The Willfully Wedded Virgin (Beyond Fairytales) Read online

  She sighed and resumed her previous pose, this time staring after him as he headed into the dense vegetation to hunt. His posterior certainly gave the jungle much more favorable scenery. She bit her lip, watching the way his behind flexed under his trousers as he walked away.

  “Staring is rude and very unladylike.”

  She snapped out of her trance, ripping her gaze off his ass. Being close to Alexander was another reason she had wanted to come on the trip, though her father would have an apoplexy if he found out about their flirtations for the last month. Best to remain quiet about it, or her father would certainly ship her off to live with her aunt, a sour old spinster. “I wasn’t—”

  “He’s not for you.”

  “Oh, pooh. I’ll be dried up before you approve of any man to my taste.”

  “Your taste leaves much to be desired. Go make yourself useful and boil some water for tea. Alexander will be returning with dinner shortly.”

  “Of course. Because boiling water is why you brought me along.” He’d hired a woman to handle the cooking and cleaning. This tea making was beneath her, and he knew it. It could only be punishment, his way of putting her in her place. Fine, she’d humor him, and maybe she’d even help cook. Let him chew on that and see how it sat. She stomped over to a pack and yanked out a pot, heading for a stream a hundred yards down the trail and in the opposite direction Alexander had traveled.

  It would’ve been lovely to bump into him. Alone. He’d kissed her once in the dark in the garden. Ever since, she’d craved another taste of his lips, had wanted to feel his strong arms wrapped around her, his hands scandalously squeezing her bottom. Lord, she’d liked it. If only she could secure another moment alone with him and explore the strange desires he’d ignited.

  “You agreed to my terms,” her father called after her.

  “Only for the trip to the site,” she muttered under her breath. Once they reached the city, she would strike out on her own in search of treasures, and she’d decided her father would not stop her. He’d only stated terms for while they traveled—not when they arrived.

  Semantics.

  She fingered the small derringer in her pocket, knowing her father would send her home if he saw it. A gun was an inappropriate thing for a woman to carry, but she’d need it if she were to go off and explore. No one could ever make her believe the tiny pistol had been made for a man’s hand. It fit her palm perfectly.

  ***

  Somewhere in the Peruvian jungle, July 2015….

  Alcatraz would’ve been easier to escape from. The floor-to-ceiling, crystallized walls of the chamber in which Agent William Davidson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation found himself trapped appeared seamless. “Motherfucker.” He slapped his palms against the crystal wall. “You piece of shit. Let me out! I know there’s a door here somewhere. Open, goddamnit!”

  He’d only wanted to solve the mystery of the disappearance of his great-grandfather, his namesake, in 1905. Instead, he’d managed to lock himself in the ruins. How, he didn’t know, other than he’d picked up what appeared to be a harmless relic.

  Turning around, he slid down to sit against the wall, pulling his knees to his chest and resting his head on the cold stone, still breathing, not light-headed or weak, but frustrated as all hell. Because he hadn’t suffocated yet, Will presumed fresh air came from somewhere and, with it, a way out. Now if he could only find it.

  He lifted his face and stared at the wall. “Open sesame!” Nothing. He dropped his head into his hands. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  It was likely no one would ever hear him. When they’d set up camp, he’d asked the guides to take him to the ruins that weren’t on the maps, the ones he knew sat just to the north, thanks to a small diagram drawn on the back of an old photo. They’d babbled something about evil spirits and cursed cities, refusing to go near it even when he offered them a substantial amount of cash.

  So they’d helped him set up camp, and he figured, after a good meal and a chance to settle in, he would ask again. He’d taken five minutes to stow his gear in his newly pitched tent and think of a better plan to gain their cooperation, perhaps offering them his first-born child, but when he’d emerged, they’d split with half his gear.

