Proposition: Marriage. Eileen Wilks
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of snakes, too.”
“I think it was a fer-de-lance. They’re rare, and I’ve never seen one in person before, so I could be wrong. It could have been another of the bothrops—that’s a genus of pit viper found in Central and South America.”
She pulled away suspiciously. “You know an awful lot about snakes. Are you some kind of—of herpetologist or something?”
“I thought we’d agreed that I was a spy.” His expression was solemn, but his eyes were bright with mirth.
“You are laughing at me.”
“You sounded so horrified.” he said apologetically.
“Well, spying I could understand, but why anyone would want to spend their life studying snakes—”
He chuckled.
She blinked and managed to be offended for one whole second before her own absurdity tricked her into giggling. “I r-really don’t like snakes,” she said between giggles, and this struck her as so exquisitely funny that she went off into peals of laughter—at herself, at him, at the whole silly show of life, because she was so very glad she was still a part of it.
He didn’t laugh. His eyes changed, darkening, but that was the only notice she had. It wasn’t enough of a warning, not when she was laughing so hard her vision was blurred by tears.
When his mouth closed over hers, her laughter stopped.
His lips were smooth and firm and beguiling, and she smelled him—oh, she breathed him right in, and he went to her head like wine. She made one sound of protest, but he ignored that, just as he ignored the hand she put on his chest to hold him back. He simply moved her hand out of his way while his other hand slipped to her bottom and scooped her up against him.
It was too much, too fast. She’d lurched from terror to flight, skidded from flight into laughter, and now she was being ruthlessly kissed by a man who made her knees silly and her soul shiver. In a day already ripped loose from everything Jane knew about herself and her world, the sudden surge of passion caught her and flung her into a mad riptide she had no way of resisting.
When he pushed his thigh between her legs and pressed up, she heard herself moan. And it was her. She was the one making those soft, urgent sounds. She had to stop this, stop him—only he pressed up again with his thigh, and his tongue wet her lips while his hands, both hands now, kneaded her bottom, lifting her, then pressing her down on the leg she straddled. He taught her to ride him, taught her a slow, rolling rhythm that carried her mind the rest of the way out to sea, and left her body in charge.
And her body knew what it wanted.
He pulled her down with him. The forest floor was damp and spongy, and the moist, fecund odor was almost as intoxicating as the way he smelled when she pressed her face to his neck.
He didn’t unfasten her clothing. He ran his hands over her as if there was no part of her he didn’t need to feel, to know. Her knee, her breast, her shoulder. The soft swell of her belly But he didn’t take her clothes off, which gave her a spurious sense of safety.
Then his mouth left hers and closed over the tip of her breast. Right through her dress and her bra he suckled her, and no one had ever done that to her. She hadn’t even known people did that—not with their clothes on—and she was almost shocked back into conscious thought. Almost. But by then he had her dress and her bra wet from his mouth, and he did things with his tongue and his teeth that rasped the dampened material against her sensitive nipple, and she moaned instead, and clutched at his shoulders.
His mouth moved to her other breast, and that was good, too; that was what she wanted. He sucked. She felt his hand on her leg, and it was drawing her skirt up, and that felt good, too—the warmth of his palm on her thigh, on her—
She yelped when he pressed his palm against her there, right between her legs. He slid a finger beneath the elastic of her panties and touched her even more intimately, and she moaned again, and this time she shocked herself, because her hips lifted pleadingly.
“I—I—” she stammered. “I don’t—ah—”
He licked her nipple. His finger slid inside her feminine folds and rubbed her lightly. She made a sound she’d never made before, and her hips turned wanton again, making that greedy pushing-at-him movement. But she held on to the thin thread of consciousness and gripped his shoulders hard, willing him to look at her.
He raised his head. His mouth was wet and his eyes gleamed with hunger, and his finger was still moving, stirring her unbearably. He looked so entirely delicious she knew this was her last chance “I don’t do this sort of thing!” she gasped.
“But I do, Jane,” he said gently, and he moved his hand, stretching the elastic of her panties so that his finger went up inside her. “I do.”
And he did, too. First he kissed her again. And he tasted like danger, but he also felt like safety and home—solid and strong and eager for her, so eager. Maybe she could have fought her own hunger, the need that had grown in her all day. She couldn’t resist his.
He wasn’t cold now. Now he burned just as she did. Now he needed her.
And when he pulled her panties down and shifted between her legs, she helped him. He gripped her hips in his hands and guided himself inside, and the sensation was so rich and huge it almost sent her over the top right then.
Her eyes closed. She slipped her hands inside his loosened shirt, and delighted in his skin. “John,” she gasped. “John.”
He didn’t move He was fully, firmly inside her, but he wasn’t doing anything. Jane wasn’t exactly a woman of the world, but she knew what was supposed to be happening now, and it wasn’t.
She opened her eyes and looked up at him.
His eyes were full of all sorts of blue—the restless blues of oceans and ghosts and sorrow, and the hot blue at the heart of a flame. “My name isn’t John,” he said softly. Then, at last, he began to move.
She was warm and limp beneath him. Instinct or some last gasp of reason had kept him braced on his elbows so that now, as he slowly seeped back into himself after the sensory explosion of climax, his upper body, at least, wasn’t crushing her.
Unlike her, he was still fully dressed. But he felt naked. Trapped and naked and exposed.
Fear was a swell he rode, a great, ocean-deep wave too vast and familiar for panic. Reason rode the wave with him—a slim craft he clung to. But reason told him he had just made himself into a fool. Fools died quickly in his business. And sometimes they caused other people to lose their lives, too.
He looked at the woman beneath him. Her eyes were closed. A half smile curved her lips. Sweat dampened her face and shoulders, making her glow. The little chain she wore around her neck hung crooked now. The locket dangled in the dust beside her.
Ah, Jane.
He pushed off her. “Get up.” Grimly he put himself to rights and zipped his pants.
She blinked up at him, obviously confused, a trickle of hurt altering the curve of her mouth. He had to force his voice to soften, but it took no effort at all to reach out one more time and cup her cheek; her skin was so soft. “I’m sorry,” he said more gently. “I’ve endangered both of us. We have to get out of here, quickly.”
His shirt hung outside his pants. It was partly unbuttoned. He remembered her hands—such warm, avid hands—struggling to undo a few buttons so she could stroke his chest
She did sit up, but then just sat there, looking bewildered. The skirt of her dress slipped from her waist to puddle in her lap. Her bodice was still damp over one nipple. “You didn’t put us in danger,” she said. “There’s no one around.”
She didn’t understand. He’d forgotten everything but the need to bury himself in her. That went beyond danger to sheer foolhardiness. How could he have