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With the Nuevos’ boisterous laughter ringing in his ears, Takura jumped over that same assortment of pots and didn’t stop running until he reached the stream. He collapsed to his knees at the water’s edge, peering at his reflection with a mixture of shock followed very quickly by horror.

  “Oh shit!” He practically fell face first into the water, scrubbing at himself with both hands. The paint wasn’t coming off. He grabbed fistfuls of grass from the embankment and scrubbed harder, first his face and then his chest. It definitely wasn’t coming off.

  Crap.

  Throwing the grass on the bank, he glared down at the gently flowing water until the ripples from his vigorous splashing faded enough to make the transparent surface reflective again. He looked at his face, frowning at the bright red swath of color that ran from earlobe to earlobe, down one cheek, across his mouth and up the other side. At least it wasn’t tattooed onto him. That gave him hope that the paint would eventually fade away. Maybe in a couple weeks. Or months.

  Or years.

  Maybe.

  “Shit.” He threw the crumpled wad of grass into the water and stood up, hands on his hips, scowling at his now quite colorful chest.

  “You’ve got paint on you,” came a soft observation—Levina, once more planted behind her shielding bush.

  Takura looked up slowly. She had crawled back into her chemise and drawers. The fragile lace was neither Amazon tested nor jungle approved. It had torn in places along the hem of her shift and across one shoulder. The crisp whiteness of the elegant fabric was stained from yesterday’s romp in the mud but was also as clean as it would ever be again.

  One hand drifting timidly up to her own furiously blushing face and she gestured across her own mouth. “It’s a little…um, red…”

  “Clothes,” he said through tightly clenched teeth.

  She retreated a step, blinking at him with those owlishly green eyes of hers before turning to pull his clothes off the bush. Creeping as close to the water’s edge as she could come without getting wet, she carefully wadded his shirt and pants together and held them out to him. He came up onto the shore to take them from her, and she politely turned her back so he could dress in dignity.

  “They painted me, too,” she said, conversationally. “My stomach, actually.”

  He grunted, a hard, unamused bark of laughter. “You haven’t seen your face yet, have you?”

  With a shrill gasp, one hand already flying up to her cheek, Levina ducked down to look at herself in the reflective surface of the water. Her eyebrows beetled together as she took in the thin blue-black line that traveled the length of her forehead with twin bright red dots spaced directly above her nose.

  “Please tell me this comes off.” Having already watched him try, she couldn’t help but scrub at her own paint. “Oh no! Oh…” She covered her mouth with her hand, but then groaned. Hesitantly, she tried to pull her bangs down far enough to hide the paint, but it was a doomed effort. Almost softer than he could hear, she whispered, “He’s going to kill me.”

  Zipping up his trousers and pulling his shirt down over his head, Takura indulged in another grim laugh. “Don’t worry. Once your beau learns about the marriage, somehow I doubt that little bit of paint is going to bother him much.”

  “Marriage?” She looked up at him. “What marriage?”

  “Our marriage,” he bit through tightly gritted teeth.

  For the second time in as many days, he left her standing slack-jawed by the side of that stream, staring after him while he strode through the water and headed back into the village. This time, neither one of them was laughing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They were making better time with the machete than they had without it. Takura had the lead and he was doing his best to exorcise his frustration on the vegetation, hacking out a path to take them deeper into the Amazon. And maybe it was working. Although not as angry as he’d been when he first found himself unwittingly married, the idea had definitely not grown any more favorable since leaving the Nuevo.

  “What are we going to do?” Levina finally asked. It was the first thing she’d said since discovering they were married. It was both innocently and reasonably asked, and yet it was enough to make him mad all over again.

  He hacked vindictively at the blocking vines and branches. “We’re going to ignore it. You’ll go back to your world, and I’ll stay here. No one has to know.”

