by Cindy Dees
“Here. You give it a try,” he said, shoving the dead fish and his knife into her hands.
The fish was cold and slimy. Ick.
She looked up at him pleadingly. “When we get back home, I’ll take you to that restaurant in Annapolis, my treat, if you’ll fix the fish.”
“Squeamish, eh?”
Jerk. He was laughing at her. “Yes. Yes, I am squeamish. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.”
He lifted the fish out of her hands and knelt by a rock, which he used as a work surface. He efficiently whacked off the creature’s head with his knife. She looked away hastily and busied herself adding more wood to the fire.
“That’s enough wood,” Tex commented over his shoulder at her. “We don’t want a bonfire. It would send up too big a smoke plume.”
Alarmed, she replied, “I thought we were safe. Nobody’s chasing us anymore, right?”
“True, nobody’s chasing us. But that doesn’t mean we’re safe.”
She turned around to face him. A neat, white fillet was falling away from the carcass of the fish under the ministrations of his sharp knife.
Now what threat did they face? Her heart raced and her stomach felt truly queasy as she asked, “Why are we still in danger?”
Tex glanced up from the second fillet. “Nobody in this country likes Americans. The poachers and farmers out here would have no compunction about slitting our throats just because of our nationality. More importantly, if the rebels figure out we’re tailing them, you better believe they’ll kill us if they can. They went to a lot of trouble to get the RITA rifle, and they’re not going to hand it over without a fight.”
She gulped.
He stood up and moved to her side. “Here.” He handed her the two fillets that, thankfully, looked like fish was supposed to, now.
“Do you think you can manage to thread those on a stick and roast them over the fire?”
She frowned up at him. “What are you going to be doing?”
“I’m catching a couple more fish. We could both use a no-kidding, stomach-filling meal, and we can smoke any leftover fish and eat it later.”
She managed to drop the fish twice, coating it with ash, then to burn her fingers wiping the ash off, and to scorch her face from the heat of the fire before the fish was finally cooked through, but she did it.
Tex finished cleaning the four additional fish he caught and joined her by the fire. Proudly, she handed him his fillet on a stick. He took a bite while she watched anxiously.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well what?”
“How does it taste?” she demanded.
He grinned. “Fine. You did a great job of cooking it. Or are you waiting to see if I keel over dead before you taste yours?”
She stuck her tongue out at him and bit into her fish. It had a strong, oily taste, but she was so relieved to be eating real food again that she didn’t care. They ate another entire fish. Then Tex partially cooked the remaining fish before wrapping it in green leaves and burying it in the coals of the fire.
“That’ll be ready in about an hour,” he remarked. “We can rest until it’s done.”
She could think of something else she’d like to spend an hour doing. But even the idea of saying it out loud made her blush.
Tex hopped up and searched the edge of the woods for a moment. He stooped, picked a handful of leaves and came back to her side.
He flopped down on the ground beside her, half reclining against the buttress root of a giant tree. “Here, have a couple mint leaves.”
She smelled them cautiously, enjoying the bitingly fresh odor.
She watched Tex pop several his into his mouth and start chewing. Around the leaves, he explained, “It’s not exactly a toothbrush and toothpaste, but it gets the fish taste out of your mouth.”
She mimicked him, gingerly nibbling the edge of a leaf. It had a rather green taste to it, but the cool, minty flavor the leaves left behind was worth it.
She watched Tex prop his hands behind his neck and close his eyes. When he relaxed like that, he looked just like a tiger, sleek and well-fed. She itched to reach out and touch him, to explore more slowly this time the expanse of muscles that was his chest and shoulders. She talked to distract herself. “So what’s the plan now?”
He answered without opening his eyes. “We track the rebels until we catch up with them. Then we watch for an opportunity to move in and steal the rifle back. Once we’ve got the RITA, we hightail it out of there and get back home.”
She frowned. “We’re going to have to run away from the rebels again?”
