Ann closed her eyes as he caressed her cheek. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to continue to feel on this so very raw, vulnerable level, but Ann pushed on. She met and held his tender, burning gaze as he continued to cradle her cheek. “I wanted so desperately to reach out from behind my walls and love you in return, but I was afraid, Mike. So very, very scared. You made me happier than I ever thought possible. You’ve made me laugh more deeply than I ever have before. You’ve given me so much by having the guts to not let your past, those awful events, crush you, like they did me. I’ve been running scared all my life. I realized that, too, last night.” She slid her hand over his and whispered brokenly, “You were the one with the courage to confront me with the truth of who you are. And I was still hiding and running.”
She leaned forward and slipped her hand, palm down, across his shoulder. Instantly, she felt his flesh tense beneath her touch. “You wear a badge of honor on your back. I wear scars of my past around my heart.” Her palm reached the jaguar fur on his shoulder blade. She felt him tense again, as if to try and shield himself from her reaction. Throwing her fear to the wind, Ann moved against him, pressing her breasts to his chest as she slid her hand slowly, purposefully across the patch on his back again and again.
“The crosses you bear are many. The path you’ve chosen to walk is paved with risks and death. How can I, someone with so many emotional wounds, judge you?” She moved her hand in a delicate, circular motion, allowing the sensation of his skin against her palm to course through her. His flesh was sun warm and firm. The jaguar fur was soft and thick in comparison, a seamless part of him. Ann eased back on her heels and allowed her hands to come to rest on her thighs as she looked at him. “You never judged me, Mike. I have no right to judge you or this strange world you live within. Four days ago, you told me I had to make a decision about us. That’s not true. We both had a decision to make—for ourselves, about ourselves. If you can love me, faults and all, then I can give myself permission to love you even if you are a part of a greater family known as the Jaguar Clan.”
Her words echoed through him like mission bells being rung on a cool, clear morning, like the music of the heavens and earth combined. Without a word, he slid his dark fingers around the whiteness of her wrists. Gently, he drew Ann’s arms downward. “The love and pain you held for Casey is not something to be ashamed of, querida. And what Crane did to you wounded you even more, made another scar on your heart. In a sense, those scars are medals of courage, purple hearts, if you will, that speak of the battles you were in, the wounds you sustained.”
Just his warming, firm touch eased her anguish. There was no mistaking his feelings for her as she drowned in his blue gaze. Tears glimmered in his eyes. Tears for her…
“They were battles I lost, Mike. I’m not proud of what I did, what happened….”
“You didn’t lose any battles, Ann. Listen to me,” he rasped fiercely, “you were frightened and alone. So very, very alone. I just thank the Great Goddess you didn’t stop trying to reach out—especially to someone like me. But then, you’re walking a unique path, too. And that path is the same as mine.”
Hanging her head, Ann listened to the fierceness behind his words, which sounded like a growl. It wasn’t a growl that frightened her, but rather moved through her, sustaining her, nurturing her.
His hands tightened briefly around hers. Ann’s fingers were so cold and Mike knew it was because she had been so scared of coming face-to-face with her ugly past and sharing it openly, with trust and vulnerability, with him. “Your courage,” Houston rasped, “is magnificent, Ann, in my heart, my eyes. There’s not a damn thing you need to be ashamed of. You were young and you were impressionable with Casey. When he died, Crane took advantage of you and you believed in the bastard.”
She pulled her hand from his and slid her fingers along his recently shaved cheek. “Walking wounded, aren’t we?”
He took her hand and pressed a kiss into the palm. “But we aren’t dead, Ann. And we sure as hell have hearts that belong to one another.”
“I’m afraid,” she quavered. “Afraid for you…afraid of a possible future between us. I’m afraid of the strangeness of your world compared to mine. In the last four days, I’ve come to accept it on some level, but it’s very hard, Mike…so very hard….”