  Except that he’d know. He’d always thought he’d get married someday. He got along well with many of the tribes he knew along the river. He was successful. He was handsome. For the price of a healthy piglet or two, he’d have no problem winning over a native family with an eligible girl. He might even find someone from his own tribe, although most were now assimilated into the Masis, and that was, of course, only if he ever got back out that way. No point in trying now. There was no word in his native language for either divorce or annulment.

  “I’ll know,” Levina said, more to herself than to him.

  “It’s not a real marriage. Know that.” He didn’t have to turn around to know she was rubbing at her forehead again.

  “Yes, but—”

  “I don’t want you!” Takura roared, snapping around. He still had the machete in his hand, and it wasn’t until she took a startled step back that he realized the threatening manner in which he held it. He made himself lower the blade. Shaking he was so upset, he turned back to hacking at trees and vines.

  Levina did not immediately fall into step behind him. He could feel her eyes on him though, following angrily as he stomped on to the next obstacle. “I don’t particularly want you, either, you know! You’re mean and belligerent and…”

  “Good!” He hacked his way through another tree, stepping through a window of broken branches to glare at the pond that blocked their way.

  “This isn’t my fault,” she said, a hint of hurt feelings beginning to creep into her tone.

  It wasn’t, either, but that didn’t make him any less mad. Marriage was sacred. Family was sacred. It was not something to be thrown away on some pampered, silly American woman who, in just a few short weeks, would be returning to her pampered American world (and her fiancé) where he would likely never see her again. And so, even knowing he was being unfair, Takura couldn’t make himself stop. He just vented.

  “Of all the captains on that dock, why’d you have to come to me? I wish I’d never met you; at least then, I’d still have my boat. I should have taken you back to Manaus when I had the chance, too. At least then, I wouldn’t now be married!” He bellowed the word so loudly it startled a flock of roosting birds into flight and set a distant troop of monkeys to whooping in the treetops.

  Gripping his machete, Takura turned his back on the pond and viciously started hacking a path around it. “You’re a menace, that’s what you are. Trouble follows you like a plague. You—”

  He broke off abruptly when a plant suddenly hit him in the shoulder, root ball, dirt clod and all. A shower of soil splashed up into his hair, into the collar of his shirt and trickled down his back. Takura froze, shoulders hunched, in absolute disbelief at what she’d just done. Internally, his temper flared hotter than the sweltering jungle heat. When he turned around, it was to see her struggling to rip up a hapless fern. She threw that at him too. There was a thin green snake coiled in the leaves. The snake flew free in midair; he ducked them both.

  “Don’t!” he snapped, pointing at her when she immediately dropped to pluck two more handfuls of damp earth and roots.

  “I am not a menace!” She cried, her face bright red with anger. She had tears streaming down both cheeks, and despite his stern gesture, she threw one handful after the other directly at him. The first clod missed Takura by several feet. The second struck him squarely on the chin.

  “Settle down!” He coughed to clear his mouth and scrubbed furiously at his hair to get some crawling thing off his scalp. “Cool your damn temper, princess, or I’ll cool it for you!”

  “I’m not a mena
ce and I’m not a plague!” Her voice broke. She stomped her foot, she was so impotently angry and ducked down to grab a piece of rotting wood. “And I won’t either burn the whole jungle down!”

  He swore when it hit his shoulder, and then his temper erupted. He charged before she could grab something else to lob at him. He grabbed her around the waist and, with a screech of fury, she began beating at his head and shoulders. He lifted her off the ground, kicking, struggling and fighting every step of the way back to the side of the pond. With a single, mindless heave, he threw her into the water.

  Levina screamed, and with a loud, muddy splash, ever so briefly disappeared from view. She resurfaced a half second later, splashing violently, flailing her arms and legs, a look of pure panic on her face. Only belatedly did Takura remember she couldn’t swim.

  “Help!” she screamed, rolling in the water from her back to her stomach, splashing frantically but in a disjointed and ineffective way.

  “It’s not deep,” Takura said from the shore. Hands on his hips, feeling like a complete jackass, he watched her struggle. “Put your feet down. Prin—Levina. Stand up.”

