But it was too late. He’d already pulled her panties from the small of her back to peek at her bottom. Catching sight of her incision, he paused to inspect it and she glanced back, distracted.
“It’s red,” he said, sounding none too pleased.
“It’s just chafed from the walk. I had to take off the bandage.”
“Does this hurt?” he asked prodding the skin around the wound.
It did, but she didn’t want him worrying. “No,” she assured him.
He sent her a hard look. “Keep it covered and clean,” he ordered grimly. “Damn it, Luce,” he added quietly, “if it gets infected, then we’re both in trouble.”
“It won’t,” she assured him, hoping she was right.
He squatted abruptly, sweeping a hand down, then up the length of her legs. “No hair,” he commented, oblivious to the awareness fizzing inside her. “How do you do that?” He stood up with a frown.
“It’s called waxing. A man couldn’t handle it.”
His eyebrows rose at the challenge. “Is that right?”
“Trust me,” she assured him with a smirk.
“Check your crotch every morning,” he continued, deliberately crude. “Centipedes like to crawl into warm, moist places at night.”
“Eww!” Lucy exclaimed in a very American-sounding protest. She quickly followed up with a “¡Qué asco!” and an apologetic grimace at Gus, who, with a shake of his head, spread his arms wide. “Now you check me. Ticks like to hide in hair, obviously, so if you don’t mind, comb your fingers through my chest hair and my…armpits,” he added, groping for the Spanish word.
Lucy just looked at him in disbelief. “Why can’t you do that yourself?”
He cast his eyes upward. “I can’t see as well as you, obviously. We’re married now,” he reminded her. “We look out for each other.” Teamwork, he mouthed in English.
Lucy huffed out a breath but relented. Stepping closer, she sifted through his surprisingly soft, cinnamon-brown chest hair, relieved to find it parasite-free. The fuzzy trail that disappeared into his boxers was tempting to trace. Giving his armpits a cursory inspection, she hauled him around the way he’d done to her and checked his back, snapping the elastic of his boxers as she stole a peek at his smooth, gorgeously honed buttocks.
Was it hot in here, or… “What now?” she demanded, aware that the Colombian army could be striking the rebel camp and she’d never even know it.
“Feet,” he said, turning around to point down at the sturdy double-layered socks she’d bought with hiking in mind. “Take those off.”
He’d already taken off his own socks. “We wash them when we can, but not if they won’t dry. Wet feet cause jungle rot, and that’s the last thing you want. Hang up your socks every night, upside down unless you want to invite something inside them. Any blisters? Cuts?” He frowned down at her pale, narrow feet.
“No.”
“Good. If you get them, you do whatever it takes to keep them clean and covered.”
“Got it. Can we get dressed now?” she asked, painfully aware of how vulnerable she felt on so many levels. Once upon a time, she and Gus had known each other’s bodies as well as their own. This quasi-intimacy brought it all back, the pleasure, the playfulness, only the emotional bond they’d once shared needed to stay in the past. There wasn’t any place for it now.
“Sure. Do I make you nervous?” he asked her mildly.
“No, why would you?” she retorted, suppressing a shiver of longing as she recalled their kiss on the plane.
His brandy-colored eyes gleamed with mockery. “Just checking.”
Lucy caught a whiff of boiling rice. With her stomach growling, she stuffed her feet back in her socks. “Come on. I think they’re cooking lunch, and I’m starving!”
As she reached for her clothing, she was conscious of Gus’s thoughtful gaze sliding down her rib cage. “What?” she prompted, sensing his disapproval.
“You should have fattened up before making this trip,” he scolded.
“I did. I ate like a pig.”
“And then you ran every night.”
“I did not.” Did he just assume that or had he been spying on her again?
“Do you ever ask yourself what you’re running from?” he persisted, that same probing light in his eyes.
Memories of the bombing in Valencia ripped through Lucy’s thoughts, causing her to flinch and draw back. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she muttered, turning away from his astute gaze. What was he implying—that she’d been emotionally damaged by the bombing, too? Hell, no. The CIA’s psych staff would have caught that years ago.
