Authors: Lindsay McKenna
Cav enjoyed walking behind Lia; the woman had the sweetest hips, and he liked watching them move. Today, he wanted her to relax and enjoy herself. Looking around, he saw they were the only people there except for the man who would welcome them to the caves.
Although Cav wanted to relax, he couldn’t. He was still on the job, and the likelihood of Medina’s men jumping them in Venado was low, but there was a good chance they’d try when they left. Sure, they could hide well enough in the jungle surrounding this place. And of course, Cav had tucked his Sig Sauer pistol into a side pocket, wrapped in a Ziploc in case he needed it.
After paying their admission fees, they found themselves walking on a boardwalk into the adit entrance to the cave. Lia led the way, familiar with it. Cav liked the yellow ochre limestone that gleamed with the sheen of humidity. As they moved deeper, he saw Lia strap her helmet on and turn on the light. He did the same.
The gravelly entrance turned slippery and Cav heard water running somewhere ahead of them as darkness closed in, surrounding them. Only their lights on their helmets lit up the area enough to see where they were placing their feet.
Looking up, Cal saw large gray bats hanging upside down above them on the tunnel’s wide ceiling. He actually found caves comforting, and Cav was happy that he and Lia were alone, sharing these special moments.
He saw Lia stop and pull out her waterproof map of the system and walked over to her, his light focused on her map. “We’re at Emgrada principal. Our next juncture should be Tunnel Humedo, right?”
“Right,” Lia agreed, smiling up at him. She held up the map, using her index finger. “We’re here. In about a thousand feet, we are going to move to the right. We’ll pass another tunnel on the right first, but we don’t want to take that one. We want the second tunnel.”
“Roger,” he said, touching her upturned face. Lia’s skin already glistened with perspiration. The cave was very humid, and Cav’s clothes were sticking to him. “Feels like it could rain in here,” he said wryly, his eyes following the light.
She laughed softly, folding up the map and tucking it into the pocket of her pants. Her skin prickled with pleasure as he’d brushed her cheek with his fingertips. It felt like the most right thing in the world to Lia. “Oh, yeah, and you’re going to be soaked by it. Hey, are you doing okay?”
He heard concern in her low voice. Reaching out, he moved some curls away from her left eye. Cav couldn’t help it; he wanted to touch this woman so badly. Her hair was damp and silky beneath his fingertips. “I’m doing fine. You?” his voice growing thick with yearning.
Her lips parted beneath his second unexpected touch. Cav saw her gray eyes change with arousal. This was the first time he’d openly reached out to touch her.
Lia felt her skin prickle with pleasure as he moved strands of hair away from her eyes. Her voice was oddly off key. “Um…fine…just fine…” His green and gold eyes were deeply shadowed, but she easily read Cav’s intent. He wanted to kiss her.
She wasn’t sure what to do next. Lia simply didn’t trust herself to read any man, especially Cav. His unexpected touches were welcome and she loved the sudden intimacy that had leapt between them. And she wanted more. Did she have the courage to kiss him back? Or first? And what would it mean if she did? Where was this possibly leading?
Cav wasn’t supposed to be a permanent fixture in her life. He was transient, and she needed someone permanent, something she could build on over time.
Lia gave herself an inward shake. Cav invited her to fantasize and dream. But she wouldn’t fool herself after the debacle with Jerry. She had been shattered once and Lia couldn’t find the heart or courage to try again.
Turning, Lia continued slowly forward, her boots slopping from the ever-present water that was sometimes nearly ankle deep. The limestone gravel that littered the floor was hidden from view, so she had to pay attention to where she was placing her boots. Although Lia had been in this cave at least forty times in the last four years, she never took her experience for granted. Caves were living beings, constantly shape-shifting and changing. Earthquakes in this region added to the changeability of the rocks and gravel beneath her feet.
They came to the second tunnel. She turned. “We go about five hundred feet and then we get into a pretty narrow tunnel. Off and on, we’ll be down on our hands and knees, squeezing through some tight places.”
“Okay, good to know.” In the flash of the light on his helmet, several bats flew past them, disturbed by the human invaders in their territory.
