The tribe insisted on offering her festive food and drink in gratitude again, and it was over two more hours before they finally started on their way back to the pier.
Once in the truck, Jewel sank back into her turbulent thoughts. This time her companions left her alone.
She still couldn’t get over it, seeing Roque with Ake, the infinite empathy and gentleness that had permeated his every glance and move. It had hurt. Was still hurting.
Would he have been like this with their own child, had he or she lived? She’d never let herself think what it would have been like, had chosen to believe his jubilation over her pregnancy, his despair over her miscarriage had been part and parcel of him wanting to cement their marriage for his own ends. She’d always been ready to believe any ulterior motive to explain his behavior.
In the past, that had been somewhat justified. But now she couldn’t cling to the anesthetizing misconceptions. He didn’t have a petty or exploitative bone in his body. She doubted he’d ever had any, no matter what his situation had been then. Now, even in his current superior position, she believed he hadn’t meant his threat of depriving her of assignments with GAO, that he had just been emphasizing how much he wanted her to stay. How much he wanted her, period. And in her restored physical condition, she no longer found it hard to believe he could want her for herself.
And though she knew his desire could be nowhere as sublime as Qircamo had painted it, that it was only physical, that had been all she’d ever wished for. His honest desire. And now she saw who he was, or who he’d become, she felt no shame in wanting it. In wanting him. She felt only breathless anticipation.
If he was offering his honest desire now, no matter what happened later, she was taking all she could of it. And him.
He couldn’t find Jewel.
It had been five hours and thirteen minutes since he’d last seen her. Over the endless, agonizing hours, his fear that she might have changed her mind again and had left after all had metamorphosed into a far worse dread.
What if someone had abducted her under his very nose?
Too agitated to take inventory of who else might be missing, he’d looked everywhere, questioned everyone, until a local had saved him from an impending heart attack just minutes ago. He’d seen Jewel leaving with some men from her team.
She hadn’t been abducted! Agradeça O Deus.
But this could still mean she had left. She could have had some of her team transport her to Tabatinga’s airport.
Not if he had anything to say about it. Even if she had left Tabatinga, left Brazil, he’d go after her, drag her back. She wasn’t walking out on him again…
Stop. Think. He did, took half a dozen steadying inhalations. He’d been by her cabin four times. He’d check again. This time he’d enter it, make sure she was still here.
As he tore his way there, people jumped out of his path as if from that of a speeding car. In under two minutes he reached the cabin, reached for the doorknob—and it receded out of reach.
His heart surged in relief. Jewel. She’s back. She’s here.
Next moment it did so again, in dismay. Not Jewel, not Jewel. The frustrated mantra churned in his head.
It was Madeline. And she let out a startled shriek. “Dr. Da Costa—Roque—you just knocked ten years off my life expectancy!”
“What are you doing here? Where’s Jewel?” he growled.
“Er… I’m staying here. I share the cabin with Jewel, and I haven’t seen her in a while. She’ll probably come back any moment now for her afternoon shower. The indoor one, that is.”
“Her things are still here? She hasn’t left?”
“Uh, I haven’t looked, but—”
He pushed past the woman, no longer seeing or hearing her.
Jewel. That was all that boomed in his head and chest. He had to see for himself if she was still here. This woman could be stalling him until Jewel got far enough away.
The dresser had combs and hair products on it. He knew Jewel didn’t use any. She just washed her hair, ran her fingers through it and left it to dry into that glorious cascade.
There were two small suitcases. He couldn’t tell if either was the one he’d seen Jewel packing. Both could be Madeline’s. Only finding Jewel’s clothes would be proof. The closet.
He snatched it open, found six outfits hanging there, utilitarian, similar-colored, their loose-fitting size not indicative of whom they belonged to. How could he tell if any were hers? If Madeline was covering for her, she wasn’t about to tell him which was which. There was only one way to find out.
