"No, I am," Ash rasped. "Forgive me."

Charlotte could feel the beginnings of her withdrawal and begged, "Don't." She lifted her hips and drew Ash insistently down. "I can't bear if you leave me now."

She slid a hand down the taut straining muscles of Ash's back and moved with her as their bodies fused in pa.s.sionate accord. Ash's strokes slowed to a languorous rhythm that made her shudder with yearning. A ood of liquid bathed the ngers inside her, bidding them deeper.

"Kiss me," she whispered, almost sobbing with the sudden force of her emotions. She couldn't think. All she could do was crave. And be.

Trembling, she offered her lips, then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, cupping them for Ash's possession. The torture of wet heat and gentle teeth compressing her nipples one at a time only increased the pounding pressure at her core. Moaning, Charlotte arched her back, needing more. Harder and faster. She was sweating, wracked with desire, her nerve endings telegraphing every miniscule sensation to the crushing tension at her core.

"Oh, baby." Ash was shivering, and Charlotte could feel a change in her body.

* 175 *

Through the haze of her own cresting response, she realized Ash was on the brink, too, and she slid a questing hand down between their bodies.

"No," Ash choked out. "Wait."

She moved back a little and nudged Charlotte's legs further apart.

Leaning over her, she said, "You smell so good, I just have to have it all."

Charlotte could scarcely sti e the cry torn from her as Ash's mouth added unbearable sensation where she needed it most. She could feel herself falling. Her stomach plummeting. She grabbed for something to anchor herself, curling her ngers into Ash's hair.

"Ash," she gasped, and a strength-sapping ume of pleasure spiraled from her womb to her c.l.i.t, where it broke free in shattering convulsions.

For a long while, they clung to one another. Charlotte felt Ash come hard against her at some point and realized she'd tended to herself. She made an attempt at apology for this, but Ash silenced her with kisses so exquisitely sweet, Charlotte understood she'd done nothing wrong.

"I would never hurt you." The broken whisper pierced her heart.

She sensed Ash had more to say, and wanted to tell her there was no need. Explanations didn't matter. But she was drifting. A deep contentment stilled her mind and soothed her body. For the rst time in her life, she felt known by her lover.

v The cloud forest called to Charlotte, awakening her from a deep slumber. She rose with painstaking care, listening for any change in Ash's breathing that could herald her surfacing. Watching her face, naked in sleep, she almost stayed. But she knew if she did, she would never be able to clear her mind enough to unearth the truth of her emotions. In the light of day, she doubted all she'd felt the night before and she was afraid of the choices she might make, the bridges she might burn, if she pushed Ash away again.

Anxious not to cause pain, she scribbled a quick note telling Ash she was taking a long walk and wanted them to talk when she returned.

Tucking it in the top of Ash's backpack, she stole one last long look at the woman who changed the way her heart beat, then picked up the clothing she needed and crept from the tent.

* 176 *

She ed quickly into the forest and as soon as she knew she'd escaped detection, she paused to change quickly into her work clothes and boots. Her time was limited. She had to get there and back well before the clouds burned off in the middle of the day and the Nagle helicopter arrived.

The route to the waterfall was etched into memory, and she had also mapped it out with subtle markers as she and Ash made their way back to the camp two days earlier. It took a little under two hours for her to nd the ridge again, and she stood there for a while, calming her breathing and allowing time to slow down. She hadn't understood until right now why she needed to be here at this moment in her life, poised on the edge of pure beauty in a place unchanged for millions of years.

The lost world found here, secreted in the heart of Mother Nature, was a painting of her own interior. Its truth was her truth, and resonated inescapably. Here at this timeless ontic threshold, one reality became another. Earth touched sky. Primal displaced urban. The lowlands were press-ganged into mountains. Heat rose and descended as mist. Life ended and began in an unstoppable, eternal cycle of which she was a part. She, too, trod a line between one universe and another. Innocence and knowledge. Past and future. Solitude and union.

Sandwiched between heaven and earth, the cloud forest seemed trapped, a surreal layer at the intersection of the planet and its atmosphere.

Light drained through the mist, painting the verdant undergrowth every shade of wet luminous green. The yearning trees stretched toward the sun. Each tiny organism seized its moment, nding its equilibrium and embracing its part in the whole.

Like a witness to her own dreaming, Charlotte descended into the mist, drinking in the smell of a world destined to be lost almost before it was found, the pungent ooze of fallen layers rotting down to peat, the perfumes of species doomed to extinction. Was that to be her lot, too?

Would she uproot love before it had time to bloom?

