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  Beth touched his lower lip with the damp tip of her tongue, making Sam’s breath snag in his chest. He pressed his advantage and licked back, tasting the sweetness of her mouth as if he’d never kissed her before. After waiting so long for this, he didn’t want to rush it. Tamping down the primitive urge to take her without fanfare, he kissed her tenderly, with all the pent-up longing he’d been suppressing for a year and a half.

  He kissed her lingeringly, succulently, enjoying the hell out of the tastes and textures of her mouth and the increasingly urgent sound of her breathing. Beth reciprocated, her cool fingers stroking his face, ratcheting up his need for her even more.

  She broke away, panting slightly, a flush riding her cheekbones. “I suppose teaching me to fire one of your guns will draw a crowd?”

  “The four- and two-legged variety.” He used his thumb and pinky to spread the two halves of the deep V apart to expose the velvety roundness of her breasts. Small and plump and absolutely perfect. Her nipples were the same pale coral as her lips, and already hard and responsive, just waiting for him to taste them.

  She spread her fingers on his chest, kneading the muscles, then slid her hand across his pecs to his nipple. “Swimming is probably out of the question?” she asked as she rubbed a thumb over the sensitive peak.

  He pinched her nipple, making her moan low in her throat, then she reciprocated, doing the same to him. Sam gritted his teeth at the sweet sensation and used his wrist to push her zipper down another few inches. “Leeches.”

  “Nasty.” Above their heads her fingers tightened in his, as her free hand wandered randomly over his chest, combing through his chest hair, making him crazy. She licked the seam of his lips, then whispered in a sultry voice, “Wanna play doctor?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN - TROPICAL HEAT

  “God, yes.” His voice was husky, his eyes dark with desire. Elizabeth thought his hand shook a little as he gently touched her cheek. “You be the patient first. I’ve waited too damn long to see you naked. And if you put your hands on me now I’ll go off like a rocket.”

  “How long?”

  “Eight inches?”

  Elizabeth laughed. “How long have you wanted to see me naked?”

  “Eighteen months, six days, and nineteen hours.”

  “That’s almost as long as we’ve known one another.”

  “It’s exactly as long as we’ve known one another.”

  Her nipples pebbled and ached. She wanted him to touch her so badly. She’d imagined his touch on her breasts, dreamed erotic dreams where Sam kissed her body everywhere. She wanted that. She wanted him. “Why didn’t you say anything?” she asked, pressing her hand over his where it curved around her breast to show him how she wanted him to touch her. He didn’t need instruction. The pressure, the pull and caress, were perfect. He kneaded and stroked until her breath caught.

  “You were married.” He bent his head to take one eager nipple in his mouth, then sucked hard enough to make her moan. She speared her fingers into his hair to hold his head there.

  “Then,” he said huskily, trailing his tongue across the upper curve of her left breast. “You were talking divorce.” His teeth surrounded the nipple, teasing and tasting until Elizabeth’s hips came up off the floor. It was hard to draw in a breath.

  “Then you got the divorce.” Sam pulled the zipper down on her suit as far it would go, then skimmed his hand down her belly. His fingers slid beneath her skimpy blue cotton pan ties to touch her. “Then.” His voice was thick as she shifted to allow him access to her wet heat. He slipped two fingers inside her, and Elizabeth’s breath snagged. “Because I’m such a far-thinking guy, I waited a full, interminable, year to be sure I wasn’t going to be your transitional lover.”

  She reached down and urged him to exert pressure where she needed it. “Rob and I had a very amicable divorce.” It was hard to think, let alone try to talk. “I—I—Deeper. Yes, like that…Ahhh—I didn’t need a t-transitional guy. But, oh, God, Sam, I wanted you too. From the moment I saw you.” He withdrew his hand, and for a moment Elizabeth lay there stunned. “Don’t stop!”

  “Gotta get naked. Now.” He finished unzipping, then pulled the tight-fitting fabric off his shoulders and down his body.

  After a shaky start, Elizabeth struggled out of hers too. And the only way she managed that was taking her eyes off Sam’s cut abs and the swirls of crisp dark hair on his tanned chest. She wanted to lick him all over.

