"I'm ready."
Triumph stabbing through him, he swept her into his arms.
Chapter 9
Margarita awoke the next morning to a rare occurrence in the center of the rain forest—sunshine. Glorious, glittering rays. They flooded through the mosquito net draped over Alejandro and Conceptión's bed to pool on the scratchy, handwoven sheets.
Basking like a cat in the golden wash, Margarita lay amid the tangled sheets and listened to the sounds of goat bells tinkling and a rooster crowing his heart out under the house next door. A languid contentment weighted her limbs. Smiling, she lifted her arms in a lazy stretch. An unexpected pull of sore muscles tipped her smile into a grimace.
Madre de Dois! She'd thought three days in the jungle would have loosened every ligament and tendon in her body. Apparently she'd exercised a few she didn't know she had last night.
Or rather, Carlos had.
She turned her head, frowning at the pillow beside hers. The scratchy ticking still bore the indentation from where he'd buried his head in it. He'd rolled out of bed before dawn with a whispered instruction to doze a while yet. Margarita had been only too happy to take him up on the offer. She needed sleep and time to regroup before she faced him in the light of day. Particularly after the incredible night they'd just spent.
Carlos hadn't exaggerated when he'd warned her that they'd take it slow. He was, she'd discovered last night, a master at slow. And tender. And erotic. He'd loved her in ways she'd never imagined, let alone thought to experience. Even now the insides of her thighs chafed from the scrape of his beard.
Her stomach clenched at the memory of how he'd cupped her bottom, lifted her hips and driven her to near madness. Never, ever had she guessed the magic a man could work with his tongue and teeth and wicked, wandering thumbs. Over and over, he'd brought her right to the brink of a shattering climax. Each time, she'd had to bite her lip to keep from screaming out her need. But nothing could hold back her sobs or her pleasure when, finally, he took them both over the edge.
Then, this morning, after what seemed like only moments of exhausted slumber, he'd ignored her sleepy protests and rolled her onto her stomach. Parting her legs, he'd canted her hips to his satisfaction and slid into her still slick depths once again. She'd come awake with the first slow drive. Within moments, she was writhing frantically and urging him to lunge harder, faster.
Carlos, damn him, had refused to hurry his pleasure. Vaguely, Margarita recalled beating her fists against the straw mattress and screeching like a cat with its tail caught in the door when the pleasure took her at last. She could only pray her cries hadn't awakened the whole village.
That hope died a mortified death when Conceptión backed through the oilcloth a short time later carrying a small clay jug in one hand and a heaping plate in the other. She looked surprised to find her guest still in bed.
"Forgive me. I didn't mean to intrude upon you. I heard you, er, come awake with the roosters and thought you might want breakfast."
Margarita's face burned as she patted the sheets in search of her missing nightgown.
"It's under the bed," Conceptión said with a chuckle as she padded across the uneven floor to place her burdens on the table.
Spurred by the tantalizing aroma of hot chocolate, Margarita forgot her embarrassment and dropped the cloud of soft cotton over her head. Feet bare, she joined her hostess at the table. Her taste buds danced with joy when she saw the contents of the high-piled plate.
Mounds of golden fried banana were topped with sour cream made from goat's milk, she guessed. Or perhaps from the milk of the skinny cow she'd glimpsed last night. The inevitable black beans that formed the staple of every Madrileñan meal swam in a pool of thick broth. Her mouth watering, Margarita scooped them up with tortillas still warm from the outdoor oven.
"This is wonderful," she said between hungry bites.
Conceptión accepted the compliment with a smile. "Our cows have no meat on their bones, but they give plenty of milk. If only we could get the milk to market before it sours…"
Shrugging off the impossible task of hauling milk through miles of uncharted jungle, she poured a mixture of clear water and the juice of tart, sour oranges into a mug. Margarita gulped it down, drinking in energy with the tangy liquid.
"I'm making a pig of myself," she said as she rolled another tortilla and dug it into the beans. "I'll have just one more and save the rest for Carlos."
"He ate earlier with the men, before he left."