  Panicking, her eyes as large as tea saucers, she struggled to grab onto a low hanging branch that was just barely out of arm’s reach. “Help!”

  “Put your—shit.” Dropping to brace his hand on the edge of the sheer embankment, Takura hopped down into the pond. He landed thigh-deep in water and waded out to her, sinking as deep as his ribs before he managed to grab one of her flailing arms. “Stand up. Put your feet down.”

  Coughing and gasping, Levina latched onto him like…well, someone in desperate fear of drowning.

  “Stand up,” he said again.

  She straightened slowly, her feet finding the pond’s muddy bottom. Standing chest-deep in muddy water, she looked down at herself and then up at him. Then she burst into tears. “You tried to drown me!”

  Just when he thought it wasn’t possible to feel any worse about it, with one gasping sob after another, a lost look on her sunburned face, she quickly showed him how wrong he was. She tried to push away from him, but Takura hooked her shaking shoulders and pulled her in against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her. “All right, all right. That’s enough. I’m sorry.”

  Her small hands clutched at his shirt, the ragged ends of her broken fingernails scratching grooves into his neck and shoulders as she clung to him, but he accepted that as well-deserved punishment for behaving so badly.

  “I’m not a menace,” she wept.

  “No,” he agreed, rubbing her back until she calmed. “This isn’t your fault, either. I’m sorry I said it was.”

  He rubbed her shoulders and her back, picking bits of decomposing leaf matter from her long, wet hair, patiently waiting until her sobs dwindled into sniffles and hiccups. The temptation to drop a kiss onto her forehead nearly overwhelmed him. She could be a comfortable little armful…when she wasn’t screaming, yelling and throwing snakes at him.

  * * * * *

  “Lean your head back,” Takura said, his voice calm and low, and Levina reluctantly obeyed.

  She could feel his hands, one between her shoulder blades and the other at the small of her back. With cool water lapping at her on all sides, those two slight touches were all that were keeping the panic at bay. Well, that and the fact that Takura was standing right here with her. Despite his having thrown her into this pond (mud puddle really), she knew he wouldn’t let her drown.

  “Take a deep breath,” he said. “Hold your body stiff and straight. That’s it. I’m going to take my hand away, but I’m not going anywhere.”

  Levina held her breath, her body as stiff as she could make it in the water. Her hands were tight as fists.

  “Relax,” he said, and she tried to obey. “Ready?”

  “Yes,” she whispered, and even managed a hesitant nod. Despite knowing the water was only chest-deep, she was still scared.

  The hand beneath her shoulders sank into the cool water and disappeared. Her breaths quickened, but though she felt herself dip a little deeper, she barely sank in up to her ears.

  “You’re okay,” Takura soothed. “Keep your back straight. Remember to breathe, slow and even.”

  Her heart was beating a furious tattoo against her ribs. The water licked along her sides, sparking trepidatious shivers, but his face remained calm and that was the only reason she did not give in to the tickles of panic that coiled and rolled inside her.

  “One more hand,” he said, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “Ready?”

  She shuddered, but drew another slow breath and managed a second shaky nod. “Ready.”

  His touch fell away, and Levina tensed in response. But she didn’t sink. She was floating, drifting in a puddle of muddy water with Takura keeping slow pace beside her, his hands ready to catch her if she panicked or sank.

  “A-am I swimming?”

  “As good as.”

  Levina couldn’t help it. Scared as she was, she still managed a small grin. “Really?”

  “Want to try kicking your feet a bit and moving your arms?”

  “No,” she quickly demurred. “No, I’m all right.” She was fine just like this, getting used to the feeling of what had—up until mere moments before—been a mortal enemy for as far back as she could remember.

  “Any time you fall in the water, just remember this and, unless you’re about to go over a waterfall…or land in a school of piranha…you should be okay.”

  She startled and almost sank as she lifted her head to look around. His hand caught her even before more than her ears could go under and quickly returned her to buoyancy. “Are there any in this water?”

