While the Fire Rages

by Joan Hohl

  “What in hell do you think you’re doing!” he roared. “Get back in bed!”

  Afraid she’d fall on her face if she so much as paused, Jo continued groping along the wall to the bathroom. “I feel grubby,” she panted. “I’m going to have a shower.”

  “Forget it.”

  As shaky as she was feeling, Jo probably would have docilely, happily gone back to bed had he said anything else. “Forget it” definitely did not make it as a convincer, except to convince her to keep going—if it killed her! Jo kept moving with dogged determination. “I said I’m going to take a shower, and I meant it. Go away.”

  “Be sensible, Jo. You can’t even stand up straight. Go back to bed.” Jo hadn’t heard him move away from the doorway, but now he was right behind her. His hands on her shoulders were warm, and reassuring, and, thankfully, supporting. “Let me help you.”

  “Do what? Take a shower or get back into bed?” Jo could have bitten her tongue for the smart, too-fast retort. She felt his fingers flex spasmodically into her shoulders, his warm breath feather her cheek.

  “Both,” he whispered. “If you like. In fact, I’ll even join you—in both—if you like.”

  The idea was appealing, too appealing. Jo shrugged to dislodge his hands and found herself sitting on the floor. She didn’t know whether to laugh hysterically or cry hysterically. She did neither, she simply sat there, listening to Brett swear as he bent to help her up.

  “You have got to be the most obstinate woman I have ever met!” Though his voice was harsh, his hands were extremely gentle. “How the devil you ever got around Wolf—” He broke off to stare at the tears welling up in her eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked, his face a study in concern. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “No.”Jo shook her head, sniffing, “only my pride. What a dumb thing to do.”

  “Surprise, surprise!” Brett grinned. “We finally agree on something.”

  “But I really must have a shower,” Jo murmured in a very conciliatory tone. “I feel so yucky. Please, Brett.” The art of practicing cajolery was new to Jo. Not knowing quite how to go about it, she unconsciously did the right thing. Lowering her incredibly long lashes slowly, she repeated, “Please.”

  Brett was not at all a novice to the art, nor was he immune. A slow smile gathering along his lips, he knelt beside her. “Yucky, humm?” he murmured close to her ear. “Sounds uncomfortable.” Raising his hand, he combed his fingers through her long, tangled mass of dark hair. “Okay, Delila.” His quiet voice held a hint of teasing laughter. “You’ve chained me to the pillar. You may have, not a shower, but a bath. On one condition.”

  Victory within her grasp, Jo decided to push her luck. “Why not a shower? It’s so much faster,” she coaxed. “And on what condition?” she added quickly, hoping to put him off stride. Jo suspected her ploy wouldn’t work. She was right; it didn’t. Brett merely laughed aloud at her.

  “First things first, my greenhorn temptress.” A thread of tenderness wove through his chiding tone. “Consider your present position.” Brett’s gaze swept her crumpled form. “You could not remain erect with a wall to lean on. How were you planning to manage a glass enclosed shower stall?” One silky blond brow arched exaggeratedly. “Have I made my point?”

  “Point taken,” Jo mumbled ungraciously. “But—”

  “You simply do not quit.” Brett shook his head in mock despair. “On to point two. My condition is, while pleasant, at least for me”—here his tone hardened— “absolutely necessary. I will supervise your bath.”

  The silence that descended on Jo, and the room, was eardrum-cracking. To maintain that one could hear a pin drop would be to understate the case; one could possibly have heard a feather flutter to the floor. Unfortunately, for Brett, the silence was short-lived and shattered by a female screech.

  ‘You will what!”

  “There is certainly no lack of strength in the lungs here,” Brett observed to the room in general. “You heard me, sweetie. No supervision, no bath ... and no arguments. Got that?”

  Jo did not require an interpreter of facial expressions to tell her Brett was not talking to hear the melodious sound of his own voice. He was dead serious and equally determined. As wishing he’d drop dead, period, was no solution to her immediate problem, Jo declined from voicing the observation. She was quiet a long time—a very long time—wrestling with the pros and cons of her boxed-in situation. Brett simply remained still, metaphorically playing out enough rope. She either bathed with an audience of one, or she crawled back into bed without even as much as cleaning her teeth. Yuck! Of course, being a product of an age with a fetish for cleanliness, Jo hanged herself.

