Camouflage Heart (9 page)

“You're seducing me,” she said, feeling as if the heat of the fire had moved deep inside her.

“I would love that more than anything.” His sexy lips stretched into a semblance of a smile. “If I still knew how.”

“Hey.” She grinned at him. “I might not be as experienced as the average teenager, but I still know when I'm being seduced.”

He dipped his head to the valley between her breasts, until she could feel his hot breath through the thin material of the tanktop. “I'll let you be the judge of things then,” he said.

He pressed his lips to her body, dragged them over her breast until his mouth was over a nipple,
then he sucked it through the tanktop. She grew damp between her legs in response and arched her back, shameless, wanting all he was willing to give.

His fingers moved over her stomach and gripped her hips and he ground himself into her. The shock of it, the electricity that zinged through her, brought her to the edge. It was too much, too soon. She wasn't used to it. Her body didn't work at these speeds.

He pulled back and scooped up the flowers, held them above her then let them slip through his fingers one by one, raining white-pink blossoms over her body. He kept one, feathered the soft petals over her lips, her neck, across the narrow strip of skin that showed between her tanktop and panties, then moved lower and caressed the soles of her feet, drawing curlicues with the orchid up her inner thighs.

When he got where he was headed, he brushed the flower over her underwear a couple of times before tucking it into the band. She trembled as he pressed his hot palm against her.

In a circular motion he pushed and massaged, while he bent over and fastened his lips on her nipple, her clothes still between them. He changed the rhythm then, to slower strokes, up and down, then circular again, the heel of his palm against her opening, his fingers against her swollen nub of pleasure.

As he had pulled her up hillsides, and rocks and
trees to save her life, he pulled her now to the sky, higher and higher. And then his teeth closed over her nipple and she tumbled.

The first thing she could hear was her own harsh breathing, her body still contracting. She looked at his badly cut hair, his head resting between her breasts, her mind swimming in confusion as her body was still swimming in bliss. How could he so fast? What he had done to her? Was it even possible?

She still had her clothes on, he'd never even gotten as far as her naked skin, let alone having any part of him inside her. Sweet heavens. The man and the way her body had responded to him took her by surprise. He singed her, turned her inside out. She loved every second of it. Audrey reached for him and ran her fingers through his hair, caressed his back.

He pulled up and turned her with her back to him, locked her tight into his arms. His lips were pressed hot against her shoulder, but he didn't move them, didn't move anything, although she could feel his hard length against her bottom. There was a thrill in knowing that she affected him this way.

“Go to sleep,” he whispered into her ear, brushing his warm lips over her lobe.

“Brian?” She tried to turn and found herself gently restrained. “You don't have to— I mean, I want to. I want you.”

Lord, it sounded pitiful and shameless. Her body hadn't even fully calmed down yet, but she did want him, again, still. How could he not know that? Or was there more to it?

He had broken through all her defenses with amazing speed and ease. And now she realized he wasn't about to let her come anywhere near his. The mask was still firmly in place. Was he hiding from her, or from himself?

He pressed his lips to her skin again, then repeated, “Go to sleep.”

And from the strain in his voice she understood what it cost him to rein in his own passion.

“Let me touch you, then.”

He drew a deep breath. “Maybe another time.”

“Tomorrow we might not be alive. You need me as much as I need you.”

“I don't want you to give yourself to me because I need you. Not to escape from reality, not for pity.”

“Pity has nothing to do with it.” The fierce denial tumbled from her lips. She tried to turn again, frustrated by the arms that wouldn't let her. “It's not fair. It's not fair to either of us.”

She could feel his heartbeat against her back, slow and measured. Hers, on the other hand, was still scrambling. His heat enveloped her, comforted her, and it made her mad that he wouldn't let her give the
same comfort to him. “What reason would you accept? What do you want?”

He touched his forehead against the back of her head and stayed silent for so long, she didn't think he would respond at all.

“I don't know,” he whispered, his voice raspy and full of emotion. “I no longer even know who I am.”

 

T
HE ARMY
was in the jungle.

Hamid leaned his back against the rough stone of the cave, trying to think through the throbbing pain in his shoulder. At least it was cool in here, although far from quiet. His men in the back made plenty of noise, arguing about the attack the night before and taking care of their injuries, cursing the Royal Malaysian troops.

For a moment back at the tin mine, he had been certain the negotiator was bluffing. But no, his own men came across a village messenger this morning. There were soldiers not ten miles to the east of here.

They could be the ones who had attacked his camp, returning now with the hostages. He should have been notified when they'd first entered the jungle. Anger pulsed through him. Where had the village watchers been then? An example would have to be made. But not yet. He had other things to take care of first.

“I have an important job for you,” he told the man across the fire from him.

“Anything,” Omar responded.

A spark flew from the fire and landed by his feet, going out quickly on the cold stone.

