“Huayco!” someone shouted. Landslide.
She whipped her gaze to the rock face, and her blood ran cold. Boulders the size of cars plunged over the cliff. She and the men stood paralyzed while a rock sailed past them. It slammed into a tree with a concussive blast.
She fought back a sob.
There was an awful noise, like a bomb exploding. Two boulders smashed into each other and burst apart, firing shrapnel in all directions. Delaney caught some in her leg and went dizzy with pain. The weight of carrying Jaden was crushing.
There was nowhere to go, she realized. They would die here, all of them. She imagined Huenu’s wife and children keening with grief. The American media cannibalizing themselves to get the news out first: heartthrob Jaden Seavers, dead at twenty-seven. A more ominous sound made Delaney snap her attention back to the cliff. In slow motion, the entire precipice collapsed, sending up rocks and trees. The sheer force of it blasted her off her feet. She lay stunned and helpless beside Jaden, trying to be brave, trying to accept the inevitable. She curled herself around him, as much to protect as to say good-bye. Perhaps now she could admit the hard truth, she thought, closing her eyes, bracing herself for impact. All that shame and guilt and desire, years of it.
The rumbling stopped.
The dust continued to climb and roil, yet everything appeared uncannily still. Shocked, exhausted, no one said a word. Even the llama stopped clacking.
“A miracle,” Huenu muttered. She opened her mouth to respond, but what she saw over his shoulder made the words stick in her throat. There was a fifty-foot-wide chasm where the road used to be. All the rescue workers stood gaping on the other side of it.
Chapter Three
The implications hit Delaney all at once. Jaden’s removal to Cusco was now out of the question. With a sinking feeling, she also knew the rescue attempt was over too. The workers would pack up and make the treacherous descent down to their lives and families. And what of her own village? Anguish seized her when she considered the damage an earthquake might have done. No, they had to get back right away.
But how could she do that and at the same time save Jaden? A quick ascent might kill him. And even if they could get hold of one, no standard-production helicopter could ascend eight thousand meters or find a place to land if it did.
She pressed one hand to her mouth to stifle a sob. His life was completely in her hands. She stared down at his face, the sooty lashes, the faint pink flush to his lips and cheeks. A thousand memories threatened to engulf her. But a different sadness, one far more personal, refused to let go. She knew that no amount of humanitarian work would absolve her of the sin of loving him.
Gently, Huenu put his hand on her shoulder. “We must go.”
“Yes,” she said tonelessly. Across the ravine, the old truck was already sputtering away. She saw the bewildered frightened faces of the men in back. It shocked her to realize that all of them, herself included, had nearly died. And now the actual dead lay sprawled in a tour bus somewhere far down in the valley. Delaney squeezed her eyes shut, stemming tears that surprised her. All that bad blood. It could never be scrubbed clean again.
Val had been family, same as Jaden.
Huenu and the men collected two light but sturdy branches and lay them side by side about three feet apart. Only then did she realize what they intended to fashion: a makeshift stretcher. With her pocket knife, she helped cut vines they would lash around the branches, creating a sling for Jaden. Her fingers wouldn’t stop shaking. What if they couldn’t carry him all that distance? And how would she persuade them to take the journey in stages so he didn’t throw an embolism and die? They had families too, and were understandably anxious to get home. What if there’d been casualties?
An hour later, the stretcher was finished. They sat in the shade and drank water that the llama carried in saddlebags. Delaney wiped her forehead on her sleeve, wishing that llamas were strong enough to carry people. That would have solved a lot of problems.
But when they lifted Jaden onto the stretcher, he seemed almost feverish. His dark hair lay plastered to his shoulders with sweat. Delaney took a towel out of her backpack, wetted it with water from her canteen and wiped his face.
