Life-and-death business.
Diana took off the baseball cap and wiped the perspiration from her face with her sleeve. “How long do you suppose it will take those men to find us?”
“Long enough.”
“Long enough for what?”
“For me to create a diversion or two, leave a surprise here and there, set a few mousetraps.”
She frowned. “Mousetraps?”
“Maybe rattraps is more like it.” Ross’s eyes hardened. “If we’re lucky, very lucky, maybe we’ll catch ourselves a couple of big rats.”
Diana reached out and placed her hand on his arm. “You won’t take any unnecessary chances, will you?”
Ross tipped her chin up, bent over and brushed his lips across hers. “Of course not. But thanks for being concerned.” Then he was all business again. “I’ve got one more job for you while I’m gone.”
“While you’re gone?”
“While I’m down below planning a few surprises for our visitors.”
“Surprises as in booby traps,” she said composedly.
“Exactly.”
“What’s the job you want me to do?”
Ross dug into his knapsack, took out a vial of yellowish liquid and handed it to her. “I want you to sprinkle this around the perimeter of the hideout—the platform, the hut, the shower, the railing. Everywhere.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know the scientific name—if it even has one—but basically it smells like a mongoose.”
Diana wrinkled up her nose. “Smells like a mongoose to whom?”
Ross hesitated. “Not to whom. To what.”
She held the vial up to the sunlight. “Okay, it smells like a mongoose to what?”
“Snakes.”
“Snakes!”
He caught the vial just as it slipped from her hands. “I’m sorry, honey, I should have explained before I gave it to you. How do you feel about snakes?”
Diana gave him a dirty look. “Do you mean the small common variety of garter snake, or the forty-foot-long anaconda?”
He was obviously trying to reassure her. “There aren’t any anacondas in this region. They’re only found in tropical South America, usually in the Amazon.”
“I assume that’s the good news.”
“There are, however, giant pythons and cobras on these islands.”
“That must be the bad news,” she said dryly.
Ross continued in a no-nonsense tone of voice, “Most snakes don’t like the mongoose. It’s their natural enemy.”
“Like in Rudyard Kipling’s story about Rikki-Tikki-Tavi.”
He snapped his fingers. “Now you’ve got it.”
She sighed dramatically. “Why can you never find a good mongoose when you need one?”
He shrugged. “That’s why I want you to sprinkle essence of mongoose around to create a barrier.”
Diana took the vial from Ross’s hand and assured him, “I’ll be thorough. Trust me.”
“You might rustle up some dinner when you’re finished.”
She turned a slightly reproachful gaze on him. “I hope you don’t mean that literally.”
Ross actually laughed out loud. “Try the army rations.” He began to gather up his paraphernalia: several coils of rope, a spear, a ball of thin wire, a lethal-looking knife the size of a small machete and sundry odds and ends. “There should be plenty of rainwater in the barrel, if you decide to take a shower.” He raised his head and squinted up at the bright sunlight filtering through the treetops. “This might be the perfect opportunity to dry your clothes.”
“I’ll bet I look a sight,” she offered, chuckling good-naturedly.
“You’ve never looked more beautiful to me,” Ross claimed in a husky voice.
Diana’s throat constricted. “You won’t be gone too long, will you?”
“Not any longer than I have to be, believe me.” His voice grew softer; he was almost caressing her with his words. “We both need some food and some sleep, in that order. But I’ll rest a whole lot easier once I take care of a few things down below.”
She took a step toward him. “Ross, about last night—”
His eyes darkened. “We’ll talk when I get back, Diana. I’ve got something I want to say to you, too.”
She put her hands on his shoulders, went up on her tiptoes and pressed a kiss to his mouth. “Watch your back, cowboy.”
“I will.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” He started down the hemp ladder. “Pull the ladder up once I reach the ground. Don’t lower it again until I signal.”
“What’s the signal?”
“I’ll give a whistle.”
She peered over the platform at him. “What kind of whistle?”
He winked at her. “A wolf whistle, naturally.”
When the whistle came, Diana lowered the ladder and Ross climbed up. It was a toss-up between hunger and exhaustion for both of them. They ate in silence and immediately stretched out on mats in the thatched-roof hut. Sleep came in a matter of a minute, maybe two.
It was the heat of the day. Nothing was active. Even the animals of the forest knew better than to move around in the sultry oven that was the jungle at midday.
Later Diana awakened to stars overhead and a moon on the rise and wondered how that could be. Then she realized there was a trapdoor, a kind of sunroof, in the ceiling of the hut. Ross must have opened it while she slept.
There was a slight breeze cooling her skin as she lay there. The scent of exotic tropical flowers was heavy in the air: blooming vines with names she could not remember. But one. The cadena de amor. The “chain of love.”
She turned her head and discovered that she was alone in the sleeping hut. Quietly moving to the door, she peered out into the night. At first she couldn’t see Ross anywhere. Then there was a slight movement on the other side of the platform, and she knew it was him.
She deliberately left her boots behind and crossed to him in her stocking feet. She made no sound on the wooden floorboards, and was almost directly behind him before she said his name.
