Emerald Fire, page 8
‘Try me.’
‘Well, I made myself fall asleep. It’s what I always do when I’m up in a plane.’
‘You make yourself fall asleep?’
‘I told you it would sound silly,’ she said defensively. ‘But it works.’
‘How do you do it?’
She sighed. ‘I tune out my surroundings. You know— I pull down the window shade so I can’t see out, I get the flight attendant to bring me one of those little pillows so I can put my head back, I burrow under a blanket, and I tell myself I’m really not up in the air but that I’m—’ She made a little sound of distress as Slade turned her in his arms. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m putting you across my lap,’ he said in a no-nonsense voice, ‘and there’s no point in complaining because, believe me, I’m only doing it for our safety.’
Brionny felt the heat of his body encompass hers. Her nose brushed his cheek; her hand slipped across his chest.
Safe, she thought. Safe?
‘That—that makes no sense. There’s no reason to—’
‘There’s every reason,’ he said firmly. ‘If you don’t get any rest, I won’t either. And tomorrow we’ll both need our wits about us.’
‘Yes, but this—’
‘Look, we don’t have a window shade to pull down, nor a pillow. But you can put your head against my shoulder and close your eyes.’ His hand came up, his fingers warm as they tunneled into her hair, and he brought her cheek to his chest. ‘Now. Where shall we pretend we are? Do you have any preferences?’
Brionny gave a little laugh. ‘Anywhere but a mile up in a tree.’
‘OK. I’ve got it. It’s summertime, and we’re sitting on my aunt Bessie’s wooden swing.’
‘Come on, McClintoch—’
‘The swing is very old. And it needs to be oiled. It creaks when it moves.’
‘Look, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it won’t—’
‘The moon is up.’ Slade’s voice whispered against her skin. ‘It’s a warm night, and the wind’s coming in soft and easy from the south. We’ve been sitting out here for hours, just talking and counting the stars. Now we’re both getting sleepy. “I’m tired, Slade,” you say, and I say, Well, why don’t you just put your head on my shoulder and close your eyes?’
‘McClintoch, really. This is interesting, but—’
‘A second ago you were calling me Slade.’
‘No, I wasn’t.’
‘Sure you were. “I’m tired, Slade,” you said, and I told you to put your head down and close your eyes.’
She couldn’t help smiling. ‘Nice try, but that wasn’t me talking, it was you, speaking for me.’
‘Me? Putting words in your mouth?’ He smiled too, and drew her closer. ‘Come on, give it a shot. Put your head on my shoulder, take a deep breath, and relax.’
With a little sigh, she did as he’d asked. Amazingly enough, she felt the tension begin easing from her body. Gradually she became aware of Slade’s scent, sweaty and male. And exciting—but how could that be? What on earth could be exciting about the smell of sweat?
The way he was holding her was exciting too. She had never imagined feeling so safe in a man’s arms—and yet feeling so aware of herself as a woman. Her skin felt so sensitized, and so hot where his touched it.
Her hand lay against his chest, her fingers lightly curled into the damp cotton of his shirt. His cheek was against her temple. He needed a shave, she thought suddenly; she could feel the faint abrasion of his shadowy beard against her skin. What would happen if she put her hand to his cheek and let her palm play softly over the light stubble? Her heart gave a thud, then another, and she shifted a little in Slade’s arms.
‘Comfortable?’ he whispered.
Brionny nodded, although that wasn’t quite the way she’d have described how she felt. Slade’s throat was inches from her mouth. What would his skin taste like? she wondered. And his lips—how would they feel on hers? His kisses this morning had seemed as hot and fiery as the sun. Now, with the moon slipping from the sky and the blackness of night settling around them, would his kisses taste of coolness and of the dark?
Brionny shut her eyes. She could imagine going down into that darkness with Slade, letting him carry her into a bottomless whirlpool where there was nothing but him and the night and the feel of his body against hers…
‘Bree.’
She lifted her head and looked into his eyes, as deep and green as the jungle. His hand stroked her cheek.
