by JoAnn Ross
“Liar.” He leaned back just enough to look down into her unfocused eyes. “I don′t suppose you’d be willing to kiss me and tell me that.”
“Ah, another test.” She smiled up at him as her vision cleared. “I’ve always been very good at tests.”
He smiled back, enjoying this flirtatious moment. Enjoying her. “So have I. Which should make this even more interesting.”
His mouth was warm as it claimed hers, his body hard against her softly yielding one, his arms so strong, so right, as they encircled her and drew her even closer. How was it, she wondered when she heard his husky moan of pleasure mingled with a deep male need, that this man could make her feel both soft and strong all at the same time?
Practically purring herself, she lifted her arms and slid her fingers through his hair—thick, shaggy silk. “We can’t do this.”
“I’d say we’re doing it pretty damn well.” Without taking his mouth from hers, he lifted her off her feet, holding her tight against him.
“It’s a mistake.” With her legs wrapped around him, she began scattering a blizzard of kisses over his throat, his face—that rugged, gorgeous face.
“That’s your opinion.” The way she had him in a vice grip between those long coltish legs made him feel about to explode. “Personally, I think it’s long overdue.”
She heard a thundering of bass percussion and realized it wasn’t her heart, but the pounding of tribal drums. “The festival...”
“Screw the festival.” His hands were beneath her skirt, his fingers digging into the silky skin bared by the high cut of her cotton panties. “It’s not real, anyway.”
She gasped at his intimate touch, at the way he was grinding against her.
“Stay here, Kate.” Alec realized he was on the verge of begging. Worse yet, he didn’t care. “Stay with me.” He braced his feet. Then, lifting her still higher, he put his mouth on her breast, dampening the cotton. “Stay here where you belong.”
Oh, how she wanted to! As much as she’d ever wanted anything in her life. Her need for him was every bit as strong as her need to breathe. She’d never felt so defenseless.
“I can’t.” She dragged in a painful breath. “You promised, Alec. We’re getting a divorce and you’re coming to New York with me.”
“Come with me instead.” He moved to her other breast, doing things with his mouth and teeth that had her trembling like a willow in a hurricane. “I’ll take you places you’ve never been, Kate. Wonderful, magical places.”
Of that she had not a single doubt. She also still believed, deep down inside, that sex—even the hottest, most thrilling of her life—wasn′t anything to base a long-term commitment on.
“Oh, Alec.” She dragged her mouth away from his. “Don’t you see? I want you, too. So much I can’t bear it. But it’s not enough.”
He went as still as stone, then slowly lowered her back to the ground. As she stood there, still held tight against his rock-hard body, Kate could feel him garnering control, nerve by nerve, muscle by muscle.
He would, Alec assured himself as he gathered up the scattered threads of his patience, maintain his control if it killed him. “Your call.”
His voice was distant, but roughened with a hunger K.J. was feeling herself.
She placed a conciliatory hand on his arm and felt the muscle turn to a boulder beneath her fingertips. “I′m sorry.”
Alec couldn’t decide whether to curse her or himself. In the end he did neither. “You don’t have to apologize, Katherine Jeanne. It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.”
“It’s also a woman’s responsibility not to promise things she’s not willing to carry out.”
As he looked down into her miserable face, Alec felt his irritation fading away. Sympathy stirred. “Are you always this tough on yourself?”
“There are rules.” She briefly closed her eyes at the tender touch of his fingers skimming up her cheekbone. “Sensible people follow them.”
He wondered if that was his Kate talking, or her pessimistic little voice. “And lose out on a helluva lot of fun in the meantime.” Because it was easier to laugh than to cry, he shook his head and managed a crooked smile. “Now, before I put us to another test, we’d better get going.”
Kate opened her mouth to thank him, but something hard and flinty in his eyes stopped her. She merely nodded instead and smoothed the rumpled cotton beneath her hands.
Alec watched those lily-white hands move from her chest to her hips, and felt a now-familiar surge of need.
