More Than Paradise Part 16

"I don't care." In fact, being f.u.c.ked hard against a tree sounded pretty good. Charlotte could not believe she could think such a thing, let alone lobby for it. Where was her self-control?

"Well, I care." Ash's expression was as naked and honest as Charlotte had ever seen it, the emotion heart-stopping. "I've been wanting to make love to you since the moment I rst saw you. But this isn't what I had in mind."

"Does it really matter? We're here and we want each other. Isn't that enough?" Her cheeks burned. Having dragged Ash out here and tried to seduce her, she was now being refused. That was the icing on a very embarra.s.sing cake.

"Charlotte, listen. Normally, it would be enough for me. Normally I'd be ne with having a quickie, then doing breakfast with the frog hunters ten minutes later." Ash cradled her face, a hand on each side.

With laconic humor, she continued, "Ever since the airport hangar- * 143 *

and before that-I've thought about f.u.c.king you more or less anywhere that's viable. The Jeep. The back of the Huey. Our tent..."

Charlotte's heart jumped. This was news.

"But this just isn't the right place or time." Ash glanced over her shoulder at the sound of something stirring on the forest oor. A small dark bird with yellow wattles emerged from a pile of moldy leaves with a huge beetle in its beak.

"You're right. It's not." Charlotte let herself slump against Ash's chest, and she was drawn into a warm embrace. Lulled by the hushed thunder of Ash's heartbeat, and ghting tears, she said, "I never let this kind of thing happen."

Ash stroked her hair. "I can see that."

"I think I'm afraid." The confession came out in a rush. "I'm afraid I might never feel like this again. Like I could just lose myself and be...

here. In the moment. All of me. Not taking myself away somewhere."

She broke off, feeling like she was talking nonsense and Ash would think there was something wrong with her.

Ash planted one small kiss after the next, on her cheeks, her hair, her lips. She felt so close, closer than anyone was allowed to be. It was as if she were drawing Charlotte to her, tenderly courting her inner self, inviting her to stay and trust. Charlotte fell into the bright ocean of her eyes and found nothing withheld. She sensed Ash was offering her a gift. That she found this closeness just as fragile and unexpected as Charlotte did. Yet she was not turning away, and somehow, by accepting this edgling bond, they were both reaching into the unknown.

"I know exactly what you mean about going away," Ash said.

Her voice was rough, fractured by a yearning that matched Charlotte's own. "And I promise you something. We won't do that when we make love."

* 144 *

CHAPTER THIRTEEN.

There's something I want to show you." Ash swung Charlotte's day pack over her shoulder. Her piercing eyes sought Charlotte's. The promise in their depths made her stomach plummet.

"Come on."

Exchanging a few words with her a.s.sociates as they went, she led Charlotte casually away from the breakfast crowd along a freshly cut trail that wound its way southeast of the campsite. After almost an hour, they broke through the darkness of the forest and charted a path down toward a natural opening in the canopy where several huge trees had fallen.

When they reached a vantage point on the slope just above the area, they paused to look out on an astonishing netherworld so lush it seemed thrown across the land like a sprawling quilt of emerald velvet dotted with owers. At this time of morning, and probably for much of the day, it was a cloud forest, enveloped in thin swirling mists. The air was thick and damp, pungent with the bitter green secretions of plants and the drifting vanilla pear scent of crushed agar wood and rare orchids. The few remaining old-growth trees grew thick and gnarled, guarding the magical slope like ancient sentries.

"It's perfect," Charlotte breathed as they descended into a world bathed in mist.

After days in the dim underworld beneath the canopy, fruitlessly seeking a match for her leaf samples among the fallen array beneath the various strangler trees she encountered, Charlotte felt heady with delight to be out in the open. The shrills and clicks of countless birds and insects created a hum very different from the muf ed calm of the * 145 *

rainforest oor, and the elaborate biome that had sprung up around the fallen trees was unlike anything she had ever seen.

The cycle of natural regeneration in this untouched place made it a virtual laboratory for reforestation research, from the toiling insects to the seedlings, epiphytes, and vines to the mosses and ferns. Fog drip converted rotting wood and leaves rapidly into layers of peat, infusing nutrients into the new growth, and Charlotte could tell the cloud mist was not completely persistent. Sunlight also tended this secret garden, fostering even more diversity and speed of regrowth.

