Under Her Skin

by Lea Santos

  Even spending casual time with Iris skirted the line of propriety, but with Torien’s blood running so damn hot every time Iris was near, it nearly crossed the line completely. And could only lead to problems—this, she knew. She had frequent and varied opportunities for uncomplicated female companionship, which was more than she could handle right now. The last thing she needed was a woman like Iris to muddle her brain and rattle her convictions.

  Yet Iris had come to her.

  Torien’s heart skipped.

  There she sat in the lush, fragrant garden, looking more beautiful than the rarest blossom ever could. Curvy, soft, warm, and painfully feminine. Close enough to touch, though doing so would be about as wise as Torien running her hand over an open flame. Either way, she’d end up getting burned.

  Torien’s logical, analytical side told her one thing: Iris Lujan spelled danger.

  And Torien’s explosive reaction to her was the most dangerous part of all.

  She wasn’t used to playing with fire…

  “Torien?”

  She spun to find Iris shadowing the doorway of the cottage, one bare foot resting atop the other, hand braced on the doorjamb. Iris’s gaze traced down her body, taking in the sports bra and bare stomach, making her feel utterly exposed. She had not realized before how small the potting cottage was, how intimate. It smelled of earth and green. Life. Torien’s pulse thrummed in her ears. Reaching for the clean white sleeveless shirt she’d left folded on the cane-back chair in the corner, she punched her arms through the sleeve holes, covering her bare skin as quickly as she could.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” Iris’s caramel complexion stained with the dusky rose of embarrassment. “And, I’m sorry, I-I didn’t know you were…” Iris gestured toward Torien’s body, then raked her full bottom lip through her teeth, looking wary, as though Torien meant her harm. Maybe Iris sensed what Torien had been feeling.

  She shook her head. “It’s okay,” Torien said, a little too gruffly. “What do you need?”

  Iris’s hair spilled over one shoulder, the silky strands brushing against the curve of one breast, all too prominently displayed in the red tank top she wore tucked into low-slung, fitted denim shorts. Speaking of skin, Iris’s outfit exposed far too much of hers for Torien’s mental well-being. She tried not to focus on it.

  Iris crossed her arms beneath her bosoms. “Will it be a problem if I sit in the gardens while you work?”

  Torien gazed out the dust-hazed window, trying to seek distance from Iris, from her own traitorous feelings. She had never been more aware of her own visceral reactions, never more distracted by a woman she could never have.

  She meant to tell Iris she must go, but found she could not. Torien didn’t want Iris to leave. Instead she waved her hand indifferently, and picked up the hedge trimmers. “Cada perico a su estaca, cada changa a su mecate.”

  “I’m…not sure I understand what that means, Tori.”

  Her stomach contracted as all the breath seemed to push from her lungs. No one called her Tori. Toro, yes, because of her bullheaded nature. But never Tori. Still, she loved the sound of it on Iris’s tongue. “A Mexican saying, one of my father’s.”

  Iris laughed softly. “My dad has his favorite sayings, too.”

  “I think all fathers do. This one, it means…” Torien paused to figure out the simplest translation. “Do what you wish.”

  Iris blinked. Confusion showed on her face. “O-okay. Thank you.”

  That settled, Torien expected Iris to leave.

  She did not.

  Leaning one temple against the doorjamb, she asked, “Have I done something to bother you?”

  “Of course not.” Torien forced her mouth to smile around the small lie and softened her tone. Torien was bothered, all right. Her nerves danced, sensitized and ready, just beneath her skin. “I just have much work to do.” She reminded herself who she was, who Iris was, and where they were, then added politely, “However, you may stay. Of course. The gardens are for the enjoyment of Señora Moreno and her guests.”

  Those green eyes, like spring leaves under ice, assessed Torien unblinkingly. “Geraline is my business manager, you know.”

  “I did not know.” Torien’s breaths came only with conscious effort. She shifted position, her boots making a thick sawdust-on-wood sound against the floor. What did Iris expect her to say? “That is…ah…good.”

  “Yes. I guess so.” Iris licked her lips, her gaze flitting through the small cottage to light on anything but Torien. “She takes care of my contracts, assignments. Things like that.”

