Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

by Elizabeth Lowell

  Her eyes opened dark with need, watching him.

  “Hunter?” she whispered.

  “Shh. Ravisher at work here.”

  Her smile became a hiss of indrawn breath when his mouth skimmed down her body, his hands slid beneath her hips to hold and mold her buttocks, and his teeth left a stinging caress on one hip bone and then the other. With a dark, fluid motion he shifted over her, pressing her legs farther apart to make room for his shoulders.

  The scent and heat of her filled him like a drug.

  He made a rough sound against her thighs as his fingers shifted to her nipples, squeezing and plucking in caresses that would have been painful just moments before. But not now. Now she was lifting into his hands, her body focused on the luxuriant whips of sensation uncoiling through her, arcing her.

  Then he bent his head and took her in a way he’d taken no other woman, wanting to drown in her.

  She would have cried out if she could, but he’d stolen her body. She lived only where he touched her, and he touched her everywhere. Without knowing it, she drew her knees up and gave herself to whatever he wanted, because with him she wanted everything. Ecstasy shivered through her, brilliant pulses that exploded like fireworks behind her eyelids, blinding her.

  He lifted his head long enough to see her lost in the pleasure he had given her. Then he bent his head and drove her up again, less gently, fingers and teeth and tongue caressing and demanding until she came in a wild, writhing rush that destroyed her.

  When she could open her eyes again, he was there, holding her, sealing her soft cries with his mouth. The taste of him, of her, of passion tangled with their tongues. With a long sigh, she separated their mouths and nuzzled the hands that held her face so tenderly.

  “Gardenias,” she murmured. “Why do you smell like gardenias? Did you steal Celia’s perfume to fool the guards?”

  Hunter smiled despite the driving hunger that made every muscle of his body hard.

  “I waited in the bushes,” he said, tracing her mouth with his fingertip. “Watching the guards.”

  She blinked slowly, a thick sweep of eyelashes. “That explains it. Were the bougainvillea thorns bad?”

  “Wicked. Make it up to me.”

  His blunt erection nuzzled at the lips of her sheath.

  “Come here,” she whispered. “Deep, Hunter. I want you deep.”

  “Then hold your knees high.”

  She would have been embarrassed, but she was too caught in their mutual sensuality to care about anything but pleasing him. She opened herself as much as she could, then watched him sink into her, inch by thick inch. Seeing the joining set fire to her all over again. She had never known a lover like Hunter, a man willing and able to enjoy every aspect of making love, not just his own release.

  His pleasure in her was as surprising as it was arousing. She breathed his name as he filled her until she overflowed. Her hidden muscles flexed, held, caressed, until his control gave way to powerful, twisting thrusts. He rode her with a strength and power that made the world go black and red and wild until he shuddered above her, unable to hold back anymore.

  Then they lay tangled, sated, their sweat mingling, breaths ragged, bodies joined.

  WHEN LINA AWOKE AT DAWN, SHE WAS ALONE BUT FOR THE sunlight turning the mosquito netting to ripples of liquid gold.

  She wanted Hunter. Wanted him close to her, holding her, laughing while she kissed each tiny wound inflicted on him by insects and thorns. Then not laughing when she kissed the flesh that had given them both so much pleasure. There had been no more condoms, but she hadn’t cared. She just wanted to worship his body as he had worshipped hers.

  And she had.

  Smiling, stretching, feeling each sensual ache from Hunter’s tender, demanding lovemaking, Lina pushed through the mosquito netting. She showered and dressed in clothing suitable for jungle hiking, then took her backpack downstairs and tucked into the canvas enough food and water to last until evening. She filled a canteen with strong, rich coffee, left a note for her mother, and slipped out the back door before the maids arrived to begin grinding corn for Abuelita’s breakfast tortillas.

  As always, there were guards along the perimeter of the compound. Lina barely registered their presence. She was too impatient to see Hunter.

  The door to Casita Cenote opened before she could knock. Hunter’s eyes blazed a silver blue that took her breath. He was dressed, as impatient as she was.

