“Tell me,” she pleaded, her hand covering his. “Please. Tell me what is going on.”
But he didn’t tell her. He kissed her. A soft brush of his lips across hers, his tongue gliding along hers, the brutal demands of minutes before gone, though there was nothing tentative about the touch. Nothing tentative about this man.
The mood had, indeed, taken another swift turn; the storm had faded into a sensual aftermath she could not begin to deny. She was trembling, and not from anger. The anger was gone, the desire was not. The need for release was not. Amber’s arms wrapped around his neck, passion spiraling in her stomach and making her clench her thighs together. She could feel him thicken inside her, feel her body melt around him.
Slowly, they began moving together, a sultry rhythm, his hips pumping with delicious precision—the long, hard length of him stretching her, caressing her. She was clinging to him, panting into his mouth, desire climbing past her reserve, clouding the questions and accusations. He was so powerfully male. So wildly capable of arousing her, as she had never been aroused in her life. She was hot. So hot. If he stopped this time, if he took her to the edge and pulled back, she would scream. She would yell. She dug her fingers into his shoulders. She might yell now.
Amber pressed herself against him, rotating her hips. Trying to get more. He seemed to understand. Palming her backside, he pulled her against him and drove into her. Once and then again. Over and over. Her thighs clenched around his waist, and she buried her face in that broad, spectacular chest. Without warning, the edge of orgasm splintered into a thousand pieces of rainbow-colored pleasures, the sweet bliss of his cock stroking her into yet a thousand more.
A deep, guttural groan slid from Jareth’s lips, his head tilting back. Amber looked up in awe at the pure masculine beauty of that moment—the lust and pleasure wrenching across his features. It was arousing in ways that reached beyond her orgasm. And when he tilted his head down, his eyes meeting hers, she sucked in a breath at what she saw—his eyes were yellow, not teal as they had been before, yellow like the jaguars’.
Amber had found Yaguara in Jareth—and it was a secret she could never share with the world. Because, after tonight, she knew why her instincts had made her feel the need to protect Jareth back at her camp. Jareth was hunted, and the hunters were nearby. Somehow, she had to make him see—she and her crew were not those Hunters.
The full moon turned the waterfall into a stream of white fire pouring into the pond where Jareth and Amber lingered, blasting over the rocks with an illuminating force. As if nature knew what Jareth did—Amber could no longer be left in the dark. Jareth rubbed his chin across the silky soft veil of Amber’s fast-drying hair, again thinking of how easy it would be to throw her over his shoulder and carry her to his cabin—keep her naked and beneath him. Safe.
Regrettably, though it would be pleasurable, doing that would only delay the inevitable. He had to enlighten her about the Hunters that she’d aligned herself with, and the danger that situation could put her in. He inhaled, forcing his body from hers, and pressed his hands to her face.
“We have much to discuss,” he said. “And as long as you are naked, talking is the last thing on my mind.” He scooped her into his arms, his gaze sweeping her puckered nipples, water droplets begging for his mouth. Instantly, his dick throbbed, thickening with desire. “We definitely need clothes.”
Amber clung to his neck. “Something tells me naked in the pond is going to be far more enjoyable than what you have to tell me.” He didn’t comment. Any relief Jareth felt at discovering Amber’s innocence had quickly faded into the need for action. He stepped out of the pond, settled her on the ground. She was already in question mode. “Who are these Hunters you spoke of?”
He reached down and snagged her clothes, pressing them into her hands. “Dress and then we’ll talk.” Thinking of that hot, sweet body tightening around his, he added, “Quickly would be my preference.” He turned and gave her his back, determined to get dressed himself. The more barriers between them, the easier it would be to focus on the business at hand.
“I have a million questions,” she said behind him, thankfully scuffling around enough for him to believe she was actually putting on her clothes. “Ugh. It’s really hard to put on wet clothes.”
