by Candace Camp
He went back outside and sat down before the doorway with their guard. Leslie frowned after him; she felt like sticking out her tongue at him. He certainly was full of orders tonight. But there was something strange in his manner that told her it was best simply to go along with what he said. She couldn’t afford to spoil whatever act he was putting on for the guerrillas. She set down the bundle and dug in it for food. There were some unappetizing looking beef sticks, as well as cheese and crackers. She unwrapped the beef jerky and cheese, opened the crackers and took the food out to Cutter.
He took the food without comment and patted the ground to the side of and slightly behind him. Leslie hesitated, her temper rising at his high-handed manner, but she sat down where he indicated. Cutter offered their host his choice of food, then took some himself and finally handed it back to Leslie. Cutter and Velasquez talked in Spanish as they ate, and Leslie chewed away at the tough meat in silence, wondering to herself just how much of this macho act she was going to have to put up with.
She soon found out. When Cutter and the other man had finished eating, Cutter handed the remains of the meal to her and said, “Joaquin tells me there’s a well at the south end of the village.” He pointed in the general direction. “Take the bucket from inside the house and go to the well and fill it up. I want a bath.” Leslie’s eyes sparked, and she almost told Cutter to fetch the water himself. But she refrained, wet her lips and managed a sweet smile. “Of course, babe.”
She was rewarded by the unconcealed astonishment in Cutter’s eyes. She slipped back inside the house and stuffed their dinner into the bundle. Then she strained to see the bucket in the dark room. Cutter stepped into the room and lit a match, and she spied the elusive bucket against the far wall. Cutter followed her when she went to get it, blowing the match out and dropping it.
He grasped her upper arms and pulled her close to him, bending down to nuzzle her ear and murmur, a tremor of a laugh in his voice, “You ready to start throwing things at me yet?”
“Just about,” Leslie snapped, putting her hands up against his chest and shoving. He didn’t move.
“Gotta make it look realistic,” he whispered, his lips nibbling at her earlobe. “You’re my woman, remember?” Leslie made a faint, irritated noise. She could feel his smile against her skin. “It’s the only way we can be assured of your safety. You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He kissed her full on the mouth, surprising Leslie. It was a long, leisurely kiss, and Cutter’s tongue played slowly through her mouth, taking full advantage of the situation. His hands moved down, pressing her up into him, and Leslie could feel him already hardening against her.
After what seemed like forever, he pulled his mouth from hers, leaving Leslie limp and flushed. His mouth trailed across her cheek and to her other ear. “Sorry to be so domineering.” His voice sounded a trifle shaky now. “These men wouldn’t understand my treating ‘my woman’ any other way. If we talked to each other the way we usually do, they’d decide I was weak. It would hurt our position. They might decide you were fair game—or that we’re both expendable.”
“What?” Leslie shivered, but she wasn’t sure whether it was from fear at what Cutter had said or from the velvet nibbling of his lips.
His mouth slid down her neck, bringing the tender flesh to pulsing life. “They might even figure you’d appreciate ‘a real man’ instead of someone who didn’t know how to handle you.”
“Cutter!”
“I won’t let that happen. But, frankly, I’d just as soon avoid getting into a fight over you. So do as I say, okay? And no protest.”
“All right. I promise.”
He kissed her again, a brief, firm kiss that was more a seal to their agreement than an erotic exploration. Still, even that touch of his lips was enough to raise her temperature several degrees. “Good. Then get your bucket and go.”
“Yes, master.” Leslie said sarcastically, but as she stepped back and out of his arms, she flashed him a smile. Then she bent to retrieve the bucket and started for the door. Velasquez sat outside, his gun on the ground beside him. She was sure that even in the dim light he had been able to see what they were doing inside, and she flushed at the thought that their kisses had been on display. But then, she reminded herself, that obviously had been Cutter’s intent.
