"Did you feel a bite? Here? Here? Oh…" Her gaze locked on his left shoulder. "Dear God!"
Carlos swallowed.
"It's only a scrape," she said with a rush of relief, resuming her intent scrutiny. When she tugged at the hem of his T-shirt, Carlos decided he'd better call a halt before she stripped him down to the buff.
"I wasn't bitten." He snagged her wrists just above the bandages. "I caught the thing right behind the head. It couldn't get at me."
"Are you sure?"
"I'm sure."
Her throat still clogged with fear, Margarita stared at him. He hadn't been bitten. He was okay. It took several shattering moments for her mind to absorb those basic facts.
The instant it did, delayed reaction set in. A giant shudder racked her, starting in her upper torso and clawing its way downward. Another, even longer and harder than the first, followed. Her straining thighs quivered, then gave out completely. Plopping on her heels, she did something she hadn't done since she was a little girl.
She burst into tears.
Great, sloppy, gulping sobs that tore at her chest and throat.
"Rita." Alarm skittered across Carlos's face. "Don't cry. It's all right."
"No, it's not!"
Pulling a hand free, she pounded on his chest as though it was his fault the foot-long rat had decided to hitch a ride in her backpack.
"The thing might have had rabies. You might have died," she wailed, thumping his chest again. "Right here, before my eyes."
"Dios!" He snatched her wrist once more. "You just took off its head with a shot few marks-men could make and now you cry?"
"Don't talk about it! Don't talk at all. Just…" Tears streaming down her cheeks, she flung herself forward. "Just kiss me."
Still sobbing, she locked her mouth on his. It wasn't the neatest kiss Carlos had ever given or received. Noses bumped. Chins scraped. Her squirming body almost slithered off his chest. One knee came down between his thighs, a little to close to his groin for comfort.
With a grunt, he locked an arm around her waist and rolled them both over. The cumbersome vest she'd unclasped a few moments ago slid off his shoulder. Impatiently, he yanked free of it and they rolled again, legs tangling, mouths fused. She strained against him, her body hot and slick against his.
It was a wild mating of tongues and teeth and torsos. Carlos's mind emptied of every thought but Margarita, every sensation but Margarita. The curve of her waist under his hand. The tangle of rain-damp hair that whipped around them with every twisting turn.
He made a last attempt at sanity and tried to pull back. She wouldn't let him put so much as an inch between them.
Her hands frantic, she dragged his T-shirt up and over his head. Her mouth was hot on his skin, her teeth sharp as they scraped the corded muscles of his shoulder.
This wasn't what he wanted for her. The thought rifled through his mind even as he attacked the buttons of the oversize fatigue shirt she'd adopted as her own. Every civilized instinct in his body recoiled from taking her like this. On the ground. Rolling on the dank earth like frenzied beings. But when she wiggled her arms out of the shirt he'd all but ripped from her back, he needed only one glimpse of the scrap of red lace covering her breasts to know it, too, had to go.
Along with her jeans. And the tiny triangle of red beneath. When the denim and silk caught on her boots, trapping her legs together, Carlos had to fight the urge to whip out his machete and slash through the fabric.
His heart was slamming against his chest by the time he'd stripped her down to a wild mass of blue-black hair, a tiny oval locket and an expanse of skin so creamy and smooth his throat closed. The sight of her violet eyes dark with hunger and the tips of her breasts hardened to points fired a need so deep and savage he rolled away and surged to his feet.
"What are you doing?"
Dismay at his abrupt withdrawal blanked her face until his hands went to his belt. In less than a minute, he'd shed his clothing. All trappings of civilization went with them. He was on fire to mate with the woman sprawled naked on layers of green, her head back, her tangled hair sweeping the ground. Instinct made him place the Beretta and machete within easy reach atop their pile of clothing. An even deeper instinct brought him to stand beside her, giving her one last chance to retreat before he claimed her.