  “I see.”

  Why are you telling me this, Irisíta? You like playing with fire, too?

  Heat surged through Torien’s veins as she studied Iris. She hoped it didn’t show in her eyes.

  One sharp inhale through her nose, and Iris said, “Well, anyway…” She pointed toward the bench. With a hesitant turn, she headed down the pale pink, crushed shell path to reclaim her seat.

  Unable to stop herself, Torien leaned her spine against the doorjamb, half in the cottage and half out, and watched as each crunching footstep punctuated the sultry sway of Iris’s hips. Her mind’s eye set the image in slow motion, and she couldn’t tear her gaze away.

  Damn her human weakness. She did not want to look away, even as she knew she should.

  Iris settled on the shaded bench, tucking those long, lean legs beneath her and wiggling into a comfortable position. She looked up, finding Torien studying her from the doorway. That familiar line of concern crinkled her smooth forehead. “Is everything okay?”

  Torien decided to answer honestly. “I…don’t know.”

  Iris nodded as though she understood the cryptic words, but Torien knew from her reply she did not. “I won’t get in your way. Promise. I’ll just sit here and be quiet. And watch, if that doesn’t make you too uncomfortable.”

  Torien couldn’t get more uncomfortable than she already was. “No pierdas cuidado. You understand?”

  “Yes. In slang, we’d say something like…‘don’t sweat it.’ Thank you. I appreciate you letting me watch while you work.” Iris’s features gentled with sincere relief, and happiness lit her wide, light eyes.

  For one suspended, painful moment Torien felt she would do anything in the world to put that look on Iris’s face again.

  And again.

  Iris could be anywhere, with any woman she wanted—or any man, for that matter. Or alone. Yet she’d chosen to be here in the garden with Torien.

  It means nothing, Toro.

  Even if it had, nothing could come of it.

  Iris shooed Torien playfully with her soft, slender hands. “Go on, then. Just act like I’m not here.”

  The absurdity of her statement smoothed the rough edges off Torien’s worry and emboldened her. One corner of her mouth lifted with tired amusement. Torien’s pure female core compelled her to say what was on her mind. “I am strong-willed, Irisíta, but pretending not to notice you would be an impossible task for any woman.”

  Iris’s gaze dropped, and she swallowed slowly.

  Benevolent vindication soothed Torien as she crossed to the topiary bushes and began to trim. Torien knew she had flustered Iris. But after the physical and emotional havoc Iris had wreaked on her, Torien felt nothing less than justified.

  *

  Lord have mercy on her lust-ridden soul, Torien positively reeked, dripped, exuded, epitomized raw female sensuality. It wasn’t so much the few words she said as the way she said them. The timbre of her voice resonated against Iris’s chest like a rough caress, exactly how she instinctively knew Torien’s hands would feel on her skin.

  Relief that their conversation had ended shook through Iris. Seeing Torien standing there in the doorway of the shed, half of her face sunlit, the other half in shadows, Iris didn’t think she could eke out one more intelligent word if her life depended on it. As if confronting that toned, sun-browned, half-naked torso inside the potting cottage hadn’t
been taxing enough. Iris had reeled as though someone had planted a perfect uppercut on her jaw, but she played it off. Torien, so endearing, had lunged for that sleeveless white shirt like Iris’s gaze had been an unwelcome touch, and still Iris hadn’t had the human decency to turn away.

  She couldn’t.

  The pristine shirt, ragged where the sleeves had been torn off, had smelled like bleach and sunlight and hardworking woman, and deep inside Iris, something primal swirled. She wasn’t ashamed to admit Torien made her…want. That last look Torien had given her from the doorway, as if she were holding back—just barely—from running those rough hands all over Iris’s body, didn’t help matters much.

  Iris’s blood had hammered in her ears and she couldn’t seem to pull air into the deepest part of her lungs. She just hoped Torien hadn’t noticed her utter lack of cool.

  Several minutes later, when she’d regained her composure, she pretended to read while surreptitiously watching Torien shape the topiary bushes. Torien wielded the trimmer meticulously, like an artist, and the muscles in her arms flexed with each careful twist and turn. Those weren’t gym muscles, they were real. Work-hewn and completely beguiling. Torien blended so naturally with the growing things around them.

