Not now, he thought. Not now. "Where’re we going?"
Acasia glanced sideways. "To see Fred."
"Fred?" Less pleasant memories rushed in on Cameron. He grimaced; Acasia nodded. "Wonderful. A hostile brother in a hostile wilderness."
Acasia murmured her agreement, giving in to the urge to grin. "But the village he’s in is our safest bet for getting out of here by chopper in one piece. Sanchez’s soldiers are afraid to go there, and it’s tough to get to besides." Her grin tightened as the car lurched sideways. "Don’t worry, we won’t be there long, and I promise not to let him harm you."
Cameron snorted. How long could it take a six–foot–seven–inch hulk to do him harm? "Fred always thought I stole your virginity long before I actually did."
It was the right thing to say, apparently, because once again he got the sidelong purple gaze, the muted laughter. "Who stole whose?"
He was about to reply when the road bottomed out and the Cobra plunged off the path and down a light incline, ripping through dense undergrowth, plowing its way into the dusky, suffocating warmth of the rain forest. It bumped gently to a stop among the exposed roots of a tree. The air was filled with raucous screams and whirrings, the chuck–chuck–chuck of an unidentified bird enraged by the Cobra’s passing. Then there was silence.
Acasia hoisted herself out of her seat, then slid out over the trunk and opened it. Cameron sat still, gathering together the bits and pieces of himself jarred loose by the unceremonious descent. Now he remembered why he hadn’t missed driving with Acasia, and also the real reason why he’d never bought a Cobra. Neither car nor woman seemed to have any sense of how to get from point A to point C without rattling a guy to pieces.
"Who," he asked tightly, "had the nerve to send you after me?" He caught hold of the Cobra’s windshield and pulled himself erect, turning just in time to catch a pair of worn combat boots in the chest.
"I hope you’re still an 11 1/2 triple E?" Acasia said politely. "The State Department sent me here, via Paolo Gianini."
"Gia—" Words failed Cameron. Not three days ago the director of the private security company recommended by the State Department had looked him straight in the eye and, agreeing blandly to his plans to come down to Zaragoza, said,
"Okay, Cam. It’s your hide. No interference."
No interference, huh? Then what was Acasia? "You work for him?"
"With him," Acasia said. She clipped her sunglasses to the front of her shirt and viewed Cameron over the trunk lid. "This is not exactly the kind of call I appreciate, you understand, especially not when it involves you. I was under the impression you had more sense. Toss me my hat, will you?"
"You’ve got a helluva nerve talking to me about sense!" Cameron snatched the baseball cap off the floor and pitched it violently at her. "You drive like a maniac, you don’t bat an eye when we’re fired on, and you act as though chasing around the countryside with soldiers on your tail is an everyday occurrence."
"Only some weeks." Acasia caught the hat and fired a T–shirt at him in return. "You might want to lose the top half of that monkey suit. Come on! Sanchez can’t be far behind us. I want to be long gone when they find this car. Let’s move."
His metallic pewter eyes caught her purple gaze and held it as he tried to find the woman beneath the tough–guy guise. "Still a steamroller, eh, Casie?"
Acasia held his gaze unwaveringly, then forced a swagger into her movements and insolence into her cryptic reply. "Just try to stick with me, okay, Cam?"
It was the last way she wanted to act, but she couldn’t think in terms of what had been, so she didn’t tell him that even if Paolo hadn’t asked her to come she would have anyway. She didn’t say that the sight of him alone in the crowd, staggering from the blow to his head, had nearly unnerved her, which could easily have gotten them both killed. They had too far to go from here, in terms of safety and, more importantly, of friendship—and love. She couldn’t lose her control, even for a second, couldn’t let herself think about the past they’d once shared, even though she wanted to. Going back was impossible, but going on? That might be just as tough.
"Here, chew this. It’ll help keep you from getting too thirsty." Acasia tossed Cameron a stick of gum and turned to begin the automatic task of taking stock of the jungle. It was safest, right now, to stick to the job.
C
AMERON CAUGHT THE gum Acasia tossed him and folded it into his mouth. Wintergreen flavor coated his palate, and he glanced at her in surprise. Trust Acasia to remember the only gum he’d chewed at seventeen.