  “Oh, all right!” But she couldn’t quite let it go at that. “If you’re so dammed desperate to play voyeur while a woman bathes, let’s get it over with.”

  Brett did not become angry at her nasty barb. He cracked up with laughter. Flinging himself onto the carpet, he roared at the ceiling. “Oh, goody,” he gasped between barks of laughter. “I’ve been waiting thirty years to leer at a woman in her bath. Now, that erratic, erotic pleasure is to be mine.” As Jo glared at him, Brett whooped with delight. “And not only is this woman beautifully pale of skin from a recent illness”—he paused to compose himself then went on—”she is also a trifle sick in the head.”

  Her back ramrod straight, Jo stared down at Brett in solemn consideration. Set into lines of superior austerity, Brett’s face was breathtaking in its classical perfection. His visage softened by warmth and genuine amusement, he stole Jo’s heart along with her breath. Suddenly, for reasons Jo didn’t want to examine too closely, she was eager to undress for this perfect example of the magnificent male in his prime. Still, wary of his motives concerning much more than a silly bath, Jo was determined not to reveal her eagerness.

  “You do have a rather strange sense of humor, Mr. Renninger.” Jo offered her opinion with a solemnity that mirrored her expression. “Still, I would guess the un-draped female form holds no mystery for you... hmmm?”

  Brett literally fell apart again. The seizure of mirth lasted for several minutes, during which Jo fought valiantly against the onslaught of reciprocal laughter. When, at last, Brett brought himself under control, he sat up facing her and grasped her face in his hands.

  “You know what?” he asked seriously. “You have a rather strange talent for tapping a deep emotional response from me, be it anger, or amusement, or ... whatever.” Jo would have liked to question the whatever part, but he added, frowning in thought, “I don’t think I’ve laughed that spontaneously in at least twenty years.” The corners of his mouth twitched with that funny quirk Jo was beginning to realize was all his own. “You may be a little weird”—he allowed the quirk to grow into a smile—”but you’re a kinda nice weird.” With that, he lowered his smiling lips to hers.

  Turning her head, Jo robbed him of his target “Brett, no!” She fought the insistent tug of his hands. “I haven’t brushed my teeth!”

  Brett’s hands sprang away from her face as another paroxysm of laughter shuddered through him. “Okay, I give up!” Springing to his feet, he stared down at her, his chest actually rumbling with the effects of his amusement. “I’ll run your bath for you. I’ll even prop you up while you do your thing with a toothbrush. Then I’ll wait right here, outside the door, while you perform your ablution ritual.” He started for the bathroom, pausing to slice a sharp-eyed glance at her. “You know, I think you may damn well be worth every penny Wolf is paying you.”

  There was an underlying note in his voice that caused a chill in Jo’s bones. Up until Brett’s last statement, sexual tension had been drawing her nerves to a vibrating tautness. And riding the back of that tension was the faint spark of hope that Brett had revised his original opinion of her. With his sudden withdrawal the tension snapped and the tiny spark of hope was doused. What was it about her that turned him off? Jo asked herself as she sat, miserable and uncaring of her disheveled appearance. Listening
to the rush of water into the bathtub, she stared into nothingness and scoured her mind for answers.

  The physical attraction was not one-sided, Jo knew that. Brett felt the tug of sexual awareness every bit as strongly as she did. That single kiss they’d shared had revealed the depths of the physical desire Brett felt for her. Would he, she wondered tormentedly, have given in to his need a moment ago if she had not stopped him? As usual, when Jo began searching for answers to questions about the element of constraint between Brett and her, all she found were more questions. Circles, circles, circles. Whenever she contemplated Brett Renninger, her mind took on the characteristics of a carrousel.

  “Have you passed out with your eyes open?” Brett’s drawling query fragmented Jo’s bemusement.

  Oh, why couldn’t she hate him? Or, at the very least, dislike him as he so obviously disliked her? Shaking her head more at herself than in a silent reply to him, Jo was unaware of the appealing picture she made with her mass of hair a riot around her head and shoulders and her slim, long-limbed body covered with the sheerest of nightgowns. All she was aware of was the suddenness of Brett’s impatience with her.

