Diamond Bay Read online

  Damn! The image was so real, so strong, that it kept creeping back. If it was only a fever-induced dream, it was the most realistic he had ever known. But if it had really happened, when and how? He had been unconscious most of the time, and out of his head with fever even when he’d been awake. Yet he kept reliving the sensation of her hands on him, stroking gently, with the open intimacy of lovers, and he had either had his hands on her or his imagination had lurched into overdrive.

  She plumped the pillows and turned to him. “Do you want to sleep in your shorts?”

  For an answer he unsnapped the cutoffs and let them drop, then sat down on the bed so she could work the shirt off his shoulder. The warm, faintly floral scent of her enveloped him as she leaned close, and he instinctively turned his head toward it, his mouth and nose pressing into her shoulder. She hesitated, then quickly freed him from the shirt and moved away from his touch. The moist warmth of his breath had heated her skin through the fabric of her shirt and played havoc with the even rhythm of her heartbeat. Trying not to let him see how his nearness had affected her, she neatly folded the shirt and placed it on a chair, then picked up his cutoffs and placed them on top of the shirt. When she looked at him again he was lying on his back, his right leg bent at the knee and raised, his right arm resting across his stomach. His white briefs contrasted sharply with his bronzed skin, reminding her that he didn’t have any tan lines on his body. She groaned inwardly. Why did she have to think about that now?

  “Do you want the sheet over you?”

  “No, the fan feels good.” He lifted his right hand from his stomach and held it out to her. “Sit here for a minute.”

  Her mind told her that it wasn’t a good idea. She sat down, anyway, just as she had done so many times since he’d been in her bed, her body angled to face him and her hip against his side. He draped his arm over her thighs, his hand cradling the curve of her hip as if to keep her nestled against him. His fingers, curving around to her buttock, began to move caressingly, and her heart started pounding again. She looked up to meet his eyes and was unable to look away, caught by the mesmerizing black fire.

  “I can’t give you all the answers you want,” he murmured. “I don’t know them myself. Even if I tell you I’m a good guy, you’d still only have my word for it, and why would I cut my own throat by telling you anything else?”

  “Don’t play devil’s advocate,” she said sharply, wishing she could find the will to break away from the seductive power of his gaze and touch. “Let’s deal in facts. You were shot. Who shot you?”

  “I was ambushed, set up by one of my own men—Tod Ellis.”

  “Bogus-FBI-agent Ellis?”

  “The same, from the description you gave.”

  “Then make a call and turn him in.”

  “It isn’t as simple as that. I’m on a month’s vacation from the agency. Only two men knew my location, both of them my superiors.”

  Rachel sat very still. “One of them betrayed you, but you don’t know which one.”

  “Perhaps both of them.”

  “Can’t you contact someone higher up?”

  Something cold and furious flashed in his eyes. “Sweetheart, you can’t get much higher. I’m not even certain I can get through. Either one of them has the power to declare me an outlaw, and calling from here would endanger you.”

  Rachel felt the icy power of his rage and shivered inside, thankful that she wasn’t the one who had crossed him. The look in his eyes was in direct contrast to the touch of his fingertips on her hip. How could his touch remain so gentle, while the wrath of hell glittered in his eyes?

  “What are you going to do?”

  His fingers trailed down her hip to her thigh and rubbed across the hem of her shorts, then gently glided beneath it. “Recuperate. I can’t do a damned thing right now, including dress myself. The problem is that I’m putting you in danger just by being here.”

  She couldn’t control her breathing, or her pulse rate. Heat was building inside her, destroying her ability to think and leaving her to operate purely on her senses. She knew she should move his hand, but the rasp of his rough fingertips on her thigh was so pleasurable that all she could do was sit there, quivering slightly like a leaf in a soft spring breeze. Did he normally treat women as if they were his to touch as he wished, or had he picked up on her uncontrollable responses to him? She thought she had disguised them well, kept them to herself, but perhaps his job had made his senses and intuitions more acute. Desperately she made herself move, putting her hand on top of his to prevent it from moving any higher.

  “You didn’t put me in danger,” she said, her voice a little hoarse. “I made the decision without your help.”

  Despite her controlling hand, his fingers moved higher and found the edge of her panties. “I have a question that’s been driving me crazy,” he admitted in a low voice. He moved his hand again, delving beneath the elastic leg of her panties and curving his fingers over the cool bareness of her buttock.

  A whimper escaped her before she bit her lip, controlling the wild little sound. How could he do this to her with just his touch? “Stop,” she whispered. “You have to stop.”

  “Have we been sleeping together?”

  Her breasts had tightened painfully, begging for that touch to be transferred to them, for him to claim them as he had before. His question destroyed what little concentration she had left. “This…there’s only this one bed. I don’t have a couch, only the love seats—”

  “So we’ve been in the same bed for four days,” he interrupted, stopping a flow of words that she had felt edging toward incoherency. His eyes were glittering again, but this time with a different fire, and she couldn’t look away. “You’ve been taking care of me.”

  She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “Yes.”

  “All alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ve been feeding me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Bathing me.”

  “Yes. Your fever—I had to sponge you with cool water to keep it down.”

  “You did everything that had to be done, took care of me like a baby.”

  She didn’t know what to say, what to do. His hand was still on her, his palm warm and hard against the softness of her flesh.

  “You touched me,” he said. “All over.”

  She swallowed. “It was necessary.”

  “I remember your hands on me. I liked it, but when I woke up this morning I thought it was a dream.”

  “You did dream,” she said.

  “Have I seen you naked?”

  “No!”

  “Then how do I know what your breasts look like? How they feel in my hands? It wasn’t all a dream, Rachel. Was it?”

  A hot, wild blush colored her face, giving him an answer even before she spoke. Her voice was stifled, and she looked away from him, her embarrassment at last freeing her from his gaze. “Twice, when you woke up, you… uh…grabbed me.”

  “Helped myself to the goodies?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And I saw you?”

  She made a helpless gesture toward her neck. “My nightgown drooped when I bent over you. The neckline was hanging open….”

  “Was I rough?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Did you like it?”

  This had to stop, right now, though she had a feeling that it was already too late, that she should never have sat down on the bed. “Move your hand,” she said, trying desperately to put some strength into her voice. “Let me go.”

  He obeyed without hesitation, triumph stamped on his hard, dark face. She shot up from the bed, her face on fire. What an utter fool she had made of herself! He probably wouldn’t be able to sleep for laughing at her. She was at the door before he spoke, his voice momentarily freezing her to the spot.