by Maren Smith
“That—” She blinked twice, her wondering expression fading into a look of near scientific perplexity. “Why, that wasn’t terrible at all.”
Still buried deep inside her, his body seeming to pulse in time with the latent thrills of pleasure that still shivered her, Takura raised his head from the soft kisses he’d been decorating her shoulder with. He was smiling, even as the dark lines of his eyebrows knitted together. “What?”
“Mother always told me husbandly urges were the worst part about being married, but also that it was something all wives had to endure. But…but I don’t think that was terrible at all.”
He stared at her as if unsure whether he ought to laugh or not. “Thank you,” he said finally. “I think.”
“No, it was wonderful.” She let her hands play down the front of his chest as he drew back onto his knees. The friction as their bodies came apart made her loins spark, a tiny latent orgasm that made her breath catch. Unabashedly, she looked at him and even reached for his dwindling member, touching him with reverent curiosity. He was trying to pull his pants back up, but he paused, his dark eyes smoldering, when her fingers closed around him. It was soft now, so unassuming compared with what it had been. “I didn’t know it would be like that.”
Something told her with Parnell it probably wouldn’t be.
Oh dear. Parnell.
Levina took her hands off Takura and tried to swallow past the guilty knot tightening in the back of her throat. “What am I going to do now?”
She hadn’t meant to say that out loud, and it startled her a little when Takura answered, “You’re going to get up off the ground.” He looked up at the sky. “I don’t think it’s done raining. We need to find someplace to dry out before we get swamp rot.”
Romantic pillow talk, it was not.
His head suddenly snapped around and his dark eyes locked on her. “Wait a minute. That wasn’t what you meant.”
No, it wasn’t. Instinctively knowing nothing awaited them at the end of this discussion apart from another argument, Levina got up off the ground. “That’s okay.” She picked up her discarded bloomers so she wouldn’t have to look at him. They were muddy and torn, and definitely not salvageable. Her shoulders slumped and she dropped the tattered cloth back where she’d found it. She looked down at her torn shift. “The way this is going, I’ll be utterly naked by the time we find that silly orchid.” She couldn’t help casting his shirt and trousers a disgruntled frown. “Why aren’t you having this problem?”
“I’m not wearing satin, and don’t change the subject.” Hands on his hips, Takura glared at her. “What do you mean, what are you going to do now?”
“Jungles aren’t the only places with consequences.” She run her fingers through her tangled hair, wincing sharply at each snarl she encountered. “I don’t want to fight anymore. I just…I don’t know what I’m going to tell my parents. Or Parnell.”
“Tell him you married someone better.”
“This is serious! I’m engaged. I’ve betrayed my fiancé—”
“With your husband!”
“But we’re not really married! You said so yourself! How am I supposed to explain that?” And even if she could explain it to Parnell, how could she explain Takura to Society in general? She wasn’t even sure her parents would accept him, much less Boston. She covered her mouth with both hands. Would they even accept her?
She began to pace, alternating between holding her mouth and nervously plucking at her falling-apart shift. “I’ll lose my position at the museum. I think that’s fairly safe to say. I have my grandfather’s money, so at least we’ll have something to live on when we get back home, but…”
Takura stepped closer to her, his dark eyes hardening. “What makes you think I want to live in Boston?”
Having walked as far as the overhanging embankment would allow, Levina spun to face him. “Well, of course we’re going back to Boston. Where else are we going to live?”
Takura spread his arms.
“Here?” she gasped, appalled.
“Why not?”
“Because…it’s a jungle. Nobody lives here! We just visit now and then. You know, explore, take samples, make sketches, and then we go home again, where there’s ice and bathtubs. And not quite so many headhunters.”
Hands falling limp at his sides, Takura looked at her. “I live here,” he finally said. “I make my home with the Nuevo and in Manaus. Sometimes—when my boat is actually floating on top of the water instead of several feet underneath—I take tourists up and down the river. I don’t make the kind of money you’re used to, princess, but I don’t starve. Neither will you, and neither will our children.”