With a groan, Houston nodded. Her palm was so soft and yet so strong. He could smell the faint scent of the spicy orchid soap that she’d used. “I know…and it’s your choice, Ann. I love you. For me, right or wrong, selfish as it is, there’s no other answer except that I want you. All of you. For the rest of the time I have on our mother, the earth.” He smiled tenderly at her. “I know it’s not so simple for you, though…. By telling you I love you, I’m placing you in harm’s way. Because of that, I can’t and won’t ask you to stay with me. This has to be up to you. Entirely.”
Ann moved into his arms, curled up between his legs, wrapped her arms around his torso and laid her head against his chest. It was such a beautiful sensation—the strength of his sun-warmed flesh beneath her cheek, the powerful thud of his heart against her ear. Mike pulsed with such life, such hope, that it gave her hope.
“My whole life has been based upon my fears, Mike. I constructed my safe little world up in my head to avoid feeling. Well, I’ve found out the real world, reality, doesn’t work like that. Every time I think I’ve got everything in place, life comes along in one form or another and destroys my order.” She moistened her lips. “I think I finally got the message that there’s no safety in living the life of the mind. I have to step outside of it once and for all. I’m willing to do that, to try that with you. Yes, Escovar is a threat to us. I’ve lived too much of my life with what-ifs, and with you, I have to surrender all of that. I can’t have life on my terms, I’ve discovered. I have to learn to flow with it, not against it.”
“My wild-orchid woman,” he whispered huskily against her hair, sliding his fingers around the curve of her shoulder to the juncture of her slender neck. “We can live our lives in fear or we can walk free. That’s the choice before you.”
“I can be a coward like I’ve been all my life, or I can choose freedom, can’t I?”
“Yes,” he murmured, “and freedom always has a price. And in this case, the price could be very high. It could mean your life,” he said soberly, his fingers stroking her head.
His touch was silken. Her breasts tightened in need of him, of the love he could shower upon her. Every time Mike stroked her hair, she felt joy replacing her fear.
“The other day, when I was out in the meadow trying to think my way through all of this,” Ann told him in a low voice, “I watched a monarch butterfly land on some gold flowers at my feet. It stayed there, close enough for me to touch. I began to look at it in a different light. In a way, I feel like a butterfly. Almost a third of my life has been spent in a cocoon, Mike. And then—” she laughed a little breathlessly “—I met you. My chrysalis cracked open. My world changed. It was opening up and I grew afraid, because the only home I’d ever known was the prison of my orderly, rational cocoon. I’d equated that hard shell around me with protecting me, when really it was imprisoning me and stopping me from growing and being fully human…from being myself.”
Mike’s hand stilled on Ann’s slender neck. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingers. Smiling against her slightly curled hair, he said, “So are you going to crawl back inside that prison or be a butterfly, mi querida?”
She twisted her head to look up at his wry, smiling features. His eyes burned with such tenderness and love that they melted the last of her fear and replaced it with a growing euphoria that made her feel as if she could do anything—anything in the world—and succeed at it. Even love Houston fiercely, fully when she’d never allowed herself to love at all.
“Butterflies are very delicate.”
“Yes,” he murmured, leaning down and kissing her nose lightly, “but they will fly two thousand miles on their migration journey to come
back to their home. They might be delicate, but they’re tough.”
Ann sat up and spontaneously threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, Mike, I love you so much it hurts. Please, love me. That’s all I need, that’s all I ever want from you. Please…”
Chapter 13
The anticipation, the longing, was exquisite as Ann watched the tenderness burning in Mike’s eyes turn to undisguised hunger and need of her. He eased up on his knees so that only inches separated them. As he towered over her, his shadow falling across her, her gaze was riveted on his eyes, on his mouth, which had become so terribly vulnerable looking in those seconds after she’d asked him to love her. Ann understood what their lovemaking meant, where it would lead. But today was the first day of forever for her. She was now a butterfly, free to fly, no longer imprisoned in a cocoon that hid her from life, from the man she loved. They had been in a sense like aliens from two very different cultures and times, but the language of the heart had been their mutual connection, the one language they both spoke and understood. It was enough.
