Morgan's Rescue (37 page)

     
"Oh?"

     
"It's a secret. Only the men know about it."

     
"Ahh," Pilar teased, standing up, "one of those." The Quechua had places for men and places for women. Each gender had unique, special places to go for healing, for ceremony or for time to think, uninterrupted. She knew that wherever Culver was taking her this morning, no one would interrupt them. Today he would love her. The thought made her go weak with desire. How many times had she ached to fulfill him with herself, her body like an anguished candle incomplete without him as her flame?

     
"I'll go over to their hut, pick up the knapsack and be back," Culver told her, rising. He saw her cheeks flush, making her look even more desirable. Pilar wore a simple white blouse and a pale blue skirt that brushed the tops of her slender ankles. She was barefoot and looked so much a part of this beautiful land—as if she belonged here for the rest of her life.

     
"How soon will we be there?" Pilar asked as she walked with Culver down a very old, rarely used path through the jungle. They had walked for more than two hours into a portion of the jungle she was unfamiliar with. She knew of all the women's places, the sacred places where they went for their monthly moon time, to spend five to seven days singing, dreaming, weaving and being close to the Mother, but she did not know this path.

     
Culver squeezed her hand. "Not much farther, according to Don Alvaro." It was nearly ten in the morning, and the fog was burning off, allowing dappled sunlight, like droplets of golden rain, to shimmer and dance through the thick canopy above them.

     
Pilar saw the jungle thinning in front of them, and she felt Culver's hand tighten momentarily around hers as they stepped out of the wall of foliage. Her breath caught. There in front of them was a waterfall nearly thirty feet high, the water gushing over the black-and-white-granite rocks into a huge oval pool below. The water was crystalline—a deep emerald green so clear that she could see fish swimming in its depths. Around the pool, water lilies extended their white petals skyward like slender arms embracing the sunlight.

     
"Oh!" Pilar whispered, her fingers going to her heart. "This is like a dream!"

     
Culver looked around, appreciating the beauty of the pool. "Don Alvaro told me about this place right after we brought you home," he said as he led her forward. Thick green grass covered the rounded banks. "He said this was the pool where a young man brings the woman he loves.
A lovers' hideout, where they can have complete privacy."

     
Pilar halted at the pool's edge and gazed up at Culver. Her eyes filled with tears as she absorbed his tender look. "This is so much like the pool where we first met and loved. . . ."

     
"Yes, it is." Culver released her hand and shed his pack, then took out a large sleeping mat and spread it beside the water. The rush of the waterfall mingled with the melodic songs of birds and the harsher calls of parrots that flitted like rainbows within the jungle wall. Culver saw the tracks of many animals, and knew the pool was a main water source for many jungle inhabitants.

     
Leaning down, he picked up a bright red Macaw feather. "Here, this is for you. . . ." He knew how Pilar loved the brightly colored feathers. She was weaving a shield of ones she'd found on her daily forays into the jungle. Now he watched the delight in her eyes as he handed her the long crimson plume.

     
"Thank you!" Pilar stroked the feather lovingly and watched as Culver crossed to a very old rubber tree that leaned over the pool. Stretching upward, he picked a string of pink-and-white orchids that hung from the trees like a small cluster of stars. The look he gave her as he settled the necklace of orchids around her throat made her feel faint with need.

     
"These don't begin to do you justice," Culver murmured thickly as he began to slowly unbutton her blouse. He saw her lips part as his fingers lightly grazed her flesh. Pilar wore no bra under the faded white cotton, and her nipples began to harden beneath the fabric as he opened it. His voice grew hoarse with desire. "I wanted to bring you here,
mi querida,
to love you. I wanted to have you to myself for just a few hours, to make you mine again."

     
Heat swept through Pilar's breasts as he slowly opened the blouse to reveal them. She swayed unsteadily. Gripping his arms, she whispered, "Yes…please, love me, Culver. I—I've waited so long…dreamed so long of this moment. . . ."

     
His hands slid beneath the fabric, and she felt the calluses as his fingers cupped her straining breasts. His skin was toughened by long hours of work, powerful sunshine and unrelenting wind, while hers was soft, her flesh molding and fitting into his strong hands. Her fingertips dug into his upper arms, and her eyes closed as Culver moved his thumbs teasingly over her nipples. The sensation was electric. A gasp escaped her, and she felt his hands gently draw her forward until his mouth fitted hotly against hers, his tongue moving boldly into its depths. Breathless, Pilar raised her arms to his neck and sagged against his strong frame.

     
His mouth drew fire from her. Before this, at night in their bed, he had kissed her gently.
Tenderly.
But now, as he eased the blouse from her shoulders and worked the clasp on her skirt free, he was neither gentle nor tender. No, this kiss was hot and seeking. Pilar felt her skirt pool around her feet. When his fingers molded against her flared hips and traveled down her body, she felt her lingerie join the skirt. Then she stood naked, fitted tightly against his clothed form feeling his masterful hardness pushing strongly against her belly to let her know just how much he wanted her.

     
Without letting his lips leave her mouth, Culver picked her up and carried her to the mat, where he gently deposited her on her back. His mouth was rich, giving and taking. She felt the prickle of his recently shaved skin and dragged into her nostrils the scent of his body, slightly sweaty from the hard labor he'd performed in the fields earlier this morning. Her fingers frantically worked at the buttons of his shirt, and she ached to tear his clothes off so his naked body could mold and fuse with hers. Finally the shirt fell away, and with his help, his Levi's soon joined it. In one hot, burning movement, he settled at her side, one arm beneath her neck, his other hand ranging up and down her naked body.