Levina gasped. “Don’t you dare bring children into our fake marriage! That’s not fair!”
“Our marriage is as real as this is!” Takura gestured to the tribal paint on his face first and then hers. “To the Nuevo, it’s very real. And I’ll tell you something else, princess. My people have no word for divorce. Not once the marriage is consummated.”
“But…I never said ‘I do.’” Shoving her fingers through her hair again, Levina paced restlessly back and forth along the muddy embankment. “I never said anything at all because I was passed out in a hammock with you and wearing nothing but a dress made of leaves. My parents will never understand, Takura. How am I going to tell them? How am I going to face them? At least I’m not pregnant. For the life of me, that’s the only thing I can think of that would make this whole thing worse!”
There was a loud crack, and suddenly the ground under her dropped several inches. Both she and Takura looked down at the sagging section of embankment (a good eight feet from the edge and twice that in length) that she was standing on.
“Levina.” Takura started toward her, reaching out his hands. “Come here. Right now.”
She turned her head, looking at the drop-off still a good four feet behind her. There was a muffled pop of snapping roots and the separating earth dropped again, very nearly dropping her to her knees as it sagged even lower. Levina snapped around, grabbing for Takura’s hands, but it was already too late. With a mighty rumble, the entire cliff-side suddenly gave way, sucking Levina down with it. She screamed, unable to find solid ground under her scrambling feet and feeling the jolt in her shoulders when Takura’s fast grip arrested her fall.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed, dangling in the mud.
“Hold on.” He started to pull her up, but the ground under his feet suddenly crumbled and they both fell, slipping and sliding in a gush of soil and debris. Somehow, they managed to avoid slamming into any of the big trees that dotted the hillside. Even more miraculous, a rotting log that had become caught up in the landslide as well, missed hitting them as it crashed and rolled right over the top of them.
Ferns and vines whipped at them as they washed down hill, then rose sharply as they crested an even larger drop off. Levina swallowed a mouthful of mud, choking on her scream as suddenly she and Takura and half the now liquid jungle were swept out into empty air. Suddenly finding her voice, Levina gave birth to a ragged scream as they plummeted down and down, belly-flopping painfully and gracelessly into the fast-flowing Rio Negro River.
Levina panicked. She had no air, she couldn’t swim. She fought herself to go stiff the way Takura had taught her, to roll onto her back but the water was black with mud and she didn’t know which way was up.
She flailed, but Takura’s grip on her wrists remained as tight as shackles. He jerked her so hard she felt a wrenching pain shoot up her arms into her shoulders. His foot accidentally caught her stomach, and only then did she realize he was kicking towards the surface. She began kicking then too, and in the next instant, they broke into open air.
She sucked to fill her aching lungs, coughing and choking, as she let herself be dragged through the soupy water toward the nearest shore. Her face was so thickly covered in mud that she could barely see. Only when they bumped into something unyielding did she realize they’d reach
ed the bank.
“Get out of the water,” Takura choked. He crawled up into the brush, dragging her with him until they both had solid ground once more beneath them.
They each collapsed: he, rolling onto his back, chest heaving as he gasped for air; she, coughing hard and wiping at her face just to be able to see again. The river behind them looked like soup it was so saturated with soil and debris. She spat mud. Her teeth felt gritty with it, and her shift was filthy, so tattered now that it barely stayed on her. One sleeve had been entirely ripped away. While her nipple remained covered, the majority of her right breast was now bared. So was a large patch of her stomach and her skirt was torn, not length-wise but at knee level around her right leg from the front all the way to the back, leaving the excess to hang like an unfinished hem. It tangled around her feet. She had to work to get them free again.
Wiping her hands in the grass, she reached for a broad leaf to wipe her face. Blinking blearily, she looked at Takura, then turned and as discretely as possible blew the mud out of her nose.
