by Colette Gale
And the scent of her. He closed his eyes, drawing in the imagined essence once more…then he remembered, and lifted his hand to his nose. A tremor rippled through him when he smelled her on his hand, her scent mingling with that of his own.
Assaulted by the memories, the sensations, the smells, he sank into the images, sliding back into them in his mind, letting them fill his thoughts. His rod pounded once again, hot and hard and insistent.
Closing his hand around it, he did as he’d done in the past—he stroked, faster and faster, his fingers tighter and tighter around the throbbing shaft. Sticky moisture dripped from the tip, making his movements sleek and slippery and fast. He imagined his rod pressed against the woman’s warm, soft skin, sliding in the rich dampness between her legs, slipping into her tight, dark depths.
He cried out in triumph as pleasure and release bolted through him, hard and fast and deep. It went on for a long time, and when it was finished, his body still pulsing and throbbing, he slept.
And dreamt.
— VI —
“Did you find the glimmer-headed tyra today, Papa?” Jane asked her father.
They’d just finished a dinner of baked fish and plantains and were sitting in the treehouse. Efremina had slid the movable wall away, leaving one side of the living space open to the view of the jungle from tree-height.
It was the most unique, comfortable parlor Jane had ever been in. Large, leafy branches spilled into the room. Birds, butterflies, and other winged insects flitted about just beyond reach. The scent of rich, sweet flowers filled the air. The sun was setting, coloring the sky with violent red and orange flames.
“We had no luck finding the tyra,” Jane’s father replied, puffing on a long, slender pipe. “But I did capture the perfect specimen of a red-beaded long-twine. Perhaps you’ll make a sketch for me tonight, love?”
“Of course,” she told him, and rose to retrieve her sketching tools. Since Jonathan disappeared, she’d hardly used her pencils and pastels. But it had been part of the arrangement with Papa—she was able to convince him that she should accompany him on this trip because he needed an artist to document his discoveries in pictures.
They could take photographs, of course, but not only did that require a large amount of equipment that took up much space, but setting up a darkroom would have been impractical in the jungle.
Unfortunately for Jane, the very act of drawing only served to remind her of Jonathan. More than once they’d joked that, after they were a married couple, they could travel the world together. He would write the travelogue, and she could sketch the images that would go with it. They would partner to create a book.
Now, Jane pulled out a thick sketchpad and her wooden box of pastels and settled to draw a picture of the long-twine. Her papa had pinned the poor butterfly to a small, thin wooden tile. As she looked at its flamboyant red and yellow wings spread helplessly, Jane couldn’t help recall her own imprisonment this afternoon.
Her belly did a little flip and a sudden rush of heat and pleasure rushed through her. Her nipples tightened at the memory of him—whoever he was—touching her with those large, dark hands. Despite the roughness on the pads of his fingers, his caress had been tender and tentative…and maddening. Maddening, because she’d craved more.
Her cheeks burned now as she remembered how she’d shuddered and cried out in front of that wild man, that strange wild man. How she’d wanted him to touch her—the naked, native, half-animal man. How she’d wanted him to bury himself in her. With a start, Jane realized her mouth was dry and her breathing had gone shallow.
What was wrong with her? How could she even contemplate such a thing?
Especially when, only last night, she’d firmly rejected—even fought off—a gentleman who sat here in this very room with her. He’d done nothing more than the wild man had done in the jungle—notice her bare breasts, and attempt to touch her. Albeit a bit more insistently than the wild man….
But today, she’d been fairly begging a stranger to make love to her. A stranger, who, as it happened, seemed to have no idea of her desires.
Thank fortune.
The red pastel she’d been using snapped in half, leaving an ugly stroke of red on the paper. Jane sighed in frustration as she rubbed a matching smear off her hand. Her drawing was ruined. She’d have to begin again.
“Miss Clemons, perhaps you’d care to walk out with me for a moment,” said Kellan as his shadow fell across her paper. “I want to make one last circuit around the camp before night to ensure everything is secure. You appear distracted…perhaps a bit of air might clear your mind.”
“Far as I can tell, we got plenty o’ air up here,” Efremina sniffed. “We’re missing an entire wall.”
Jane hid a grin. Her first instinct was to decline Darkdale’s invitation. She wasn’t certain she wanted to be anywhere alone with him.
But that was foolish. Other than last night’s misstep, he’d been nothing but proper and gentlemanly toward her. And if she was so desirous of male companionship that she was begging a stranger to take her—
Jane coldly stopped that thought. The only male companionship she really wanted was Jonathan.
But Jonathan wasn’t coming back. She’d been foolish to even entertain that possibility. He’d disappeared in this jungle and surely had been dead for years now. She’d seen how thick and dark the terrain was. There was no hope of finding any sign of him now, three years later, in such a place.
Jane looked up at Kellan. Perhaps she ought to walk out with him. After all, they were going to be here together for several more weeks. He clearly had some feelings for her, and he’d been sincerely apologetic this morning.
Aside from that, they were going to be residing together, relying on one another. Holding a grudge or creating a division between them would only cause awkwardness and perhaps jeopardize the safety of any or all of them.