She sank down onto the mossy oor beneath the magnolia tree and felt the spray of the waterfall on her face. She could almost hear the forest breathing, feel the movement of the earth-the restless shift of continents, the rise and fall of the oceans. Curling against the roots of the tree, she let herself cry.

They were old tears, for the woman she had been and the one she had become, tears she wanted to leave in a place where they could nd rebirth in beauty. There was no going back. She could not change the * 177 *

past. But she could change the future. And suddenly, intoxicatingly, she understood how.

For a long time, she lay there thinking about the woman who had made her want that changed future more than anything. Super cially they had little in common, but there was a deeper understanding at work between them, a mysterious tie neither could escape. Charlotte had felt it all along, and fought it. Last night, ghting Ash physically, then surrendering, had been a revelation.

The symbolism stole Charlotte's breath away. That struggle of her will against Ash's echoed so closely the struggle within, between heart and mind. She needed to let Ash come close, yet at the same time she denied that need and pushed her away. In doing so, she was punishing the self that made her vulnerable. She was denying her own nature.

She stared through her tears at the orchids spilling around her and thought about the larger battle for control of nature, the one waged by machines and men. And she knew something else. She would do what Bruce had asked of her. It would be a crime not to.

Charlotte sighed, recognizing how easy it would have been for her to contact Ash that afternoon. Instead she'd decided to treat her like any other member of their party and rush off with Bruce, leaving Ash to wonder where she was. Her behavior was a denial of everything that connected them and of the truth discovered right here in this spot-that she was in love with Ash.

She had, Charlotte re ected, been in denial about one thing or another the whole time they'd known each other. In acknowledging that, she nally understood why she had believed Ash was a man.

The self-deceit was necessary. Her unconscious mind had tricked her conscious. Her soul had put her in blinders so she would not be afraid.

A sweet contentment enfolded her as she revisited the question Ash asked her when they rst made love. Why me? Here, in the very place it was asked, resting in the bosom of Mother Nature, lulled by the heartbeat of life, she could nally answer.

My soul chose you.

* 178 *

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The weather's closing in," Klaus remarked from the pilot's seat as they climbed away from the lake bed. "Good thing we made the swap today."

Ash nodded. The lump in her throat was so big she couldn't speak.

"By tomorrow, it's going to be a mess down there," he continued.

"Could be zero visibility for weeks. Lucky you got out now, my friend."

Ash stared at the monsoon clouds rolling in from the northwest.

Klaus was right. Once the weather set in, supply drops would be a c.r.a.pshoot. Visual ight rules applied all over New Guinea. If you couldn't see through cloud, you didn't y into it. The expedition would just have to cope without extras for as long as it took to get a clear day.

f.u.c.k it. What did she care? She was never going back anyway.

After this, she intended to spend a few days hunting around Kwerba for Bruce the Roo, just so she could tell Tubby she'd tried, then she was going back to Pom to sell her apartment and make arrangements to put a manager on her coffee plantation. She would spend some time in Madang, securing her belongings, then catch a plane, and ip a coin to choose her destination. Maybe she would just take the latest offer from Aegis and head for Iraq. The whole place was going up in smoke. Civil war was a pro table time to be a soldier of fortune.

Her thoughts drifted to Charlotte and she found herself ground down by sheer misery. To awaken and nd her gone had made her crazy. She'd scoured the immediate vicinity of the camp, frantic to nd * 179 *

her before the Huey arrived. There was no way Klaus could put down on the lake bed for any longer than it took to of oad his cargo, namely Renee Gunderson, the woman who would be taking Ash's place in Charlotte's tent from now on.

She had called Charlotte's cell phone repeatedly only to endure the sound of her lover's smoky lilt inviting her to leave voice mail. She didn't. Charlotte had made it pretty plain that she didn't want to hear from her. No explanation. No kiss good-bye. She'd slipped from their tent like a thief, depriving Ash of the chance to explain herself. And she'd desperately wanted that much.

There was no way she could make up for what had happened the night before, she knew that. Her loss of control was a shock to her, too. She'd never forced herself on a woman and she wanted Charlotte to know she would never let it happen again. Her whole life, she had dreaded this day, the day her father's genetic legacy would steal something precious from her.

Who could blame Charlotte for running away? Ash had known full well she was pushing her b.u.t.tons as they wrestled for physical control, but her emotions had been running white-hot in those fraught moments.

She should have walked. She should have seen where it was going and had the good sense to remove herself from the tent. But Charlotte's blithe unconcern for her feelings had messed with her head. Something beautiful had happened between them only the day before and it seemed as if Charlotte had done her best to ruin it ever since. Bad enough the strange conversation about the Dani Bush incident that very night, but then the unexplained vanishing act. What was up with that?

