by Cindy Dees
She couldn't make out any more. A beeping sounded in her ear. The connection had been lost.
She stared glumly at the phone.
How could Tex's own commander send him on a suicide mission like this? What was it about soldiers that made them all believe they were super heroes? Didn't the colonel realize the odds they were up against out here? How could this Colonel set Tex up to fail, or even die, like that?
Was this what had happened to her father? Had he sold his own heroic persona to his superiors so well that they demanded too much of him? Had he broken himself on the rocky cliffs of their expectations?
And then something rustled in the brush behind her. She looked frantically in both directions and dived under the nearest bush.
Chapter 11
"Dammit, Kimberly. Where are you?" Tex called lowly. He didn't have time to play these games with her. A second's panic hit him. What if she had called his bluff and walked off into the jungle by herself? He moved faster toward her last position.
He let out a relieved huff when she crawled sheepishly out from under a bush.
"I thought you were the rebels," she confessed.
He shook his head in disgust. "They're long gone, the bastards."
"So what was that noise?"
"A jaguar. Probably smelled the blood from the dead guy and came to investigate."
She glanced around in consternation. "There are jaguars out here?"
"Yeah. Not many, but they're here, all right."
She shuddered visibly. "Now what?"
"Now we track down the rifle. Any luck with the phone?" he asked.
"Yes. I talked to a Colonel Folly."
Just hearing his commander's name made him feel better. He and Kimberly were overdue for a good break. Eagerly he asked, "What'd he say?"
"He said he'd position the team in theater by tonight. As soon as you get an exact position fix, contact him with it."
Disappointment coursed through Tex. "He couldn't locate us from the cell phone?"
Kimberly shook her head. "He said something about it not having a triangulation capability."
"Too bad. Did he have any instructions for me?"
She answered reluctantly. "He said you're to go after the rifle and get it back. As soon as we figure out where we are, he'll send in some guys to pick me up and to help you."
Tex nodded grimly. Just as he'd thought. Getting that gun back was a top priority. At least he still had the clip. It'd take the rebels a couple days and a good weapon smith to fashion a new clip for it. He had to stop the rifle from falling into the wrong hands. The hands of people who'd take it apart and learn how to duplicate its amazing technology.
He glanced at his stolen watch. "It's about noon. We've still got plenty of daylight left to track the rebels."
"Wonderful," Kimberly rumbled under her breath.
"Let's see if we can lift anything else useful off the dead guy's body."
Kimberly grimaced.
He didn't particularly enjoy poking through a dead man's pockets, either, but they had precious little gear. Anything they looted could be useful.
Flies were starting to buzz around the corpse as they approached it. It didn't take long for Mother Nature to claim back her own out here. With a shudder of horror, Kimberly stood well back and let him do the honors.
She was authorized to be grossed out. She'd held up shockingly well through the morning, first on that long run and later climbing the cliff. He'd never have guessed a spoiled little rich girl like her could gut it out like that.
Methodically he stripped and searched the corpse. He took off the guy's camouflage fatigue shirt. Too small for him, but it would work for Kimberly. A cigarette lighter. Half a pack of smokes.
"This guy's carrying Gavronese cigarettes," he commented.
"Great! At least we know what country we're in now," she responded dryly. "Now if only we knew where in it we were."
He grinned at her sarcasm. "It's a dinky little place. We're bound to run into someplace I recognize sooner or later."
"You've spent a lot of time here?" she asked.
He grunted. "That's putting it mildly. I spent two months earlier this year in this very jungle, doing surveillance on the rebels before they attacked. Then we got trapped in St. George and had to egress right through the middle of the damned revolution."
"Sounds like fun," she commented.
He looked up at her and grinned. "That was the mission where we blew up the airport."
"What ever happened to the woman with you guys?"
"My commander married her."
"Love in a war zone? How romant—" she broke off.
He looked up at her sharply. If he wasn't mistaken, she was blushing. Hell, the back of his own neck abruptly felt hot.
He lowered his head and got back to work. The dead soldier had a utility belt. Tex unbuckled the wide webbing and pulled it from underneath the guy. He started opening its pockets.
"Jackpot!" he exclaimed.
"What?" Kimberly stepped closer.
He held up a tiny brown glass bottle, not much bigger than his thumb for her to see. "Water purification tablets."
"Hallelujah." Kimberly sighed in relief.
"He's got a canteen, too. We can fill it and have a little to drink between water sources." The guy had all sorts of useful bits and pieces in the belt's half-dozen compartments. Knife sharpener, compass, needles, fish hooks, hell, even condoms. He stuffed those back into their pouch hastily.
Kimberly's mouth curved into a beautiful smile that warmed him from the inside out. "Who'd have thought I'd be so thrilled with a canteen and a bottle of iodine pills a few days ago?" she asked, shaking her head and sending her mud-caked hair rattling like a pile of bones.
He gazed up at her. Even coated in mud and grass, she was beautiful. Her bones, the shape of her face, were exquisite, and the bright green of her eyes matched the jungle around them.
"Survival scenarios have a way of stripping everything down to the bare essentials."