“Are you hurt?” Takura mumbled, exhausted.
Levina shook her head, and then because his mud-covered eyes were closed, said, “I don’t think so.”
She struggled to stand.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he said.
In slow, shuffling movements, Levina turned around. She looked down at herself in despair and then peered into the shadows around them. She wiped at her eyes again, but her arms and hands were as filthy as her face. Still, even with mud thick upon her lashes, when she looked again, it didn’t change what she could see. There were faces in the shadows. Little brown faces, topped with thick shocks of black hair and bright orange and yellow feathered headbands.
She took two hesitant steps toward them and, with dark eyes glittering, one of the faces separated itself from the rest. It was a man, slender and not quite as tall as she was. He was almost naked, wearing only a vine belt around his waist and a long, thin gourd over his private parts. In one hand, he held a very capable looking knife, but it was what he wore around his neck that caught Levina’s attention and held it.
Dangling by its hair like a shriveled sort of amulet, its eyes and mouth sewn shut, was a shrunken human head.
CHAPTER NINE
Levina walked a winding uphill trail into the Jivaro village, led along by tightly bound wrists and a short leash that subsequently attached her to the warrior ahead of her. The ropes cut into her wrists, but Levina wasn’t inclined to complain. At least she was walking.
Takura’s wrists were also tied. So were his ankles, leaving him to be carried up that same hill trussed like a pig on a long pole that was balanced on the shoulders of the four warriors who carried him. They were smiling. Laughing, even, and no one had gone out of their way to be cruel to either Takura (despite his bonds) or her. Maybe she was reading the situation wrong, but that gave Levina hope that maybe things wouldn’t turn out too badly.
Compared to the Neuvo, the Jivaro had more tribesmen but larger and fewer huts. A cry went up when the hunters returned and the villagers got their first glimpse of outsiders among them. Men, busy at their weaving looms, stopped what they were doing and came to investigate. Children gathered in doorways or scampered down the path to get a closer look. Women paused, giving her nervous glances as she was led past, but then quickly returned to the chore at hand: cooking, cleaning, working in small garden plots or carrying heavy basket loads in or out of the village.
The women were the only ones who did not abandon their tasks, and at first glance, Levina could understand why. They seemed to be saddled with the lion’s share of it, and nothing they did looked easy. They wore the sun, the rain and the hardness of their existence in the lines on their faces. Even the younger women looked old. If Levina weren’t so scared, she’d have felt for each and every one of them.
But she was scared. She had no idea what was going to happen next, and she dreaded that fast approaching inevitability when she knew she would find out.
“Don’t struggle,” Takura had told her as they’d bound him to that pole. “Don’t scream or fight in anyway. Don’t even give them angry looks, princess, or they will take your head off.”
That they might take her head anyway Levina knew without needing to be told. Unable to help it, she looked back but caught only reassuring glimpses of Takura’s trussed-up feet before several Jivaro warriors closed in behind her, nudging at her back to keep her walking. But she felt better knowing Takura was still behind her. At least she wouldn’t have to go through this alone.
She was immediately ashamed of herself for the utter selfishness of that feeling. Any other woman would want the man she loved to get away.
Levina stumbled and almost stopped walking. A fist, hard and cold like ice, gripped her insides, squeezing so hard that for a moment, she didn’t think she could breathe.
She loved Takuara.
When had that happened? How had that happened?
Dark hands gripped her arms on both sides, propelling her up the path. She was pushed through the small village to a large bamboo hut where a handful of men were clustered around two elders, both of whom sat cross-legged in the dirt, drinking from the bowl of a shared coconut shell as they watched the procession draw near. The old men leaned together, gesturing between her and Takura and one nodded.
