Chapter 21
ELLIE (PRESENT)
My head shakes back and forth, burying my long, auburn hair deeper into the crystal white sand.
Nate nuzzles the apex between my thighs, running his nose up and down the length of me.
He breathes me in like my feminine musk is his favorite scent.
My legs shake with the anticipation of his mouth on me, licking and sucking until I come on his tongue.
Exhaling deeply, he burns me alive with the heat of his mouth. The mouth that is now aligned directly above my soaking wet center.
“Oh God, Nate,” I cry out, unable to control the sounds coming from my mouth.
I feel his mouth form a smile against the juncture between my legs.
Slowly, so fucking slowly, he widens his lips, covering the span of my mound.
I shiver at the wetness of his tongue as it lightly glides over my aching core.
He presses it firmly against me, in search of my clit, as he tastes my arousal.
His kiss on my mouth made me so fucking wet that my excitement escaped the confines of my panties and saturated the crotch of my leggings. His kiss between my legs is going to flood the whole damn island.
I wait.
And wait.
And fucking wait.
This is how I die. After escaping literal hell, the anticipation of his mouth sucking my clit between his full, sexy lips is what’s going to kill me. I stretch my neck back and lift my hips against his mouth as my climax builds from his invisible touch. His edging will be the death of me.
Finally, his tongue reaches my clit, and I nearly sigh in relief. I feel his sharp, leathery fingers trail across my breasts, drawing out a low moan as I feel the small pinpricks of pain.
Wait.
What?
Sharp, leathery fingers?
My eyes pop open and I lift my head from the sand, the quick movement causing a crick in my neck I will definitely feel later.
Right now, the only thing I am capable of feeling are the giant claws of the raccoon-size lizard crawling across my chest.
CRAWLING ACROSS MY CHEST!
“Oh GOD, NATE!” I scream in absolute panic. I’m terrified to move, but I also want nothing more than to tuck and roll my naked body and fling this beast from my stomach.
Nate rears back, looking like he is ready to take on the devil himself.
He stands, naked and erect, assessing the area for any possible threat.
His fight mode is activated, and I am momentarily distracted by how fucking hot it is.
Godzilla quickly regains my attention as he nestles down onto my chest like he found himself a nice, fluffy pillow to rest on.
The fucking audacity.
Nate’s frazzled gaze finally finds its way back to me and he realizes the danger isn’t as imminent as he first thought. It may not be Van Pelt emerging with a rifle, but I fear my current predicament could also transpire after a roll of the dice in Jumanji.
He looks down at my chest, serious and stoic.
His eyes track the lizard…my eyes…the lizard again.
I see him fight it, but he ultimately loses the battle quickly.
One minute, he is ready to take on a jaguar for me.
The next, he drops to his knees and falls back on his ass laughing hysterically as the demon lizard sleeps on my tits.
I hate him.
I hate him so much that I start laughing with him. Within seconds we are both crying, tears streaming down our faces as the—not so little—scaly bastard naps soundly on my naked breasts.
“Nateeee,” I whine through my laughter, “get it off of me. Pleaaassseee.”
“I don’t know, Pip. I’m really enjoying the view I have here.
” His eyes trail down my naked, helpless body.
He smirks as he makes his appreciation very apparent.
His hand caresses his cock from root to tip, his gaze never leaving mine.
I lick my lips at the intensity of his stare, remembering all too well how his long, thick cock used to feel inside of me.
His breathing increases when his eyes finally trail down to his favorite spot between my legs.
I let my knees fall open and slide my finger through the wetness as a low growl echoes deep in his chest. Nate’s pace increases as his fisted hand runs up and down the length of his sex.
My mouth waters at the thought of taking him into my mouth.
The thought of his hands tangled in my hair as he forces his cock to the back of my throat.
A small whimper leaves me as my core grows wetter.
Suddenly, I feel shy. I’m lying in the sand, naked and exposed, putting on a show for a man who hasn’t seen my body in eight years.
With an iguana on my chest.
I cross my legs to try and hide his view of my most intimate parts. Reality comes crashing into me like a freight train. Katie. The plane crash. Katie, again.
