Come on! Dek willed everything he had into making that fast-vanishing beach.

Which was when Talina rolled off the raft, dove, and appeared on the shoreward side. She was standing, having obviously found bottom. Head and shoulders out of the water, she pulled, dragging them against the current. The image of her straining face, the passion in her eyes, would stick with him.

Then it hit him, and he, too, rolled into the water, thrashed for footing, and struggled to pull their unwieldy vessel to the shore. Barely beached, Talina shouted, “Back on the raft. We’re barefoot. Get your boots on first thing. I don’t want to dig a slug out of your foot.”

Dek didn’t think, just tumbled onto the wet mat of their half-submerged raft. He reached for his quetzal-hide boots—stopped long enough to painfully rip one to the tube things from his left calf and sling it into the river. As it hit, something broke the surface, snapping it between tooth-filled jaws and vanishing beneath the roiling waters.

“So help me, if I never see another river . . .” A shiver ran down his spine. Looking back, the sucking and welling currents showed no trace of the shark-thing or its bigger and much scarier killer.

Heedless of the blood streaming from the wound, Dek pulled on his boots, and in his underwear, helped Talina drag the craft higher on the beach.

Dek bent at the waist, hands propped on his knees as he sucked for breath. “God, that was close. You have no idea. That big splash? That was a predator killing a predator that was going to kill us. And the beach. It never looked so far away. We’d have missed it . . . but for you.”

She shot him a weary grin, her own lungs heaving.

Dek decided he liked the view; he’d keep that image of her: half naked, her toned body at the river’s edge, the fantastic beauty of the sheer-walled canyon and vegetation for background. She exuded something primal—the essence of a healthy female in a state of nature, untamed, incredibly competent, and reeking of sensuality.

“My God, I love you,” he told her. “Promise me you’ll stay at my side for the rest of my life.”

The way she laughed and slung her wet hair back, sent a tingle through him. “Dek, gotta tell you, that’s the best offer I’ve had since . . . Well, for years.” She looked around, took in the narrow beach of mixed sand, gravel, and small rocks. Then she turned her attention to the narrow fissure in the gorge wall. Vegetation choked the narrow cleft. “But, looking up at where we have to go, the rest of your life might be a matter of minutes. No telling what’s waiting for us up in that crack.”