I turn away from her and don’t respond. She can suit herself.
When we get to the beach, she whimpers with every step she takes on the hot sand. I look again at her, but she won’t meet my eyes. The heat’s made her hair sweaty, and her face is red, the rest of her skin a light pink. Fortunately, we avoided the brightest sunlight, but it’s still hot as hell here. She looks gratefully to the water, and it seems we both realize the same thing at the same time.
We don’t have a change of clothes. Her bag is back at the cave.
She looks down at her dress and up to me.
“Well, this was poorly executed,” she mutters.
“Yeah. Well, I’ll turn away. You take your clothes off and hang them on a branch.”
“Cy,” she says bracingly.
I raise a brow to her. Her eyes say what she doesn’t want to out loud. The attraction between us is fucking dynamite.
“Yeah. That’s why I said I’d turn away,” I remind her. “You can air dry or something, then put the dress back on.”
A corner of her lips quirks up, but she doesn’t respond.
“Okay,” she finally says. “But make sure you turn away.”
I give her a look that turns her suddenly shy and a bit more humbled. “Please. Turn away, please.”
I respectfully do what she asks, but it doesn’t help like I thought it would. I can hear the rustle of her clothing as she removes it, and a second later I watch as she hangs them on a branch that extends to the watering hole.
I swallow hard. She’s naked. Christ, I want to see her. A little voice whispers in my ear, tempting me to just take a peek, but I don’t. If I do, I’ll be joining her and then we’re screwed. We’re both barely hanging onto self-control already.
But God, I need to wash, too. So I step away from her and go to the other side of the hole. I’ll be practical and logical and safe. I step out of my jeans and toss them on the bank, then wade into the water a few yards away from her. From the corner of my eye, I can just barely make out the gorgeous slope that leads from her side to her hips.
I start counting in Spanish.
Uno. Dos. Tres.
Doesn’t help. Damn.
I count to twenty to try to stop myself from getting a hard-on.
Doesn’t work.
I start reciting the prayers I learned in grade school. Maybe some kind of religious memory will trigger the need to stay celibate or something. Next thing I know, I’m imagining her in a Catholic school girl uniform.
Yeah, that didn’t work.
I dive into the water and close my eyes, drowning everything out in the muted depths. We swim in the ocean but have sighted sharks offshore. If we stay in the shallows we’re fine, because it’s the depths that are more dangerous. Here, in the watering hole there are no sharks to worry about. Nearby, there are waterfalls. It’s idyllic, and I stay beneath the surface, schooling myself for as long as I can.
I surface to the sound of her screaming.
Christ.
I whip my head around trying to find her. She’s clutching her arms across her chest and screaming her fool head off.
“What the fuck?” I ask her, looking to where she points. In seconds, I’m on the bank grabbing for my machete when I see a boa constrictor just inches away from her. Huge and deadly, though it isn’t poisonous, it’s very capable of strangling her to death. And even if it wasn’t dangerous, it’s another food source.
We lost a man to a snake. I won’t lose another. She screams again and again while I wield the knife and lunge. The boa strikes at the same second I bring my knife down, but it doesn’t get far as the thick, sharpened metal lops its head off. Her screams become bloodcurdling, and she’s crying freely now.
I hate this for her. Hate it.
With the end of my knife, I pick up the snake and toss it to shore, then turn back to her. She walks toward me, and without thinking, I open my arms to hug her. Thunder rolls overhead, and before she reaches me, huge drops of rain pelt down from above. She reaches me as the rain falls in sudden torrents. We both speak at the same time. The poor girl’s trembling.
“I’m sorry, I froze—”
“Those things are deadly—”
“I tried to get away—”
“It killed one of the men here.”
“You saved me, I couldn’t—”
And then she’s in my arms, soaking wet and utterly naked, and I don’t even try to stop this. She’s shaking but framing my face with her hands as I bring my mouth to hers and kiss her. Oh, Christ, it’s been so long since I kissed a woman, and never in circumstances like this. We’re soaking wet and disheveled, but stripped from every possible modern convenience, there’s nothing but raw sexual attraction.