“You regretting what we just did together?” he asked, a muscle ticking in his jaw, the heat in his black eyes having iced over in under a second.
God, yes! Because if he knew what she’d done eight years ago, he would never deign to touch her, let alone kiss and caress her and whisper hot, demanding words in her ear until he made her come. On the other hand, she couldn’t bring herself to lament having allowed herself that one glorious, all-too-brief moment in his arms. Because it would undoubtedly be the only one she ever experienced.
“No,” she told him. “That was…” She swallowed, shaking her head, having no words to describe what it had meant to her. She tried another tack. “I’ll relive that in my dreams a million times over. You were… It was…” Again words failed her, so she simply shrugged, her expression begging him to understand.
That inscrutable mask of his dissolved into a grin. “Sí.” He nodded. “My sentiments exactly.”
And it would be so easy to take a couple of steps forward, go up on tiptoe, reclaim his mouth, and forget about coming clean. “Carlos,” she began, “what I meant to say is how incredibly sorry I am that—”
“Abby,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “Stop apologizing for having to take a leak, sí? When a girl’s got to go, a girl’s got to go. Besides, what’s done is done. And if we have any hope of making it out of this jungle alive, we need to focus on what’s in front of us, like that Thai border, instead of what’s behind us.”
Any hope of making it out of this jungle alive…
Focus on what’s in front of us…
Alrighty then, so maybe now wasn’t the time to dish out heaping helpings of truth. Maybe he had enough on his plate without her adding a big ol’ spoonful of painful revelations to the mix.
And maybe I’m just a coward…
“Okay.” She nodded, forcing herself to swallow the guilt sitting at the back of her throat like a thick slice of Momordica charantia, a plant known in these parts as bitter melon. “Let’s get a move on.” But when she took a step forward, her toe caught on a root, and she was thrown into his arms. “Son of an ingrown butt hair,” she grumbled.
“Ha!” Carlos’s crack of laughter echoed into the canopy, startling her. “Son of an ingrown butt hair, eh?” With his warm hands on her shoulders, he helped her regain her footing, setting her gently away from him. And now her stupid shoulders were the ones prickling. “That’s a new one.”
“I try.” She twisted her lips and looked down to re-arrange her tunic top around the skirt material bunched up around thighs. When she glanced back up, it was to discover a strange look plastered over Carlos’s face. Then to her utter consternation, he jumped back and started flailing around like one of those plastic, inflatable air-puppets that dances in front of used car dealerships.
“What’s that? What are you doing?” she demanded. “Why are you hopping around like you have ants in your pants?”
“Ants!” he yelped, whacking at his legs as he simultaneously unfastened the holster tied around his thigh. “In my pants!”
For a moment, she simply stood there, blinking at him as he danced around. Then the levity of the situation had her rolling in her lips to keep from grinning. “So that’s an actual thing?” Of course, all her humor dissolved when she glanced around to discover that, sure enough, the elephant had disturbed an anthill and the dark red critters were swarming all around them. “Oh, God,” she said, then “Oh! Ow!” when one of the little suckers sank its mandibles into her ankle. Hopping on one foot, she slammed her palm down on the impudent pest and ran for the relative safety of the roots of a nearby tree. Jumping on the foot-high, bark-covered log, she watched Carlos bend to untie his jungle boots. For a moment, she was distracted by the quick efficiency of his long fingers. Fingers that had speared deep into her hair. Fingers that had gripped her hips to grind her—
Oh, for the love of Peter Piper’s peppers, Abby!
Carlos toed out of his boots, and then—quick as a whistle—shucked his drawers…er…cargo pants. He stepped out of his boxer shorts a half second later. Buck-naked except for his tank top and green tube socks, he started vigorously shaking both garments as he joined her atop the big root.
Jaw. Slung. Open.
Eyes. Bulging. From. Head.
That was Abby. A caricature of herself. If a blaring sound effect, something like ah-ooo-gah, were to blast through the air, she wouldn’t be surprised. She tried to close her mouth, and couldn’t. She tried to swallow, and couldn’t. Blinking worked slightly better. She managed to get her eyelids to cooperate once. But then they stuck wide open again like her eyeballs were coated in the syrup she sometimes extracted from the maple trees as a demonstration to tourists who visited the DC Botanic Garden.