“You are welcome to stay longer at the resort,” she offered. “If you can change your plane tickets, I will give you another week in the cottage at no charge. Your Shifting Sands experience should not be so heavy on surviving in the wilderness and being held hostage.”
“I’d like that,” Mary said with a weary laugh. “But right now I’d mostly like a shower and about four hours at the buffet.”
Scarlet laughed with her, and Mary thought it was unexpectedly genuine sounding. There was relief in her face, and Mary realized that she hadn’t just been angry about losing Shifting Sands and being shuffled off the island. She’d been afraid.
It was somehow comforting to know that there were things that someone like Scarlet was afraid of, too.
“We’ll leave the staff to clean this up,” Scarlet suggested. “And I’ll need to add duct tape to my list of supplies to reorder.”
Mary watched Scarlet go off, waiting for Neal to finish his phone call.
He came back with a familiar dark scowl on his face. It lightened when he caught sight of Mary again, and he bent to give her a lingering kiss.
“We’ve got this,” Bastian said, waving them off. The mercenaries were being neatly trussed and completely disarmed, and marched off to… Mary didn’t care where. She assumed that they would be kept until the Costa Rican authorities could get there, and was just as happy to look forward to the promised shower.
“I still have sand in awkward places,” she told Neal. “My cottage?”
He took her hand and walked beside her down the steps. The sun was making its wild lunge into the ocean for sunset, and everything was cast in golden light. The few clouds near the horizon were fuchsia and orange, and the ocean made its siren song over the sounds of birds and insects.
The smells wafting from the dining hall almost made them turn in their tracks.
“A very fast shower,” Mary said, despite the grumbling of her stomach.
“A very fast one,” Neal agreed.
That vow lasted only as long as it took to stagger to Mary’s cottage and strip each other out of their clothing.
She could not keep her hands from the planes of his muscles, and although she got the shower started and pulled him in after her, soaping herself seemed like a terrible use of her time when she could be kissing him, and letting him caress her and lift her up onto the bench with her legs eagerly spread.
He entered her, slick and shamelessly inviting, and Mary had to bite back cries of pleasure and peaking desire.
“Don’t, don’t stop,” she begged in his ear, nibbling at his neck and clutching at those amazing broad shoulders.
“Don’t let go,” he told her back, lifting her effortlessly along the wall to get her into a position where he could thrust easily into her, over and over again until she was drowning in pleasure and her begging was incoherent.
Then he was coming too, thrusting with increasingly urgent strokes until he made an animal noise near Mary’s ear and then coursed into her with his seed.
They stood slowly as they regained control of their breath and the waves of their pleasure ebbed away. Neal knocked a bottle of shampoo off the rack and caught it deftly, but not before it had spilled onto Mary’s shoulder.
“Close,” she said, scooping it up and redepositing it on her head.
After that, the shower was more utilitarian, but if Mary lingered a little longer than was strictly necessary in some spots while lathering Neal with soap then it was understandable, and he certainly didn’t object.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Neal felt like a new man. Showered, dressed in clothing that (mostly) fit, and sitting across from Mary in the open dining hall, it seeme
d like it had been more than just a few scant hours since they’d been rescued from their private cove. It seemed insane that they’d been taken as hostages and rescued themselves in that time, and Neal still found it hard to believe that Lewis—Lewis that he’d been sent to bring down ten years ago—was in custody.
“How does it feel?” Mary asked quietly.
Their plates were empty between them, though they’d been refilled several times by Breck.
Scarlet had insisted that the staff be served in the guest hall, and Graham, Bastian, Travis, and Tex were regaling a rapt Breck with a version of the situation that Neal suspected had little resemblance to the actual events.
Neal shrugged, not sure what Mary was asking about.
“Lewis is why you went to Beehag’s prison,” she reminded him. “Does it feel like closure to finally capture him?”