Beautiful Sacrifice: A Novel

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE DISTINCT CRUNCH OF CRUSHED LIMESTONE MEETING hard-soled combat boots came like bizarre jungle calls from around the perimeter of the compound. Hunter waited until the guard closest to him continued on his predictable rounds.

If I was handling security, Hunter thought, there would be a lot of job openings. These clowns should be dancing with elephants in a circus.

On the off chance that the guards might be backed up by other, more subtle men, Hunter waited in the shadow of a group of sabal palms whose trunks were buried in flowering vines and gardenias allowed to go feral.

I’m going to smell like a vase of flowers when I get out of here. Plus fresh blood from the damned insects eating me alive. Good thing all my shots are current.

There were diseases out in the jungle that were a lot more dangerous than the armed men making their mechanical rounds of the Reyes Balam compound.

Hunter waited, a semiwilling sacrifice to the insect gods.

No hidden guards moved. No sharp odor of cigarettes or matches hung in the darkness beyond the lighted paths. Toward the big house, two young women called from the huge kitchen, teasing the men who would rather be romping in bed than stomping around in the dark with guns.

When the guards had completed two rounds, Hunter picked his moment and ghosted through the landscaping, ignoring the noisy pathways. There were only a few flickering lights on the second floor at the southeast corner of the house—candles beckoning him. The rest of the floor was dark.

He wondered if the rooms were truly given over to guards, or if Cecilia had used that as an excuse not to let him sleep under the same roof as Lina, princess of the Reyes Balam line.

The muted, liquid illumination of the candles through screened windows drew Hunter as surely as his hunger for Lina. The landscaping lights around the house provided more ambience than security. It was way too easy for him to drift among the shadows that dipped and danced with every mood of the wind. The ancient bougainvillea was more ladder than barrier. The thorns drew blood he barely noticed. The sturdy wrought-iron balcony was an invitation he took with both hands. He went over the railing like a jungle cat, more imagined than seen in the shadows.

The French doors leading inside weren’t locked. Hunter dropped to the balcony floor, eased open the doors, and listened.

Nothing but his heartbeat.

Silently he went low through the doors, closing them as he slid behind one of the heavy draperies that had been gathered at either side of the door. The sitting area was empty of all but half-consumed candles, the TV silent. A partially open door waited to the side. He stood near the door, listening, watching, wanting.

The scent of cinnamon and woman curled from the bed to him in a silent caress. The alluring line of shoulder and waist and thigh called to him. The pale, fragile silk of her nightgown revealed and concealed with every shifting breath she took. The dark shadows of her nipples, the shadow between her thighs, her slightly parted lips slid like a knife into his heart. For an instant he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, could only feel the ache of certainty sweeping over him.

She was everything he’d ever wanted, ever dreamed, ever hungered for in the loneliness that was his life.

Abruptly Hunter decided they could talk about artifacts and death later. At this moment other things were more important.

Lina’s bed was draped in a fragile fall of mosquito netting. A single candle flickered at her bedside, beyond the reach of the netting. Slowly Hunter licked the finger and thumb of his right hand, pinched the wick, and let the room slide into a radiant kind of darkness. Exterior lights glowed beyond the screened windows, turning them into luminous silver.

With quick motions he stripped off his boots and clothes, making sure his weapons and condoms were within reach. He pushed through the gauze, feeling it slide like breath over his naked body. He put one hand over Lina’s mouth as he let the mattress dip beneath his weight.

The electric change in Lina’s body told Hunter that she was awake.

“Easy, sweetheart,” he murmured against her ear.

He felt her smile beneath his hand, but it was the hot lick of her tongue over his skin as she breathed his name that told Hunter she knew exactly who was in her bed.

“Go back to sleep,” he said softly. “Don’t mind me.”

His erection prodded her hip in bold contradiction.

She would have laughed out loud if his hand hadn’t covered her mouth. As it was, she bit the base of his thumb slowly, deliciously, then sucked one finger into her mouth for a hotter caress, the kind of tasting she wanted to do all over him.

“Is anyone else on this floor?” he asked.

Lina savored the unique flavor of his skin—jungle and salt, a metallic hint of blood and dusty thorns—before she reluctantly gave up teasing his finger to answer.

“Only the night guards, and they’re out making rounds,” she said softly.

“I noticed. Bunch of clubfooted clowns.”

“Their guns are clean and loaded. Carlos checked them before they began their shift.”

