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He drew her down until she was straddling him, her knees cushioned on the fabric of the bedroll on either side of his thighs. He teased her with his hands, teased her and coaxed her and urged her until nothing else mattered but the exquisite tension building inside her.

This was what it was supposed to feel like, she thought, dazzled with the discovery. She had never realized how intoxicating sex could be.

“Yes,” she whispered, suddenly desperate. Her nails dug into his shoulders. “Yes. Now.
Hurry
.”

“There's no rush.” He watched her with half-shut eyes. “We've got all night.”

“I don't,” she said fiercely. “I've never been this close.” She reached down, took him into her hand, and tried to fit herself to him.

He sucked in a sharp breath. “I get the message. But we need to do this slowly. You're so small and tight.”

He eased himself into her, stretching her, filling her impossibly full.

“It's not that I'm so small,” she whispered. “It's that you're so big.”

He laughed a little, and then he groaned as she clenched around him. He made another sound: a man in the grip of torment or rapture. She could not tell. She was too busy concentrating on her own reaction to the deep invasion.

The hot, tight sensation was almost unbearable. She began to move, tentatively at first and then with increasing speed and confidence.

“I said slow,” he reminded her, smiling a little.

He flexed his fingers on her derriere, squeezing gently, controlling her headlong rush.

She bent her head and sank her teeth into his earlobe.

“Well, if you feel that strongly about it,” he said.

He moved his fingers into her cleft. She did not think she could tighten herself any more snugly around him, but she was wrong. Her body reacted to the intimate caress by ratcheting up the coiled tension within her, drawing all her inner muscles ever more taut.

“Yes,” he breathed. He let her feel his own teeth now, on her throat.

The sensual storm broke over her in an irresistible wave of unfurling energy. Helpless, she abandoned herself to the release.

He followed her over the edge, pulsing heavily into her, his breathing harsh in her ear. He gave a husky, exultant roar of satisfaction.

When it was over, he fell back, pulling her down across his chest.

 

 

“CLOSE ENOUGH?” FONTANA ASKED A LONG TIME LATER.

“Hmm?” She snuggled deeper into the bedroll they shared.

He levered himself up on one elbow. “You said something about never having been that close. Just wanted to be sure you made it.”

She blushed and opened her eyes to find him looking down at her. There was a subtle difference about him, she thought. She tried to come up with the right descriptor. Pleased? Relaxed? Satisfied? Happy? There was a bit of all of those things in his hard face, but something else as well. She wondered if he felt what she was feeling, a sense of connection between them. It was more than just the great sex, she thought. There was a shimmering, psychic element to it. Her intuition told her that it could be the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to her. Or the most painful.

“Yes,” she said. “Definitely close enough. Right on top of it, actually.”

He kissed her bare shoulder. “Because I'll be happy to keep trying until I get it right.”

She giggled. “It couldn't have been any more right; trust me.”

He kissed her, a long, indulgent kiss, savoring her.

After a moment he raised his head slightly.

“Feel something?” he asked.

Her heart leaped. He sensed the psychic link the sex had established between them. Joy sparkled through her.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Me, too.” He looked toward the foot of the bedroll. “Thought so. Elvis is back.”

So much for pillow talk with a Guild boss.

Elvis rumbled a cheery greeting. She was relieved to see that there was no evidence of the iridescent lizard or anything else that he might have dined on. She reached out to pet him.

From out of nowhere Jake's name flickered through her mind again, accompanied by a sense of urgency.

She looked at Fontana.

“That reminds me,” she said, “while you were sleeping off the afterburn, I remembered something Jake Tanner told me when he gave Elvis the dressing room. I doubt if it means anything in light of Jake's drug issues, but it might be worth checking out when we get back to my apartment.”

THE TREK THROUGH THE RAIN FOREST TO THE NEAREST official Guild-sanctioned gate took several hours because of the rough terrain. Fontana knew that he could have made it in half the time, but Sierra was a novice in the jungle. She was healthy and in excellent condition, but she lacked training and experience.

“You know, this would have been a lot easier and faster if we could have used the sled,” she said at one point. “Maybe the Guild should consider putting some roads in down here.”

“That was tried.” He used the heavy steel blade to hack through a maze of vines. “Lasted about three days.”

“What happened to it?”

“The jungle reclaimed it. Most of it was gone within twenty-four hours. By the third day you couldn't even tell where the construction crew had cleared the path, let alone see any signs of pavement. The only way we can keep the clearings around the official gates is by maintaining them every day.”

“You mean stuff down here grows that quickly?”

“Yes, but only under certain conditions. The vegetation recovers fast when you try to destroy some portion of the landscape, but otherwise everything down here remains in balance.”

He heard a muffled thud.

“Ooomph,” Sierra said.

He turned and saw her sprawled facedown on a mass of vines. Elvis scuttled around her, cooing anxiously.

She looked up with a mournful expression. “Remind me to cross jungle exploration off my list of possible future career paths.”

He walked back a few steps and helped her to her feet. “You've got a list of career paths?”

“When you come from an overachieving family, you're expected to have a career path early on. Like from about age ten. I'm still looking for mine.”

“Ten is a little young to be making that kind of decision isn't it?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said sweetly. “When did you decide to join the Guild?”

He scooped up Elvis, stepped over a fallen log, and moved forward again. “At the age of eight on my first day as a Hunter Scout.”

She laughed. “And now you're running the Crystal organization. See? You've been focused for years, just like the others in my family. Me, I'm still trying to decide what I want to do with my life.”

“What have you tried besides journalism?”