  As hungry.

  “I’d kiss you,” he said in a deep voice, “but then I’d lose my head and go right to the top of your family’s shit list.”

  The way Lina’s eyelids half lowered as she licked her lips told him that she’d awakened with the same thing on her mind.

  “You’re killing me,” he said, touching her damp lips with a fingertip.

  She smiled, touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, then stepped away. “We’ve got to leave before Celia or Abuelita thinks of a way to keep us apart.”

  Hunter peeled the backpack off Lina, lengthened the straps to fit him, and said, “At your service, beautiful.”

  She hesitated, smiled. “I never felt beautiful before you.”

  “Have I mentioned that you’re killing me?”

  “Maybe I like the way you ‘die.’”

  The crunch of boots on crushed limestone was all that stopped Hunter from dragging Lina inside and bolting the door.

  “Start moving,” he said huskily.

  She turned and took a path leading away from the guard, walking quickly. He followed a little more slowly, just far enough back to appreciate the natural motion of her hips.

  “You have a seriously fine ass,” Hunter said.

  Lina gave him a you-have-got-to-be-kidding look over her shoulder.

  He grinned.

  “What am I going to do with you?” she asked, laughing.

  “You did real good last night…and then some. Now change the subject or I’ll be walking bent over.”

  Her dark eyebrows rose. “So it’s all my fault?”

  “Every little bit.”

  “There was nothing little about last night. Bitty either. You may be used to your whacking great equipment, but I’m walking funny today.”

  Hunter laughed even as red burned along his cheekbones.

  Smiling, she resumed her “funny” walk to the parking area of the compound. He took a long breath and followed her, wishing every step of the way that he had the right to drag her back to his bed for another up-close-and-personal loving from said equipment.

  The Bronco was waiting where they had left it, limestone dust dimming its deep green paint. She held out her hand for the keys he had reclaimed yesterday. He dropped them in her palm. They were still warm from his pocket. She started to say something about how hot he was, then told herself to stop teasing the jaguar.

  But it’s such fun.

  Beneath the scraped-back hair and jungle wear, Lina felt more female than she ever had in her life.

  “Where are we going?” Hunter asked as she unlocked the Bronco.

  “First, the Cenote de Balam, or Jaguar Cenote, as Philip calls it,” she said. “Then to a very special place I’ve never taken anyone.”

  “Breakfast along the way?” Hunter asked hopefully.

  “In my backpack. The canteen clipped to the bottom is coffee. I ate while I was throwing stuff together.”

  “Beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and understanding,” Hunter said, smiling wolfishly as he released and opened the canteen.

  “I’ll remind you of that when I irritate you.”

  Hunter was too busy swigging coffee to answer. But he winked.

  “There’s a good limestone-paved walkway to the cenote from the compound,” Lina said, “but I don’t want to meet anyone. The villagers and workers use that path.”

  He grunted something agreeable around a mouthful of pork, chiles, and hard-boiled eggs wrapped in yesterday’s corn tortillas. Four more fat bundles just like it waited for him in the
backpack. He was hungry enough to eat every one.

  “What about your cousin’s artifacts?” Hunter asked between bites.

  “Gorgeous. Echoes of Kawa’il. Nothing close to what we’re looking for.”

  “Did he say anything useful?”

  “Not to me.”

  On either side of the long estate driveway, elegantly spaced and manicured gardens flowed by. Before Hunter finished his second tortilla, she turned the Bronco onto what looked like a maintenance road. Moments later they were deep in the jungle. Untamed, unmanaged, raw with life. The jungle had a different kind of allure than the estate, the beauty of single moments framed in every shade of green—a bird flashing through a shaft of sunlight, a butterfly resting with blue incandescence on a white flower, the sudden rush and screech of howler monkeys passing overhead.

  The sun filtered through the intertwined growth of the canopy, enclosing the Bronco in a living green world. As the trees grew bigger, the spaces between them increased, though the sunlight didn’t. Despite the overwhelming shade, the inside of the vehicle got hot, then hotter.