She stared back at him. Something electric sprang up between them, pulling him slowly to his feet. "They do, don't they?" she murmured.
He'd never thought much further than food, water and shelter before on a survival trek. But abruptly, a need to kiss her became absolutely necessary to his long-term survival. He stepped forward slowly. He didn't care if her clothes were brittle with dried mud, if her face was coated in the stuff, if he couldn't get his hands into her hair, let alone run his fingers through it. He needed this woman. Now.
She moaned as his arms came around her. Their mouths met and they melted into one. One body. One soul.
Her hands skimmed up his ribs under his shirt, sliding around to his back to pull him closer. "I was so scared this morning," she murmured, her breath a warm caress on his lips.
"But you fought through it," he murmured back.
Her lips softened and molded to his, cutting off any further conversation. He felt the aftermath of her desperation coursing through her, a wildness that reached out to him and called forth his most basic responses.
He slanted his head, his tongue slashing past any resistance she offered, plundering her mouth with reckless abandon. The way her breath caught in her throat drove him wild, and he could think of nothing but having her, all of her, right now. Nobody was chasing them. They could afford to steal a moment for themselves.
She arched into him, her body strung as tight with need as his.
"Please, Tex," she murmured. "Take me away from here."
Her words registered as love talk. "Together," he mumbled back against her lips. "We'll fly all the way home."
His hands fumbled at her sweater, pushing it up toward her neck.
"You'll take me out of the jungle now?" she asked hopefully. "Home?"
He froze in the act of lifting her sweater off of her.
"Not until we've got the rifle back," he mumbled. His brain felt dull, like an unsharpened knife.
She pulled
back, looking up at him keenly. "I want to go home."
"So do I. But what does that have to do with what we're doing right now?" Come on, brain. Get in gear, here!
She stepped completely away from him and yanked her sweater down. "Fine. Let's go get the damned gun so we can get out of this hellhole."
"Fine," he shot back.
She glared hotly at him. He glared back.
He shoved the dead man's fatigue shirt at her. "Put this on. It'll hold up better than that flimsy sweater of yours. Besides, it's not caked in mud."
She stared at it in loathing. And sighed. "No, it's just bloody."
She reached for it in resignation and slipped it on.
He buckled the dead guy's utility belt around his waist, stuffed everything he'd found into its pockets, and moved off in the direction of the retreating tracks from the rebels.
He didn't immediately hear Kimberly's footsteps behind him. That was just peachy with him. If she wanted to throw a tantrum and sulk at the foot of that cliff till she rotted, that was her choice.
A swish of leaves behind him told him Kimberly'd caught up. The insidious relief that stole through him startled him. Rather than examine it, he picked up the pace and continued on.
The rebels were moving as a group and not bothering to hide their tracks. It was an easy thing to follow the trail of fifty men barging through the jungle. Their machetes cleared what felt like a veritable road through the brush. He and Kimberly made excellent time.
They'd walked for two or three sullen hours when a distant sound made him pause and take note. A grin split his face.
"What?" Kimberly snapped irritably.
"I think I hear something you're going to like."
"A taxi cab that'll take me to Washington?"
"Better."
She tugged on his shirt till he actually had to stop. He turned to face her. "What is it?" she demanded.
"Let's go find out if I'm right," he said imperturbably. He didn't want to get her hopes up and then disappoint her if he was wrong.
They walked another couple minutes and the sound grew into a steady roar. He pushed forward and even began to smell it. When he could feel it on his skin, they finally broke out into a large clearing. Before them stretched a pool of water, maybe a hundred feet across. A small waterfall cascaded down the side of a large outcropping on the far side of the pond.
Its crashing sound was what he'd been hearing all this time. It wasn't a gigantic waterfall, but it was plenty big enough to pound all the mud off them and out of their clothes.
He stepped aside so Kimberly could see. "Can I interest you in a bath?" he asked.
She squealed with delight and rushed forward. Then she stopped abruptly. "Are there leeches in there?"
He squatted down and stuck his hand briefly in the water. "Nah, it's too cold for them."
"Are you sure?" she asked dubiously.
"Positive. Of course, it's going to make for a wicked chilly bath."
"Can we afford the time?" she asked.
"Yeah. We're moving fast, and I don't want to run up on their heels before dark. We've got maybe an hour to get clean," he replied.
Kimberly was already tearing off her filthy clothes. She stopped when she got to her lacy pink bra and matching bikini panties.
He gulped at all those slim, tempting, female curves. Hot damn, but she had a great body. He drank in the sight of her thirstily. Her legs were just right. Slender, but muscular, like a dancer's. He felt his body getting all hot and bothered at the thought of those sleek thighs wrapped around his waist.
Kimberly stepped forward, dipping a toe in the water. She looked like some fey forest creature as a shaft of sunlight fell upon her form.
With a gasp, she eased into the water. "Oh, my gosh, it's like ice water!" she exclaimed.
He shrugged out of his shirt and pants and stepped forward. The second her gaze landed on him, he felt its heat on his skin like a laser beam.
He didn't think often about how he looked. He usually measured his body in terms of how strong or fit it was. But for once he was glad for the bulging muscles, the flat stomach and lean hips.