He watched as she buckled a machete scabbard around her waist and hoisted a backpack over her shoulders. The weight of the pack drew her shirt tight, and Cameron found himself completely distracted by the sight. Whatever image she chose to project, the figure beneath was all woman. Her physical appeal was undeniable, as strong now as it had always been. He licked lips gone suddenly dry, and his belly warmed. She had always done that to him, made him feel as if he were starving for something only she could provide.
The adrenaline rush produced by their flight was wearing thin. He slapped harder than necessary at a mosquito on his neck, and Acasia turned her attention to him again. For an instant he saw what he’d been looking for, there and gone: memory followed by regret. Then she settled the baseball cap over her short, straight hair, and the visor hid further revelations from him.
He realized he was still holding the shirt she’d thrown him, and he tossed it down beside the boots so that he could rid himself of his ruined dress shirt and the tie he hated. The forest brushed heavily against the silence, seemed to close around them. Everywhere Cameron looked, life grew out of decay, swarming frantically heavenward seeking light.
A thought, irrelevant and misplaced, came to him from some past reading binge. A world sufficient unto itself… Just like Acasia. She’d told him once that love and trust were wonderful emotions but the only person you could ever really depend on in this life was yourself. She’d gone out of her way once to prove to both of them that she would never need anyone but herself in order to survive.
Refused
to need—or to trust—anyone but herself, as Cameron himself had pointed out to her. As far as he could see, that state of affairs hadn’t changed. He worked the T–shirt over his head and sat to pull on the boots.
"Tuck your pants into them," Acasia advised automatically. "It’ll keep anything from crawling up your legs."
"You want to tie my shoes for me, too, Mom?"
"What?" Acasia looked up in surprise, then reddened slightly. Cameron had been the one to introduce her to the pants–in–the–boots trick. "Sorry. Habit."
Cameron sighed and laced up his footgear. The sparring was an old habit, too. He wiggled his toes inside the boots and permitted himself a grin. So, Madame Abrasive was not, perhaps, as tough as she appeared. Not if she remembered his shoe size. He watched curiously while she moved around at the back of the car, using minimum effort for maximum results. There was nothing delicate about her. She was too tall, too strongly built, too unbreakable; every curve was well–defined, but firm, graceful. He liked to watch her move. There was something timelessly seductive about her unselfconscious comfort with her surroundings. What, he wondered, made her so in tune with them? This was not the sophisticated Acasia who’d regaled him with stories of her father’s exploits on the Riviera, the one who’d made polite faces when he’d introduced her to his collection of zoological specimens, the one who’d been cautious in the woods….
"You ready yet?" she asked, interrupting his thoughts.
She set a small box on the Cobra’s fender and closed the trunk. Cameron’s heart nearly stopped. Held casually in her hands was a 12–gauge shotgun. What had begun to feel almost like a fantasy was back to cold reality now. She checked the magazine, then pumped a shell into the chamber and added another to the magazine. The rest of the shells were dumped into a pocket of her khaki fatigue pants before she covered the gun’s muzzle with a canvas jacket and slung it over her shoulder. Her expression was one of such detached efficiency when she lifted her face to him that he gaped at her.
"Who are you?"
She shoved the cap to the back of her head and perused him quizzically, laughing when realization dawned. The corners of her mouth lifted sheepishly. "Hell, Cam, I don’t know. I ask myself that same question every morning."
Cameron slid out of the car and walked around to her. "What’s happened to you? This isn’t like you. You hated guns."
"Nothing stays the same, Cam."
"No? Then why am I still wondering if I’ll survive you?"
There was no laughter in the question, and Acasia swallowed and turned away, evading the well–remembered, too–incisive stare. "There’s a trail around here somewhere. Stay close."
"Casie…" Cameron caught her arm, and she shrugged him away without replying. Her remoteness had him stumped. His memory had kept her the way she’d been: tough but gentle; cynical but open; one of those rare people with whom friendship had been accidental and immediate, verbal communication an afterthought, love part of the natural progression. A friend with whom the conversation, even after half a lifetime, should have resumed as though they’d never left off. Even here. Instead…
He blinked, and nausea assailed him. His head throbbed, and he swayed, fighting the cloying heat. It came at him unexpectedly and relentlessly from all directions, pressing in on him, giving him the sensation of being trapped inside it. He shook his head to clear it, then focused on Acasia, who had found the trail with deceptive ease.