Imagining the seed bank that must be buried beneath the rotting trunk they were skirting, she said, "This is incredible. I could spend a lifetime collecting data here and barely scratch the surface."

She caught a smile from Ash and her pulse responded by swapping its customary tempo for ts and starts that made her feel light-headed.

In an instant she was transported back to the previous morning and could feel Ash's skin melting her own every place there was touch. She met Ash's eyes and saw in them an acknowledgement that she, too, was remembering.

Charlotte reached out to make their connection physical, but her hand met rubbery resistance from something that felt like damp fabric. She took a step back and found herself gazing at a huge spider's web dotted with crystalline dewdrops. It was at least ve feet wide and eight feet high, a complex construction of pale gold silk angled and elaborately braced against the surrounding plants. Charlotte had encountered a part of it far from the center. She touched the web again experimentally, surprised that it didn't cling to her ngers and that she hadn't torn it.

"Simon would lose his mind," she said. Their b.u.t.ter y expert also had an obsessive interest in spiders and had declared his determination to locate several of New Guinea's most famous specimens while he was here.

"See those?" Ash pointed to a row of insect husks arranged in a remarkably orderly line across the web. "That's to stop birds ying into it by accident. The way the spider sees it, they're homewreckers. No point catching something you don't want to eat and it tears your place up as well."

"So the spider makes its own safety strips." Charlotte was fascinated.

Ash pointed out the owner of the resplendent spider-palace, a * 146 *

narrow-bodied arachnid with a golden thorax and long black legs that appeared to be decorated with feather tufts. "Meet Nephila. The golden orb-weaving spider."

Charlotte laughed. "I was expecting a tarantula, at least."

"Tarantulas don't build webs. They burrow." Ash tapped her booted toe against the moss-covered tree limb they were crossing.

"These dead trunks probably have a healthy population. Watch out for anything really huge and black with hairy legs and a bad att.i.tude."

Charlotte shuddered. "Great. Is this what you wanted to show me-the valley of the spiders?"

Ash grinned. "No, it's better than that. But while we're here, just so you know, the golden orb's web is almost as strong as Kevlar. If you're ever in the eld and you get injured, you can use one as a bandage or a tourniquet to stop bleeding."

"Are you serious?"

"Absolutely. Some of the tribes even turn them into shing nets."

"You know," Charlotte gave her a long look, intrigued by her unexpected interest in natural history. Maybe they had something in common other than mutual l.u.s.t. "You're a veritable encyclopedia about this place, and between you and me, I nd that very s.e.xy."

Ash seemed brie y startled by the irtatious comment, then her eyes ickered and she replied warmly, "In that case, you're going to be all over me very soon. Come here, woman."

She lifted Charlotte over another dead limb and led her along a narrow thoroughfare between a fallen tree trunk of huge girth and a thicket of Cyathia tree ferns with extraordinary frond length. New Guinea was a large island, and something Charlotte found remarkable about evolution on such land ma.s.ses was that plant species often grew larger, whereas animals became dwarfed.

Here in the canopy ssure, the additional light had given permission for the ora to run riot. Fleshy epiphytes sprang like a forest of green antlers from the moss-covered tree trunks; shrubs and small trees had found gaps in which to put down roots. Creepers festooned anything growing vertically, and birds and small animals wandered through the steamy lushness of it all, gorging themselves on grubs and seeds, then lolling back, sated.

None of these creatures ed as Ash and Charlotte pa.s.sed by; they watched with vague interest, then returned to their snacking and snoozing. All the while, as they moved deeper into the cloud forest, * 147 *

Charlotte sensed they were being observed by countless creatures concealed from the human eye, tarantulas among them no doubt. She paused as a ock of delicate little gray birds descended from a treetop and darted all over the path she and Ash had just trampled, apparently on an insect safari. Standing still, she stared back up at the Fojas, feeling dwarfed by the primeval grandeur of this unearthly place.

