hooked a finger behind each panel of her bra and peeked inside. “Do you mind?” she sputtered. “I think I’d know if a tick or a leech was in there.”
“Check the undersides of your breasts every day,” he said, ignoring her and spinning her around.
“Don’t—”
But it was too late. He’d already pulled her panties from the small of her back to peek at her bottom. Catching sight of her incision, he paused to inspect it and she glanced back, distracted.
“It’s red,” he said, sounding none too pleased.
“It’s just chafed from the walk. I had to take off the bandage.”
“Does this hurt?” he asked prodding the skin around the wound.
It did, but she didn’t want him worrying. “No,” she assured him.
He sent her a hard look. “Keep it covered and clean,” he ordered grimly. “Damn it, Luce,” he added quietly, “if it gets infected, then we’re both in trouble.”
“It won’t,” she assured him, hoping she was right.
He squatted abruptly, sweeping a hand down, then up the length of her legs. “No hair,” he commented, oblivious to the awareness fizzing inside her. “How do you do that?” He stood up with a frown.
“It’s called waxing. A man couldn’t handle it.”
His eyebrows rose at the challenge. “Is that right?”
“Trust me,” she assured him with a smirk.
“Check your crotch every morning,” he continued, deliberately crude. “Centipedes like to crawl into warm, moist places at night.”
“Eww!” Lucy exclaimed in a very American-sounding protest. She quickly followed up with a “¡Qué asco!” and an apologetic grimace at Gus, who, with a shake of his head, spread his arms wide. “Now you check me. Ticks like to hide in hair, obviously, so if you don’t mind, comb your fingers through my chest hair and my…armpits,” he added, groping for the Spanish word.
Lucy just looked at him in disbelief. “Why can’t you do that yourself?”
He cast his eyes upward. “I can’t see as well as you, obviously. We’re married now,” he reminded her. “We look out for each other.” Teamwork, he mouthed in English.
Lucy huffed out a breath but relented. Stepping closer, she sifted through his surprisingly soft, cinnamon-brown chest hair, relieved to find it parasite-free. The fuzzy trail that disappeared into his boxers was tempting to trace. Giving his armpits a cursory inspection, she hauled him around the way he’d done to her and checked his back, snapping the elastic of his boxers as she stole a peek at his smooth, gorgeously honed buttocks.
Was it hot in here, or… “What now?” she demanded, aware that the Colombian army could be striking the rebel camp and she’d never even know it.
“Feet,” he said, turning around to point down at the sturdy double-layered socks she’d bought with hiking in mind. “Take those off.”
He’d already taken off his own socks. “We wash them when we can, but not if they won’t dry. Wet feet cause jungle rot, and that’s the last thing you want. Hang up your socks every night, upside down unless you want to invite something inside them. Any blisters? Cuts?” He frowned down at her pale, narrow feet.
“No.”
“Good. If you get them, you do whatever it takes to keep them clean and covered.”
“Got it. Can we get dressed now?” she asked, painfully aware of how vulnerable she felt on so many levels. Once upon a time, she and Gus had known each other’s bodies as well as their own. This quasi-intimacy brought it all back, the pleasure, the playfulness, only the emotional bond they’d once shared needed to stay in the past. There wasn’t any place for it now.
“Sure. Do I make you nervous?” he asked her mildly.
“No, why would you?” she retorted, suppressing a shiver of longing as she recalled their kiss on the plane.
His brandy-colored eyes gleamed with mockery. “Just checking.”
Lucy caught a whiff of boiling rice. With her stomach growling, she stuffed her feet back in her socks. “Come on. I think they’re cooking lunch, and I’m starving!”
As she reached for her clothing, she was conscious of Gus’s thoughtful gaze sliding down her rib cage. “What?” she prompted, sensing his disapproval.
“You should have fattened up before making this trip,” he scolded.
“I did. I ate like a pig.”
“And then you ran every night.”
“I did not.” Did he just assume that or had he been spying on her again?
“Do you ever ask yourself what you’re running from?” he persisted, that same probing light in his eyes.
Memories of the bombing in Valencia ripped through Lucy’s thoughts, causing her to flinch and draw back. “I don’t know what