“Your primo struck me as a demanding sort of employer,” Hunter said, but his lips and teeth tracing her flaring cheekbone said that there were other demands a man could make.

Hungry ones.

“He is. That’s why he’s successful. Celia checked their clothes and fingernails. She won’t abide dirty guards inside the house.”

“Did Abuelita check their ammo?”

Lina’s soft laugh was a rush of warmth over his lips. “She’s asleep in her suite off the kitchen.” Lina’s lips went from the corner of his mouth to the hinge of his jaw. “The suite used to belong to the housekeeper, but when she quit last year, Abuelita took over the job. She even oversees the making of the candles she so loves.” Teeth nipped his ear. “The house has never been so spotless or held so many candles. No one dares displease her.”

“Her husband must have had huevos.” Hunter’s mouth nibbled Lina’s lips in sweet retaliation.

“I don’t remember him. He drank himself to death long before I was born.”

“Huh. Can’t say I blame him.”

Teeth nipped, then sucked on the pulse in Hunter’s neck. “Abuelita’s soft underneath her armor,” Lina said.

Hunter doubted it, but he didn’t doubt Lina’s affection for the old woman. “Did the family give you more grief after I left?” he asked.

Which had been as soon after dinner as was civilly possible.

“They understood you were tired,” Lina breathed against his hair.

“More like they were glad to be rid of me.”

She would have argued, but suddenly didn’t have the breath. Hunter’s warm mouth had found the valley between her breasts at the same moment as his hands had slid around their soft weight. The edge of his teeth on one nipple was sweet lightning ripping a sound of surprise from her.

“Okay?” he whispered, waiting.

In answer she shifted her thighs open. The scent of cinnamon and arousal lifted to him.

“God,” he groaned. “You work on keeping quiet.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I’ve always wanted to ravish a princess.”

Her breath broke as he sucked on one breast, then the other. Her fingers tightened in his hair and she fought to be silent while his mouth worshipped her. Minutes slid by in a breathless silence that ended when small whimpers broke from her. His mouth alternately tormented and delighted her breasts, sending sharp streaks of lightning from her nipples to her womb.

When she was twisting slowly beneath his mouth and hands, her nipples stiff and quivering, glistening from his tongue, he lifted his head to admire the beauty his slow caresses had created. He kissed one nipple, then the other.

Her eyes opened dark with need, watching him.

“Hunter?” she whispered.

“Shh. Ravisher at work here.”

Her smile became a hiss of indrawn breath when his mouth skimmed down her body, his hands slid beneath her hips to hold and mold her buttocks, and his teeth left a stinging caress on one hip bone and then the other. With a dark, fluid motion he shifted over her, pressing her legs farther apart to make room for his shoulders.

The scent and heat of her filled him like a drug.

He made a rough sound against her thighs as his fingers shifted to her nipples, squeezing and plucking in caresses that would have been painful just moments before. But not now. Now she was lifting into his hands, her body focused on the luxuriant whips of sensation uncoiling through her, arcing her.

Then he bent his head and took her in a way he’d taken no other woman, wanting to drown in her.

She would have cried out if she could, but he’d stolen her body. She lived only where he touched her, and he touched her everywhere. Without knowing it, she drew her knees up and gave herself to whatever he wanted, because with him she wanted everything. Ecstasy shivered through her, brilliant pulses that exploded like fireworks behind her eyelids, blinding her.

He lifted his head long enough to see her lost in the pleasure he had given her. Then he bent his head and drove her up again, less gently, fingers and teeth and tongue caressing and demanding until she came in a wild, writhing rush that destroyed her.

When she could open her eyes again, he was there, holding her, sealing her soft cries with his mouth. The taste of him, of her, of passion tangled with their tongues. With a long sigh, she separated their mouths and nuzzled the hands that held her face so tenderly.

“Gardenias,” she murmured. “Why do you smell like gardenias? Did you steal Celia’s perfume to fool the guards?”

Hunter smiled despite the driving hunger that made every muscle of his body hard.

“I waited in the bushes,” he said, tracing her mouth with his fingertip. “Watching the guards.”

She blinked slowly, a thick sweep of eyelashes. “That explains it. Were the bougainvillea thorns bad?”

“Wicked. Make it up to me.”

His blunt erection nuzzled at the lips of her sheath.

“Come here,” she whispered. “Deep, Hunter. I want you deep.”

