The urgency to find him swamped her as it had before, except that this time a nameless fear had joined it.
She was going to lose him forever. She felt it like a crushing weight on her chest.
She didn’t even realize that she’d been drawn by her need to be near him to return to the chamber where she’d first met him until she found herself stumbling along the darkened corridors that led up through the temple. He wasn’t there anymore, she told herself angrily, but she continued to climb the steep corridors that led from one chamber to another until, at last, she found herself standing before the statue.
Her throat closed as she looked up at his image, realizing abruptly what it was that he meant to do, and her fear nearly overwhelmed her. “It didn’t really matter,” she whispered, fighting the wobble in her chin. “I was just too … shallow to realize that it’s you I love, not what you look like.”
When he didn’t answer, she sat down on the cold stone floor at the feet of the statue, covering her face with her hands, struggling to keep from sobbing aloud. “If you could … just give me another chance.”
She thought at first when she noticed the blue light filtering through her fingers that he’d come back, that she would have the chance to convince him not to risk his life for something that was so meaningless. She could see nothing through her tear blurred eyes, though, except that the room was filled with blue light.
“Anka?” she whispered.
He didn’t appear to her, not in any form.
The blue light intensified, filling the room and then began to dim. Her heart nearly failed her when she saw that the light was emanating from the crypt itself.
Leaping to her feet, she rushed to the low wall and peered inside.
The light nearly blinded her. Shielding her eyes the best she could, she tried to peer past the light. Slowly, it congealed in her mind what was happening.
“Don’t!” she cried out. “If you’re doing this for me, please don’t!”
He didn’t answer, but she saw the wrappings burst as the emaciated flesh contained in the rotting material expanded, became smoothly sculpted muscle and tissue. The withered skin became lighter, smoother, tinged with the pink of blood flowing beneath the surface.
A new fear arose as she watched the slow transformation.
The casket that held him was sealed. He would suffocate even if he managed to revitalize the body!
She was casting around for a rock to break the container when it exploded, sending heavy plastic shards outward and every light winked out save for the blue/white energy radiating outward from Anka himself.
Struggling up from the floor where the force of the blast had thrown her, Gaby finally gained her feet. Glass from the shattered lights crunched beneath her feet as she rushed back to the crypt to peer inside.
Her heart seemed to stop in her chest when she looked down at him. He looked just the way she’d always pictured him in her mind … except more handsome if possible, real, solid, alive. He opened his eyes, sucking in a sharp gasp to fill his lungs with air.
Gaby had uttered something between a sob and a laugh when she realized that something was wrong. The blue light was weakening. She could see him without peering at him beneath her lashes to try to battle the bright light.
His eyes were glazed, she realized—with weakness or pain or both.
They closed even as she gasped with sudden, painful fear and launched herself up and over the low wall to reach him.
She fell over him, cutting her knees and palms on the shards of plastic that surrounded him. Ignoring the pain, she scrambled off of him and touched his face, his shoulder. He didn’t respond. Worse, his skin was cooling, his breath becoming more and more shallow.
He was dying, she realized in absolute horror, and it was all her fault! She hadn’t been willing to accept him as he was! Making no effort to stem the sobs that were wrenched from her chest in painful gulps, she struggled to lift his head and shoulders onto her lap. “Don’t go, Anka! Please! Just … let this go! Don’t leave me! Please don’t leave me! I love you!”
“Moonflower,” he said hoarsely, his voice little more than a breath of sound. “I love you, too.”
Chapter Fifteen
Fat fluffy snowflakes drifted downward, joining the growing mound blanketing the world outside. The view from the window above the bath made Gaby shiver despite the hot, bubbling water lapping at her breasts.
At times like this the life she’d had before seemed distant, almost as if it had happened to someone else—which was bizarre she supposed considering the life she had now, the things she’d done.
As scary as it had been, though, to find herself on the wrong side of the law, international law at that, she wasn’t sorry. As unnerving as it had been smuggling her ‘wetback’ out, she would do it again.
Actually, she hadn’t done all that much on that end. Anka had been so weak after he’d made the transition, he’d needed her until he’d finally regained his strength—weeks of recuperation that had made for the worst time of her life. He’d known the city, though, known where he could hide to recover his strength while the militia went crazy searching for the ‘missing’ mummy of the temple.
All she’d had to do was sneak past them to bring him the food and water his body required.