He studied her. “You still doing okay?” Caving was difficult and strenuous activity, and where they were going, it was going get tougher according to the map.
“I feel like I’m walking on air,” she said smiling as she tucked the map away. “You?”
“Feeling good,” he agreed, meeting her smile, wanting to lean down a few inches and kiss the hell out of her. This time, Cav saw that she wanted to kiss him, too. It was there, clear in her large gray eyes that softened by the second as he held her gaze. Straightening up, he resisted. Barely. “I’m ready.”
So was she, but not for what he thought. Lia licked her lower lip, turning around, heading down the tunnel. Her heart was yearning for Cav’s touch once more. He’d
almost
kissed her—she’d seen it in his eyes.
What would she do? Her emotions seesawed as she took the tunnel, her hands out on the walls as they got narrower the farther they walked.
Lia halted at another tunnel to their right. She pulled out the map and Cav leaned close, looking over her shoulder. Inhaling his male scent, her lower body contracted with real need. Cav was reminding her how long she’d gone without sex.
She saw him as more than that, however. He’d touched her heart and by the way he treated her on a daily basis, he was helping her unveil herself to the world once more. Cav was healing her, whether he realized it or not.
They began to hunch over as the tunnel ceiling began to slowly lower. Finally, after another half hour, they came to a pool of blue water. Lia crouched down near it and Cav came and joined her. Their lights flashed around, showing the ocher walls gleaming with water trickling from upper, unknown sources. That water fed the pool in front of them. It was oblong and disappeared into the gloom beyond their headlamps.
“Time for a break,” Lia told him. She leaned against the damp wall in her crouch, pulling a protein bar from her pack.
Cav took the other wall, facing her. The tunnel was about four to six feet wide. He sat down and stretched his legs as much as he could near her. Lia’s face gleamed with perspiration and humidity. Her naturally curly hair was curled even more tightly around her face. As he peeled the paper from his bar, he said, “What do you like most about caving?”
She munched and gave his question some thought. “The silence.” She gestured toward the pool. “I love the sound of the drips into water, the rush of wind around me as I walk in a dark adit. I always feel like I’m in the womb of the earth. In my imagination, I think of caves as being Mother Earth’s natural womb. And I find it protective. You’re going to laugh, but sometimes, I feel as if she’s invisibly surrounding me with her love. Here, I feel so free and natural.”
“How long have you been spelunking? You said age ten, right?”
“Yes, with my dad.”
“Did you always feel this way about caves?” Cav wondered, trapped by the serene look on her face now. The change in Lia was amazing to him. Out in the world, she had such a serious demeanor. Here, her face was free of all tension, her gray eyes glistening with excitement, her mouth no longer tight or stretched, but soft and so very kissable.
She squirmed a little. “Well, maybe the last five years I’ve found a refuge of sorts in caving. Before, it was about exploration, discovery and seeing so many beautiful things revealed in the light of my headlamp.” She gave the transparent blue pool a warm look. “Now, I find peace down here…”
Cav studied her profile and heard the pain, but he also understood the need for a place like this. She had been attacked and nearly killed by the knife attack. He could imagine a place like this where she felt as safe as a baby in a womb, where she could relax and just be herself.
“Down here,” he offered pensively, “you don’t have to worry about people staring at you. Right?”
She turned her head, meeting his shadowed gaze. “Yes.”
There was such weight and tiredness behind her answer. Cav reached out, allowing his fingers to graze her lower leg. “You don’t have to go through this alone, you know.”
Lia felt like a dry sponge soaking up his tender male touch. Her heart beat harder and she felt his hand rest around her damp ankle. She could have pulled it away from him, but she didn’t want to.
“Some days,” she quavered, her voice fading into the breeze that ebbed and flowed around them, “it’s very hard for me to face the world. Here,” and she lifted her hand, fingers moving gracefully outward, “I don’t have to worry about what people think of me when they see me and my scars…”
“But here you get nurtured, sustained, right?”
She had trouble responding, since her skin was tingling beneath his calloused hand, now lying comfortably against her ankle. The bottom of the scar was beneath his fingertips. And yet, oddly, Lia felt comforted by his contact. “How…” she choked, “How could you know this?” Was he a mind reader? Sometimes, Lia swore Cav was exactly that.