‘You’re tensing up again,’ he said softly.
‘This isn’t working,’ she said shakily. ‘I think—’
‘You’re not supposed to be thinking.’ His voice was husky, but it sounded as if it was somehow shot through with silver. ‘You’re supposed to be relaxing. That was the whole point of this, remember?’
The truth was that she was having trouble remembering anything.
‘McClintoch—’
His mouth brushed lightly against her temple. ‘My name is Slade.’
She swallowed. ‘Slade. Please—’
He smiled. ‘I like the way you say my name,’ he whispered.
Their eyes met again, and what she saw in his made the breath catch in her throat.
Slade murmured her name, tilted her face to his, and kissed her.
CHAPTER SIX
IF ONLY Slade had kissed her with passion, or even with anger—with any of the fiery emotions they’d sparked in each other since they’d met—Brionny knew she could have handled it. She could have shoved him away, slapped his face, done what women had always done to humiliate men who took advantage of a woman’s momentary weakness.
But he was kissing her with a sweetness that was almost unimaginable. His lips moved gently on hers, silk against satin; his hands cupped her face, his thumbs gently tracing the delicate bones. An unpredictable kiss, she thought hazily, from an increasingly unpredictable man.
She knew the kiss was meant to be a distraction, a calculated assault on her senses to divert her from reality. And it was working, she thought as he drew her closer. She could feel her fear slipping from her, falling away into the night. The trouble was that something just as dangerous was replacing it. Her mouth was softening under Slade’s, her pulse-rate was quickening. Her hands were spreading on his chest, her fingers curling into his shirt.
With a little moan, she twisted her face from his. She waited, struggling for composure. When she thought she’d regained it, she looked at him and managed a strained smile.
‘Thank you,’ she said, as if he’d given her some aspirin for a headache. ‘I’m OK now.’
Slade stroked damp tendrils of hair back from her temples. ‘You’re not afraid?’
‘No, not any more.’ She smiled again, a little less tremulously. ‘Your diversionary tactic worked. I feel much calmer.’
It wasn’t true. She felt anything but calm. He was tracing the lobe of her ear, his finger moving lightly along the tender flesh, and, though she’d tried to put some distance between them, how much distance could you manage when you were sitting in a man’s arms?
His fingers dropped to the neck of her T-shirt and traced a path that encircled her throat.
‘Do you?’ he said softly. ‘Feel calmer, I mean.’
‘Absolutely.’ Brionny cleared her throat. ‘And you were right about this branch. It’s so wide that I can’t possibly fall.’
‘No, you can’t.’ He looped both arms around her. ‘I’d never let it happen.’
His arms were a strangely welcome fortress. It took effort not to lean back in his embrace.
‘In fact,’ she said, ‘I— I don’t even feel woozy about being so high.’
Slade chuckled. ‘All that reassurance from one kiss? I’m flattered, Stuart.’ His smile tilted, grew soft and lazy. His gaze dropped to her mouth. ‘Just think how reassured you’d feel if I kissed you again.’
‘No,’ she said, her voice breathy and high-pitched. She cleared her throat again. ‘I mean—it’s not necessary. Really.’
‘It’s OK,’ he said solemnly. ‘I’m willing to make the sacrifice.’
Her eyes flashed to his. ‘Don’t make fun of me,’ she said sharply.
‘Me? Make fun of you?’ He wore the angelic expression of a choir boy with a frog tucked in his back pocket. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’
Brionny ran the tip of her tongue over her lips. Was he flirting with her? If he was, he was wasting his time. She wasn’t into that kind of male-female banter, not on the ground and certainly not here, in the branches of a tree in the Amazon with a man like Slade McClintoch.
He touched his forefinger to her mouth, drawing it gently along the curve of her lips, leaving a trail of fire in its wake.
‘I was just thinking, Stuart…an experiment always has to be repeated before it has validity. Isn’t that right?’