To her relief, he dropped the subject and concentrated on getting dressed.
Lacing her boots up tightly, Lucy left their cubby without a backward glance.
God, she was hungry!
“Luna!” Hours later, Gus found her squatting in the drizzle behind the bungalow trying to coax one of the fat chickens out from under the building.
“What?” Their midday meal of rice and panela had scarcely taken the edge off her hunger. Low blood sugar made her cranky. He was better off leaving her alone. “Here, chickie.” She made kissing sounds that caused the bird to cock its head. She had to know if it was hiding an egg under its fluffed-up feathers.
Between Gus’s suggestion that she was running from something and the Venezuelan slang word that had popped out of her mouth earlier, she was feeling like a failure. And failure in any way, shape, or form was not an option.
Gus pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” he urged. “We’ll find you something to eat in the jungle.”
How could he tell she was ravenous? “We can’t just leave, can we?” She cast an anxious glance toward the camp.
“Fournier’s napping, and Buitre’s busy,” Gus reasoned.
It was anti-American hour on the radio. The deputy sat in his quarters with the radio blaring out of his window so the younger rebels could listen to a ranting Cuban speak of matters few of them understood. “I want to call the JIC,” he added in her ear. “Come on. Let’s go.”
She responded at once to the call for action. With her fingers linked in his, she let him lead her into a steeply descending forest. Vegetation swallowed them. The patter of light rain drummed the canopy, drowning out the radio. Within minutes it felt like they were miles from the camp, when they couldn’t be more than a hundred feet away.
“Are you sure you can find your way back?” she asked, disguising her rising anxiety.
“I’ve been marking our path,” he assured her. “Like this,” he said, bending a low-lying branch as they passed it. “Every time you go into the woods I want you to do the same thing,” he urged.
Lucy cast her gaze upward into the spiraling trees. She could feel dozens of pairs of eyes on them, monkeys, no doubt, hunkered in the branches overhead, subdued by the rain.
Putting his back to a tree, Gus reached for his left boot. With a twist and a click, he opened the hidden compartment and pulled out the sat phone. Lucy kept a sharp lookout as he dialed the JIC.
“You should tell me the number,” she whispered, “in case something happens to you.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me,” he insisted ultra seriously. “I put them on speed dial, number seven.”
Lucky number seven, she thought as a droplet of water coursed down her spine, giving rise to a shudder. Her stomach rumbled. Where out here was he going to find any food?
His soft swearword had her glancing at him sharply. He was scowling up at the leafy dome overhead. “This is a dead zone,” he explained, putting the phone away. “Come on.” He led her deeper into the forest.
Some distance later, he stopped and tried the phone again.
“Anything?” she asked, her stomach churning.
“Nada,” he retorted. “Maybe the canopy is too thick for the sound waves to penetrate.”
“That’s not good,” said Lucy.
“No, it’s not,” he agreed
as he grimly put the phone away. “Let’s find something for your hip.” He drew her toward a thick vine dangling from an immense height and plucked a leaf off it. Tearing it in half, he squeezed a clear liquid from it. “Rub this on your incision,” he said, handing it to her.
He watched as she lifted her jacket and tugged her T-shirt from her pants.
“What is this?” she asked, smearing the leaf’s juice over her incision, only to suck in a sharp breath.
“Wild grape. It has antiseptic properties.”
“No shit,” she breathed, wincing as it stung the open wound.
“Memorize the shape of the leaf,” he said, snapping off another for her inspection. “See how distinctive it is? It grows all over the place. Do this every time you take a potty break, and the wound should heal.”
“Got it,” she said, growing annoyed with his detailed instructions. Her stomach growled again. “Can we find something to eat now?” she pleaded.
He swept a discerning eye around them, pulled her toward some rotting fruit on the ground, then pointed up into the branches of a tree, where whitish globes dangled among dark leaves. “There.”