Now, he’d framed something for her, his words a nice, tidy portrait of what she was thinking or feeling.
“As a SEAL, you’re taught a lot of body language, both verbal and nonverbal. We always need to read the enemy, so I guess I’ve applied that skill to everyone I meet, more or less.”
With Lia, he applied all of his experience to read her accurately, but Cav wasn’t about to say that, though. The fact that she was allowing him to place his hand across her ankle sent a powerful need through him. She was entrusting herself to him on an intimate level by allowing him to touch her like this. He hadn’t consciously thought about it, but her words made him want to soothe her, help her.
“You’re pretty good,” she said, finishing off her protein bar. “You’ve sure pinned me.”
“Does it bother you?” and he held her gaze.
“No. It did at first, but over the past week, I guess you’ve grown on me—or vice versa,” and she gave him a quick grin.
Cav lifted his hand away from her ankle, not wanting to overstay his welcome. He’d seen Lia’s expression change, grow languid, and saw the yearning in her eyes. Cav was very astute when it came to knowing whether there was something between him and a woman he wanted to take to bed. And he’d never wanted to take a woman more than he did her.
Lia had no idea how much of his heart she already owned. And if she knew that, what would she do?
Cav returned, “We’re a good team,” and tucked the paper into his pocket. He pulled on his gloves once more. “You ready to swim this pool?”
Rousing herself, she nodded. “Yes. The depth is between ankle deep to up to your waist,” she told him, slowly standing, dodging some rocks that hung down from the overhead. “Half way through, we can swim to the other end. It remains about waist deep to the other end of it.”
She chuckled. “As a SEAL, I’m sure you’ll find this a lot of fun.”
“I will. Want me to lead?”
“No, let me. About once or twice a year during the rainy season, this tunnel is inaccessible because the water is nearly to the top of the adit here,” and she pointed upward. “But during flood time, it digs new pockets and holes beneath the pool. I want to carefully explore it. No sense in falling into a six-foot-deep hole we can’t see.”
She was right about that, and Cav nodded. “Lead the way. I have your back.”
For the next fifteen minutes, Lia found new potholes in the pool and called over her shoulder to Cav to alert him. The water was a tepid, mirroring the cave’s year-round warmth. Climbing out the other end, dripping wet, Lia made her way to a nearby white limestone alcove. She watched Cav make the journey without any problem. His hair was plastered against his skull, flesh gleaming beneath the lamplight as he left the pool. He grinned over at her.
“Refreshing. At least it took the sweat off us.”
She laughed and nodded, standing. Arranging her gear around her waist, she said, “The adit gets wider and we won’t have to hunch over.” She thought that at this moment, Cav looked about seventeen, now that he wasn’t wearing his usual rugged, stern look. Caving had a way of stripping off the layers, the masks, that people wore, Lia had discovered a long time ago. Turning, she said, “The stalactites get bigger and you’re going to have to be careful or you’ll get punctured by one of them from here on until about five hundred feet up the adit.”
Cav liked the overhead limestone structure formed from the calcium salts found in the sedimentary rock. They always reminded him of an icicle hanging from the roof downward.
Lia was right, some were very sharply pointed at the ends, and could damn well puncture a distracted caver’s body before they knew what had happened.
Fortunately, the limestone floor was nubby and rough, but over the years stalagmites had broken off by tourists muddling along in the adit. It was a shame. True cavers left everything untouched and unbroken. They left no footprints in the caves they explored. Tourists were different. No one had taught them cave ethics, as witnessed by the destroyed stalagmites crunching beneath his boots as he walked along the dark entryway.
For the next hour, Cav followed Lia through chest-high water. In other areas, they squeezed through holes in the limestone that most people wouldn’t believe an adult could get through. But they did. They crawled on their hands and knees in some parts of the lowered adit as their helmets scraped the ceiling. A river was flowing through the bottom of the adit now as they continued on in silence. Only the drip, drip, drip of water could be heard, along with the squish of their boots against the floor.
Cav’s admiration for Lia mounted as they struggled through another hole in the cave wall, landing in a pit of mud. By the time they’d crawled through it, they were covered head to toe with it.