Her gaze devoured him. He walked toward her, as mesmerized by her as she seemed to be by him. She'd waded out waist-deep into the pool, only a few yards from the shore. The bottom must drop away pretty steeply.
He took a running step and leapt away from the bank in a shallow dive. He knifed into the water only a few feet from Kimberly.
The frigid water blasted him back painfully to the present. Wow, that was cold!
He shivered through the first shock of it and surfaced, shaking the water out of his hair. The bottom was rocky but not jagged. He stood up.
Kimberly's nipples were tight little buds beneath her bra, which clung to her almost more revealingly than being completely naked. His hands ached to cup the soft mounds, to tease the heat back into her breasts, to tighten her nipples once more for an altogether different reason.
Kimberly ducked under the water and a pool of light brown floated to the surface around her. The mud coming off her. He dunked himself and scrubbed the mud off his body.
He didn't usually worry much about cleanliness in the field. He took it when he could get it, and he didn't sweat it when he couldn't. But today, bathing beside Kimberly, he felt every inch of her relief as she washed herself. His own skin suddenly itched with a burning need to be squeaky clean.
He swam over to the waterfall and stood up under the edge of its pounding spray. No shower had ever felt better. He stepped out of the pounding flow and opened his eyes. Kimberly stood under the water beside him with her eyes closed and her head thrown back.
She looked like a goddess. Venus rising from the sea. She looked almost fragile beneath the force of the waterfall. A pang of remorse hit him for the way he'd made her work the past few days. She deserved to be pampered and protected. She was a lady, and he wished he could have shown her proper respect. But he'd dragged her around a jungle and bullied her into feats of enormous effort like he was a drill sergeant and she was some raw recruit.
The circumstances had demanded it, but that didn't make the regret for the way he'd been forced to treat her any less keen.
He slogged over to her side through the waist-deep water. "Turn around," he murmured.
Her eyes flew open and she looked up at him warily.
"I'll scrub your back for you," he offered quietly.
A look of surprise flashed across her face. It pained him that an act of kindness from him elicited such a response.
She turned around and he reached out slowly. Her back was slim and graceful, disappearing into the water enticingly. He rubbed her shoulders gently, massaging away the tension there while he worked the last, light brown film of mud off her skin.
He diverted falling water onto her back, rinsing away the last vestiges of filth. Her skin was a warm, ivory color like a rich ice cream. It begged to be licked and tasted in the same manner as the sweet treat. He clamped down on his libido sternly. Hadn't he just been telling himself that he should treat her with more respect?
She turned under his hands to face him. His palms came to rest on her slim shoulders.
With her wet hair slicked back from her face and not a stitch of makeup on, she was possibly more beautiful than he'd ever seen her before, including the first day he met her. Not many women got more good looking as all the artifice and primping was stripped away, but she was one of them.
He stared down at her, mesmerized by the purity of her features. In the dancing play of light from the falling water, her eyes glowed with an ethereal, emerald light with an unmistakable offer. Herself.
Chapter 12
He stared down at her in shock. The directness of her gaze threw him completely off balance.
It would be so easy to take her up on the offer, to sink into the secret garden of pleasure in her eyes. To lose himself within her. To walk away from the danger and fatigue, the filth and fear. To forget his duty. T
o abandon his honor…
He jerked his hands away from her with a sharp curse. She was just like Emily. She didn't get it. Didn't understand what honor and duty and doing the right thing meant to him. Hell, she wasn't all that different from his mother, either. When the first opportunity presented itself for her to bail on him and run from hardship, she'd leapt at it.
Not that he could blame Kimberly for wanting to get out of the jungle. Hell, he was seriously looking forward to a real bed and a real meal, himself. But that didn't mean he was willing to walk away from everything that mattered to him for the sake of his short-term comfort. Unlike his mother and Kimberly, he wasn't that selfish.
He sighed. "I have a responsibility, not only to myself, but to hundreds or thousands of people who will die if I don't get that rifle back. I'm the only person in the right place at the right time to recover the RITA, and by God, I'm going to do it!"
Her reasonable tone of voice was like fingernails on a chalkboard to him. "Tex, listen to me. You can't do this alone. It's too much for one man. You're so caught up in being a hero you're not thinking straight."
He answered bluntly. "Bull. I'm thinking perfectly straight. I can do this mission. You have no idea what kind of training I've got, what my skills are. You've just got a burr up your butt about this whole situation because your father was a big war hero and you can't stand anyone who's like him."
"That's not true!" she retorted hotly.
He glared angrily at her. "What's the matter, Kimberly? Can't stand being in the company of an honest man? Got tired of being the military hero's daughter, so you set out to tear down everything he stands for?"
She recoiled from that one like he'd hit a nerve. She turned and started wading toward the bank of the pool. He followed after her, splashing loudly.
"Is that why you're so bent on stopping me?" he taunted. "Don't want to have to stand in the shadow of another war hero? Well, don't worry about it. I don't give a damn about being on the cover of a magazine, and I'm sure as hell not interested in politics. I'm not going to steal your precious spotlight!"