“Well, there was a stint as a sales consultant in an art gallery. I enjoyed that quite a lot for a while.”

“What happened?”

“Turns out I don't have a keen eye for modern art. Ever heard of Adam Bollinger?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar.”

“He's famous for his life-sized sculptures of what he calls contemporary artifacts. His work forces us to confront the intrinsic shallowness of reality.”

“And?”

“And when I arrived at the gallery one day, his new sculpture of a city garbage can had just been delivered and uncrated. It was still sitting on the sidewalk out front. I mistook it for a real garbage can and threw an empty coffee cup and a used tissue into it. Unfortunately, Adam Bollinger happened to be standing just inside the gallery doorway, supervising the unpacking of his piece. He saw me abuse his sculpture. The next thing I knew, I was looking for another position.”

He hid a smile. “What was that?”

“I became a hotel concierge for a while.”

“I take it that came to a bad end, too?”

“Let's just say that I learned a valuable lesson. When the CEO of a major corporation checks in and asks to have a private anniversary celebration arranged in his suite, it is not a good idea to assume that it is the anniversary of his Covenant Marriage with his wife that he intends to celebrate.”

“The anniversary was with the mistress?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What happened?”

“The real wife showed up with the private investigator she had hired to tail her husband. There was a dreadful scene. The CEO was furious with me because he believed I'd tipped off his wife. The upshot was that the wife filed for divorce.”

He whistled softly. “Was it granted?”

Divorce was rare, and it could be ruinously expensive, but adultery was one of the few grounds available to a couple that wanted to separate legally. Those grounds were allowed, however, only if all of the offspring of the union were eighteen years of age or older.

“The divorce was granted, yes, but it was very messy,” Sierra said.

“Aren't they all?”

“Yes, but in this case the husband owned a high-flying computer company. The wife went after half the business. In the course of the trial it turned out that the firm was in bad shape financially. In the end, it went bankrupt.”

He shoved aside a massive leaf. Something resonated somewhere in his brain. He had to fight not to grin.

“Are you talking about the Rensenbrier divorce?” he asked.

“You know about it?”

“It was in the papers for weeks. Not just the tabloids, either. The business papers carried it as front-page news. I dumped my shares as soon as I heard the rumors, but I still took a hell of a hit.”

There was an odd silence behind him. His amusement vanished. Grimly he tightened his grip on the emergency kit. He knew what was coming.

“You owned shares in Rensenbrier, Inc.?” she finally asked neutrally.

“Probably comes as a shock to find out that a Guild man occasionally thinks about things like long-term investments,” he said.

“Don't you dare imply that I was questioning your financial sophistication.” Temper crackled in her voice. “That's not what I meant. I was just a little surprised to hear that you owned shares in Rensenbrier, that's all.”

“Why?”

She sighed. “Because most people who owned the stock get mad at me when they find out that I was sort of involved in the downfall of the company. You weren't the only one who lost money.”

He stopped and turned around again. She looked miserable. Sexy as hell with his shirt falling off her shoulders and her nipples forming interesting little bumps in the fabric, but miserable. His irritation evaporated.

“You weren't involved,” he said. “You were an innocent bystander. The company didn't crash because of the divorce. It was doomed when it came out in open court that Rensenbrier had been cooking the firm's books.”

“Some people feel that if the divorce had never happened, the company's problems would not have been exposed, and they might have been able to bail before things went sour. Rensenbrier himself still insists that he could have saved the business if his reputation hadn't been smeared in court.”

“Ghost shit. Rensenbrier was a house of cards just waiting to fall down. It was only a matter of time.”

“That's what Dad said. The thing is, a lot of investors back in Resonance got the impression that I'd had a hand in the disaster. Gossip travels fast in business circles.”

He searched her face. “Is that the reason you decided to move to Crystal?”

“Yes. I wanted to start over in a place where nobody knew me.”

“So you came to a strange town where no one knows anything about you, and you proceed to do a series of exposés on the local Guild. You drag the corrupt chief right onto the front page of a tabloid newspaper. After he's out of the way, you marry the new Guild boss.” He nodded. “That's the way to stay anonymous, all right.”

She flushed. “Okay, so my plan didn't work out exactly as I'd intended. The thing is, after I met Jake and some of the other hunters in the Quarter and heard about the missing men, I had to do something. I couldn't ignore them. I felt like I'd found my calling at last.”

He pushed through a heavy mass of leaves. “I knew it. A natural-born do-gooder.”

“Hey, I resent that—”

He stopped. “Hush,” he said quietly.

“Don't you hush me, Fontana.” Then she, too, heard the voices in the distance. “The gate?”

“Almost there,” he said.

He climbed up onto some exposed tree roots that were as thick as a man's body, pushed aside a monstrous, cup-shaped leaf, and saw the gate. It was wide open, revealing the glowing green quartz catacombs beyond. A large number of people were clustered around the entrance. They didn't look like the usual gaggle of explorers, archaeologists, biologists, and researchers that accompanied routine expeditions.

Most of the entire membership of the Guild appeared to be present in the clearing. The hunters were all dressed in jungle gear. Some milled about, waiting. Others unloaded equipment from two large sleds.

The man in charge turned to one of the hunters.

“Tell those damn reporters to get out of the way, or I'm going to let the next sled run right over them,” Ray said in a voice that was meant to carry across the clearing.

“Yes, sir,” the man replied.

Sierra clambered up onto the low mound of roots and surveyed the scene. “What's going on?”

“I think we'll be on the front page again tomorrow morning.”

“What in the world?” Understanding lit her eyes. “They're getting ready to send out a search-and-rescue team. For us?”