Wild Rain (Leopard People 1)

Rio bit her shoulder, a teasing bite he couldn't help, kissing her skin, the line of her back. Anything he could reach. He wrapped her up in his arms, just held her while he tried to recover his ability to breathe. Every moment that he was with her made him feel more alive. He thought running in the forest was the most freeing feeling, but being with Rachael gave him something else, something he couldn't quite put a name to, but he never wanted to do without. Slowly, reluctantly, he eased his body from the haven of hers, a wide smile on his face.

Rachael sagged to the floor of the cavern as if her legs simply collapsed. Rio eased her down onto the sleeping bag. To his horror she burst into tears and covered her face with her hands. He stared down at her helplessly, astonished that she would be sobbing as if he'd broken her heart.

"Rachael. Damn it. You didn't even cry when Fritz nearly tore your leg off. What's wrong with you?" He sat down beside her and clumsily put his arm around her shaking shoulders. "Tell me."

It was the first awkward movement Rachael had ever seen him make and it comforted her when she thought there could be no comfort. "I don't know myself like this. It frightens me, the way I feel for you. The way I think about you. I don't even know my own body anymore. I like sex, Rio, but I'm not driven by sex. I'm a thinking person. I like to think about things from every angle. When I'm with you, like this, I disappear completely and there's only how it feels. How you feel."

He pulled her to him, pillowing her head on his shoulder when she wanted to hold herself stiffly away. "How we feel together, Rachael. It's being one person, in the same skin, our minds in the same place. It's how we are together. Why would you be afraid of that?"

"I can't fall in love with you, Rio, and you can't love me. If we just wanted to have sex and it was pleasant or even fireworks, it would be fine, but this is different. It's so much more. It's like an addiction. Not to the sex, that's only a small part of it. I feel like I have to be with you. That you're in some way essential to my life, to my reason for existing." She shoved her hand through her hair, lifted her head from his shoulder and glared at him. "I wish it was a past life that makes me want you so much, but I can't even blame it on that. Love shouldn't be so all-consuming. I'm not an all-consuming person. I'm not."

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself? I never thought about loving someone, Rachael. I wish I could tell you how I know we're destined to be together, it sounds so stupid even when I say it to myself, but I know we're meant to be man and wife. I can't imagine waking up in the morning and not having you beside me. Hell, I don't even have all that much to offer you. I have a risky job, a people who won't welcome me into their village, let alone their lives, and that would certainly spill over to you and our children, but it doesn't matter. I know I have to find a way to make it worth it to you to stay with me."

"Are you even listening to me? Does any of this make sense to you? Because it doesn't make a bit of sense to me. What do you know about me other than I have a million-dollar price on my head? And some leopard man is running around trying to kill me. And I may or may not be part of a species I didn't know existed until a couple of days ago. That's it. That's what you know, yet you're ready to spend your life with me. Is that normal, Rio? Do you think people really react that way?"

"What's normal, sestrilla, and why does there even have to be a normal for us? If you aren't one of my people I still want to share your life." He touched her tear-wet face. "This should never happen, not because you think you're falling in love with me."

"Don't sound happy about it, Rio. Do you think it's going to end happily? How can it? They won't stop with one killer. They'll send another and another until one of them kills you or me or both of us."

He kissed her. It was the only thing he could think to do, tasting her tears, feeling her terror. Not for herself but for him. She melted into him the way he was coming to know, every bit as hungry as he was. Feeding on his mouth. Committing to him with her body when she wasn't ready to do so with words. And that was all right with him. He tasted her complete acceptance of him. Felt it in her response. She simply surrendered everything she was into his keeping and just as wholly made her own demands.

Rachael leaned her head against his chest with a small sigh. "I'm not going to think about it anymore, Rio. Let's just see where it all takes us." She rubbed his jaw with the heel of her hand. "Did you find him?"

"He was not from our area. I'm guessing South America. He was definitely one of our species. Have you ever been to South America, Rachael?"

"You're not very good at sounding casual when you really want to know something, Rio," she reprimanded. "I was born in South America. I spent the first four years of my life there. We immigrated to the United States. My father, well, he's really not my birth father but to me he was my father, was born in South America and lived there most of his life, just as my mother had, but he had a lot of family in the United States."

"You have a stepfather?"