  “Well?” he snapped. “Are you going to sit there for the rest of the morning? Your water’s getting cool.”

  As if she were a child, or a total incompetent, Brett assisted Jo into the bathroom. His hands impersonal of touch, but firm of grip, clasped her about the waist while she brushed her teeth and cleansed her face. Then he left her, his dubious expression a silent question of her ability to get into, then out of the tub without doing injury to herself. Quelling the urge to scream in frustration, Jo stepped into the warm water, a soft “oh” of delight whispering through her lips.

  Brett had not only filled the tub to less than an inch from the rim, he had sprinkled her scented bath crystals into the water. Sighing with pleasure, Jo slid down into the fragrant silkiness. The soothing warmth lapping her chin, she closed her eyes in contentment and promptly dozed off.

  “What am I going to do with you?” Jo’s eyes flew wide at the sound of exasperation in Brett’s voice. He was standing beside the tub, hands on his hips, actually scowling at her. “The idea was to become clean, not dead.” Snatching a fluffy bath sheet from a towel bar, he held it out in invitation. “Let’s go, water baby, bath time is over.”

  “You promised to wait outside!” Jo exclaimed accusingly.

  “I waited outside,” he grated. “Twenty minutes, to be exact. That water has got to be cold by now.” He shook the towel lightly, impatiently. “Out.” It was not a request but a definite order.

  It was at that moment that Jo realized she was covered by nothing more than clear liquid. The fact that Brett had seen everything there was to see of her the afternoon before had little impact on her now. Feeling herself flush, and hating it, Jo launched a verbal attack.

  “You get out!” she snapped. “I am perfectly capable of getting out of the tub all by myself.” With deliberate insolence she swept his lean length with hazel eyes sparkling with anger. “If you don’t move quickly,” she threatened softly, “I swear I’ll splash water all over your suit.” Brett’s response to her threat not only startled Jo, it shocked her,

  “Screw the suit! I have dozens of suits. I have only one of you.” His eyes narrowed in warning. “If you do not stand up and step out of that damned tub in five seconds,” he enunciated clearly through gritted teeth, “I swear I will haul you out of there bodily. And I won’t concern myself about what I touch, or how roughly I touch it.”

  Her head lifted in defiance, her eyes challenging him, daring him, Jo rose from the water slowly and stepped delicately onto the bath mat. Then, her head back, her bearing regal, she stood before him in nature’s covering of blushing ivory-toned skin.

  Except for his eyes, Brett didn’t move. For several seconds he didn’t even breathe. Starting with Jo’s now-sodden, tangled hair, his glinting gray gaze inched the length of her body to the tips of her water-wrinkled toes. When his eyes slowly returned to hers, he stared into their depths as if he were trying to search out the deepest secrets of her soul. The intensity of his gaze stopped the breath in Jo’s throat and liquefied all the strength in her body.

  “Damn! You are beautiful!” Brett’s hushed, reverent tone drained all defiance, all resistance from her. “Your hair is beautiful.” Slowly, holding the towel aloft, he moved to her. “Your skin is beautiful.” Flipping the huge terry sheet behind her, he wrapped her in its voluminous folds. “Your eyes are beautiful.” Sliding his arms around her, he drew her to him. “And your mouth.” His arms tightened to crush her to him. His voice lowered to a murmured groan. “God, your mouth!”

  The mouth that Brett groaned over trembled in reaction to a sudden, searing need racing wildly through Jo’s body. She was afraid, afraid of her own ineptitude, her own inadequacy, but she was also powerless against the force that urged her to arch her neck and raise her lips to him in silent offering. Brett pounced on her offering with the vengeance of an angry deity. With a guttural growl her lips were taken inside his mouth to be devoured, nibbled on, and then gently laved by his searching tongue.

  Giving in completely to the rioting sensations storming her body, Jo worked her arms free of the confining towel and coiled them around his neck, driving her fingers into the silken strands of his hair. The heat rising inside her found a measure of release as she obeyed his silent command to part her lips, wider and yet wider. All rational thought suspended, Jo’s mouth consumed while being consumed. When Brett’s stiffened tongue pierced into the moist warmth, Jo drew a moan from him by curling her own tongue around his. This time Brett placed no restraint upon his hands. His impatient mutter filled her mouth, and then the towel was torn from her body and tossed aside.