"Left?" The tortilla halted a few inches from her mouth. "Left for where?"
"He and Alejandro and our little Tomás went back across the river, to see if they can spot those who follow you."
The beans and bananas congealed in a heavy lump in Margarita's stomach. Carlos had gone to hunt down their pursuers, taking only Alejandro and his young grandson…and leaving her safe and snug with the women.
She tossed down the half-eaten tortilla. Anger rifled through her, swift and fierce. He'd taken off without a word to her. Without asking her opinion in the matter or even considering that she might have one.
Damn him! After all they'd been through, all the ground they'd covered together in the past few days, surely she'd earned the right to be consulted.
"They'll be all right," Conceptión said in a reassuring voice, mistaking the reason for her sudden rigidity. "Alejandro knows this corner of the jungle like the back of his hand. He won't let your man walk into a trap."
"Carlos is not my man," Margarita answered tightly. "He's his own man. Very much his own man, apparently."
The older woman's glance darted to the rumpled bed. Her brows rose skeptically, but inbred courtesy kept her from contradicting her guest.
"I will leave you to dress. The rest of the women are just outside, plucking chickens. Come and join us when you will. We'll have a feast tonight in honor of your visit, yes?"
She left Margarita still simmering with anger at Carlos—and now riddled with guilt. These people were so wretchedly poor. She hated for Conceptión to sacrifice her precious chickens but knew better than to wound her pride by protesting.
Although raised to appreciate the comforts that wealth afforded, she was also too much her mother's daughter to sit idle when there was work that needed doing. Maria de las Fuentes had scrubbed floors, boiled laundry in a big black caldron and hoed the kitchen garden on a large ranchero before she won the eye and the heart of the neighboring landowner's son. Proud of the fact that she'd come from the land, she made sure her own brood appreciated the people who tilled and toiled on it.
Quickly, Margarita finished her breakfast and retreated to the nook beside the bed to strip down and scrub away the lingering aftereffects of the night's activities. Her mouth tightened as she dragged a rough, wet cloth over her body. Carlos's scent seemed to have invaded her pores.
She had just stepped into Conceptión's old-fashioned drawers when she felt a tiny tremor against her breast. Instantly, her palm went to the gold locket. The vibration was so small, so slight…and so frustrating! Even after three days, SPEAR hadn't given up trying to contact her. If only she had some way to return the signal!
The locket tingled against her breast for a minute or two. Stopped. Began again. Stopped. Thinking it might be some kind of code, Margarita flattened her fingers over the piece and held her breath. The signal didn't come again. Sighing, she finished dressing.
The loaned wedding skirt and blouse were far too fine for the task of plucking and scalding chickens, however. For that, Margarita pulled on her still damp jeans and Carlos's fatigue shirt. Once dressed, she smoothed the handwoven blankets over the straw mattress, then went outside to join the other women.
Bubbling laughter, bright sunshine and abject poverty greeted her. Pausing on the porch while her pupils adjusted to the dazzling light, Margarita surveyed the scene. Most outsiders would have been dismayed by the muddy track that constituted the village's only street, not to mention the houses that looked about to
tumble off their stilts at any moment. Beyond the tip-tilted, tin-roofed structures, sloping fields dotted with charred tree stumps stood guard against the jungle that would reclaim the entire village in less than a month if allowed.
Yet none of the women clustered on benches placed in a haphazard circle appeared the least daunted by their surroundings. Feathers flew as their hands kept as busy as their tongues. It only took Margarita a moment to realize they were offering candid advice to a young woman whose husband had apparently become so aroused by the sight of her nursing her babe that he'd attempted to lift her skirts while the child was still at her breast.
"Rogerio tried the same thing when I nursed my first," a heavyset woman related with a snort. "I ground the seeds of nasturtium into his beer. For three days, he could barely make it to the fields to release himself. After that," she finished smugly, "he left me alone until I was ready for him."
"Which was probably the very next week," the woman next to her jibed. "Not that I blame you. He's a bull, that Rogerio. As is this so-handsome Carlos, judging from the groans that came from Conceptión's house this—What? Why do you poke me?"
