CHAPTER THREE
Chrissy's senses seemed to have sharpened and she was strongly aware of the pungent aroma of unfamiliar spices from somewhere behind her. Outside from within the jungle canopy a bell-bird made a regular sound like the smash of a hammer against a broken anvil. It was piercing and insistent, full of the sense of time ticking by. But the sound that was loudest was the motor-kick of her own heartbeats. She lifted a hand to her throat and, as if recognising that she was cornered, she pressed back until the kitchen work-bench dug into her thighs.
Garcia Montada strode into the room like a conquering war-lord.
At once Chrissy felt a primitive fear, the fine hairs at the nape of her neck rising helplessly as her eyes darted from side to side searching in vain for a way of escape. His electrifying power seemed to reach out, paralysing her will.
'I'm not doing anything wrong!' she blurted. His blue eyes raked her pale form.
Aware that beneath the voile shift she was completely naked, she crossed her arms in front of her, unwittingly pulling the diaphanous material more tightly across her breasts. Her nipples seemed to harden at the contact. She let her hands slide to her sides. Garcia Montada observed these small actions with the piercing blue of a compassionless glance.
None of her movements seemed to escape him, not even the sharp rise and fall of her breath as she lifted her face to him.
He gazed down with his head on one side as if weighing the prudence of several courses open to him. Then before she could flee he reached out to grasp the wrist holding the knife. Without removing it from her grip, he forced her hand behind her back and, as her body arched, pulled her slowly and deliberately into his hard, hot body.
Chrissy had no time to do more than open her lips in the beginnings of a protest when his mouth ravaged down over her own. Her breath was stopped, her senses beginning to dizzy.
Despite her initial aversion at being taken so decidedly into the arms of a man who was still almost a stranger, she felt the betrayal of limbs turning to silk beneath his touch. Her mouth moistened instinctively as his tongue began its exploration, at first with a kind of savage hunger then with a slower, deeper, more sensual touch, a more and more pronounced pleasure communicating itself to her so that she could feel her own breathing deepen and become as ragged as his own. The air all around was hot and moist and filled with the thunder of their pulsing blood. Her hand, still holding the knife, came up languidly of its own accord, with his fingers still braceleted around her wrist, then somehow her own fingers were running helplessly through the deep gloss of his hair and the knife clattered on to the floorboards somewhere between their feet.
His embrace became savage. It was like a contest, a battle, desire sweeping them both in a suddenly released torrent towards the precipice of lost control...
It was Chrissy who struggled to her senses first. The sound of the knife falling, the pirating of her mouth by his, the greed of his touch over her moist nakedness, bit by bit jerked her back to reality, sending her hands sliding down his chest to push feebly at first then with greater force against the immovable wedge pinning her against the wall.
His voice was a soft snarl when he saw what she was trying to do. 'Not entirely unexpected --'
'What?' she managed to croak.
'Entice and repulse... you like the teasing game? You like to spice up your inevitable surrender with a little charade of hard-to-get?' He laughed huskily against the side of her blonde head. 'All I have to do is lay bets with myself on how soon you'll say yes...' He lifted his head and looked down at her through narrowed eyes. 'Very soon, I should say...very soon indeed.'
He was still breathing raggedly, his lips hovering just above her own, and he made a feinting movement as if about to possess hers again, but then drew back just as she herself moved away. He brought his lips close to hers again just as she relaxed and then they both withdrew at the same moment. Cat and mouse. Tiring of the game, he brought one hand up to grip the back of her head and, cupping it in a firm grasp, pulled her, resisting, tight-lipped, towards him, until only a few centimetres separated them. 'Soon;.. yes?' he breathed. 'Siesta with me.. .in your room? Now? Why not now? Say yes!'
She lowered her lids. She could feel his hard maleness, unashamed token of arousal, burning against her abdomen. When he ran his hands down her spine he massaged as if applying warm oils to it. The scent of him seemed to carry his essence deep into her soul. To herself she groaned with astonishment, I desire this man, this man of all men. But why, why?