She could give him another chance.
Besides, it was a much better solution than fantasizing about a wild man of the jungle who lived among the animals, and probably acted like them too. She shivered and felt hot all over again. This spurred her to action—a movement designed to banish the sordid images of the wild man.
“Very well, Mr. Darkdale,” she said, setting her sketching materials aside. “I do believe a walk is just what I need.”
If Jane was concerned about her father’s reaction to her walking out unchaperoned with a man, she needn’t have been. Professor Clemons had his nose deep in a book and a pen in hand as he scratched notes about some winged creature or other.
Efremina was a different story. She looked at Jane with an arched brow, sniffing with unconcealed disapproval. “Best watch for snakes, miss,” she told her. “I hear lots of’em, in all sizes—especially the bitty ones—come out at night.” She slanted a look at Darkdale.
“Miss Clemons has nothing to worry about,” Kellan told the housekeeper in a soothing voice. “I’ll be with her.” He disappeared down the rope ladder.
“As if that makes me feel any better,” Efremina muttered. “Yer sure you don’ want to take a pistol with you, Janie?” Her eyes were piercing.
“I’m certain I’ll be fine, darling. I’ll be just a short distance away, on the ground.”
Jane smiled and stepped onto the lift. It was just large enough for one person at a time, with walls that reached only to waist-height. It was slower than climbing a ladder, but more practical when one was bringing large items up into the tree—or when one was wearing a skirt and didn’t care to give the person climbing down the ladder below a clear view of one’s knickers.
Once on the ground, Kellan gallantly used the pulley to lower the lift, and when Jane reached the bottom, he helped her alight from the small platform.
“I’m so pleased you agreed to walk with me,” he said.
She noticed he was holding a torch, and the light flickered over his features. He was a handsome man, despite the intensity in his eyes. They were dark and even in
the unsteady light, she could see something there that burned intently. She looked away, uncertain what to say.
He unsettled her.
Kellan walked around the perimeter of the clearing below the tree that supported their living quarters, lighting several torches positioned both on the ground and in trees. “The flames will discourage animals from approaching. Most of the nocturnal ones are afraid of light.”
Sitting on a large boulder, she watched him. And at the same time, found herself peering up into the trees as if to see the wild man lurking in the branches. Hoping to see him.
And then she felt foolish and hot all over again and forced herself to stop doing so.
“I must ask you about the last time you saw Jonathan,” she said when Kellan finished his circuit and approached.
She heard his sigh as he came closer and knew he thought her mission was a vain one—a realization she was beginning to accept. Yet, the stubborn part of her wouldn’t completely release the hope.
He offered her his arm. “Walk with me and I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” he said.
Jane stood and slipped her fingers through the crook of his elbow. She wasn’t certain why her heart was beating hard, and why her insides felt a little queasy. He was being a perfect gentleman. He was handsome. He didn’t smell funny.
“When you and Jonathan were here before, you didn’t stay in the treehouse. You lived on the ship?” she asked. “And where did you come onto the land?”
“As you saw when we made landfall yesterday, the sea’s inlet here is deep enough for the ship to come very close to shore—just about where we disembarked yesterday. This made it convenient for us to sleep on the vessel each night and disembark every morning. But there were some nights when we knew we wouldn’t be able to travel as far as we wanted to go and get back to the ship in one day, so we brought hammocks and slept in the trees on those nights.”
“Tell me again, exactly what happened on the day Jonathan disappeared,” she pressed.
“Jane, darling, why do you want to relive such a—?”
“Tell me,” she insisted. “Now that I’m here, I want to understand what happened to him. And if there’s any chance of finding him….” Her voice trailed off.
“Jane, he’s dead. No man could have survived in this jungle alone—”
“Mr. Bellingworth did! And there are native peoples who live here—”
“Who are cutthroat and savage!” Kellan told her flatly. “They hunt heads and sacrifice humans, and there are tales of a tribe led by a brutal woman taller than the tallest of men.” The muscles of his arm had tensed as his voice rose, but now they relaxed. “I’m sorry, Jane. I don’t mean to frighten—”
“Did you see any of those natives while you were here?”
“We encountered no one.”
“What happened that day?” she asked again, choosing not to mention that his warnings about the native people were based on tall tale and legend, and stories didn’t frighten her at all.
“We came onshore as usual. Jonathan had been studying a map from a different angle the night before and he wanted to try out a new theory he had for following the diagram. This entailed following a northeasterly path—”
“That way?” Jane asked, pointing in what she thought was the proper direction. A map?
“Why, yes,” Kellan replied. “You can’t see it from here, in the dark, but there is a small mountain range that followed a river. We climbed through one of the small passes and then Jonathan accidentally dropped one of the knapsacks down a rocky hill. It had many of our provisions in it, including ammunition for the rifle, and so he had to take the risk of climbing down after it. He never returned. I looked for him, called after him, and he never responded. I went back to the ship and brought the crew to search. We never found a trace of him.”
“What were you searching for?” Jane asked. “You referred to a map. What was on it?”
Jonathan had never mentioned a map….“Why did you and Jonathan really come here?” she asked Kellan again. “It wasn’t just for an adventure, was it?”
