by Cherry Adair
A lucky blow caught it where its tongue forked. Sarulu reared back its head, making an unimaginable noise and blurring her vision with another cloud of foul-smelling red smoke.
Coughing, eyes burning and tearing, Sara hit out blindly. Half the time she didn’t even connect but half the time she did. Sarulu uncoiled and slithered closer, seemingly unaffected.
Terror-induced adrenaline flooded her body. Sara turned and ran blindly. All that mattered was that she put as much distance as possible between herself and Sarulu.
The snapping and cracking of tree trunks and branches meant the monolithic snake was right behind her and closing fast.
Ssssssssarasarassssara.
Lungs exploding, sweat blurring her vision, Sara felt more than the intense primitive urgency to elude her predator. Hundreds of tiny hummingbirds catapulted out of hiding, missing her by inches.
Zigging and zagging through the understory, she squeezed her body through the narrowest of spaces, between the thickest tree trunks, the most impenetrable vegetation. Anything to slow the snake’s progress. Branches cracked and fell behind her as monkeys shrieked and birds and insects added their noisy fear of being eaten to her own. Everything raced to get the hell out of the way.
She saw the mouth of what looked like a small cave up ahead. Oh, God. Was she being herded there intentionally? Dare she risk running inside for shelter only to find herself trapped?
Or was the opening too small for the monster snake? Did she have a chance of hiding until she could manage to extricate herself somehow? Surely she was smarter than a freaking snake. Or maybe Jack would hear her call.
It was her only option.
With all the energy she could muster, Sara screamed Jack’s name as she plunged into the dark maw of the cave.
Chapter Twelve
Jaaaack!
Sara. Not his imagination. She was screaming his name. Worried, Jack realized he hadn’t seen her in hours. No one had seen her in hours. She wouldn’t have left without telling him first.
Hell, maybe she would, he thought as he stood in the middle of the quiet street and did a slow circle, looking for a clue to her whereabouts. The thick, ozone-scented air was preternaturally still, heavy with the promise of rain. What little air movement there was touched his skin with hot fingers and barely ruffled his hair.
A sky full of stars was visible here and there through chinks in the canopy, and a waxing gibbous moon flooded sections of the cobbled street, leaving other areas in darkness. The streetlights were nothing more than bug-covered, yellow blobs, useless for visibility.
“Where did you run off to, Sara?” Jack closed his eyes, feeling the press of the night jungle surround him. The only sound was the musical flutter of leaves stirring in the humid breeze that had finally picked up a little. No cheeps or growls from the birds or animals.
Too quiet.
Something was out there on the hunt.
Jaaaaaaaack!
In his head, but as clear as if Sara were shouting directly into his ear. “I hear you,” Jack murmured, his voice grim as he Trace-teleported, following Sara’s wizard signature, as unique as the scent of her skin.
He materialized somewhere darker than night and instantly produced a high-beam flashlight. Caught by the beam, flakes of mica winked from the surrounding rock face like stars in the night sky.
The crystals were due to the porous limestone. Venezuela was riddled with thousands of similar caves; he’d explored several of them over the years. The small crystal cave was a domed room, no more than twenty feet by about thirty.
He bisected the area with the light cone and saw Sara’s crumpled form near the back of the cave. Racing over to her, he shimmered the flashlight to a rocky outcropping nearby and crouched by her side.
Lifting her upper body, Jack gently cradled her in his arms. He hated that she felt small and insubstantial. This was Sara, Amazon Woman Supreme; she wasn’t supposed to be vulnerable.
She was deathly pale but that could be attributed to the artificial light. Her eyes were closed, her face sweat- and tearstained. Her clothing was a little dirty and rumpled, but he didn’t see any blood anywhere. Jack stroked her damp hair off her face, searching for any evidence of injury, his heart pounding. “Sara?”
Her long lashes fluttered. “Jack?”
“What happened, honey? Are you hurt? Did you get lost?”
Her body jerked in his arms. “Did you see it?” she asked, clearly on the verge of hysteria, which was totally unlike Sara.
He stroked her cold cheek with the back of his finger. “See what? Bats?” More than likely this was one of the caves where the vampire bats roosted, although he didn’t smell them.