“Then hold your knees high.”

She would have been embarrassed, but she was too caught in their mutual sensuality to care about anything but pleasing him. She opened herself as much as she could, then watched him sink into her, inch by thick inch. Seeing the joining set fire to her all over again. She had never known a lover like Hunter, a man willing and able to enjoy every aspect of making love, not just his own release.

His pleasure in her was as surprising as it was arousing. She breathed his name as he filled her until she overflowed. Her hidden muscles flexed, held, caressed, until his control gave way to powerful, twisting thrusts. He rode her with a strength and power that made the world go black and red and wild until he shuddered above her, unable to hold back anymore.

Then they lay tangled, sated, their sweat mingling, breaths ragged, bodies joined.

WHEN LINA AWOKE AT DAWN, SHE WAS ALONE BUT FOR THE sunlight turning the mosquito netting to ripples of liquid gold.

She wanted Hunter. Wanted him close to her, holding her, laughing while she kissed each tiny wound inflicted on him by insects and thorns. Then not laughing when she kissed the flesh that had given them both so much pleasure. There had been no more condoms, but she hadn’t cared. She just wanted to worship his body as he had worshipped hers.

And she had.

Smiling, stretching, feeling each sensual ache from Hunter’s tender, demanding lovemaking, Lina pushed through the mosquito netting. She showered and dressed in clothing suitable for jungle hiking, then took her backpack downstairs and tucked into the canvas enough food and water to last until evening. She filled a canteen with strong, rich coffee, left a note for her mother, and slipped out the back door before the maids arrived to begin grinding corn for Abuelita’s breakfast tortillas.

As always, there were guards along the perimeter of the compound. Lina barely registered their presence. She was too impatient to see Hunter.

The door to Casita Cenote opened before she could knock. Hunter’s eyes blazed a silver blue that took her breath. He was dressed, as impatient as she was.

As hungry.

“I’d kiss you,” he said in a deep voice, “but then I’d lose my head and go right to the top of your family’s shit list.”

The way Lina’s eyelids half lowered as she licked her lips told him that she’d awakened with the same thing on her mind.

“You’re killing me,” he said, touching her damp lips with a fingertip.

She smiled, touched the tip of her tongue to his skin, then stepped away. “We’ve got to leave before Celia or Abuelita thinks of a way to keep us apart.”

Hunter peeled the backpack off Lina, lengthened the straps to fit him, and said, “At your service, beautiful.”

She hesitated, smiled. “I never felt beautiful before you.”

“Have I mentioned that you’re killing me?”

“Maybe I like the way you ‘die.’”

The crunch of boots on crushed limestone was all that stopped Hunter from dragging Lina inside and bolting the door.

“Start moving,” he said huskily.

She turned and took a path leading away from the guard, walking quickly. He followed a little more slowly, just far enough back to appreciate the natural motion of her hips.

“You have a seriously fine ass,” Hunter said.

Lina gave him a you-have-got-to-be-kidding look over her shoulder.

He grinned.

“What am I going to do with you?” she asked, laughing.

“You did real good last night…and then some. Now change the subject or I’ll be walking bent over.”

Her dark eyebrows rose. “So it’s all my fault?”

“Every little bit.”

“There was nothing little about last night. Bitty either. You may be used to your whacking great equipment, but I’m walking funny today.”

Hunter laughed even as red burned along his cheekbones.

Smiling, she resumed her “funny” walk to the parking area of the compound. He took a long breath and followed her, wishing every step of the way that he had the right to drag her back to his bed for another up-close-and-personal loving from said equipment.

The Bronco was waiting where they had left it, limestone dust dimming its deep green paint. She held out her hand for the keys he had reclaimed yesterday. He dropped them in her palm. They were still warm from his pocket. She started to say something about how hot he was, then told herself to stop teasing the jaguar.

But it’s such fun.

Beneath the scraped-back hair and jungle wear, Lina felt more female than she ever had in her life.

“Where are we going?” Hunter asked as she unlocked the Bronco.

“First, the Cenote de Balam, or Jaguar Cenote, as Philip calls it,” she said. “Then to a very special place I’ve never taken anyone.”

“Breakfast along the way?” Hunter asked hopefully.

“In my backpack. The canteen clipped to the bottom is coffee. I ate while I was throwing stuff together.”

“Beautiful, sexy, intelligent, and understanding,” Hunter said, smiling wolfishly as he released and opened the canteen.

