Chapter 17
That night, Rory couldn’t sleep. He tried counting the croaks of the coqui frogs—mating calls, Sasha had told him. He tried imagining himself in a fluffy king-size bed instead of a net-shrouded cot. He silently hummed the lullaby his grandmother used to sing him at bedtime.
Everything he tried just made him more wide awake. Finally he gave up and climbed out of his cot. Maybe he just needed some fresh air. With three people sleeping in it, the guest tent was getting stuffy.
Outside, moonlight filled the encampment with silvery shadows. The moon was full, or nearly so, and it seemed so close he could make out the craters and the lakes. If only he could fly there and leave all his earthly problems behind.
He climbed onto the picnic table and stretched out on his back.
Bathing in moonlight…maybe that would help him sleep.
The fresh air felt cool against his face as he stared up at the moon.
A procession of stately dark clouds paraded across the sky, sometimes blocking the light, then clearing away again.
He wouldn’t be surprised if it rained, since it seemed to just about every night here.
A soft footfall made him jolt back to a sitting position. Mathilda was tiptoeing toward him. She wore a thin hoodie over cotton pajama pants, her feet in slippers. Her hair was loose to her shoulders and her eyes glimmered in the moonlight.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she whispered.
“No. Maybe it’s the moon. It’s so bright here.”
“It is. This is the first night of the full moon. The ancient Hawaiians considered the moon to be full for four nights, did you know that? Each night of the cycle has a name. Tonight is Mahealani. It’s still a fairly common name among native Hawaiians.
Isn’t it beautiful? Oh, and Hilo is named after one of the full moon nights. ”
He smiled to himself. She sounded so nervous, and that made him want to be calm—for her. He offered her a hand and helped her onto the picnic table next to him. “You really love Hawaii, don’t you?”
“I do. It’s the only place I’ve ever felt really free.
My parents have never even been here. They kept talking about visiting me, but it’s such a long flight from the East Coast and this,” she gestured at the clearing, “isn’t exactly their scene.
Also, my mother is afraid of volcanoes. When I told her the whole island is made up of five volcanoes, and one of them is currently active, she stopped talking about visiting.
It’s just as well. They’d want to stay at the Four Seasons or something like that, which isn’t really visiting me. ”
She fell quiet next to him. The murmurs of coqui frogs and cicadas and the distant croak of a toad wove a web of night song around them.
It felt utterly magical. The warmth of her body next to his gave him a sense of deep peace.
Despite the many things that separated them—backgrounds, misconceptions, deceptions, situations—he felt connected to her in a way he couldn’t shake.
“Have you read your…proposal, I guess it is?”
She let out a soft sigh. “That’s what it is. I’d call it more of a business proposal, but it does include marriage.”
His stomach soured and the moonlight seemed to dim from silver to gray.
“And?”
“And nothing…yet. I have to think about it. But I don’t want to think about it.
I’m supposed to go to Hilo tomorrow and now it’s the last thing I want to do, because there will be Internet and my parents will be trying to reach me, and I’ll feel compelled to google all the terrible things that will happen if I say ‘no,’ and Duncan wants to meet in person and…
” A tear ran down her face. “And I’m never going to find Hector now,” she finished, her wistful tone tearing a hole right through his heart.
“Hey.” He put his arm around her and pulled her close to him. “Hector is probably living his best life free in the jungle. He’s got plenty of platosporum—”
“Pittosporum.”
“Spitosporum,” he corrected himself.
She giggled. “Pittosporum. Starts with a ‘pitt.’”
“Pittosputum. Sorry.” He didn’t mind playing the illiterate idiot if it made her laugh.
“Spitosputum. Oh my God, now I’m doing it, even worse than you.” They were both chuckling now, trying to keep their voices down.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “You’ll wake the coma victim.”
That made her laugh even harder. “You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you?” she gasped. “Trying to cheer me up?”
“Is it working?”
Her answer surprised the hell out of him.
She turned toward him and flung herself into his lap.
A warm bundle of curvy flesh wrapped around him.
Even if his mind took a moment to grasp what was happening, his body knew exactly what was going on.
Arousal flashed through his belly and stiffened his cock.