As they left the hut, he couldn’t decide which of them was crazier. Then decided it probably didn’t matter, since they were both undoubtedly flat-out nuts.
13
AS THEY WALKED across the village square, the equatorial sun was melting into a glorious El Greco landscape of shimmering blues and blinding oranges. A young boy, no more than six or seven, ran in front of them, a brilliant cockatoo perched on his shoulder.
“If I’d given it any thought, I would have imagined the jungle being totally green,” K.J. murmured. “But the color is almost blinding. I feel like Dorothy, when she landed in Oz and suddenly everything went from black-and-white to Technicolor.”
“It is dazzling,” Alec agreed. “And, as stubborn as it is about giving up its secrets, a part of it gets into your blood.”
“That sounds suspiciously as if you’re considering staying.”
“Nah. I’ll probably come back, if for no other reason than to check in and see how Rafael’s doing and play uncle to his kids, when he finally settles down and has some. But once I find the barge, I’ve got a book to write. And a Viking ship loaded with plundered Celtic artifacts to recover off the coast of Lapland.”
Once again, K.J. thought how much like her father Alec was. George Campbell would not only have liked her husband, he would have respected him as well. He also, she suspected, would not have been happy about her choice to travel a safer, more secure path in life.
However, she thought with a quick flash of Campbell temper, if her father had wanted her to be more daring, then he should have managed to stay alive long enough to act as a role model, rather than sending her into the clutches of the grim and always proper mother he’d been estranged from for years before K.J. was even born.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Alec murmured.
“I was just thinking about my father and how excited he would have been about tonight.” She only hoped she could do her legacy justice.
“I wish I could have met him.”
“He would have liked you.”
“Even after I took his baby girl away?”
K.J. returned his smile. “All you’d have to do is praise his work and he’d be putty in your hands.” As she was.
“That would be easy enough.” Since the sun had set, she’d left her hat back at the hut, allowing him to drop a quick friendly kiss atop her head. “Even easier would be praising him on his lovely daughter.”
Fortunately, their arrival at the lodge, where Rafael was waiting to greet them, precluded K.J. from having to answer that flattering statement.
The huge communal ceremonial lodge, Alec told K.J., had, like the sleeping lodge, been built with government grants Rafael had acquired. The men sat cross-legged on reed mats on one side of the oval room, the women and children on another. They were all adorned with body paint, which Alec explained was believed to invoke friendly spirits.
At the far end of the large space was a group of young, half-naked adolescent girls whose hair had been cut short, which, Alec told her, signaled their arrival at the threshold of womanhood.
“That coming of age ceremony is one of the most important of the tribal cycle,” he murmured as they took their place among the group of Europeans and Americans who’d been given positions of honor on the east—and thus more holy—side of the lodge. “Even more important than the marriage rite.”
“Which means it isn’t for public display?”
“Exactly.”
>
K.J. nodded her approval. “I’m glad. That’s a very personal time for a girl. I’d feel as if I were intruding.”
Alec was pleased by her instant understanding and wondered how much of her ability to so quickly accept other cultures came from spending her first nine years with her gypsy parents.
Apparently believing that a well-fed audience was a receptive audience, the tribe had prepared a feast for their visitors.
Still having secretly feared being served termite appetizers, K.J. was relieved when the food was not only vaguely familiar, but delicious. The feast began with slices of smoked fish surrounded by sweet black grapes that were nearly the size of golf balls. While K.J. had been exploring the river with Alec, the women had wrapped bananas and manioc cakes in wild banana leaves and cooked them among fireheated stones.
A tapir—or wild pig—had been roasted to a turn in a pit and went perfectly with the stone-cooked sweet potatoes. K.J. also found the mutum, which was the size of a wild turkey and served with a side of boiled rice, delicious. She did, however, politely pass on the armadillo that had been cooked in its shell.