Her gaze darted behind him, her pupils huge, her expression terrified. “Sarulu.”
Sarulu? The penny dropped. “The rainbow snake?” He searched her face again, looking for a head wound, an injury of some kind. He didn’t see any blood. Thinking the light closer, he checked her pupils. They dilated just fine, and when she shoved the Maglite out of her face, he put it aside.
Supporting her shoulders on his bent leg, he tenderly probed through her hair for a lump or contusion of some kind. “Do you have a headache?” Had she fallen? Had someone hit her? He found no injuries, much to his relief. “Did you fall asleep and have a nightmare?” he asked gently. That made sense. She must be exhausted after the day they’d had. Hell, he was ready for a shower, a meal, and a comfortable bed himself. But how the hell had she gotten herself to this cave, somewhere out in the jungle, in the dark?
“I did not fall asleep.” She struggled to extricate herself from his hold. He wasn’t about to let her go. She was shaking, her eyes wild. “And I can assure you firsthand—Sarulu is not a freaking myth.” She shuddered violently, then pulled away to sit up. “Look at the cuts on my …”
Jack grabbed her shoulders as all the color drained from her face. He thought she was going to pass out. “Look at what, honey?”
Using both hands, Sara touched her arms, her breasts, her hip, then her legs, searching for—what, Jack had no idea. “I had cuts all over me.”
“We’ll check in better light, okay?” he murmured soothingly.
Her eyes were huge when she looked up at him. “Are you real?”
“Jesus, honey—” Jack yanked her into his lap and wrapped his arms around her. “I’m very real and so are you. You had some kind of nightmare or something. A bad one, apparently. But I’m right here, and I won’t let you go.”
Sara wrapped her arms around his waist, clutching his shirt with both hands. “I’m totally freaked out, Jack.”
“Yeah, I see that.” He rocked her slightly, feeling the frantic pounding of her heart against his chest and the sweaty dampness of her shirt under his soothing hand. “Shh. I’ve got you, honey. Shh.”
“Take me home,” she whispered against his throat. “Please, Jackson. Take me home. Now.”
Since he was thinking exactly that, at exactly the same moment, they ended up on a wide bed in a cool, dark room.
Sara struggled to sit up, trying to shove his weight off her. But even if Jack had wanted to, he could barely move. While she shoved with one hand, her other arm was around his neck, and her legs were locked around his waist. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“I have to shower, right this second.”
“Magic or water?”
“Magic now.” She shuddered, lying back and tightening her arms about his neck as she buried her face against his throat. “Water later. Lots and lots of lovely hot water. Later.”
Jack magically stripped off their clothes, leaving both of them shower-fresh without either of them leaving the bed.
His head lowered, and with a small sigh, Sara closed her eyes, parting her lips to welcome him.
He gently cupped her face in both hands, studying her soft mouth, the lush sweep of her dark lashes on her lightly flushed cheeks. Emotion welled inside him. God, he’d missed her. Missed this. He wanted to deny it and failed compl
etely.
Sara curled her fingers around his wrist. “Don’t …” Her voice shook, just enough for him to know she wasn’t as sanguine as she wanted him to believe. He wanted to devour her, but for now, a taste would sustain him.
Drawing her up, Jack bent his head, covering her mouth with his. Her lips parted, and he tilted her head back a little so he could slant his lips against hers and deepen the kiss, tapping into the deep, passionate core he remembered with every beat of his heart.
He brushed her lips with his in a light, tantalizing caress, then cupped the warm, silky weight of her breast in his palm, rediscovering the lush curves he’d never forgotten. His thumb moved over her nipple, slowly rousing it to a hard nub.
Sara felt a low hum vibrate deep in her throat. His gentle, rough-skinned hand on her breast felt absolutely perfect. The purr morphed into a small whimper as he kept stroking her sensitive nipple. She wanted him with a desperation that should have set alarm bells ringing in her head. Instead, she relished the hungry exploration of his mouth on hers. He nibbled and teased, catching lightly at her lower lip with his teeth, then played over the little sting with a hot sweep of his tongue.