“’Fraid so.”
Her stomach fell to her feet. Just when she’d finally relaxed, he had to go and drop that bomb on her.
He opened one eye and peered at her. “Why the long face?”
She rolled her eyes. “Do you have to ask?”
“No.” He sighed. He held an arm out to her. “Come here.”
She cuddled against his powerful side, laying her head on his solid shoulder.
“Tell you what. I’ll make it up to you as best as I can. I’ll try to do this mission as fast as I can, and I’ll do what I can to make the trek as comfortable as possible for you.”
“I don’t care how long it takes, Tex. Just as long as you’re safe. If you’ll be at less risk to do it slowly, then by all means, take your time.”
She couldn’t believe she’d just said that. But once the words were out of her mouth, she realized they were absolutely true. She’d rather spend an extra couple weeks out in the jungle than see any harm come to him.
His hand moved across her back soothingly. He dropped a kiss into her hair. “It’ll be okay,” he murmured.
Abrupt tingles shot across her skin. She was far from okay. She needed more of that, and she needed it right now. She should hold out against her desire. Should take advantage of his full stomach and relaxed mood to argue one more time with him. But it wasn’t as if he would change his mind in this lifetime. Reluctantly, she admired his conviction and let it be.
She ran her palms over the bulging muscles of his chest, her fingers acutely sensitive to the fine ripple of response that raced across his skin.
They really ought to get some rest… His hands plucked at her collar, peeling the fatigue shirt off her shoulders, baring her breasts to the cool air and pinning her arms at her sides…. the thought of rest spun away.
His fingers speared into her hair, pulling her face to his, holding her gently in place while he plundered her mouth. Mint still lingered on his breath and she savored the taste of him. Then his mouth slid away from hers, down her throat, toward the cleft between her breasts.
Anticipation shot through her. The remembered feel of his mouth on her flesh, of the magic he wove with his tongue, tightened her nipples in response before he even got there.
His mouth closed upon a rosy peak and she was lost.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
How Tex managed to move around briskly, putting out the fire and packing up the smoked fish after what they’d just spent the past hour doing, she had no idea. When he helped her to her feet, her legs felt virtually boneless. Heavy languor weighed down her limbs, and it was an effort to follow him back into the jungle.
Her brain felt drugged. All she could think about was the way his mouth and hands had moved on her skin, the way he had filled her, hot and hard and pulsing. Even now, the thought of it made her go weak at the knees.
Fortunately the pace he set wasn’t too awful. Wearing her pants from the first guard and the newly washed and semi-dried shirt from the second soldier, she found the going much easier. She was free to climb and scramble over and around obstacles without worrying about catching or tearing her clothes.
They picked up the trail of the rebel force where they’d left off. Instead of just running through the brush this afternoon, though, Tex stopped now and then. He pointed out a footprint in the mud, or the way the twigs were broken to indicate which direction the rebels
were moving.
He even stopped once to pick a gorgeous white orchid for her. Its deep throat was scarlet edged with yellow, its feathery petals a pure, brilliant white. After inhaling its sweet, exotic scent, she tucked it behind her ear.
They hiked until nightfall. Tex picked out a camping spot, then hacked the lower limbs off several trees and dragged the pile of boughs over to where she sat. In the settling darkness she made out his hands, weaving the boughs into some intricate pattern. He laid the resulting frame on the ground and then tore off a dozen giant leaves to lay over it.
When she stretched out on the makeshift mattress, its springy support held her a good six inches off the ground. It wasn’t quite her own bed, but it wasn’t bad. It was a heck of a lot more comfortable than the damp, hard ground they’d been sleeping on.
The boughs gave as Tex’s weight eased down beside her. She snuggled against him, enjoying their newfound intimacy. For the first time she didn’t lie in the dark listening fearfully for the sounds of men hunting them. She noticed the jungle’s nighttime symphony and was amazed by its variety and richness.
