by Tory Cates
“I can’t believe you still have all this on,” Cam said with a lightness that was betrayed by his ragged breathing as he began fiddling with buttons and zippers.
Malou couldn’t believe it either. She already felt loved to the depth of her soul. Cam made swift work of her clothes, then began to tear away at his own. This time it was Malou’s turn to slow and steady him. Kneeling beside him, she captured his hand with hers and removed it from the buckle he was jerking open. Instead, with the same maddening slowness he’d used to tantalize her, she toyed languidly with the fastener. After she’d finally unbuckled it, she tugged gently at the zipper. Cam’s eyes slid shut, and a groan rattled in his throat. She unbuttoned his shirt and caressed it away from Cam’s chest and over his shoulders, trailing the teasing tips of her nails along every inch of the firm flesh she left exposed.
As she knelt above him, her breasts came to tautened life beneath the stimulation of his ardent gaze. But when Cam, still only half-undressed, reached out toward Malou, she backed away, returning her attention to the jeans that still needed to be removed. She slid them out from beneath him. When Cam rose up on one elbow, his muscles bunching above it, Malou pressed him back to the pillow with a debilitating kiss. Her lips still pinioning him to the bed, she drifted her hand across his chest, pausing to circle his nipples until they hardened. Then down to where his wide rib cage sloped into the hard, flat plane of his stomach. Her hand went lower but skirted along the outer edge of his pelvis, across the powerful band of muscle that joined his thigh to the pelvis there, then down. The springy hair of his upper leg tickled Malou’s palm as she brought her hand back up, and as she reached the juncture between Cam’s thighs, a sharp intake of breath met her touch. He was alive beneath her hand. Alive and ready for loving her.
Nothing Malou could have done would have restrained Cam when he rose again. She dissolved into his kiss, sinking beneath it back onto the bed. Their tongues warred in a duel where the victor was the one who could inflict the most pleasure. Cam won by claiming new territory; his mouth brushed down along her neck and fastened on her breast, sucking surges of pleasure through her that pulsed out of her deepest core. Then Cam was seeking that very core, probing for it with a tongue that washed shivers of ecstasy through Malou. And still it probed with a rhythm and constancy that pounded delirium into Malou’s blood. It probed until the ecstatic shivers gathered together and centered on that one bliss-lavished spot, crowding together, denser and denser, until there was no more room for any more pleasure. Until all the delicious feelings exploded together, all at once.
Only then, feeling Malou tense and arch toward him, then twist away, only then did Cam stop to move back up and hold Malou in his arms as the quakes of release swept through her. Her quick, short breaths battered against his chest. When they had evened, her eyelids fluttered open and, still dazzled with love, she looked up at him.
That gaze ripped something loose deep inside of Cam. He squeezed a warm rain of kisses on Malou’s face, her eyes, cheeks, brows. And Malou returned every one of them. But there remained an even better way of showing Cam all that her heart held. She slid close until she felt him, still ready to love her. She swung her leg on top of his and, facing each other, side by side, their kisses never stopping, he sought entrance.
Cam’s hand moved along the length of her leg, over her hip, her waist, and came to rest on her breast, where it massaged wondrous patterns. He bent forward until his lips replaced the hand. He teased the nipple with his lips and teeth, intensifying desire. As desire stirred within Malou, his nuzzling grew slightly rougher as he tugged the nipple to tautened, pulsing life. Feeling Malou’s building response, he clasped her buttocks and pressed her more tightly to him.
Malou felt all of him driving more deeply into her, reigniting a profound need. She clung to him, unable to resist the primal rhythms that moved them, undulating to the tempo dictated by Cam’s hands on her hips.
His mouth closed over hers, his kiss a frenzied taking of all she could give. His breathing matched the staccato hammer of his heart pounding against hers. His face was transfixed. He was as much a captive to the pleasure she gave as she was to the ecstasy that held her in thrall.
“Oh, darling, I’m close, very close,” he whispered fiercely, as she moved against him.
