Beautiful Sacrifice

has those artifacts? ”
    “If we knew, we wouldn’t be here,” she said, stepping away from his grasp. “Thank you for your time.” She turned to Hunter. “We’d better go. My family will be impatient to meet you.”
    Mercurio finally seemed to get the message. The look he gave Hunter was as hard as a blade.
    “Thanks for showing us around, Dr. de la Poole,” Hunter said, hand extended.
    Mercurio grasped it angrily. “Of course.”
    This time Hunter didn’t hold back his grip.

C HAPTER S IXTEEN
     
    O UTSIDE, THE SUN WAS A MEMORY AND DARKNESS REAL. Lina and Hunter walked down the pathway, casting strange shadows from the knee-level lighting. No voices came to their ears. Nothing moved farther back in the landscaping.
    “Old boyfriend?” Hunter asked blandly.
    “Don’t start.” Lina all but snarled into the night. “Sometimes I wonder what goes through Mercurio’s head.”
    “I don’t. He wanted you sweaty and horizontal.”
    She grimaced. “In his dreams. By the time he noticed me sexually, I had outgrown my crush on him.”
    “Bad timing.”
    “In hindsight, it was brilliant.”
    Hunter’s arm slid around her shoulders. “Yeah.”
    She turned toward him and started to say something.
    His mouth came down and suddenly Hunter was all Lina knew, all she could know. There was no darkness, no stone path, no wild jungle breathing fragrance over the land. There was only Hunter’s heat, his taste of coffee and lightning, need coiling in her until she couldn’t breathe.
    “I want you naked,” he said against her mouth.
    “And horizontal?” she teased. But it sounded more like a suggestion.
    “Any way I can get you, including straight up.”
    “Like an ice-cream cone?”
    “You change your mind about being shy?” he asked.
    “I’ve been thinking about it. A lot.”
    He shuddered when Lina’s tongue caressed up his neck and along his jawline, pausing over the dent in his chin. He lifted her until her legs were wrapped around his hips and his cock rubbed against her hot, moist center.
    “Yeah, just like an ice-cream cone,” he said roughly. “I wanted to lick you all over last night, but I was afraid you’d bolt.”
    “That was last night.”
    “And now?”
    “You make me adventurous.”
    A door slammed somewhere behind them. Reluctantly Hunter allowed Lina to slide down his body until she was standing so close to him he could feel her hard nipples against his chest. He breathed out roughly.
    “Car,” he said.
    For a moment all Lina could think about was getting closer to him. Naked close. Then reality came like a cold rain.
    “I’ll drive,” she said huskily. “The last part of the road is confusing if you don’t know your way, especially in the dark.”She shivered despite the warmth of the night and the heat of the man so close to her. “What you do to me should be illegal.”
    “Not yet. We’ll get to that part later tonight.”
    “My family is old-fashioned.”
    “So am I.” He smiled, a flash of white in the darkness. “I’ve always wanted to climb up a trellis to a woman’s second-floor bedroom.”
    “Naked?”
    “Only after I get inside.”
    Lina laughed. She wanted to kiss Hunter again, but didn’t trust herself. So she turned to the Bronco waiting out front. By the time she got in and fastened her seat belt, she could almost take a full breath again.
    Almost.
    If she didn’t look at Hunter’s lap.
    She turned the key and drove onto the highway. Within minutes, the colorful lights of Pueblo Tulum had been replaced by the occasional eerie flash of animal eyes reflected in the Bronco’s headlights along the roadside. Shrines loomed and vanished like random ghosts congealing from the shadows of the jungle.
    Eventually Lina turned off the highway onto a series of roads that became more and more narrow until they unraveled into tangle of dirt tracks and semipaved lanes.
    “You were right,” Hunter said. “I’d be lost by now. GPS only shows where you are, not where you want to be. The maps I have of this area don’t show nearly this many trails.”
    “That’s because we’re on Reyes Balam lands. The main access to the estate is kept in reasonable shape, but the rainy season hasn’t officially ended. Only the worst washouts will have been repaired, and nothing will be scraped and oiled until things dry out more.”
    “Looks fairly dry to me.”
    “Yes,” Lina said without looking away from the road. “The rainy season was stingy this time. But