Leopard 02 - Wild Rain

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,