Tempt (Take It Off) (15 page)

I felt my heartbeat against my chest. It was a slow and steady rhythm, kind of lethargic and lazy. But that was because I was barely breathing. I was holding my breath.

He was touching me.

His fingers drifted over my skin like a breeze on a summer day. It was a feather-light caress that never ended because he didn’t lift his hands.

It started at my collarbone and drifted out across my shoulders and then descended downward until he hooked his fingers around my elbow, brushing against the sensitive spot on the inside of my arm. Downward he traveled until his fingers pulled away from mine to hover just barely over the tops of my thighs.

Then his direction reversed, climbing upward so the slightly rough pads of his fingers traced the outline of my belly button and then dragged over my ribcage.

Tiny shivers raced up and down my spine
, creating goose bumps that scattered over my scalp and caused my eyes to flutter closed.

His hands splayed my waist, gripping my flesh and pulling me closer, but he didn’t kiss me. He buried his face inside my neck and used his tongue to wet a circle of tender skin
, then pulled back slightly to blow across the area. I shuddered.

My body started to arch into him
, but something caught my arm, something large and warm. It wrapped around my bicep in a possessive manner, causing my head to turn and cast a glance in the direction I was being pulled.

My heartbeat accelerated instantly. The lethargic rhythm was chased away by a shot of adrenaline so pure that I could taste it on my tongue.

He yanked me away from the teasing, gentle caresses and cupped my face in his palm, lowering his lips toward mine. Excitement crackled along my nerve endings and my tongue jutted out to moisten my lips.

Just as he was about to claim my kiss
, I was yanked away again, this time by the one who had me first.

I cast a look to my left at green eyes flash
ing with possession and then once again to my right where chocolate eyes gleamed with jealousy.

I was caught in the middle of two very enticing choices.

A choice that I didn’t want to make.

Brown eyes stepped closer, his body brushing against the entire length of my arm. He reached out and pushed the hair back over my shoulder, exposing the side of my face. He leaned down and captured my earlobe between his teeth and sucked it into his mouth. The gentle suckling sounds that whispered through my ear
loosened something deep inside me.

I turned my head toward him, not wanting him to stop.

But green-eyes was not to be cast aside.

His palm covered my breast, gently kneading the area and causing my hardening nipple to brush against the smooth fabric of my bikini top. And then his mouth was on my neck, pulling the skin into his mouth and massaging it with his tongue.

Two mouths…

Two sets of hands…

And my single body.

I wasn’t sure who to touch, who to grab
, but I didn’t want either of them to stop. The sensation of being kissed in more than one place in a single moment made a moan escape from my lips.

My fingers began to twitch, wanting
to elicit shivers of their own.

As my hands lifted away from my sides
, I vaguely wondered who they would reach for first…

My eyes shot open. I stared up at the dark sum
mer sky and drew in a long, shaky breath.

Holy crap.

What the hell was that? A threesome… that’s what that was. Never had I ever imagined myself and two guys getting it on at the same time. I might have been embarrassed if my body wasn’t so incredibly turned on.

I squeezed my eyes shut as images taunted me, teased my mind and my body. Nash in front of me, Duke behind.

Neither wanted the other one there, but no one would walk away. The Ava man-wich had turned into the Ava buffet.

Thoroughly disturbed
, I turned my head and looked at Nash, who was lying right beside me, looking peaceful in his sleep. How could I have a dream like that? How could I betray him that way?

And that’s what it felt like. A betrayal.

I pushed up and walked quietly away, toward the water, where I stood, letting the surf rush over my feet and the wind tangle my hair. The moon was much higher now; the night seemed darker. But I didn’t mind. I felt like hiding. Hiding from myself, that dream… my desires.

Maybe it was just stress. This wasn’t exac
tly an easy situation. Added to the fact I practically lost my virginity (well, the actual first time clearly didn’t count; I mean geesh, Nash made me feel more when he just looked at me) a few hours ago, well, maybe that dream wasn’t as unsettling as I thought it should be.

A wave of homesickness swept over me, so strong that it hurt. I missed my family, my tiny apartment. I missed hunting for a new job, I missed worrying about paying the rent
, and I even missed those annoying Friday night dinners when my family would ask me what I was going to do with my life.

Being here with everything essentially taken away made things seem clearer. It opened my eyes to facts I might not have wanted to see before. I was living my life in limbo
—suspended between living and drifting. And it was all because I was scared.

What if I put myself out there like I did with my ex, like I did with my last job
, only to have it blow up in my face again?

For so long I felt like a complete failure. A quitter. I quit school. I flitted between one job and the next. I finally gave up my virginity only be dumped and ridiculed. I fi
nally committed to a job I liked, and I was let go because the economy sucked.

But I was still here.

I was still standing.

And now I was trapped on a deserted island with a guy I desperately wanted and a band of murdering pirates. To top it off, I was having dreams… dreams that were beginning to make sense.

Well, sort of.

What if those dreams were just one more way my mind was trying to get in the way of something I wanted? Trying to scare me away from getting too close to Nash?

“Ava?” His voice drifted through the breeze and squeezed my heart. I looked over my shoulder at Nash, who was standing there with sleep-heavy features and messy hair. He’d pulled on his shorts but hadn’t bothered to button them or zip them up.

He came forward, wincing a little when his feet hit the cold water, but he didn’t stop. He wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my shoulder. “You still having bad dreams?”

“I didn’t want to wake you,” I said, avoiding the question. How did you tell a guy you had a sex dream about him… with another man?

“You can wake me anytime.” He pressed a kiss to my bare shoulder. And then I realized…

“I’m still naked.”

