River of Eden

by Tara Janzen

  Coming up by his side, she slicked her hair back off her face and took a deep breath. The sound of the water rushing and tumbling over the falls set them apart from the rest of the forest, encasing them in a world of their own made up of the blue sky above and a rich carpet of ferns below. Annie kicked off her shoes and sank her toes into the soft greenery, all the while looking around at the magical glade.

  Tsunki, Will thought, mesmerized by the sight of her wet with her clothes clinging to her body. Tsunki, a river spirit known to lure men with the promise of sexual favors. According to Tutanji, it happened all the time. A man would come down to the river to bathe or fish, and there would be an erotic incarnation of all his human desires, a spirit woman in flesh-and-blood form who would bind the man to her with an enchanted seduction. Tutanji had experienced two such sexual encounters in his youth, he’d once told Will, the second of which had conferred shamanistic powers upon him.

  His gaze swept over her again and he felt the first slow flames of desire lick into life. Annie Parrish, tsunki of the Amazon. He was definitely enchanted, and more than half seduced.

  Last night aside, it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and there were a few things he’d almost forgotten, especially that a woman had to be won, every time, and that no matter how many times a woman had walked the Rio Vaupes, a man’s power, sexual and physical, could overwhelm her in an instant.

  Annie knew that better than most.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, and with a gesture, he directed her gaze to the shore, to the broken limb of a tree near the water, and watched in satisfaction as her eyes widened. It was his gift to her.

  “I found them this morning, right where you’d said they would be.”

  “My God,” she murmured, stepping nearer the log and reaching up to touch the flowers blooming in such rare profusion.

  “Look up,” he told her, following close behind. “Into the trees.” And when she did, he saw her wonder turn into amazement.

  There were hundreds of blue orchids in full bloom, enough to make it seem as if there were two skies, the one above the canopy, and another in the understory.

  It was a living miracle, and Will knew she understood that as well as he did.

  “Aganisia cyanea,” she crooned, caressing another delicate blue petal.

  “I lost count earlier, but from what I can tell, there’s a few hundred flowers blooming here, a world record. If you can verify, Dr. Parrish, we can at least submit the find for posterity.”

  She laughed at that, her eyes brightening. “And can you imagine them wondering how Dr. William Sanchez Travers and Dr. Anne Parrish just happened to end up in the same middle of nowhere at the same time to verify each other’s count of an unprecedented number of blooming Aganisia cyanea somewhere in northwestern Brazil.”

  He smiled along with her. “They would never believe the truth.”

  She laughed again, a sound that rippled along his senses with near physical pleasure. He liked making her laugh. He liked seeing the weight of seriousness lifted from her shoulders, even if only for a short while.

  He liked her—more than liked her. Tutanji could have all the other tsunkis, Annie was the embodiment of his sexual desire, silken skinned and gently curved—and sweet. It had been so sweet to sink into her liquid heat and lose himself in the sensual wonder between her legs, to spiral out of control with her, with his mouth on hers and her body pulling him deeper and deeper under her spell, until he’d come, his body buried in hers to the hilt and her sweet gasps of pleasure burning her into his soul.

  The memory washed through him, making him hard beneath the scrap of cloth he wore. She knew why they’d come away from the camp. He’d seen the knowledge in her blush.

  She’d returned her attention to the closest flower and was touching it gently, her fingers moving over the petals, exploring the secrets of its inflorescence exactly the way he wanted to explore her. He wanted to kiss her, make love to her, devour her with lust and passion and love. He wanted her to be his.

  His gaze strayed to the necklace around her throat. The cat had been tawny and green-eyed like her, sleek and beautiful, but without the creamy curves of her shoulders and breasts, without her soft mouth.

  He moved closer to her, close enough to kiss, and reached out and took one of the jaguar fangs in his fingers. Her gaze locked onto his, and the slow, burning heat in his veins became a fire.

  “Tutanji says you are wild and need to be tamed,” he told her. He’d brought her here to make love to her, because he might not ever get another chance, and he wanted it badly enough to steal time. They should be on the trail, but he had to have her again.

