“I’m fine, see?” She took his hand, pressed it to her cheek.
He drew a breath, exhaled, glanced at his watch. “It’s time to get up anyway—just a few minutes to sunrise.”
Shanti stepped away from themandir, needing privacy. When she returned, he had breakfast, such as it was, waiting for her.
“Vegetable crackers, freaky cheese spread, and more Skittles.” He handed her a packet labeledLemon Lime Beverage Powder, Carb Fortified. “Mix half of that in one of your bottles of water, give the rest to me. It will help keep you going.”
While Shanti ate her breakfast, the monsoon forest came alive around them, birds erupting into song at first light, macaques screeching like drunk soccer fans. She could tell Connor was still upset about the nightmare, the line of his jaw hard. “Did I do something wrong? In your dream, I mean.”
He took a bite of cracker, shook his head. “It wasn’t really about you.”
Elizabeth’s words came back to her.
There’s no such thing as an uninjured soldier.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“No.”
Well, that was final.
He popped his last cracker in his mouth, walked down the stairs and a short distance away, satellite phone in his hand. “I need to check in.”
It was then that a slender ray of light played over one of the columns, revealing the stonework she hadn’t been able to see last night.
She laughed, traced her fingers over small sculpted figures of men and women having sex in pretty much every way conceivable. She looked from one to the next, moving from column to column.
She was still looking at the little figures when Connor returned.
“What is it?”
She pointed to an image of two women holding another woman’s legs apart while a man penetrated her. “Erotic art.”
A dark brow arched. “On a temple?”
“In the Hindu tradition, sex isn’t viewed as something dirty or sinful. It’s sacred, like other parts of life. It was Hindus who wrote the Kamasutra, remember?”
“Kamasutra. Right.” He leaned in, looked at the carving of a man entering a woman from behind while she took another man’s cock into her mouth. “I can’t imagine what my folks would say if you put stone porn on their church.”
That made Shanti laugh. “It’s not porn. It’s sacred.”
“Okay. Sex is good. I’ll buy that.”
Shanti leaned in to examine another. A woman stood, one leg around her lover’s waist, while he penetrated her. “You’d have to be close to the same height to do that.”
“Not necessarily.” He gave her a slow, sexy smile. “Want to try?”
A jolt of lust shot through her. “Aren’t we running from the bad guys?”
“We can be quick.”
That meant no orgasm for her. Still, she’d be lying if she’d said looking at all this erotic art hadn’t made her want him.
Take what you can while you’re with him. You could end up dead today.
He moved in on her, backed her up against the column, the hard ridge of his erection pressing against her belly, making her womb clench. “The first dream I had last night was about fucking you. I woke up with a hard-on. You were sound asleep.”
“I’m wide awake now.”