“You must gather your men and what's left of mine and attack the army. We must slow them down, cause a distraction.” Enough of a distraction for him to slip unseen down the river. He had to get to a doctor—there was one near Miri he trusted, one who had helped him in the past. Then he had to get to KL in time.

The fire popped, its flames not substantial enough to light the whole cave, but enough to show the greed on Omar's face. He missed Jamil, even if they hadn't always agreed on everything.

“I will defeat this army unit, I will take their big guns, I will unite the camps. And when you give the signal from KL, I'll be ready.” The younger man punctuated his words by bringing his fist down on his knee.

Hamid sat straight, wanting to press his palm against the pain in his shoulder, but resisting. It would not be smart to show any sign of weakness in front of Omar.

“You are instrumental to the success of our cause,” he said, and watched the calculating look in the other man's eyes.

He would have to be taken care of before he became a problem. But not yet. He still had usefulness left in him. And things were bad enough so they couldn't be picky.

He would let Omar handle the army unit. If the young hothead won, it would be a victory for them all. If he lost, and something happened to him…one less problem to worry about.

The camps were more or less united, and once he succeeded in KL, the stragglers would accept his leadership. But he had problems aplenty in other areas. Having the hostages escape had dealt a blow to phase two of his plan. He had counted on the ransom money for more weapons, had a couple of surface-to-air missiles on order. He needed them to effectively fight the Royal Air Force. He needed a decisive military victory.

“Stop by Ali's camp once you cross the river,” he said, on second thought. “He will join you if you tell him I sent you.”

“I don't need Ali.”

“You misunderstand me, friend. It is Ali who needs you. I fear your brother was trying to convince him that a major offensive was not necessary. It would be good for him to see the army, to realize they were already in the forest. It would help him understand that the war has already started, whether he wanted it or not.”

He needed Ali's calm reason to temper Omar's blind courage. They both would hate working with the other, but they would make a stronger team than either one fighting alone.

Allah willing, his line would be restored to the throne soon, the country put into the service of the one true god instead of foreign business interests. It had been bad enough when the Chinese skimmed off profits, and most businesses were owned by them, while the Malay people worked the land, peasants and servants in their own country. But at least the Chinese who lived on the peninsula had kept the profits invested in the country. They kept to themselves and respected Muslim law even if they didn't practice it.

The Western influx of businesses was changing the face of the country, however, and the government welcomed the Europeans and Americans, who looked at the natives as barbarians to be exploited. In its mindless quest for modernization, the government failed to protect the culture of the country and its citizens. Young Malay people worked in sweat-shops under conditions little better than slavery, making products they would never be able to afford to buy, for business owners who took the profits and distributed them to their shareholders back in the west.

His country was under occupation, not by a for
eign army, but by foreign businessmen. And to make things worse, it was the country's very own government who held it down, allowing it to be raped.

He was fighting in a righteous war. And he couldn't lose. If he lived to see victory, he would be king. If he fell, he'd be a martyr for his cause, and his brother would be forced to give up his misguided acceptance of the status quo. Yes, his brother would be forced to avenge him, to take up his weapons.

Either way, the true line of succession would be restored soon. The KL attack would start a tide that could not be turned back.

Brian listened to the night, feeling every breath Audrey took, every heartbeat. She might not have thought that was enough for him, but in the past few years there had been plenty of times when he had thought he would never have another moment like this.

She had seen where he'd been, what he'd become, and yet she accepted him. He was stunned and humbled at once. He wanted to get up, rush out into the rain and dance, twirl her around, or bang his chest and shout into the night like Tarzan in triumph. Since she was sleeping, she probably wouldn't have appreciated either display of joy.

He stared into the darkness, trying to get his mind around all that had happened in the last couple of days, all the ways his life had changed. He sure hadn't foreseen this when he'd planned his escape.

He was laying amidst flower petals, with a beautiful woman in his arms.

It wasn't the first time—he had once known how to woo. But it was the most significant, the one he would never forget. And not because of the extraordinary circumstances, but because of the extraordinary woman.

He relaxed his arms, realizing suddenly how tense his muscles were. Something prickled his instincts, and he turned his attention to the outside world. He lifted his head and listened, but couldn't hear much over the rain. Their fire had gone out long ago. He reached for their clothes, finally dry.

“Audrey,” he whispered to her. “Wake up. We have to get dressed.”

She came awake at once. “What's wrong?”

He wasn't sure. There was now a slight tremor in the rock beneath them. Something popped in the distance, then again and again. Not gunfire. He yanked on his pants and shirt, his boots, found the papers and tucked them away. “Where are the matches?”

“In my pocket.”

The sounds were getting louder. A rumble, like logs rolling. Had the river risen this high? Couldn't be. Not overnight. And then it clicked.

“Mudslide!” He grabbed her and they half slid, half fell off the rock. “This way. Away from the river.”