She didn’t like walking down the middle of the encampment, with the dark silent huts on either side. She could feel the eyes watching her from the darkness, and now and then in the flare of the fires she could see the dark, impassive faces of the fighters. She glanced back toward Velasquez’s hut and was relieved to see that Cutter had come back outside and stood watching her, his arms folded across his chest. When she found the well, she wasn’t sure what do. She’d never drawn water from a well before, and she couldn’t find any crank such as she had seen on the ones in movies. She wished for the hundredth time that her cell phone wasn’t dead—though she wouldn’t have been able to watch a how-to video on YouTube this deep in the jungle anyway.
There was a rope dangling down into the well, so she grasped it and began pulling it up, hand over hand. It was heavy, and the rough hemp scratched her palms. At last she jerked it free from the well and found a bucket full of water attached to the end. Clumsily she tilted up the bucket and poured it into hers, spilling about a fourth of the water on herself during the process. Her bucket was only half-filled, so she dropped the bucket back in and hauled it up again. By the time she had her bucket filled, her palms were almost raw and her shirt was half-drenched.
She dropped the pail back into the well and picked up her own bucket, staggering a little at its weight. She trudged through the settlement, the large wooden bucket banging against her leg and splashing water into her boot. The bent wire handle bit into her hand, and halfway to the house she had to stop and transfer the pail to her other hand. But she kept on resolutely and at last reached Velasquez’s home.
The two men sat outside. While she had been gone they had built a small fire. The firelight flickered over Cutter’s face, highlighting and shadowing his features and turning his skin an odd coppery tone. He looked like a stranger to her, hard and dangerous, and she could not suppress the little tongue of anxiety that raced through her stomach.
Leslie started past the men into the house, but Cutter reached out a hand and curled it around her wrist, stopping her. “Set it down out here,” he ordered quietly. “Joaquin and I will talk while you wash me.”
Leslie bit her lip to hold back her startled response. She stared at Cutter in dismay as she set the pail down beside him. He began to unbutton his shirt and strip it off. “You’re going to bathe outdoors?” she asked finally, hoping her voice came out sufficiently subservient instead of appalled.
A smile broke his countenance then, and he tilted up his head to look at her. “Not entirely. Just wash my hair and chest. We’ll go inside for the rest. There’s a bar of soap with the clothes.” He nodded toward the hut.
Leslie thought for a split-second about pouring the entire contents of the bucket over Cutter and then hitting him in the head with it. But she took a steadying breath and retrieved the soap before returning to him. Cutter sat a few feet from the captain, talking to him, one leg drawn up and an arm resting casually on his knee. His muscled chest and arms gleamed in the firelight. Leslie drew in a shaky breath. She had no idea how to go about this, and she felt sure she would regret it.
When she stepped out, Cutter changed position, kneeling and sitting back on his heels. He placed his hands on his thighs and leaned forward so that the water would spill over his hair and onto the ground. “There’s a dipper hanging beside the door.”
“What? Oh.” She had been wondering how she was going to do this without getting them both thoroughly soaked. Though, the idea of the water-dumping and bucket-clobbering was still pretty appealing—he was getting far too much enjoyment out of this macho act. But the short-term gain was probably not worth endangering th
eir positions, so she took the gourd dipper and carefully poured water from it over Cutter’s head.
When his hair was completely wet, Leslie rubbed the bar of soap into as much of a lather as she could and began to scrub his hair. It was worse than she had feared. There was something compellingly erotic about washing his hair: feeling the smooth slide of his hair between her fingers, the warmth of his scalp under her massaging fingertips. It was heightened, too, knowing that others watched her doing it, saw her as Cutter’s “woman.” There was a strange primal pleasure in it, no matter how much Leslie tried to will it away.
Cutter made a small noise of pleasure and twisted his head a little, so that the muscles in his neck coiled and released. Leslie took the hint and slid her fingers down to massage his neck, working out the tightness of the thick muscles and tendons. He let out a sigh of pure bliss, and Leslie smiled. She’d remind him of this the next time he started in about her being a spoiled rich girl. You sure wouldn’t find any other Harvard alumna in a guerilla encampment in the middle of the jungle washing her guide’s hair.