“Are they edible?” Lucy asked, her mouth watering already.
“Yes. Search the ground. You may find some you can eat.”
Lucy snatched up a spiked ball and turned it over in her hands, looking for bugs. “It looks like lychee,” she commented.
“Same fruit family. It’s called garcinia.”
As she pried off the prickly skin and popped the white globule into her mouth, Gus struggled to climb the tree, but the branches were too high and the trunk too slippery to get a firm grasp. Enjoying the fruit’s pulpy aromatic taste, Lucy hunted the ground for more, but there weren’t any.
“I’m not going to be able to climb this,” Gus apologized, giving up.
“I’ll stand on your shoulders,” she offered, unwilling to take no for an answer.
“No. You could fall.”
“So, if I fall you’ll catch me, right?” she reasoned. “Please, Gus. I’m starving. Now, give me a hand up.”
With an unhappy grimace, he planted his feet apart and held up his hands. Lucy wiped her sticky fingers on her jacket, grabbed his hands, and stepped from his thigh onto his shoulders.
From there she managed to reach a higher branch and pull herself onto the lowest bough. Fruit dangled enticingly overhead.
“Careful,” he cautioned as she groped for them.
The slickness of the bark beneath her feet was daunting. But hunger compelled her to lunge for a branch just out of reach. She caught it, shaking it furiously to dislodge several garcinias.
Thump, thump, thump. Even as they hit the loamy soil, Lucy lost her footing. Swallowing a scream, she fell backward, crashing into Gus, who rushed to catch her.
Together they hit the earth with a squishy thud. Gravity lassoed them, pulling them down a near-vertical slope, over a slick layer of rotting vegetation.
“Hold on!” he cried as they crashed through the under-growth together. A sapling flashed by, and he seized it, bringing them to a jarring halt.
Lucy dug her toes into the loam to keep them there.
For a minute, neither of them moved. She heard Gus drag air back in his lungs. She bent her right leg to make certain her kneecap, which had struck a root, wasn’t shattered. Then she slowly sat up and realized she was straddling him. If she tried to clamber off him, she’d slip.
Catching Gus’s eye, she found him regarding her intensely. His hands flexed on her thighs. “You okay?” he rasped.
“Fine.”
She hadn’t straddled him like this since she was twenty years old and Gus was her playground. Remembered pleasures made her inner muscles clench with sudden longing. The realization that he was growing hard against her crotch prompted a rush of liquid heat. Suddenly, she wanted more than anything to feel him buried deep inside her.
No! Lucy Donovan didn’t need that distraction. She couldn’t let the promise of pleasure sweep her astray.
Summoning all her willpower, she dragged herself off him, only to start sliding again. He caught her wrist just in time to keep her from sliding out of sight and sound.
“Hold on!” he ordered harshly.
Keeping a firm grip on her and using the sapling as a crutch, he hauled himself off the ground. Then he pulled her firmly against him, banding her to his side with an arm around her waist. In spite of herself, Lucy luxuriated in his superior strength. “Don’t do that again,” he scolded. “Every decision you make out here, you check with me first. We’re partners, got it?”
Partners. The word sounded symbiotic, summoning images of the way they used to be.
She’d been self-reliant for nearly a decade. Could she even operate that way with another human being? “Got it,” she affirmed, dismayed by her desire to kiss and be kissed by him again.
“We’d better get back,” he said, eyeing the slope they would have to climb. “This will take some coordination,” he warned.
In the next ten minutes, Lucy discovered she could trust Gus to look to her safety. Of course, the reverse was also true. So long as safety was the result of partnership, she was all for it. She’d already admitted she needed him to make this assignment a success.
What she didn’t need him for was to fulfill her deeply buried feminine yearnings. Those would have to go away on their own.
By the time they arrived at the garcinia tree, all the fruit was gone, stolen away by creatures unseen. Lucy didn’t even want to know what they were. All she knew was she was still hungry, in every sense of the word.
A ROOSTER CROWED WELL before dawn, and Gus’s eyes sprang open.
