by Maren Smith
His dark eyes rose to hers, and her mouth ran dry. His look had turned smoky, smoldering. It made her stomach clench, and then clench again even harder when he leaned in to press the softest kiss against the wet skin just above her woman’s mound.
Levina forgot to breathe. Her heart pounding, she could only stare as he leaned even more slowly back on his heels. There was a tautness about him; a strange look on his face that seemed both dark and alluring and hungry all at once.
With two short blinks, however, that look abruptly vanished. It was as if he’d slammed it behind a door. “Yeah, you look good.”
His hands fell from her hips as he rose, turning his back as he finished checking himself. The heady spell broken, when he grabbed for his clothes, she shakily followed suit.
“Check your drawers,” he said gruffly. “There might be leeches hiding in the folds.”
She’d forgotten all about the leeches. Her hands were trembling so badly she could barely pick up her undergarments much less crawl into them. Everywhere he’d touched her burned, and there was a slow, seductive throb pulsing both in the tips of her taut nipples and between her trembling legs.
Their backs turned one to the other, they dressed quickly and neither one said another word.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The air was both damp and hot. Levina could feel tickles of sweat winding down along her spine, and because of that, she discovered she had an unreachable itch between her shoulder blades that could only be scratched with the aid of a thin stick. Like the one she had taken to carrying as if it were an extension of her arm. She alternated between using it to scratch those hard to reach itches and whacking at the leafy vegetation as she followed along behind Takura. Their progress was slow and boring. The jungle was dense here, dotted with shorter trees that let in a lot of sunlight, and every step they took first had to be cut out of the plant life. Above her, the sun had to be close to setting. It felt very late and the shadows seemed to be getting darker, but unable to see the sky, she had no way of judging the time.
Levina smacked at a mosquito on her arm. She was starting to get hungry, and her legs hurt. And she was being eaten alive by bugs—she scratched at her arm and the back of one thigh, and didn’t put a voice to any of those complaints because Takura wasn’t complaining and he had to be every bit as uncomfortable as she was. Maybe even more so. He’d been leading them through the overgrowth, walking freely whenever the jungle allowed it, and when it didn’t, he used the machete they’d borrowed from the Neuvo. With seemingly inexhaustible strength, he cut a narrow path through flush thickets of sharp bamboo and low hanging jade vines, leading them around gigantic trees and over massive root structures that rippled and flowed like strips of barked ribbon, unraveling out of the sky and into the ground.
Takura had taken his shirt off some time ago. With her only job being to carry it and not fall behind, for the last hour Levina had watched the sweat roll off him in streams. She smelled him every time he raised his arm to whack through another obstacle. It was a strong, musky, manly scent. Given another day, in this heat it might ripen into something unpleasant, but for now she liked it. And anyway, she had little right to complain since she hardly smelled like roses.
“Can I try that?” she suddenly asked.
One arm raised to hack through a screen of crisscrossing bamboo, Takura paused to look back at her. He was panting. “Try what?”
“That,” she pointed at the machete. “I can be useful. Besides, you look tired. Let me try that for a while, and you can rest.”
Takura hadn’t said more than two words to her since he’d kissed her. Now he looked her up and down, his expression closed and so carefully neutral that he almost seemed unfriendly. Much like he’d been the first day they’d met. Had that only been three days ago? Right now it felt more like a lifetime.
In the end, his exhaustion won over whatever misgivings he might have. He handed her the machete and stepped back out of her way, letting her take the lead.
Having spent the day watching him, Levina knew what to do. She closed her hand around the wooden handle, feeling the weight of the long blade. Taking Takura’s place before the bamboo, she shifted her feet apart to mimic the stance he’d used and hesitantly raised her arm. Her bottom wiggling, she adjusted her stance again. Then she hacked.
When Takura did it, whole handfuls of thick bamboo branches cleaved into pieces before falling broken out of their path. But when Levina brought her arm cracking down, the machete chipped one stalk, turned sideways and slid down the rest all the way into the dirt. A few leaves and twigs were chopped off on the way, however. She supposed that wasn’t terrible…for a first attempt.
“All right,” Takura caught her shoulder, pulling her around so he could reach for the machete. “Give it back before you cut your leg off.”
“No!” Levina quickly snapped her back to him, holding the machete out of reach, like a child unwilling to share a favored toy. “I can do this. Let me try.”
His mouth quirked. Although he didn’t quite roll his eyes, the look he wore came awful close to one she used to receive frequently from Parnell.
“I can do this,” she insisted, and Takura relented. He stepped back, waving for her to continue, but still that look stung at her.
Squaring her shoulders against the bamboo, Levina pressed the blade of the machete against the branch before her, taking careful aim. She grit her teeth and threw back her arm, swinging down as hard as she could and very nearly fell flat on her face as her hand, still tightly gripped around a now empty leather-wrapped handle, passed effortlessly in front of the brush obstruction to thwack harmlessly into the front of her underskirt.
Levina blinked first at the empty machete handle, then up at the green-growing canopy above them, and then finally turned around and looked at Takura.
The long blade was embedded in the moss-covered tree just behind him and the bloody gash rounding over his shoulder showed the path it had taken to get there.