  “Tamed?”

  “Yes.” His fingers slowly moved up the necklace, caressing the skin of her collarbone beneath. She knew what he wanted, and she wasn’t backing away. “He said you need to have my seed inside you to make you content, and that if you are reluctant, I should suck on you with my mouth until you are ready to accept me. He says even the wildest woman will take a man, if she is first worked on in this manner.”

  Another blush washed over her face and down her throat, reminding him of how easily she’d been aroused in the hammock, of how she’d responded to his touch.

  “We made love last night, Annie.” His voice grew husky as he smoothed his fingers up the side of her throat, tracing the line of her jaw with his thumb.

  Golden lashes swept down over her eyes, resting in half-circles on her cheeks. “I know. I remembered this morning.”

  “I wondered if you would. You were mostly asleep.”

  “Not nearly as asleep as I might have seemed,” she whispered, slowly lifting her gaze to meet his again. Her eyes were green streaked through with gold, her hair gold streaked through with silver—the little cat—her mouth softly pink and beckoning.

  Watching her, holding her gaze, his heart beat heavier in his chest. He could smell her, the warm animal scent of her skin, so alive, the scent of her growing arousal. He remembered how she had tasted in the night, her tongue teasing his, her lips parting on a gasped breath—and everything inside him wanted her.

  He’d watched her bathe in the pool with the other women, seen her naked in the river, cloaked only in the rising mists of morning, and he wanted to see her naked again. He wanted to feel her against him, the length of her body pressed against him, her skin hot from his touch.

  “Annie,” he murmured, lowering his mouth and brushing his lips across hers. “I want to tame you with my mouth, to suck on you here, querida,”—he slid his hand down the front of her shorts and cupped her with his palm—“until you are wild with wanting me inside you again.”

  Her response was immediate, the tension of desire tautening her body, her mouth opening beneath his. She moved against his hand, her pelvis rocking against him as her tongue slid across his lips, and Will groaned, wondering who was seducing whom.

  He opened his mouth wide, hungry for her kiss, one hand holding her to him while the other undid the buttons on her shirt, before moving lower and releasing the snap and opening the zipper on her shorts. He worried that he was rushing her, but the time they had was short and he wanted to spend it all on top of her, losing himself inside her. She made a soft sound as he eased his hand into her shorts, his fingers slipping beneath her panties and sliding into her soft curls, and then sliding deeper into an even softer place.

  She was slick, already wet, and they’d barely begun. Aroused and aching down to the core of his being, every muscle in his body, every breath became focused on one thing—to make her his, completely.

  Dragging his mouth from hers, he reached up and picked one of the blue orchids, then pulled her down beside him on the forest floor, sinking with her onto the green earth.

  He would have her the way he wanted, all of her.

  Annie felt as if she’d slipped back into a dream. Within the shadows of the forest, he was seducing her, his body hot and hard along the length of hers, his thigh capturing
her between him and the ground, holding her in place while his mouth teased and made promises she knew he could keep. With his hand, he pushed her shirt open and followed the path with his tongue, licking a trail of fire to her breast. When he took her in his mouth, she melted and knew this was the beginning of heaven on earth, with the forest all around and Will above her, his body turning her wanton with need—and the orchid. He trailed it over her other breast in a delicately soft path.

  “Will.” She gasped his name, and he switched his mouth to her other nipple, nuzzling her, soothing the ache he’d started.

  The silken fall of his hair draped over her skin in a lazy, sweeping motion that followed the movement of his head. She buried her hands in it, running her fingers through the multicolored strands and along his scalp, holding her to him. Using the flower, he continued the path of petals down her belly and farther down between her thighs.

  She sighed and moved restlessly, parting her legs, and Will let go of the flower to touch her with his fingers. Lifting his head, he held her gaze with his own, his eyes darkly slumberous as he spoke to her in soft Portuguese, telling her how beautiful her body was, how soft and wet she was and how her readiness made him hard for her, how he wanted to taste her. Then he kissed her, deep and wet, and began following the flower’s path with his mouth, laving a trail of heated desire across her breasts and down to her navel, until he was there, his hands pulling her shorts down over her hips and off her legs, his tongue hot and sweet on her most secret place.