The ghostly shimmer of the mosquito netting reminded him where he was. Oh, yes, asleep in a bungalow, way up on La Montaña, a guest of the FARC.
Lucy’s soft body pressed to his made up for the thinness of the mat. He could feel her shivering, but she was sleeping at last, given the steady rise and fall of her chest. He hadn’t slept much himself, not with the dull ache in his groin.
Playing Luna’s husband while remaining professionally vigilant was even harder than he’d thought it might be. Lucy’s scent, her softness, the way she fit against him like his long-lost other half were undermining his intent to keep their relationship professional, to keep his heart intact.
His weakness for her was one of the reasons he hadn’t wanted her on this assignment. Ironically, it was probably also the reason he had given in. A number of women had thrown themselves at him over the years—SEAL groupies, mostly—but he’d never found another Lucy. And despite his common sense warning him of her danger to his heart, his body and soul had a will of their own.
He wanted Lucy the way he’d had her eight years ago, before she’d cut him from her life. Only Lucy didn’t seem the least bit interested in rekindling intimacies. She was too obsessed with saving the world, regardless of the cost to herself.
The groaning of Buitre’s screen door interrupted Gus’s reflections. Curious, he parted the leafy wall by his head and peered outside. With a clear view of camp from this end of the bungalow and the sky a dull shade of pewter, he could see Buitre stalking toward the head of the trail with an AK-47 in one arm and a battery-powered lantern in the other. The rebel paused by the fifty-caliber machine gun to speak with the man on watch.
Where would the deputy be headed this early in the morning? Gus wondered.
The promise of his departure brought Gus more fully awake. He eased carefully from the mat, loath to waken Lucy. Donning his socks and boots, he ducked out of their cubby and slipped from the bungalow’s rear exit, stepping quietly off the platform onto the muddy ground.
By then Buitre had disappeared up the trail.
Studying Buitre’s hooch, Gus weighed his odds of entering it unseen by the kid on watch. With the lean-to that housed the rebels blocking the guard’s view, his chances of success looked good, providing he kept close to the building’s shadows.
Co
unting on the wet earth to muffle his footfalls, he crept toward Buitre’s quarters. The door yielded with a groan, and he slipped inside, shutting it softly. Letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, he waited for his fast-beating heart to find a steady tempo.
Predawn light shimmered in the window, but the radio that had been on the windowsill yesterday was gone. Buitre must have taken it with him.
The notebook, on the other hand, still lay on the desk. Crossing the room to pick it up, Gus cracked it open, deducing at once that it was a log, updated daily by the highest-ranking officer. Needing more light, he carried it to the window and flipped through the pages, skimming the contents. As he blundered into a hand-drawn map of La Montaña, his heart gave a leap of excitement.
This was just the kind of information the JIC desired from them. If there were time, he would snap off some digital photos with the camera built into his sat phone. But the sun was rising quickly. Instead, he would have to take the map and hope it wouldn’t be missed.
Beneath his deft fingers, the page parted smoothly from the binding. Blowing stray bits of paper off the desk, he folded it and stuffed it in his pocket, returning the notebook to the desk.
The sky was already brighter.
He moved toward the bunk on the other side of the room and ran his hands along the headboard, encountering the haft of a small, sharp knife. Yes! He curled it into his palm, relieved to have a weapon, which he hoped Buitre would just assume he’d misplaced.
The sound of furtive footfalls caused Gus to freeze. Someone was creeping toward the door.
Flattening himself against the wall, he waited.
Crap! Now what? If a rebel stepped inside and saw him, he would have to subdue him without being seen, but killing him was out of the question. He dropped the knife into his thigh pocket and waited, resigned to using his bare hands.
The door creaked open, slowly, apprehensively.
A boot and a shoulder edged through the aperture. A pair of eyes rounded the corner, forcing him to react before the interloper spotted him. With a lunge, Gus clamped a hand over the individual’s face, hauled him inside, and spun him around.
Show No Fear Page 8