His arm moved beneath her fingers again, his muscle tense. “Surely he told you.”
“Please tell me why.”
He stopped, turning to look down at her. “It was diamonds. We were looking for diamonds.”
“Diamonds?”
He nodded. “Jonathan acquired a map that was supposed to lead to a hidden vein of diamonds. The natives find no value in the stones and so anything we discovered was for the taking.”
Jane couldn’t have been more surprised at his response. She’d never had any idea of this. “You never found the mine? Whatever happened to the map?”
“No, Jonathan disappeared before we were able to find the cache. The map was old and many of the landmarks had changed. We spent days traipsing through the jungle trying to follow the clues on the map, but we never did.”
Jane stopped and turned to look at him. He would have kept walking if her fingers hadn’t been around his arm, tugging him to a halt. “What happened to the map?”
“It was with Jonathan when he disappeared.” He was looking at something in the shadows and Jane’s gaze followed his line of sight.
“What is it?” she asked, edging closer to him. Her heart was pounding. It was one thing to walk through the jungle during the day…but at night, the wild, feral creatures came out.
“I thought I saw something,” he said, his arm moving nearer to his side. This had the effect of pulling her closer against him, and for the moment, Jane was comforted by the warm solidness of his body.
She waited, still and silent, as he stared into the darkness. At last, he shifted, moving his arm so that her grip fell away. “Whatever it was, it’s gone,” he said.
She would have stepped away, but Kellan reached for her.
“Jane,” he said. There was that note in his voice…that intense, almost desperate tone. His fingers curved around her arms before she could step back, and he looked down at her in the flickering light of the torches.
She opened her mouth to speak, to somehow ward him off, but before she could do so, his face descended and his lips covered hers.
Jane’s initial reaction was to shove him away, but she stopped herself and forced her eyes to close and her curling fingers to relax. She allowed him to kiss her, in part because she was curious, and in part because she knew her body craved the touch of a man.
Kellan’s mouth was warm and sleek, and although she felt the barest flutter of response, Jane felt nothing like the rush of sensations she’d experienced at the touch of the wild man.
When she could stand it no longer, she twisted her face firmly away from his lips and planted her hands on his chest to hold him at bay. His torso rose and fell rapidly, and she saw the desire in his eyes. His lips were full and glistening and his hands tight around her arms. Too tight. A flicker of revulsion trembled through her.
“It’s time for me to return,” Jane said, keeping her voice steady and calm. “Efremina will be worried,” she added, suddenly wishing her maid would holler down from the treehouse and call her inside.
Kellan licked his lips, and the very sight put Jane in mind of an animal contemplating its prey…in an unflattering manner. “I want you, Jane,” he said, his grip still tight. “You needn’t play the innocent maid with me, or the demure girl. Jonathan told me all about you. How passionate you were. All of the things you like. How you need the touch of a man.”
Jane froze, her heart thudding in her chest. Jonathan would never speak to anyone about the things that passed between them. Kellan was lying. “Mr. Darkdale,” she managed to say. “I don’t think this is an appropriate conversation.”
“Then let us not talk,” he said. “He told me in great detail, Jane…so many stories of you together…and in such great detail that I could hardly sleep at night without dreaming of you. Without imagining us together, me pleasuring you, sliding between your sleek—”
“Stop!” Galvan
ized by his disturbing words, she yanked away and stumbled back. “I’m not certain what Jonathan told you, but I no longer wish to finish this conversation. Good night, Mr. Darkdale.” She spun toward the treehouse ladder.
“I would make you scream with pleasure,” he said, his voice low and tinged with anger, his words wafting behind her as she clambered up the ladder. “Jane, I will taste you. I will have you. And you’ll beg me for more.”
— VII —
Jane climbed up the ladder and into the parlor. When her head emerged from the entrance in the floor, she found Efremina holding a cup of tea and watching her. Her gaze was all-too-knowing and Jane’s cheeks turned warm.
“See any snakes down there, Miss Jane?” Efremina asked as she lifted the cup to drink.
“No,” Jane replied brightly. “Not at all.”
The last thing she wanted was for the maid to know what had transpired between her and Kellan. Who knew what Efremina would do (a variety of possibilities had already crossed Jane’s mind as she climbed up the ladder, for Efremina had stiff morals, little patience, and surprising strength). And as Jane had concluded, it was important that Kellan Darkdale remain in their camp. At least until The Fledgling returned. They needed him, his expertise, and his strength.
“Some of’em snakes can be right vicious,” Efremina told her. “They seem harmless and pretty, with their bright colorin’, but those’re the ones to watch out fer. Those’re the ones who sneak up on ye in the night, slippin’ b’neath yer covers and—”
“I’m exhausted,” Jane interrupted, trying not to think about any form of snake slipping beneath her covers. “I’m going to go to bed now, Effie, darling.”
The older woman looked at her and gave an understanding nod. “I’ll be making certain no snakes bother ye the rest of the night, missy.”
“Good night, Papa,” Jane said. As far as she could tell, Professor Clemons hadn’t moved except to turn the page of his book since she’d left for her walk.