For a moment, only a moment, a tiny alarm sounded in the back of Margarita's mind. She almost cowered before the sun-bronzed warrior towering over her. The dim light did little to disguise the hard planes and contours of his body. Or the rigid shaft that jutted from the thatch of dark hair at his groin. Her throat went dry even as damp heat burned between her legs.
He looked so fierce. As though he wanted to warn her things were about to change irrevocably between them.
She didn't need a warning. She was all too aware that she and Carlos were about to cross an invisible line. What waited for them on the other side?
She couldn't guess, and at that moment couldn't summon the will to even try. All she wanted was to slide her palms over those corded muscles. To taste again his mouth on hers and feel him plunge into her with all the power of his magnificent body. Silencing the last tiny warning bell, she yielded to all that was feminine in her and curved her lips in deliberate invitation.
The invisible restraints holding Carlos snapped. With a growl, he sank to his knees. His fists wrapped around her ankles, spread her legs. The glitter in his eyes primed her more than any sophisticated foreplay could ever have done. Her womb clenched. She was ready for him, so ready she ground out a sound that was part plea, part angry demand.
The strangled cry brought him surging forward. In one brutally swift, incredibly skilled move, he seated himself between her thighs, and thrust into her. With the first lunge, her hips slammed into the springy earth. With the second, her back arched.
Carlos used her body's leverage to diabolical advantage. Fisting his hands in her hair, he held her head and kept her hips canted at exactly the right angle for him to ram home with every flex of his thighs. Hoarse cries of pleasure ripped from the back of her throat, lost in the sounds that rose from his chest. Wrapping her legs around his lean flanks and her hands around the satiny steel of his arms, she matched him thrust for thrust.
Margarita had never known such blinding, shattering pleasure. It coiled at her core, pulsed outward like a strobe light gone berserk. Desperately, she tried to hold it back.
Not now! Not yet!
She didn't realize she'd moaned the words aloud until Carlos dragged up his head.
"Yes, now." He locked his thighs, filling her so completely she gasped. "Open your eyes, querida. I want to watch your pleasure take you."
He waited until she'd focused her spinning senses enough to see his face before he angled one hip and reached between their sweat-slick bodies. With his thumb and fingers exerting wicked pressure, he drew back, then slid into her again. And again.
Margarita almost crawled out of her skin. Her nails dug into his arms. Her body heaved upward. Even then she might have held out for another moment or two if he hadn't contorted just enough to take one of her nipples in his mouth. Three days' growth of beard scraped against her tender skin. His teeth tortured the engorged tip of her breast.
"Carlos! In the name of—Oh!"
She arched, going taut as a drawn bow. White heat lanced into her belly.
In some distant corner of her mind, she thought she heard a howler monkey's hoarse, guttural cry. Shocked, she realized the animal scream had come from her. A half second later, she splintered into a thousand pieces.
With a savage sound that swallowed hers, Carlos flexed his thighs, plunged deep and rode the crest of her climax to his own.
* * *
"I'm sorry."
The husky apology dragged Margarita from her semi-stupor. Lifting heavy lids, she blinked at the whisker-roughened face mere inches from her own.
"Why?"
"I shouldn't have…I've never…" Disgust rippled over his fea
tures. "I've never lost control like that."
She didn't have the heart to tell him she would have torn out his liver with her bare hands if he'd held back another moment.
"Did I hurt you, Rita?"
"No," she whispered, her voice still raw from the cries that had ripped from her throat.
He rolled off her, his body as taut as hers was limp. "The next time will be better."
Margarita's mind boggled at the thought. She couldn't imagine anything better. She was about to ask if he was serious when the sight of his tight buns trapped the words in her throat.
They were lean and muscular and only a shade less coppery than the rest of him. She was trying to imagine how he'd managed that all-over tan when he scooped up his clothes and shook them a couple times to dislodge any relatives of the now-deceased slug rat.
"The next time we make love, it will be in a bed," he promised grimly, yanking on his pants.
