AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Yes. They call it the green hell. But I call it a virus-laden Petrie dish.”
“No kidding,” she said. “I’ve done a lot of work in the Amazon, but nothing like this. It has a dry and rainy season. When its dry? There is no mud and easy going walking-wise.”
“Not in this kind of jungle. It’s miserable. You never get dry. You never warm up. Everything is always damp. Mold, bacteria and fungus are everywhere.”
She knelt by her knapsack; her voice low. “I don’t know how you’ve done it, Nik. I know I couldn’t,” and she risked a look up at him. He stood with his hands on his hips, mouth set, staring up at the tree where the orchids were nestled. When she whispered those words, he cocked his head in her direction and she saw the raw pain in his eyes for a moment.
“We all do what we must,” he rasped, placing his hand against the damp bark of the tree, testing the strength of the trunk.
The heaviness in his voice, his utter exhaustion from dealing with the Russian drug team, weighed on Daria. She wanted to rise to her feet and simply walk up to Nik, slide her arms around his waist, lay her head on his chest and hold him. It wasn’t about sex this time. It was about human compassion and caring for someone carrying deep pain. She was discovering that her heart was wide open of its own accord toward him. He was a tragic figure to her, having gone through so much and having lost so much. All of that stress was multiplied on him right now with her thrown into the mix. He knew this was her first undercover assignment, a newbie that could easily get them killed if she screwed up by accident.
Looking around, having picked up her camera and coming over to stand by Nik, she said, “I don’t see how anyone could get around in this jungle without being heard. It’s so thick. You’d hear them coming a mile away.”
He rested his hand on the tree, studying her. “In this area the jungle is very dense. Further up, near the Highlands, there are wooden vines twisting and turning so that only small animals can negotiate and get through them. Even if Brudin is here, he’s on the wrong trail unless he followed us and saw we took a different trail. Besides, none of them are good at tracking. I am. That is why I made some tracks up the wrong trail that were obvious, so he’d follow it.” Shaking his head, he gave her a warning look. “Let’s stick to our script.”
Right.Daria nodded and stepped away as he hooked his hand around a lower limb and quickly hefted his lean body up into the tree. In no time, he had gently pried loose the first orchid and carefully handed it down to her. There, on the trail, she would measure the longest leaves, then the full orchid itself and then photograph it, write her notes and hand it back to him. The plop, plop, plop of rain gathering on the leaves far above them and then dropping earthward and the monkeys screaming off in the distance were the only sounds. Daria felt as if she had cotton in her ears, all the sounds muted. She wondered how close Brudin was, if he was here at all. Still, she stuck to the business at hand and this was how the hours passed for the two of them before they packed up and headed back to town.
“Why don’t you come inside?” Daria invited to Nik on the porch of her apartment. It was late afternoon and the cloud cover had cleared further, showing even more light blue sky through above them. The cliffs of the sun-bathed Machu Picchu towering above was washed with strong, swift moving shafts of light, and the town itself was as bustling, busy and noisy as always. She tilted her head and pleaded with him silently as she saw him considering her request.
Nik’s heart lurched over at her invitation, seeing the pleading in her eyes. It would give them a chance to talk without being overheard. And to not be potentially followed or listened in on. He looked down at his muddy boots, his cammies as soaked as the shirt he wore. They had long ago taken off their jackets as the temperature rose and combined with the high humidity. His hair was damp and shining in the sunlight. “I could. It wouldn’t be out of the norm for our growing relationship,” and he gave her a slight smile. Not once had she caught sight of any of the Russians along the railroad tracks as they’d returned to Aguas Calientes.
Daria gripped Nik’s hand. “Good, come on in. And don’t worry about the boots. We’ll stand on the rug inside and take them off.”
She had such long, beautiful fingers, and when they curled around his hand Nik needed no further urging. He stepped inside. Daria took her half of the dark-green rug and set her knapsack down on it as well. Everything she wore or carried was muddy. Nik’s throat felt dry as he watched her bend down to ease each boot off her feet. There was nothing but grace with her movements. Nik shut the door behind him and locked it. The blinds were open, allowing a lot of sunlight into the apartment, lifting his spirits. At last, he was alone with her again. They’d played their parts, kept their banter within the boundaries of her being a botanist. He took off his boots across from Daria on the rug. Then he did another quick sweep of the place in case any bugs had been planted in their absence. He gave her a thumb’s up, indicating that the apartment was still clean and they could relax and speak freely.
“I’m going to take a quick shower,” Daria told him, holding her damp socks in her hand, her feet bare on the wooden floor. “Would you like one, too?”
“Yes. You go ahead. I’ll try to wash some of the mud off my arms and hands,” and he gave her a warm look. How badly Nik wanted to follow her into that bathroom and get into the shower stall with her. He’d seen Daria’s face relax once they were inside the apartment, and felt so much of the tension she carried slough away. “I could make us a good cup of coffee?”