“Tell me about it,” he grumbled as he endured the snug ride of his blue jeans up his wet thighs. Unable to resist, he glanced over his shoulder in time to see her tugging a T-shirt over a wet, practical-looking, black bra that still managed to be damn sexy. She was damn sexy. He grimaced and turned away, tugging his shirt over his head.
“So Yaguara is real,” she said, her voice filled with wonder.
Jareth tugged on his boots, tied his hair back at his neck, and turned to find Amber fully dressed, hands on her hips, her clothes wet and clinging to her curvy hips and breasts. He gave her a short nod. “Yes. Yaguara is real.”
A look of wonder slid over her face. “As in living today. Not extinct.”
“A small population remains,” he said. He motioned in the direction of two large rocks, and they sat down facing each other.
Amber blinked and repeated the words. “A small population remains? What does that mean? It sounds . . . not good. It sounds not good at all.”
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees. “The Hunters date back to the Spanish Conquistadors; the Yaguara, much further than that. Yaguara had close ties with the Indians. Our women were dying in childbirth, and a Shaman aided our efforts to heal them. In turn, we offered food and protection. But then the Conquistadors came in large numbers, far larger than our own. They tortured the Indians to get to Yaguara. Yaguara were captured, and experiments were run to test their weaknesses.” He was careful to speak as if he were not Yaguara. He’d come as close to admitting what he was as he’d planned to. Amber was still human; their trust was newborn and fragile.
“And those tests led to their methods of hunting,” she said, her face pale with understanding.
“Yes,” he said. “But it was not our physical weakness they latched onto, but our emotional bonds. They attacked our villages. Threatened our women and children. Tried to enslave the men to fight for them.”
Stunned, she whispered, “My God. We’ve done this throughout time. What humans do not know and understand, we fear. And what we fear, we destroy.”
“The Conquistadors were not afraid,” Jareth said tightly. “They wanted to possess the Yaguara warriors, to use them to fight their wars. But they pushed us too far. Once we would take no more, once the Yaguara stood up and began to fight, they were demonized and have been ever since.” Unbidden, his mind painfully tracked through the hell of discovering that his sister and mother had been locked inside homes and burned alive—only one of the ways to kill an immortal, once ash always ash. Because he’d dared to fight his enemy. “Never again have we lived openly among humans.”
Her hands ran down her wet pants, her spine stiff. “Who are these Hunters? Are they part of the government? Please tell me our government is not this inhumane.”
He laughed but not with humor. “The Hunters are nowhere near being part of the government,” he assured her. “They see themselves as above the law. A private club that reaches across the world.” A club of which her father had been a high-ranking member. Something she wasn’t going to accept readily, which was why now was not the time to tell her. No one wanted to hear about how their idol was really a ruthless, murdering bastard. And hers had been. Now was the time to focus on getting her out of this canyon safely.
There were secrets inside that cavern that the Hunters wished to find, like old Yaguara alliances with Indian tribes that existed to this day, and that could endanger innocent lives. Jareth would not allow that to happen. Nor would the leaders of his race. He did not want Amber, nor anyone else who might be oblivious to the Hunters and their agendas, to be caught in the crossfire if this turned nasty.
“There are Indian tribes still aligned with Yaguara,” he sai
d. “This area is rich in that history. We cannot allow anyone to be put in danger. Protecting Yaguara’s secrets is protecting innocent lives.”
“I would never do anything to hurt anyone,” she said. “I’ll do what needs to be done.”
“You have to walk away from the cavern discoveries and do so now.” He went down on a knee in front of her, rested his palms on her slender thighs. “Listen to me, Amber,” he said urgently. “We are dealing with cold-blooded killers, and they are now working from inside your crew. That is why I had to be sure you were not one of them. My instincts said you were not a Hunter, but they are all around you. It was hard to believe you didn’t know any of this.”
Her eyes widened, her hands settling urgently over his. “No. That can’t be true. No one on my team would do something like this. No. You’re wrong.”