They walked for three hours, taking turns carrying. Their progress was slow, and Delaney’s worry intensified. Twice they stopped to rest. The jungle, usually a place of joy and wonder, felt unbearably sticky. Late-afternoon sun streamed gold through the canopy and made dappled patterns on the ground. Gradually, the lushness thinned. The topography opened up into low swelling foothills carpeted in shades of green and brown. Above them, the sky was a hot electric blue, and between the knuckled spurs where the mountains parted, a snow-capped peak rose majestically, emptying itself into a watershed that reflected the sky like a mirror.
Distracted by her own thoughts, Delaney was startled when Huenu spoke. “The sun will be setting soon.”
“Yes.”
“We must make shelter for the night.”
“Yes.”
When he hesitated, Delaney braved herself for the worst.
“Ilakllariy,” he said. We worry.
“About the village.”
“Carrying the American, we are slow. The others say it is better for you to stay. Wait, and we will come back.”
She bit down on her first impulse, which was to argue. Of course they wanted to go. She was lucky to have gotten this much help from them at all. Her second impulse was to scream in frustration. But this was as far as they could ascend without compromising Jaden’s health. Although for a thousand reasons she felt overwhelmed by the thought of being alone with him, she knew how pointless it was not to accept her fate.
“Imasu knows of a place to shelter,” Huenu said. “A temple of the Inca. It is close to water, and of course we will leave you all our food.”
“Thank you.”
They fell silent as they trekked closer to the temple. Imasu pulled the llama and led the way. Delaney found it strange that the Incas built anything this far up. Most temples or ruins of temples lay deep within the lowland jungle. Despite an ever greater sense of curiosity and dread, she pushed on. Slobber hung off the llama’s muzzle, but it kept pushing too. Night would be here soon. Already, the familiar clouds of sunset lay in rumpled folds across the sky, red clouds with purple underbellies. Delaney followed the men up a steep embankment and felt the backs of her thighs quiver with exertion.
When they topped the hill, she spotted the temple in the near distance and blinked to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Sunk halfway into the side of a mountain, it was almost perfectly preserved. She had never known it existed until now.
In the tradition of Inca temples, it had been built in the shape of a pyramid, maybe one hundred meters high. The external walls were terraced on all sides like oversized stairs. Drawing closer, she could see a small portal with the symbol of an eye carved above it.
“You will be safe here,” Maiqui said. “You and the American.”
Huenu pressed a wad of leaves into her hand. Coca leaves, she realized, to help with Jaden’s altitude sickness. The Indians chewed them as a mild stimulant. “We hope to return the day after tomorrow,” he said.
He and the men carried Jaden beneath the carved eye and into the temple. Delaney stopped to ignite the Coleman she’d refilled before leaving the village, and dragged after them.
Once inside, she held up the lantern to get a better look. They were in an enormous chamber, a ceremonial chamber by the looks of it. A great stone altar sat in the center. When she ventured closer, she realized all the dark stains were most likely blood. Before the Spaniards came with their swords and their smallpox, the Incas had regularly sacrificed humans.
She set the lantern down on the altar steps and helped Huenu unpack the llama’s saddlebags. It looked at her with its soulful eyes, as though empathizing with her dilemma.
&nbs
p; “You will need a fire,” Huenu said.
“I’ll gather thatch.” She gazed down at Jaden, thinking how many tasks awaited her. How alone they would be.
The men turned to leave, and she followed them, steeling herself not to watch them walk away. Instead, she selected sticks and a few good branches, then went back inside. Strange how no animals nested there, not even snakes. The air smelled of mold and dank—enough to support some form of vegetation, surely, but there were no vines, no moss, no weeds struggling up through cracks in the stones. The place gave her an odd feeling of…not anxiety, exactly. Restlessness. As though a strange energy emanated from that gruesome altar that both repelled and fascinated her.
She knelt beside Jaden and took inventory. He needed more water and, if he could chew them, the coca leaves. Despite his sickness, he looked remarkably healthy. Most sufferers were white and hollow-eyed, bent double with stomach pain.
Other emotions, more intimate ones, crowded. She kept herself busy so she wouldn’t dwell on them. But her pulses kept fluttering. Why had Val booked a trip to come see her? And what sort of wild celebrity lifestyle did Jaden lead in LA? She didn’t even know if he was married.
