Chapter 5
Chapter Five
What is that?
My fingers tangle in strands of damp, sweat-soaked hair that’s clinging to my neck. Ick.
I’m hot. My mind is murky, and the combination makes this feel like a fever dream.
“Ugh. What now ?”
I shiver, my stomach twisting.
But when I reach to push the hair away, pain flares in my arm. Sharp and immediate.
Okay, that’s sore.
I grit my teeth, shifting carefully, and use my other hand instead.
The strands peel away from my throat, leaving behind an uncomfortable wetness.
Focus, Allison.
My thoughts are a mess, sluggish and heavy, like wading through fog.
Above me, there’s a roof. Not a familiar one. A thatched expanse. Crooked and patchy, with thin rays of light sneaking through the gaps.
The smells around me are not familiar.
Ugh… Seriously, what now?
As if the last few months haven’t been enough. Now, I don’t even know where I am.
I startle when the surface below me shifts. It’s a slow, uneven sway that pulls at my balance even as I lie still on my side.
I’m aware enough to know I need to go. I don’t know where, but go. Get back into hiding.
My stomach twists, again, this time harder. The nausea comes fast but fades just as quickly when I take a few steady breaths.
I also need to eat.
Something drifts through the air—coconut and spice? It cuts through the humidity, grounding me even if I’m not sure what it is.
Grit claws at my eyes as I blink against the haze.
The scene around me is unfamiliar, the world tilting as I take it in from the weird angle I’m lying in.
Is this a boat?
I lift my head—my neck is achingly stiff—and catch a glimpse of murky water below. It churns in restless swirls, the muddy surface catching flashes of sunlight.
Definitely, a boat.
A bird calls somewhere nearby. Then another and another like they’re announcing something, and the sound anchors me more.
I’m in a rainforest.
This is Vandemora.
But why am I on a boat?
Like I’m waking from a decade of sleep, my mind whirs slowly, but builds in speed. As more of my senses come onboard, I sniff the air again.
Oh.
Definitely coconut and… man?
Spicy. Warm.
Oh, god .
When I swing my head to the right, it all comes back.
I jolt upright so fast my head spins. “Oh! Jesus! ”
Dizzy!
My hand flies out to steady myself and lands…
Right on the big stranger’s cock.
At least that’s what I think it is.
But it’s really freaking big. Like a log with a plump rounded head.
“Fuck!” he shouts.
Jolted from a dead sleep, he explodes off the bed in one fluid motion. Muscles flex and coil, his body taut with instinct.
A gasp flies from my mouth, my focus locked on the knife. Glinting silvery light, its razor-edge mere inches from my face. In the hands of a man who holds it like he’s not averse to do mortal combat.
His soldier’s gaze flicks around us. “Goddammit, what’s wrong?”
“N-nothing.” I almost laugh. But nothing about this is funny. This situation is so wrong. “I just… I got dizzy and grabbed… your…I mean, the first thing I could.”
His dick apparently.
His gaze falls to my hand, now clenched into a tight fist against my leg. It’s on fire.
“Fuck’n A, woman,” he mutters, his shoulders dropping as his arm falls to his side, the knife still catching the hazy tropical light.
I’m so stunned I can’t move, and it’s not because he almost filleted me, or because I just had a close encounter with his appendage.
He was sleeping next to me…
Like we…
No.
But I can’t drag my stare away from the corded tendons in his white-knuckled grip—still wrapped around the weapon. A big dangerous-looking field knife, wrapped easily in his oversized palm. Like it was made to go there.
I’m reminded of a wild animal that’s been tamed… only it never really is. We only pretend to have cajoled a beast into submission, but its primal, dangerous nature is right there, coiled. Waiting to reemerge.
A flash of nerves hits me as my mind snatches at a scene from a few hours ago—about how that hand felt on me.
Commanding. The primal animal in him prowling just below the surface as he surely and boldly checked for injuries on the riverbank.
And before that, he touched me protectively when the gunshots were around us.
Stifling a groan of annoyance, I look away.
I shouldn’t like his touch so much.
His eyes flash angrily as he studies me working through my emotions, taking my anger as directed at him.
The tone he uses cuts across the humid air, as effective as his knife would through flesh.
“Watch what you do. Could have ended with your throat cut.”
He’s mad at me? Unbelievable.