To him, too astonished by her own reaction to be angry, she said, 'Don't. I'm not that sort of girl. Let me go.'
His face registered no expression. 'Of course you're not. You're a nice girl. A respectable girl. You don't like to make love.'
Chrissy wasn't breathing any more. 'Let me go,' she said tonelessly, ignoring the irony in his voice. Her breasts were taunted by the muscular movements of his broad chest and she longed to feel his touch on them, to suffer the release he could bring from the wild pain of longing, so shocking in the swiftness of its arousal. But she held herself still in order not to betray the unreason of her desire. 'Let me go,' she repeated like an automaton.
'Of course...' But he didn't move.
'Let me go, please,' she said again in the same flat tone.
'All in good time.'
'Please...'
'We can go to your room.'
'No!'
Still he held her. She could feel his manhood straining to subsume her. If she struggled, she thought, it would push him over the edge of control—sending herself, too, over the edge... It would take the smallest movement. The tiniest, single, most innocent tremor would send them over on to some other, wilder shore where restraint meant nothing.
'I want you to let me go. I'm asking you please to release me,' she repeated, her voice blank with the effort to control the tone of yearning struggling to be expressed.
She could scarcely say more. Her throat felt blocked with desire, the inner voice screaming, Take me, I want you. But it was a voice of impersonal lust. She knew that. It was knowledge she could hang on to, something that would get her safely through the next few months if she could only hold it like a talisman before her. No man had ever made her feel like this. She was bewildered by it.
He was staring into her eyes and something seemed to be exchanged as if they were passing each other on a journey down the corridors of each other's souls. In another moment she would be drawn beyond the point of turning back. She closed her eyes. She tried to set herself against him. He saw the change, knew he had lost her for the moment. Shutters came down over his own eyes. His lips tightened.
She felt his touch withdraw. His body drew away, the heat subsided, her breath came back. She had to clutch the edge of the table for support.
He would have been white-faced but for his deep tan. From across the kitchen he looked at her long and hard without speaking. She still felt enwrapped in his embrace. Still the imprint of his hand marked her flesh. It was against all reason. They didn't even like each other. Something seemed to have caught them in its spell. With a shuddering breath she pressed the back of one hand to her forehead and closed her eyes again.
'Are you all right?' He didn't move towards her, but his eyes didn't leave her face.
She lifted her glance and felt the power of those cobalt eyes on hers. She turned, abruptly bending to retrieve the knife. Not looking at him, she said, 'It's so hot. I'm not used to such heat.'
'It's the humidity. You should rest as much as possible to begin with.'
'I haven't time to rest --' she broke in nervily. 'Gavin left so much work to be concluded.'
She stole a glance at him.
'Drink plenty of water,' he told her, his eyes never leaving her face. 'Haven't they told you that? You'll feel better.'
He sounded as if—no, she brushed her hand across her face, again feeling it come away damp. He didn't care. It was just the husky seductiveness of his voice that gave the illusi
on of concern...
'I was going to make a palm fan,' she told him.
'That's what the knife was for? I thought it was meant for me.'
She gave a shaky laugh.
'I'll get us both water.' He reached to a shelf, took down two pint glasses and filled them at the water-cooler in the corner, approaching just near enough to hand one of them to her, then moving back again to the opposite side of the kitchen.
She sipped at it, feeling trapped, like an animal being scrutinised beneath glass. They were talking to each other, using words of the most ordinary kind, as if nothing had happened. What did he expect her to do next? Carry on like this as if her nerves weren't screaming for some sort of catharsis?
He was observing her as if he felt he was in for a surprise. She was weak with the tide of desire as it ebbed, taking with it all her reason. She could sink to her knees on the wooden floor. She could fall at his feet.
Unable to bear the tension any longer, she measured the distance between herself and the door. It meant she would have to pass close to him in order to escape. 'Thank you for the water,' she said and, clutching the glass between two clammy hands, made a dash for it. He let her go. She hurried along the corridor with her breath held until she reached her own room and closed the door with a sharp snap. Gone was any idea of going out on to the veranda.