Leslie picked up a dipperful of water and trickled it over Cutter’s head, rinsing the soap from his hair. He raised his head, shoving back his wet hair with both hands. Leslie hesitated. Now she was expected to clean his chest and arms. A trifle breathlessly she said, “I don’t have a washrag.”
“Use your hands.” His voice was low and husky.
Leslie swallowed and dipped her hands in the water. She smoothed them over his shoulders and arms, then down his chest and back, returning again and again for more water. Next, she lathered up the soap between her hands and spread it over his torso. His skin was slick beneath her fingers, and his chest hairs prickled her sensitized palms. Cutter’s skin was smooth, but the muscles beneath were rock hard. His spine was a long indentation down his back, a row of bony outcroppings. His collarbone was hard, with vulnerable, soft indentations beside his throat.
Slowly Leslie examined the varied textures of him. The scents of soap and his hair and skin mingled in her nostrils. She knelt beside him, so close she could feel the warmth emanating from him. He sat still beneath her touch, his face impassive, and he continued his conversation with their guard, but now and then she felt a brief, involuntary quiver of his flesh as she touched him. It was strangely impersonal to touch him like this in front of strangers. Yet it was also deeply intimate to stroke him with her hands, to learn every plane and rise and hollow of his body. When he was well soaped, Leslie paused, uncertain what to do. Cutter glanced at her, and she almost jumped back from the pale blaze of his eyes.
“We’ll go inside now.” He spoke a word to Velasquez, then rose lithely and walked into the hut. Leslie washed the soap from her hands and followed him, lugging the bucket with her. Cutter peeled off the rest of his clothes and stood before her naked, his desire obvious even in the dim light from the fire outside. Leslie felt a flicker of satisfaction—so her touch had affected him as much as it had her. Yet, she didn’t know where to look. It felt odd to just stare freely at his nude form but she didn’t want to seem weak or embarrassed by it either.
From where Velasquez sat, he could not see Cutter and Leslie standing inside the hut, so Cutter took the dipper himself and sluiced the water over his body. Leslie tried not to gawk, but she couldn’t keep her eyes from the sight of the water streaming over his flesh, cutting rivers through the white lather and washing it down his long, lean legs. Leslie’s chest was tight, her breath short, and her insides had turned to liquid fire. Cutter was intensely masculine, his hard strength primitively inviting. She had to link her hands behind her back to keep from reaching out touch him. It horrified her to learn how little control of herself she had around him, how easily he turned her into a hungry, physical stranger. She wanted him desperately.
He soaped and rinsed the lower half of his body while Leslie tried hard not to watch. Then he blotted his body with a clean shirt and dressed. The shirt clung damply to his skin.
“There’s plenty of water left.” Cutter came up close to her. He kept his voice low, and a teasing note crept into his tone. “Would you like me to return the favor?”
Leslie’s pulse picked up its beat as she thought of his soapy hands caressing her as she had him. She cleared her throat. “Uh…no. It wouldn’t fit your macho image.”
His grin broadened. “They don’t have to know.”
“Cutter, please.” Leslie did her best to hold on to the last remnants of her self-control.
“Okay. I’ll go outside and engage our friend in conversation, so you can have some privacy.” He winked. “I’ll be thinking about you, though.”
Cutter sat down just outside the doorway, angling his body so that Velasquez had to sit where he couldn’t see into the hut and so that Leslie was out of his own line of vision, also. It was a more gentlemanly gesture than Leslie would have expected from him. However, there were times, like now, when Leslie had to admit that she never knew what to expect from Cutter. He constantly contradicted her image of him—then turned right around and did something that was all too like the hardboiled soldier of fortune that she had first thought him to be.
Leslie took off her clothes and poured a dipperful of water over her head, wincing as the cool water touched her flesh. She bathed quickly, thinking wistfully of a long, hot soak in a big tub. When she was through, she dried her hair with the shirt she had just removed, then followed Cutter’s example and used a clean blouse to blot the excess water from her body. She dressed in a clean pair of jeans and hesitated over her one clean shirt. It was so wet from drying her body that it would cling indecently, but it was either that or go around in only her bra. Finally she decided to leave the shirt out to dry and simply go ahead and slip into her sleeping bag for the night. That way no one would see her.