He could see the struggle inside her reflected in her eyes, and the instant rejection. The defensiveness. She did not want him to be right, but on some level, she knew he was. Jareth drew her hands into his. “It’s true, Amber. I’m sorry.”
“Who?” she demanded. “I want to know who on my crew is involved in this.”
He braced himself for her reaction. “If they sense you are on to them, or that you, or anyone you care about, might be a problem, they will react, Amber. And you won’t like that reaction. These are cold-blooded murderers. Once you are out of here, I promise you, I’ll make sure you know what you need to know.”
She pushed to her feet, hands on her hips as she glared at him. “Damn it,” she said, the look on her face incredulous. “I deserve to know who is involved.”
“And every innocent person on your crew deserves to survive this,” he ground out. He’d already said more than he’d intended to. “Get your people out of here.”
“If it’s so important that we leave,” she asked suspiciously, “why did you let us stay this long? Why wait until now to come to me?”
“I didn’t show up in your camp last week just to save you from those jags,” he admitted. “I came to see how close you were to getting inside that cavern. I had to decide how much longer you could stay.”
She waved a frustrated hand in the air. “Even if we leave,” she said, touching her temple, taking a moment to calm herself, “these Hunters know where the cavern is now.”
“Plans are underway to remove all sensitive information.”
She fired back another question. “Then why let us stay at all after we found the cavern?”
“You’re nowhere near the area we feel is sensitive,” he said. “It was decided that if you were allowed to work and found nothing, it would discourage Hunter interest. And I wasn’t going to allow you to leave being marked a Hunter, as an enemy of Yaguara for the rest of your life, if it was undeserved.”
She paled, settling back down on the rock. “Marked.” Her delicate throat bobbed as she swallowed. He remembered kissing it, the gentle curve. “What does that mean?” she asked.
Dragging his gaze to her eye level, he replied, “Yaguara want to know their enemies. I’m sure you understand why this is critical.”
“Do you hunt them as they do you?”
He did not miss the direct question. He answered it indirectly. “Killing a human without cause is a criminal offense among Yaguara, and before you ask, yes, the Yaguara is organized. It has government. It has soldiers. It has rules. And those rules are taken seriously. Every kill is documented and justified before their leaders.”
She drew a long breath. “And I’m traveling with people who are ‘marked,’ as you call it. That’s how you found me?”
He gave her another grim nod. She hugged herself, stared at him, distress overflowing from the rims of her big, green eyes. “I can’t believe you thought I was one of them.”
“I didn’t,” he said. And that was the truth.
Her lips tightened. “You seemed pretty damn convinced in that pond at one point.”
In a flash, he leaned into her, wrapped his arms around her and held her close. She was so tiny, delicate in body, but so tough inside. Her arms wrapped around his neck, offering the acceptance he’d longed for from her, as he had not from any other woman in his very long life. He brushed his lips over hers.
“Did I?” he whispered. “Because I’m pretty damn sure what you felt out there was how much I wanted you to be innocent.”
Her lips quivered next to his, a challenge following. “Why do you care?”
He shouldn’t. He was a Sentinel. A guardian of his people. And though all Sentinels vowed to protect innocent lives, he’d gone far beyond duty for Amber. But the truth was, the very thought of her being a Hunter had twisted him in knots. Clawed at him like the swift swipe of an enemy’s blade. Even now, there was a knot in his chest.
“I haven’t decided that yet.” He forced himself to release her, to lean back on his heels. Steeling himself for duty, he forced aside this damnable attraction to Amber. They stared at one another, tension and awareness crackling in the air before he issued the warning he’d spoken a week before. “Go home before someone gets hurt. That’s as clear as I can be.”