“Yeah, well, maybe you should warn me you’re lying next to me. And maybe a heads up that you sleep with a knife under your pillow like some kind of unhinged action hero!”
His eyebrows shoot up, his disbelief almost comical, and I brace for whatever he’s about to hurl from his tongue in my direction.
“I don’t sleep with it under my pillow.”
That’s not what I expected.
Calling me stupid. Making me feel foolish. Yes.
Not this.
The unexpected comment puts me on my heels.
“Could’ve fooled me,” I snap, feeling all kinds of flustered. “I move wrong, and suddenly it’s all Hoo-rah, danger alert over there. Hair-finger or whatever.”
The staring that follows makes my insides twist in shame.
But then his lips twitch. Only a fraction of a second, but he fights it down.
“You mean a hair-trigger?”
“Sure. That.” I frown, mostly at myself, but some at him because he’s giving me whiplash. “Whatever tactical nonsense you call it. My bad for being the helpless civilian who accidentally woke up Rambo.”
That does it. His smirk breaks free, slow and crooked, and his low laugh rumbles out.
“Careful, Ally.” He shakes his head once. “Don’t try to distract me with humor.”
Time passes—the humid air pressing around us—as we continue to stare at each other breathing harder than we should.
There are a million things in his expression now, and not a single one is something I understand.
I’d probably need a spy satellite to unravel even a clue about this man. It only takes looking at him to know he’s a walking contradiction.
I mean, the knife in his hand. The corded sinew of a hardened killer. With the slow, sexy grin of a runway model who knows just how to work you over with a single well-placed blow.
God .
Pushing a hand into my hair, I let him see my frustration.
He’s the last person I want to be stuck with. I need someone I can trust.
I can’t trust someone I can’t understand.
“Where are we?” I croak through vocal cords that sound like rusty hinges.
He tips his head left and right, never taking his gaze from the fierce lock it has on me. His neck cracks loudly as those two judgmental lasers narrow even more on me.
I stare, mostly because he’s so handsome it hurts.
Deep. Somewhere I didn’t know could hurt.
And that pisses me the hell off.
The man was made for torturing the other sex. Women probably walk into traffic in his wake. Dazed, confused, and useless.
Dark, serious brows arch over his starkly carved face. They seem to punctuate the beautiful color of navy-blue eyes, his long but crooked nose, and lips that are a little thick and soft, but hard and commanding.
Angels have wept over the creation of this face, I’m sure.
But the scruff on his tense jaw line adds something indescribably sexy. That final swipe of an artist's brush that adds the finishing touch. The feral unapologetic masculinity that makes him lethal.
Listen to me. Who knew I was poetic?
He disappears when I close my eyes and stifle that groan that’s built to a roar.
But he’s still there, seconds later when I surrender to the urge to look at him again.
Without a word, the man stashes his knife somewhere on his leg and shoves a hand in his short, dark-blond hair. Every flicker of muscle hypnotizes me more and somehow fuels my anger.
When he turns away, his bare back comes fully into view, and I jerk my eyes away from the impact.
My god.
His tattoos.
I’ve never been so close to a man with ink like that. Or built like that.
I swallow, roughly. The mouthful of gravel I’ve suddenly got refusing to move.
“There’s food.” He lifts an elbow toward a small table. “You need to eat.”
Hell yes, I do. I’m starving.
Out of nowhere. Out of years of not caring about sex. But now I’m ravenous for a Mortal Kombat action hero that nearly got me killed.
Get a grip on yourself, Allison.
Stomach knotting, I glance around, for the first time really checking out the boat as if the fog of his sex appeal is dissipating by my sheer willpower.
The sight of a lopsided basket of fresh fruit wrenches a thin sound from my chest. “I’m starving.”
For a lot of things, it seems.
Without an ounce of elegance, I pick up a banana, tear open the peel, and nearly shove the whole thing in my mouth.
It’s animalistic and uncouth.
At least I don’t make a nom-nom-nom sound.
When he glances at me, I cover my mouth self-consciously with one hand as I hold the stub of the banana peel in my other hand.
I can barely swallow, my mouth is so full, almost to the point of bursting, with my breath sawing in and out through my nose like I’m some kind of wild animal.
His eyes fixate, dilate, and pin me in place. “Good Christ, deep throat.”
With a muttered curse, he turns away again, leaning his forearm against the canopy over the top of the boat’s small cabin area.