Her breath hitched, but his lips drifted away to stroke a burning path across her cheek, paused over her closed lids, then returned to her eagerly waiting mouth.
She welcomed his tongue, silky-smooth and wet against hers as he tasted her, the subtle strokes and forays made more thrilling by his control. Jack had always been a masterful lover. He didn’t plunder. He didn’t grab. He savored. And he took his sweet time. Her temperature spiked and her pulse raced with anticipation.
Fine tremors rode through his body as Jack buried both hands in her hair, cupping the back of her head in one palm as he gently teased her mouth. She reciprocated by combing her fingers through the cool strands of his dark hair. She scored her nails gently against his scalp, causing him to draw in an out-of-rhythm breath, but he didn’t stop what he was doing.
Jack’s body, sprawled half over hers, burned with a furnace heat. His arms were like steel bands surrounding her. A haven.
He lowered his lips to her throat and whispered, “I want you more than my next breath.”
And that breath was gratifyingly ragged. A shudder ran through her body as his mouth crushed down on hers. She slid her open palms up his chest, enjoying the sensation of smooth, hot skin and crisp hair, then rubbed her face against him like a cat. She felt like purring. “Make me forget. Help me, Jack.”
His eyes glittered as he stared down, and he murmured thickly, “Beautiful.”
Sara cradled his head in her hands. She wished she could pull him around her like a magic cape of protection and safety. Bringing his mouth down to hers, she met his tongue thrust for thrust. His warm fingers closed around the cool globe of her breast. Gliding his palm down to span her rib cage, Jack lowered his head.
The silk of his hair brushed her breasts as he opened his mouth, drawing a peak deep into the hot, wet cavern of his mouth. She let out a cry as he sank his teeth delicately around the tight bud then stroked it with his tongue. He paused to look up at her. “Don’t think of anything but this. Us. Now.” His voice was soft, thick with desire. His hands were everywhere. “Lift up. …”
He kissed his way back up her exquisitely sensitive skin until his lips were against her throat, and his hand slid purposefully up the back of her thigh. Her legs were still wrapped around his waist, and she lifted her hips in entreaty.
“Now, Jack!”
He brushed his lips around the curve of her ear, setting every nerve in her skin tingling as his mouth traveled to the pulse beating in her temple, then skimmed across her cheek. “Is that an all systems go?” he asked hoarsely against her lips.
She wanted to say something clever and witty, but barely had enough breath to demand, “I want you inside me.” And just in case her urgency wasn’t coming through loud and clear, she slid her hand down his hip, then wrapped her fingers around his penis.
He was hot, silky, and hard. She stroked her thumb over the head until he groaned then closed her fingers around him.
“Wait,” he murmured.
Jack was a big guy. He had big … hands. He slid two fingers inside her, moving them in intense circles, massaging and testing her readiness. Sara shuddered, moving her hips against his hand in jerky, involuntary motions. She was wet, swollen, and desperate, and several stages beyond ready. “Talk about chatty. …”
With a huff of laughter, Jack withdrew his hand to position his narrow hips between her spread knees. She had a moment’s pause to feel the sheer size of him—there—before he pushed inside.
He hissed out a shuddering breath as he buried himself to the hilt in one powerful thrust, then lay still. And Sara was grateful. The sensation of him inside her was so piercingly sweet, so monumental, that she couldn’t move herself.
“Okay?” he asked, voice rough against her ear.
All of her senses were tuned to him; she was absolutely aware of everywhere their bodies touched. Everywhere. She smiled against his throat. “Better than.”
“Tighten your legs around me.”
“I was getting there,” she said thickly as he pushed himself impossibly deeper. She walked her heels up his back, feeling gloriously invaded, and kissed his jaw as he started to move.
Pinned down by his weight, she tightened her legs as he moved his big, powerful body inside hers. She felt alive, supernaturally so, as she ached and burned and shuddered in his arms.
The beauty of their lovemaking had always astonished her. Every time it transcended anything Sara could imagine even in her wildest dreams, anything they’d shared before. It always felt new. Their bodies were perfectly matched. Yin and yang. Waves of pleasure crashed and churned until she went blind and deaf, her entire being focused on where they were joined. She was being helplessly urged higher and higher, impossibly higher, as the earth shifted, rocked, trembled, with her at the very epicenter. Her entire body clenched as she came hard.
