She flushed a deep red. "Because of the way you look at me, the way you talk to me. You make me feel ... dirty."

"Dirty!" He howled at the word. "You should be thanking me for that. Has Hugh ever made you feel dirty?"

"Of course not! Hugh treats me like a lady."

"Yeah, I'll just bet he does. I'll bet Prince Charming kisses you all nice and neat and doesn't even mess up your hair. I'll bet Hugh's a fastidious lover, isn't he? In at ten, out at ten-fifteen? Simultaneous climaxes? All nice and tidy?"

"You're disgusting!"

His breath shook as he studied her. "And you like it, don't you?" He began to walk around her, circling her slowly, lowering his voice to a husky murmur. "If you know anything about me at all, Randy, you know I'd never treat you like a lady. I'd treat you like a woman. I'd mess you up a little, and I'd keep you that way-messy, s.e.xy, wet-just for me."

Randy reared up in shock. She breathed in sharply, and then she went weak against the restraints, her legs refusing to hold her. A powerful current of excitement was flowing through her, making her tremble, and yet deep inside, there was the wildest, sweetest ache, seizing up and clutching at her muscles. If she hadn't been bound, she would have sagged to the floor.

"Stop it," she said, fighting for strength. She twisted away from the cooling air that bathed her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s, refusing to look at him, refusing to partic.i.p.ate in any more of his outrageous games. "Don't talk to me anymore," she said, her voice shaking.

She felt the pull of his silence, but she didn't look up.

"Why not?" he asked finally. "Are you afraid of what I'm going to say, of how it might make you feel? I don't even have to touch you, do I, baby? I can just talk to you and you get hot."

"Please," she breathed. "Don't!" She could feel a kind of shuddering in her depths. It was strange and potent and beautiful, as if she were coming apart. It made her want to draw up, to protect herself, but she couldn't with her legs restrained. She was helpless against the feelings. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were throbbing with excitement. Her thighs ached softly. He did make her feel like a woman. But he made her feel those other things too, totally unacceptable things! s.e.xy and dirty. Why was that so thrilling?

"Don't do this," she said urgently. "You're torturing me."

"I'm not even touching you, Randy."

Geoff was well aware of her anguish, but he couldn't stop himself. The sight of her half-naked and flushed with turmoil fed into his more primitive male needs. The restraints against her pale skin made her seem delicate, vulnerable. But even if he'd wanted to free her, he couldn't have done it at that moment. He'd waited too long for this. He wanted to feel her naked b.r.e.a.s.t.s trembling under his touch. He wanted to make her heart rip out of control, just as his had.

He wanted some satisfaction.

She shuddered as he moved closer, close enough to tilt her head up and kiss her, close enough to cup her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Something near agony moved in her eyes as she looked up at him. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"Maybe I have to." His breathing went odd and harsh as he fought the need to give in to her, to end her torment. "Maybe I want to hear you admit it."

"Admit what?"

"That you liked it, Randy. That you liked it with me, that you'd like it again."

She moaned and swayed, almost sensually. It aroused the h.e.l.l out of him hearing the sounds she made, watching her twist against the restraints. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s shivered and swung with her movements, and her skin was flushed with heat. But it was her nipples that made his groin ache like fire. They were drawn, beautifully taut. They reminded him of how hard he was, how badly he wanted to make love to her.

"You're beautiful, Randy," he admitted huskily. "I want you. I do want you."

Randy went still at his admission, shuddering inside, waiting for his touch. Every cell in her body was waiting, every nerve. She closed her eyes, sighing, quaking. Wanting it ... yes, wanting it. But he didn't touch her. His fingers never found her. His hands never claimed her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, easing their pain. Instead, he began to move around her again, arousing her with words, telling her with soft, searing heat what he would do to her if he were her lover.

She sagged against the restraints, unable to stand. The quaking inside her was terrible, beautiful. It broke over her like a wave, leaving her weak with stimulation, incoherent with need. She closed her eyes and whispered the words he wanted to hear. Be my lover.

"What, baby? I can't hear you."

He was going to make her say it again!

"Be my lover," she pleaded, opening her eyes.

Pain flared through his features as he came to stand before her. He cupped her breast, searing her to her soul. "You already have a lover," he said. "Who do you want? Me or Hugh?"

Randy shook her head frantically. She wanted him, even though she knew it meant giving up everything, her dream, her fairy-tale future. "You," she whispered. A moan ripped through her as he bent and took her breast in his mouth, drowning her flesh in fire. "I want you!"

But even as she uttered the words, she knew she couldn't go through with them. The instant they were out of her mouth, she began to shake her head and cry. "No, I can't," she gasped, flinching away from him, begging him to understand. "I can't!"

Something snapped inside her then. Something went crazy in the dark recesses of her mind. "Stop!" she cried. He tried to keep her from flailing, but she twisted away from his hands. She was still fighting him, still writhing and crying when she realized that he'd cut her free from the leather restraints. She dropped into his arms, faint with s.e.xual heat, torn by emotion and confusion.