  He took her slowly, lingering in his pleasure, licking her like a cat, a big cat, a jaguar who teased with his tongue, who knew when to push her harder and when to gentle her with long, soft strokes. Above them, hyacinth macaws broke free of the trees with raucous cries. In the distant canopy, howler monkeys could be heard making their guttural calls, but within their bower, all was the rhythm of love, hot skin slickened by desire, breathing heightened to a rapid cadence, and Will, taming her with the patience of the ages, until she didn’t think she could bear any more.

  When the end came, she tightened beneath him, her soft cries of release as sweet as the nectar between her legs—intoxicating. He played her out, teasing her with his tongue over and over until she begged him to stop.

  “Will, please... please... Will,” She groaned his name, and he moved up her body, taking her mouth deep as he pressed into her below, inch by inch, claiming her, his senses primed by her response.

  She gasped, opening herself to him, and pleasure skittered down the base of his spine, adding urgency to his thrusting. She was his to love, the soft, female place between her legs his to quicken and please. Lust powered the act, pure and bewitching. His hips met hers on every stroke, pushing her higher, their bodies united by a fever pitch of friction and tension and his bone-deep need to take everything she had to give.

  He pushed inside her again, pleasured as he’d never been before, tantalized by the sliding of her foot down the back of his leg, the thrust of her pelvis forward to seat him more deeply between her thighs. She was so wet and hot, and when her climax came again, he was with her, consuming her and being consumed, his cry echoing in her mouth, his seed spilling into her.

  Annie hung suspended with him in the long, pulsing moments of physical release, her senses drenched with the pleasure emanating from where their bodies joined, with him so deep inside her. The heat and wonder of him filled her completely, and when she fell back to earth, she knew irrevocably that she’d fallen in love.

  CHAPTER ~ 23

  Rio Cauaburi

  Fat Eddie was furious. “Ten thousand reais!” he screamed into the shortwave radio on his boat. “She is worth more than your life, Marcos!”

  “Sim, senhor,” the man answered from somewhere deep in the jungle between the Marauiá and the Cauaburi Rivers, where he was failing miserably to track down Annie Parrish and Guillermo Travers.

  But Fat Eddie didn’t want agreement, he wanted the damned little cat. He wanted the gold Corisco Vargas would pay for her. He’d sent Johnny Chang’s head to Leticia, and was expecting a perfectly gruesome shrunken head, a tsantsa, from his Shuar Jivaro friend. He wanted Annie Parrish’s to complete the pair.

  That Marcos had been unable to catch Travers, Fat Eddie could understand, but the woman should have been captured days ago. She was a woman. How fast could she run in the forest?

  Fast enough and then some, according to Marcos. But Fat Eddie wasn’t interested in excuses. He didn’t pay people to give him excuses.

  Merda. There was nothing upstream in the direction they were heading except for Reino Novo, and having Annie Parrish walk right into Vargas’s hands was a disaster so profitless, Fat Eddie couldn’t bear to imagine it. If she was going to end up dead on the jungle altar Vargas so ridiculously revered as El Mestre, why couldn’t she do it after Fat Eddie had squeezed his money’s worth out of her?

  Ignoring the sputtering radio and a sputtering Marcos, he yelled out over the water to the dozens of other boats now with him on the river. “Turn around! Turn around! We go north again, back up the Cauaburi!”

  Why in the name of God Travers and the woman were going to the gold mines was a mystery—with plenty of profit in it somewhere, he was sure. People didn’t risk their lives without the promise of some kind of profit. If he had to, he’d catch the little cat on her way up the riverbank itself in order to be the one to turn her in, and he would squeeze her skinny little arms all the way to Vargas’s office to get her to tell him what she was after.

  Women were the most vengeful creatures God had ever put on Earth, but something told Fat Eddie that a smart woman like Doutora Parrish would figure some profit into her vengeance. Murder alone wasn’t enough to get her to walk into the jaguar’s jaws.

  She was after something.