He took each out, sniffed it. The first one wasn’t Jewel’s. Or the second. Or the third. The fourth brought her scent, hitting him in the solar plexus, in the loins. Jewel. She was still here. Or had she left one outfit behind to throw him off?
Deus, what was happening to him? He was behaving like a lunatic. A dangerously paranoid lunatic to boot.
“So this is the kind of supervision I have to expect on this expedition, huh?” Jewel’s voice poured all over him, cool, smirking, and, Deus, so welcome.
He swung around to her, images cascading in his mind. Shooing Madeline out of the room, locking the door behind her and dragging Jewel into his arms, crushing her there to make sure she was really here, then dragging her to bed and drowning in her. The pressure of the urges made him light-headed.
Jewel’s velvet drawl worsened his condition. “You’re going to be inspecting my clothes for signs of lack of deodorant use?”
“Where have you been?” Sim, very good indeed. Now he sounded like an insecure, jealous fool. One with a fetish for sniffing his woman’s clothes. Get a hold of yourself, idiota.
“Why? I’m supposed to report my movements to you?”
“Sim, you damn well are. Do you realize just how dangerous this place is for a woman like you?”
Her exquisite, dense eyebrows shot up. “A woman like me? I’m a sort now? Or do you mean just any woman?”
“No! I mean you! A woman any male would go to any lengths to sink his teeth into!”
Her lips twitched. “I don’t see any male baring his fangs at me. Of course, if you’re talking about your own fantasies…”
He advanced on her, vibrating to the frequency of every urgent emotion there was. “Never fear, I’m going to demonstrate every one of those in detail. But you’re not sidetracking me.You are not to make one move without company and protection!”
The eyebrow that arched at him now was in itself a portrait of mischief. “I had both, but thank you so much for caring.”
“I don’t care who you had with you. You don’t move around without my company and protection. Is that understood?”
“I had four men along, two of them armed to the teeth. You consider yourself better than that?”
“Damn right, I am. Get this straight, Jewel—”
“Uh, guys.” Madeline raised her voice from the door. “I’ll go get a bite to eat. Try not to burn the place down, OK?” With that she turned and escaped the scene.
Jewel gazed after her for a second then stuck her fists at her waist. “What’s that? Payback for embarrassing you in front of your team?You’ve got only yourself to blame for that.”
“Did I look embarrassed to you? Trust me when I say I’m embarrassment-proof. This is for making me think…”
He stopped. He had to stop. He was taking this beyond foolishness. She was here. She was safe.And she was staying. That was all that mattered. He shouldn’t take his agitation out on her.
She cocked her lovely head at him. “What did you think? That I’d left? That I skulked behind your back instead of confronting you? As you said, I wouldn’t do that to my team. And since when have I left without telling you what I intended?”
It was as if something detonated inside his head.
He looked down on her for a whole minute, grappling with the blast of fury and revisited humiliation and pain.
He finally snarled, “If you mean you walking out o
n me, let me refresh your memory. You didn’t tell me your intention of leaving me, I cornered you into it. I offered to take you back to the States to recuperate among familiar scenes and people after—after your miscarriage, and you jumped at the offer, no doubt thinking it the best way to go and never come back without a confrontation. I’m sure if I hadn’t given you that opening you would have skulked behind my back. But fool that I was, I messed up your plans, didn’t I? I insisted on taking you back myself, left you no choice but to tell me exactly why you’d married me so I’d back down. You even asked me my price for all the times I’d performed in bed with you. Say, I never asked—how much did you intend to pay me per session? At what price did you rate me?”
His question rang in the suddenly crushing silence. Her face went totally still, even her eyes stopped transmitting any expression. Dammit, what was she thinking?
Again she did the unexpected. She looked him straight in the eyes and told him exactly what she was thinking.
“Would it satisfy you if I told you I thought a fair settlement was everything I had and would ever have?”
