“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, hoping the water would screen them from sight should anyone be close by. Rio went back under to secure the heavy mesh over the tube. Rachael waited, staring at the opposite bank through the pouring water of the falls, subconsciously counting to herself until Rio emerged beside her. She put her arms around his neck and pressed her body close to his. “I should never have told you.”

“You can tell me anything. I told you about my mother.”