“This punch is absolutely delicious,” K.J. said as she smilingly accepted another gourdful of bright orange fruit punch from a loincloth-clad waiter wearing a necklace of bright macaw feathers. She took an appreciative sip. “What’s it made of, anyway?” It tasted vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
“It’s from the pupunha palm—or peach palm. With some coconut milk mixed in.”
“That explains it.” She nodded. “It’s like a piña colada. With peaches instead of pineapple. I’m going to have to get the recipe.”
Alec wondered how she’d feel if she knew the fruit was prepared by first being masticated by the old, toothless women of the tribe, who’d then spit the mash into a dugout canoe, where it was covered with palm leaves and allowed to ferment in the heat.
“I’d be a little careful,” he warned. “It packs quite a punch.”
“I’m fine.” She smiled up at him. “Better than fine.” She leaned back on her elbows beside him. “I can’t remember when I’ve felt so relaxed.”
“That probably has something to do with the fact that that’s your third gourd of pupunha.”
“That’s not it at all.” Her smile widened and she aimed a kiss at his cheek that missed and hit his jaw. “It’s getting away from the city.”
She sighed happily as she watched a man toss something onto the fire, which had burned down to embers. An incense-scented cloud rose from the hot rocks, then drifted over the room like wisps of fog.
When the man sat down again, a group of children rose and began to march around the oval circle of onlookers. They were, she realized, the tribal orchestra. Three boys were playing amazingly well on reed flutes, while four others were blowing into hard palms, creating an oboelike sound. A pair of boys on the brink of adolescence pounded barehanded on hollow drums, setting the pace for the dancers, who’d entered the lodge.
Young women dressed in skirts of shredded tree bark and wristlets and anklets of bright feathers moved to the pulsing rhythm, their feet shuffling on the packed dirt floor, their hips swaying in a hulalike motion. Accustomed to the Western female fanaticism concerning a perfect Barbie doll body, K.J. was envious at the way they seemed so unconcerned about their near nakedness. Some tummies were perhaps more rounded than the Western ideal, some breasts not as pert. But from their sensual movements and the bright light of feminine confidence in their flashing dark eyes, K.J. suspected none of them suffered any body-image insecurity.
And why should they? she mused, remembering what Alec had told her about this being a matriarchal society. Since they possessed the power, they could also create the ideal of feminine beauty in their own individual image.
That thought had her wondering if in this culture, perhaps it was the men who had to worry about staying fit and virile. If so, she decided, skimming a surreptitious sideways glance at the man lounging beside her, Alec would undoubtedly be considered the most desirable male in the village. Which her little encounter with Sonia yesterday had already suggested.
And speaking of Sonia . . . K.J. was not at all pleased by the way she’d positioned herself near them, looking for all the world like some sort of lush female fertility statue come to life.
An older man, painted in maroon dye, joined the women at the center of the circle and began to chant. He was wearing leglets of hollow nuts that rattled as he shuffled his feet. What Alec told K.J. were armadillo claws around his wrists and shiny yellow jaguar teeth around his neck reminded K.J. uncomfortably of her middle-of-the-night encounter. The man was wearing a second necklace—a single, highly polished pink quartz pendant strung on twine.
“That’s considered a source of power,” Alec explained, ”since he found it while wandering lost during his dream-journey-the spiritual, hallucinogenic trip all would-be medicine men have to survive before being allowed to practice their spiritual arts.”
The pace of the music quickened. The medicine man’s chanting grew louder. In his left hand he began whirling a reed stick that, when hit with his right hand, created a high singing sound that vibrated through the smoky lodge. The women’s dance had become a blatant invitation as they swayed seductively in front of the men, eyes flashing sensual messages that backed up the erotic motion of their hips.
Each time a man jumped up, eager to dance with a woman, he faced a possible rebuff. Those who were allowed to join in the dance were celebrated with a roar of approval from the crowd.
It was soon apparent that the visitors were not going to be left on the sidelines as mere observers. While the young women danced, older ones worked the perimeter of the crowd, urging the civilizadas to their feet. One girl, in her early twenties, with a waist-length fall of platinum blond hair, was the first to succumb, tossing off her T-shirt and bra with abandonment. As she laughed and teased the man who was obviously her boyfriend, the crowd applauded both her daring and her skill.