A deep popping noise sounded nearby.
“What’s that?” she asked, startled.
“A frog,” Tex murmured easily. “About the size of a bullfrog. Lives in the trees and eats bugs. I don’t know its name.”
She subsided, relieved. A few moments later a sibilant hiss startled her. “What’s that?”
“A coatamundi. Looks sort of like a raccoon. Good eating if you can catch them, but they’re fast little suckers.”
She subsided yet again. And then a terrible screech rent the night air. She lurched against Tex. “My God, what’s that?”
“A big bad jaguar that’s going to come eat you if you don’t quit asking what all the noises are.”
“Really?” she asked breathlessly.
He chuckled and ruffled her hair. “Jaguars don’t eat people. They’re too small to attack humans, and they’re terrified of us, anyway. I think that was a monkey.”
A couple more strange noises erupted and she jumped, but she didn’t ask about them.
Tex’s smooth, deep voice caressed her out of the darkness. “Do you need some distracting from all the noises, darlin’?”
“That would be wonderful,” she answered, relieved.
“Any preferences on how we go about it?” he asked.
She smiled against his chest. “It’s my turn to taste you all over, this time.”
His whole body clenched beneath her. He cleared his throat. “That sounds, uh, fine.”
She smiled at the way his breath caught when her mouth slid across the rippled washboard of his stomach. And when her mouth slid even lower, she loved the way his groans rose to join the other untamed sounds of the night.
THE MUFFLED ALARM of the stolen watch beeped and he fished around in the cloth he’d wrapped it in to mute its noise. He turned it off and swam slowly toward consciousness. Something warm and sleek and female pressed against his side. A smile curved his lips. She’d about killed him with pleasure last night. But what a way to go.
Reluctantly, he disentangled himself from Kimberly and sat up. The jungle was quiet. The night creatures had retired for the evening, but the first hint of dawn hadn’t arrived yet to wake the chorus of daytime creatures.
He leaned over and kissed her smooth shoulder. She groaned and rolled over onto her stomach. He eased the space blanket down her back, kissing the curve of her spine as he went. She stretched with the lazy contentment of a cat.
She mumbled, “It’s still night-time. I thought we were going to take it easy from here on out.”
“This is taking it easy. I let us sleep a whole extra hour.”
“What time is it?” she asked sleepily.
“Four-thirty. Time to rise and shine.”
She groaned and rolled over. Her breasts gleamed, pale in the darkness, and his hands started to reach forward. God, he couldn’t get enough of her.
He fisted his hands until his nails bit into his flesh. They were never going to catch the rebels if he spent every waking moment making love to her.
He sighed and pressed to his feet. He pulled on his clothes and helped Kimberly into hers. He packed up their gear, kicked apart their bed and moved out.
The rebels were making no effort whatsoever to conceal their movement and it was a no-brainer to track them through the dense jungle. Thank God. Without a machete to slash a way through the underbrush, this stretch of jungle would have been nearly impassable. They would have ended up crawling forward on their hands and knees most of the time.
He’d done that before, the last time he’d been in Gavarone with the Blackjacks. They’d been watching the rebels prepare for war. An army shockingly well-equipped and trained for a bunch of locals in a rinky-dink South American country. He and his teammates were pretty sure a guy named Eduardo Ferrare was backing them, although they didn’t have any solid proof.
The Blackjacks had run a surveillance op on Ferrare a few years back and heard enough of a meeting between Ferrare and a bunch of Gavronese terrorists to conclude they’d asked him for money. With a lot of zeros in the sum. Enough to fund an army.
As Tex followed the rebel trail, he turned over the question of why some rich crime lord would buy himself an army? What purpose would it serve Ferrare to take over a tiny chunk of South America? Free money laundering? An ego rush? Something more sinister?
He frowned, pulling his mind back to the business at hand. He would leave the analysis to politicians like Kimberly’s father. His job right now was to make sure the Gavronese rebels didn’t add the RITA rifle to their arsenal.