Geoff gathered her in his arms, his heart pounding wildly. He wanted her with a ferocity that frightened him. And he could easily have taken advantage of the situation. She didn't have the strength to resist him, and she was as aroused as he was. But he didn't want her that way, confused about what she was doing, why she was doing it-and especially who she was doing it with.

He was also aware that he'd endangered their safety by delaying their escape. Despite what he'd told her about Santeras being occupied, he knew the man could show up at any time.

"Can you stand up?" he asked Randy, stripping off his shirt and wrapping it around her.

She nodded, still dazed, groggy.

"Come on," he said gently, drawing her into his arms and soothing her until she stopped shuddering. "I know another way out of this dive. I've been here before." She leaned into him heavily, letting him support her weight as they started for the door.

Eleven.

GEOFF'S OTHER WAY OUT of the villa involved an air-conditioning shaft and a claustrophobic climb to the surface. They escaped onto the grounds through an air-intake vent and then found the bike where Geoff had parked it, in a concealing thicket of banyan trees. It was a harrowing ordeal, but it took Randy's mind off the tangle of nerves inside her, and it got them out of the villa without being spotted.

She barely had the strength to hold on to Geoff as they sped toward the entrance gates of the grounds on his motorcycle moments later. She was too dazed to worry about whether or not the guard would let them out. But apparently Geoff had some kind of "understanding" with the man, and the next thing she knew, they were zigzagging along the serpentine road that descended the mountain.

She pressed herself to Geoff, nestling her face into the valley of his shoulders as they caromed through the moist, jungle-scented darkness. All she wanted now was for her body to stop throbbing. And to be safe.

She'd just begun to relax when Geoff pulled the bike into the driveway of a cliffside bungalow that overlooked the glimmering harbor lights of Botafogo Bay.

"This is a friend's place," he explained. "We can't go back to the hotel tonight. Santeras might look for you there."

Randy found the wood-shake bungalow charming with its bougainvillea-wreathed arbors and breathtaking view. "Whose house is it?" she asked.

Geoff helped her off the bike and dismounted. "It belongs to a former customer, a wealthy American businessman, whose wife and daughter were taken hostage during a military coup in Guatemala. My partners and I got them out."

"Really?" She eyed him with a skeptical smile. "You never mentioned this place while I was haggling with the reservations clerk for a room."

Geoff snagged her hand and brought her along with him as he walked toward the hacienda's entrance. "I wanted to see what you could do, tiger."

If Randy was charmed by the outside of the house, she was enchanted by the inside. Golden wood tones dominated, warming couches done in dusty-rose chintz and maple curios stocked with china. The wall overlooking the bay was a long curve of gla.s.s with a breathtaking view that was totally un.o.bstructed, even by the terrace, which was a flight of stairs below.

She stood at the window, hugging Geoff's shirt around her and gazing down at the twinkling necklace of lights that outlined the harbor. She'd seen postcards of a similar view, but none of them had done it justice. It was almost too lovely to take in.

"Do you like the place?" Geoff asked, coming up behind her.

"I love it." She turned to him and saw the antic.i.p.ation she felt mirrored in his eyes. It was the perfect romantic hideaway. They both knew it.

He touched her arm.

"Geoff, I can't," she said, her voice throaty and low. Longing welled inside her as she shook her head. She couldn't, but she wanted to, she wanted to.

"Yes, I know."

The whispered words were harsh with disappointment. They totally surprised her. Did he know? Did he finally understand her conflict? His touch was gone, with no more pressure than a breath of air. It could have been a warm breeze caressing her skin, except that a breeze would never have brought her such a keen sense of loss. Be my lover, she thought.

Unable to suppress the longing, she searched his face, perhaps for some kind of rea.s.surance that he might want more than a repeat of the past, more than just one night of s.e.x. She searched her own memory. What kind of man was he? she asked herself. She was as drawn to his harsh beauty now as she had been the night she met him, a mysterious drifter cruising through town.

She knew in her heart that Geoff Dias could never be part of her life. He was too wild and primitive to be the man of her dreams. She could never live the life he'd chosen, and she was sure he could never adjust to hers. What kind of husband could he possibly be, what kind of father? She knew nothing about him really, except that he could be perverse and pa.s.sionate and was addicted to fast motorcycles. So why was she standing here, gazing at him, longing for him?

"What is it?" he asked her. "You're looking at me like a kid with her nose pressed to a store window."

"I can't help myself ... I want to be with you."

His reaction brought her a quiver of guilty pleasure. He looked confused, thunderstruck. His hand was unsteady as he touched her face.

"Randy?"

"It's true," she said, closing her eyes for a second, nuzzling against the warmth of his fingers. "I'm an engaged woman whose fiance is missing. I should be thinking about Hugh, nothing but Hugh. But I'm not doing that, Geoff. I'm thinking about other things, bad things, us ... together."

He said her name again, softly.

She turned away from him and stared out the window, needing to get the rest of it out. "The wanting is terrible. It's a knife inside me, cutting me to pieces. My willpower is gone, my sense of right and wrong. I hardly have anything left holding me together. It's ripping away at everything I thought was important."