  So fresh. So female. So real.

  Tori was the type of woman you could imagine making love just by looking at her. Slow-motion imagining, of course.

  Iris sighed.

  Okay, so it wasn’t just the peacefulness of the gardens that had drawn Iris back. She was curious about this sexy, enigmatic Mexicana. Torien seemed…so alive. So normal. Iris didn’t know Torien, true enough. But she wondered if she should try to change that. The circles in which she’d moved over the past decade didn’t facilitate contact with truly “average” women—average in the best sense of the word. Those she did meet were usually too intimidated by that big, immobilizing illusion—fame—to do more than gawk or smile nervously from a distance. Whenever Iris did meet an interested woman, she found herself assessing for ulterior motives. Was the woman drawn to the real her, or the hype? If her dating track record proved anything, the hype seemed a lot more alluring than the quite average woman behind it.

  Torien, on the other hand, didn’t seem the least bit fazed by the “Iris Lujan” hype, nor did she seem to have many preconceived notions about her. Unfortunately, Torien didn’t seem altogether thrilled by her attention, either.

  A smile of irony curved Iris’s lips, and she buried her face in her book to hide it. Murphy’s damn Law, in action.

  If Geraline were to ask about her vacation plans now, she would have a whole different answer. She wanted to get to know Gerri’s enigma of a gardener, and she had six weeks to do so. Watching Torien work wasn’t nearly enough. Iris wanted more. But she was nothing if not patient. She would bide her time, connect with Tori on her terms…just as soon as she figured out what those were. Iris bit back another smile and pretended to be engrossed in her book. She hadn’t felt this kind of fire in the belly for years.

  Chapter Three

  She had returned to the gardens every day, her presence simultaneously pleasing Torien and testing her strength of will. Saturday—exactly eight days after Iris had turned her life upside down—dawned warm, then quickly shot up to inferno status. Heat-hazed morning sun rays seared Torien’s shoulders and head. She had taken a day off from her volunteer work, intent on finishing a new, intricate flower bed at Moreno’s. She hadn’t expected to run into Iris at this time of day, since she usually worked at the estate in the afternoons and evenings, a fact Iris seemed to have keyed in on almost immediately. But ten minutes after she’d parked the pickup in the back drive, Iris had ambled out to the garden. They’d greeted each other briefly, cheerfully; nothing more.

  Two hours into Torien’s work, sweat beaded her brow and rolled down her neck, setting her on edge. She desperately wished to remove her shirt and work in her sports bra alone, but every time she almost yanked the shirt over her head, she remembered Iris and the incident in the potting shed. Torien would quickly find herself picturing Iris’s urgent fingers removing the shirt, Iris pressing those soft, full lips to her heated chest and shoulders. Her body would respond to this little fantasy despite direct orders from her brain to the contrary.

  Damnit.

  Ever since she’d met Iris, her blood throbbed with need and her mind wandered into places far too wanton for her own good. Or Iris’s.

  Torien’s awareness of Iris from the moment she’d claimed her spot on the bench earlier was especially acute. That familiar way her hair obscured her face when she bent forward over her book. The sunshine glinting off her glossed lips, which she absently tapped with her index finger as she read. The unbelievable creaminess of her skin and its powdery scent, which somehow managed to carry on the breeze and overpower the riot of garden scents, as if just to distract, disrupt, and draw Torien.

  How much was one woman expected to take?

  The only consolation was the fact that Iris seemed as restless as Torien felt. In between long stints of reading, Iris prowled the garden, barefooted and wearing one of those long, floaty sundresses she favored, this one as blue as the Colorado sky. A deep V in the back exposed perfect caramel skin to the sun’s kiss and confirmed Torien’s suspicion that she wore no bra. ¡Ay! Sexy without even trying. How did she do that?

  Seemingly lost in thought, Iris studied plants, squatted ever so gracefully to peer into the shiny gazing ball perched atop a brass sculpture at the center of the rock garden, drew small designs in the soil with her toes—an activity that struck Torien as breathtakingly sensual. She watched in her peripheral vision as Iris puttered around the cabaña, stooping to sniff a blossom or caress a soft petal between her fingers.