Other women followed. And although a very strong part of K.J. yearned to join them, her little voice had returned to keep her in her place.
It’s a disgraceful display of things that should be kept private between a man and a woman, it said in that voice that was so eerily like her grandmother’s. For not the first time K.J. was forced to wonder how on earth Helen Campbell had ever loosened up enough to engage in the sex necessary to have a son.
But K.J. didn′t think it was all that disgraceful. On the contrary, she mused, as she sipped on another gourd of the tasty punch, the erotic, hedonistic dance was the closest thing to how she felt whenever Alec touched her. Kissed her. Even looked at her with those wicked silver eyes. Which was why, when a trio of laughing women ganged up on her, pulling her to her feet and encouraging her to lose herself in the moment, she didn’t even try to argue.
The unrelenting beat of the drums echoed all the way to the marrow of her bones; the sexy wail of the handcrafted reed instruments set her blood thrumming in her veins. And the way Alec was looking at her—only at her—made her body glow with an inner heat that had nothing to do with the smoldering coals and hot rocks.
She was no longer Katherine Jeanne Campbell, the girl who always got straight A’s and had won the state champion debating medal. She was no longer the nervous, swept-away-by-romance bride who’d married a man who could have stepped from the pages of the books she edited.
She was Woman. An all-powerful female who felt not the slightest need to hide her sexuality beneath drab suits and tidy hairdos. She was a woman who knew what she wanted and had no qualms about going after her perfect mate. After Alec.
As she stood in front of him, her eyes locked on his, Alec belatedly realized he’d made a tactical battlefield error. He’d brought Kate here tonight to loosen her up. In that, at least, he’d been successful.
Better than successful, he thought as she slipped the flowered cotton dress off one shoulder with a flirtatious flair that could have put Gypsy
Rose Lee to shame. If she was any looser, she wouldn’t be able to stand up. Or to keep moving her slender hips in a way that made him want to grab hold and go along for the wild ride. He’d planned to seduce his wife tonight; what he hadn’t counted on was her seducing him.
She languidly lifted her arms to comb her fingers through the wild spirals of fiery curls in a way that thrust her breasts invitingly toward him, allowing him to observe the way the nipples were pressing against the thin material. Alec felt his heart pounding in his head, his ears. His loins.
Recklessness blazed in her eyes, radiated from the bump and grind of her hips. Alec never would have guessed that she’d even known how to move that way.
“Good God, Kate.” It was half curse, half groan.
“What’s the matter, Alec?” She leaned toward him, her breasts at eye level as she cupped his face between her silky smooth palms. “Does it disturb your male ego to surrender control?” She touched her tongue against the tip of her index finger, then skimmed it along the seam of his lips. The fingertip was wet, his skin was hot; Alec imagined he could hear the resulting hiss of steam.
“Actually . . .” He swallowed past the knot of lust when the word came out sounding half-choked. “Actually, I’m enjoying the show.”
“I′m glad.” Her smile was nothing less than beatific. It was also dangerous. Alec figured that Salome must have looked a lot like Kate while she’d been discarding all those veils. Right before she’d demanded the Baptist’s head on a platter. Kate touched her mouth against Alec’s, allowed a brief tangle of tongues, then backed away again like the seductress she’d amazingly metamorphosed into. “I want you to enjoy yourself tonight, Alec.”
She began to move again, her hands caressing their way down her sides, over the slight flare of hips and across her thighs in a way that had him almost swallowing his tongue. “I intend for both of us to enjoy ourselves.”
Her eyes holding his with the sheer strength of her feminine will, she slipped the dress off the other shoulder. It was now clinging to the crests of her breasts in a way that had a hot, virile hunger pumping through his blood. He wanted to rip her dress off her, cup her breasts in his hands, take them into his mouth and suck hard enough to make her cry out.