"It's so timeless," she said. "These forests formed in the Pliocene period. We're probably the rst people to set foot here in ve million years."

"And we live on borrowed ground," Ash re ected, surprising Charlotte again with the depth of her observation.

She thought about that. It said a lot about her att.i.tude that she was startled every time Ash made a thought-provoking comment.

Embarra.s.sed by her own intellectual sn.o.bbery, Charlotte reconsidered its foundations. She knew a lot about some things, in fact, she could be called an expert. But she knew next to nothing about a great deal more, and she was just nding that out.

She had never known anyone like Ash and probably never would again. In Charlotte's narrow social circles, Ash would be a novelty, the real thing among people who only played at risk-taking. And Ash wasn't just a woman with some interesting stories to tell, she was an interesting woman.

Charlotte wondered what Ash thought of her. Was this pull of theirs only s.e.xual? Did Ash like her as a person at all? They hardly knew each other, yet Charlotte could already imagine them being a part of one another's lives. Already, she could not conceive of leaving New Guinea in a few weeks' time and never seeing Ash again.

The thought shook her, and as she tried to come to grips with what it meant, she became aware of a sound she hadn't discerned before, a faint rattling swish.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

Ash heaved a mock sigh. "I was going to blindfold you and make it a big surprise. I should have known you'd have hearing like a bat."

Her gaze grew bold and her tone caressing. "Feel like taking a shower with me?"

Charlotte's breath died in her throat. Undone, but trying not to show it, she said, "Oh, let me see. Am I ready to wash ve days of lth off my body or would I rather continue to be a human petri dish?"

Her attempt at ippancy drew a lazy smile. "I guess that's a yes."

* 148 *

v Ash kept thinking this was a mistake. She'd stumbled onto the secluded waterfall two days after arriving in the Fojas, and she'd known then that she would bring Charlotte here. At the time, she hadn't expected the place to hold any signi cance other than botanical.

But here they were. Alone in paradise. And for the rst time in living memory, Ash had performance anxiety.

She let her gaze slowly wander as she unlaced her boots, automatically verifying their solitude. The waterfall cascaded about forty feet into a tranquil pool overhung by a magnolia tree with enormous waxy white owers. That alone was worth the trek, but it was chump change compared to the orchids that rambled over the entire area in a carpet of sensuous blooms like nothing Ash had ever seen.

As she'd expected, Charlotte ipped out the moment she saw them, gasping about new species and how there were more orchids in New Guinea than anywhere else on earth. She even delayed stripping for her shower so she could swoon over a silvery white ower she described as "like a ravishing gossamer star. The Taeniophyllum genus, I would say."

When she was nally done crawling around on her hands and knees, the face she lifted to Ash was adorably pink and framed by a ma.s.s of black waves corkscrewed into curls by the damp mist. A profusion of tiny white petals clung to her hair and if it hadn't been for the beige cotton vest and pants, the hiking boots, and the portable microscope, she could have pa.s.sed for a bride.

That wasn't a thought Ash entertained every day. Neither was the one that followed. She wanted to kiss Charlotte and make love to her for the rest of the day, then take her home to Madang.

She told herself to get serious. There wasn't a chance in h.e.l.l that this woman would walk away from a plants-are-us megastore in the middle of nowhere to shack up for a couple of months of pa.s.sion with someone she'd never clapped eyes on until three weeks ago. They didn't know each other, and Charlotte held down a prestigious job, doing what she loved, on the other side of the world.

A romance between them was the kind of impossible scenario that only happened in novels, and even the women who swore by that stuff would probably nd it a bit far-fetched. Sure, fact could be stranger than ction-Ash's life was an unappetizing example of that principle. But * 149 *

she was a realist. A well-brought-up, overquali ed girl from a normal family back East was never going to allow herself more than a brief brush with adventure. She would never consider settling in the tropics with a mercenary soldier-c.u.m-pilot, and why should she?

Ash sensed that Charlotte might fool herself that they could have more. That was how women like her gave themselves permission to do things that would normally make them uncomfortable. But, in the end, she would go home and get on with her life. In due course, she would meet another impressively credentialed career woman and Ash would be nothing more than a fond memory. Hot s.e.x in the wilds of West Papua.

