Proposition: Marriage. Eileen Wilks

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      The man beside her stiffened. She turned her head slowly.

      He wasn’t looking at her. Or at the federales. A bead of sweat trickled slowly down his temple as he stared at his left hand, the one farthest from her.

      A snake slithered slowly across his outspread hand.

      It paused, a pretty creature a little more than a foot long, the green, scaly body crossed by narrow white bands. It looked like a chubby green rope. Jane tried telling herself that short, chubby snakes weren’t as scary as long, sleek ones, but fear sucked her brain empty, and the thought wouldn’t stick.

      The snake raised its flat, lance-shaped head, opened its mouth and tasted the air with rapid flicks of its tongue.

      Only inches separated the snake’s mouth from John’s face.

      Panic crawled over her like a swarm of ants. She wanted to move—wanted it with a twitchy physical craving she’d never known before—but if she moved, if she even breathed too hard, the snake might bite John. She had managed to stay still with that bug on her. She could do this. She had to, or it would bite him and he would die. Right there beside her he would die, and it would be all her fault.

      She told herself desperately that most snakes weren’t venomous. John was holding very, very still, so maybe he didn’t know this. She wasn’t sure he was even breathing.

      The snake lowered its head and moved forward. Over John’s hand. Across the ground. And straight toward Jane’s hand.

      She thought she’d faint.

      It sampled the air near her clenched fist. When had she closed her fingers up tight like that? Now she couldn’t relax them. She thought furiously “vegetable” thoughts at the snake: I am a green, leafy plant. I am warm from the sun, not from blood. You can’t eat me. I am a green, leafy plant....

      The snake’s tongue flicked over her skin. She stopped breathing. Her vision dimmed.

      But she didn’t move.

      The snake turned away from her hand and slithered casually on into the thicket.

      She watched as it slid through the grass, heading slowly downhill. Her chest hurt. She remembered to breathe, which helped. She wondered if the snake would go all the way down to the gully and bite one of the soldiers.

      The second the snake vanished from sight, she felt a hand on hers.

      This time, she didn’t jump. She turned her head.

      John nodded once. What is that supposed to mean? she wondered hysterically. Hello? How are you today? Seen any good snakes lately? Then he started inching backward on his stomach. Alarmed, she glanced down and saw that while they’d been occupied—literally—by the snake, the soldiers had moved along the gully and out of sight.

      She was more than ready to follow her rescuer’s lead this time.

      They inched backward until they could stand. As soon as she was on her feet he took her hand again.

      They ran hand in hand down one of the trails, him ahead, her behind, and no doubt he was fully in control of himself and had sound, logical reasons for making such a speedy escape. Jane ran because it felt so damned good to run. She didn’t want to stop. She didn’t want to see another bug or soldier or slithery green snake ever again--or any part of a forest, either. But the forest was all around them, and no matter how hard they ran, she couldn’t get away from it.

      He slowed and stopped, pulling her off the trail with him into a small, sun-dappled spot, a patch of ground where some mystery of the soil had caused the trees and underbrush to thin. There was enough sunlight for a bit of grass to spread itself out. Scraps of blue showed through overhead, laced by the leaves of the few branches that arced above the pocketsize clearing.

      “I’m not tired,” Jane said, gasping for breath and clutching her side. “I can keep going.”

      “Hey.” He turned her to face him. “It’s all right. We’re far enough away from them now.” He took her other hand in his, too, and smiled at her.

      “I—I—” She couldn’t catch her breath. He wasn’t winded, damn him, and his ponytail was still neat. “I hate snakes!” she exclaimed. “I hate snakes, I really do. I just hate them, but I couldn’t move. At first it would have bit you and then it would have bit me, but I—I—” Her breath caught in a hiccup that was perilously close to a sob.

      “I know,” he said, and pulled her up against him and put his arms around her. “You hate snakes.”

      He was warm and solid and she clutched at him, delirious from lack of oxygen. “I know you’re not laughing at me,” she told him. “Because if you were, I’d have to kill you, and I don’t have my breath back yet.”

      “I’m not laughing,” he assured her, and his hand stroked down her back. “You did good back there. Real good. I thought I was dead. I would have been, if you’d startled the snake. You saved my life by keeping your head.”

      She had rescued him? The thought made her even more dizzy. “Then it was poisonous? I thought maybe you were just scared of snakes, too.”

      “I think it was a fer-de-lance. They’re rare, and I’ve never seen one in person before, so I could be wrong. It could have been another of the bothrops—that’s a genus of pit viper found in Central and South America.”

      She pulled away suspiciously. “You know an awful lot about snakes. Are you some kind of—of herpetologist or something?”

      “I thought we’d agreed that I was a spy.” His expression was solemn, but his eyes were bright with mirth.

      “You are laughing at me.”

      “You sounded so horrified.” he said apologetically.

      “Well, spying I could understand, but why anyone would want to spend their life studying snakes—”

      He chuckled.

      She blinked and managed to be offended for one whole second before her own absurdity tricked her into giggling. “I r-really don’t like snakes,” she said between giggles, and this struck her as so exquisitely funny that she went off into peals of laughter—at herself, at him, at the whole silly show of life, because she was so very glad she was still a part of it.

      He didn’t laugh. His eyes changed, darkening, but that was the only notice she had. It wasn’t enough of a warning, not when she was laughing so hard her vision was blurred by tears.

      When his mouth closed over hers, her laughter stopped.

      His lips were smooth and firm and beguiling, and she smelled him—oh, she breathed him right in, and he went to her head like wine. She made one sound of protest, but he ignored that, just as he ignored the hand she put on his chest to hold him back. He simply moved her hand out of his way while his other hand slipped to her bottom and scooped her up against him.

      It was too much, too fast. She’d lurched from terror to flight, skidded from flight into laughter, and now she was being ruthlessly kissed by a man who made her knees silly and her soul shiver. In a day already ripped loose from everything СКАЧАТЬ