they would realize that she was a victim; after all, they were the police, they didn’t make mistakes like that—and that they would catch up with him soon. If not, what would he do to her? Despite his promise, would he kill her? Maybe he had just said what he had to assure her cooperation until he no longer needed her.

  If he didn’t kill her, would he rape her? That, she decided, was a very real possibility. Sooner or later, they would have to stop and rest, and then, she was very much afraid, she
would learn the worst. She kept remembering how he had said that he didn’t mind hurting women. The memory made her shudder. Would he rape her? Dear God, she prayed he would not. It was impossible to imagine herself being subjected to such horror . . . But then, this morning it would have been equally impossible to imagine herself being kidnapped by a terrifyingly real, terrifyingly serious version of the Frito Bandido. And it had happened. If he were to initiate a sexual overture, what should she do? Would he hurt her if she resisted him? Just because she thought he was sexy—detestable word, she had been around sixteen-year-old girls too long—did not mean that she would willingly have sex with him. Far from it! First of all, he scared her senseless. And second, where she came from, there were only two types of females: ladies and all others. And ladies did not, definitely did not, have sex with men they had known for less than a day, regardless of how physically attractive said men might be. And a lady would certainly never voluntarily have sex with a violent and possibly crazed criminal who had abducted her at gunpoint. And Lora had always been, indisputably, a lady. The sticking point was what he would do when she rejected him. He might take her rejection philosophically or, as seemed far more likely from what she already knew of him, he might not. And that’s where the spectre of forcible rape came in. Because he could force her, she knew. No matter how hard she might fight, he could easily overpower her. Her self-defense course had not turned her into a female Bruce Lee, after all. She had gotten lucky, before, but she could not count on it happening again. Against a six-foot-four or thereabouts hunk of honed muscle and bone that looked like it should be playing fullback for the Dallas Cowboys, she didn’t stand a chance.

  While she was sitting there ruminating, casting the man beside her the occasional worried glance, Lora gradually became aware of an ever-more-pressing concern: she had to go to the bathroom. At first she ignored her bladder’s signals, but as the minutes and miles passed she became increasingly uncomfortable. Hunger and sleepiness she could, and would, hold at bay for some hours longer. But she had to go to the bathroom! The problem was, she was afraid to tell him so, afraid that mention of such an unmentionable subject might give him ideas, in case he didn’t have them already. Besides, she was afraid to stop, period. While she was driving the car, she felt relatively safe. Once she was not, who knew what he might take it into his head to do to her?

  She squirmed as discreetly as possible on the uncomfortable vinyl seat, tightening her muscles and trying to think of something else. He was staring out at the road ahead of them, which was deserted now. Except for the faint light of their own headlights, they were surrounded by darkness. Uneven expanses of fields rolled away from the highway on both sides, products of the slash and burn method of reclaiming farmland from the jungle. Even the blacktop highway itself stretching away into an infinity of unseen miles contributed to the overall impression of inpenetrable night. Except for the occasional lowing of a cow or cry of a night animal, they could have been alone in the world.

  ‘What the hell are you wiggling about?” After about fifteen minutes of what she had thought were her imperceptible movements, his voice barked at her over the faint hum of the engine.

  “Nothing,” she answered defensively, refusing to look at him although she knew he was glaring at her. Quite apart from fearing what he might do to her if he started thinking along those lines, she found that she simply could not tell a strange man of the problem that afflicted her. It would be too embarrassing.

  “Then for God’s sake, sit still.” He sounded more irritable than threatening, but Lora didn’t want to push her luck. She concentrated on ignoring her difficulty, and almost succeeded. Until the first fat drop of rain plopped down on the windshield, to be followed by another and another in a rapidly quickening assault.

  “Oh, no.” The mere sound of water flowing threatened to be her undoing. She clamped her thighs even tighter.

  “What are you moaning about?” He turned to face her as he spoke, his eyes glittering points of light in the darkness. She could feel them moving down over her body and then back up to her face again. Her hands tightened on the wheel; she did not like the speculative way he was looking at her body. Of course, he could merely be trying to decipher the cause of her obvious discomfort, but along the way he was making no bones about eyeing her curves. Lora slowed the car to a crawl as the quickening droplets turned without warning into sheets of pouring rain; modesty and fear battled with urgent need. Need won.

  “I have to stop.”

  He snorted. “We’ll stop when I say stop. It’s not raining that hard.”

  Lora stared out into the raging downpour. He probably would call a hurricane a little rainstorm, she grumbled inwardly. But in any case that was not her problem at the moment.

