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  With a dismissive flick of those icy-blue eyes, Parnell turned from him. Pulling a sterile black carrying case out from under the narrow bed, he opened an interior pocket and withdrew a note of paper. “My dear Jinxie tells me payment was promised and services faithfully rendered. How much?”

  The room was too small, and with every passing second it seemed to be getting smaller. His hands hurt—physically ached—with the need to hit him. Takura shook with the effort it took not to. “I don’t want your money.”

  “I’m sure you don’t. But, regardless of what you might otherwise wish, you’ll get none of hers. As soon as we reach Manaus, I am going to marry that empty-headed little girl and that will make her money mine. Neither you nor she will ever have access to it again. So, let it not be said that I don’t settle all due accounts. How much do you want, Mr. Takol?” Filling his pen with enough ink to write, Parnell neatly blotted the tip and then began to fill in his note. “What is it going to cost me to make you go away?”

  Takura felt the snap—an internal cracking sensation that shot up his back, jolting into the base of his skull and vibrating down the lengths of both arms—as his self-control irrevocably slipped his grasp. “Two,” he breathed, so angry now that he could taste it. He could see it—a hazy shade of crimson that buzzed behind his burning eyes and, in that moment, tainted the entire world.

  Oblivious, Parnell bent to write that down. “Two hundred?”

  “No.” For the first time, Takura smiled. “Just two. Think of it as two good licks.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Stiffening, Parnell half turned to look back at him and after that, everything happened too fast to recall. Takura couldn’t remember moving; Parnell’s throat just seemed jump into his hand. The far wall broke their fall, the impact sounding like cannon-fire throughout the cabin. It shuddered the entire boat. That’s when Takura hit him. Not once, not even twice. He wasn’t in a counting mood, at that point. All he knew was, by the time he’d finished, Parnell had dropped his note and was flailing with both hands to ward off the next blow. He also had a mouth full of blood and Takura’s knuckles were throbbing where he’d split them open on Parnell’s teeth.

  “Her name is Levina. She’s not Jinxie. She’s not empty-headed, and she’s not a little girl.” Knocking Parnell’s hands aside, Takura latched onto his neck with both hands now. He slammed Parnell against the wall, holding him up even after Parnell’s legs buckled and he tried to slide down to the floor. “If you ever lay hands on her again, if you even think about caning her, I will break you in half!”

  He slammed Parnell back up against the wall, and then again, and again—damn, that felt good—and probably would have done it again, but for all the hands that appeared seemingly out of nowhere. They grabbed onto him, dragging him backwards off of Parnell and out of the tiny captain’s cabin.

  He was all the way out into the sunlight, held back by porters when all he could think about what getting back inside and finishing the job, when Parnell came up off the floor. Fists clenched, his face a battery of blood and rising bruises, Parnell chased after them. “Throw that savage off this boat! I want him over the side! Feed him to the fucking river!”

  The native porters startled, turning to stare first at him and then at the captain, who emerged from the wheelhouse with his own fists clenched. His black indian eyes flashed as he shoved between Takura and the porters, and then Parnell, physically muscling the taller man back until both were out of arm’s reach.

  His mouth a hard, flat line, he said, “I will not be a part to murder. Kindly remember, Mr. Ellery, you are a guest on my boat and in my country. I suggest you find someplace quiet to sit down and shut up, or you’ll spend the remainder of this trip tied hand to foot in the hold!” He looked at Takura. “Both of you!”

  “Parnell?” Takura didn’t notice Levina until she pushed between them all, her wide green eyes looking to him first before she sidled up to Parnell’s side. “You’re bleeding.”

  When she touched his arm, offering a handkerchief to dab at his bloody face, Parnell yanked away. He wrenched his arm to escape her touch and his elbow caught Levina in the mouth. The blow spun her around, bending her double as she clapped a hand over her lips, her eyes squeezing shut in pain.

  “Jinxie!”