  Pissed didn’t cover it, but then again, he had a map, albeit, a crudely drawn one, so he’d struck out on his own and located the ghost city. All his research said this was where X marked the spot; this was where his grandfather and, later, an entire expedition had disappeared. Maybe the place really was cursed or—a better explanation—just rigged with a lot of traps.

  Over a hundred years before, William’s great-grandfather had gone into the jungle with his brother, Alexander, and a guide. When he’d wandered off to explore something alone, he’d vanished, never to be seen again.

  According to family letters and newspaper articles on the find, his great uncle, Alexander, had mounted a second expedition in search of both a fabled treasure and his missing brother. The only surviving member of the expedition, Alexander had returned famous and very, very wealthy.

  His fortune and celebrity had grown after his discovery of another ruined city to the south, but whispered speculations regarding what had happened to his traveling companions on his second trip into the Peruvian jungle had also brought him a darker sort of fame. Rumors floated about that he had had something to do with the fate of the party, though nobody could ever prove it.

  In 1906.

  Fast forward a hundred years and put the mystery in the hands of an expert in solving cold cases.

  Will reached into his pocket and extracted an aged photo he’d found tucked inside a massive book in his uncle’s library at the estate sale—the whole reason that, at the age of sixteen, he’d decided to become an FBI agent. The group in the picture posed with smiles on their faces—all except for his uncle, who stared off at something in the distance. Preoccupied with his brother’s disappearance? Will could only guess.

  According to an old London newspaper clipping Will had found recently while digging for clues on another case, Alexander had discovered that the entire party, save one, had been killed by headhunters from a native tribe. The authorities had never recovered the bodies to prove otherwise. They only had the word of one man, a man who’d crawled from the jungle, battered and bloody, with a bullet wound in his shoulder; certainly not the weapon of choice for a primitive headhunter.

  The reemergence of the mystery had seemed a sign—time to dig into the disappearance of Doctor William Davidson and the secondary party sent to rescue him. Will had decided to start by looking into family tales of an ancient site in northern Peru. Nothing in newspaper articles indicated a city to the north or even ruins, but the photo didn’t lie, nor did the native superstitions.

  Once he had the funds and ability to solve the mystery, Will had booked a flight to South America, traveling with the best guides money could secure, cracking open a cold case, and hoping to solve a century-old murder with modern forensics.

  He flipped the photograph over and read the elegant script before returning to the image on the front. According to the cursive lettering, someone had snapped the photo a day before the party departed. The aged image displayed a prim and proper Victorian party with two women in the group. The gents wore British pith empire helmets and knee-high boots, appearing every bit the dapper explorers, while one woman was dressed as any lady of her time in skirt, shirt, gloves, and a big hat secured on her head with a long scarf. The other woman appeared to be Peruvian, her homespun skirt and hat bespeaking her heritage. He imagined the first woman had blonde hair and blue eyes, but the sepia tones hid their hues, and the true color of either would forever remain a mystery. Her outfit, unlike the other woman’s sturdy garments made for jungle exploration, begged him to ask why she’d gone along, but then again, it had been another time and certain standards of dress were expected of women then. Maybe they were her exploration clothes?

  He traced her face with his finger, something he�
��d done a hundred times over the years. Beautiful. She radiated energy, and if one really took the time to study her image, it was obvious she’d been full of life, if not bursting with it. He’d become addicted to a buzz he gained from gazing at the photo as though he really knew her. As a teenager, he’d pretended he knew her.

  Every time he pulled out the old photo, his heart beat a little faster, his blood got a little hotter, and illicit images washed through his brain. Would a person have gotten scorched standing next to her? Crazy, but when he thought of the mystery woman, he thought of a firestorm you wanted to grab hold of and hang on to for the wild ride.

