Eileen Wilks - Proposition - Marriage

The second the snake vanished from sight, she felt a hand on hers.

This time, she didn’t jump. She turned her head.

John nodded once. What is that supposed to mean? she wondered hysterically. Hello? How are you today? Seen any good snakes lately? Then he started inching backward on his stomach. Alarmed, she glanced down and saw that while they’d been occupied—literally—by the snake, the soldiers had moved along the gully and out of sight.

She was more than ready to follow her rescuer’s lead this time.

They inched backward until they could stand. As soon as she was on her feet he took her hand again.

They ran hand in hand down one of the trails, him ahead, her behind, and no doubt he was fully in control of himself and had sound, logical reasons for making such a speedy escape. Jane ran because it felt so damned good to run. She didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to see another bug or soldier or slithery green snake ever again--or any part of a forest, either. But the forest was all around them, and no matter how hard they ran, she couldn’t get away from it.

He slowed and stopped, pulling her off the trail with him into a small, sun-dappled spot, a patch of ground where some mystery of the soil had caused the trees and underbrush to thin. There was enough sunlight for a bit of grass to spread itself out. Scraps of blue showed through overhead, laced by the leaves of the few branches that arced above the pocketsize clearing.

“I’m not tired,” Jane said, gasping for breath and clutching her side. “I can keep going.”

“Hey.” He turned her to face him. “It’s all right. We’re far enough away from them now.” He took her other hand in his, too, and smiled at her.

“I—I—” She couldn’t catch her breath. He wasn’t winded, damn him, and his ponytail was still neat. “I hate snakes!” she exclaimed. “I hate snakes, I really do. I just hate them, but I couldn’t move. At first it would have bit you and then it would have bit me, but I—I—” Her breath caught in a hiccup that was perilously close to a sob.

“I know,” he said, and pulled her up against him and put his arms around her. “You hate snakes.”

He was warm and solid and she clutched at him, delirious from lack of oxygen. “I know you’re not laughing at me,” she told him. “Because if you were, I’d have to kill you, and I don’t have my breath back yet.”

“I’m not laughing,” he assured her, and his hand stroked down her back. “You did good back there. Real good. I thought I was dead. I would have been, if you’d startled the snake. You saved my life by keeping your head.”

She had rescued him? The thought made her even more dizzy. “Then it was poisonous? I thought maybe you were just scared of snakes, too.”

“I think it was a fer-de-lance. They’re rare, and I’ve never seen one in person before, so I could be wrong. It could have been another of the bothrops—that’s a genus of pit viper found in Central and South America.”

She pulled away suspiciously. “You know an awful lot about snakes. Are you some kind of—of herpetologist or something?”

“I thought we’d agreed that I was a spy.” His expression was solemn, but his eyes were bright with mirth.

“You are laughing at me.”

“You sounded so horrified.” he said apologetically.

“Well, spying I could understand, but why anyone would want to spend their life studying snakes—”

He chuckled.

She blinked and managed to be offended for one whole second before her own absurdity tricked her into giggling. “I r-really don’t like snakes,” she said between giggles, and this struck her as so exquisitely funny that she went off into peals of laughter—at herself, at him, at the whole silly show of life, because she was so very glad she was still a part of it.

He didn’t laugh. His eyes changed, darkening, but that was the only notice she had. It wasn’t enough of a warning, not when she was laughing so hard her vision was blurred by tears.

When his mouth closed over hers, her laughter stopped.

His lips were smooth and firm and beguiling, and she smelled him—oh, she breathed him right in, and he went to her head like wine. She made one sound of protest, but he ignored that, just as he ignored the hand she put on his chest to hold him back. He simply moved her hand out of his way while his other hand slipped to her bottom and scooped her up against him.

It was too much, too fast. She’d lurched from terror to flight, skidded from flight into laughter, and now she was being ruthlessly kissed by a man who made her knees silly and her soul shiver. In a day already ripped loose from everything Jane knew about herself and her world, the sudden surge of passion caught her and flung her into a mad riptide she had no way of resisting.

When he pushed his thigh between her legs and pressed up, she heard herself moan. And it was her. She was the one making those soft, urgent sounds. She had to stop this, stop him—only he pressed up again with his thigh, and his tongue wet her lips while his hands, both hands now, kneaded her bottom, lifting her, then pressing her down on the leg she straddled. He taught her to ride him, taught her a slow, rolling rhythm that carried her mind the rest of the way out to sea, and left her body in charge.

And her body knew what it wanted.

He pulled her down with him. The forest floor was damp and spongy, and the moist, fecund odor was almost as intoxicating as the way he smelled when she pressed her face to his neck.

He didn’t unfasten her clothing. He ran his hands over her as if there was no part of her he didn’t need to feel, to know. Her knee, her breast, her shoulder. The soft swell of her belly But he didn’t take her clothes off, which gave her a spurious sense of safety.

Then his mouth left hers and closed over the tip of her breast. Right through her dress and her bra he suckled her, and no one had ever done that to her. She hadn’t even known people did that—not with their clothes on—and she was almost shocked back into conscious thought. Almost. But by then he had her dress and her bra wet from his mouth, and he did things with his tongue and his teeth that rasped the dampened material against her sensitive nipple, and she moaned instead, and clutched at his shoulders.

His mouth moved to her other breast, and that was good, too; that was what she wanted. He sucked. She felt his hand on her leg, and it was drawing her skirt up, and that felt good, too—the warmth of his palm on her thigh, on her—

She yelped when he pressed his palm against her there, right between her legs. He slid a finger beneath the elastic of her panties and touched her even more intimately, and she moaned again, and this time she shocked herself, because her hips lifted pleadingly.

“I—I—” she stammered. “I don’t—ah—”

He licked her nipple. His finger slid inside her feminine folds and rubbed her lightly. She made a sound she’d never made before, and her hips turned wanton again, making that greedy pushing-at-him movement. But she held on to the thin thread of consciousness and gripped his shoulders hard, willing him to look at her.

He raised his head. His mouth was wet and his eyes gleamed with hunger, and his finger was still moving, stirring her unbearably. He looked so entirely delicious she knew this was her last chance “I don’t do this sort of thing!” she gasped.

“But I do, Jane,” he said gently, and he moved his hand, stretching the elastic of her panties so that his finger went up inside her. “I do.”

And he did, too. First he kissed her again. And he tasted like danger, but he also felt like safety and home—solid and strong and eager for her, so eager. Maybe she could have fought her own hunger, the need that had grown in her all day. She couldn’t resist his.