Then they lay tangled, sated, their sweat mingling, breaths ragged, bodies joined.
WHEN LINA AWOKE AT DAWN, SHE WAS ALONE BUT FOR THE sunlight turning the mosquito netting to ripples of liquid gold.
She wanted Hunter. Wanted him close to her, holding her, laughing while she kissed each tiny wound inflicted on him by insects and thorns. Then not laughing when she kissed the flesh that had given them both so much pleasure. There had been no more condoms, but she hadn’t cared. She just wanted to worship his body as he had worshipped hers.
And she had.
Smiling, stretching, feeling each sensual ache from Hunter’s tender, demanding lovemaking, Lina pushed through the mosquito netting. She showered and dressed in clothing suitable for jungle hiking, then took her backpack downstairs and tucked into the canvas enough food and water to last until evening. She filled a canteen with strong, rich coffee, left a note for her mother, and slipped out the back door before the maids arrived to begin grinding corn for Abuelita’s breakfast tortillas.
As always, there were guards along the perimeter of the compound. Lina barely registered their presence. She was too impatient to see Hunter.
The door to Casita Cenote opened before she could knock. Hunter’s eyes blazed a silver blue that took her breath. He was dressed, as impatient as she was.
As hungry.
“I’d kiss you,” he said in a deep voice, “but then I’d lose my head and go right to the top of your family’s shit list.”
The way Lina’s eyelids half lowered as she licked her lips told him that she’d awakened with the same thing on her mind.
“You’re killing me,” he said, touching her damp lips with a fingertip.
She smiled, touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, then stepped away. “We’ve got to leave before Celia or Abuelita thinks of a way to keep us apart.”
Hunter peeled the backpack off Lina, lengthened the straps to fit him, and said, “At your service, beautiful.”
She hesitated, smiled. “I never felt beautiful before you.”
“Have I mentioned that you’re killing me?”
“Maybe I like the way you ‘die.’”
The crunch of boots on crushed limestone was all that stopped Hunter from dragging Lina inside and bolting the door.
“Start moving,” he said huskily.
She turned and took a path leading away from the guard, walking quickly. He followed a little more slowly, just far enough back to appreciate the natural motion of her hips.
“You have a seriously fine ass,” Hunter said.
Lina gave him a you-have-got-to-be-kidding look over her shoulder.
He grinned.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asked, laughing.
“You did real good last night…and then some. Now change the subject or I’ll be walking bent over.”
Her dark eyebrows rose. “So it’s all my fault?”
“Every little bit.”
“There was nothing little about last night. Bitty either. You may be used to your whacking great equipment, but I’m walking funny today.”
Hunter laughed even as red burned along his cheekbones.
Smiling, she resumed her “funny” walk to the parking area of the compound. He took a long breath and followed her, wishing every step of the way that he had the right to drag her back to his bed for another up-close-and-personal loving from said equipment.
The Bronco was waiting where they had left it, limestone dust dimming its deep green paint. She held out her hand for the keys he had reclaimed yesterday. He dropped them in her palm. They were still warm from his pocket. She started to say something about how hot he was, then told herself to stop teasing the jaguar.
But it’s such fun.
Beneath the scraped-back hair and jungle wear, Lina felt more female than she ever had in her life.
“Where are we going?” Hunter asked as she unlocked the Bronco.
“First, the Cenote de Balam, or Jaguar Cenote, as Philip calls it,” she said. “Then to a very special place I’ve never taken anyone.”
“Breakfast along the way?” Hunter asked hopefully.
“In my backpack. The canteen clipped to the bottom is coffee. I ate while I was throwing stuff together.”
“Beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and understanding,” Hunter said, smiling wolfishly as he released and opened the canteen.
“I’ll remind you of that when I irritate you.”
Hunter was too busy swigging coffee to answer. But he winked.
“There’s a good limestone-paved walkway to the cenote from the compound,” Lina said, “but I don’t want to meet anyone. The villagers and workers use that path.”
He grunted something agreeable around a mouthful of pork, chiles, and hard-boiled eggs wrapped in yesterday’s corn tortillas. Four more fat bundles just like it waited for him in the backpack. He was hungry enough to eat every one.
“What about your cousin’s artifacts?” Hunter asked between bites.
“Gorgeous. Echoes of Kawa’il. Nothing close to what we’re looking for.”
“Did he say anything useful?”
“Not to me.”
On either side of the long estate driveway, elegantly spaced and manicured gardens flowed by. Before Hunter finished his second tortilla, she turned the Bronco onto what looked like a maintenance road. Moments later they were deep in the jungle. Untamed, unmanaged, raw with life. The jungle had a different kind of allure than the estate, the beauty of single moments framed in every shade of green—a bird flashing through a shaft of sunlight, a butterfly resting with blue incandescence on a white flower, the sudden rush and screech of howler monkeys passing overhead.
The sun filtered through the intertwined growth of the canopy, enclosing the Bronco in a living green world. As the trees grew bigger, the spaces between them increased, though the sunlight didn’t. Despite the overwhelming shade, the inside of the vehicle got hot, then hotter.
Hunter barely noticed. He expected heat in the Yucatan, even in December. It was the cool days that surprised people. But here, as in Texas, winter was being real slow about chasing summer from the land.
“Does the estate get its water from the cenote?” he asked as he swallowed the last bite of breakfast. “Or from cisterns during the wet?”
“Cisterns. Nearly all of Quintana Roo sits on a limestone shelf. Water flows through it, rather than being held back or pushed to the surface by denser, less water-soluble rock. During the wet season, rain fills the underground cisterns we’ve built. In the old days, the dry season was difficult, especially after the Maya fell and the ancient cisterns and canals fell apart.”
“So you don’t use the cenote at all?”
She shook her head. “Not anymore. We just drill down into the limestone ‘sponge’ to reach freshwater stored in stone from rainfall. You don’t drill too far, though. Close to the sea, freshwater floats on top of saltwater. It’s easy to punch right through to undrinkable stuff.”
“And if you don’t have a well?” Hunter asked. He enjoyed watching the relaxation and anticipation that spread through Lina with every minute away from the estate.
“Then you go to the nearest cenote, dip out water, and carry it back up the path. You’ll see signs of the old trail worn into solid limestone around Cenote de Balam. The trail is older than local memories, far older than Bishop Landa and his soldiers.” She downshifted deftly and whipped around a washout. “The actual word isn’t ‘cenote.’ It’s dznot. The Spanish mangled the Mayan word.”
“Pretty much what they did to the natives.”
“Oh, the natives were good at going to hell all by themselves. But yes, there wasn’t a whole lot of cross-cultural understanding, then or now.”