Wild Orchids (36 page)

"Don't worry, I doubt if anything much is. Our smell will still be all over the place here, and wild animals don't like our smell. But if it makes you feel any better, I intend to check it out. That's why I brought the flashlight." .

Lora had vaguely wondered why he hadn't turned the flashlight on during their trek through the jungle, but had come to the conclusion that he felt it would attract attention. Without light, they were just one of many creatures out roaming in the night.

He switched the flashlight on, aiming the beam down at his feet, then turned to look at her.

"You want to wait here while I check?"

Lora shuddered, and grabbed at the hand that had at last released hers. "Not on your life!"

"Stay close, then."

Lora reflected that if she had ever heard an unnecessary piece of advice, that was it, but then she didn't have time to think anymore because he was disappearing through the opening and she had to scramble to keep up with him.

The interior of the plane smelled musty, even mustier than the cave. Max swung the flashlight around the interior slowly, then moved down the aisle, shining the light carefully to the left and right. When he got to the curtain separating the cabin from the cockpit and moved it, there was a sudden burst of sound. Lora screamed as something took wing, then screamed again as a trio of small white creatures passed within inches of her head as they flapped toward the opening. The whole episode took less than a couple of seconds, but Lora was left shaking and staring wide-eyed at the gaping hole that led to the jungle at night.

"Just some bats. Nothing to be afraid of. The ones around here are harmless. All they eat are insects." Max was back, his arm sliding around her waist as he led her toward the rear of the plane where the seats had been removed. He stopped in the tail section, in an area with perhaps as much floor space as a double bed and maybe a few inches more than his own height in head room. Shining the light all around, he gestured for Lora to follow the beam with her eyes.

"See? We're all alone." He shook out the blanket as he spoke, while Lora watched with nervous eyes. Somehow she seemed to have gotten out of the spirit of the thing. She was perfectly willing to let his seduction wait until morning.

There was a faint click as he turned off the flashlight. Without its bright yellow beam, the inside of the plane was even darker than the jungle… She was shivering as his arms came around her, and not with passion. Her cursedly vivid imagination was alive with creepy crawlies…

He pulled her against him, and she was faintly comforted by the hard warmth of his body. He was reassuringly solid… She snuggled against him, and felt one arm move as he reached up to slide a hand beneath her chin and tilt her face toward his. The darkness was like a veil shrouding his features, but she could clearly see the restless glitter of his black eyes.

"Not afraid anymore, are you? We're perfectly safe. Trust me."

His voice was the merest murmur as he bent down to brush her mouth with his. It could hardly be called a kiss, so brief was the contact. He straightened to look down at her, his hand dropping to gently stroke over the skin of her throat. Lora kept her face tilted to his, her throat arching under the soft caress. He bent his head again to take her mouth in a kiss that was slightly harder, slightly more stinging, but was still over in slightly more time than it might take her to blink. Lora frowned, and felt herself yearning upwards. If he was going to kiss her, he might as well do it right…

He bent his head a third time, his arm hard around her waist holding her against him as his other hand slid down the front of her t-shirt to find her breast. His palm, firm and warm, cupped the soft roundness, and Lora felt a sudden clenching in her loins. Her nipple sprang to sudden attention beneath his hand. He did not caress her, just held her with that penetrating warmth while she swelled into his hand, and somehow it was the most arousing thing he could have done.

"Max," she breathed, her arms coming up of their own volition to find the back of his head and pull it the rest of the way down to her lips. She felt the soft abrasion of his mustache, felt him smile a little bit against her mouth, and then he was kissing her as she longed to be kissed, hard and deep, his tongue in her mouth demanding her body's most primitive responses. She still shivered in his arms, but fear was the farthest thing from her mind. She shivered because her body was on fire for him and he seemed in no hurry to put out the flames…

His hand was beneath the t-shirt now, leaving a trail of fire over her ribs as it slid around to find and unfasten the hook of her bra. One-handed… Lora would have marveled at his expertise if she had been capable of marveling at anything other than her body's responses. He was tugging the t-shirt up, and Lora was impatient as she had to let go of his mouth for the brief time it took to pull the shirt and bra over her head. Then her hands were on his shirt, pulling it off, and their naked chests were crushing together as her hands rumbled at the zipper of his jeans and his operated hers with more surety.

"Amateur," he goaded softly into her mouth as he began to push her jeans down her hips while she still fumbled with his zipper.

"My hands are shaking," she whispered in response, tugging at the recalcitrant zipper to no avail.

"So are mine," he said into her mouth, and she trembled more at the knowledge. Then he was releasing her mouth to slide both her jeans and her panties down her legs. He had to pull off her shoes before she could step out of the garments, leaving them lying in a heap where she had been. She felt his breath warm on her thighs and then her belly as he straightened, and remembering what he had done to her before she felt the clutching spiral of urgent desire spring to life between her legs. Wantonly, she pressed herself against him, going mad as her nakedness came up against the stiff material of his jeans. She wanted him naked, too…

Her hand tore at the zipper now, and this time it gave. He stood unmoving as she bent to slide the jeans and shorts down his muscled legs, to remove his untied shoes. Then he was naked, gloriously naked, and as she straightened she pressed herself to him, somehow finding that her mouth was trailing up his thighs, open and moist as it caressed the hair-roughened muscles that clenched and trembled beneath her kisses… He jutted out at a ninety-degree angle from the path she was taking, and she didn't even have time to consider what she was doing before some instinct that she hadn't even known she possessed told her to take him in her mouth. She did, and he groaned deep and loud, the sound agonized in the hush of the night. His hands clenched on her hair as she allowed her instincts to take over, loving him as he had loved her before, pleasuring him as he had pleasured her. Until at last he could stand it no longer.