His back is locked straight this time. But it’s the way his cargo pants fall low on his hips, circling the bones of his pelvis that makes my lips press tight.
Oh, my god. He’s so blessed hot.
Now my cheeks are flaming, and I’m still choking on the banana.
Nice. Great . Way to go.
Just what I need, to choke to death on a phallic object in front of this man.
He shifts his overtly powerful body and makes a deep rumbling sound as if he can feel me groping him with my retinas.
At least he leaves his back to me.
I chew. Slowly.
How tall is he?
As I force down the last of the fruit, I allow myself to enjoy the view of him.
Thankfully, he doesn’t turn, and I have time.
Because I must be deranged. Too much stress. Too little sleep. Nearly dying so many times I can’t count. That should excuse my behavior, right?
He’s a sight. Miles of muscle, rivers of scars, and ink so black it rivals the night sky.
This guy’s body is a work of art, both a carnal sculpture and display of human artwork.
“You gettin’ an eye full?”
Hit by a jolt of guilt that could shake the Richter Scale, I grab a piece of purple fruit to distract myself. But try as I might, I can’t remember the name of what I have in my hand.
Nothing is adding up, and the name of the syrupy-sweet produce is the least of my worries.
“I’m sorry.” Not. But hey, I should act decent anyway.
He chuckles. “Sweetheart, you should not be making those slurping sounds while you suck on that fruit after that little show. It sounds like eating pussy.”
He didn’t…
Splat .
The purple fruit falls out of my hand. Chasing my quick inhale, heat shoots down my body and lands in a place I had forgotten existed. Until him.
Visions of his dark-blond head between my legs, his mouth eating greedily, riot my nervous system.
If he goes down like he does everything else, I’d die deliriously happy.
“Uh-hum.” Clearing my twisted throat, I pick the fruit off the floor to throw it away. Trying in vain to sound composed, I say, “Well, sorry if your imagination is a little overzealous.”
Because apparently mine is too.
“It’s not the only thing about me that’s overzealous.”
His hand falls to the front of his cargo pants and adjusts something… before he turns to face me.
“Thanks for the news flash, I’m happy for your ego.”
“I’m not the one that gets the benefit.”
My core clenches.
“In my experience, overzealous just means shoddy work.”
His eyes spark, some kind of risqué humor taking flight there. As if he wasn’t dangerous enough as is.
This suddenly feels like a dangerous game. The two of us squared off, dancing around, sexually-charged innuendos our weapons.
“I mean in my work,” I add. “It’s all about being slow and methodical. You can’t just tear into a sacred place and decimate it with brute force and sloppy enthusiasm.”
“Oh, really?” He lets the crackling energy of his gaze drop down me. “I think sloppy enthusiasm and brute force make for some of the best fucking that any two people can share.”
Gulp.
Okay. Innuendos gone. He looked at me like a meal and said the word fucking.
My fingers start to tingle at the thought of this potent chemistry growing until it flashes and destroys us both.
“Ha.”
I laugh aloud. One out of place, awkward as hell sound that bounces into the space between us like a dropped grenade.
The staring continues. From both of us. So long I don’t know what’s happening.
I’ve never had a sexual stare down with a man.
I don’t know how to get out of it with my life intact. Especially when it comes to him .
How can I be so freaking attracted to this man? His ego is bigger than this damned boat.
Maybe the crocodile actually chomped on my head.
But my hand continues to clench from the memory of landing on the distinct shape of a gigantic, veiny cock. Thick. Long. And big enough to scare any sane woman.
That banana was like a pinky finger in comparison.
He hasn’t moved. Totally fixated on me. With the patience of a killer hiding in wait.
Those dark eyes zero in on the finger I’m licking clean of the sticky fruit juice absentmindedly, and I realize that I am a complete idiot.
I jerk my hand down and hide it behind my back. That’s when I realize…
The worst thing ever.
Holy hell . I’m wearing his shirt and nothing else. After a few palpitations, I find my breath, but it’s vaporous and pathetic.
“Where are my clothes?” I squeak.
He glances right with a lazy roll of his shoulder.
There are my belongings, gently swaying in the light breeze. It looks like the clothesline of a cat burglar. My black cargo pants, my also black bra, my faded black T-shirt, all hang next to my black jacket. All of it is held up by a thin piece of line that stretches between the poles supporting the roof.
A thick, husky voice wraps around me and squeezes the breath right out of me.
“You didn’t have any panties on.”