  Hunter barely noticed. He expected heat in the Yucatan, even in December. It was the cool days that surprised people. But here, as in Texas, winter was being real slow about chasing summer from the land.

  “Does the estate get its water from the cenote?” he asked as he swallowed the last bite of breakfast. “Or from cisterns during the wet?”

  “Cisterns. Nearly all of Quintana Roo sits on a limestone shelf. Water flows through it, rather than being held back or pushed to the surface by denser, less water-soluble rock. During the wet season, rain fills the underground cisterns we’ve built. In the old days, the dry season was difficult, especially after the Maya fell and the ancient cisterns and canals fell apart.”

  “So you don’t use the cenote at all?”

  She shook her head. “Not anymore. We just drill down into the limestone ‘sponge’ to reach freshwater stored in stone from rainfall. You don’t drill too far, though. Close to the sea, freshwater floats on top of saltwater. It’s easy to punch right through to undrinkable stuff.”

  “And if you don’t have a well?” Hunter asked. He enjoyed watching the relaxation and anticipation that spread through Lina with every minute away from the estate.

  “Then you go to the nearest cenote, dip out water, and carry it back up the path. You’ll see signs of the old trail worn into solid limestone around Cenote de Balam. The trail is older than local memories, far older than Bishop Landa and his soldiers.” She downshifted deftly and whipped around a washout. “The actual word isn’t ‘cenote.’ It’s dznot. The Spanish mangled the Mayan word.”

  “Pretty much what they did to the natives.”

  “Oh, the natives were good at going to hell all by themselves. But yes, there wasn’t a whole lot of cross-cultural understanding, then or now.”

  Laughing at the dry understatement, Hunter handed her a bottle of water.

  She braced the wheel with her knees and one hand and drank. A thin line of water dribbled down her chin and dampened the khaki blouse above one breast, slowly revealing the dark shadow of a nipple.

  Hunter forced himself to think of someone who might be following them. A fast check of the side mirrors revealed that they were the only limestone dust cloud on the road. Not that he could see all that far with the jungle crouched around like a huge green cat.

  “Without the cenotes,” Lina said, handing back the water, “the very ancient Maya would have died out long before the Spanish arrived. That and the fact that freshwater floats on top of salt.”

  “Fire, water, earth, and air,” Hunter said. “All the rest is decoration. No matter where you are in the world, that doesn’t change.”

  “The lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula could use more of the decoration called fertilizer,” she said wryly. “In the ceiba and copal jungle, the ground beneath our wheels is thin, crumbly, and poor. Survival is hard. Take the strangler fig tree. It lives by being supported by a host tree, using the host as a ladder to climb up to light. Eventually the fig vines harden, extend roots, and strangle the host. Despite its lush look, the jungle plants survive more by force of will than the generosity of nature.”

  “Like the people. Still here. Still surviving, come hell, high water, and the Spanish. But then, we’re all survivors descended from survivors. The rest of them are buried in the dust of time.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, “the weight of all that history is…crushing. And sometimes it’s so exciting to be a part of it that I want to dance.”

  His fingertips trailed gently down her cheek. “I’ll dance with you.”

  Dark eyes flashed gold when she looked at him and smiled. Then the rough road claimed her attention again. The dual tire tracks zigzagged around clumps of rock as the jungle slowly melted away into a different, sparser growth.

  “We’re almost there,” Lina said. “I’ll park off in the scrub.”

  “No problem with the locals and a rental car?”

  “Not if it’s seen at the Reyes Balam estate first,” she said.

  Hunter nodded. “You’ve got more guards than the ones in the compound.”

  “We take care of the villages. They watch out for us.”

  They got out of the Bronco, and she reached into the back and took out a wide leather belt. A machete dangled from a clip on one side of the belt.

  “I’m stronger than you are,” he pointed out mildly.

  “The path shouldn’t be too bad. It’s only been about eighteen months since I’ve used this route. But if I get tired, the big knife is all yours.”