It might have been minutes or hours, Sara didn’t care. Their bodies were glued together, and somehow, she had wound up on top, her head on his broad shoulder. His fingers trailed lazily up and down her back.
The drapes were drawn, and it was cool and dark in the room. Jack played with her hair. “Ready to talk about what happened earlier?”
Sara told him what she’d experienced, attempting not to sound insanely melodramatic. But there was no way to make a gargantuan iridescent snake sound even remotely everyday.
“Not that there could possibly be such as thing as a two-hundred-foot snake with a psychedelic, triple-forked tongue,” she finished. “But however it was done—illusion or hypnosis—I saw what I saw. Hell, I felt it.”
“I don’t know about two hundred feet,” Jack said doubtfully. “But the fossilized vertebrae of a forty-five-foot-long snake were discovered last year in Colombia. It’s possible your snake was one of Titanoboa’s great-great-great-grandchildren.” He brushed a kiss on the bridge of her nose. “Possible, but not likely. Titanoboa cerrejonesis might be related to present-day anacondas and boas, but it lived fifty-eight to sixty million years ago. The temperature has changed in those millions of years. A snake can only become so large before its metabolic rate becomes too low to support its bulk. It’s almost impossible for a snake as big as you’re talking about to live in the current temperature of the rain forest.”
“It stood upright”—Sara shivered hard, and Jack tightened his arm around her—“or rather, half of it did. Its head went above the tree canopy. At least fifty if not seventy-five feet. I’m telling you, that thing was at least two hundred feet. It smelled gross—sulfur and, I don’t know, dead things.” She rubbed the hair on his chest absently. “And I didn’t imagine the colors. God. I’ll never look at a rainbow the same way again.”
She dragged in a breath. “Truthfully, now that I’m home, I’m really not sure if it happened or if, like the whiteout when we almost crashed, it was an illusion.�
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“It was another illusion,” Jack assured her. “Do you hurt anywhere? You said it lashed you with its tongue. Perhaps you crashed into a tree branch and it knocked you out?”
“It did more than lash me with its tongue,” she told him grimly.
“More? Like what?”
Now she felt ridiculous, and her skin felt hot, then cold, then hot again. “It … felt me up.”
“Felt you up?”
“Like this.” She took his hand and slid it up between her legs.
“Christ—”
Something heavy crashed to the floor in another room and shattered. Sara actually managed to ignore Jack and listened; who, or what, was out there? She’d had more than enough mysteries for one night.
“Shhh,” a woman hissed drunkenly.
“I bought the damn vase. Don’t tell me to hush. Who’s going to hear us?”
Sara frowned. Who’d come to her wing of the house at this time of night? She bet it was friends of Inga and Ida. She’d have a little chat with them tomorrow.
“Everyone in the neighborhood, if you keep yelling like a damn crack whore,” the man shouted. “Didn’t you think I might be embarrassed by your behavior tonight? People already think we’re a joke. Why’d you let Babs lay one on you like that? Isn’t it bad enough that people think you married a guy young enough to be your son? Now they’ll think I can’t satisfy …”
Sara sat up, getting more annoyed by the second. She didn’t recognize the voices, and she sure as hell didn’t want to hear their marital problems.
“Jack!” She nudged him with her foot.
“I hear them.”
“I so did not let her kish me, kiss me, Malcolm, honey, sweetie, lover,” the woman’s voice said drunkenly over the unsteady click-click-click of high heels on hardwood flooring. “It was a friendly peck between neighbors. Everrryy-body at the partay wanted to kiss her.”
“They’re coming this way! Hurry. We have to—” Sara whispered, yanking the sheet up.
“Nobody is going to come into your quarters. Door’s locked.” Jack attempted to strip the sheet off her with his teeth. “Mmm. I love the smell of your skin after sex, you know that?” he said against the curve of her breast, his breath warm on her skin. He always snuggled after sex, and usually fell asleep in her arms. But right now, she needed him wide-awake.