His fingers, rough and callused, slid against the planes of her face, eliciting tiny tingles of pleasure. A ragged sound escaped her parting lips as he framed her face and gently angled her chin upward. He was going to kiss her. Ann allowed her hands to come to rest on his powerful chest, the dark mat of hair wiry beneath her fingertips. He had kissed her senseless before, and her body quivered with the memory of those stolen moments, heat flowing and pooling languidly in her lower body. But this was different. She was going to love Mike in return. She was going to breathe her breath of life back into him. This time, it would be an equal exchange as they shared with one another as never before.
Ann felt Houston lean over to claim her parted, waiting lips. Her fingertips dug into his chest as she anticipated—needed—him. She felt his large fingers curve against the base of her skull, strands of her hair tangled within his grasp. His body swayed slightly forward. His moist breath caressed her face. And then she strained upward to meet his descending mouth.
The first skimming brush of his lips against hers brought tears to her closed eyes. His touch was like that of a butterfly, so light and tentative. She could feel him restraining himself, and feel the leashed power vibrating within him as he took her mouth a second time. Hungrily, she opened her mouth as he rocked her lips open. He tasted of sunlight, of the sweet water of the rainbow waterfall, of the lush scent of orchids that grew in nearly every tree that surrounded the Village of the Clouds.
His breath mingled with hers. She took his breath deep within her, and she felt him tremble. As their mouths clung wetly, sliding greedily against one another, she allowed her own breath to flow into him. There was such a connection forged in those meltingly hot moments. She was no longer thinking, guided only by her heart, which asked her to give herself on all levels to Mike. Never in her life, had she done that—she’d always been too afraid. With Mike, with his tender mouth touching, cajoling and teaching hers, she gave as much of herself as she could, knowing that it would take time to surrender herself completely. Only time would help her to truly accept who and what he was.
Everything about him was primal—the pressure of his mouth against her own, the hunger building in his powerful embrace. She heard him groan, the reverberation moving through her like a drum being beaten as her hands slid upward across his bunched, tense shoulders following the curve of his thick neck. An explosion of heat begged to be released within her. As she brushed against him with her breasts, an incredible wave of pleasure shimmered through her. She felt her nipples tightening, clamoring to be touched, cherished and suckled.
Lost in the splendor and heat of his mouth, his breath warm and ragged against her, she buried her fingers in his dark, thick hair. She couldn’t get enough of him, she discovered. Her body throbbed and cried out for him. With each movement of his mouth, his tongue sliding provocatively across her lower lip, she whimpered. He was trembling in earnest now, and it wasn’t her fevered imagination. Slowly, very slowly, Houston eased away from her mouth.
Barely opening her eyes, her breath shallow and fast, Ann met and clung to his burning gaze. The raw power of him as a man, as someone who desired her, poured through her like cooling rain on a very hot day, it was so welcome. Ann tried to speak, but her heart was skittering wildly in her breast. She kept touching him, unable to stop from exploring his neck, shoulders and magnificent chest. It was as if she’d never realized how love could make her feel. But then, she understood that because of her past, she had never before trusted herself to open up to any man, never allowed herself to feel the divine pleasure that now exploded simultaneously through her body and heart.
“I want you to love me,” she said unsteadily. “I want to love you…”
Houston nodded, unable to speak for a moment. Caressing her flushed cheek, he drowned in Ann’s upturned gaze, which glowed with such life that he wanted to cry. Here was the woman he knew had lain dormant beneath that mask, that armor she’d worn so long to protect herself. Suddenly she seemed like an innocent in his eyes, not a mature woman with experience and life behind her. And he knew that emotionally she was terribly naive. Getting to his feet, Houston drew her upward. Not wanting to lose contact with her, he slid his arm around her and drew her against him.
“Come on, I know where we should go,” he rasped.