“I’ll remind you of that when I irritate you.”

Hunter was too busy swigging coffee to answer. But he winked.

“There’s a good limestone-paved walkway to the cenote from the compound,” Lina said, “but I don’t want to meet anyone. The villagers and workers use that path.”

He grunted something agreeable around a mouthful of pork, chiles, and hard-boiled eggs wrapped in yesterday’s corn tortillas. Four more fat bundles just like it waited for him in the backpack. He was hungry enough to eat every one.

“What about your cousin’s artifacts?” Hunter asked between bites.

“Gorgeous. Echoes of Kawa’il. Nothing close to what we’re looking for.”

“Did he say anything useful?”

“Not to me.”

On either side of the long estate driveway, elegantly spaced and manicured gardens flowed by. Before Hunter finished his second tortilla, she turned the Bronco onto what looked like a maintenance road. Moments later they were deep in the jungle. Untamed, unmanaged, raw with life. The jungle had a different kind of allure than the estate, the beauty of single moments framed in every shade of green—a bird flashing through a shaft of sunlight, a butterfly resting with blue incandescence on a white flower, the sudden rush and screech of howler monkeys passing overhead.

The sun filtered through the intertwined growth of the canopy, enclosing the Bronco in a living green world. As the trees grew bigger, the spaces between them increased, though the sunlight didn’t. Despite the overwhelming shade, the inside of the vehicle got hot, then hotter.

Hunter barely noticed. He expected heat in the Yucatan, even in December. It was the cool days that surprised people. But here, as in Texas, winter was being real slow about chasing summer from the land.

“Does the estate get its water from the cenote?” he asked as he swallowed the last bite of breakfast. “Or from cisterns during the wet?”

“Cisterns. Nearly all of Quintana Roo sits on a limestone shelf. Water flows through it, rather than being held back or pushed to the surface by denser, less water-soluble rock. During the wet season, rain fills the underground cisterns we’ve built. In the old days, the dry season was difficult, especially after the Maya fell and the ancient cisterns and canals fell apart.”

“So you don’t use the cenote at all?”

She shook her head. “Not anymore. We just drill down into the limestone ‘sponge’ to reach freshwater stored in stone from rainfall. You don’t drill too far, though. Close to the sea, freshwater floats on top of saltwater. It’s easy to punch right through to undrinkable stuff.”

“And if you don’t have a well?” Hunter asked. He enjoyed watching the relaxation and anticipation that spread through Lina with every minute away from the estate.

“Then you go to the nearest cenote, dip out water, and carry it back up the path. You’ll see signs of the old trail worn into solid limestone around Cenote de Balam. The trail is older than local memories, far older than Bishop Landa and his soldiers.” She downshifted deftly and whipped around a washout. “The actual word isn’t ‘cenote.’ It’s dznot. The Spanish mangled the Mayan word.”

“Pretty much what they did to the natives.”

“Oh, the natives were good at going to hell all by themselves. But yes, there wasn’t a whole lot of cross-cultural understanding, then or now.”

Laughing at the dry understatement, Hunter handed her a bottle of water.

She braced the wheel with her knees and one hand and drank. A thin line of water dribbled down her chin and dampened the khaki blouse above one breast, slowly revealing the dark shadow of a nipple.

Hunter forced himself to think of someone who might be following them. A fast check of the side mirrors revealed that they were the only limestone dust cloud on the road. Not that he could see all that far with the jungle crouched around like a huge green cat.

“Without the cenotes,” Lina said, handing back the water, “the very ancient Maya would have died out long before the Spanish arrived. That and the fact that freshwater floats on top of salt.”

“Fire, water, earth, and air,” Hunter said. “All the rest is decoration. No matter where you are in the world, that doesn’t change.”

“The lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula could use more of the decoration called fertilizer,” she said wryly. “In the ceiba and copal jungle, the ground beneath our wheels is thin, crumbly, and poor. Survival is hard. Take the strangler fig tree. It lives by being supported by a host tree, using the host as a ladder to climb up to light. Eventually the fig vines harden, extend roots, and strangle the host. Despite its lush look, the jungle plants survive more by force of will than the generosity of nature.”

“Like the people. Still here. Still surviving, come hell, high water, and the Spanish. But then, we’re all survivors descended from survivors. The rest of them are buried in the dust of time.”

“Sometimes,” she said, “the weight of all that history is…crushing. And sometimes it’s so exciting to be a part of it that I want to dance.”