  “I must admit,” she said, sitting up to yank down the legs—pretending that they were having a normal conversation only so that they didn’t jump each other’s bones instantly—“that—” God, they were so ready for each other that she wondered if they might jettison off the branches supporting the tent. She was in such a hurry to get naked, her hands shook.

  “When my husband told me he’d met someone else I was hurt.” She kicked the entire black suit off and turned to see him watching her, his dark eyes gleaming in the false dusk inside the tent. Elizabeth placed both hands on his chest and pushed him onto his back. She followed him down. Using him like a very hard, not particularly comfortable, mattress. It was sheer bliss feeling his skin against hers.

  “Not a gaping-wound hurt,” she told him, nibbling a path from his throat to his chin, while his large hands skimmed down her back. “Because,” she licked the curve of his lower lip, “we didn’t have that kind of passion. But hurt that after I’d worked so hard to make our marriage work, he’d gone off and found someone else.” She opened her mouth over his and found his tongue. She felt as though sparklers fired off in her blood.

  While she kissed her way to his ear, he scooped her hair off her neck and started tasting the tendons there, making her shudder. “Then you walked into the clinic that day in the middle of all my personal drama and I forgot everything.”

  Elizabeth’s mind went blank as his tongue traced an erotic path up the side of her throat and then swirled inside her ear.

  “A-all that testosterone, a black eye, your arm bleeding. And even though I thought you’d been in some skanky bar fight…” She smiled at his growl of mock outrage.

  “I thought you were the hottest, sexiest man I’d ever seen.”

  “Yeah?” he whispered directly into her ear.

  She shuddered. “Oh, yeah.” It had been lust at first sight. “I thought you weren’t interested.” Struggling to make sense of her failing marriage, building a new practice, and paying off monumental med school loans, Elizabeth had been broadsided by her visceral and blatantly sexual attraction to a stranger when her life was already in an upheaval. She’d put Sam away to think about late at night. And think about him she had. With the way her life was going at the time, she was almost relieved that he hadn’t felt the same immediate attraction that she had. If both them had felt the same way, she imagined that it would have been impossible not to act on it. By his apparent disinterest, Elizabeth had managed to stay true to her marriage vows, however tenuous they’d been.

  Her brain was fogging. Sam flipped her over. It wasn’t easy; the tent was barely big enough for the two of them. He leaned over her, his fingers tangled in her hair, his gaze hot, his thumb making lazy circles at her temple. “That kiss I planted on you six months ago didn’t give you a heads-up?”

  “It gave me pheromones and blood pressure up,” she assured him, tracing the curve of his smile. Even though her body pulsed and throbbed, and she was wet for him, their lazy, we-have-all-the-time-in-the-world conversation was drawing out the finish unbearably. “But that was the only indication that you even knew I existed.”

  His fingers skimmed up to cup her breast where it plumped against his chest. Elizabeth shifted to grant him access to her nipple. He squeezed it this side of exquisite pain, then stroked his thumb over the erect peak. The sensation shot directly to every nerve center in her body.

  “You didn’t notice I was practically stalking you?” he demanded, kneeing her thighs apart.

  “I did notice that you were pretty
much everywhere I was, yes. But you never came over and talked to me. Never asked me out. You kissed me once and then I didn’t hear from you again. You disappeared for a mon—”

  He slipped inside her. Hot and hard. “Ah. You noticed.”

  “Wait. Don’t move,” she begged, the sensation too strong, too sweet. She wanted him so much her heart ached with the need. Here he was, this man who had set her pulse racing for what seemed like forever. Here he was, Sam Pelton, with his hips spreading her thighs wide and his warrior eyes gleaming as he looked down into hers. YesYesYES!

  “Of course I noticed.” She tried to speak around a pant as she started to rock her hips against his. “One minute everywhere I looked there—ah—there you were, then you kissed me like there was no tomorrow anddisappeared for a month. It was enough to…give…a girl a freaking…complex.”

  His penis flexed inside her, and Elizabeth moaned, then bit him on the shoulder. The pleasure he was giving her was indescribable, both sharp and sweet. Her body tightened unbearably around him as he threw back his head, the tendons in his neck showing in sharp relief.

