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‘What the …’
‘That man. The way he touched me … the way he looked at me …’ The whispered words held the echo of her horror, her eyes darkening at the remembered degradation.
‘It’s over,’ Zach told her crisply. ‘Forget it.’
‘How can I?’ Tamara demanded wildly, almost on the point of hysteria. ‘Every time a man takes me in his arms I’m going to remember … to be revolted …’
‘That’s enough! You’re behaving like a girl who’s never experienced any physical intimacies before. You’re an engaged woman …’
‘And because of that I’m not allowed to have any feelings, any …’
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Zach told her, grasping her arm and hurrying her away from the small clearing. ‘Right now I want to put as much distance between the caves and us as I possibly can. What are you worrying about? That your fiancé might disapprove? I’m sure when you tell him it was either that or losing your life, he’ll understand, and nothing happened, after all.’
Perhaps it hadn’t in the sense that he meant, but apart from his kisses it had been her first sexual experience and it had left her feeling defiled in a way that no amount of logic could wipe away.
If Tamara had thought she had been driven to the limits of her endurance on the long trek up to the caves, it was nothing to the gruelling pace set by Zach once they had escaped from their guards.
A machete he had taken from the cave helped him to force a path for them through the dense undergrowth of the forest, and Tamara, following in his wake, could only marvel at the decisiveness with which he seemed to know instinctively which path to take when several converged, although it wasn’t until late in the afternoon that she learned how he had known and what he had been looking for.
Every muscle in her body throbbed in protest at the strain being placed upon it, but she daren’t ask for a respite in case her body stiffened up so much that she couldn’t get going again. The path had grown steadily muddier, but plodding doggedly in Zach’s footsteps it was several minutes before she realised that the dull, muted roar she could hear was running water.
‘That’s what I’ve been looking for!’ Zach exclaimed in triumph when they eventually came in sight of the spate of water cascading over rocks to bubble frenetically down miniature rapids.
‘We can follow it—with luck, all the way down to the coast,’ he explained to Tamara. ‘I knew there must be streams running through the forest.’
‘But how did you know how to find one?’ Tamara asked breathlessly, trying not to wince as her aching legs protested mutely.
‘The state of the ground; animal tracks heading to what I hoped would be water. Simple knowledge known to any Boy Scout.’
But although he minimised his skill Tamara could not. Without his training they would never have escaped, never found this stream, and yet even while she acknowledged these facts she felt a faint frisson of fear prickling across her skin. There was something about Zach, something alien and untamed, something so overwhelmingly male that at times she wanted to run from him and keep on running.
‘Tamara?’
She hadn’t realised he was watching her.
‘I’m all right,’ she lied listlessly. Her period of captivity had not prepared her for what almost amounted to a forced march through rough jungle terrain.
‘We’ll stop soon,’ Zach promised her. ‘Fortunately the stream isn’t very deep here, although it’s flowing too fast for us to take any chances. We’ll walk through it as far as we can. If they do track us as far as the stream it might help to put them off the scent.’
Following Zach’s example Tamara removed her trainers, knotting the laces and slinging them round her shoulders.
‘You might as well take off your jeans as well,’ Zach told her laconically. ‘It will save them getting soaked.’
With shaking fingers she did as he suggested, telling herself that the embarrassment she felt was stupid in view of the intimacy they had shared while they were captive. But then it had been different, she argued mentally, something alien quivering to life within her as Zach studied the vulnerable length of her legs in the tiny briefs which were no more revealing than the bottom half of a bikini, and yet somehow … Was it her imagination, or had the jade eyes darkened slightly as he looked at her?
Although she didn’t realise it, something of her feelings was mirrored in her eyes, causing Zach to say dryly,
‘Relax—I might be a crude, uncouth soldier, but I promise you I don’t share my fellow professionals’ lust for your body. The degenerative effect of civilisation! Disappointed?’
‘I’m engaged to another man, remember?’ Tamara retorted, her chin firming and lifting. ‘And besides,’ she let her mouth curl fastidiously, ‘men who indulge in physical violence have never appealed to me.’
‘Meaning that my scars revolt you? Try
remembering that they were gained trying to free innocent but important civilians. I’m no mercenary, Tamara; no would-be hero trying to prove something to the world. As far as I’m concerned it’s simply a career.’
‘Killing people!’ Tamara lashed out stormily. ‘Don’t you realise that if it weren’t for men like you, there wouldn’t be these terrorists?’
His eyebrows rose as he turned in mid-stream to stare at her. ‘You think not? It’s the age-old story. Tamara, which came first, the chicken or the egg. You can’t use sweet reason on men controlling guns like these and trained to use them.’