Ann felt as if she were walking on air rather than the ground. The sunlight felt different, too. The breeze seemed to caress her like invisible hands, making her vibrantly aware of her body as never before. Each time she moved, she felt the action within her body. The sensation was so surprising that she lost herself in the fluidity, the gracefulness, of her own motion. Talk was unimportant.
At the same time, Ann felt Mike’s every emotion. Alaria had made her understand that those of the Jaguar Clan had the very same senses as a jaguar; they were incredibly attuned to all living things and could absorb every impression, every emotion and thought without effort. This morning, Ann was glad to be in such intimate attunement with Mike. And even more surprising, she could feel his returning joy, his raw hunger for her, not only in her mind, but in her heart as well, and it left her reeling with euphoria.
They walked for perhaps half a mile down a winding, twisting mountain path in the jungle. At the bottom of the slope, a barrier of thick bushes and trees had grown like a dark green wall where the path ended. Mike halted and turned to her. He smiled knowingly.
“I think you’ll remember this place,” he said as he moved some branches aside to allow her entrance.
Puzzled, Ann slipped past him. Beyond the barrier of foliage, she saw an oval-shaped pool. Gasping, she halted, her eyes growing large.
Mike stopped beside her. Ann had pressed both hands against her lips, the surprise more than evident on her face. He chuckled softly and drew her against him as they viewed the pool together.
“This is the place in my dreams!” Ann whispered in awe, and she looked up at him. “I dreamed this, didn’t I?”
Mike broke into laughter and pulled her fully against him, embracing her hard and swiftly. “Dreams are a part of our reality, mi querida. They are the stuff that helps us bring things into this physical manifestation, into the here and now.” He kissed her hotly for a long, long time and felt her begin to melt bonelessly into his arms. Reluctantly, he broke away. How easy it was to love Ann. Even more joyful, more wonderful, was her ability to love him equally in return. Mike thought he might die of happiness. The threat of Escovar faded. At least, for a small space of time.
Ann sighed and looked at the pool, shaking her head. “So many times, Mike, I dreamed of this place! It was the only place I could come to—to…help myself. If I undressed and slid into the water, I felt hope. I felt strength, as if I could keep on going, and I could survive….”
He heard the trembling in her lowered voice. Caressing her hair, he sighed heavily and simply held her. “This is known as the pool of life,” he told her. “It’s shaped like a womb to r
emind us that all creatures, two-legged and four-legged, come from the body of a woman, that we are all part of the tapestry of the Great Goddess, that we are all from her.” He gestured to the clear water, which looked like glass, the sunlight reflecting off of it like dancing diamonds. “There are many legends about this pool among the Indians of Peru. It is said that anyone who can find it and bathe in it will become healed. Many people, dying of disease, try to find this place.”
Ann studied his face and realized how happy he was; there was no longer any strain in his features. “And…do they ever find it?”
Houston smiled tenderly down at her. “The Village of the Clouds is accessible to anyone, two-legged or four-legged, whose heart is in the right place. The Great Goddess judges that, we don’t. Many have found this beautiful place and some, with their last breath of life, have fallen into this water, only to be revived, healed and reborn.”
She moved her hand against his lower back and felt the deep indentation of his strong spine, the tight muscles on either side of it. “This pool saved my life in my dreams. I knew that—every time I woke up and remembered being here, swimming in it.”
“Your heart, mi querida,” he said huskily, framing her face and making her look up at him, “is so pure that I have no question as to why She allows you to come here any time you want.”
Drowning in his tender smile, in the burning desire in his eyes, Ann took a deep, tremulous breath. It was so easy to lean against his strong, steadying body. “I love you so much,” she quavered. “I’m so happy I think I’ll burst, Mike.”
Houston rocked her in his arms. “I love you, Ann. I always have. I always will.” The deep timbre of his voice resounded around the intimate place, ringed by the wall of high, thick foliage. “I never knew I could feel this way, my wild-orchid woman. And it’s because of you. You and that very brave, courageous heart in this tiny body of yours.”
Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of the Jaguar Page 24