“Yes, Cam. Oh, yes,” she mumbled, her response an insensate affirmation of what they were reaching together.
Knowing that he need restrain himself no longer, Cam’s motions grew more frantic. With each wild thrust the heavenly feeling built. Malou clung to Cam now, answering his raw need with her own. And still the pulsing rhythm increased to an almost unbearable pitch. It catapulted her higher and higher until she floated into a realm of oblivion and exquisite pleasure heightened by the feel of Cam’s fulfillment pulsing deep within her.
She came languidly back to reality to find her hands grasping Cam’s tight buttocks. She stroked his hard, muscled torso, then curved her arms about his broad shoulders to cradle him against her tenderly. To hold this bold, powerful man who had quivered in her arms just as she had in his. He lay so still, so obviously wrapped in a cocoon of contentment, that Malou was sure he’d fallen asleep until he spoke.
“Are you an angel or an enchantress or both?” he asked, a warm, soundless chuckle rumbling against her in his chest. “I can’t make up my mind which.”
“I’m just the prim primatologist, don’t you remember?”
“Who on earth ever said that? Someone severely lacking in taste and perception, obviously.”
“Obviously,” Malou agreed happily.
Reluctantly, Cam shook off the marvelous, blanketing layers of contentment and propped himself up on an elbow above Malou. He traced a finger across her cheek and over her lips, sighed, and asked, “Mary Louise Sanders, what am I going to do with you?”
“I rather liked the things you’ve come up with so far,” she answered impishly. But Cam’s thoughtful expression told her that the time had arrived for the serious discussion their lovemaking had only postponed.
He sighed again and let his hand drop. “I don’t want to get into this, do you? It was a miracle that you happened to be here. What happens between us in bed together is a miracle. And it’s a miracle that our worlds ever intersected long enough for us to meet. Should we question miracles?” he asked, a smile lightening his intense features.
“I’ve always maintained a strict policy against the practice myself,” Malou quipped, joyous relief flooding into her smile.
“But what were you doing here?”
“I needed sanctuary,” Malou said simply, “and this is mine.”
Cam nodded in solemn agreement, for she had spoken his heart and the reason why he too had been drawn to the stone cabin secluded from time.
“And speaking of sanctuary,” Malou said, sucking in a deep breath for courage, “I’ve come up with a great idea for a monkey sanctuary.”
Cam groaned. “If someone had told me a few months ago that I’d be in bed with a gorgeous woman talking about monkeys, I’d have advised that person to seek professional help. Now, maybe I’m the one who should see a shrink,” he said with mock disgust, but a grin was flirting at the corners of his mouth.
“No, really, it’s the perfect plan.” Now that Malou was actually putting her idea into words, they burbled excitedly from her. “Move the monkeys down here,” she blurted out.
“Down here? Perhaps you’d like to get them all in bed with us?”
“No, silly,” Malou laughed, buoyant with relief and exuberant in the glow of Cam’s love. “Move the monkeys onto this land around the cabin.”
Cam cocked a doubtful eyebrow at her.
“No, listen,” she insisted, not allowing Cam an opportunity to object. “You’ve said yourself that this property isn’t worth much. It’s wild, overgrown, hilly, rocky, remote. There’s not a decent road out here, and it’s on the flood plain. All qualities that make this land worthless for cattle or crops but ideal for monkeys.
”
Cam continued to look doubtful. Malou ignored him.
“It has a natural water supply running through it, and since it’s hilly, the troop wouldn’t need such a large compound so it wouldn’t be too terribly expensive to fence it in.”
“One thought . . .” Cam attempted to interject, holding up a finger, but Malou didn’t even slow down.
“Sell the land they’re on right now, and you’d make enough from that to pay off your note on time and have plenty left over to fence in the sanctuary. That’s what we’ll call it, the Landell Monkey Sanctuary.”
“Malou, if I may just interrupt to . . .” But Malou wouldn’t let him. She had to convince him. Had to make him share her enthusiasm.