Now she'd gone off somewhere to examine ferns under her microscope, knowing full well that Ash would have to leave without seeing her. It was the last thing Ash had expected. She'd been so sure that despite her poor handling of the situation, she'd somehow broken through to Charlotte on a deeper level. In those moments, she'd felt as close to her as she'd ever felt to another human being. Had she completely misread the perfect intimacy between them?

Charlotte's latest ploy had certainly dispelled any illusions. Ash could take a hint. If Charlotte wanted nothing to do with her, that's exactly what she would get.

v * 180 *

"I don't understand." Charlotte stared down at the depression in the earth where her tent used to be. "Why do we have to move the camp?"

As if it weren't bad enough that she'd arrived back to nd Ash gone and no reply left for her, not even a verbal farewell to be pa.s.sed on by one of the others, now there was this-the entire camp taken apart?

"Are you sure there wasn't a note in the tent for me?" She surveyed her rolled-up sleeping gear with dismay. Maybe there was something but it had been discarded by mistake.

The woman methodically stacking the equipment said, "I spoke with Major Evans at some length during the handover. She didn't give me any message to pa.s.s on."

Charlotte picked up her tightly rolled sleeping gear and started undoing the Velcro fastenings. "I think I'll check for myself. I'll try not to hold you up."

Her companion, a Minnesotan who looked like a prison warden and acted like she'd been separated from Nitro at birth, got impatient.

"I'm sure if there was a message she would have asked me to deliver it.

She was surprised you weren't around when she left." Placing the lamp on top of the folded mosquito nets, she added, "I'm setting off for the new site in four minutes. Anything not in order will be left here and you will need to transport it yourself."

Where did they nd these people? Charlotte unfurled the pad and sleeping bag and carefully searched them. Then she had a better idea.

Hastily she rolled the bedding up again and stacked it with everything else. They had phones. Charlotte located hers and hit Ash's number on speed dial.

No one picked up. Meanwhile, the prison warden, whose name Charlotte was too distracted to remember, was loading their tent and its modest contents onto a crude sled. When she was done she gave Charlotte a curt nod and set off up the mountain, apparently expecting her to follow. Charlotte stayed where she was. She'd spotted Miles standing with Nitro on the track down to the lake bed. Just the unappealing pair she wanted to see.

"I'll catch up with you later," she told her new minder, then marched off to nd out if Ash had given Miles a message for her.

The conversation she overheard as she approached was all about the change in campsite, apparently Miles's brainwave. Nitro thought * 181 *

it was a dumb idea. Both men were high on testosterone. Miles was shouting as she reached them.

"I take full responsibility. This is my expedition and you guys are the hired help. Get used to it."

"In matters of personal security, you agreed to abide by the recommendations of Nagle Global Diligence personnel," Nitro replied.

"Do I understand that you are declining to do so?"

Charlotte had heard the same speech shortly before he threatened to throw her out of the helicopter.

Miles blurted, "You bet I am. We're the customer, and that means we call the shots."

"You're placing your party at risk." Nitro was keeping his cool.

"The present campsite can be evacuated more easily in an emergency, and it doesn't show ash ood damage. We've got rain coming."

"Which is precisely why I'm moving us to higher ground!" Miles's tone was contemptuous. "I suggest from now on you leave the thinking to the smart people."

Charlotte couldn't help but feel that talking down to Nitro was a mistake. The guy was well over six feet, a hunk, armed, and had all his hair, qualities that probably didn't endear him to Miles. But putting him down was no way to deal with jock envy. Miles was spoiling for a broken jaw.

"You're making a mistake," Nitro said with icy composure.

Charlotte thought, Here we go.

"What are you going to do?" Miles kept right on pushing his luck.

"Shoot me?"

Nitro looked tempted.

Charlotte decided it was time to defuse the situation. Politely, she interrupted. "Excuse me. I was wondering if Ash left a message for me with either of you."

Both men stared at her blankly.

Miles said, "What kind of message?"

Charlotte shrugged. "It's not important. We were supposed to have a quick chat before she left, but I got kind of lost coming back from my new sampling site."

"Where's Gunderson?" Nitro asked.

"Who?"

"Your bodyguard."

"I don't have a bodyguard."

* 182 *

Nitro looked past her and made some kind of hand signal. Both Charlotte and Miles turned around, and there was the warden, standing with her loaded-up sled, looking like she was itching to put Charlotte in solitary for a month.

Miles seemed just as taken aback as Charlotte was. He directed his wrath at Nitro. "Would you mind explaining what the f.u.c.k is going on?"