“Great idea,” she said, walking across the living room toward the hall.
The sway of her hips made his lower body tighten with need. Her hair was mussed, curled thickly from the humidity, her clothes sticking to her like a second skin. Daria was in top athletic shape, but he’d noticed today, after climbing several thousand feet up and down the trail, that she had a slight limp. Why? He decided to ask her after she’d taken her shower and they had sat down over coffee together.
Nik was in the kitchen when Daria emerged later from the bathroom. His eyes narrowed as she padded on bare feet around the corner. She’d washed her hair and combed it out, the sleek black cape of it with its blue highlights pouring over her shoulders. It was the white terrycloth towel she wore around her body, the edges of it barely brushing mid-thigh, that anchored him. It was then that, as her legs and the towel moved, he saw several recent, pink scars just above her knee on her left thigh. Before he could say anything, she halted at the entrance to the kitchen.
“Your turn. Have you made the coffee yet?”
“No. I was gathering things.” Did Daria realize she was turning him inside out with need? That towel hinted that she had small but full breasts beneath its material. And she was long in the torso, the fabric hanging over her rounded hips. He already knew she had a fine butt.
“I’m going to pull on a set of clean clothes. When I come out, I’ll start the coffee?”
Swallowing, Nik nodded. There was a scent of oranges as he passed by her, wanting to reach out, touch her bare shoulders, thread his fingers through her shining hair. Forcing himself to do nothing of the sort, Nik murmured, “Sounds good. I won’t be long.” He hesitated fractionally. “You need to automatically sweep your apartment first thing each time after you enter from now on.”
“I forgot all about that. Thanks for remembering to do it right after we entered.”
“Don’t worry,” Nik soothed, reaching out, unable to help himself as he barely brushed the crown of her head with his fingers. “Undercover work is new to you. I don’t expect you to remember everything.” He saw the guilt and apology in her eyes. “You’re doing fine,” he added, understanding that she was probably feeling pretty bad about missing the sweep for bugs. Nik had given her the time enough to think about doing it on her own, and she hadn’t.
“Not really,” Daria muttered, shaking her head. Her hand tightened on the front of the towel between her breasts.
He gave her a patient look. “Moya kotya, this is a joint effort. We’re a team. We each bring strengths and weaknesses to this mission. Don’t be hard on yourself. If I’m fine with your performance, you should relax, eh?” and he grazed her cheek with his thumb, forcing himself to back away from her before he did anything else. Nik was so close to taking her and yet, he knew that would be wrong. Daria hadn’t given him THAT signal. But he did see a melting look in her eyes when he touched her cheek. She LIKED his touch. They no longer had to play act. Whatever was going on now, was between them as far as he was concerned. And it was real.
“If you say so,” she said, apologetically.
“Look at it this way. If Korsak hasn’t ordered bugs to be put in your apartment, it means he’s buying that we’re a couple. That’s a good thing. Besides, he would know I would look for them. And then that would put him into an uncomfortable position with me. I’m the only medic they have and they can’t risk me walking out on them.” Nik forced himself to break away from her and walk down the hall to the bathroom.
By the time he’d showered and put on his scruffy, humidly damp clothes, he still felt a hundred percent cleaner. Sweating was an expected part of the tropics and it was always refreshing to feel clean, if only for a little while. He’d washed his hair and used her comb to tame it into place. He wished now that he’d shaved. His beard had only darkened his lower face, giving him, he thought, a more lethal look. Nik knew he was already not pretty-boy handsome in the least. There was Latin music on a radio, low but cheery, coming out from the kitchen. Inhaling, he smelled the fresh coffee in the air. He quickly rolled his long sleeves up to just below the elbow and padded in bare feet out into the kitchen. For a moment, he just stood there watching Daria. She was focused completely on opening up a box of cookies and placing each of them one by one on a small white saucer. Her hands were delicate and long, and he wanted so badly to feel them exploring him. Her back was partially turned toward him and he knew how to walk silently so that she’d never hear him coming. Daria wore a bright-yellow capped sleeve top that outlined her trim, tight body. The white cotton shorts that hung mid-thigh outlined her long, long legs. He smiled a little as he saw that she remained barefoot. It brought back the wild woman image he had of her once again.
It was Daria’s hair, now slowly drying in the humidity, the strands of it glinting reddish and bluish-black beneath the fluorescent light above her, that drew his gaze back up from her legs. She had left her hair down and it enticed him, made his hands itch to explore its strands, run them through his fingers, feel their strength and their silky quality. He knew she had been a Marine, saw it in the sleek muscling of her upper arms and the latent strength hidden in her lower arms. There were many, many old scars, white and shiny, along both her arms and he knew she’d probably collected them as a sniper lying on hard, unforgiving rocks, lying in wait for her next HVT, high value target.