That warning bell in Margarita's mind started pinging again. She hadn't even recovered from this cataclysmic encounter and already he was talking about the next. Disconcerted, she reached for the fatigue shirt and shoved her arms into the sleeves.
"We'll take it slow," he vowed as he tugged on his black T-shirt. "So slow and sweet you'll want to die of it."
"I came pretty close to rigor mortis this time."
He didn't appear to appreciate her flippancy. If anything, the tight cast to his face grew more pronounced as he pulled on his socks and boots.
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves here," she said with what she hoped was a bright smile. She pushed to her feet, determined to defuse what was becoming a decidedly awkward moment. "We still have several miles of jungle to get through before we talk about what happens when we're out of it."
He shot her a swift look. Her stomach sinking, Margarita saw centuries of proud Madrileñan male in the rigid set of his jaw.
"I'm not some penniless cane cutter or rummed-up sailor off a foreign ship. I won't rut with you in the dirt, hitch up my pants and go contentedly on my way."
"Oh, for heaven's sake!" Exasperated, she raked a hand through her tangled hair. "This is the twenty-first century, you know. We don't have to set up housekeeping together just because we made love once."
"Once?" Cool, sophisticated Carlos made a distinctly rude sound. "If you think either of us will stop at once, you're even more rattled than I am at this point."
He had that right. From the moment that rat had crawled onto her shoulder, Margarita had plunged from one wild emotion to another. Fear for herself. Terror for Carlos. Joyous relief. Searing lust. And something deeper, something she couldn't define yet, even to herself. She needed time to sort through the tumult. Time to understand why the prospect of sharing a bed and a house with Carlos raised shivers all up and down her spine.
"This conversation is getting us nowhere," she announced. She scooped up her panties, gave them a cautionary shake, then waited for Carlos to turn away so she could dress.
To her consternation, he refused to take the hint. When she hesitated, his grin held just enough of a mocking edge to grate on her nerves.
"As you pointed out, this is the twenty-first century."
His sardonic reminder brought a flush to her cheeks, which warmed even more when Carlos let his gaze drift from the bits of moss decorating her hair to the gaping front of her shirt.
How ludicrous! Not ten minutes ago, they had fused in the most elemental way a man and woman can. Why in heaven's name did she now feel so suddenly, absurdly shy?
Only after she'd fumbled the shirt buttons into the holes did Margarita appreciate that stripping down in the heat of passion was one thing. Putting her clothes on while being watched by the man who'd just taken her apart, nerve by nerve, kiss by kiss, was something else again.
Nor did it help her composure when he lifted a smug, all too knowing brow. "Some things don't change much over time, do they?"
With that obscure and thoroughly maddening remark, he gathered his vest and the machete and strolled far enough away to afford her an illusion of privacy.
But not so far that she didn't catch the way his head whipped around when a raucous screech sounded in the distance. The not-very-distant distance.
Another screech followed the first. In the next instant, a clamorous din assaulted her ears as flocks of startled birds flapped through the trees. With a low curse, Carlos dragged on his vest and threw a low, urgent command over his shoulder.
"Get your boots on!"
As if she needed the spur.
She was stamping them on when a flurry of movement shook the branches high above her. Craning her neck, Margarita spotted a dozen or so small, white-faced creatures flying through the trees.
Spider monkeys. A whole troop of them. In frantic flight. Something must have alerted them to danger. Her heart thumping, she grabbed her other boot. She had it half laced when Carlos crouched at her side. Swiftly, he placed the Beretta and two spare ammo clips on the ground beside her, then plowed his hand through the layers of vegetation. It came up oozing black mud.
"I'm going back."
She nodded, her fingers tugging frantically at the tangled laces.
"I'll leave the automatic with you." A flash of white teeth showed through the streaks of mud. "Just make sure you don't put a bullet between my eyes by mistake when I come back."
"If I put a bullet between your eyes, it won't be by mistake."
With swift efficiency, she ejected the magazine, checked its load and slapped it into place. Scooping up the spare clips, she scrambled to her feet.
"Let's go."