His nearness unnerved her. He was her dream of the night before, only real this time. As she dipped the hem of her shirt in water and passed it over his face, she noted with guilt, shame, and longing the swell of his chest and shoulders, the flatness of his stomach, and what lay below, prominent even in jeans. It acted on her like a hot, dark drug.
She, Delaney Jones, who the guys at school used to call the Ice Queen… Little did they know it was because no one compared, that once you’d been with certain men, you could never go back.
Delaney’s head swam. It was her dizziness from before, only worse. She staggered to her feet. She could almost hear the blood surging through her veins. What was happening to her?
She went outside to clear her head, just in time to see the last rays of sun sink behind the western peaks. Then she heard a rustling sound behind her. Turning, she saw Jaden standing ten feet away, barefoot with his shirt off.
The smile he gave her was unmistakable. “God, how I’ve missed you.”
Chapter Four
Delaney was even more beautiful than he remembered.
She was dizzy and disoriented, of course. After all, they were in a sacred space. When the sun set and the Hungering Ones stirred, mortals felt the change too. Some grew dizzy; others fainted. Val used to say there was enough mystical energy in this one spot to reanimate all the witches of Salem. But then, Val used to say a lot of things.
Most of them were on the subject of his love for this mortal. Shameful and unnatural was what she called it. Now, that love may very well prove to be his salvation.
“Jaden.” Delaney’s dark eyes widened in apparent shock. She took a few steps toward him, and then toppled bonelessly. Jaden caught her in three strides.
The warm scent of her intoxicated him. She was in his arms again, where he could protect her, where she belonged. Her masses of dark hair spilled over him, as soft and inviting as a drowsing animal. He feasted his eyes on her patrician nose, the fuller bottom lip, the delicate gold hoops that rimmed her lobes. His heart pounded in excitement, pain, rapture at her nearness. Delaney, why did you leave me…?
Memories came rushing back—Delaney at sixteen, equal parts bold, awkward, smug, self-doubting.
He lived on those memories, lived inside them even, trapped there with the stage lights and paparazzi flashbulbs and the silent yearning for that one thing that wasn’t there, the thing that was real. That was her.
Her eyes flickered open again, and then bore deep into his. “You’re not well. You shouldn’t be walking. The altitude.”
“I’m fine. You’ll be fine too. In a few minutes, the dizziness will pass. It’s stronger here because we’re inside the temple.”
“Your mother.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Do you know what happened?”
His mother—even why he’d arrived here—was a complicated subject. Too much to go into now. How would he convey that no matter what might have happened on that bus, his mother wasn’t dead in the way Delaney understood death?
He decided on the truth. At least, the truth that he could tell her. The rest… He would need courage for that. And if she accepted her role in the sacred rite, she would need courage too, along with strength, stamina, and a willingness to throw herself into an abyss of such raw carnal pleasure, few mortal women could survive it. “Not all trials are by fire,” Val had once said. “Some require that which burns far hotter than flame.”
“I didn’t come here because of Val,” he said. “I came here because of you.”
The surprise of it registered on her face. “But the bus…”
“Went over the cliff. I know.”
“Jaden, you realize she didn’t make it, right? We couldn’t recover the bus. I’m so sorry. There was an earthquake—”
“Please, Delaney. I can explain it all later. No questions now.”
With visible effort, she went silent. He set her on her feet. She gazed up at him, half her face illuminated by the light of the lantern, the other half in darkness. The air itself seemed to vibrate with increasing awareness as his excitement mounted, and his life in LA receded. All that celebrity bullshit. All those tawdry substitutes. The only thing he’d ever truly wanted was here.
He trailed his fingers down her cheek and saw her eyes flicker. A man could drown in those eyes, that mouth, the sweetness of it. He could tell she remembered their last moments together, remembered and yearned as he had yearned. New strength surged through his body. Now that night had come, he came alive.