Normally, Ash would have no problem with that. She always hoped her s.e.xual partners would one day nd love and happiness if that's what they were looking for. But in Charlotte's case...not so much.

She followed the swooping path of a fruit dove as it landed in the magnolia tree above them. An uneasy thought took shape as she watched the graceful bird explore a ower. What if her feelings for Charlotte weren't just a reaction to the loss of Emma? What if she was falling in love? Stranger things had happened, admittedly not often.

Ash ri ed through her memory trying to nd another time when she might have been in love so she could compare the two. At nineteen she'd had a relationship for a year with a girl she really loved. Things hadn't worked out. Posy's folks were religious and gave her a hard time about being a lesbian. They made a series of false complaints to the cops about her, just so that she would have the ha.s.sle of door knocks late at night and trips downtown to answer absurd questions about crimes she couldn't have committed.

At nineteen there's only so much you can cope with. She and Posy just gave up in the end and the last Ash heard, she had married a guy from the church and had a house full of kids. No doubt her parents were still congratulating themselves on their intervention.

After Posy, she'd had a succession of girlfriends, all short-lived.

A career in the military made it hard to have real relationships, even for straight singles. Ash got used to limiting her emotional involvement, and by the time her world crumbled and she moved to PNG she seldom thought any more about nding "the one." Every now and then, when she lay next to another stranger whose body she'd just known intimately but whose heart and soul were entirely closed to her, a dark mood claimed her and she would have to leave immediately.

* 150 *

At those times she was aware of an aching void inside and a sense of isolation so profound all she wanted to do was bury it any way she could. Alcohol. More s.e.x. s.e.x with fewer limits. Nothing ever made any difference and lately, she'd been nding herself even less satis ed than usual. Having s.e.x, when all she ever shared was her body, simply brought home what was absent. Tenderness. A lover who knew who she was, not just what she could do. A mate.

Ash could swear that a part of her soul was shriveling. Neglected.

Untouched. Starved of its needs and nding no safe harbor in another's arms.

"Hurry up." Charlotte's feet stopped not far from hers.

They were bare. So were her legs. Naked, she presented herself, hands shyly folded, one cupping the other, chest rising and falling at the mercy of her shallow breaths, eyes wide with apprehension.

Ash was so enchanted she forgot to be suave. "I am so not worthy."

"Does that mean I should shower alone?" This was spoken with a kittenish purr that made Ash feel like a country b.u.mpkin mysteriously chosen by the May Queen.

"Absolutely not."

She got to her feet, feasting on the inviting grace of Charlotte's form, the girlish rise of her belly, the apple-perfect b.r.e.a.s.t.s and blush pink nipples, the delicate hollows where her shoulders ared. Arousal engulfed her senses and infused her limbs with familiar tension. But she was surprised by an unusual sense of tranquility where normally she was driven by a single-minded focus. The change was interesting.

It meant she could slow things down. Sometimes that was dif cult to do when desire overtook her.

Intrigued, she let her gaze fall to the shadow of dark hair between Charlotte's legs. Her desire was just as urgent and irresistible as it ever had been for anyone, yet another, deeper emotion was at work. Ash could feel it stirring in that starved inner self. Hope.

"Let me." Charlotte unbuckled Ash's belt with deft purpose. Her ngers played teasingly across Ash's torso, making the blood run hot beneath her skin.

"Temptress," Ash said, relishing her rare foray into irtatiousness; it was so at odds with the woman the world saw.

She let Charlotte continue the ritual of undressing her, enjoying the changes in her expression from playful seduction to beguiling * 151 *

delight to moments of faltering inquiry. When she started to lift Ash's tank, she froze.

Seeking to rea.s.sure her, Ash said, "It's okay. Nothing hurts anymore."

"What happened?" A slight breeze swept the soft dark curtain of her hair away from the ne bones of her face. She lifted pained eyes to Ash.

"This big one was shrapnel." Ash took Charlotte's slender hand in hers and traced her fore nger over the knotted scars, wanting her to know it was okay to touch them. "The three holes are from bullets. And these stripes are machete wounds."