32. Chapter 29 – Ambrose
Ihad never been so hard in my fucking life.
My erect cock pressed painfully against the khaki fabric of my pants, and I gave it a tight squeeze to relieve some of the pressure. Nikki and Marley had already passed by my hiding place with armloads of mangoes a few minutes ago, but I couldn’t go back yet—not with this raging hard-on.
I shouldn’t have stayed. It was a private moment—one pre-plane crash Ambrose probably would have given them.
But new Ambrose, whose Board of Directors had likely already voted him out, and he had nothing and no one to return to, was a selfish prick who hid behind a tree thicker than a Jeep and watched like a creepy pervert.
My only regret was not jacking off while I did.
He’d kissed her like he’d fucking owned her, and she’d melted under him like she was his to own.
Like I’d wanted her to own me.
Jealousy sliced through my chest with a dull knife. The warmth of her lips, the sweet taste of her tongue—both were a very recent memory, but it wasn’t me Marley West had wrapped those thick, squeezable thighs around. It was him.
Seeing Nikki come out of those trees, haggard but alive, brought an overwhelming sense of relief on this terrible day of fuckery.
Danny and Vanessa were more of a burden than a help, but neither of them deserved to die.
When Nikki had been swept under the river, I’d swallowed my grief and vowed to protect Marley at all costs—whatever it took.
It wasn’t just self-preservation driving my actions. Marley West wasn’t at all who I thought she was. In five days, she’d proven she had balls of steel and the heart of a saint—and the vocabulary of a five-year-old when she was flustered. She was so goddamned cute it made my chest itch.
I was compelled to take care of her—it was the least I could do with Nikki gone and Maddox fucking off to criminal paradise. And taking care of her made me want to kiss her. And now that I’d kissed her …
It didn’t really matter because now he was back. And she admitted she had feelings for him. And the way he’d fucked her - the declarations I hadn’t missed—those feelings weren’t one-sided. Where did that leave me?
And why did it even matter when we were still fucking stuck here?
“Join in or fuck off.”
His words repeated over in my mind like duplicate code, and my need to fuck grew even stronger.
Giving in, I pulled my cock out of my pants and gave it a soft stroke, shuddering violently with pleasure.
My ribs still hurt, although a lot less than a few days ago, so I placed my other palm against the tree trunk for leverage.
Stroking harder, I thrust into my hand with barely controlled movements.
He hadn’t meant it, right? Theresa and I weren’t ever close to being adventurous in the bedroom, but a threesome with a man would have been so far out of the realm of possibility I might as well have suggested fucking an alien.
Pre-cum wept from the tip of my cock, and I stifled the groan deep in my chest. Why was the thought of that so fucking arousing?
I’d never slept with a man. I’d kissed one in college, before I’d met Theresa, but it was after enough Jager and Redbull I’d chalked it up to experimentation instead of an actual preference. Did I have a thing for men now?
Or just Nikki?
Closing my eyes, I fucked my hand with more gusto, replaying the scene I’d just witnessed behind my eyelids. I hadn’t seen her face when she came, she’d been looking the other way.
But I’d seen his.
Head thrown back, pouty lips parted, naked and biteable ass still thrusting …
Vicious electric currents shot up my spine. The drumming of my heartbeat flooded my ears and my balls drew up and my swollen dick finally released the load it had held for five whole days.
Fuck, yessssssss.
“Hey mate, I—”
My eyes flew open to see Nikki rounding the corner of my tree just as cum shot out of my tip, painting the bush in thick white strands of silly string.
Fuck, noooo.
It wouldn’t stop. The snakes-in-a-can just kept on shooting, taking up the most awkward thirty seconds of my entire existence. Had I ever come this hard?
Nikki closed his mouth, but he also didn’t give me the dignity to look the fuck away. He folded his arms across his chest instead, and watched my dick with a fascinated grin until the faucet was finally dry.
We stood there, two dudes, one with his dick out, in complete silence. Quickly, I tucked myself back into my pants and gritted my teeth. What did I say? It’s not what it looks like?
“I was checking in to see if you were okay, but clearly, you’re doing quite well.” He nodded his chin to the cum-covered bush and wriggled his eyebrows.
“Not as well as you,” I shot back, folding my own arms in some weird, sexually charged stand-off. “I thought you were gay?”
His grin grew impossibly wider, and a demonic glint entered the one eye I could see behind those stupid broken glasses. “I’m bi, mate, but that’s only your business if you’re interested.”
He took a step closer, the move more of an invitation than a threat.
“Are you? Interested, I mean?”
Another step.
“Was all that for her?” He dipped his head toward the evidence again. “Or was a bit of that for me?”
Jesus Christ. I didn’t need to answer because my cheeks mimicked Marley’s. How could one eye be so fucking intense? It was trained on me like a locked missile, and I couldn’t look away.