“Ross…” She saw him start as he jerked around.
“I thought you were still asleep,” he said softly, in nearly a whisper.
“I was until a minute ago.” She looked out at the night. “Have you seen anything?”
“Nothing.”
“Was it too hot for you to sleep?” From all appearances he was wearing only a pair of khaki pants, and his skin seemed to glisten with perspiration in the moonlight.
“I’m used to the heat.”
But Diana noticed he did not answer her question.
She reached out and touched his arm, and she could feel the tension in him like a tautly drawn wire about to snap. “Are you worried about the two men?”
He shook his head and said in a cold, uncompromising voice, “Assuming those two goons ever make it this far, I’ve taken care of things.”
She was still concerned. There was something wrong with Ross—or at least not quite right. Something was on his mind. She could tell.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
He continued to stare straight ahead into the forest canopy. “Talk about what?”
“Whatever it is that’s bothering you.”
“No.”
She didn’t understand. “No?”
He uttered a growling profanity. “No, dammit, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Diana bit her lip.
Then Ross turned and, driving his fingers through his hair in frustration, softly raged, “Don’t you get it even yet? Don’t you understand?”
She shook her head.
“It’s you. You’re what’s bothering me.” His eyes burned into hers. “I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it. But I want you, Diana.”
Her mouth formed his name. She blurted out, “I want you, too.”
“Are you sure?”
The question required a simple yes or no
. “Yes.”
Ross leaned back against a thick branch of the great towering tree and folded his arms across his bare chest; his muscles seemed to strain at the very confines of his skin. It was a minute, maybe longer, before he said, “You’re engaged to marry another man.”
She looked right at him. “Yale doesn’t make me feel the way you do.”
“Has he ever tried?”
She swallowed hard. “No.”
“Have you wanted him to?”
She shook her head again.
“I told you last night that I wasn’t prepared to make love to you,” he rasped.
Her eyes grew huge. “Because you don’t want me enough?”
A muscle in his face started to twitch. His eyes shimmered fiercely. “I vowed I’d never lie to you. I won’t start now. I was telling you the truth last night when I said I wanted you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman. I desire you, Diana Winsted. I want to make love to you, to be a part of you, to bury myself so deep inside you that we can’t tell where I end and you begin. I want to feel your body close tightly around me as you climax again and again and again.”
She said in a whisper, “I’m not sure I can.”
He went very still. “What?”
She didn’t know if she could say it. “Have a climax.”
Ross looked at her as if she was crazy. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
Tears welled up at the edge of her eyelids. “I was called an ice princess all the way through high school and college. You can’t imagine what that was like.” Her eyes drained of vitality. “It wasn’t entirely as a result of my appearance. If a guy tried to touch me, I froze. It was awful. Some of my dates thought I was a tease, that I was leading them on, so I quit dating. I assumed I was frigid.”
He said with unexpected gentleness, “When did you find out you weren’t?”
“Last night.”
That took him by surprise. “Last night? You mean when we were kissing in the honeymoon suite of the Hotel Paraiso?”
She nodded.
“Oh, my God, Diana,” Ross proclaimed in husky tones, opening his arms to her.
She took two steps toward him and was immediately engulfed by his embrace. He held her, held her close, held her for dear life. Her whole body was shaking, and her skin was oddly damp.
“Do you have any idea what it does to me to know that I’m the only man you’ve ever responded to?” he said at last.
“No.” Her voice sounded strangely foreign to her own ears. “But I think I can guess.”
“I’ll bet you can.” He laughed as his swelling manhood wedged itself between them. It was a wonderful, masculine laugh. “There is nothing more exciting to a man than the knowledge that he excites a woman.”
“The reverse is true, as well,” she murmured, savoring her first real taste of feminine power.
Ross gazed down into her eyes. “When I told you I wasn’t prepared to make love to you, I meant it literally. I have no way to protect you, Diana. I’ve been out here in the boonies for a long time. I don’t carry little foil packets around with me.”
She blushed down to her roots. “I see.”
“That was the bad joke last night about being prepared. I wasn’t. I’m not.”
She took a deep breath and plunged ahead. “In that case, I guess I am.”
“Prepared?”
She nodded. “A girlfriend drove me to the airport on Tuesday. She always thought it was a little odd that Yale and I weren’t intimate. I never discussed it with her—she just seemed to know somehow. Anyway, she gave me a hug in the car, said something about ‘going for it with my fiancé’ and stuck a small box in my carryon. I didn’t think much about it at the time. I suppose I was a little embarrassed. But it’s still there.”
Ross didn’t even seem to be breathing.
“Do you want me to check?”
“Yes.” His voice vibrated with the word.
She went into the sleeping hut, unzipped the side pocket of her carryon and took out a small box. She walked up to him and placed it in his hand. “I guess they even sell them in pretty packages for women now.”
“So I hear.”
“This is very awkward for me, Ross. I don’t know the first thing about the proper etiquette in this situation.”
Ross slipped the small box into his pants pocket. Then he looked straight into her eyes. “To hell with the proper etiquette, Diana. Do you want to make love with me?”