She had unrolled the sleeping bag and was unzipping it when Cutter came in. “Good. I was about to suggest that.” His eyes flickered over her barely clothed breasts, but he said nothing.
Leslie crumpled up the bedroll against her chest. You’d think he could go back out and let her get into the sleeping bag. But he stood right here, watching her and waiting. Finally he picked up the other sleeping bag, unrolled it and unzipped it all the way around. He walked to the lumpy bed in the corner of the room and spread out the unfolded bag on it. Leslie stared, thought she was pretty sure she knew where this was going. She tried to tamp down the sparking excitement in her chest. She should be irritated with Cutter for just presuming they would sleep in the same bed because they were pretending to be together.
Cutter turned to her. “Come on. We’ll use yours as the cover.”
“We?” Leslie tried to sound disdainful but it came out closer to breathless.
Cutter sat down on the edge of the bed and began pulling off his boots. When she just stood watching him, he scowled and made an impatient motion to her to come closer. Leslie edged over, still clutching the other sleeping bag to her like armor. Cutter took her wrist and tugged her down onto the bed beside him. Leaning closer, he whispered. “I explained this already; I thought you understood. You’re safer if they think you’re my woman. They don’t trust me, but I’ve told them I’m a good friend of Mora’s, and they’re afraid to cross me until they find out whether or not it’s true. I can protect you, but it has to look real.”
“But we just—I mean, that’s what the show outside was for, wasn’t it?” Leslie whispered back fiercely.
His smile was taunting. “What are you afraid of? Don’t you think you can sleep in the same bed with me without jumping my bones?”
Leslie’s nostrils flared. “Of course I can! I don’t have any doubts about me.”
“Then there’s no problem, is there?”
“But we don’t have to! They won’t know.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “No? What if they come in early tomorrow morning to wake us up and find us sleeping all zipped up in our separate bags? What if Velasquez decides to check in the middle of the night to make sure we
haven’t escaped? It’d make our playacting tonight look pretty false wouldn’t it? Knowing I had lied about that, they might decide I’d also lied about Mora knowing me. These people demonstrate their distrust in a pretty permanent way. Personally, I’d rather not wind up dead.”
Fear darted through Leslie anew at his words. She imagined Cutter lying bleeding and lifeless on the ground and a lump rose in her throat. She got up and laid her sleeping bag on top of the other one. Then she sat back down to remove the thick boots Sister Mary Margaret had lent her, bending over so far that her breasts were partially concealed from Cutter’s gaze. She thought about sleeping in the same bed with him without a shirt on, and she started to retrieve her blouse. But then she thought about sleeping in its dampness and decided against it. She’d just make sure she slept a good distance away from Cutter so that her naked skin wasn’t touching his.
Cutter unbuttoned his damp shirt, pulled it off and stood to strip off his jeans. Leslie quickly crawled between the covers and over to the opposite side of the bed, turning away from him onto her side. She felt the bed sag beneath his weight as he lay down. The bed wasn’t very wide, and they were separated by only inches. Leslie could feel the caress of his body heat. She tried to think of something else besides his large, hot, muscled body beside her.
“What’s going to happen? What will they do with us? Do you suppose Blake is right here in this camp?”
“Good old Blake. He’s always the most important thing, isn’t he?”
“He’s the reason we’re here.”
“I know.” Cutter’s mouth was a grim line. “Frankly, I have no clue whether he’s here or not. They might have him hidden away in a smaller, more secret camp. It doesn’t matter. Nothing can happen until Mora comes, anyway. Apparently he’s not in camp at the moment. Velasquez told me tonight that Mora’s supposed to be back tomorrow. All we can do is hold tight until he comes.”
“Will Mora back you up? I mean, is he really your friend?”
