Beyond Machu by William Maltese

Author:William Maltese [Maltese, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: erotic MM, Romance MM
Publisher: MLR Press, LLC
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER TEN

THAT EVENING, THEY CAMPED in a cul-de-sac, three sides of which were jungle in a tight natural weave that Dan dared even a snake to slither on through. Couched within the dark recess formed by the cupping thick undergrowth, they faced outward. Their fire separated them from the trail—and from anything that might chance a stroll along that particular pathway.

As always, night fell fast. The fire, while shedding light on the small circumference around it, only intensified the shadows beyond its illumination. Within that resulting inky blackness, Sloane tended to the burros. Closer to the flames, Eduardo sat on his heels and tossed on another piece of wood. His face was made unworldly by flickering tongues of light caught and reflected by his eyes.

Dan's attention was momentarily drawn from Eduardo to a stretch of blank ebony backdrop. Although he didn't hear or see anything unusual, his primitive survival instincts provided warning signals that traveled upward along the length of his spine to raise the small hairs at the back of his neck.

“You feel it out there, don't you, Dan?” Eduardo took a candy bar out of his pocket and began peeling back the wrapper.

“Feel what out there?” Dan didn't like Eduardo intuiting Dan's feelings.

“The danger lurking just beyond the light of the camp fire.” Eduardo crumpled the candy bar wrapper and fed it to the flames.

“I merely caught a chill. Let's not make a whole production number out of it.”

A hunk of wood shifted and caused a shower of sparks to levitate toward the false sky of matted leaves and vines. “In reality, the jungle isn't evil.” Eduardo licked chocolate smeared on his lower lip. “Neither is it good. It merely is, by way of neutral ecological system kept delicately balanced on the premise of kill or be killed, survive or perish. We have intruded, uninvited, and must play by its rules.” He stirred the fire, conjuring more sparks. Squatting deeper on his haunches, bent slightly forward to give his back a hunched posture, he became a grotesque caricature of Rumpelstiltskin from the childhood fairy tale of the same name. “A game of chance is played by all of us who enter this maze of so many natural hallways and doors. Select correctly and go for days on end as safely as strolling some country lane back home. Select wrongly and confront jaguars that have sampled human flesh and acquired a taste for it, or natives suddenly deciding to rebel against encroaching white men's ways in one final reversion to the primitive, or—” He shrugged.

“You certainly do have a way with words.” Dan was out to hide inner frustration at having—even for a moment—allowed Eduardo to see him afraid. Men like Eduardo made a point of searching out the fears of others and using them to advantage. “Excuse me if I'm actually surprised by how articulate you are in English.”

“I had a pervert English teacher, provided to me by my pervert mentor. The latter thought it would

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