  That was the energy she gave off. Powerful and, for lack of a better word, spellbinding. Adventurous, brave—he could picture exactly who’d she’d been. He’d fallen asleep many nights dreaming about her—a ghost from the past. When he thought about it, the mystery woman had been the cause of many of his failed relationships. Over the years, she’d become the icon of his ideal woman, someone to measure all girlfriends against, and an ungrounded obsession he knew he needed to lose. When he looked at other women, he searched for that spark, that rush he got from the woman in the old picture. He promised himself it was time to end the fantasy that had long grown out of control. When he solved the mystery, he could finally lay his obsession to rest, find a woman in the here and now, and start living like a normal man.

  He tossed the picture on the carved stone floor, the image of little use to him now. If he couldn’t get out, he’d die here. He rested against the smooth wall. Closing his eyes, he retraced his steps and focused on any details that might be key to his release from the trap. It all came back to one thing—the only thing that could have triggered it.

  That damn crystal skull.

  But the relic hadn’t followed him into the trap. It had disappeared the moment he touched it. Hard to tell how since he’d blacked out—possibly from some kind of poisonous gas from the trap he’d triggered. Had the missing expeditionary party of 1905 fallen into a similar fate somewhere else in the city? Could the remains in the room belong to one of them?

  His gut said yes.

  One would think an FBI agent would have better things to do on his vacation than find himself stuck in a situation like this, wondering if he’d end up like his cellmate. Speaking of which…. He sighed and glanced over to the skeletal remains of a man in the corner, wearing clothes from the turn of the century. His spinal column and forearms had deep cuts into the bone, as though someone had hacked at him with a sword or machete, and he’d attempted to block the attack. Clearly murder.

  Bored, with nothing better to do, he’d taken to examining the victim, rifling through the surprisingly well-preserved clothing—which didn’t match anyone from the expeditionary party in the photo. The climate in the room in which he was trapped had a dry, dusty, hot quality, even if the jungle outside steamed like a Finnish sauna. A formula for mummification—or in the victim’s case, partial mummification.

  After examining the contents of the corpse’s pockets, Will still didn’t have a clue who he was. The man had no identifying papers anywhere on him. Tucked inside the mystery man’s vest, he found a pocket watch with an inscription, To my love, etched on the cover. It, too, gave no hint at his identity, and the clothing he wore appeared the same as any of the men in the photo—except for the cowboy hat. So, time frame? Around the same era during which his grandfather had disappeared.

  “Who are you? My grandfather?”

  Air brushed across his neck. Will turned, scanning the dim chamber for its source. Where the cavern’s lighting came from, he didn’t know. His flashlight had died hours ago, or maybe only minutes had passed. Hard to tell. He’d already lost track of time, what with his watch frozen on the same time he’d touched the skull. Even the built-in compass had gone hokey, spinning counterclockwise as though it didn’t have a clue which direction was up. It provided very little help in gathering his bearings. Everything seemed a little too surreal for his taste.

  He eyed the room, taking in the odd construction of his personal hell. At least he had some kind of illumination not tied to technology and eventually doomed to run out of charge. Perhaps the walls were carved out of some kind of phosphorous rock—the only explanation he could come up with for the ghostly glow.

  He shivered and rubbed his arms, turning to his long-dead companion. “I’m not getting out of this, am I?”

  The empty sockets and yellowed teeth leered at him as though in jest at the situation he found himself in. Will snorted. As though I really expected him to answer.

  Chapter Two

  Alexander dropped the bloody carcass at Elizabeth’s feet. She jumped back, knocking the pot over. The water that had taken her forever to bring to a boil doused the small fire she’d worked so hard to keep going in the damp environment.

  She pointed at the offending carcass. “What is that?” A musty smell rolled off the massive, hairy, mouse-like beast. Her throat tightened then watered. How foul. Elizabeth brought a gloved hand to her nose, hoping to stop the meager contents of her stomach from exiting. Forget taking a stand by helping to cook the meal. It was time to find another way to make her point.

  She stared at the thing, the ragged edges of its bristly hide hanging open around its belly, exposing the hollowed out body. Its beady, dead eyes seemed to watch her. She shivered and rubbed her arms. Rat.