His fingertips trailed gently down her cheek. “I’ll dance with you.”

Dark eyes flashed gold when she looked at him and smiled. Then the rough road claimed her attention again. The dual tire tracks zigzagged around clumps of rock as the jungle slowly melted away into a different, sparser growth.

“We’re almost there,” Lina said. “I’ll park off in the scrub.”

“No problem with the locals and a rental car?”

“Not if it’s seen at the Reyes Balam estate first,” she said.

Hunter nodded. “You’ve got more guards than the ones in the compound.”

“We take care of the villages. They watch out for us.”

They got out of the Bronco, and she reached into the back and took out a wide leather belt. A machete dangled from a clip on one side of the belt.

“I’m stronger than you are,” he pointed out mildly.

“The path shouldn’t be too bad. It’s only been about eighteen months since I’ve used this route. But if I get tired, the big knife is all yours.”

“Knife?” He looked at the forearm-long blade that had been invented by natives for the sole purpose of whacking through jungles. “More like a sword.”

He followed her as she set out for a section of scrubby jungle—or jungly scrub—that looked no different from any other piece of the landscape. Trees struggled on the harsh land, lifting vine-burdened arms to the relentless sun. Bushes fought for their place in the light.

Lina slid sideways between several closely spaced, barely ten-foot-tall trees. Vines dangled only to be cut away by efficient strokes of the machete. She moved down the path like she wielded the machete, with an unconscious ease that came only from long experience. No hurry, no hesitation, just steady walking and random swings of the machete at whatever blocked the trail.

Hunter settled back to enjoy the walk. There weren’t as many bloodsucking clouds of insects as he’d expected. The rainy season had been light enough to deny mosquitoes the stagnant puddles they used to breed, and then breed again, repeating the cycle of life and death until the standing water dried up. The wind helped keep the insects down, too. At least when it blew enough to push insects under cover.

The path had only a thin layer of dirt, with limestone knobs shoving through like blunt teeth. Tree roots humped up. They were smaller and thinner than those deeper in the jungle, but enough to trip unwary feet. Plant growth waxed and waned according to a complex balance of light, water, and slope of the land. Birds and monkeys called in the distance, but a moving pool of silence spread around Lina and Hunter.

When predators walked, the jungle held its breath.

After ten minutes the amount of light gradually increased. Somewhere ahead there was a hole in the canopy.

Lina went still.

Instantly Hunter faded into the foliage close to her.

Muted voices came on the wind. The words Hunter could make out were in the local dialect. He watched Lina.

After a few moments the voices faded and she moved forward again, then stopped, framed by trees far taller than she was. She clipped the machete in place at her hip and motioned Hunter forward. When she felt him behind her, she took a half step left, letting him see ahead.

As Hunter squeezed next to her, he saw the breathtaking drop into the limestone cenote less than a yard beyond their feet. Trees crowded right up to the edge of the cliff and beyond, roots clinging to limestone ledges no bigger than his hand. Vines trailed from trees and rock alike, yet after the thousand shades of green that was the thickest jungle, the overall impression of the cenote was of muted pale cliffs and water that blazed blue under an empty sky. Where shadows fell, the water darkened to a murky shade of green.

Across the cenote, where the cliff was lower and less steep, a pale thread zigzagged down to the water. He estimated that the far side was about two hundred feet away, with a cliff perhaps twenty-five feet high. Where he and Lina stood, the cliff was at least ten feet higher, probably more. Without a point of reference, it was hard to tell. The mouth of the cenote was a rough circle left when the roof of an ancient limestone cavern had collapsed. Freshwater lay at the bottom of the limestone cliffs.

“Jase would be strapping on dive tanks,” Hunter said in a low voice. “You ever dive the cenote?”

“Not with equipment. The water is deep, but even deeper at this side than the other. We used to jump in over there,” She pointed to a place where the jungle at the top of the cliff had been cleared and covered with crushed limestone, creating a flat area. The cliff below was steep, almost overhanging the water. “Hundreds of years ago there was at least one altar there, but it didn’t survive the Catholic mandate. Generations of Maya have gradually restored the limestone causeway from the village to the cenote, though after we put wells in the villages, people no longer had to risk their lives just to get a drink.”

The red and yellow of heaped flowers announced the presence of a different, modern shrine near the edge of the limestone platform.

“Is that usually there?” Hunter asked.