The import of her words, the sincerity permeating them—it was too much for him to handle, too great to contain. He had to—had to…
He growled incoherently and snatched at her. She completed the yank that brought her slamming into his body with a surge of her own, met his crushing kiss halfway.
He sank into her, lips and tongue and teeth, devouring her gasps in a savage mouth that would have forced hers open had it not already done so, hungrily. His teeth sank into her lips, his tongue plunging deep inside her, driving in furious rhythms, draining her, growling for more. She gave him more, opened for him, let him ravage her, take his fill, then plunge even deeper. He pushed her onto the bed and this time, when she staggered back, she dragged him down with her on purpose, her hands convulsing on his bunched muscles, revealing their need for his feel, his closeness, his impact.
He gave them all to her, coming down on top of her, taking enough of his weight off so he wouldn’t hurt her, giving her enough to assuage her clamoring, and his.
The moment he filled her arms, her head flung back, sending her hair fanning out in a shimmering fan, and something unintelligible tore out of her lungs. It sounded like “so good.”
It was, magnificent beyond description. Their eyes and breaths tangling, their hands roaming each other in disbelieving wonder, her feel cushioning him, her voluptuousness reveling in his toughness, her legs winding tight around his hips, then higher on his back, in ultimate invitation. He tossed his head back and growled something as fierce.
Then it shot to a higher level. He didn’t know when the initial ferocity metamorphosed into something far more overpowering, something as profound and penetrating as it was tender and tempestuous. He enveloped himself in her arms, her kiss, her eagerness, one thing reverberating in his mind.
This was new.
He remembered how her younger body and passion had felt colliding with his, merging, feeding, sending his conflagration higher. And this was nothing like it. She’d never driven him beyond that last barrier of control like now, had never sent his mind unraveling, his senses stampeding. Never, not even with her, had he bypassed the build-up of arousal to the fever pitch of mindlessness in heartbeats like this.
In mortification, he realized that one thing was the same. He was. Repeating his mistakes.
He’d always rushed her, pursued her, besieged her, afraid to let her blood cool, her logic return, making him lose any chance with her. And where had that method gotten him?
A day ago she’d been hating him, shocked to find them still legally tied. Then the moment she relented, responded, he was dragging her into ultimate intimacies that were bound to muddy everything. Again he was giving her no chance to make a reasoned decision she could defend to herself once satisfaction faded and her body stopped crying out for his. Once again he was placing himself in a position where he only represented sex to her.
No wonder she’d treated him like she would have a gigolo. In the past, when he’d felt he hadn’t been reaching her on an emotional level, he had used sex to capture her, to try to keep her.
But he wasn’t doing it again! He had to have her wanting all of him, not only what he could make her feel. This time she wouldn’t have him that easily. Easy come, easy to let go.
But she was writhing beneath him, her passion igniting his higher, her lips moaning her hunger and pleasure under his, her hands worshipping him all over, kneading, needing. Now.
His lips and hands worshipped her back, the power of a bursting dam, eight years’ worth of pent-up craving and bitterness behind every shaking breath and touch and grasp.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t deny her…
No—he had to! If he was to ever mean more than sex to her…
But her need and surrender were tearing at his self-control. He shuddered, couldn’t stop giving in to her, giving her, stroking and kneading and pleasuring her.
Just one more taste—please, everything in him begged.
Helpless, lost, conceding her power and his defeat, he plunged into their fusion again, his lips gliding his restless hunger along her velvet sweetness, absorbing all he could of her heat and moans, hoarding her feel and eagerness.
Feeling her craving him, needing him was all he’d ever wanted from this life. It tampered with his will and sanity all over again. But it was a matter of survival this time that he made sure her desire transcended the physical. He had to take drastic measures—now.
He came up from their last and deepest merging panting, broke out of her feverish embrace.
He almost fell back into her trembling arms when her sob of “Roque, please…” speared through him.
He crushed down on the overriding temptation instead, lifted himself away on shaking arms. Her legs unlocked with his move, fell to his sides, rubbing, urging. He gritted his teeth.