Anka had refused to allow her to risk any more than that, though. She thought he would have refused that much from her if there’d been an alternative. When the time had come to leave, though, he’d dismissed her plans for getting him out of the country and across the border. He’d made his own way, leaving her to gnaw her nails in anxiety until he’d appeared one day on her doorstep—with his treasure, which he’d refused to leave.
He was right. It was his, but the South American government wouldn’t have seen it that way if they’d caught him with it. Fortunately, no one but him had known of its existence. Otherwise there would’ve been a more frantic and widespread search for their missing mummy.
And the treasure had come in handy when they finally managed to move it through the black market and exchange it for actual money.
It had bought the ranch in the wilds of Montana, paid for Anka’s new identity, insured a safe, comfortable life for the two of them.
She still cringed at the ‘life of crime’ she’d had to resort to to protect her family, but she wasn’t sorry she’d done it—not at all. Some things were worth a risk, worth tremendous risks.
“You cannot be cold,” Anka murmured lazily. “I am roasting alive.”
Gaby chuckled, twisting around to look up at his face.
In all the months they’d been together, it still sent a pleasant jolt of surprise and appreciation through her when she met his green eyed gaze. “The water isn’t that hot!” she disputed.
“I am,” he whispered when he’d bent his head to align his lips with her ear.
The comment pleased her, even though she didn’t really believe it. Her belly looked as if she’d stuffed a basketball—or maybe a watermelon—beneath the skin. If he got much bigger, they weren’t going to have to wait for him to make his appearance by the natural route. She was going to pop open like an overripe watermelon.
Anka splayed his hands over the mound in question. When nothing happened after several moments, he thumped it lightly. “Very ripe,” he agreed with a husky chuckle.
Before Gaby could take exception to the comment he slipped his hands upward to cup her bare breasts, massaging them gently. “These too,” he whispered against the soft skin just beneath her ear. “Very nice melons, topped with ripe little cherries.”
Warmth wafted through Gaby that had nothing to do with the hot bath they were soaking in. “You must be hungry,” she teased him.
He caught her hips, lifting her up and settling her on top of his legs. “I am, Moonflower. Hungry for you … always,” he murmured nipping at her shoulder with the sharp edge of his teeth.
“Mmm,” Gaby moaned. “You should do something about that, then. Doctor says
no more fooling around after next week.”
He grunted. “That’s because she doesn’t know how I fool around.”
Gaby twisted her head to look at him with interest. “I thought you didn’t get anything out of doing it that way?”
“Where did you get that idea?” he asked, amusement threading his voice.
Gaby sat up and turned to look at him. “From you.”
He speared his fingers through her hair, dragging her closer and sealing his mouth over hers in a heated, mind drugging kiss. The bud of desire stirred, opening more fully as his taste sent a heady rush through her. “I never said I didn’t get anything out of it,” he whispered, plucking at her lips between each word when he’d lifted his mouth from hers.
“Then why …?” Gaby broke off. It didn’t matter now, but she cringed inside every time she thought about how closely he’d come to dying that day he’d decided nothing would do for her but to resurrect the body he’d abandoned so long ago.
He lifted slightly away to look into her eyes. “Because loving you that way only made me hunger for more—so much so that I was blinded to the risks to you. Because it wasn’t enough to possess your mind and soul. I wanted your body, as well. I wanted to feel my flesh merge with yours. But more than anything, I wanted to unite my life force with yours.”
Gaby felt her throat close with emotion, with both love and heated desire at his words. Pulling his hand from her cheek, she guided it downward between them, over the rounded belly that housed their child to the center of heated need. She stroked his damp hair away from his neck and shoulders as he began to tease her clit with the tip of one finger.
He usually wore it tied at the base of his skull with a band when he was working around their ranch, but when they were alone he wore it down for her, because he knew she loved to run her fingers through his long, silky hair. People stared, of course, on those rare occasions when they went to town, but Anka was oblivious to it, and she didn’t care.
She saw the speculation in their eyes when they looked at him.
The men were thinking he was an Indian, or worse, Hispanic.
The women were thinking about what a lucky, lucky woman she was.
The women were right. She was lucky to have him.
The men …. She shrugged. They’d chosen a Hispanic surname for him when they’d created his identity, but the fact was he wasn’t anything any of these people had ever seen before. He was certainly from South America. He was part Indian, but he was born long before the Spanish invaded South America and even if he hadn’t been, he was still only part Indian. The rest of him was … purely divine.
The End
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