  That it was an accident was obvious, judging from the horrified look that shook Parnell. But it would be hours later, while tied hand and foot in the hold, before the mindless swell of Takura’s fury bled slowly out of him enough for him to think clearly again. For now, all he saw was Levina’s hand peeling back from her lips and the smear of blood pooling in her palm.

  It took all three porters and the captain almost a full minute to pull him off Parnell, and he spent every one of those sixty seconds beating the pomposity out of Prince Parny.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “You sit and soak awhile,” Felda, the hotel manager’s wife said as she rinsed the last of the soap from Levina’s long, copper hair. “I’ll be back in a moment with your dress.”

  Good manners dictated that Levina say thank you, but she just couldn’t bring herself to. She sat, waist deep in bubbles and perfumed water, hugging her knees to her chest and tried not to cry instead. The Palacio les Rois was arguably the nicest hotel in the whole of Manaus. Certainly, it was the most expensive. Wealthy tourists booked their vacations here. Even wealthier rubber barons bought their product and sold their souls over plates of fine cuisine in the restaurant across the street, and when foreign dignitaries came to visit the capital city, they booked their stays in rooms just like this one. It was ornate. It was extravagant, and despite the fact that the balcony doors stood wide open to let in a cooling breeze, it was Levina’s prison until Parnell returned, complete with guards stationed just outside the door.

  Felda retreated from the room, the heavy double doors bumping softly closed behind her. She had not been smiling. This was not a happy occasion for anyone except, perhaps, Parnell, who had made a grand show of cheerfulness during the brief check-in process. He poked tender fun at his black eye, split lip and disheveled clothes; to Levina, it was an act worthy of the Teatro theatre. For as long as there was an audience, he played the part of the attentive fiancé without flaw.

  Behind the doors of their hotel room, however, everything changed. His smile disappeared; his demeanor turned frosty and distant. Though Levina shrank from him, Parnell did not immediately turn against her. In fact, he barely even looked at her. Instead, he washed his hands and his battered face, changed into fresh clothing, and quietly said, “I expect you to make yourself presentable, Jinxie, darling, and I suggest you not dawdle as you do it. As soon as I arrange a license and find a priest, then we are going to be married. Afterwards, you shall have all the hours of our first night together to beg my forgiveness. For your sake, I hope I can find it within me to grant it.”

  Then he’d left.

  He hadn’t even asked if she still wanted to marry him.

  She hadn’t said she didn’t, either.

  Hot soapy water lapped around Levina as she sat up in her bath, hugging her knees to her chest. He’d called her Jinxie and darling, but he’d said both so coldly that Levina could find no hint of fondness for her anywhere in his voice or his eyes. The Parnell she once thought she knew was gone, leaving her to share a hotel room and the rest of her life with an angry, bitter stranger.

  Perhaps she’d never known him to begin with. Or, maybe it was she who had changed.

  Levina closed her eyes, wondering where Takura was now. The police had dragged him off the boat almost as soon as they’d docked, and Parnell gave her no chance at all to say goodbye.

  She missed him.

  She loved him, for all the good that could do either one of them. Takura wouldn’t come to Boston, and she could understand why. No one in her circle of society would ever accept him. Her parents would never accept him. How would he live there? How could he support them? This is where Takura made his home. This was where he belonged.
/>   But not Levina. Because she was disaster incarnate. Because she didn’t know the first thing about jungles. Because she had almost got them killed—by headhunters, caimans, mudslides, and the list just went depressingly on and on.

  No, Levina had no business staying in the jungle. She had to go home, to Boston, to her family, and to the life that up until a mere week ago she had always known she was supposed to have. That life involved Parnell.

  Except that she didn’t love Parnell.

  Love. What a silly thing on which to base something as important and as permanent as marriage. Parnell had money. He had distinction and a legacy, and a museum that she could work in. And maybe, yes, it was a stupid job, copying information onto file cards and writing speeches that she wasn’t important enough to give. But she used to enjoy…well, at least parts of it. And her parents liked Parnell, very much. She might as well like him too. That was what successful marriages were made of: mutual liking, social equality and a firm foundation for proper financial support. There was no place in any of that for something as fickle and emotionally irresponsible as love.