‘If you expect me to find that amusing—’
‘I expect you to treat this with scientific detachment.’ He laid his finger against her lips again. A tremor went through her as he began to trace their outline. ‘Such a sweet mouth,’ he whispered. Her lips parted slightly. His fingertip slid inside and moved gently over the damp inner flesh. ‘Just think of this as our treehouse lab,’ he said. He was still smiling, but his voice had grown thick, the words softly slurred. ‘I have no personal stake here. It’s all in the interest of science.’
‘It isn’t. You know it isn’t. And—and—’ She caught hold of his hand as if she were catching hold of reality before it slipped away completely. ‘Slade. You aren’t listening.’
‘Of course I am.’ His fingers curled around her wrist. He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressed a kiss against the palm. ‘I’m listening harder than you can imagine.’
‘You’re not,’ she said, trying not to tremble at the feel of his lips against her skin.
‘Of course I am.’ He turned her hand over, kissed the inside of her wrist. There was no lightness in his voice now, no teasing tone at all. ‘I’m listening to everything, sweetheart, even to the things you’re afraid to say out loud.’
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ she said shakily. ‘Slade, please, you have to stop.’
A murmuring sigh of pleasure whispered from her lips as he kissed her.
‘Is that what you really want me to do, Bree?’
Her head fell back as he pressed his mouth to her throat. What did she want? Not this, she thought desperately. Surely not this. Even if Slade wasn’t lying about the headhunters—and that was a damned big ‘if’—he was still the sort of man she knew better than to trust, a man dropped into her path by a fate with a bad sense of humor…
But what happened to all that logic when he kissed her?
‘Tell me what you want,’ he whispered, but it wasn’t really a question for he was already kissing her deeply, hungrily, and she was kissing him back.
Her lips parted and his tongue slid against hers. He tasted like spring mornings and summer rain, like the first cool snowflake dropping from a winter sky. He tasted of fire and of flame, and when he drew up her shirt, baring her skin to the soft night air and to his caresses, Brionny moaned against his mouth. Heat pooled between her thighs as his thumb rolled across her nipple.
‘Slade,’ she whispered, ‘Slade, please…’
He groaned, lowered his head, put his mouth to her breast. His tongue laved her skin, and she cried out as his teeth closed lightly on the aching nub of flesh. He drew it into the warmth of his mouth and she felt her last hold on reality slipping away.
What was happening to her? She had never felt like this before. Hers was a world of cool scientific thought and careful investigation. There was no room in it for madness—and surely what she felt now was madness. Pull back now, she thought desperately; pull back before it’s too late.
Instead, her hands swept into Slade’s hair. She grasped his head and dragged his face to hers, her mouth hot and open against his. He was trembling too—she could feel it—and the realization sent a lightning shaft of pleasure curling through her blood.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he whispered.
She was—but it was such a pathetic way to describe her that Slade almost groaned with despair. Words had never been his strength; he was a man whose thought processes ran to problem-solving, not poetry, and those rare times when mathematical formulae hadn’t worked, muscle always had.
Now he cursed the moments he’d read Euclid instead of Shelley. A perfect sunset was beautiful, or a warm summer morning. But the woman in his arms was much more than that. She was everything female, as mysterious and as lush as the jungle that surrounded them, yet she had a clever mind, as agile as any he’d ever known. She had a face a man dreamed of, a body that was perfection. Her lips were soft and yielding, tasting of honey, and she had set him on fire. He burned as he never had in all his years; he knew that only the exquisite sweetness of her body closing around his could ease his pain.
He arched her back over his arm, touched the tip of his tongue to her nipple, and she made a strangled sound of pleasure that set his blood to pounding in his ears. He took her hand from his chest, stroked the palm with the tip of his tongue, then slid it under his shirt.
‘Touch me,’ he whispered.
Touch him. Oh, yes, Brionny thought, that was what she wanted to do. She ached to touch him, to explore the hardness of his body. She thrust her fingers into the soft mat of hair that covered his chest, danced them across the hard layers of muscle that were so hot beneath her hand. She stroked his flat, taut abdomen and then hesitated, wanting to touch him even more intimately but afraid to do it, afraid of this sudden, driving need that was so terrifyingly new.