  “Knife?” He looked at the forearm-long blade that had been invented by natives for the sole purpose of whacking through jungles. “More like a sword.”

  He followed her as she set out for a section of scrubby jungle—or jungly scrub—that looked no different from any other piece of the landscape. Trees struggled on the harsh land, lifting vine-burdened arms to the relentless sun. Bushes fought for their place in the light.

  Lina slid sideways between several closely spaced, barely ten-foot-tall trees. Vines dangled only to be cut away by efficient strokes of the machete. She moved down the path like she wielded the machete, with an unconscious ease that came only from long experience. No hurry, no hesitation, just steady walking and random swings of the machete at whatever blocked the trail.

  Hunter settled back to enjoy the walk. There weren’t as many bloodsucking clouds of insects as he’d expected. The rainy season had been light enough to deny mosquitoes the stagnant puddles they used to breed, and then breed again, repeating the cycle of life and death until the standing water dried up. The wind helped keep the insects down, too. At least when it blew enough to push insects under cover.

  The path had only a thin layer of dirt, with limestone knobs shoving through like blunt teeth. Tree roots humped up. They were smaller and thinner than those deeper in the jungle, but enough to trip unwary feet. Plant growth waxed and waned according to a complex balance of light, water, and slope of the land. Birds and monkeys called in the distance, but a moving pool of silence spread around Lina and Hunter.

  When predators walked, the jungle held its breath.

  After ten minutes the amount of light gradually increased. Somewhere ahead there was a hole in the canopy.

  Lina went still.

  Instantly Hunter faded into the foliage close to her.

  Muted voices came on the wind. The words Hunter could make out were in the local dialect. He watched Lina.

  After a few moments the voices faded and she moved forward again, then stopped, framed by trees far taller than she was. She clipped the machete in place at her hip and motioned Hunter forward. When she felt him behind her, she took a half step left, letting him see ahead.

  As Hunter squeezed next to her, he saw the breathtaking drop into the limestone cenote less than a yard beyond their feet. Trees crowded right up to the edge of the cliff and beyond, roots clinging to limestone ledges
no bigger than his hand. Vines trailed from trees and rock alike, yet after the thousand shades of green that was the thickest jungle, the overall impression of the cenote was of muted pale cliffs and water that blazed blue under an empty sky. Where shadows fell, the water darkened to a murky shade of green.

  Across the cenote, where the cliff was lower and less steep, a pale thread zigzagged down to the water. He estimated that the far side was about two hundred feet away, with a cliff perhaps twenty-five feet high. Where he and Lina stood, the cliff was at least ten feet higher, probably more. Without a point of reference, it was hard to tell. The mouth of the cenote was a rough circle left when the roof of an ancient limestone cavern had collapsed. Freshwater lay at the bottom of the limestone cliffs.

  “Jase would be strapping on dive tanks,” Hunter said in a low voice. “You ever dive the cenote?”

  “Not with equipment. The water is deep, but even deeper at this side than the other. We used to jump in over there,” She pointed to a place where the jungle at the top of the cliff had been cleared and covered with crushed limestone, creating a flat area. The cliff below was steep, almost overhanging the water. “Hundreds of years ago there was at least one altar there, but it didn’t survive the Catholic mandate. Generations of Maya have gradually restored the limestone causeway from the village to the cenote, though after we put wells in the villages, people no longer had to risk their lives just to get a drink.”

  The red and yellow of heaped flowers announced the presence of a different, modern shrine near the edge of the limestone platform.

  “Is that usually there?” Hunter asked.

  She shrugged. “It varies, but it has become bigger, more permanent, than I remember as a child. It looks like it has doubled or tripled in size since the last time I really noticed it.”

  Hunter weighed the presence of the shrine and decided that it could wait to be investigated. It looked like just one more really big pile of flowers nearly engulfing a long-armed cross. From the thin veil of insects that seethed over the place, it was a good bet that there was food and/or blood among the bright petals.