  The tears she’d been struggling to hold back trickled over her lashes and spilled down both cheeks. Pressing the heels of her palms into her eyes, she hid her silly, female weakness under drops of bathwater. Her shoulders shook, kissed by the coolness of the breeze that billowed through sheer balcony curtains. Outside, she should hear the muffled strains of music and laughter from the restaurant across the street and the faint rustle of vining ivy that twisted up from corner flower pots to claim the balcony rails.

  “Don’t cry, princess.”

  Levina jerked around, sloshing bathwater over the rim of the tub onto the floor, her eyes and mouth both gaping as Takura hooked his leg over the top of the rail and heaved himself onto the balcony.

  “Takura!” She whispered her cry, only just managing not to squeal it even as she vaulted form her bath. She grabbed a towel, reflexively wrapping it around her even as she ran to him.

  She threw her arms around his neck and shoulders, feeling the comforting strength in his answering embrace. He crushed her to him, but Levina didn’t mind. His hands caught her face, his thumbs brushing through the tracks of her tears, caressing the swell of her bruised mouth where Parnell had accidentally struck her. There was fire in his dark eyes as he looked at her, taking in every tear before his mouth claimed hers. His kiss was as possessive as it was painful to receive, but Levina didn’t mind that either.

  Both laughing and crying and struggling to keep both as quiet as possible, she whispered, “How did you find me? I thought you were arrested!”

  “I have more friends on that dock than your Prince Parny.” Pulling away from her, Takura crossed the room to listen at the double doors. Very quietly, he locked them. For added measure, he also snagged Parnell’s bloody shirt from the floor and quietly threaded it through both handles, tying the doors fast together.

  “That won’t keep them out indefinitely,” he said as he came back to her. “Get dressed, and hurry up about it.” He gave her a brisk slap on the butt on his way back out onto the balcony to steal a quick peek at the street below. “I tried to come in through the lobby. Parny’s got men stationed…” He stopped when he noticed that she’d made no move to obey. “Princess, you are never going to hear me say this again, but put some damn clothes on before your beau comes back and busts through those doors.”

  Other than picking at the towel, Levina didn’t move. “Parnell is looking for someone to marry us.”

  Takura’s already dark eyes grew stormily darker. “You’re already married. To me.”

  Levina didn’t want to, but she shook her head. “It’s not real. You said so yourself.”

  “Just because I was an idiot then, that doesn’t mean you get to be one now!” Takura came back to her. “Levina—”

  She couldn’t bring herself to resist when he cupped her shoulders, pulling her in close to him. It was everything she could do not to melt in his arms.

  “You’re my wife,” he said, giving her a gentle shake. “My wife, my princess and, yeah, at times my pain in the ass! But I know what you’re worth even if that jackass doesn’t. I understand you want to go home, but the home you’re trying so hard to get to doesn’t want you. It wants sweet, malleable Jinxie, a girl who’d never think twice about a lifetime spent in the basement of some dusty museum, unseen, unheard, endlessly striving to win the approval of some jackass who’s incapable of giving it. You’re better than that!”

  “No, I’m not.” For the first time, Levina tried to pull away, but Takura did not relax his hold. She shrugged, a tiny hopeless hitch of her shoulders. “Thank you for saying that, but it’s not true. Parnell is right; everyone’s right. I’m a jinx. Disaster follows me, no matter where I go. I—” She covered her mouth with both hands, helpless to do anything but watch the storm darkening in his eyes as she admitted, “I love you. I love you so much, but I…I can’t do this to you.”

  For almost a full minute, Takura did not move. He simply stared at her, his fingers gradually letting her go as he took a small step back.

  “Maybe Parnell will let me keep my job in the museum.” She sniffled softly, swiping at two escaping tears with the back of her hand and struggling to pull herself back under control. “I’m the best amateur botanist he’s ever known, you know. He said that…once. I’ll have to work hard to prove I can be trustworthy again.”