"Had. He's dead. He and my mother were murdered. And he was my father as far as I'm concerned. I loved him very much and he treated me as if I were his own flesh and blood. My brother too. He couldn't have been better to us."

There was defiance in her voice. She stirred as if she wanted to get away from him. Rio began to repack the boxes carefully, trying not to look at her so it would be easier when he asked her questions. "Rachael, is it possible you did something to anger the elders of your people? Maybe inadvertently committed a crime against your people that might earn you banishment or the death penalty?"

She looked up sharply, eyes flashing fire, but Rio only glanced at her and then away, deliberately not engaging in a staring match. "I don't have people. I'm not a different species."

"How do you explain your ability to see in the dark? The fact that mosquitoes avoid you? Your heightened sexual awareness and the different emotions you've been experiencing?" he asked gently as he snapped the lid on the box and replaced it in the cage of roots.

"There are perfectly acceptable explanations. My good eating habits could account for great eyesight and lack of mosquito bites. And you're responsible for my heightened sexual awareness and my moods. You parade around naked half the time, what do you expect?"

He grinned at her. "Getting a little moody on me now, aren't you?" He held out his hand. "Let's get out of here."

"Where are we going?"

"Home. We're going home. I'm going to teach you how to live here, Rachael, and whatever happens, we'll just deal with it."

She took his hand, weaving her fingers through his. "You do realize I haven't got a stitch on."

He leaned forward to press his lips against her breast, his tongue teasing her nipple. "I did notice, yes. I've got clothes in a waterproof bag so we can get out of the river and be dry."

"Isn't it daylight? Someone might see us."

"Most people along the river aren't going to care whether we have clothes on or not." He drew her breast into the warmth of his mouth, his hands moving over her body with possession, with desire. He pressed a kiss against her throat, her chin, the corner of her mouth. "Let's get you home. I have a bathtub." He turned off the lamp, plunging the cave into darkness.

"No, you don't. I looked for a bathtub." She found his hand. "You're trying to bribe me and it isn't going to work."

"You didn't look in the right places. I have a tub I fill with hot water when I want to soak an injury. Most of the time I use the cold shower, but I've got a tub."

The water swirled around her ankles, rose to her calf. "My brother did things, bad things, Rio." There in the blackness, underground where no one could overhear them, she confessed. "I can't go to the police because they'd arrest him. I'd never do that to him. I love him. So I had no choice but to leave."

He recognized the enormity of her confidence in him. He slipped his arm around her waist. "What kinds of bad things, Rachael?"

She shook her head, the silken curls brushing against his bare skin. "Don't ask me anything more about him.

If it wasn't for him, I would have been dead a long time ago. I owe him so much. You have no idea what we went through. I'm not going to betray him. I can't." She took a breath. "I'm not lying about the elders, Rio. I don't have any elders that I know of, alive or dead, to issue a death sentence for an imaginary indiscretion. I would tell you if there were."

"I believe you, sestrilla." He touched her to let her know they had to go under the water and swim through the narrow tube. He went first, trying to figure out what she could have done to make her brother want her dead. Especially when she obviously loved him. He heard it in her voice. The smoldering anger of his kind, always so dangerous and unpredictable, swirled in his belly as he swam. It didn't make sense that the man didn't love her back. Who wouldn't love Rachael?

They broke the surface together, just under the falls, hoping the water would screen them from sight should anyone be close by. Rio went back under to secure the heavy mesh over the tube. Rachael waited, staring at the opposite bank through the pouring water of the falls, subconsciously counting to herself until Rio emerged beside her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her body close to his. "I should never have told you."

"You can tell me anything. I told you about my mother."

She kissed his throat, trailed little kisses up his jaw. "And I still think your elders stink. They didn't recognize how courageous you were in going to them and admitting what you'd done."

"It wasn't courage. It was what she taught me. I chose to do something and I had to take the consequences. It was her rule and one I respected." The joy burst through him like a rainbow of colors. Rachael had a way of making him feel worthwhile. Feel like someone special and amazing. He tied the rope around her waist and waded out into the fast-moving current. "We have to swim to shore. The current will take us a bit downstream but we have to angle for the other side of the river."

She nodded to show him she understood. This time when she put her foot down in the water, she could rest her weight briefly on it. It was a good sign that she was finally healing. She had taken a close look at it in the cave and there would definitely be scarring, but at least she had the leg.