She followed her companion's nod and spotted Margarita on the porch. Chagrin took the laughter from her lively face for a moment. But only a moment. With the earthy candor of people who live their lives close to the cycles of the earth, she grinned.
"I meant no disrespect." Nudging the woman beside her with one hip, she made room for the newcomer on the bench. "But tell us, this Carlos of yours, is he as much a man as he looks?"
Surrendering to the inevitable, Margarita laughed and joined the women's circle. "More."
* * *
Hot, sweaty and thoroughly disgruntled, Carlos swatted at a particularly persistent mosquito and waited his turn on the wooden trolley. Alejandro had gone first. Little Tomás was halfway across the gorge, clinging to the upright support like the monkey his grandfather had named him.
The boy's sharp eyes and climbing skills had yielded nothing this morning, though. They'd backtracked a good way into the jungle, stopping often for Tomás to shinny up the vines and gain enough height to search above the canopy for the telltale signs of human passage. No birds flapped into the sky. No warning screeches echoed above the treetops. No smoke curled into the sky.
The only sign they found that indicated persons other than Alejandro had followed Carlos and Margarita's trail was a small fire pit with the charred remains of several candy wrappers. Someone, evidently, had a fondness for chocolate-covered coconut.
Who?
One of the escaped prisoner's men? One of Carlos's?
The uncertainty ate at Carlos. That and the fact that whoever had followed them had been closing in when Alejandro crossed their path. The timely decision to detour to a village so tiny it didn't show on any maps had thrown their pursuers off their trail. For now.
Having come this far, whoever tracked them wouldn't give up. It was only a matter of time until they, too, doubled back and found their way to the river gorge.
Instinct told Carlos that it was the escaped prisoner who risked the dangers of the jungle to hunt someone he perceived as an even greater danger to himself. Instinct and the questions Margarita refused to answer about her involvement with the man.
Her stubborn recalcitrance rubbed Carlos raw. She knew more about this criminal than she would admit. Knew more about a lot of things than she'd ever admitted. Carlos would bet his last centavo she hadn't learned how to take off a rat's head with a single shot from her father.
He'd been tempted to shake the truth out of her a time or two. For a moment last night, he'd even considered holding back, using the passion that had her writhing and crying out in need to get at the truth.
To his profound disgust, he hadn't been able to bring himself to resort to sexual blackmail. She had only to open those incredible violet eyes, cry his name in a voice hoarse with desire, and everything but the need to pleasure her pushed to the back of his mind.
And this morning…
This morning he'd been too caught in the grip of his savage hunger to focus on anything but the satiny lines of her back and the rounded hips slamming against his thighs. Just the memory of their wild half hour before the dawn tightened Carlos's throat.
Like a fool, he'd assumed that once he and Margarita finally tumbled into bed, they'd satisfy the desire that had simmered between them for so long and move to the next higher plane. He knew better now. He'd be walking with a cane before he got enough of the stubborn, sensual woman who looked as beautiful in mud as she did in flame-colored silk.
Or chicken feathers.
When Carlos reached the other side of the gorge and trudged up the slope beside Alejandro and Tomás, he almost tripped over his own feet. None of the images of Margarita he'd locked away in his mind in the past months included anything close to this flushed, laughing woman with feathers stuck in her hair and a headless chicken gripped tight in one fist.
Unaware of his arrival, she chattered with the woman next to her, all the while ripping feathers from the hapless fowl with a skill that amazed Carlos. Dios! Was there nothing this woman couldn't or wouldn't do?
The fact that he was so slow to discover her many and varied secrets intrigued and irritated Carlos all over again. Consequently, he wore something close to a scowl when he and his companions reached the women. Nor did his mood improve when Margarita lifted her head and caught sight of him. Her laughter died, and a distinct chill frosted her eyes. Passing her half-plucked chicken to the woman next to her, she rose and dusted her hands on the seat of her jeans.
"Did you find anything?"
"A fire pit and a candy wrapper," he answered curtly, knowing what she'd ask next and frustrated by his inability to answer it.