“I think so,” she said so quietly that she wasn’t sure he heard her.
“You need to be certain, sweetheart. Because once we make love, everything will change. There won’t be any going back.”
She didn’t want to go back. She wanted things to change. They had been the same for her for far too long.
She lifted her chin and stated with conviction, “Yes, I want to make love with you, Ross. No strings attached. No risks. No obligations. You’ve set something free inside me. I want to know what it is.”
He took her by the hand and led her into the sleeping hut. “Just one thing. I won’t make love while you’re wearing another man’s engagement ring.”
Diana slipped off her diamond, then the gold charm bracelet, as well, and dropped them into his outstretched hand. He picked up his khaki shirt, slipped her jewelry into the pocket and zipped it shut.
Then he knelt before her on the buri palm mat and drew her down to her knees. His arms went around her as he kissed her with a heartrending tenderness.
There was a magical song in the air.
“What’s that sound?” she murmured, marveling at its beauty.
“The night bird,” stated Ross as he began to unbutton her blouse. “The night bird is serenading us.” The material was eased off her shoulders and down her arms, along with her bra. She was nude to the waist. For a moment he only looked at her. Then he said, “You are beautiful,” and reached out, cupping the fullness of her ivory breasts in his hands, his thumbs circling their pink-tinged tips.
Diana shivered and touched the flat brown male nipples nestled among the mat of bronzed hair on his chest and watched with fascination as they curled up into two small hard buds. “You’re beautiful, too.”
Then he bent his head and touched her with the tip of his tongue, flicking it back and forth, from one breast to the other until Diana was quite certain she would go mad. “Ross, please—”
“More?”
She nodded mindlessly. “Please, more.”
He drew her deeper into his mouth, nipping on her tender flesh, erotically tugging at her, suckling one swollen peak while his hand fingered the other. Her head fell back, and a low moan issued forth through her parted teeth.
Passion.
Yes, it was passion that he had set free in her last night. It was passion he was unleashing in her even now. It was physical, sexual, intellectual. It was grand and glorious, and it left her feeling intensely alive. Suddenly she wanted to feel Ross all around her, through her, in her. She wanted to know this man as she had known no other. She wanted to do things to him, with him, for him, that she had never even dared to imagine in her wildest dreams.
She caressed his chest and back, pondering the paradox of a man’s smooth flesh and hard muscle, marveling at his inherent strength, wondering at his vulnerability. There was no mistaking the hard, pulsing part of him that twitched with each inadvertent brush of her hand, her arm, her thigh.
His hand went to the zipper of her jeans and eased it down halfway, apparently just enough so that he could slip his fingers beneath the waistband of her panties. She could feel his touch on her stomach, then lower to the soft mound of curls between her legs.
“Ross?” She was suddenly uncertain, self-conscious, even a little embarrassed. Her panties were damp. Her body was slick and moist.
“It’s all right, Diana,” he soothed as he gently fondled her. “I want to feel your sweet response.”
There was a tentative probing with the tip of his finger. He dipped in
to her once, twice, three times, a little farther with each attempt. Then he delved deeper, driving his finger all the way into her, bringing forth a cry from her lips that broke the silence of the night.
Ross covered her mouth with his and swallowed the next passionate outburst as if it were some kind of sweet nectar to drink, as if it endowed him with superhuman strength, as if it simply gave him immense satisfaction to do so.
Instinctively Diana reached for the waistband of his khakis. She eased the zipper down with infinite care once she realized he wore nothing underneath. She trailed her fingers through the patch of hair that encircled his navel and then moved her hand lower.
Ross sucked in his breath. “Diana, sweetheart!”
His ready flesh sprang into her hand. He was smooth and strong and fine and as hard as a rock. She stroked him, caressed him, drew a random pattern from one end to the other, gave the tip a gentle squeeze.
“I’m surprised. I never knew a man’s skin could be so soft,” she admitted with dreamy amazement.
He laughed a little wildly. “There will be an even bigger surprise in a minute if you keep that up.”
She frowned in puzzlement.
He tried to explain. “Let’s just say I don’t have an overabundance of control right about now.”
She still didn’t understand. “Why is it a problem?”
“This isn’t what I had planned,” Ross ground through his teeth in the split second before he lost it altogether and a violent shudder shook his body.
Diana had touched him and he’d gone off like a firecracker on the Fourth of July. It wasn’t quite what he’d had in mind, but it had been so damn long, and she was so sweet and yet utterly irresistible….
He would make it up to her. They had all night. It wasn’t the end; it was only the beginning.
“You aren’t—disgusted, are you?” he asked.
Diana gazed up at him with huge, honest eyes. “Disgusted? Why would I be disgusted? I loved it.”
“You loved it?” repeated Ross.
“You were the one who said there’s nothing more exciting than knowing you can excite someone else.”
“Yes, I did. Didn’t I?” he said with a ragged smile. He gave her a bit of a wicked look. “I’ve also been known to say ‘tit for tat.’ ”
Not His Wedding! (Silhouette Reissued) Page 9