His Wicked Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page B

region dreaded as much as the whites did the fierce Yanomami who ruled the Amazon forest. They were said to make a soup out of the enemies they killed.
    The more she thought about it, the more she feared her sire was truly fixed on his own destruction, perhaps without even realizing it. Perhaps death really was his underlying plan—to be all the sooner reunited with Mama. She worried over this morbid possibility all morning as she went about her usual list of chores: managing breakfast, giving the servants their daily instructions, checking supplies, taking down the instrument readings and recording them in the logbook: temperature, barometric pressure, and lastly, the river’s current depth.
    For this final item, she followed the plank-and-hemp boardwalk from their camp down to the little rickety dock that the men had constructed. Along the way, she found solace in the morning breeze that rustled gracefully through the palm fronds, and swayed the hanging vines and lianas.
    Tilting her head back, she watched blue and gold and scarlet macaws swoop overhead, spiraling through the canopy like living fireworks. Three stories overhead, a spider monkey swung from branch to branch with its baby clinging to its back. Closer to earth, a large, sleek aguti dug in the soil with its long front claws, trying to pull up a root for its breakfast, and snuffling in the dirt with rodent pleasure. Eden watched it for a moment, rather amused, then continued on her way.
    A big blue dragonfly zoomed across her path as the boardwalk rounded the giant buttressed roots of a native mahogany tree. Nearing the riverbank, she paused to scan the surrounding area before walking out onto their shaky private dock: She had no intention of becoming anything’s breakfast.
    Finding the way clear, she proceeded out to where three dugout canoes were tied, bobbing in the lazy current.
    Making her notations, she squinted at the marker-pole that Connor had sunk into the river mud some ten feet from the bank. It served as a huge ruler.
Twenty-five feet
. Low today, even for the dry season.
    She marked the reading with her pencil in the logbook.
    A sudden spray of water nearby startled her, but then she smiled, alerted to this visit from one of the mysterious pink dolphins that inhabited the river. Magical creatures, invisible in the
aqua negra
. She crouched down, scanning the murky shallows. Her smile broadened as she caught a glimpse of a coral-pink tail fin.
    The Indians called these animals
Buoto
and believed they were really sorcerers in dolphin form, who dwelled in a golden kingdom that existed underneath the river. Whenever a baby was born in the village to a girl with no husband, the elders proclaimed it the work of a
Buoto
who had changed himself by enchantment into a handsome young warrior and had sneaked into the village to find a wife. The
Buoto
were infamous for their amorous ways when they transformed themselves into men. Fortunately for Eden ’s virtue, the pink dolphin was gone again as swiftly as it had appeared.
    Satisfied with her notations, she returned to camp to finish with her list of morning chores.
     
    Upriver at Angostura, Jack received his delivery of rare tropical hardwoods from the local timber dealer and personally oversaw the laborious process of attaching the barge piled with felled trees to the wide, flat-bottomed river craft he had hired.
    When all twenty crewmen from his gunship were accounted for, he shook hands on the dock with Don Eduardo.
    “Safe journeys, Knight.” Montoya followed Jack’s upward stare to the balcony of the guest apartment, where the dark-haired girl, wrapped in a bedsheet, languidly waved farewell from the wrought-iron railing.
    Jack blew her a kiss.
    “You may take her with you if you like,” his host said in discreet amusement. “At least it would keep her out of my son’s clutches.”
    “God, no.” Jack flicked him a wry look. “A woman at sea? Nothing but headaches.” With that, he jumped