“Don’t do that,” Nate insists. “Don’t hide yourself from me. Not after what just happened between us.” He holds my gaze, his eyes pleading before he continues. “You’ve never hidden yourself from me before.” He must see the war in my eyes because he releases a sigh and crawls over to me.
He gently lifts the lizard king away from my body, careful not to catch me with its claws. The green monster’s massive body squirms and his legs kick in complete panic as it tries to escape Nate’s grasp. He sets it down in the sand and it scurries away at the pace of a toad.
That was anticlimactic.
Nate regards me carefully, trying to read my thoughts.
I’m suddenly drowning in vulnerability. This is a man who has always been able to see right through me.
A man I gave every piece of my heart to until he became solely responsible for maintaining its function.
A man who had delved deep into my core and tethered his soul to mine, stitching his name into the very fabric of my being.
I never fooled him by pretending I didn’t care or pretending I had moved on.
He’s always known the truth, and that’s a terrifying thought.
I reach for my clothing, hastily redressing as he watches with sad eyes. He knows I am pulling away. He knows I regret what just happened between us. But he doesn’t know why I regret it.
Do I feel like I betrayed my sister? Yes.
Am I engulfed with guilt? Absolutely. But I’m not naive to the reality that I still love him.
I am not naive to the truth of this trip.
I tried to convince myself that nothing would happen between Nate and I, but that was just the tale I needed to tell.
One that gave me the courage to board a plane with my sister’s fiancé.
With a man I coveted, one I furtively hoped to make mine again.
The thought is jarring, but it’s the truth.
I was never going to be ok with allowing her to keep him. Not when he’s always belonged to me.
Regardless of our past…he’s mine.
It’s not the moment I just shared with him that I regret. It’s my selfishness. My complete disregard for the heart of a person who means the most to me. The most, next to him. Because if I’m completely honest with myself, Nate will always come first.
He’s my person. Even when I hated him, he was my person. Part of me always knew that if I ever really needed him, I had him. Part of me always knew that he hurt me to protect me. I just don’t know what he was protecting me from.
All I know is he just risked everything to get me to this island.
Our plane broke apart in the sky, and Nate and I are the only survivors.
I am still here because of him. The second we reached land, the only thing I could think about, the only thing that made sense, was to put my lips on his.
At that moment, for the first time in my life, I didn’t think of anyone but me.
While I’m ashamed of how quickly I’d abandoned my promise to Katie, I can’t pretend it was a promise I envisioned keeping.
On the surface, that’s what I told myself.
A nice, fabricated narrative invented to protect myself from the truth.
A tale woven in fantasy where I could remain a virtuous, respectable woman who lived her life taking the moral high ground. Someone worthy of her sister’s love.
Deep down, I knew the reality. My faithfulness belongs to my heart, and Nate is my heart.
I know breaking that promise will break us, and I’m not ready to lose my sister. Not until I know the truth behind why I’m destroying us. Because I am going to lose my sister. I don’t get to keep them both.
Nate doesn’t just get to have me, though. I can’t let him repossess my heart and soul until I know that they’re going to be safe with him this time. I need to hear his motivation for doing what he did to me in high school.
For being with my sister.
I hear Nate dressing beside me, and I peek over at him as he tucks his still-hard cock into his pants. Now that our hormones are under control, the heaviness of our situation hits me.
“We should probably make ourselves visible,” I clear my throat at the awkwardness between us, “so that the rescue plane will see us.”
Nate hesitates. “Pip…” his worried expression pins me in place, “before you woke up…fuck,” he curses, struggling to get the words out. “Before you woke up, the pilot made an announcement.”
“What…what did he say?” I bite down on my lower lip, a nervous habit of mine.
“They lost communication with the towers. We were turning around, trying to find a closer airport to land so they could address the problem.”
“How…um…how long did we not have any communication?” I ask, my voice trembling.
“About an hour, baby…”
“So…so no one knows we crashed?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
Nate looks down like he’s gathering the courage to say what he is going to say next. When his eyes meet mine again, for the first time since we crashed, I see fear in them. “No. No one knows that we crashed…and no one knows we turned around.”