River of Eden (30 page)

He opened his mouth wider, 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.

“Will, please…” 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.

When she gasped, 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, 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

R
Io 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.

D
EEP 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 gave 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?”

No, he answered his own question and flipped off the radio. He was done listening to Fat Eddie. By tomorrow night he'd be in Manaus, safe, while the fat man would be in Reino Novo, fighting it out with Vargas and whatever devil beast appeared. All Marcos had to do was get around the group of Vargas regulars behind him in the forest and make a break for the river.

Fat Eddie could go to hell, he thought, then grinned at his own cleverness, because, of course, hell was exactly where Fat Eddie was going.

B
LUE ORCHIDS TUMBLED DOWN
over three of the tree branches above where Annie was sitting. Two trees over,
another group of orchids bloomed in luscious profusion. To her right, a
munguba
was literally drenched in blooming
Aganisia cyanea.

Unbelievable, she thought. She knew botanists who would give a year of their career to see such a sight. And there she sat, no newspapers, no specimen jars, no camera—nothing to record or collect the second most amazing find of her life.

Or rather the third, she admitted, lowering her gaze from the trees to Will. He was so beautiful, sitting next to her in the half-light of the forest floor, his muscles moving in smooth precision as he repacked the arrows in his quiver, his hair falling across the back of his neck, the blond streaks gleaming a dull gold to match the bracelets hanging low on his wrist. He'd melted her down to a sated, wanton lethargy with his lovemaking, making more of a woman out of her than she'd ever been before— and being a woman was still the one thing she couldn't afford.

Hell.

She wanted him, and wanting him wasn't smart, wanting him threw all kinds of monkey wrenches into her plans for the future, if the two of them even had a future, considering the direction they were headed and what he was determined to do and notwithstanding her own commitment to doing whatever it took to get back what was hers—which she was finally ready to admit was a damn sight more than the orchid Vargas had stolen.