She shrugged. “It varies, but it has become bigger, more permanent, than I remember as a child. It looks like it has doubled or tripled in size since the last time I really noticed it.”

Hunter weighed the presence of the shrine and decided that it could wait to be investigated. It looked like just one more really big pile of flowers nearly engulfing a long-armed cross. From the thin veil of insects that seethed over the place, it was a good bet that there was food and/or blood among the bright petals.

“What’s over there?” Hunter pointed to a gap in the cliff-side foliage that lay to the right of the shrine, just beyond the head of the ghostlike trail descending the cliff.

“The path from the estate. We have technicians who check the wells and the level of the cisterns so we know if water has to be rationed or pumped up from the cenote.”

“That happen often?”

“Only a few times. Abuelita doesn’t like pumping from the cenote. Once she made everyone haul water in buckets. Said it was better that way. In fact”—Lina put her hand on Hunter’s shoulder and leaned out, trying to see better—“I’ll bet that the pump doesn’t even work anymore. The pipe down the rim into the water is gone.”

Hunter absorbed the ancient cenote and modern shrine, the ghost path and cloudless sky. “Could be a long summer.”

“My mother’s mother had more underground cisterns built after the last drought. If we had to, we could irrigate enough of the estate crops to keep the villagers and ourselves alive. I barely remember my grandmother, but she was very determined that the estate be self-reliant.”

“Governments come and go. The need for food and water doesn’t.”

“We have other cenotes on Reyes Balam lands, but none of the size and accessibility of this one. Some are so steep that even a jaguar would get a workout on the way to water. Others are little more than ponds with muddy bottoms. A few archaeological divers mucked about in them, but didn’t find much.”

“Any divers in this one?”

“Philip dived it after he and Celia were married. He found the usual knives, faces, pots, figurines, jewelry—all of it broken during the act of sacrificing to the gods. What is given to the gods isn’t taken back.”

“People, too?” Hunter asked.

“Apparently. This cenote was an important center for the lowland Maya, especially after the Spanish came. Philip dredged the cenote for a sample of what was on the bottom. He recorded the length and type of bones, the variety of artifacts, and then threw the bones back.”

“Surprised he didn’t study them.”

“Some of the villagers were angry at Philip’s ‘violation’ of the cenote, so he returned the bones, concentrated on ruins, and everyone settled down.”

The sound of more voices came on the wind.

“Busy place,” Hunter murmured.

“The wheel of time turns tonight. The Long Count ends and the Fourteenth Baktun begins. It will be a lot more quiet after that. Until then”—she shrugged—“we’ll leave the cenote to the villagers. It costs us nothing and pleases them.”

“And they’ll be in church on Sundays and holy days.”

“Their lives, their choices.”

“A very modern point of view,” Hunter said quietly as he eased back undercover. “Neither the Maya nor the Spanish were so broad-minded. For a lot of cultures, religion is a blood sport.”

Lina followed Hunter’s move to leave. As she started to go back, her body stroked over his. Even if the trail hadn’t forced them close, she still would have touched him. She’d wanted him since her first breath this morning. Face-to-face with him, she paused, absorbed in how the silver in his eyes reflected the green shadows of the enclosing plants.

The voices from the other side of the cenote became louder, then faded, absorbed by the jungle.

“We haven’t really been alone since we left the estate,” Hunter said quietly in English. “That’s why we’re not finding out just how hard a limestone mattress is.”

She hesitated, not even a breath away from him, and switched to English. “We’re being followed?”

“Does your neck itch?”

“No more than usual in the jungle,” she said wryly. “Getting used to the insects takes me a week or two.”

He nodded. “But you know that we’re being watched. Not by the same people, but we’re never alone for more than a few minutes at a time.”

She shrugged. “There are three villages within several kilometers. Cenote de Balam is sacred, and this is a big holy day for the Maya. I’d be surprised if there weren’t people gathering around the area. Plus, I’m a Reyes Balam with a strange male at my side. Naturally they would look out for me.”

For a long moment Hunter weighed what Lina had said. Then he nodded. “So much for my fantasies of jungle sex.”

Lina smiled. “C’mon. Maybe we’ll get lucky in the ruins.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I’ve never had so much fun in my life,” she admitted.

“Will you enjoy it as much when you figure out it’s not a game?” he asked softly.

Before she could find an answer, Hunter was moving down the trail, away from the cenote.

And Lina.