Blue Velvet by Iris Johansen Page A

to the pool. She wasn’t experienced enough to maintain that casual sophistication and was sure that at any moment she’d betray how nervous and uncertain she felt. Nervous and something else. Something exciting and moving and as beautifully primitive as the rain forest surrounding them.
    It was almost pitch-dark as they reached the bank of the pool, and the water was only discernible from the bank by the occasional glitter of moonlight on its mirror surface.
    Kate dropped her towels and the caftan on the bank. “It’s shallow enough to stand upright around the edges. It only deepens as you go toward the middle.”
    “Right.” Beau had already stripped off his meager clothes and was jumping into the water.“Damn!” he exploded. “Where does that spring originate, the South Pole?”
    She burst out laughing. “I told you it was cold.”
    “
Cold
, not frigid. Throw me the soap, will you?”
    She tossed it to him and then pulled the T-shirt over her head. There was no use being shy. Beau had seen everything there was to see last night on the
Searcher
. Besides, it was so dark here Beau was hardly more than a bronze blur though only a few feet away. It was reasonable to assume she’d be equally indiscernible.
    She inhaled sharply as she jumped into the water and she heard Beau’s chuckle. “Definitely the South Pole, eh?”
    “Definitely,” she gasped. She poured a little shampoo in her hand and began rubbing it into her hair. The curls were coarse and wiry with salt and she sudsed and rinsed it twice before she was satisfied it was clean. “I’ve finished with the shampoo. Would you like to use it?”
    “I made do with the soap,” he said carelessly. His voice was suddenly much closer and she looked up to see him only a few feet away. “Ididn’t want to wait. I wanted to get through in a hurry so I could have my treat.”
    “Your treat?” She moistened her lips nervously.
    “Bathing Kate, bonny Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom.”
    “Shakespeare,” she identified, a trifle breathlessly.
    “Right,” he drawled, “but we’re not going to discuss literature tonight. That I promise you, sweet Kate. I only display that degree of restraint every century or so.”
    “I think most of the salt is washed off now,” she offered faintly.
    “But we have to be sure, don’t we? I promised you
every
grain of salt.” He was very close now and she could see the white flash of his teeth in his darkly shadowed face. “And I’ll think we’ll start here.”
    The cold wet bar was against her throat and she gave an involuntary shiver. “Cold?” he murmured. “Let’s see if we can fix that.” He rubbed the soap briskly between his hands. “I’m going to like this much better anyway. And you willtoo, Kate. I guarantee that you’ll like it a hell of a lot better.”
    He took the bottle of shampoo from her and tossed it and the soap on the bank. Then his hands were on her throat rubbing the lather from his hands into her skin with slow teasing skill. She stood perfectly still, almost forgetting to breathe as his hands moved to her bare shoulders rising out of the water. His hands were cold from the water and hard with calluses. Playboys shouldn’t have calluses, she thought inconsequentially, but then Beau wasn’t a stereotype. He was a law unto himself. His hands weren’t really cold either. She could feel the vital heat beneath the surface coolness and it was arousing an answering heat everywhere he touched.
    “Give me your left arm.”
    She raised her arm from the water and his hands moved over it from shoulder to wrist with slow easy strokes that should have been soothing. They weren’t. By the time he’d finished the other arm, her heart was beating wildly and her flesh was so exquisitely sensitive that every brush of his hands was actually painful. It was like something from an erotic fantasy to bestanding here in this icy water in almost total darkness while a naked shadowy stranger ran his