"Stop," he ordered on a strangled groan. Caught up in what she was doing, Lora paid no attention. He groaned again, then pulled her away from him by her hair and held her there on her knees in front of him when she would have come back to him.

"Max!"

"Easy, babe, easy. Christ, I don't believe what you do to me." He was dropping to his knees beside her, his hands on her arms easing her down. Lora was barely conscious of the roughness of the blanket beneath her bare backside as he pinned her with his body, his thighs wedging between hers, spreading them wide. She needed no encouragement. She was ready for him, aching, hungry…

"I love your tits." He muttered those words against the soft globes as his mouth rooted for and then found a nipple. He drew it gently into his mouth, rolling his tongue around the bud, biting it softly.

She could feel the scratch of his mustache and unshaven chin rasping against her soft skin. Lora cried out, her hands coming up to clutch his shoulders, her nails digging deep into his skin. His mouth moved to the other nipple, suckling, rasping, and Lora felt quivers of fire shoot up from her loins. She whimpered, writhing beneath him, her legs coming up of their own volition to wrap around his hips. He was hard and heavy and hot on her, crushing her down into the hard floor, and she loved it. The burning heat of him jabbed at the softness of her inner thigh, and she shifted restlessly, craving his possession. With every fiber of her being she wanted him…

"And I love your ass." His hands slid all the way around her body to separately cup the twin halves of her behind, squeezing and kneading and stroking the dark crevice between.

Lora whimpered, stunned that she could be so aroused by such a caress, and then his mouth was on her breasts again and his hands on her bottom were lifting her against him, grinding her hips into his. She wrapped herself more tightly around him, clutching him to her with arms and legs, trembling, writhing, needing…

"Please, Max, do it now!" she moaned as his mouth came up to claim hers, unable to bear the throbbing tension that was rapidly turning into physical pain inside her another instant. In answer, his mouth possessed her, fierce and demanding and wildly sweet. And his body possessed her at the same time.

Lora groaned. The feeling was like nothing she had ever experienced. She quivered and quaked and cried out as he made love to her with passionate intensity, his body an instrument of both torture and ecstasy as he went first soft and slow, then hard and fast, then soft and slow again, keeping her always on the brink. Finally, she was mindless with passion, writhing as she cried his name. She needed him to give her peace…

"How do you want it, Lora? Hard or easy?" It was a soft, insidious question, murmured as he traced the inside of her ear with his tongue.          

She shivered and shuddered, her hands digging deep into his buttocks as he kept his movements teasingly slow. His hair-roughened skin was a penance against her aching breasts. His hard-muscled body kept her pinned to the floor, helpless to do anything to bring this agony to an end. She could only beg him to be merciful…

"Harder. Love me harder," she groaned, driven far beyond inhibitions by the torment he was inflicting on her body.

She heard the quick indrawing of his breath, felt a reflexive clenching of his arms around her, and then he was slamming into her with the fierce rapidity of a jackhammer and she was loving it. She clung to him, gasping, matching her movements to his with frenzied abandon. He cried out her name at the end, stiffening, his arms clenching around her so that she could scarcely breathe. But she wasn't concerned with breathing. She was dying, and it was glorious. She was soaring above the clouds, and he was with her…

It could have been seconds or it could have been hours before she drifted back down to earth. Lora rather suspected that it had been somewhere in between, because the interior of the plane was still inky dark, the blanket was still scratchy beneath her backside, and the man she loved still lay sprawled across her, breathing hard. She turned her head and found that his face was so close that their noses brushed. Smiling faintly, she brushed a kiss across his mouth. His eyes opened. Her eyes must have adjusted to the dark, because at such close range she could see every separate eyelash—he had surprisingly thick eyelashes—and every tiny line that fanned out around his eyes. She could see the glisten of moisture on his forehead and the dampness of the edges of the rough black hair. She could see the bump in the bridge of his nose and the chiseled line of his mouth beneath the villainous mustache. She could see the shadowed outline of his unshaven chin.

"Did I live up to my end of the promise?" There was a teasing inflection in his voice, and she could see a faint gleam of white teeth as his lips parted in a fleeting grin.

"Mmmmm."

"Oh, no. You'll have to do better than that. You weren't shy earlier." He leaned over to kiss her, drawing her lower lip into his mouth to nibble at it before releasing it. Lora stretched, loving the feel of his warm, sweat-damp body on her, and would have purred if she knew how.

"You want your pound of flesh, do you? All right, it was very nice." She kept her words deliberately prim.

"Very nice? Is that all you can say? Come on, Lora, you can do better than that."

She smiled a little, and her hand came up to trace the harsh outlines of his face. He turned his head so that his mouth nuzzled her palm.

"I really don't have a lot to compare it with, you know. Maybe you could demonstrate again?"

He stared at her for a moment, then chuckled. "You've got to be kidding."

She shook her head. "No-o."

"I feel like Dr. Frankenstein with his monster."

"And what did Dr. Frankenstein do with his monster?" It was silly, seductive teasing, and Lora reveled in it. She had never felt so warmly content, so at ease with a man…

"I have no idea." He shifted, rolling onto his back and pulling her with him so that she was lying on top of him now, her legs between his and her arms around his neck while her fingers threaded through the thick softness of his hair. "But I know what I'm going to do with mine."

"What's that?"

"Guess." His mouth was nuzzling her neck, moving lower. Against her thighs she could feel the part of him that she thought was out for the count hardening again.

"Max, I was teasing!"

"I'm not."

And he proceeded to demonstrate his seriousness very expertly until they were both exhausted. Bright fingers of dawn were trailing down through the trees before they finally made it back to the cave.

Chapter XXII