  “We’d have been eaten by now, if there were.”

  Startled first, she promptly splashed him when his smile betrayed his quirky sense of humor.

  “Joke,” he clarified.

  She splashed him again.

  “There might be leeches, though.”

  Levina got her feet under her and very quickly waded for the muddy bank. With her back to him, she plucked at the front of her dirty shift, quickly checking her chest before bending to lift the hem and run her hands discretely up and down her legs, albeit over her drawers.

  Climbing up onto the shore behind her, Takura asked, “Want me to check your back?”

  Under any other circumstance, she’d have refused, but having spent the previous night dressed as a taro plant while her guide ran about au naturale, and then factoring in the unsavory possibility of leeches, Levina added yet another mortifying experience that she knew she’d never recount to another living soul once she was safely home again. “Yes, please.”

  Lifting the shin-length hem of her garment all the way up to her shoulders, Takura checked her back while she—hoping he was much too engrossed in the activity to notice—surreptitiously pulled the waist of her drawers away from her skin to check her lower half. Apparently, it wasn’t surreptitious enough.

  “I’d be happy to check that for you, too.”

  “No, thank you.” Her face flushed.

  “It’s nothing I haven’t seen already. On you, even.”

  She flushed even hotter. “No. Thank you.”

  “Suit yourself.” He let the back of her chemise fall into place. “Do I have anything on me?”

  He walked away from her, already stripping off his shirt to show off the muscular ridges and valleys of his smooth, brown back. He looked over his arms, both the fronts and backs and into each pit before looking down at his chest, and that’s when he suddenly froze. He dropped his shirt on the ground. “Strip,” he said, rapidly shucking out of his own clothes. “Right now. Everything.”

  Engrossed as she was in the magnificent display he offered, when Takura turned around, Levina took one look at the wriggling black slugs that he was pulling off his stomach, ribs and legs, and that sexy little thrill inside her abruptly died.

  Levina ripped her clothes off. It was the fastest that she’d ever got
naked in her life, and she absolutely could not have cared any less if Takura was looking at her or not.

  “Are they on me?!” She spun in a tight circle, slapping and rubbing at her skin everywhere all at once. “Do you see any?”

  “Hold still,” he said and, picking leeches off himself as he came, moved toward her.

  “Oh God! That means there are some!” She shrieked.

  “Hold still.”

  She shrieked again, but obediently froze the instant he touched the back of her thigh. She gave in to a full-blown dance of the willies, stamping her feet and bouncing when he began picking leeches off her leg.

  “Turn,” he told her.

  “Are they off?” she whimpered.

  “Yes, now turn.” He pulled her around by her hips and Levina shuddered all over again. She couldn’t bring herself to look down. She couldn’t even look at him, although he was certainly looking at her. He’d knelt down to check her, picking bits of dead leaf off her wet skin and finding another leech attached directly above her pubis, which made her break out in goosebumps—both because she’d never had any man touch her there, ever, and because she’d had a leech (she muffled a squeal of pure disgust) clinging practically to her privates.

  “You look fine.” Takura knelt in front of her, one hand resting warm against the curve of her hip. His voice sounded funny—thick, perhaps even somewhat strained.

  “Ugh!” she shuddered, barely noticing anything beyond her need to indulge a fully-bodied shudder of revulsion. “I have leeches on me!”

  “They’re off now,” he soothed, stroking her hips with both hands. His hands rubbed up and down her thighs.

  She managed to open her eyes, looking down at herself where thin trickles of blood marked the places where he’d removed each parasite. She shuddered even more violently. “I can still feel them. Are you sure they aren’t crawling—”

  Looking down at Takura, she stopped. In one brief burst of heat, the leeches were forgotten as she suddenly recognized how he was staring at her. All of her. From her tasty leech-nibbled parts, to the expanse of pale skin below her belly button, down her long pale legs and then back up again. His hand stroked her, the warm rasp of his palms caressing low across her abdomen to wipe away the blood.