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She stilled in astonishment at the sight of the waterfall tumbling down over a jutting outcrop of limestone rock into a wide glistening tranquil pool below. The water was so clear she could see each individual pebble below the surface. It was very beautiful. But she was obviously not on the same path she had used before.
Joaquin was going to kill her, she conceded ruefully. Bending down, she dipped a finger into the water. It was deliciously cool. Slowly, she raised herself again. She listened to the silence. Even the birds had gone quiet. She was so hot that her damp clothes were sticking to her skin, and getting mad at Joaquin hadn’t helped. Just a quick two-minute dip, she decided, succumbing to temptation. Then she would retrace her steps, for goodness knows where she would end up if she stayed on the path she was on!
Peeling off her skirt and top with a sigh of relief, she stepped into the pool. Heavenly. She scooped up water and splashed herself all over, revelling in every sparkling water droplet that cooled her overheated flesh.
‘Freeze, Lucy…’
Joaquin’s drawl was so much quieter than its wont, and such an unwelcome shock, that for a split second she did freeze with appalled chagrin, her lack of clothing her most overriding concern. Automatically her head then jerked up and she began to whip her hands over her bare breasts, and then what she saw in that one mortified upward glance filled her with absolute terror…
CHAPTER SIX
IN THE deep shadow below the trees, no longer screened by the thick vegetation, stood the most huge and terrifying beast Lucy had ever seen outside a zoo.
The jaguar was barely fifteen feet away on the other side of the pool. His big golden eyes were drilling holes into her and her mouth fell open. So intense was her fear that she could neither draw breath nor remove her shattered gaze from the animal. And then, with a sudden movement that scared the living daylights out of her and provoked a startled gasp from her straining lungs, the great muscular cat sprang through the trees and was gone.
‘Oh, my heaven…oh, my…oh, my!’ Lucy spluttered through chattering teeth, her near nudity now the very last thing on her mind.
A pair of powerful arms lifted her out of the water and brought her back on to dry land. Trembling violently with fear, she couldn’t have spoken to save her life.
‘You know the Maya believed that when night fell the sun turned into a jaguar that prowled the underworld,’ Joaquin murmured as he peeled off his shirt and dropped it round her shaking shoulders.
‘They also called it “the beast that kills its prey with one b-bound”!’ Lucy stammered sickly.
‘They are rarely aggressive towards humans.’
‘Thank the good Lord that he didn’t fancy getting those big paws wet!’ she gabbled, clutching at a bare broad male shoulder to keep herself upright.
‘He is an excellent swimmer, querida. This is the pool where he catches fish. You were trespassing.’
‘Get clothes on,’ Lucy mumbled, not keen to hear any further revelations of the big cat’s habits.
Joaquin crouched down to gather up her discarded garments. She crouched down with him, pale as death and still shaking like a leaf. ‘I was scared—’
‘That’s good, querida. That’s more sensible than skinny-dipping in a rainforest when twilight falls.’
‘Never again,’ Lucy promised in a wobbly voice.
In a deft movement, Joaquin dropped the gypsy top over her head and freed her from his shirt. ‘But in all my vast experience I do not think that I ever saw anything as lovely as you were in that brief instant before I saw that you had attracted another admirer.’
With complete calm, he then began inserting her arms into the sleeves of her top while she knelt on the ground in front of him, still virtually paralysed by shock. ‘Lovely?’ she queried unevenly.
‘You…exquisite…your breasts, your hair, the way the light fell on your skin…’
‘Oh…’ Lucy collided unwarily with shimmering green eyes, conscious of a soaring wicked response she could no more have prevented than she could have denied herself air to breathe. She moistened her dry lips.
‘No…’ Joaquin decreed in a low-pitched undertone, as if she had spoken.
Only she didn’t need to speak to know what he was talking about, and it gave her the most extraordinary sense of power to note the slight tremor in his lean brown hands as he extended them to help her back to her feet. He proceeded to feed her shaky lower limbs into her skirt. She recognised his dexterity without surprise and was amazed by her own lack of concern at being dressed by him. She tried to picture how she must have looked to him in the pool. Clad in nothing but a pair of panties that were wet and probably transparent.