“But that’s not the best part of the idea. The best part is this: With the monkeys in a smaller area, it would be more feasible to turn the sanctuary into a tourist attraction. We could just build some viewing platforms with telescopes on the edge of the sanctuary, and tourists could watch without disturbing the troop. The troop could be self-supporting with that and the grants. And I’d keep writing the grant proposals so you . . .”
“Sounds good,” Cam finally put in.
“Okay,” Malou replied, still charging ahead too rapidly to stop and really listen, “maybe you don’t like having a monkey sanctuary named after you. We could call it the South Texas Sanctuary or . . . What did you say?”
“I said it sounds good to me.”
“You like the idea?”
“Wasn’t I supposed to?”
“Well, yes, of course, but I thought you’d be more, well, resistant.”
“Why? It’s a good solution. Obvious once it’s been presented. But then, most of the best solutions do seem obvious once someone’s thought of them.”
“You like the idea,” Malou muttered, stunned with happiness.
“Don’t act so surprised,” Cam chuckled. “Although you seem not to believe me, I always work for deals where there are no losers and no tears.”
Malou winced at the reminder of the cruelly misguided charges she had hurled at Cam the day before. He saw the cloud gathering over her sunny joy, and he tapped the end of her nose. “Hey, just one thing.”
She looked up at him.
“Don’t think I’m developing any late-blooming affection for those furry nuisances. It’s just that, when it floods, monkeys are so much better at climbing trees than cows are. With that in mind, you’ve got yourself a deal. Now kiss me, or every one of the sorry beasts goes on the block.”
Malou was preparing to do just that when, her relief clouding her judgment, she made one final remark. “I just knew you couldn’t have done it.”
Cam halted. “Done what, my lovely?”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it matters. Everything is solved and you’re beside me and nothing else matters.”
“But what is it that doesn’t matter? That I couldn’t have done?”
He’d stopped bending toward her and was leaning back now, set on finding out what it was that Malou suddenly seemed so nervous about.
“Oh, Cam, just forget I ever said anything.”
“Malou, if you’ll recall, there are already quite a few things I’ve made myself forget you ever said. I don’t feel like adding another one to a list that’s already too long, so tell me what it is you think I couldn’t have done.”
Surely he must have already guessed at her suspicions, Malou told herself. Though she was loath to bring up the subject again, perhaps now was the time to have done with it once and for all. Her voice was small and tentative when she spoke. “Poisoned the monkeys. I knew in my heart that you never would have ordered that. It was Ernie who kept badgering me about it; then it turned out he was the scoundrel all along.”
Cam’s look of disbelief told Malou a tale that she did not want to know. “You thought I poisoned those monkeys?”
“Not really,” Malou protested. “Not deep down inside. Anyway, it was Jorge who Ernie kept saying had done it.”
“And you believed him?” His voice was scoured clean of all emotion except astonishment.
“Well, there were certain things that had me wondering. Like you knowing what coyotillo was. And our first morning here when Jorge came and told you, ‘Everything is done as you ordered,’ and then you hurried him outside so quickly that it seemed like you had things to say to him that you didn’t want me to overhear.”
Cam’s mouth dropped in amazement. “What I didn’t want was for Jorge to see you bedded down here with his patrón. In his culture the judgments are harsh for a woman who spends the night with a man she’s not married to. I wanted to shield you from that. And the ‘everything’ I’d ordered done were some repairs that he’d told me about over the phone. What other things had you wondering?” A new harshness was entering his voice as the shock wore off.
A sick feeling was welling up in Malou’s stomach, but there was no way out of the trap she’d laid for herself except to keep going straight ahead.
“Just you, and my misunderstanding of who you are. To me you seemed like a man who would do anything to get what he wanted. You even said as much to me.”
“Malou, did you and dear old Ernie ever stop to consider that if what I’d wanted was no monkeys, I could have cleared them off my land with a phone call and made money in the process? Why on earth would I have to send Jorge in the dark of night to poison the creatures?”
“I told you it was stupid,” Malou admitted. “But you reacted so violently when I threatened to call in the press, and then Ernie had a theory that you wanted to neutralize any bad press you might get from selling off the troop, so you tried to show that they were dying off in the wild.”
