“I hurt like hell,” Jayde complained as she moved her stiff body. Correction, her stiff and stank body. She was the sole occupant of the den; there was no sign of Tyson. The protective leaves were off the opening and light filtered through the thick foliage.
The pack sat propped up along the spot Tyson had occupied throughout the night. She had both blan-kets covering her and a poncho bunched up as a pillow. Moving slowly, she crawled out of the hole and stood. Jayde stretched and touched her hair with a grimace. It felt brittle and dirty; of course slogging through mud and rain, and sleeping in dirt probably didn’t help.
With a disgusted motion, she reassembled her ponytail. “I don’t even want to know what my feet smell like,” she mumbled to the air.
“Probably the same as mine.” Tyson’s deep timbre was like a sexual jolt to her system. His large body materialized before her. “Morning, Jayde,” he said with a grin. “Got something for you, come on.”
Tyson swiftly stored their gear and shouldered the pack as she took care of her morning toiletries. “Let’s go,” he said as he moved them back into the jungle.
“Morning to you too,” she mumbled before she followed him. “Should’ve stayed in the damn cave and slept until this nightmare was over.”
Tyson didn’t respond. They walked for almost a mile and just when Jayde was ready to protest about everything, he stopped and held back a branch for her. “Go on,” he coaxed.
She stepped through and stopped dead in her tracks. It had to be a vision. Jayde blinked a few times to make sure it wasn’t. A small clearing dominated by a crystal pool of water sat in front of her. At one end was a cascading waterfall that sent rainbows into the morning air.
“I found it this morning while looking for some food,” Tyson said as he moved to stand next to her.
“Oh, my God. Look at this place. It is like something out of a travel brochure. It’s beautiful.” she gushed. The lush green grass waved gently in the sweet breezes that blew around them. Jayde moved slowly into the center of the clearing.
She turned quickly and looked at him. “Can I swim in it?”
“Of course, I figured you would want to clean up a bit. It may be our last time before we get out of here.”
Even though it was still relatively early in the morning, the sun had warmed the area. Jayde picked out a big rock near the waterfall that she knew would work for drying clothes. Propelled forward, she moved away from Tyson and around the water to her destination.
Undaunted by the fact that there was no soap, no shampoo, or even a towel, Jayde sat on the rock and unlaced her boots. She peeled off her putrid socks and piled them next to her, wrinkling her nose at the smell. Oblivious to Tyson standing across the clearing, she stood and unfastened her pants, sliding them down her legs. The gun she set next to her boots and the knife.
She pulled her shirt off over her head and dropped into the pile of dirty clothes. Jayde took down her ponytail, allowing her dirty hair to fall free. Standing on the rock in her bra and underwear, she did a swan dive into the pool only to rise out of the water like an ebony water nymph. She slicked back her black hair as she exhaled deeply.
“God, this feels wonderful,” Jayde breathed. Her brown body glistened with the water and sun. She gave herself over to the feeling of the water flowing over her body, scrubbing it the best she could and washing out her clothes before laying them on the rock to dry.
When she noticed her skin had begun to prune, she emerged from the water. A glance around told her she was alone, so she walked unashamed to the pack he had left to pull a blanket out and use it as a towel.
Tyson had watched a true Aphrodite emerging from the water when Jayde had dived in and had prayed low in his throat. He hadn’t imagined it would be this difficult to keep away from her. He’d dropped the backpack by the edge of the water and with only one more glance at her before disappeared into the trees. He’d needed a moment to collect himself, or else he would have tackled her in the pool and tried to recre-ate Adam and Eve in Eden.
In the interim he sourced some food. When he thought he was okay, Tyson returned, stood just out of sight, and watched her. He was unable to move as he spied upon her near-naked body. She frolicked in the water like a little kid, pausing to scrub her body and hair and clean her clothes, and then went back to playing. She swam down and then shot up as fast as she could, as if trying to see how far out of the water she could get.
Her happiness mesmerized him. She looked at ease swimming. He almost collapsed from desire when he saw her throw her bra and underwear upon the rock as well. Knowing she was totally nude in that water set the blood in his veins on fire. It only intensified as she maneuvered her wet, naked body out of the pool and toward the pack.
She was walking toward him but did not notice his stare. Tyson’s whole body was on alert as he watched her full breasts move with each step she took. His greedy gaze moved down her body to the thatch of black hair between her legs and he groaned out loud.
Jayde was wringing the excess water out of her hair as she walked and the second she covered herself with the blanket Tyson realized he’d smashed one of the fruits he’d collected for breakfast in his hand. Its juice ran off his fingers and onto the ground.
He dropped the damaged food and took a series of deep breaths. A minute or so after she covered her-self, he emerged from the tree line with the fruit in his hand. “I got some fruit for breakfast,” he announced as she turned to glance at him.
“Wonderful,” she said. “I’m starving.”
“Me too.” He sat the food, mostly guava, down next to her and placed himself on the other side of it.
“What’s that all over your hand?” Jayde asked.
“Fruit.” He wiped his hand off in the thick grass they sat upon.
“What happened?”
“I gripped it too tightly,” Tyson muttered evasively. He wasn’t about to tell her he did it while drooling over her naked body like a love-struck schoolboy.
“Oh,” she responded. She sighed in pleasure as she bit into the succulent flesh. “This is wonderful,” Jayde responded around a mouthful of food.
Tyson ate silently. She had tucked the blanket under her arms like a towel, and he wanted to remove it and take them both to a plane where their troubles didn’t exist. But until he got them back to safety, all he could do was fantasize. So he did.
He dreamed about her legs around his waist, about him plunging deep into her warm, willing body. Every possible thing he could do to Jayde sexually came to his mind as he looked at her. But it was the second he pictured her growing big with his child that he shook himself. At that precise second, sitting close to the top of a mountain deep within Central America with drug lords on their tail, Tyson realized he’d fallen in love. He had fallen in love with the woman he sat next to as they ate fruit. Through every-thing they’ve been through, her beauty, her strength, and her unshakeable determination to survive had latched onto his heart with an indomitable grip. Tyson loved her.
The fact he hadn’t known her for more than a few days didn’t matter. There was something about her, and he learned more and more every moment he spent with her. Jayde Rose Porter Kincade was a very special woman. A woman he had fallen for, head over heels. It scared the hell out of him.
Tyson jumped up, causing Jayde to look at him in surprise and a healthy bit of fear. “What’s wrong? Did you hear something?”
Immediately ashamed for scaring her, he answered, “No. I just need to go take a look around. I won’t be far.” And for the first time in his life, Tyson ran from a woman.