  “I was out of the country on an—op.” Sam pumped his hips and Elizabeth made a soft appreciative sound in the back of her throat, stroking her hand down his back, then digging her nails into his hard butt cheek as he hit his stride. “And I was waiting—I’m trying to draw this out, sweetheart. But I’m going to go off like Vesuvius in about a second if you don’t stop moving under me like that. Lie real still—I was waiting the year out.”

  She couldn’t keep still, everything they did pushed her higher and higher, until Elizabeth didn’t know where she stopped and Sam began. Her internal muscles contracted around his penis buried deep inside her. His hands were gentle as he stroked her back and her behind in strokes that he maybe thought were soothing, but were instead making her crazy with lust, love, and need all jumbled together.

  Sam’s body was a furnace above hers, sweat gluing their skin together as Sam skimmed his hand down her side, then touched her intimately where they were joined. She shifted slightly to give him better access, and thought, We fit together perfectly, then said out loud, “Yes, God yes, I love when you touch me there. Just like that. Just. Like. That.” And—I love you.

  Elizabeth loved the taste of his skin, loved the scrape of his jaw against her breast, loved the smell of him. Loved the satiny feel of his tanned skin and crisp hair beneath her marauding fingers.

  “I figured after that—Hmm.” She bit his earlobe, and he groaned his pleasure, so she did it again. She felt his desire, and it doubled her own. “I figured that you weren’t following me at all. It was a string of co-coincidences. You took my dormant libido from stalled to overdrive, then—poof. You were gone. When you came back it was as if that kiss had never happened. I knew you weren’t shy, so I was convinced you just weren’t that into me.”

  “Make no mistake,” he said, his voice raw with emotion as his thrusts became more aggressive, as if he couldn’t wait another second.

  To hell with trying to postpone this. Elizabeth was just as eager. She needed it now. “Do it hard,” she told him, wrapping her legs around his narrow hips and locking her ankles in the small of his back. She wanted to devour him, and set her open mouth on the thundering pulse on his throat.

  “I was into you. In every way a man can be into a woman I was in…to you.” He plunged deep, sending them both over the edge in a shower of sensation that lasted a long, long time.

  Sam kissed her shoulder. “Our ride’s here.”

  “Hmmm.” She stretched, then wrapped her arms around his neck. “I thought we had a late check out.” She took a little nip on his lower lip. “How’d you manage to get dressed without waking me up?”

  “Special ops training. Up and at ’em, sweetheart. We have a reservation at another hotel. One with a soft bed, and no roommates.”

  “Woohoo.”

  Her smile zinged through Sam’s bloodstream like liquid sunshine. Wanting to make love to her again wasn’t an option, unfortunately. He was looking forward to making love to her for hours on end with no interruption, and without being distracted by listening for the bad guys.

  Their time would come to laze in bed all day. This wasn’t that day.

  Looked like they were going to get out of here in one piece. If Thadiwe’s men weren’t smarter than the average chimp and had managed to elude him. If they got downriver unscathed. If the hidden chopper hadn’t been discovered and sold for parts. None of those things would have fazed Sam before. Having Beth with him changed everything.

  “Here.” He handed her the DEET. “The mosquitoes are having a freaking convention out there.”

  He slid toward the tent opening and yanked down the zipper. “I’ll wait outside to give you room.”

  “Stay. I love being in tight quarters with you.”

  Living in a one-man tent with Beth sounded damn good to him too, but he shook his head. “You’d never get dressed.” He had to kiss her one more time. Supposed to be quick, but she threaded her fingers through his hair, and held him for a kiss that turned him inside out. He’d never been much of a kisser, but Beth made him a convert. Reluctantly he brought the kiss to an end. “Don’t take long,” he told her, loving the way her eyes lost focus when he kissed her. “We have to make tracks.” He crawled out onto the limb to give her room to dress, but left the flap up so he could watch her.

  She shot him a sassy smile, and drew the LockOut over her body like a seasoned stripper.