She went over to the double doors that gave on to it and closed them, adjusted the shutters in the bottom panels until they allowed in air but no light, and, draining her glass, she slid under the mosquito netting on to the bed. The memory of his kiss seared through her mind. The whole incident had taken maybe no more than five minutes. But it burned in her like everlasting hell-fire. She couldn't forget the way his mouth had felt, ravaging her own, or the way his body had seemed to call to hers, and the look in his eyes, and the way he had slowly released her and then tried to talk to her as if nothing had happened when all the time they both knew as if it had been shouted aloud that something terrible had taken hold of them both.
And surely, surely, she thought, there could be no going back? There could be no backward trail from this point?
Only when she heard movement from the other side of the house did she dare rise, dress, and emerge, with caution, like someone peering out from a shelter after the passing of a hurricane. Knowing there was no avoiding what lay ahead, she forced herself to walk down the corridor towards the sitting-room. The aroma of coffee already filled the air. When she went in Lars and Hans were sitting outside in the shade of the veranda and Senhora Suarez was pouring coffee. She poured a third cup when she saw Chrissy.
'Did you manage to get forty winks?' asked Hans.
Chrissy shook her head and tried to look nonchalant. 'It was too hot.'
'You'll be used to it by the time you have to leave,' he joked.
'I thought I'd try to fix up a fan of some sort,' she said. All the time she spoke she was wondering if Garcia Montada was going to saunter on to the veranda. If he did, what would she do then?
But Hans was answering her. 'There's an electric fan somewhere around.'
'I thought we tried to conserve electricity as much as possible?' There was only a small generator for refrigeration.
'Can't have you suffering!'
'I saw a fan in a film once,' she admitted, trying to shut thoughts of Montada from her mind. 'It was a simple palm-leaf affair, tied to a string which was in turn attached to the foot of a rocking-chair. Whenever anybody sat in the chair the slightest rocking motion moved the fan.'
Hans laughed. 'Sounds a good idea.'
Chrissy gave a shaky smile. 'As soon as I've had a session with Gavin's notebooks I'm going to make one.'
Soon she was back in the lab. It looked as if she would have the place to herself most of the time. Eloise and Pierre had still not returned, and she had forgotten to ask where they were. It seemed almost too hot to make conversation. Maybe tonight after dinner it would be different. Last night she had been simply too tired to stay up. Garcia Montada seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
The pattern of the next few days followed the first. Work in the relative cool of the morning, a light lunch followed by a siesta until the temperature dropped, then more hours trying to give some order to the wealth of information Gavin had gathered over the last few months, followed by dinner with the rest of the group.
Eloise and Pierre, she learned, spent their days in the canopy—taking photographs and studying a particular species of wasp respectively. Lars too spent his days on a platform in the canopy forty or fifty metres above the ground, his study fruit bats. Hans, as an entomologist, seemed to have no set pattern to his whereabouts. Sometimes he was around, other times not.
Of Garcia Montada there was never any sign, and so far Chrissy had been unable to pluck up the courage to bring his name to her lips. She waited like a cat at a mouse-hole for any mention of him, but talk was exclusively shop-talk.
She had managed to engineer a palm fan and made one for Hans too. When Lars looked left out she made a third, and after dinner the three of them would sit out in the dark with just an oil lamp shedding its glow, and listen to the sounds of the forest. Sometimes there would only be the creak of three bamboo rockers and the idle swish, swish of the fans. Always, though, there was the backdrop of the jungle—night screams, howls, cries, the dry cough of some nocturnal creature, clicks and whirrs of a thousand different species.
'What a treasure trove out there,' murmured Hans one night. 'Do you realise, Chrissy, there are more than forty thousand different species of insect in a single hectare of rain forest?'
Lars spoke. 'And over one thousand seven hundred different kinds of bird?'