  “I need to stop,” she said tightly, without looking at him.

  “You heard what I said.”

  “I have to go to the bathroom!” The words burst out of her mouth. Furious that he had made her admit something so intimate, she shot a glare at him. His eyes moved swiftly over her once again, and then he settled back into his seat. To her angry embarrassment, she caught the glimmer of a faint grin as it came and went on his mouth.

  “Oh.”

  When, after a few minutes, it became obvious that that was all the response he meant to give to what was rapidly becoming the driving force of her life, she shot him another furious look.

  “Is that all you can say?”

  “What do you want me to say? In case you haven’t noticed, it’s raining cats and dogs out there. I would say that you are welcome to stop the car and go behind a bush if you like, but I’d have to get out with you and I’m damned if I’m going to get soaked to the skin. You’ll just have to exercise some self-control.”

  “Self-control!” Lora spluttered, thinking of the miles that she had been doing just that. He looked over at her, and once again she caught that faint, glimmering grin before it disappeared and his mouth became as hard and uncompromising as ever.

  “Unless you have a jar in the backseat.”

  “A jar!” Words failed her. She seethed silently, steering the car through the driving rain with gritted teeth, not really caring whether or not they stayed on the roadway. More by good luck than by good management they did, but she was at the point where it made not the slightest difference to her. She had to go to the bathroom!

  The gun was lying in his lap, its nose pointed toward the dashboard, his hand resting negligently on the handle. Even if it had been pointed directly at her, she wouldn’t have cared. There were no restrooms or even any buildings in sight, nor had there been for miles, there was no jar in the backseat, and there was no way she was going to wet her pants.

  “I’m stopping,” she said through her teeth, suiting the action to the words. “You can shoot me if you want to, but I have to go to the bathroom!”

  He turned to stare at her as she threw the car into neutral, set the brake, and opened the door, stepping out into the downpour. She heard him curse, and saw his brown hand tighten on the gun as she shut the door behind her with a bang. He got out onto the roadway, clapping the sombrero on his head as he emerged, and stood scowling at her over the roof of the VW. The gun, pointed directly at her, was in one hand while with the other he tried to hold the folded sarape over it to protect it from the cascading torrents.

  Lora ignored both him and the gun, walking away from the car into the quagmire at the side of the road. She was already soaked to the skin. Water streamed over her face and hair, and her dress was plastered to her body. Mud oozed slimily over the sides of her sandals, sucking at her feet with every step. A most unaromatic smell assaulted her nostrils. She sniffed, barely avoided getting a nose full of water, and identified the odor’s source. Mexican farmers fertilized their fields with human excrement. Shuddering, she stopped in her tracks. There was no way she was venturing into one of those fields.

  She narrowed her eyes against the rain and peered back toward the car. He had walked around it an
d now stood with feet braced apart and the gun pointed in her direction. With only the car’s headlights behind him for illumination, she could not see his face but the rest of him looked very big and dark and dangerous. She caught the mutter of his voice over the pouring of the rain, and guessed that he was cursing her with expert fluency.

  “Turn your back!”

  He didn’t hear her the first time, so she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted. For a moment he stood irresolute, staring at her, but then he must have decided that she had no intention of doing what needed to be done while he stood and watched her. He turned his back. Lora had a brief moment of thankfulness that she wasn’t wearing pantyhose, and then the whole business was concluded with satisfying speed. Feeling much better despite the fact that she was soaked to the skin, she stood, adjusted her clothing, walked around him back to the car, and got in. The thought of running did briefly occur to her, only to be quickly dismissed. When he caught her—and he would—he would be in a filthy temper, and she had already learned a healthy respect for his temper. Besides, the idea of slogging through acres of mud teeming with the source of that smell was off-putting in the extreme.

  “I ought to shoot you. I’m wet as a drowned duck.” Those were his first words as he got back in beside her. The gun was raised threateningly, but even its shiny blue-black barrel was not as ominous as the scowl on his face. The straw sombrero had been no match for the rain; he threw it and the soaked sarape into the backseat with a gesture of disgust. He was as wet as she. Water still ran from his soaking hair down his face and dripped from the end of his thick eyebrows and mustache. His shirt clung wetly to his broad chest and his drenched jeans hugged his thighs, emphasizing taut muscles and sinews. Through the wet closeness of his shirt, she saw the dark shadow of body hair. Hairy chested men had always secretly appealed to her . . . Lora’s eyes flickered at the thought. Averting her face with a belligerent lift of her chin, she reached to yank the car into first. It bucked forward, then, as she shifted with a loud grinding of gears, lurched on down the wet road.