“I know”
His voice turned husky.

“I miss home.”

“I know. Me too.”

“It’s been almost a week. Do you think they’ve given up?”

“Would you have given up by now?” he asked.

I searched deep within myself for the answer. For the truth. “No.
If it was someone I loved, I would never give up.”

“They’re going to find us,
bella
.”

“I like when you call me that.”

“I know.”

“You’re a know
-it-all.”

I felt his chest vibrate with silent laughter. I brought
up my hands to rest over his arms. I didn’t want to let go of him. Not ever.

Conflicting thoughts swirled around my head.
Finally, I sighed. Now wasn’t the time to think too deeply about the way I felt about Nash.

Besides
, my heart already made up its mind. It was just my head that was struggling. When I first met him, my body’s response had been undeniable. But my head… my head reminded me that all guys were the same. Nash showed me differently. He proved me wrong. Yet my head was still fighting against what my heart already knew.

“What else is bothering you?” he whispered, reading me all too well. “Do you have regrets?”

I turned in his arms, tipping my head back and gazing up into his face. “I could never regret any of my time spent with you.”

He kissed the tip of my nose. “That’s good. I plan to take up a lot of your time.” He
swung me up into his arms, cradling me against his torso and walking out of the water and back up the beach where he spread me out in the sand and came over me.

For the rest of the night
, I didn’t think at all.

I woke up to a strange yet familiar sound. It wasn’t the waves. It wasn’t the ocean breeze. It was
n’t gunshots or drums…

It was a plane.

Nash must have heard it too, and we both bolted up off the sand and rushed out by the water, staring at the sky and waving our arms frantically, trying to get the pilot’s attention.

But the plane was nowhere in sight.

Yet we could both hear it. It had to be nearby.

But where?

“We need a flare,” Nash said, frenzied. “We need the flare gun on the plane!”

We both took off running down the beac
h. He ran so fast he went out of sight as I struggled to push through the sand, thoroughly disgusted with myself.

I kept glancing up at the sky, trying to catch just a glimpse of the aircraft, praying that it wouldn’t turn and fly off, leaving us stranded once more.

When I finally reached the part of the beach where I could see our crashed plane, I rushed forward, wondering what on earth was taking Nash so long. As fast as he moved, I really expected to see the bright-red burn of a flare across the sky by now.

Seconds dragged by.

He never reappeared.

The sound of the overhead aircraft faded away.

Finally, Nash came running out of the trees, the big flare gun clasped in his hand. He had this wild look on his face. The minute his feet touched the sand, he looked up into the sky.

“Fuck!” he screamed, frustrated.
“Did you see the plane?” he asked.

I shook my head no.

“Grab up whatever you can find—wood, shells, whatever. We’re going to write out S.O.S. in the sand.”

I ran off to grab some of the partially burned wood left in the bonfire
and some large palm fronds and driftwood lying around. As I started to build the first S, Nash came over beside me and yanked something out of his back pocket.

“What is that?” I asked as I worked.

“Make it big,” he instructed, looking at my handiwork. Then he explained. “This is a smoke flare.”

It was a long, red stick (probably would be better to call it a wand, but whatever)
, and I watched as he ripped the top off and jammed it in his pocket. Then he pulled the cap off the top and stuck it on his finger like an oversized thimble. He held the flare out and scrapped his covered finger over it once and it burst forward like the giant sparklers I used to play with on the Fourth of July.

“Don’t look into the flame,” he told me
, and I looked away, starting to make the O.

When I ran out of supplies
, I stood to get more, and I noticed the bright flames had gone out and there was now a deep rust-colored smoke funneling up into the sky, being caught up in the wind.

“It’s too windy!” I worried.

He shook his head. “Smoke flares are designed to be seen from miles away and in the windiest conditions. Maybe it will attract that plane back.”

It was certainly better than nothing. I rushed forward to get some more supplies
, but he grabbed my arm. “Stay away from the plane.”

The look in his eyes worried me
, but I could only deal with one thing at a time so I nodded and then rushed around for more rocks and fallen branches. When I came back, Nash buried the end of the smoke flare in the sand (in the center of the letter O), keeping it upright as smoke poured into the sky.

“That’s going to attract
their
attention,” I said, implying the pirates.

“They already know we’re here,” he said grimly.

He didn’t say anything else as we finished the S.O.S signal, and my mind raced wildly, wondering what he meant. At the same time, I listened to the plane, praying it would turn back.

Please see the smoke.

The signal was done and the smoke was still gliding up above the ocean when Nash grabbed my hand and pulled me along with him toward the hammock.

“What’s going on?” I asked, trying to hold in my
freak-out and wondering how long it would last.

“They know we’re here.”

“The pirates?” I whispered.

He nodded.

“How?”

“I don’t know
, but they were in the plane. They searched it. They trashed it.”

If my body wasn’t producing adrenaline before
, it definitely was now. “They must have seen us yesterday.”

“Yeah. It was damn good luck we spent the night in that hammock or we would have been there.” He actually shuddered, like the thought of that was absolutely repulsive.

“How many do you think there are?”

“Way more than us.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Stay out of sight,” he said as we walked up to the hammock. “Stay on the move. Pray that someone sees that smoke.”

When we reached the hammock swaying gently in the breeze, he turned his back to me, reaching beneath the sand, and picked something up. A memory of him pulling something out of his pants last night and putting it there drifted through my head.

I wasn’t curious what it was then.

I sure as hell was now.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He turned and showed me.

It was a gun. A black pistol.

My mouth went dry. My voice was hoarse when I spoke. “What happens if they find us, Nash?”

“We hope to God I have enough bullets.”