It was Delaney whose lips he touched, whose blood he craved. He’d tasted her moon blood but never drunk from her. If she accepted her mission, she would be the only thing that kept him and others like him from turning completely demon and ravaging the earth.
But now it was his cock that was stiffening with blood. He could feel it lengthening inside his jeans. Tentatively, she skimmed it with her fingers, butterfly soft. Her gaze met his again, unflinching. Under the cotton tee she wore beneath her camp shirt, her nipples stood out sharply. He wanted to circle them with his tongue, then pinch and roll them the way she liked. He’d made her come like that once while she rubbed against his thigh. The memory made him harder.
“Delaney,” he said. Her lips were moist and pink and near enough to taste. With ruthless impatience, he kissed her.
Desire coursed through him. He’d meant to talk to her first, to explain. But the urgency of his need overruled everything else. She was crying softly as he kissed her. He could feel her body trembling against his. Frustration and longing surged out of the place where he’d locked them for two long years. They flooded his senses with the mindless need to fuck, to possess, and in the possessing, destroy the walls that held him in check. The other truth of what he was, what he would become without her, lay in wait like a beast in chains. He could feel the savagery of it tearing at him beneath the skin. It told him to drink her, to find release, to seek salvation. But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t because he loved her.
He could hear her whimpering now. It thrilled him. Straitlaced Delaney Jones, captain of her lacrosse team and the chess club, pushing his jeans down and then kneeling in submission in front of him. With palpable need, she took his cock in her mouth, swirling her tongue around the head, and then letting him slide in and out of her mouth, going deeper with every stroke. Already his balls ached to empty themselves in her hot, willing mouth. He loved that she wanted it. But he wanted things too.
With effort, he pulled out of her mouth and lifted her up to undress her. He put his tongue where his cock had been, felt her soft lips part to receive him. Still kissing, he drew her T-shirt up, pleased she wore no bra, and then brushed his thumbs against her nipples, teasing them, making her squirm.
“You know what I’m going to do to you, right?”
She shook her head, clearly too aroused to speak. He peeled the T-shirt off, then her shorts. The warm scent of her spiraled up like an exotic perfume, making the swollen head of his cock bob in acknowledgment. Her beauty held him spellbound. The long tapering waist had voluptuous appeal. Her breasts jutted between skeins of silky hair. At some point, she’d kicked her shoes off and now stood barefoot. Delaney must have known what she was giving him. He knew what he was receiving.
He grabbed her bottom and lifted her onto him. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and her legs around his waist. With exquisite slowness, he penetrated her, inch by inch, watching her eyes grow dark and liquid, listening to her shuddering breaths. She was so wet and hot and tight, he thought he might pop right there. Not a night had passed that he didn’t crave her. Not a woman had graced his bed that could eclipse the nights he spent with her, nights like this one, nights that felt like dying. But then he’d learned long ago, sometimes you had to die in order to live.
With her ankles crossed behind his back, he could feel her heels tapping him as he intensified his thrusts. She made urgent, pleading sounds that only increased his frenzy. He knew she was close to climaxing. He knew what it would take to keep her cresting that wave over and over until she forgot everything but that, everything but him.
Still impaling her, he strode over to the sacrificial altar and leaned her against the steps. One hand he used to cup her bottom. With the other, he parted her labia and lightly rubbed her swollen clit, continuing to ease in and out, feeling her come almost instantly. She spasmed around him even before crying out with a curious mixture of ecstasy and loss.
The minute her first peak subsided, he sent her on a second, a third, a fourth. She gave up all pretense of keeping her legs locked around him and just yielded to the overpowering urgency of her own need, her own pleasure. He watched her, his heart aflame, humbled by her willingness to give herself so utterly to him. Still she kept coming, her knees pulled up, her throat bared. He forced himself deep and held it there, administering light pinches to her clit that threw her spinning into yet another racking orgasm. Her sex gripped him like a fist. All he wanted to do was lose what was left of his mind inside her, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
Carnal Sacrifice Page 3