The natural slope of the land would give the mud
direction. He didn't want to get caught in its path. He couldn't see it, could barely see a foot in front of his nose, but he knew the monster behind him. He'd seen it kill before in Haiti. He'd been part of the marine rescue crew that had retrieved the bodies. Mudslides were ferocious killers.

They ran, giving everything to it, but it soon became apparent they couldn't outrun the force of nature. Not in the dark, not with his bad knee. He searched for the biggest tree around, and prayed they were out of the main flow.

“Grab on.” He latched on to a handful of vines and climbed up the tree with Audrey on his back.

“Is it safe up here?” she asked when they were sitting in the V of a branch.

“Safer than down there. Unless the mud takes the tree.”

And as if to underscore his words, the monster reached them, shaking their precarious haven. He could hear trees falling all around, but theirs held. And then a thunderous crack rent the air and their branch shook as if a giant whacked his axe into the tree.

“What was that?”

“Probably a log hitting us.” The mud rolled everything in its path with it.

“Will it knock down the tree?”

“Not a log, no.”

“But?”

“A rolling boulder could. We should be out of the main flow though.” He put his arm around her to make sure she didn't fall should the tree get hit again and shake harder.

She clung to him. He was aware of every point where they touched. Her soft body seemed to melt into his. He ran his hand down her back in a gesture of comfort, and found himself comforted by her nearness.

The rain was still coming down pretty hard, the few minutes they had actually spent in dry clothes nothing but a distant memory. When she shivered, he held her tighter, offering her some of his own body heat. “It'll be better when the sun comes up.”

“It's fine,” she said. “We're going to make it. We're both too stubborn to die.”

He grinned into the darkness, his arms woven around her. They waited for sunrise like that, sleep impossible under the circumstances.

The devastation around them became apparent as soon as the first light of dawn appeared on the sky. That they could see the sky, was a telltale sign in itself. The thick canopy was gone; the trees razed where the main flow had been, thinned considerably on the edge. Their tree was one of the few still standing. The mud covered everything below.

“How deep do you think it is?”

He looked at the trees that had survived the night. “A couple of feet.”

“Can we walk in it?”

He nodded. “But it would take us too long to fight our way to dry ground. And it's still raining. The mud might start moving again.” He stepped over to another branch so he could see all around.

“Are we trapped?”

He grabbed a thick vine, tested it with his weight. “Ready to go?”

She was staring at him wide-eyed. “You can't be serious.”

“You wrap it around one foot like this, hang on tight, and push away with the other. I'll be right there to catch you.” He swung as hard as he could, sailed through the air, latching on to a branch on the next standing tree. “Come on, there's nothing to it.” He threw the vine back.

She hesitated.

“I'm going to catch you. You have to trust me,” he called out to her.

But his heart lurched into his throat when she did kick away and flew for a few precarious moments in the air, until he finally grabbed on to her and crushed her to him.

She looked up at him with a smile. “It wasn't too bad.”

A couple of seconds passed before every nerve ending in his body got the message that she was here, safe in his arms, and he could let her go.

“Glad you feel that way,” he said, “because we're going to have to do this again.”

The second swing took them clear of the mud that now cut them off from the river.

“We can't get to the boat, can we?”

“Even if we could make it over there, I doubt we would find it.”

“So we'll walk?”

“For now.” They didn't have another option. “Walking would get us out of the jungle eventually, but it won't get us to civilization in time to warn Kuala Lumpur of the attack.”

“We have to get back to the water.”

“As soon as we can.”

He started out, following the edge of the mudslide toward the river, and they walked all morning until they finally reached the Baram around noontime. It was tamer than he'd expected.

“The mud might have dammed it up somewhere above us. I wouldn't want to be on the water when that dam breaks,” he said. Not that that was a worry at this stage. They no longer had a boat.

“Look over there.” Audrey pointed to a fallen log down the bank.

The vegetation had been flattened by water that had overflowed the river basin not long ago, debris littering the muddy bank. He scanned the thick chunk of wood that had caught her attention.

Not just a log. He scrutinized the pointed end as he walked toward it. A canoe. The water must have lifted it somewhere upriver and dumped it down here. He ran, praying it wasn't broken, that half of it wasn't missing but was just buried in the mud. He was digging around it by the time Audrey caught up with him.

“Give me a hand. Pull here.”

They heaved it toward the water and he flipped it over, scooped out the mud that still remained inside. As far as canoes went, it was a rather primitive one, cut with an axe from one piece of wood. And no paddles, he felt around in the mud, coming up empty-handed.

He grabbed a flat, straight piece of driftwood—better than nothing—then with Audrey's help pushed the canoe in the water. It didn't sink.
So far, so good.

“Get in.”

When she did, he handed her the rifles then pushed the canoe out far enough so the current would catch and carry it. But before he could climb up next to her, the canoe caught on something and rolled, taking her under.