  Takura tipped his head slowly to one side. He stared first at her, and then at the locked double doors, and finally at massive four-poster bed not far behind him, draped in acres of mosquito netting and blanketed by a lacey white coverlet.

  “I know it probably doesn’t seem this way.” She reached up to lay her hand along his cheek. “But this really is for the best. For both of us.”

  He took firm hold of her arm.

  “For e-everybody, really. Wh-what…are you doing? Takura?”

  He marched her to the bed, seating himself at the foot of the mattress. Her arm held captive in his grip, she started to sit down beside him, but she only got halfway down before a flash of temper he caught hold of her towel with one hand and then yanked on her imprisoned arm. He ripping the cloth right out of her hands, stripping her completely bare in that half second before she landed, sprawling across his lap.

  Levina squeaked, but he quickly adjusted his grip, pinning her down in this most undignified position with little more than one burly arm wrapped across her back and around her waist.

  “W-wait! Oh!” She grabbed his knee with one hand and a fistful of lace blanket with the other. She tried to get up, her feet madly scrambling for leverage, only to kick straight out in startled shock when the flat of his very hard palm came cracking down across the center of her unclothed and completely unprotected bottom. “Oh!”

  He caught her wrist when her hand dashed back in defense of her smarting flesh. He pinned her arm at her side and caught her thrashing legs between the sudden vise of his thighs.

  “I know it doesn’t seem this way,” he said, and brought his hand down a second time, swatting hard across the entire right side of her buttocks. She gasped, her skin there stinging now as if it had just been attacked by a swarm of angry bees. “But this is really for the best!” Like the unleashing of torrential rains, he began to spank hard and fast, his voice quickly rising to be heard above her yelping pleas and the sudden rattling of the double doors as whoever stood guard on the other side tried to break in. “For both of us! For everybody, really!”

  “Wait!” Levina wailed, and then burst into frantic tears because not only was he not waiting, he wasn’t stopping, either.

  “Who are you?” Takura demanded, vigorously assaulting the entire surface of her bottom with crisp smack, whack, cracks of his unyielding hand.

  The pain was overwhelming; the fury of those swarming bees unstoppable. She threw back her head, shouting, “I—Ow! I-I-I’m Levina Wainwright!”

  If anything, his paddling hand grew hard
er, fell faster. “Who are you?”

  “Levina Wain—”

  He spanked the top of her right thigh and Levina sucked a ragged breath. It came out again, accompanied by a burst of frantic bucking, screeching, sobbing and fighting the likes of which Parnell would never have tolerated, but which Takura simply absorbed. He tightened his grip on her wrist and around her waist, and no matter how she twisted and writhed, he never slowed or missed his target. The stinging swarm was soon replaced by a bonfire of unbelievable proportions. It covered her entire backside, burning and throbbing deep inside her bright red flesh, the heat kicked up hotter and hotter with every fresh clap of his hand.

  “Who are—”

  “Levina Takol!” she wailed, dissolving into braying sobs. “Takol! I’m Levina Takol!”

  The spanking ceased. No last minute flurry of harder than normal spanks. No final scolding or frown of censure to drive the message home. It simply ended and his grip on her immediately shifted, helping to pull her up without first letting her go.

  Levina scrambled to get her feet under her, to retreat back out of arm’s reach and rub and rub to get that awful, throbbing fire extinguished. But he kept his hand steadfastly locked around her arm, and in the end, all the further ‘up’ that she could get was a perching seat upon his left thigh. That brought them both to eye level and they stared at one another: Takura, quiet, dark and firm; and Levina, her green eyes wide and one hand thrown back in a vain attempt to soothe away the pain. Neither one of them spared so much as a glance toward the double doors, where the rattling had become pounding as two men now struggled to break in. So far, the knot Takura had tied in Parnell’s shirt was holding. They were also calling out to Levina, but she wasn’t answering them.