  “Capybara. Natives call it cuy or coo-ee.”

  “Yes, well.” Elizabeth swallowed. “It looks like a giant rodent.”

  “In a manner of speaking”—he shrugged—“it is. If you want lamb or roast duckling, Ms. Dodge, you’re not going to find it down here. Capybara cooks up tasty with corn or rice and will fill bellies.”

  “However it may cook up, Mr. Davidson, I’m not eating vermin.”

  “Elizabeth. Quit being disagreeable. You wanted to come along. You eat what everyone else does or go hungry,” her father barked behind her.

  “Then let me rephrase that.” Elizabeth stiffened her spine and tossed her apron in the dirt at Alexander’s feet. “I’d rather starve.” She swiped the pot off the ground, sniffed, and stomped off. A pot of tea, then. Suffice it to say, it would have to fill her belly for the night. As for the rest of them, they could jump in the river for all she cared.

  “Elizabeth! Get back here this instant.”

  Ignoring her father, she continued to storm toward the stream, not even turning back to grab a lantern even though the sun had already set. After walking for a minute, she found the jungle closing in, blocking off what little moonlight she’d had. She cursed her impulsiveness when she stumbled over a root. A nearby tree saved her from going face first into the ground. Lifting her hand in front of her face, she struggled to count her fingers. Lord, not good.

  “Ah, ah, ah!” Screeching came from somewhere above. Leaves rained down. “Monkeys. I hate monkeys. Nasty, hairy little beasts.” She reached up and clutched her hat firmly to her head, squinting into the canopy. “Don’t even think about it.” Little bastards had better not take this moment to heft shit at her. Her ill-favored mood and the small derringer in her pocket might just see them cooked up with beans and rice.

  Something cracked behind her. She spun around, dropping the pot. “Alexander?”

  A monkey cackled overhead as though laughing. Elizabeth ducked. “Anyone there?” Which way is the way to camp? Something snarled and made a huffing sound—something far too close. Something not a monkey.

  “Father?” Elizabeth turned toward the sound to see a large cat. Its snarling mouth exposed several huge and very pointed teeth. The incisors would make short work of her skin. It crouched low. “Oh dear.” She stepped back, her only thought of escape.

  “Don’t move another step.” Alexander said from where she’d come moments before.

  She froze. “Nice kitty.”

  The beast launched, springing right at her. Elizabeth threw her hands up, covering her face. The same root that had tripped her before sent her to her a
ss when it caught on her heel.

  Boom!

  A gun exploded somewhere close by, and the cat dropped scant inches from her. It let out a horrific scream, snarled at her, and went still. Elizabeth cupped her mouth. She’d been foolish to forget how dangerous this place could be. Wooziness came over her, and for a second, she thought she’d faint. She’d almost lost her life.

  “And that’s why you don’t wander off into the jungle alone, Elizabeth,” her father admonished from somewhere in the dark, bringing heat to her cheeks.

  How she wanted to tell him to shut up, but her tongue wouldn’t move, and her mouth wouldn’t open. Maybe it was a good thing she couldn’t say what she wanted to. She already felt stupid for running off and not considering the danger around her.

  Elizabeth pressed her hand to her breast, willing her heart to slow and the panic that held her trapped to settle. The corset, though laced loose, seemed too tight. Bad enough she’d gotten herself into an awful situation and had had to be rescued, but her father pointing it out, treating her like a little girl, while Alexander stood less than a couple of meters away…. She would not pass out in front of him as well, polishing off an otherwise disastrous night with flourish.

  She stared at a large, spotted cat lying on the path, so close that if she wanted to reach out and stroke its fur, she could. The dizziness returned, and her mouth went dry.

  “Jaguar,” Alexander said. “Clearly, if you’d listened to your father, you wouldn’t have gotten yourself nearly killed by one of the jungle’s most dangerous predators.”