She didn't come up.

He could see nothing in the murky water, tried to
feel around with one hand while holding the canoe with the other. He couldn't let the water take that. They needed it. Had Audrey hit her head? Had she gotten tangled in something?

He plunged under, searched desperately while struggling to keep the canoe in place. Oh, hell. He let go and clawed the opaque water with both hands, mad panic gripping him. How long had she been under? Less than a minute, it couldn't have been a full minute yet, although it felt like a lifetime.

Then his fingers brushed against cloth and he grabbed on, pulled her up. She was limp in his arms. He shook her and when he did, she sputtered and opened her eyes, pressed a hand against the reddish bump on her forehead.

“Can you stand?”

She nodded, coughing hard, and steadied herself.

The rifles. No time to look for them now. He threw himself into the water and went after the canoe. Damn, the current was strong. He caught the thing at last, afloat still with the air trapped under it. He struggled to turn it over and managed somehow, holding it in place with one hand, bailing water out with the other. There was no way he could drag it the fifty feet up to where she stood.

And she must have understood it, because she began walking, then swimming toward him. And
after an eternity she reached him at last, and he heaved her into the canoe and got in after her.

“You're okay,” he said instead of asking, not to reassure her, but because he needed to hear it, then went back to scooping water.

She pitched in, her hands shaky. They didn't stop until they were down to the last couple of finger's width in the bottom. The rain was easing off, the sun making a half-hearted effort to break through the clouds.

“How bad are you hurt?”

She tried to smile, but failed miserably. “Nicky used to get me worse while playing tennis.”

“Runaway ball?”

“Runaway racket.” She coughed. “We used to play doubles. She's like a windmill. A serious hazard on the court.” The words were said with obvious love.

He brushed her wet hair out of her face. They'd both lost their hats—the least of his worries at the moment.

“I have a hard time picturing you in an ordinary life, playing tennis. I've only seen you as part of the jungle. An Amazon.”

She laughed, but it turned into a coughing fit. He didn't dare reach out and pull her to him, for fear that they would upset the canoe's balance again.

“What are we going to do?” she asked when she could talk.

“We're fine for now.”

The water carried them straight down the middle, but sooner or later he would need something to steer them away from drifting logs and other hazards. The river floated enough broken branches to make a pole or even another makeshift paddle, he just had to wait until they got close enough to one to grab it.

Audrey coughed the last of the water out of her lungs. “Phew. That was nasty. I'm not doing that again.”

The thought that he could have lost her squeezed his lungs until he was breathing as hard as she was.

“You keep saving my life.” Her jungle-green eyes looked at him, endless wells of trust.

He leaned forward carefully, cupped her face, and with his thumbs brushed off the drops of water that clung to her eyelashes. “Maybe it's
you
who is saving
my
life,” he said, and kissed her.

And got lost in the softness of her lips. He had denied himself this the night before, and he had been right to do so. Because now that he reached the gates of heaven, there was no going back.

The meeting of their lips was like kissing for the first time—tentative, excitement mixing with a sense of awe. His hands moved to her shoulders to gather her closer, and she pressed against him. Then the canoe rocked and it brought him back to reason fast and hard.

He straightened and looked around, pushed away the jumble of driftwood that had bumped into them, keeping a sturdy stick that looked long enough to be of some help. Only when their path was clear did he turn his attention back to her, painfully aware that the slightest distraction, the smallest error in judgment could cost both of them their lives. What the hell had he been thinking?

That he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything.

But he couldn't have her. Not under these circumstances, perhaps not ever.

“Keep your eye on the back, I'll watch the front. Same as we did with the boat.”

And as they soon came to a spot where a tributary came into the river, making navigation even harder, that was the last piece of conversation they had for the rest of the day, other than quick directions thrown at each other.

When night fell they pulled the canoe out of the water and dragged it with them inland, not wanting to lose it. It was smaller and lighter than the boat.

He made their shelter far enough in the forest so that even if the water rose it wouldn't reach them—a makeshift platform, and two poles at each end that held the canoe upside down above them like a roof. They dined on a handful of crunchy roots he'd dug
up by the riverbank. Then, unable to light a fire without smoking themselves out, they snuggled together for sleep.

A part of him, the selfish part, wished they would never find their way out of the jungle.

She lay facing him, his arms around her. The rain that had started up again drowned out everything but the sound of their breathing. She brought her hand up to his face.

“You are…” She took a deep breath. “You are not like anyone I've ever known.”

He wasn't, although he would have given anything to be just an average man, someone who could have hoped for a future that included the woman in his arms. The darkness that surrounded them seeped into his heart.

“Are you telling me that I'm rough around the edges?” He tried to make light of it, and wished he could see her face, read her thoughts in her eyes. He could barely make out the shape of her head.