Slade clasped her wrist, brought her hand down his body, over the straining denim of his jeans to his aroused maleness, and she gasped at his heat, at the power she had unleashed.
‘Feel what you do to me,’ he said thickly.
She knew what she did to him, knew what he did to her. But it was wrong. It had to be wrong—although at the moment she couldn’t remember why, couldn’t remember anything but the feel of being in Slade’s arms.
‘Wait,’ she said urgently. She caught his wrist, stilled his hand against her breast while she fought for control. ‘Please, Slade. We—we can’t—’
‘We can.’ His voice was low, fierce with elemental need. ‘All I have to do is—’ He lifted her, brought her across his lap so that she was straddling him. He cupped the back of her head, brought her mouth to his and kissed her. He put his lips to her ear, whispering what he wanted to do to her.
The husky words sent fire racing through her blood. When he lifted his knees, she eased back against his upraised legs, her eyes closed, her heart hammering, riding the hardness of his body, luxuriating in the feel of him against her and under her. Her hips lifted, moving instinctively to welcome that full male pressure.
His fingers moved against her shorts and the zipper hissed open. Slade spread his hand against her belly, his touch silken on her warm skin as it brushed lower and lower…
A roar rent the night. The sound was primitive and terrifying, and Brionny froze in Slade’s arms.
‘The jaguar,’ she whispered.
‘It’s all right, sweetheart.’ His voice was gruff, impatient. ‘He’s not going to bother us.’
She sat up straight, her spine stiff with tension. ‘But where is he? He sounds so close!
Slade cursed softly. Then he sighed, reached for her, and drew her into his arms. Brionny buried her face against his shoulder as he soothed her, his hand stroking gently against her back.
‘The jag’s made his kill by now,’ he said. ‘He’s not interested in us.’
‘But that roar—’
‘It was a roar of self-satisfaction. The cat’s no different from any other predator.’ Slade smiled, pressed a kiss against her temple. ‘He has what he wants, and now the world belongs to him.’
Brionny went very still. It was such a simple analogy—and such a humiliating one. The jaguar had made its kill—and Slade had almost made his.
He wanted the emerald—the emerald he was certain she had. He would do anything to get it—and, with her eager assistance, he almost had.
That was what this seduction scene had been all about.
God, how could she have been so stupid?
A taste as bitter as ashes filled her mouth.
‘Let me go,’ she said in a low voice.
‘Sweetheart, trust me. There’s nothing to be—’
‘Trust you?’ Brionny’s voice rose. ‘Trust you? I’d sooner trust a whole nation of headhunters!’
‘Bree, I promise, the cat won’t—’
‘Damn the cat!’ She pulled away from him, shifting off his lap and out of his arms, angry enough to ignore the drop beneath them as she scooted back along the branch. ‘And damn you, Slade McClintoch! You’re disgusting! I wish I could— I wish I could—’
‘What?’ His voice had gone cool and flat. ‘What do you wish you could do, lady? Take back the last few minutes? Pretend you’d never lowered yourself to my level and trembled in my arms?’
‘If I was trembling, it was only because—because I was forcing myself to endure—’
‘Oh, yeah. Right. You sure as hell were “enduring” me, Stuart.’ Anger at himself for wanting her made him cruel and reckless. ‘That’s what those little sounds you made were all about. That’s why you were rubbing against me as if—’
‘Don’t be insulting, McClintoch! I went along with it just to see how far you’d go to get what you want.’
Slade’s mouth twisted. ‘Meaning I was making love to you so you’d tell me where you’ve hidden the emerald?’
‘Making love? Is that what you call the way you were pawing me? Maybe it wows the belles in Italpa, but—’
Slade’s hand flashed out and caught hold of her wrist.
‘Don’t push your luck,’ he said. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere, and there’s nothing that stands between you and whatever’s out there—except me.’
‘You seem to have forgotten that whatever’s out there is following the both of us.’