  He dragged his attention away from her rosy breasts and scanned the jungle around them. Thadiwe’s men would be getting close. Sam had gone out forty minutes ago to reconnoiter while Beth slept. Just because he hadn’t encountered any more soldiers didn’t mean they weren’t out there. Thadiwe’s minions had plenty of time to realize that five of their men hadn’t returned. Sam had a persistent itch on the back of his neck. He never ignored his intuition. It was gained by experience.

  “Can we frame the tent when we get back home?” Beth asked, coming through the opening feet first. She looked sensational in the tight black LockOut, her bright hair disheveled around her shoulders, her pretty eyes alert as she finished pulling the zipper up to her throat. Sam ran his gaze unobtrusively over the cut on her cheek and the two on her throat. No sign of infection. Then he slid his hand under her hair and pulled her to him for a quick, hungry kiss.

  “Nah.” He smiled into her eyes. “We’ll pitch it in the backyard and use it for our annual family vacation.” He waited for a reaction, but didn’t get one. His gut clenched before he reminded himself that Elizabeth was good at masking her thoughts. He wasn’t even sure she’d heard him, as a parrot, blue and yellow wings spread, screeched overhead. She flinched, and he wondered what it would take to get her over her fear of birds. One thing for sure, he didn’t have time for it now.

  He’d already pulled out the support pegs on the tent, and it was a simple matter to collapse the fabric and stuff it back in the bag. He held up her favorite silk blouse, the pink liberally spattered with dried brown blood. “I needed to bring your clothing so they’d think you’d worn it out of there.” He held the shirt up in a wad. “Want to try and save this?”

  Beth shuddered. “No thank you. I might never wear pink silk again.”

  “I’ll bury it, and the rest of your clothes, then. Ready?”

  “As I’ll ever be.” She scooted on her butt as far as the trunk, then stood to climb down to the ground. It was hotter than hell. Hot and steamy. Her cheeks were a delicate rose, and Sam thought that pink wasn’t so bad.

  She smiled. “I’ll be fine not seeing the color green for a while. But I’ll miss the tent.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT - TROPICAL HEAT

  “Mboté! Mboté! Boss-man,” Desi called with a shit-eating grin as he paddled a decrepit-looking pirogue up to shore. He looked ridiculously like a young Denzel Washington, and wore ragged cut-off cargo pants, and a royal blue vest with red and yellow house cats printed on it. Around his
clean-shaven head he’d jauntily tied a gray and green striped necktie. The entire ensemble would make a damn fine target for anyone on shore. As if he hadn’t a care in the world, Desi jumped out of the boat in thigh-deep water and dragged it closer to shore.

  “What happened to the Zodiac?” Sam asked. He suspected he knew. Desi had sold it, and everything in it, to the rebels for a pretty penny. He’d then probably spent the “mbongo” he’d gotten on his new lady friend. “I need…” Desi looked pitiful and mimed eating. “Koliya. Yes?”

  The guy was a strapping thirty-year-old in no danger of starving. “Hell, no. The Zodiac wasn’t yours to sell.” Desi gave him a blank look. “Never mind.” There was no point arguing. “Let’s go.”

  Sam tossed both packs into the middle of the boat.

  “Ever paddled a canoe?” he turned to ask Beth. “Desi and I will be rowing, but it wouldn’t hurt for you to know how. Just in case.”

  Just in case? Elizabeth resisted turning her head to scan the jungle surrounding them for snipers. “I’ve done the rowing machine at the gym, so I can probably handle it.”

  She demonstrated her technique for Sam, practicing in the air while he adjusted her left-handed grip just a fraction.

  “Try that again—Keep the oar as vertical as possible. Good. Okay, let’s do it.” She started to cross to the water, but Sam put his hand on her arm. “No point in us both getting our feet wet. Here, I’ll carry you.” She expected a fireman’s lift, but Sam swung her up in his arms.

  It was a silly romantic gesture, one she loved. God help her, Elizabeth thought, shocked by the realization. She loved him. He’d proven that he wanted her. But that was lust. Did the concept of love even cross the mind of a man like Sam? She seriously doubted it. He wasn’t hardwired that way. Yet he’d mentioned a shared backyard. She wondered if that was just a throwaway remark or if he actually meant they had a future together. “You Tarzan,” she joked, looping her arms around his neck.