“Sim, Jóia. I will please you—please you until you fall apart with pleasure, then I’ll please you again until you’re mad, until you’re finished…” He dimly wondered if his potency would survive the blow. Then he delivered it. “But not now.”
CHAPTER NINE
“TELL ME we’re really going to do it now!”
Jewel bit back a snappy answer, pointed at the boat that was moving away from the pier, what they now called “Roque’s Boat.” “Where our fearless leader goes, we follow, Maddy.”
To underline the accuracy of her words, their own riverboat gave a long bass honk and in minutes they were following the two smaller boats, finally starting the trek to one of the least explored tributaries of the Amazon River and one of the last wild places on earth.
They should have left three days ago. But Roque had decreed that they would wait that much longer to close Qircamo’s wounds. It had been five days since Roque had come back into her life.
And they’d been five days of the weirdest kind of hell.
Roque was driving her insane. He’d already driven her past inhibitions, confusion and suspicions. Not to mention bitterness, insecurities and long-held prejudices. And it had taken him a whopping twenty-four hours to do it. Then, just as he’d had her total surrender, he’d walked away.
The whisper that had gashed her when he’d extricated himself from her arms, ignoring her pleas for him to take her now, now, echoed in her mind again.
“Secure in your one-hundred-percent results again? Got me to admit how much I want you, so you’d be the one to walk away this time?” she’d demanded.
He’d walked back to her then, knelt on the deck beside her, his eyes predatory, sending the unabated hunger inside her howling. “That’s the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard. I’m walking away from you probably at the cost of my potency.” He’d pressed her hand to his rock-hardness for proof. “But I’m done doing things backwards. Satisfaction before anticipation, intimacy before courtship.” Then he’d exploded out of the cabin.
And it made no sense! He should
be seeking retribution. Her past insults, now it seemed they’d been undeserved, had been unforgivable. Men held undying grudges for far less.
Yet he behaved as if he wasn’t holding any. So what did it mean when a man held back from slaking his lust? When he talked of anticipation and courtship? Could that mean he wanted to make their stunted marriage into something more? Why? Did she?
No! She didn’t. She—she… It didn’t matter what she wanted!
But she wanted to be with him, for as long as his new desire lasted, and had told him that, in words and actions. And he wouldn’t let her!
Inside, she floundered. Outside, she took him on in duels of wit she’d come to crave. It was glorious talking to him, doing things with him—just being with him. They’d never talked or shared before. That had been her mistake. She’d been such a mess back then.
But she was healed now. In body and mind and mood. And Roque made her head spin and heart soar with what he was. Effortless leader, gifted doctor, loyalty-inspiring friend, gallant gentleman, thrilling companion. And to make it worse, he kept switching from blasé seducer to single-minded devourer.
Just thinking of him made her heart storm and her body burn. She fidgeted as Tabatinga receded and nature took over. The boats sailed nearer one bank, offering them heart-soaring views of incredible forests, wading birds and fresh-water pink dolphins. The for-once-struck-silent Madeline was snapping away with her digital camera.
At last Madeline’s enthusiasm bubbled over. “Yippee! My first Amazonian experience! At last! Man, I can’t wait to go on those aluminum boat side-stream trips. Monkeys, parrots, butterflies, orchids… ah! And the night trips Roque promised! Owls, caimans, and those weird birds—those potoos he mentioned…”
“Don’t forget the jaguars, alligators, boa constrictors and anacondas!” Jewel added in mock malice, Madeline’s oblivious cheerfulness grating a bit in her raw condition.
Momentary alarm flitted in Madeline’s eyes before she wrinkled her nose. “Oh, hush. I’m in raptures of expectation now—of the hikes to see the giant forests and the riverside communities, of bartering for some honest-to-goodness indigenous handcrafts and getting a bona fide Amazonian tribal tattoo!”
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