  His hands moving restlessly over her back, Brett slid his lips from hers. Biting little kisses sensitized her skin from the corner of her mouth to the delicately curved edge of her ear. With a maddeningly slow, erotic rhythm the tip of his tongue dipped in and out of her ear. When his evocative play forced a groan from Jo’s dry throat, Brett’s hands moved down to cup her rounded bottom to pull her up and into the burgeoning hardness of his body.

  “Will you part your thighs for me as quickly as you parted your lips, water baby?” he coaxed softly into her ear. Lost to everything but the need to have him fill every particle of her being, Jo complied to his coaxing with a whimper of surrender. The whimper turned to a gasp as Brett thrust his body against hers. Even fully clothed, Brett’s arousal imprinted itself on her forcefully. Releasing his grasp on her, he brought his hands up to cradle her face. His eyes glinting like new steel in bright sunlight, he stared down at her.

  “I must have you,” he said clearly, fiercely. “Against all reason ... and my better judgment, I will have you. In all probability we will both regret it afterward but, while the fire rages, I will feed my appetite for you on it,”

  A cold finger of unease poked warningly through the fog of passion clouding Jo’s mind. There was something wrong here, something in the harsh tone of Brett’s voice, and the rigid set of his features, something that looked frighteningly like disgust, both for her and himself. Not understanding this new element of fear he’d injected into their intimacy, Jo attempted a protest.

  “Brett, no ...”

  “No?” he snarled, obviously misinterpreting her protest as a refusal. Grasping her by the shoulders, Brett spun her around, roughly pulling her back to his chest, imprisoning her easily by clamping his hands over her breasts. “Look at yourself,” he ordered tersely. In a room of mirrors, there was no possible way to avoid looking at herself. Jo recognized the incongruity of the picture reflected back at her, she stark naked, Brett fully clothed. But that incongruity was not the point Brett was trying to make, as he very quickly proved.

  “How dare you tell me no?” he demanded. “Just look at yourself. Your lips are wet and parted in anticipation, your eyes are dark with desire, and your entire body is quivering with sexual hunger.�
� Watching her examine herself, Brett spread his fingers with cool deliberation. Immediately her hardened nipples thrust through the opening. Moving his hands slowly, he stroked the tips of Jo’s breasts with his index fingers. When Jo could not deny the aching moan that whispered through her lips, Brett lowered his head to place his lips to her ear. “Now tell me no.” As if to reinforce his point, he rotated his hips enticingly against her derriere. “If you still dare.”

  Jo’s rational thinking process dissolved as Brett continued to stroke and manipulate her tingling nipples. Following the dictates of a passion flaring out of control, she arched her spine to press her aching breasts into his hands and twisted her head around, seeking his mouth with her avid lips. Grunting in satisfaction, Brett released his hold on her breasts to sweep her up into his arms. His mouth clinging to hers, he carried her into the bedroom. As he came to a stop beside her bed, Brett lifted his head and froze when his glance brushed the night table. Cursing softly, vehemently, he set her reluctantly on her feet. Thoroughly confused, Jo stared at him in disbelief.

  “Brett, what...”

  “Gertrude will be here in approximately fifteen minutes,” he cut her off harshly, still staring at the table and the small alarm on it.

  “Gertrude?”Jo repeated blankly, then, because she only knew one Gertrude: “Gertrude Jorgeson? Wolf’s housekeeper?”

  “Yes. Wolf’s housekeeper.”

  The sudden, inexplicable anger in his tone and stiffened body as he turned away from her created an empty, bereft feeling inside Jo. What had she done to anger him? Surely her response had been evidence enough of how badly she wanted him? Fighting a creeping sense of failure, Jo bit down hard on her lower lip as she watched him stride to the double dresser against one wall, pull open a drawer, then, without bothering about being selective, plunge a hand in. Grasping the first garment he touched, Brett withdrew it and flung it at her with a tersely snapped “Cover yourself.”