"Let’s go," she murmured, and motioned him along behind her, darting through the spaces of light and dark, hardly seeming to notice where she was, as if movement were all that mattered.
Cameron staggered after her, willing away his nausea by concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, seeing only the way Acasia went, his eyes focused on her fluid grace. Sweat slithered down his face and neck like something alive. He licked the perspiration from his lips and blinked it from his eyes. The buzz of an insect near his ear was deafening, maddening, and he swatted it away.
He blinked again, and it seemed to his sweat–hazed eyes that the green forest shimmered, allowing the woman before him to slip sylphlike through the shadows. Everything seemed so much closer to the surface here, reduced to the simply primitive. The curve of Acasia’s neck below her close–cropped hair, the sway of her hips beneath her pack, became tantalizing, hypnotic, disturbing. Heat saturated every nerve of his body with a savage wanting. His step faltered as he made an effort to put reality back in perspective. All he could do was feel.
The rescue, and Acasia’s unexpected reentry into his life, had taken their toll. Cameron’s shirt, already tight, became suffocating. He gripped the neck of it and ripped it open, his chest heaving with release. Sweat poured off him, and the scents of the jungle overwhelmed him. He could smell hibiscus and orchids, decaying vegetation and heat. And something more, infuriatingly elusive, that came from the woman ahead of him. A low growl left his throat.
The sound, barely audible, stopped Acasia dead in her tracks. Around them the forest breathed heavily, leaf brushing leaf, small animals rustling through crushed grasses near their feet. She had heard that predatory–male rasp before, but she had never dreamed of it in relation to Cameron. She flicked a glance over her shoulder and froze, sucking in huge lungsful of thick, tepid air. The sight of Cameron stunned her. The beat of the forest was in his veins, and it frightened her. She reached for the canteen attached to her pack.
Trembling, she opened the canteen and held it out to Cameron. He took it and drank deeply, allowing water to spill out the sides of his mouth and down his chest. Sensuality—blatant, raw, graceful, animalistic—radiated from him. His bare torso glistened, framed by the ragged shirt, rising and falling unevenly with each swallow. Muscles tensed in his arm when he pulled the canteen from his lips, and his eyes slid back to Acasia’s face, telegraphing a primitive message. His mouth was full, sensual, his lips parted.
No! She was losing herself to an illusion, a memory he couldn’t possibly be sharing.
Acasia gulped and tried to moisten her dry lips. If this were anyone else she would know how to handle him, but this was Cam, and she’d so often dreamed…
Overhead, thunder rolled, and with it came Cameron, closer, lids drooping over eyes that held her mute, weaving a torrid spell.
No! she thought. It’s just the place… the heat… We shouldn’t… We can’t…. Don’t!
The echoing litany tumbled over and over in Acasia’s head, shrieking danger, but she didn’t, couldn’t, move.
When he was inches from her, Cameron stopped, raised a hand and let a finger trail along her jaw. Acasia’s T–shirt suddenly felt too small, her breasts thrust forward, nipples pebbled against it, seeking freedom. Hungry now, her eyes traveled the length of him, savoring the molding of fabric to muscle. Drawn upward again, her gaze settled on his face, finding there a feral smile. His hand found her waist and drew her hard against him. Her lower lip pouted in anticipation, and his teeth captured it, tasted, then released it.
Her mouth opened invitingly, and he met it with his own, his tongue thrusting forward to taste her lips before plunging past her teeth to take part in a molten duel. Her hands rose to his waist, found the torn shirt and finished the job he’d begun. His slipped up to relieve her of the gun, then trailed down her sides as he bent to lay it on the ground.
What was left of logic vanished completely. His hands traveled back up to outline her breasts, then tensed.
Acasia’s eyes closed and her breathing grew labored as his roving fingers brought pleasure to her. He lifted the pack away from her, then moved closer again, eye–to–eye with her for an instant before their bodies twined savagely together, mouths fueling fire, teeth and tongues creating madness, fingers urgently tearing shirts from pants to find skin. Desire pounded between them in a new litany; fabric was the enemy; sensation was all.