Around midmorning, his stomach began to rumble. “Hungry?” he asked Kimberly over her shoulder.
“Starving. With all this fresh air and exercise, I’m working up a big appetite.”
He grinned at her and sat down on a high root, pulling out the smoked fish from the day before. It didn’t taste half-bad if he said so himself. They ate their fill and he passed her the canteen. He watched her slender throat work, recalling memories of pleasure so intense last night that he thought he might pass out from it.
Before yesterday, he only had to touch her to be so turned on he was ready to explode. Now, just looking at her did it. How in the hell was he supposed to get through the next few days in such a state? For her sake, he had to find a way.
He cast about for a topic of conversation that would take his mind off of throwing her down and making love to her until she screamed. “Tell me, Kimberly. What is it you have against your father?”
She stopped drinking abruptly. “Why do you ask?”
“Well, you accused me of being like him, and you obviously hate his guts. I’m trying to avoid making the same mistake with you that he did.”
She stared off into the jungle. Her answer was a long time in coming. “Vietnam changed him.”
He snorted. “It changed everyone. Hell, any war changes a guy.”
“No, I mean really changed him. He was seriously messed up when he came home.”
“Physically or mentally?”
“Both. He got shot in the back and barely missed being paralyzed. That’s what got him sent home for good. It got him his fourth Purple Heart, too.”
Tex whistled. Not bad. “What did he do in ‘Nam?”
“He’s never said a word about it.”
Tex frowned. Most vets eventually got the war out of their system and were able to at least talk about it. “He’s never talked about it because he can’t or because he doesn’t want to?”
Kimberly shrugged. “I don’t know. I do know he worked in some sort of special expeditionary force. I think he went to some weird places.”
Tex was intrigued. “Why do you say that?”
Kimberly seemed to withdraw into herself. He put a casual hand on her leg to let her know he was here for her. Eventually she continued.
“When he came home, my father had developed a bad temper. A really bad one. We
never knew what was going to set him off. The silliest little things could completely freak him out. When he blew up, he used to yell in some Asian language. My mom taped it once and found out he was speaking Laotian.
Laotian? Damn. Most of the Americans who operated in Laos during Vietnam were Special Forces types doing very, very dirty work. No wonder the guy was messed up. Tex’s hand tightened on her leg. “Did he hit you or your mom?”
She shook her head in the negative. “He put his fist through a wall a couple of times, and he used to throw stuff like chairs and books. When he got that wild, Mom and I would leave and go shopping or get an ice-cream cone or something. He probably would have gotten physical with us if we’d have stuck around.”
“How long did he stay mad?”
“A half hour, maybe. He was usually calmed down by the time we got home.”
Tex frowned. “I don’t mean to ask a strange question, but did he remember his episodes?”
Kimberly’s gaze snapped to his. “How did you know that? He rarely remembered getting mad.”
Tex shook his head. “Poor bastard was having flash-backs, wasn’t he?”
Kimberly shrugged. “We weren’t allowed to call them that.”
“Why not? Did he get help? Some decent counseling at least?”
Kimberly laughed shortly, without humor. “Are you kidding? He was a junior congressman in a tightly contested district. He didn’t dare go see a psychiatrist. It would’ve ruined his career.”
“So he ruined his family instead?” Tex demanded.
“It got better over time. By the time I was twelve or so, he’d pretty much stopped having his episodes.”
Tex ran a hand over his face. “Sounds like a bad case of PTSD.”
Kimberly replied bitterly, “It was nice of Uncle Sam to give it a name twenty years too late for him. Meanwhile the government sent thousands of young kids like my father off to war and destroyed them.”
He stared at her in dawning understanding. “And that’s why you’re an antimilitary lobbyist on Capitol Hill, isn’t it?”
She shrugged. “I don’t believe any government has the right to put people in situations that will wreck their minds and souls.”