  “Senhor! Senhor!” Marcos’s voice came crackling through the radio. “We’ve found them, senhor! We’re closing in now!”

  It was about fucking time, Eddie thought.

  “Chocante, Marcos! Chocante! A thousand reais for you, my friend,” he yelled into the radio, lying. His captain had done a piss-poor job of finding the woman, and he would pay for his incompetence once the whole mess was over and they were back in Manaus. And if by some unlucky twist of fate, Marcos lost the doutora before Eddie could get his hands around her throat, the captain was a dead man. Eddie had run out of patience.

  ~ * ~

  DEEP IN THE RAIN FOREST on the edge of a clearing, Marcos understood his position—perfectly. He’d worked for Fat Eddie too long to overestimate the fat man’s generosity or his magnanimity, and although what he’d told the man wasn’t exactly a lie, it was definitely a stretch of the truth. They’d found something, a camp, which was more than nothing, and that was good enough for Marcos. At this point he was willing to take chances. He’d been slogging through the river drainage for three days in search of the little doutora, fighting flies and mosquitoes and heat and mud, and his own gnawing fear, and he was sick and tired of having big Fat Eddie Mano ragging on his butt.

  He cocked his pistol, scanning the abandoned campsite for stragglers. His man Rubio kneeled over the remains of a campfire and signaled that it was still warm. Jorge and Daniel searched through the palm-thatched lean-tos, in case anything useful had been forgotten—an unlikely turn of events. Marcos knew the Dakú, and they traveled too damn light to be able to forget anything. The big question in his mind was whether or not Guillermo Travers had caught up to them.

  Over the radio, Marcos heard Fat Eddie yelling for everyone to follow him.

  The best-case scenario would be if Travers was lying dead in the rain forest somewhere. He’d had a lot of bolas jumping off the boat with a giant caiman in the water, and his escape had made Marcos look bad, real bad—the ruim gringo.

  “What’s your location?” the fat man demanded through the receiver. “I want to pick her up, before she can escape me again.”

  “We’re on a tributary of the Marauiá, heading toward the Cauaburi.” Marcos gav
e him their position, wishing he was anyplace else. He’d heard about the noite do diabo, and he’d planned on being back in Manaus long before the damn thing was supposed to occur. But hell, no. There he was, smack-dab in the middle of the area the damned devil was supposed to come ripping through, with enough sins on his head to make him a target, and his estúpido boss didn’t have enough sense but to keep him chasing after a skinny little white woman.

  Hell, all he wanted was to go back to Manaus.

  He was about ready to do it, whether he found Annie Parrish or not, whether Fat Eddie liked it or not.

  “Sim, senhor,” Marcos replied to Fat Eddie’s continued instructions.

  His man Lopes came jogging back into the camp from where he’d followed some tracks up the trail, and Marcos mouthed the word “woman” to him. Lopes replied with a wide smile, and Marcos heaved a silent sigh of relief.

  Then Lopes held up eight fingers.

  Marcos wanted to hit something. He didn’t give a damn about how many women total were with the Dakú. He only gave a damn about one woman.

  “Sim, senhor.” He humored Fat Eddie again, then mouthed the words “white woman” to Lopes, who answered with a shrug and a negative shake of his head.

  That was it for Marcos, the straw that broke the camel’s back. They’d caught up with the Indians they’d been tracking, and Annie Parrish wasn’t with them.

  Findado. He was done. He was heading back to Manaus, and letting the devil have Annie Parrish and Guillermo Travers and anybody else who wasn’t smart enough to get out of the northwest before the noite do diabo.

  As a matter of fact, Marcos thought, maybe it would be best all around if the devil got Fat Eddie, too.

  “Sim, senhor,” he said again. “Yes, yes. We have her and are heading for the Rio Cauaburi on a course for Reino Novo.” The place where the devil was supposed to begin his course of destruction. “Yes, senhor. We should be there by tomorrow night. Yes, senhor. I’ll have her in chains. She will not escape. Do not worry... wait...” He made a strangled noise into the receiver, then made a few more. His mind was made up. “The static, senhor. I’m losing you, no?”