“Oh my God!” Levina screamed. She dropped the empty handle to clap both hands over her gaping mouth.
Clamping his hand over the wound, Takura sucked a slow breath through his teeth. “I’m okay,” he said calmly. He turned away from her, quickly alternating between applying pressure, checking to see how badly he was cut, and then applying pressure again. “It’s not deep. I’ll be okay.”
A single rivulet of blood was winding its way down his back.
“I’m so sorry!” Levina reached for him, but he moved away from her, pausing instead to rip patches of moss from a nearby tree and pressed those against his cut.
She was useless, Levina suddenly realized. She really was, totally and completely helpless. Not just to treat an injury like this or in finding her way through a jungle, but in life. Parnell had been right all along: she was a jinx.
“It’s all right,” Takura said, as he checked his wound again. “Damn half-assed jungle craftsmanship.”
A shimmer of tears swam up to blind her anyway. “This is not all right,” she said thickly.
“I’ll live,” he muttered, checking the wound again. He swore then, shaking his head once. “We’re going to have to pack it in moss and stitch the edges shut.”
Levina swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “How can I help?”
Takura turned his head, looking around them. “We need ants.”
Her stomach did a strange, quivering flip flop, but when he began searching the leaf-litter, she followed suit. For that last three days, the rainforest had been a veritable ocean of crawling things. She couldn’t count the number of times she had slapped an ant off her leg, but now when she needed one…
“Over here,” Takura called. She went to him, nearly walking through a trail of large black ants, most of which were scurrying with pieces of leaf larger than they were clamped tight in their overlarge jaws. She stared at them, at a complete loss for what to do next.
Takura used a broken fern frond to pick them up, retreating w
ith it a short distance before sitting down on an old fallen log.
“Here.” He handed her the piece of fern.
She took it, pinching the end of the stem between two fingers. Levina wasn’t fond of bugs. She’d never liked them, but this was her fault and she was determined to help if she could. “Now what?”
Finding fresh moss on the side of the log, Takura discarded the blood-soaked patch on his shoulder and began to tear of soft pieces to stuff into the worst of the wound. “I’m going to pinch the edges together; you get the ants to bite them closed. Can you do that?”
Levina blanched. Looking from him to the cut to the ants and finally back to him again, she nevertheless took up her position beside him. “Yes.”
She didn’t even sound convincing to herself.
Holding up the frond, Levina watched as he packed thin pieces of moss into the cut and then, wincing and growling, pinched the wound together.
“Ugh.” She swallowed hard and tried to catch her first ant. They were swarming in agitation all over the leaf, both front and back, slipping in between the fronds each time her fingers got too close. Her skin crawled. Her palms sweat. Her determination began to waver as she struggled with the idea of voluntarily picking one up.
“Hurry up,” Takura told her.
“I-I don’t think I can do this.”
“You’re the only one I have.”
That blunt reminder made Levina cringed. She could hear the pain in his gruff tone, and she knew his wound would not be stitched by any other means.
Oh, but she really did not want to touch the ants. They were huge and black, and when she hovered over them, struggling to find the courage to touch one, several of the larger specimens arched their massive heads and threatened her with equally massive mandibles.
“Mm,” she quavered, and grabbed one. It promptly bit her, and choking on involuntary squeals, she flapped her hand wildly to dislodge it.
“Take your time,” Takura muttered. “It’s not as if this doesn’t hurt like hell.”
Levina shot him a guilty glance, but he wasn’t looking at her. His eyes were squeezed shut and his teeth were bared. Selecting another ant, this time she grabbed it behind its large head.
“Mm,” she said again, but managed to keep her grip without crushing it. Trying not to hurt him any worse than he already was, she pressed the aggressive insect to the wound just above his pinching fingers. It sank its mandibles into him, angrily biting into and holding the wound closed. Her stomach tightened. She could almost feel the pain of that bite every bit as intensely as he must be.
“Break the head off,” Takura hissed. “Hurry, before it lets go.”
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Levina whimpered, and then quickly pinched the ant’s head from its squirming body. The legs kicked and writhed between her fingers before she threw it on the ground, and the sight of that black, bulging, highly-unsterilized ‘stitch’ at the center of his wound made her stomach lurch. Unable to stand it, she jumped away from him, wiping her ant-grabbing hand wildly against her skirt and shuddering all over. She could feel her skin crawling everywhere, as if there were an entire colony of ants scurrying around inside her. “Gah! I hate insects!”
“I hate getting stabbed!” he snapped back. “Hurry up and finish the damn job.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose!” She bent to pick up the ant-covered fern frond she’d dropped, bumping his elbow and jostling his wounded shoulder in the process.
“Ah!” He grabbed his arm, smothering a bellow of pain behind gritted teeth. “Dammit, Levina, can’t you do anything right?”
Hurt, Levina stared at him. A sharp burst of anger overwhelmed her then and, grabbing one ant after another, without another word, she stitched him back together. He hissed a sharp breath at the first angry bite, but then fell completely silent as well.
The minute she was done, Levina took the remaining ants and dropped the frond directly across their colony’s trail just so she’d have a good excuse to get away from him.