‘Did I look sexy?’ she heard herself whisper with helpless curiosity.
Joaquin closed big hands over her shoulders and flexed his fingers. ‘Like a water nymph in an old painting.’
A water nymph was next door to a wholesome cherub in Lucy’s mind. He urged her back the way she had come. Her legs felt ridiculously wobbly. Time itself felt dislocated. Traversing the periphery of the ruins, Joaquin turned into the original path where a big four-wheel drive now sat parked. He lifted her into the front seat, hands steady now, and impersonal. As he reversed the vehicle she studied his bold bronzed profile in the dusk light, her heartbeat hammering out a dangerous tattoo. In all her life she had never wanted so badly to touch anyone as she wanted to touch him.
When had they stopped talking? When had the silence fallen and the tension begun to build? She didn’t know, only that she was awesomely aware of that crackling tension and of him. He flipped on the air-conditioning, the click sounding preternaturally loud. He turned towards her, dense spiky lashes screening his gaze to a glimmer of the purest jade. Her fingertips curled in on themselves as she fought the crazy, shameless need to reach out to him.
In the rushing silence she noted everything about him. The faint sheen on his high proud cheekbones, the powerful lure of those bright eyes, the roughened darkness of his uncompromisingly male jawline in contrast to his beautifully modelled mouth. A tiny pulse was flickering like mad at the base of her throat as she let her head fall back and just looked at him.
‘You like to flirt with danger, querida,’ Joaquin commented, his accent rough as sandpaper gliding over silk.
Never before, probably never again, her rational mind responded. She was dizzy with the tension that held her wire-taut, outrageously aware of the heavy fullness of her breasts and the tiny little twisting sensation curling in the pit of her stomach. He looked and she burned and she melted. It was that simple, that basic, and way too potent a force for her to control. It both thrilled and terrified her to feel the magnetic pull of that power he had over her.
‘It’s not fair to blame me…’ she muttered, dry-mouthed.
Joaquin lifted a lean hand and rested a fingertip against the pulse fluttering wildly at her collarbone. ‘No…’ he conceded, drawing out the word huskily. ‘Desire is rarely so immediate as it is between us. That intrigues me, but it won’t hold me. Don’t fantasise about a future beyond tomorrow…’
Lucy heard what he was saying and she understood, but she couldn’t think about it. She let the words sink unmourned into her subconscious, her whole being concentrated on the mesmeric brilliance of his eyes, the delicious, utterly electrifying sensuality of that light and confident finger now tracing the full curve of her lower lip.
‘I’ve never felt like this before,’ she whispered breathlessly.
He cupped her cheekbone, watched her curve her face instinctively into his palm. ‘Only teenagers talk like that, Lucy,’ he censured with lazy mockery.
‘Maybe…’ she framed, sealing up the pain of that put-down as soon as she felt it, stowing it away with his words earlier, banishing all that she could not deal with.
‘You want me…I want you,’ he countered. ‘Sexual hunger needs no other label.’
Releasing her then, he turned back to the steering wheel and drove off. She was all of a qu
iver, intoxicated with longing. She closed her eyes but she couldn’t bear it. She had to look at him again. Sexual hunger? Not a label she liked. She pushed that knowledge away hurriedly, afraid to face it.
Darkness had fallen at bewildering speed. In the path of the headlights, Lucy watched him shoot the car to a halt in a courtyard which she assumed lay to the rear of the house. He sprang out and strode round the bonnet. Opening the passenger door, he just scooped her out into his arms.
A shaken laugh escaped Lucy as Joaquin lifted her high in a wholly unexpected manoeuvre that reminded her just how volatile he could be and also deprived her of her shoes, for they fell off. Simultaneously, she noticed that the lights burning in a couple of the ground-floor windows had mysteriously dimmed since their arrival, possibly to allow any staff looking out a better view of what was happening outside.
‘My shoes…Joaquin, put me down, please,’ she urged, hot-cheeked.
‘Not until we hit the bedroom.’
‘But what about Yolanda?’ she gasped, distinctly taken aback by that open avowal of intent.
‘My sister has gone to Guatemala city to stay the night with her cousins,’ Joaquin imparted. ‘Retail therapy will hopefully improve her temper.’
‘Retail therapy?’