She considered him a moment longer, and then nodded, reluctant acceptance washing over her face. “I have to find a believable reason to leave. Everyone knows how important this grant is to me, how important my father’s work is to me. He . . . was attacked by thieves and killed at a dig site a year ago. He lived a few hours at the hospital. I never saw him. I couldn’t get there in time. But I talked to him. I . . .” She looked away. Inhaled and composed herself before refocusing on Jareth. “He asked me to keep his private journals, but for my eyes only. You have no idea how hard it was to convince the investors to allow me to use his grant money to come here. If not for Mike—well, his support means a lot. His willingness to come along convinced the right people that this was worth doing. I have to talk to him. I’ll need his support.”
“Why would you have to convince Mike to help you?” he asked. “I thought he was your father’s partner?”
“They had a falling out about a year before my father died,” Amber said. “They broke all ties. But when my father died, he was there for me. I have no idea what happened between him and my father, but I’ve known him all my life. I trust him.”
Mike was probably the money behind this operation. Him and his Hunters. “You cannot tell Mike, or anyone else anything, Amber. Trust no one.”
“Except you.”
“That’s right,” he said. “Except me. As I must trust you.”
Jareth had seen where intimate interaction with humans could lead. The death of so many Indians was but one example. Amber had no idea how vehemently Jareth had disapproved of the few humans who had been allowed inside the Yaguara inner circle. But now, here he was, forced to not only involve a human, but to trust one himself. And he’d picked a woman whose father had been one of the most prominent Hunters in existence. He’d actually wanted her to deserve his trust. It was a questionable decision, at best. But one he’d made. One he had to live with, or perhaps, die because of.
“You ask a lot,” she said, her hands settled on his upper arms. The wind lifted her hair, blew a strand in her face, touching his. She brushed it away and added, “I barely know you.”
She’d invited him into that water knowing what he was, knowing he was half man, half beast. On some level, she trusted him as he did her. “You know far more about me than most do, I promise you.”
“You want me to trust you?” she challenged. “Then trust me. Stop referring to Yaguara in the third person.”
He wasn’t willing to offer the confession she sought. “The less you know . . .” he said, a flash of memory besieging him—of Indians tied down, tortured to reveal Yaguara names. He couldn’t let that happen to her. He wouldn’t. “. . . the safer you will be.”
“Somehow I doubt I will ever be safe again,” she whispered.
The truth rolled through him, along with unexplainable protectiveness. He doubted she had ever been truly saf
e. Not with the man who had been her father. Holy hell, he wondered if her mother had really been killed in childbirth, as their counsel’s reports indicated, or had somehow been a victim of this war between Hunters and Yaguara.
“Say it,” she urged.
He’d do nothing of the sort. “There is nothing to say.”
She shoved out of his arms. Pushed away. “Then, no. No, I will not trust you and you alone. You must give trust to get it.”
He caught her, tugged her back against his body. Her gaze lifted, meeting his with a challenge. “Stubborn woman,” he ground out. “You have no idea what you are asking.”
“I’m in this,” she reminded him. “You said that yourself. Ignorance isn’t going to protect me.”
Yes, she was involved now. And he was, too. Involved with her in ways he didn’t try to explain. She was under his skin, inside him, around him. Driving him wild. He kissed her, devoured her mouth with long deep strokes of his tongue, strokes that demanded her response, his hand sliding over her backside with a firm, possessive touch. She moaned, wrapping her arms around his neck and giving in to the fiery attraction that neither of them could deny, nor could they fight.
He backed her against a tree, deepening the kiss, trapping her against the surface as he had trapped her against those rocks. Some part of him afraid she would escape. That she would want to escape. He reacted to that thought, drawing her leg to his waist and fitting his cock to the sweet V of her body. Reminding her who was in control.
She moaned and shoved his chest. “Stop distracting me,” she ordered hoarsely, demanding her own bit of control. “Pleasure changes nothing. Trust me. Tell me what I want to know.”
A hard knot tightened in his chest. He had no idea why this woman had such a powerful effect on him, but her eyes, her words, her soft body pressed to his, compelled him to do as she bid. “I am Yaguara.” And with that confession, he admitted to himself what he believed he’d known the day he met her. He was never going to let her go.
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