Cam looked at Malou as if she’d turned into a stranger before his eyes. He sat up, backed away from her, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The gulf between them had opened again. When he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the wall in front of him. “Believing what you did about me, Malou, how could you have let me touch you? Love you? How?”
A thousand protests sprang up in Malou’s heart, but they were all stopped dead by the lump in her throat caused by the grim finality of Cam’s question. He had asked it like a man for whom no answer would suffice.
“What kind of man do you really think I am? Yes, I like to win. But what is a victory worth if it has to be won with the kind of sleaze you suspected me of?” Now anger began to seep into his tone. “You ivory-tower types,” he lashed out, standing to hurriedly pull on his pants. “You think you’ve cornered the market on ethics and that anyone who sullies himself by actually working in the real world of business would stoop to anything to get ahead.” He jerked on his shirt. “Wrong, Malou. Fundamentally incorrect assumption.” He drove his feet into his shoes without bothering with socks and started for the door.
Pausing there, he pounded his fist against the frame and said, without looking back, “You’ll still have your sanctuary, and I’d like you to stay on at least long enough to supervise the transfer. After that, what you do is up to you. Just one thing—all communication between us will be through my receptionist. Call her and leave messages if you need to get in touch with me and I’ll have her convey all my instructions to you.”
“Cam, no, don’t . . .” But he was gone before Malou’s tear-blurred words could reach him.
The tears dried shortly after that when the numb fog set back in just as if it had never lifted. Only now it was worse. Now Malou had this short, sharp memory of ecstasy waiting to lance her whenever she stumbled across it in the fog.
Chapter 12
The day of the transfer dawned with white heat already shimmering across the land. Everything had worked out just as Malou had predicted it would. The land had sold quickly and Cam had met his financial deadlines with enough left over to get the sanctuary under way. Or that, at any rate, was what his receptionist had reported to Malou. The woman had also conveyed Mr. Landell’s wishes that Malou supervise the relocation and that she handle it
in whatever way she deemed most expedient.
“In other words, don’t bother him with the details,” Malou had translated the instructions.
“I think that’s about what it comes down to,” the secretary had agreed.
Those instructions had taken a month to translate further into reality. Working with Jorge and a crew of laborers, she’d first fenced in the sanctuary and dug out a wide spot in the creek for a swimming pond for the monkeys. Small sparks of something as close to excitement as she was able to muster glowed in Malou as she surveyed the new compound. The troop would be so much happier in this new home with its tall, sturdy trees for them to scramble up and down and the cool creek meandering through it.
Back at the old compound she oversaw the building of several large, wire-screened enclosures. When they were finished, she baited each one with a cache of peanuts and apples. Then the wait began.
For the first few days the apples merely withered in the heat and the peanuts went untouched. Then, as Malou knew they would, the adventurous juveniles were the first to venture into the foreign structures, darting in to snatch a peanut or a chunk of apple, then scurrying back outside with it. But gradually, as they learned that nothing terrible waited for them inside the structures, they began to linger, squatting on their haunches to finish off a few peanuts before making off with an apple chunk.
The higher-ranking males, with Sumo at the lead, were the next to dare entry. After a cautious entrance, they grew bold and claimed the privileges of their rank, swatting the youngsters away from the apple chunks and appropriating all the choice bits for themselves. Once they were comfortably ensconced, even the females with babies took to frequenting the strange new places to grab off the windfall snacks. But always, for those first few weeks, the door was left wide-open for the timid to race in and out of. After a while, even the most wary became accustomed to the new buildings and took to staying inside beneath their shade for longer and longer periods.
But it was Kojiwa that Malou watched, just as she’d been watching him since that first night when she’d returned him to the troop. Concern for him was what had finally given her the strength to drag herself from the bed in the stone cottage, where Cam had left her, and to stumble back to Los Monos. The old monkey had been in better shape that night than she had, and over the weeks that followed, he had managed to gain strength and energy until he now seemed fitter than he had in years.