"Could you tell who made the fire?"
"No."
She digested that in silence for a moment. When she spoke again, the chill had seeped from her eyes to her voice.
"Don't you think you should have told me that you intended to go into the jungle with Alejandro?"
"You were asleep." Not particularly happy about the way she took him to task in front of the others, he hooked a thumb in his belt. "I woke you earlier—"
A plump, dark-eyed matron snickered.
"—but you went back to sleep. The trek through the jungle must have tired you out," he added blandly for the benefit of the others.
That resulted in an outright snort. "Something tired her out."
Wondering just what the devil these women had been discussing in his absence, Carlos took Margarita's arm. "Why don't we talk about this while I sluice off some of this mud and sweat? Alejandro said there's a pool just a little way from here."
For reasons totally beyond his comprehension, that raised a storm of laughter among the women. Even Margarita's lips twitched. Carlos looked at Alejandro, who shook his head.
"What was that all about?" he asked Margarita as she fell in beside him.
"Nothing."
He cocked an ear to the smothered laughter behind them. "It doesn't sound like nothing."
"It was no big deal. Really." To his surprise, her cheeks pinked. "Just a reference to a silly accident that happened the last time Elena and her husband bathed together at the pool."
Avoiding his eyes, Margarita ducked into Conceptión's house to grab a bar of soap and their clean clothes. Carlos couldn't know, of course, that the little accident at the pool left the twenty-two-year-old Elena pregnant with her sixth child. Or that the young mother's hilarious account of the challenges of satisfying her man's sudden urge to couple underwater and at the same time keep them both from drowning had convulsed her audience.
Unfortunately, it had also brought home to Margarita the fact that she, too, was an accident waiting to happen. Neither she nor Carlos had exercised any kind of restraint. Nor had they used any protection. The last thing they needed to worry about right now was the complication of a possible pregnancy.
Lost in his thoughts, Carlos kep
t silent as they crossed a muddy field dotted with tree stumps to the pool formed by two streams just a dozen or so yards before they plunged over the gorge. He kept his distance in the cool, green pool, showing not the least inclination to attempt the same underwater feat as Elena's husband. Margarita floated under an awning of cascading ferns and fragrant orchids while he attended to the serious business of scrubbing down.
He made short work of it. A quick, masculine soaping of hair, arms, chest, belly. A swift immersion. A shake of his head to get the water from his eyes. When he scraped a palm along his chin, frowning, Margarita guessed the bristly growth must itch like the devil in this heat.
"I'll get rid of this beard while you finish," he said after another scrape, confirming her guess. "Then we need to talk."
"About?"
"About what we do next."
Lathering his cheeks and chin, he tossed her the soap and waded to the pool's edge. Margarita treated herself to the sight of his long, sleek flanks and tight buns before turning away to soap her heavy mass of hair.
By the time she'd dried off and draped herself in Conceptión's blouse and colorful embroidered skirt, Carlos had managed to scrape most of the soap off his cheeks and was working on his chin. With a long-bladed knife and no mirror to aid him, he'd also managed to nick himself in several places. Tiny rivulets of red ran down his neck, faded to pink, then disappeared in the dark hair of his chest.
He grunted, and another spot of red blossomed on his cheek.
"Here, let me."
Folding her knees, Margarita sank down beside him and took the evil-looking knife. It was smaller than the machete, but just as sharp.
"Have you ever shaved a man before?" he asked cautiously.
"Often."
His brows snapped together. "Who?"
"My father," she drawled. "Before he found an electric razor that cut close enough for his satisfaction, he used to like my mother to shave him. When she was busy, I filled in. Hold still."
She found a certain satisfaction in performing this small service for Carlos. His departure this morning without a word still rankled, but her annoyance receded into the background as she fell into a familiar rhythm. Dipping her hand in the pool, she wet the drying soap, then slid her fingers along the line of his jaw to draw his skin taut. The knife blade followed smoothly in her wake. A flick of her wrist, another stretch, another smooth scrape.
The Spy Who Loved Him Page 10