Separate Cabins

“I seem to have lost my appetite, too.” His fingers tightened, digging into her flesh as he steered her around a corner.

The line of his jaw was rigid, hard flesh stretched tautly across it. Her own mouth was clamped firmly shut, refusing to make angry feminine pleas to be released. She stopped actively struggling against his grip and instead held herself stiff, not yielding to his physical force.

Halfway down the narrow cross street he pulled her to a stop beside a parked car and opened the door. “Get in,” he ordered.

Rachel flashed him another angry glance, but he didn’t let go of her arm until she was sitting in the passenger seat. Then he closed the door and walked around to the driver’s side. She toyed with the idea of jumping out of the car, but it sounded childish even to her. Her beach bag was tossed into the back seat as Gard slid behind the wheel and inserted the key into the ignition switch.

Holding her tight-lipped silence, she said nothing as he turned into the busy traffic on the Malecon, the main thoroughfare in Puerto Vallarta, which curved along the waterfront of Banderas Bay. At the bridge over the Cuale River the traffic became heavier as cabs, trucks, burros, and bicycles all vied to cross.

The river was also the local laundromat. Rachel had a glimpse of natives washing their clothes and their children in the river below when Gard took his turn crossing the bridge. Under other circumstances she would have been fascinated by this bit of local atmosphere, but as it was, she saw it and forgot it.

Her sense of direction had always been excellent. Without being told, she knew they were going in the exactly opposite direction of the pier where the ship was tied. It was on the north side of town and they were traveling south. The road began to climb and twist up the mountainside that butted the sea, past houses and sparkling white condominiums clinging to precarious perches on the steep bluffs. When the resorts and residences began to thin out, Gard still didn’t slow down.

Rachel couldn’t stand the oppressive silence any longer. “Am I being abducted?”

“You might call it that,” was Gard’s clipped answer.

Not once since he’d climbed behind the wheel had his gaze strayed from the road. His profile seemed to be chiseled out of teak, carved in unrelenting lines. She looked at the sure grip of his hands on the steering wheel. Her arm felt bruised from the steely force of his fingers, but she refused to mention the lingering soreness.

As they rounded the mountain the road began a downward curve to a sheltered bay with a large sandy beach and a scattering of buildings and resorts. Recalling his earlier invitation to spend the afternoon in some quiet beach area, Rachel wondered if this was it.

“Is that where we’re going?” The tension stayed in her voice, giving it an edge.

“No.” His gaze flashed over the bay and returned to the road, the uncompromising set of his features never changing. “That’s where they filmed the movie The Night of the Iguana.” His voice was flat and hard.

“You can let me off there,” Rachel stated and stared straight ahead. “I should be able to hire a taxi to take me back to town.”

There was a sudden braking of the car. Rachel braced a hand against the dashboard to keep from being catapulted forward as Gard swerved the car off the road and onto a layby next to some building ruins overlooking the bay.

While Rachel was still trying to figure out what was happening, the motor was switched off and the emergency brake was pulled on. When Gard swung around to face her, an arm stretching along the seatback behind her head, she grabbed for the door handle.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” he growled as his snaring hand caught her wrist before she could pull the door handle.

“Damn you, let me go!” Rachel tried to pry loose from his grip with her free hand, but he caught it, too, and jerked her toward him.

“I’m not letting you go until we get a few things straight,” Gard stated through his teeth.

“Go to hell.” She was blazing mad.

So was Gard. That lazy, easygoing manner she was so accustomed to seeing imprinted on his features was nowhere to be seen. He was all hard and angry, his dark eyes glittering with a kind of violence. He had stopped turning the other cheek. Recognizing this, Rachel turned wary—no longer hitting out at him now that she discovered he was capable of retaliating. But it was too late.

“If I’m going to hell, you’re coming with me,” he muttered thickly.

He yanked her closer, a muscled arm going around her and trapping her arms between them as he crushed her to his chest. His fingers roughly twisted into her hair, tugging at the tender roots until her head was forced back.

When the bruising force of his mouth descended on her lips, Rachel pressed them tightly shut and strained against the imprisoning hand that wouldn’t permit her to turn away. The punishment of his kiss seemed to go on forever. She stopped resisting him so she could struggle to breathe under his smothering onslaught. Her heart was pounding in her chest with the effort.

As her body began to go limp with exhaustion the pressure of his mouth changed. A hunger became mixed with his anger and ruthlessly devoured her lips. She was senseless and weak when he finally dragged his mouth from hers. Her skin felt fevered from the soul-destroying fire of the angry kisses. The heaviness of his breathing swept over her upturned face as she forced her eyes to open and look at him.

The fires continued to smolder in his eyes, now tempered with desirous heat. He studied her swollen lips with a grimness thinning his own mouth. The fingers in her hair loosened their tangling grip that had forced her head backward.

“Woman, you drive me to distraction.” The rawly muttered words expressed the same angry desire she saw in his solid features. “Sometimes I wonder if you have any idea just how damned distracting you are!”

Her hands were folded against his muscled chest, burned by the heat of his skin through the thin cotton shirt. She could feel the hard thudding of his heart, so dangerously in tune with the disturbed rhythm of her own pulse. She watched his face, feeling the run of emotions within herself.

“I know that I made you angry yesterday,” Gard admitted while his gaze slid to the sun-browned hand on her shoulder. “When I watched you rubbing that lotion over your body, I wanted to do it for you.”

As if in recollection, his hand began to glide smoothly over the bareness of her arm. His gaze became fixed on the action while images whirled behind his smoldering dark eyes. Rachel didn