Chrissy pondered for a moment. 'In one respect I'm lucky,' she said, 'depending on how you see it. There are only about a hundred different kinds of tree!'
'Not much to keep you busy!' Lars laughed.
Chrissy looked thoughtful. 'I know I'm only supposed to be here to tidy up Gavin's work—but I'm sure I can soon get most of it done.' She shot a glance at Hans to see if he got her drift.
'You want to add to it?'
She sighed. 'I'm sure he hasn't been able to record every single species in his garden --' 'Gavin's Garden' was how she jokingly referred to the hectare of forest Gavin had squared off for study. Each tree was mapped on graph paper. It was obvious there would be omissions.
'You want to go up into the canopy and have a look round for yourself?'
She nodded. 'I don't see why not. I can't stay in the lab all the time. Otherwise I might as well never have left England!'
Hans looked across at Lars. 'She can come with us in a day or two. When she sees how we have to climb up into the canopy, maybe she'll think twice!'
Chrissy shook her head. 'I know it's not easy—and it's a long way to fall. But I really want to do it. I think I have to. It's all very well staying on the ground, but these forest trees all look the same from down here— the same smooth bark, the same identical spear-shaped leaves. It's only the flowers that reveal the existence of different species. And the flowers only grow fifty metres up!'
It-was true and both men knew it. If they hadn't agreed to show her how to climb up she would have had to find out for herself.
'I knew a botanist,' said Hans, 'who trained a monkey to go up and throw down the flowers for him.'
'I don't think I've time for that,' said Chrissy with a grin.
'I only hope you've a head for heights.'
Eloise called to Chrissy as she left the house next morning. 'I'm at home today. Do you want to come in and see our humble abode?'
Chrissy ducked her head under the doorway of the bamboo hut and stepped inside. It was lighter than she'd expected, but deliciously cool even with the sun beating down on it. The sticks of bamboo were tied together with a special knot to keep each one in place, forming a wall, and it had a palm thatch resting on two crossbeams of heavier wood, which in turn rested in notches in a frame of four uprights and a centre p
ole.
There was a wide sleeping-platform at one end, and a few clothes hung from the central support. Apart from that there was little else. Toilet things, toothbrushes and a few odds and ends of make-up, were lined up neatly on a shelf of bamboo tied with twine to the upright that made the wall. It was all very neat, very functional. Chrissy admired the golden light that filtered in. She thought how romantic it was for the couple to start their married life in such surroundings.
'Like living on paradise isle!' she said.
'Would that it were! I'd love a dip in an ice-blue sea right now. That grey-brown soup that passes for a river out there is a real torment.'
For some reason her words made Chrissy think of Garcia Montada. Ice-blue. Torment.
She sat down on the sleeping-platform while Eloise played hostess and offered her a drink from a small cool-box. When they had talked about this and that for a few minutes, Chrissy casually mentioned the subject of her constant thoughts, admitting only that she had met him a few days ago.
'He's not around much. I've only met him a couple of times myself,' Eloise told her. 'He checks things out now and then. Comes in to see we're not running the servants ragged, I expect—as if we would,' she added.
'What's it got to do with him?' quizzed Chrissy.
'He pays their wages, I guess.'
'He does?'
Eloise shrugged. 'Why are you so surprised?' She lifted her head and gave Chrissy an elfin grin. 'Are you as intrigued by El Senhor as I am? He's quite --' she paused '—how to say it? Formidable?' She burst into peals of laughter. 'Oui, oui—tres formidable, un bel homme, oui?'
Chrissy felt her face flood with colour. 'He's married, isn't he?' she said, remembering the ring he wore. 'He's also the most horrible, arrogant monster I've ever had the misfortune to come across.'
'Yes, yes, but apart from all that there is no arguing— un tres bel homme. Were I not mad about my Pierre --' Eloise gave a very Gallic shake of the hand to demonstrate exactly what she thought of Garcia Montada. 'A man of mystery, too, eh?' She growled deep in her throat and Chrissy couldn't help but laugh.
Jungle Lover Page 4
