Rachael’s fingers twisted deeper into his hair. “What is it? What do you hear?” She didn’t care about her breathing. She didn’t want to stop kissing him, not now, not ever. Her body was already in meltdown and she wanted relief.

“Listen. Do you hear them talking? The birds? The monkeys? Even the insects are warning us.”

Rachael tried to still her pounding heart, tried to control her wild breathing to listen. It took a few minutes to separate the sounds. Strangely, she could hear individual notes, could tell there was a whisper of information. “What does it mean?”

“Someone is headed our way.”

“The leopard?” Her mouth went dry. Rio was serious. She listened again, much more closely this time. To her astonishment, she could hear the difference in the notes the birds sang, in the way the insects carried on—more hurried in their melodies. And the monkeys shrieked to one another. It took her a moment or two to realize the monkeys were also shrieking to Rio. “They’re deliberately warning you.”

He set her in the overstuffed chair away from the door. “I do them favors, they do me favors. It’s not a leopard, someone human. Someone they’re familiar with, they’ve seen before.” His hands lingered on her shoulders, the nape of her neck, massaging the tension out of her rather absently.

Rachael pulled the edges of the shirt she was wearing together, noticing for the first time that the buttons were completely undone. She was becoming as bad as Rio at being immodest. She allowed her head to fall back against the chair, arching her back like a lazy cat, shifting a little to ease the steady pressure building in the core of her body. Exposed in the early morning air, her skin itched. She looked down and thought, for just one second, something ran beneath the surface, raising her skin slightly, just enough to be noticeable. Then it was gone, leaving her wondering if she were so in need of a man that she was having hallucinations.

“Rachael, how did your mother come to hear of the leopard people and this place?” Reluctantly Rio allowed his hand to drop away from her neck as he went to the window and pushed aside the blanket to peer out.