She hesitated, shuddering, and took a breath. "It's killing me, this wanting. But I can't give in to it, Geoff, I can't."

"Randy, for G.o.d's sake!" He turned her around, staring at her, disbelieving.

She swayed with the power he gave off, craving the strength of his hands on her shoulder, loving the firmness of his grip as he anch.o.r.ed her in place. She wanted to fall into his arms so badly. It would be so easy, so thrilling to give in to him.

"I can't do it," she insisted, her voice grainy, aching. "I'm engaged to another man. And even if I wasn't, you don't want the things I want. You don't even want me, except for just one night. I can't do that."

"Why? Because you'd be betraying Hugh, a man you don't even love?"

"I'd be betraying myself. Don't you understand that? Don't you see how important this is to me? I want to be something more than I was. I have to be."

"Why, Randy? What the h.e.l.l's wrong with who you are?"

Some sweet kind of pain she barely understood welled up inside her. "This is not who I am," she said, desperate to make him understand. "I'm the illegitimate brat of a woman who had to work nights as a barmaid to pay the rent. The neighbors snickered and whispered behind our backs, they snubbed my mother to her face! All they cared about was that she had men over, men who gave her a little bit of pleasure, but robbed her of every ounce of self-respect."

"Men who made her feel dirty?" he asked, releasing her.

"Yes"-she sighed the word-"that too."

He stood back from her, silent, as if he didn't like what was going through his mind. "I'm beginning to understand the attraction to Hugh," he said at last.

Randy turned back to the window, struggling to find enough control to talk. The subject of her childhood was private, painful, but there was so much misery stored up inside her, so much that needed to come out.

"When you're a kid ... and you have a dream," she told him, "sometimes it becomes everything, a way to survive, to get from one day to the next. That's how it was for me. Cinderella and the prince. Ridiculous, huh?"

"Maybe not," he said.

Randy felt a sharp tug at her heart. There was something near compa.s.sion in his voice, and she would never have expected that from him, not in her case. Was he acknowledging the things she'd told him? Was he beginning to understand? She turned back to him and wanted to cry, he looked so grave, so beautifully sad. She still wanted him. G.o.d, she did.

"We all have dreams, Randy."

"It's just that I'm so close," she told him pleadingly. "So close to having mine. Don't ruin it, Geoff. Don't ruin me. You could ... so easily."

He let out a sound that was too harsh to be laughter. "Never let it be said that Geoff Dias stood between the lady and her dream."

She could see the emotion he was fighting, and it nearly destroyed her. Rather than cry in front of him, she fled the room.

Geoff didn't try to stop her. He didn't trust himself to say anything, do anything at that moment. The muscles of his throat had drawn up like catgut, and it was all he could do to swallow. From somewhere in the house the silvery chimes of a clock rang out. The sound was ethereal, lonely. It sharpened the emptiness rather than filled it.

She wants the dream, Dias. Get used to it.

A collection of crystal decanters crowded a lacquered tray on the wet bar, and Geoff wasted no time pouring himself a generous amount of one-hundred-proof rum. He drank it straight and grimaced at the oily afterburn. Anything to fill the void, he thought. Anything to kill the pain. Whatever works. For her it was success, the American dream. That had stopped working for him a long time ago.

h.e.l.l, if he had a dream these days, it was simple survival-cheating death, staying alive long enough to draw his next breath. Nothing too complicated.

Not that he hadn't tried it all-s.e.x, booze, rock and roll. He and his two partners in recovery operations had been made heroes by the media for some of their exploits, and he'd been tagged the "bad boy" of the bunch. The publicity had come in handy later when he was setting up Stealth International, but it had taken the challenge out of his love life. Women were willing to do just about anything for-and with-a national hero. Even the s.e.x got boring after awhile ... until her.

Survival, Dias. Don't think about her.

He splashed more rum into the tumbler, unheeding as some of it spilled over the side, and then he walked to the gla.s.s terrace doors. The panel slid open soundlessly, sultry warmth rushing in. Raking his hair back off his forehead, Geoff let the steambath of a night envelop him. It felt good, it felt hot ... it felt like her.

Aw h.e.l.l, he thought, a shudder running through him.

Don't do this, man. Survival- He stared down at the bay, clutching the slippery gla.s.s in his hand, shaking his head back and forth slowly. Trouble, dammit. He was in trouble. He had a strange feeling shifting in the pit of his gut, and he felt cold suddenly, dampness filming his forehead. At first he thought there was something wrong with the rum.

And then he knew it wasn't rum making him sweat. It wasn't heat or a tropical bug or anything like that.

It was her. It was this d.a.m.ned mission they were on. He was about to find her fiance for her and then hand her over to the yuppie b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Best wishes, kids! Have a nice marriage and maybe a couple of precocious little brats with horn-rimmed gla.s.ses and b.u.t.ton-down collars like Hugh. Just the thought of it made him sweat. It made him sick.

He stared at the gla.s.s clenched in his hand, at the rigid tension in his bloodless fingers.

Aw h.e.l.l ... holy h.e.l.l, he was in trouble.

There's no surviving this one, Dias. You're dead, man. You're in love.