“I’ve only ever dated women,” I said instead, taking in a breath to inject some steel back into my posture. “Married one, actually.” I held up my bare ring finger as if needing social proof to dispute my confusing growing attraction to a man. “Divorced one. Well, she divorced me.”
He didn’t break his stare, just got another step closer. Less than two feet apart now, I could barely breathe the tension between us was so thick, but at least I didn’t still have my dick out.
“So, that’s not a no, then.” He cocked his head, that single fucking gorgeous eye seeing through me like I was cellophane, and checking me over like I was an item on a special’s menu.
My body responded to his attention way too easily. I had to rein it in before I had another inflated pants issue on my hands.
“That’s not an invitation, either,” I bit out, unable to stop being a petty asshole. “You should know that I kissed her.”
And I would kiss her again if she’d let me.
I wanted to sleep next to her tonight, to hold her in my arms like she was mine.
My attraction to Nikki was confusing the hell out of me, but my feelings for Marley were embedded in concrete.
We’d spent five days facing our own deaths hour by hour, and she made me want to live through them.
His curls bounced as he bobbed his head. “Yeah, she told me.”
She told him? My brow crinkled in confusion.
“She cares for you, mate. That’s obvious. I care, too. Don’t let your hetero married experiences influence something potentially incredible. We’re still alive, we’re still human, and we’ll figure this out.”
Figure what out? Us?
Trauma made people do out-of-character things. I’d always considered those things to be Lord of the Flies stuff, like savage acts of violence or cannibalism. Sexual rediscovery wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind. Falling for the captain I’d wanted to ruin definitely wasn’t on the list.
Nikki didn’t let me ask the question, just turned on his heel and ended the conversation as if what we'd been discussing was as mundane as the weather.
“Well, fuck you, too, then,” I grumbled in annoyance, staring at his retreating back.
“Come on,” he called over his shoulder. “She’s worried about you. And the next time you need a hand”—he emphasized the word like a jackass—“I’ll be happy to lend one.”
His laughter carried through the trees like birdsong, and the taunt equally pissed me off and made me shiver in anticipation.
A feminine scream cut off my reply. Icy panic shot through my veins with enough force to propel me forward into a run, Nikki just a step ahead of me.
Was she hurt? Had something attacked them?
We were never splitting up again, damn it.
As I ran through the trees, jumping over tree roots the thickness of my thighs and dodging those chunga death traps, I said a prayer to any god that would hear me it wasn’t another jaguar.
Surviving one was a miracle. It was million to one odds we’d survive two.
My shoulders sagged with relief when Marley came into view, a distorted mixture of awe and horror flickering over her features as she stared off at something in the distance.
Nikki and I both rumbled to a stop, bracketing Marley on both sides to face the danger as a unit.
Tessa and Brooks remained at the base of the tree where they’d huddled for hours, eyes wide and fearful.
They stared, as we did now at the surprising figure of Madman—and a man so covered in dirt and blood he was almost unrecognizable, except for the shredded pilot’s uniform hanging off his body.
I blinked in realization. Five days in the jungle hadn’t been kind to Captain Adams—he’d lost at least fifteen pounds and held the haunted eyes of a hunted man.
Marley’s eyes filled with tears as she raced to greet her friend, wrapping her arms around him in a tight hold despite his obvious discomfort.
I knew nothing about the man other than a thirty-second greeting and smile when I’d walked on board, but judging by Captain Adams’ body language now, this was not the man she thought he was.
She pulled back from him and stared up at Madman, who’d tucked his arms into his leather jacket in a flimsy attempt at nonchalance.
“You left me. Us,” she corrected with a disapproving glare. “You could have said goodbye.”
Our resident criminal nodded his stubbled head with exaggerated slowness.
“I could have,” he admitted, offering no apology or penance.
He always had his emotions locked down so tightly, and this moment was no different.
“But I came back.” He jutted his chin outward as if that was enough of an explanation.
“I came back because you are owed an explanation from this coward.”
Green eyes shot sharp daggers in Madman’s direction, but he didn’t flinch. Instead, he pressed two large palms onto each one of the captain’s shoulders and shoved him to the dirt so roughly, his knee smashed against a knotted tree root with a sharp snap.
“Maddox!” Marley exclaimed in indignation. “What the fuck?”
“Tell her.” Madman kicked him in the tailbone, nearly toppling him over into a bed of spiky ferns. “Tell her what you told me.”
The broken man looked up at her with watery, bloodshot eyes, the gaze in them almost pleading.
Nikki was as still as a statue beside me. I hadn’t even heard him breathe. Jamie was his colleague, too. Did he fall in line with Marley’s thinking, or was he smart enough to see the guilt written into every cut of Jamie’s body?
“I’m so sorry.” His apology was wheezed out on a raspy release of air, like he’d spent the whole night screaming and his vocal cords had nothing left to give.
“I’m sorry, Marley. Rescue isn’t—” He broke off, tears streaming down his face in muddy tracks to his chin.
“Rescue isn’t coming, Marley. The only way out is through. ”
What. The. Fuck.