He put his arms around her to keep her from sliding off his lap, and felt silky flesh just above the waistband of her pajama pants. She put her hands on either side of his head and pulled his face to hers.
“Can we not talk for a little bit?” she whispered, her breath warm and sweet. “I want to escape all this. Just for a bit.”
Did she mean what he thought she meant? The answer quickly became clear when she touched her lips to his. Sweet mad desire flooded through him at the first taste of her. All the secret thoughts he’d been having about her, the attraction he’d tried to bury, all of it came bursting into the light.
He slid his hands up her back, under her thin hoodie. She wasn’t wearing anything underneath; she must have just thrown this on to go outside. Her smooth skin heated everywhere he touched. She flexed her hips in a slow, sensual movement, grinding against his erection. Oh lord.
It swelled even more, the hot flesh making its presence known, impossible to ignore. He slid his thumbs to her front to run them across her nipples. They eagerly reacted by perking into tight little buds. His mouth watered. He wanted to draw those sweet bits of flesh against his tongue.
He used his teeth to pull down the zipper of her hoodie. Oh yeah… there they were, hardened rosy peaks on the perfect globes of her breasts. The sight sent another lightning bolt of lust straight to his cock.
She arched back as he drew the flat of his tongue across one nipple, then the other. In the light of the moon, her body gleamed like some rare substance, opals or crystal or…
What was that crystal, anyway?
The thought struck him out of nowhere, completely out of place in this hot, intimate moment.
He must have paused, because she looked down at him, her lips parted, her face so full of dreamy desire that she looked otherworldly.
“Please don’t stop,” she whispered. “If you’re waiting for consent, you definitely have it.
What about you? I probably surprised you by jumping on your lap like that.
But it’s not the first time it’s crossed my mind. ”
“Not mine either, if we’re being honest. I’ve been wanting to do this for quite some time.” He swirled his tongue across her nipple until she gasped out loud, then covered her mouth with her hands.
They both waited to see if anyone had heard. No one burst from their tents armed with a machete to fend off an attacker.
“Where can we go?” he managed. They couldn’t just make out here on the picnic table. Anyone might step out for a nighttime pee at any moment. The guest tent was certainly not an option, especially now that Lincoln was simply sleeping, not comatose.
“My tent,” she whispered. “Quietly. I don’t want to have to explain to anyone.”
He got it. This was strictly on the down-low. She was about to marry a British lord, or a British wannabe lord. Would a hookup throw a wrench into that plan? Probably not, since nothing was official yet. The only hiccup would be if it turned out to be more than a hookup.
Which it wouldn’t, because it couldn’t.
With her still in his arms, he climbed off the table and let her slide to the ground, taking the opportunity to press her body against his, showing her just how aroused he was, in case she hadn’t already noticed.
She grabbed onto his butt to steady herself as her feet hit the ground, then let out a little moan.
“Do you know how many times I’ve checked out your ass?” she murmured.
“And here I thought you only paid attention to birds.”
“Usually, that’s true. But then you came along.”
He liked that. A lot. “Can we please go somewhere I can get you naked?”
Giggling, she grabbed his hand and dragged him to a tent platform at the far end of the encampment. Perfect. Maybe they wouldn’t have to keep their voices down quite so much.
And then it got even better. The first soft splatter of raindrops hit his head.
The sound of a rain shower sweeping through the jungle made them both pick up the pace.
They ducked inside her tent just in time before the sky unleashed.
Rain drummed on the roof of the tent. Mathilda hurried to the windward side of her tent and zipped up the netted window.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dark, now that the moonlight had been replaced by torrents of rain. When he did, he saw that Mathilda was already stripping off her clothes. She flung them onto her desk and danced across the hala mat that covered the floor of her tent.
“I love the rain here so much.” She flung open her arms and twirled naked before him. “I always feel like it’s talking to me.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it saying?” He should get undressed too, but he was mesmerized by the sight of her nude form spinning in her little tent.
“It’s saying, we’re all wild things. All of us. Just free and wild and pure and—” She spun to a stop in front of him. “Okay, maybe not pure,” she added with a wicked smile.
“Pure trouble, maybe.” He caught her in his arms and she wrapped her legs around him.
“You still have clothes on,” she pointed out with a pout. “What’s taking so long?”