     
The moment he pressed her fully to him and she felt his male hardness insistent against the apex of her thighs, Pilar moaned with pure pleasure. He tore his mouth from hers and lowered it to one hardened, uplifted nipple. Pilar tipped her head back, her throat exposed in exquisite surrender as he suckled her. Simultaneously, she felt his callused fingers moving downward, sliding between her thighs and easing her legs open just enough to give him entrance. Her body seemed suspended, waiting for his touch. As he slid down into that moist crevice, she shuddered, and an electrical sensation bolted up through her as he eased his fingers between the folds of her womanhood.

     
Instinctively, she curved tightly against him, her breasts pressed to his chest wall, her arms rigid with tension around his neck as he stroked her with velvet intensity. Her thighs opened wider, of their own accord. The fragrance of the pink-and-white orchids surrounded her and mingled with his very male scent. He suckled her other nipple, and she felt herself spiraling out of control, heat gathering rapidly wherever he stroked her. The hot liquid of her body spilled across his searching fingers like nectar produced by the fragrant orchids that lay around her neck. As his mouth fitted commandingly across hers once more, Pilar cried out, and a white-hot bolt seemed to shoot to her very core. But her cry was absorbed into his mouth as his tongue plunged again and again into her.

     
Culver smiled to himself as Pilar surrendered entirely to his ministrations. Her mouth was as wet and hot as the opening to her womanhood. He eased his fingers away from her, laid his hand on her small, curved thigh and opened her even more—to receive him. Laying her back on the mat, his mouth still clinging hotly to hers, he rose above her, covering her with his larger body and feeling her shift languidly beneath him in welcome. How long he'd waited for this moment! Culver had dreamed torridly of this coupling for eight endless years, and now, unbelievably, Pilar was here beneath him, her body writhing restlessly goading him to take her, to brand her as his.

     
The ache in his loins was nearly unbearable as he grazed the slickness of her moist inner thighs. His lips pulled away from his clenched teeth. He didn't want to hurt her, knowing she'd not lain with another man in eight years. She would be small and tight, just as she had been the first time he'd taken her virginity at the sunlit pool. Her mouth was pouty, soft and provocative against his. Did she realize that she was disintegrating his control with each movement of her hips? A hiss issued from between his teeth, and he froze above her, but she did not freeze in turn. With one twist of her hips, she slid upward, enfolding him, inviting him in.

     
It was too much. Culver hadn't expected her to be so bold, so assertive. Beads of perspiration popped out on his forehead as he tried to control himself. His rigidity made him tremble as she continued her gentle assault upon him,
undulating
her hips in an ancient rhythm that further crumbled his restraint. Heat was building inexorably within him, and he knew he would explode at any moment. Blindly, he plunged into her silken depths, the tightness overwhelming. His fingers curved and followed the shape of her head, and he felt her hands settle firmly upon his hips, pulling him closer, inviting him more deeply into her.

     
Dizziness exploded within him and he became mindless. He became the male jaguar taming his female. The fragrance of the wild orchids mixed with the raw, primal odor of their bodies, all conspiring against him.
Groaning,
Culver took her deeply, hard—plunging into her again and again, a little farther with each thrust. Suddenly white-hot heat surged through him, exploding like the power of the sun itself. Gripping her fiercely to him, he froze deep within her, and in that moment, she moved her hips, sucking the blazing energy out of him and into herself. With each graceful, undulating movement, he felt the power bleeding out of him like the waterfall that thundered into the womb-shaped pool below.

     
Within moments, he was spent, and Culver groaned and relaxed onto her smaller form. Kissing her soft, pouty lips, he drowned in the honey of life contained within her mouth. Moving his hips raggedly against her softer, more-provocative ones, he felt as if he were dying and going to a heaven he didn't deserve. The richness and depth of their recaptured love had made this time even better than eight years ago. They had been forged by the fires of life, shaped by intense and powerful emotions, and their lovemaking had gained an exquisite facet that had been missing before. The moments, golden and molten, spun together like a beautiful spiderweb that had captured the dew of the night and was now being shot through with sunlight. A deep glowing heat throbbed within him as she milked the last of his power into the depths of her moist, receptive body.

     
The love he felt for her in that moment was so rich, so intense, that Culver nearly drowned in the beauty as he moved off her and brought her alongside him, remaining deep within her, his hand flattened against the base of her spine to hold her hips captive. She held him in turn, a tender prisoner of love within her. Her hardened nipples grazed his chest wall, and he felt her ease away. Tunneling her fingers through his hair, she guided his head downward until once again his mouth fitted over one of those straining peaks, and he suckled her. A fine tremor moved through her as he held her in his arms in that moment, and he felt Pilar become boneless in his embrace, felt her release a sigh of utter womanly fulfillment, at one with the man she loved.

     
Culver could imagine nothing beyond this moment, and having this brave, warm and loving woman in his arms again at last. As they lay, locked together, he felt himself hardening again within her, filling her with his love. He felt the renewed honey of her liquid confines bathing him as his strength returned. Her belly was soft against him, and as he lay there, suckling her, holding her tightly, Culver wanted to give her another baby—a second child formed and fashioned out of this exquisite love that had never died.

     
As her fingers ranged through his hair, sifting the dampened strands, he lifted his mouth from her hardened nipple and gazed deeply into her lustrous, half-opened eyes, burning jaguar gold with love for him. He had no words. His throat constricted with tears as he absorbed her gaze, her touch. He loved her fiercely, as a jaguar possessed his mate—ferocious and territorial. For he was certain now: she was his mate for life, and he'd gladly fight to his death to see that she was protected and cared for, and never became separated from him again.