Pulled to a stop before that hut, the hands that clutched her pushed at Levina until she dropped to her knees. Within seconds, Takura was dropped beside her, flat on his back and still tied to that pole. There was no doubt they were the main objects of curiosity and, from some, even open hostility. And yet, when the returning warriors separated themselves from around Levina to join the others in the shade of the hut and share sips from that common cup, neither she nor Takura became the topic of the immediate conversation. That honor fell to the five newly shrunken heads that the warriors held aloft, proudly displaying their trophies, letting them dangle for all to see from lengths of their own jet black hair.
The Jivaro erupted in cheers of exhilaration. The warriors were joyfully slapped and shaken in congratulation. Some women were weeping, but not with sorrow; to Levina, it looked more like a show of extreme relief.
Lying beside her, she felt Takura nudge the side of her leg ever so faintly with his knee. When she glanced down at him, he wasn’t looking at her but at the two elders. And he wasn’t just watching, either. The flexing of his muscles was so slight, if she hadn’t been perched so close to him and staring right at him, she might never have noticed that he was moving his hands, working at his bonds, trying to get free. His knee nudged at her again. He was doing the same with his feet. His eyes never once drifted her way.
“Don’t look at me,” he said very softly under his breath.
Levina quickly looked as far away from him as she could. She glanced at her tied wrists. She hadn’t even thought to try and get out of her bonds. Furtively, she tried to mimic what Takura was doing, but the jungle-made ropes never budged. Maybe he was rubbing the fibers against the pole, gradually causing them to fray. She resisted the temptation to sneak another peek to check.
“Don’t,” Takura whispered. “Be still.”
Levina stopped straining and watched their captors instead. That communal cup was winding its way through the returned warriors and was now being passed outside the hut to the three men standing guard around Takura and Levina. Women were coming up the path behind her, bearing more cups and several gourd pitchers, and the alcohol was distributed freely, even to the children who darted in amongst the men to get closer looks at the trophy heads.
“What are they doing?” Levina whispered.
“Celebrating the success of the raid.” Takura tipped his head back, eyeing the warriors drinking just behind them. One had his chest puffed out, making wide gestures with his arm. Levina didn’t need to understand the language to recognize a boasting stance when she saw one.
By now, even the women had stopped what they were doing and gathered to listen. No o
ne was looking at her or Takura, though. In fact, they seemed to be making a point of not looking at them. And then Levina saw him.
He came out of the shadows of the hut behind the elders, his dark cheeks streaked by twin lines of scarlet paint. His headdress was slightly larger than any of the others, elaborated by a single extra band of yellow and red feathers. With no expression on his somber face, he moved through the gathering, stepping around or between men, unhurried and ignoring Takura completely as he came to get a closer look at her.
“Takura,” Levina whispered when he lowered himself to squat before her, hands briefly resting on his knees, simply staring at her.
“Don’t move.” Beside her, Takura had fallen tense and motionless. “No matter what he does, don’t fight him and don’t scream.”
It was a good thing she was already down on the ground. Levina felt her knees go weak. “What do you mean? What does that mean? Why would I scre—” Levina clamped her mouth shut when the native pulled his knife from his belt. His black eyes roved her then, looking up at her hair and down at her clothes. She was so filthy it was a wonder he could tell she was white. Or female.
Or human.
When he reached for her, sheer instinct had her flinching back, but Levina caught herself and she managed to hold herself stiff and still after that. Her eyes bounced between the Jivaro and the edge of that knife as he reached for her, placing his hand flat on her chest between the mounds of her breasts. He felt the beating of her nervous heart and then fingered the muddy cloth of her chemise. Cutting away a strip of tattered lace, he brought it to his nose and breathed in. He looked at her again, then at her hair. Discarding the lace, he smoothed his fingers over the muddy tangles, down past her face to her shoulders. Picking up a strand, he rolled the lock between his fingers until the dirt flecked and fell away.
He stopped, staring at the copper-red color for a very long time. Levina had just long enough to wonder if he’d been expecting to see blonde, when he suddenly brought the knife right up to her face. She mewed. It was the only sound she had time to make before—snick!—he cut that lock of hair from her.