  Enough, Torien thought, so preoccupied by Iris’s luminous presence that she could hardly work. This was clearly miserable for both of them, and perhaps she merely needed to release Iris from whatever obligation she felt to be there. She must let Iris know she was welcome to return to the air-conditioned rooms of the mansion. God knew Torien would if she could. She stood, stretching the fatigue out of her lower back, wishing it were as simple to purge Iris from her brain. “Are you bored, Iris, or just miserably hot like I am?”

  Iris spun toward her, smiled, wrapped her hands in a knot behind her. “A little of both, I think. Am I bothering you?”

  God, yes. Yes, yes, yes. She strove for diplomacy with her answer. “I simply don’t wish for you to be bored.” Torien smoothed sweat from one temple, then the other with the back of her hand, her eyes never leaving Iris’s face. “Have you nowhere else to be?”

  “Nowhere else I’d rather be.”

  Confusion about the contradiction of this answer, in light of the previous one, must have showed on Torien’s face.

  Lifting her palms, Iris rushed to explain. “What I mean is, I’m not bored with the garden or with…you.” Her lashes lowered. “It’s more with…life in general. Hard to explain.”

  Torien wondered if this general life restlessness had had any bearing on Iris’s tears the first night they’d met. “If you would like to talk about it, I would welcome the diversion from the heat.”

  “Oh…I don’t know. I hate to bother you with my problems. They’re not important anyway.” She tucked the long sweep of her hair behind her ear, then picked her way around a bed of purple coneflower, stopping at the edge of the plot in which Torien had been working. “What are you planting here?”

  Torien took the change of subject to mean Iris did not wish to unburden herself. So be it. Quite honestly, Torien didn’t much care what they talked about. Everything and nothing…wasn’t that how Iris had described the ease of their conversations? “Planting here?” Kneeling by the freshly turned soil, Torien palmed one of the bulbs from a nearby box, bouncing it lightly as she eyed the sky blue nail polish on Iris’s lovely toes, the silver rings on the pinkie toes of both feet. “You won’t believe me if I tell you.”

  “Give it a try.”

&nbs
p; She shook her head ruefully and squinted up. The sun hid directly behind Iris’s body, gilding the outline of her black hair in a shimmering glow. With a sting of awareness, Torien noticed how the sunlight also silhouetted Iris’s lithe shape through the thin fabric of her dress. Those infamous long legs ended at light-colored bikini underwear shimmering but barely visible, as if beneath water.

  What in the hell are you doing, Toro?

  She jerked her gaze away, hating herself for having practically undressed Iris with her eyes. Natural for a woman to notice and appreciate, yes. But disrespectful, too. Torien didn’t care to treat any woman that way—not her style—but she felt an extra level of respect and protectiveness for Iris.

  Focus. She blinked at the rather ugly bulb cradled in her hand, wrapping her fingers tightly around its familiar shape and size. “Ah…I’m planting…irises.”

  Iris’s throaty laughter lapped over Torien like a warm wave, and when their gazes met, Iris’s danced with amusement. “I want to be flattered, but first”—she narrowed her eyes playfully—“is it a coincidence?”

  “Not really,” Torien said. “I admit, I thought of you when I saw them on sale at the nursery. It is late in the season for them, but the price was a bargain. I will give sunshine and water, everything they need for a chance to bloom next spring.”

  Iris sat down, her dress billowing out on the ground around her like a blue pond. “Poor little bulbs. I wonder why they didn’t sell earlier?” She picked up the rough, brownish-gray orb, seeming to weigh it like Torien had, then regarded her across the dark tierra jardín. “You think they’ll die?”

  Torien toyed with the question. “Bulbs are like dreams. You never know if they will flourish until you plant them in the proper soil.”

  “Mmm.” Her eyes glittered. “Poetic. I’m going to remember that.”

  Torien’s cheeks warmed at her teasing tone. “I’ll coddle them. See how it goes. It was worth giving them a chance, no?”