“Don’t go far,” Takura said, cradling his injured shoulder.
She glared back at him over her shoulder and then deliberately stalked through the bushes and out of his sight. The jungle blurred all around her as angry tears began to swell inside her again. She could hear Takura behind her, muttering curses even as he climbed wearily back to his feet.
“Levina,” he called.
Levina didn’t answer. She found a tree to lean against, stubbornly crossing her arms over her chest, knowing she was neither angry enough nor foolish enough to go stomping off alone. For a moment though, she almost wished she were that brave.
“Levina!”
She kept her mouth shut, simmering furiously as he stomped through the underbrush. He couldn’t have been more than ten feet away, and yet the jungle was so densely packed that all she saw of him was a glimpse of shadow and brown skin clawing to get through the foliage greenery.
The temptation to stay quiet gave way when he called out to her again. “Levina, goddamn it!” Even with the cursing, there was a thread of real concern underneath his anger. “Answer me, woman! Right now!”
“I’m not useless!” she finally snapped. She stayed where she was, braced as stiff as the trunk at her back, frowning—not sulking, she told herself—her green eyes flashing as he came crashing through the growth toward her. He looked angry. No, more than just angry; he looked livid. As hot as the sweltering air around them, and that was enough to shatter her own bud of temper and self-pity.
“I said, stay where I can see you.” He broke out of the bushes and quickly closed the distance between them in long, purposeful strides. “I’ve told you this twice! Guess what, princess? I never say anything three times.”
Shoving away from the tree, Levina made a fumbling effort at standing up to him. She’d never stood up to anyone before, but she was determined to ignore that dangerous glint in his dark eyes and drew herself proudly upright. “I am not stupid, Takura! And I am certainly not—”
‘Useless’ died on her lips with a startled yelp when, in the next instant, he grabbed her arm and suddenly the entire jungle flipped upside down.
“Your shoulder!” she shouted, and only afterward wondered why her first involuntary thought was to his comfort when he pinning her up against his hip and promptly began to dust the seat of her dirty chemise with a volley of smacks so hard and solid that they were breath-robbing. He said not one word; neither did Levina—squeaks and yelps were not considered words in any dictionary.
This was not two good licks. This was strong, vigorous and punishing. Where Parnell was painfully reserved—civilized in the dispensing of his straight-laced judiciary measures—Takura was like the jungle, wild and hot, and he absolutely set her bottom on fire. Fresh wound or not, he held her pinned under his arm with absolutely no concern for anything beyond teaching her this well-earned lesson and using nothing at all beyond the open palm of his hand. His very broad hand. His very broad, hard, unyielding and slow to forgive hand. It broke her. It broke through her anger and impotence, laying her bare to one startled second of naked relief before the flaring burn of the pain he was dispensing overtook her.
Levina shouted, but she had no clear idea of what she said. ‘Please’ and ‘stop’ mingled freely amidst vile name calling and wordless bitter wails. She kicked, pinned against his hip, unable to break away. She clung to his trouser leg with both hands, her dancing tiptoes barely able to keep contact with the ground and scratching out tiny trenches in the leaf litter because it just wasn’t stopping. Swat after jarring swat, he spanked her until everything behind her felt seared by fire. It was awful. It was strangely comforting. It was insane, and she had no idea how to process any of what he was making her feel. And when it ended, for one horrible half second, all Levina knew was that he had stopped too soon.
She deserved more.
When Takura released her, she dropped into a graceless, undignified heap in the leaves and dirt at his feet. She grabb
ed her sizzling bottom with both hands and rocked, her eyes and mouth both rounded from the hurt and shock, bereft of his touch and suddenly angry all over again because of it.
“You have no right!” she cried, scrambling to get her clumsy feet under her. She turned on him, her face flaming as hot as the sunburn that scorched both her arms.
“No right, princess?” His anger hadn’t lessened and Takura wasn’t backing down. “No right?!” He was trembling, struggling to keep control of his temper. She could see it, simmering right under the sun-bronzed skin of him, and her ire only seemed to kick the heat of it up another dangerous notch. “People die when they get lost out here! You have no idea how fast it can happen!”
“I am not stupid!” she shouted up into his face. “Maybe I don’t know jungles or boats or machetes or…or…or ants, but I’m not stupid and I’m not useless!” God help her, fight it though she did, her voice cracked and she started to cry. She slapped at the angry tears that tried to trickle over her lashes, smearing dirt across her sun-burned cheeks. “I can too do some things right! I’m very good at the things that I do right!”
Some of his anger seemed to die a little as they glared at one another. “I didn’t mean—”
“Yes, you did! Everybody means it, but that doesn’t make it true!”
“Levina.”
He reached for her, but she slapped his hands every bit as fiercely as her own tears. She tripped on a half-exposed root as she shoved to get away from him. A moment ago, all she’d wanted was for him to hold her. Now, she’d rather fall than to be touched by him. “I hate the jungle! I hate the bugs and the heat and the dirt! I want a bath and something cold to drink. With ice! And I want it as far away from you as possible! I’m glad we’re not really married. I’d rather be eaten alive by mosquitos than to stay married to someone as awful as you!”