The brief grin snapped off his face. "You're not going anywhere."
Giving that bit of idiocy the total lack of response it deserved, she squinted upward. Hazy light filtered through the trees at a decided angle.
"We've got another half hour of light, maybe less. Since you're the one with the night-vision goggles, you'd better take the point."
"Dammit, I don't have time to argue with you."
"Who's arguing? Move out, commandante."
Carlos took one look at her face and realized his choices had narrowed to moving out as instructed or clipping her on the jaw and leaving her unconscious body hidden behind a rotting log.
She read his mind with unerring accuracy. "Don't even think about it," she warned softly. "I've got the gun, remember?"
He hesitated only another moment, then lifted his hand and swiped the remaining mud across her forehead and down her cheeks. Grimacing, she spit out the bits that oozed into her mouth.
His eyes were grim as he swung around to the trail he'd hacked through the vines what now seemed like hours ago.
"Stay to the left of the trail and at least twenty yards to the rear. I'll take the right. Listen for my signal." He pushed air through his teeth in a dry, chirpy rattle. "If you hear that call, get facedown in the mud and stay there unless I call for backup."
Margarita nodded. She might not have spent her years with SPEAR as a field operative, but she'd trained with some of the best agents in the business and knew the value of teamwork in situations like this. She wasn't going to jeopardize Carlos's life or her own with uncoordinated or unnecessary heroics.
He kissed her, hard, then melted into the darkening green beside the trail. She took the other side, the Beretta cocked and ready. Keeping low, she moved as silently as possible. She could only sense Carlos ahead of her, a stealthy presence in the gloom. Her ears strained to pick up the rustle of leaves. Her eyes searched for the slightest movement of tall, feathery ferns.
She had no idea how far they backtracked. Fifty tortuous yards. Seventy-five at most. She had just swiped the sweat from her eyes when she heard a swift, rattling chirp.
Margarita dropped like a stone.
Chapter 8
Margarita sprawled facedown in the dank vegetation, every sense on full alert. Her heart hammering, she kept herself immobile for what seemed like forever. So long, in fact, a tiny orange frog poked its h
ead out of a clump of moss just inches away and regarded her with wide-eyed curiosity.
Aside from the fearless little amphibian, she might have been alone in the jungle. Utter silence surrounded her. No insects whirred. No bats or birds swooped. Not a good sign, she thought. Not good at all.
At any moment she expected to hear shouts or the rattle of gunfire. Her nerves stretched taut, she was just sliding a hand down to her jeans pocket to make sure the spare ammo clips were easily accessible when a totally unexpected sound drifted through the moisture-laden air.
Laughter. Hearty male laughter.
She blinked. The frog blinked back.
Another deep chortle sent her mind leaping joyously. The squad! Miguel Carreras and the rest of the platoon must have been the ones following their trail. Relief pouring through her, Margarita dug her elbows into the earth and scrambled up. Her jerky movement sent the little orange frog diving for cover.
"It's all right, Rita," Carlos called as she gained her feet.
She pushed past a tangle of vines onto the path, expecting to see the short, stocky lieutenant. Instead, her startled gaze took in a walking cadaver.
The tall, incredibly gaunt stranger sported a battered straw hat, a monstrous pair of drooping gray mustachios and the baggy white cotton shirt and trousers worn by most Madrileñans. Sweeping off his hat, he whistled through the gap made by his missing front teeth.
"Ay. Your woman is most beautiful, commandante."
"Yes, she is."
Ignoring Margarita's hiked brow, Carlos performed the necessary introductions.
"Margarita de las Fuentes, meet Alejandro Benevidez. He's from a village not far from here. Evidently it's too small to be recorded on any map," he added in answer to her unspoken question.
Transferring the Beretta to her left hand, she held out her right. "You can't imagine how happy I am to meet you, Señor Benevidez."
The gangly scarecrow hastily swiped a hand down his pants leg. His horny calluses rubbed rough against her palm. "Please, you must call me Alejandro."
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