Page 19 of Hot Soldier's Rescue

They had about a half hour of twilight left before full dark when he started looking for a likely place to pull off the road and make camp. In a few minutes he found what he sought. Relatively dry land on the side of a mountain, enough underbrush to hide a vehicle, but enough old-growth forest on the hillside above to allow for a decent clearing in which to pitch a tent, and a fast-running stream nearby.

He’d been avoiding thinking about the fact that he only had one tent. Buying a second one would’ve drawn too much attention to Elise, and frankly, it would’ve signaled far too deep a commitment to helping her. Everything between them was still temporary, and he planned to keep it that way.

With quick efficiency, he unloaded the supplies they would need. Elise carried the light gear up the hillside while he hid the Jeep and then followed her carrying the heavy stuff. He approved of the tiny clearing she’d stopped in and helped her clear a patch of ground down to the dirt. The critters that lived on the floor of this jungle were emphatically not the kind a person wanted to have join them in their tent in the middle of the night. Dried leaves hid everything from army ants to deadly snakes out here.

“You act like you’ve done this before,” he commented.

Unaccountably, pain flashed across her face. He lurched forward with an impulse to put his arms around her and comfort her. But then she looked up at him and the grief raging in her gaze froze him in place.

“What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

“I used to do this with my parents—” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and then mumbled, “It has been a long time…thought it wouldn’t be this bad…too many memories…”

He knew precisely how memories of lost friends and colleagues could haunt a soul. It was one of the hazards of his profession. People you loved died. He waited for her to say more, but she fell silent, lost in tragic contemplation. Sadly, he knew the cure for that. You had to pick yourself up and go on. They were dead, you were not. You went on living. But his heart ached for her loss anyway.

He passed her a collapsible bucket. “Go fetch water. I’ll put up the tent and get a fire started.”

She nodded and headed off into the trees toward the sound of cheerfully bubbling water.

By the time he’d finished building the entire camp, Elise still hadn’t returned with the water. Concerned, he headed out after her. The last remnants of the gloaming filtered down through the canopy overhead and he made out mostly gray shapes and shadows. The sound of the little stream grew louder, and he slowed down, approaching with caution. Crouching, he eased forward on battle alert. The night sounds around him gave no indication that other predators prowled the night, but he took no chances, nonetheless.

The way his stomach jumped with nervous anxiety was a nasty surprise. She was just a nun. An asset to be looked after. There was no reason whatsoever for him to be personally concerned about her. Wasn’t her safety in God’s hands, anyway?

Right. And that was why the butterflies in his stomach refused to settle down despite all the calming exercises he ran through in his mind. He’d been in gunfights and ambushed, his life put in extreme danger a hundred times, and always been cool as a cucumber. But here he was all alone, sweating bullets that one small female had somehow managed to get herself into trouble.

He crept around a giant fern and caught sight of a movement ahead. He froze. Very slowly, he drew his pistol. Inch by inch, he moved closer to get a better view. Something light moved against a backdrop of black, crouching down and then rising up again.

A faint groan reached his ears and his pulse shot up unpleasantly. Was that Elise? Was she in pain? Every nerve screamed at him to bolt forward and save her. Only his long years of training, and the sure and certain knowledge that his stupidity would get her killed faster than anything else out here, gave him the discipline to hold his position.

Another slow step forward. And another.

The shape crouched and rose again, this time half-turning toward him.

Stunned, he stared as he finally made out exactly what he was seeing. Elise was taking a bath. Well, not a bath, exactly. She’d stripped naked and was using a washcloth to scoop up water and stream it down over her glorious body. Her spine was outlined by a long, tantalizing trail of soapsuds that disappeared into the crevice of her buttocks. The shape of her behind captured his gaze; the way it curved into her thighs made his breath catch in his throat.

She scooped up a handful of water and held her arms up overhead. The water ran down her slender arms, washing a mound of suds into the valley between breasts that were arguably the most perfect he’d ever seen. His breath stopped altogether. Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed in ecstasy, her profile as pure as the clear water dripping onto her collarbones.

As the night cooled rapidly around him, his body raged with fire to rival the searing heat of this tropical climate. This was not lust. It wasn’t even need. It was a pull of instinct so visceral, so overwhelming, he didn’t even know how to think past it, let alone how to control it.

It shouldn’t shock him that a nun was also a woman, but he was absolutely stunned that she was such a sensual creature beneath all those clothes designed to make her as unattractive as possible.

Elise groaned again, and there was no mistaking the sound of pleasure. It vibrated through him with the force of an earthquake. He absolutely had to hear her make that sound again. He’d give up his eternal soul to be the one to cause her to make that sound.

He took an aggressive step forward and a twig snapped underfoot. Elise’s eyes popped open and he froze in horror in the act of stalking her.

“Who’s there?” she called out nervously.

Good God, almighty. He was voyeuristically intruding upon the private bath of a nun. N. U. N. Nun. He’d turned into a freaking pervert. He whirled violently to put his back to her and called over his shoulder, “It’s me. I was worried about you. Everything okay?”

The sounds of frantic movement came from behind him. She had to be snatching up a towel and holding it across her body like an inadequate shield. “Uh, yes.” She sounded out of breath, no doubt racing to yank on her clothes. Covering herself in panic. Please, God, let her not realize he’d seen her enjoying her bath like that. She’d be too humiliated to ever look him in the eye again.

For all the money in the world he wouldn’t give up having seen her naked in the jungle with water and soapsuds running down her body like a blessing. But neither did he want to lose the easy familiarity between them.

She spoke breathlessly from just behind him. “The water was so cool and refreshing looking, I couldn’t resist. I took a little sponge bath. I’m sorry if I worried you.”

Huh. Worry didn’t quite describe what she’d done to him. An image of her burned in his mind as brightly as the sun, and no power on earth was removing that from his head anytime soon.

“Did you enjoy it?” he choked out as she moved up beside him. He risked glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. The potato sack was firmly back in place. But when he looked at her now, all he saw was silky skin and womanly curves. Sex. Mind-blowing sex. Pleasure that transcended mere mortal intensity.

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