Chapter 22 #2
“Medical research doesn’t happen like people think it does,” he says.
“Hospitals, labs, trial registries, grant databases, journals. They all have a piece of the puzzle, but the systems don’t talk.
So a patient can do everything right. Their doctor can do everything right.
And somewhere else, the information that could change everything exists without ever reaching them in time. ”
His eyes are on the sand now, and I stop cutting my toast because there’s only one place this conversation can go.
“In time for who?” I ask.
“For me, it was my brother.” Jake works his jaw.
“By the time we found the study, he’d been dead three months.
It wouldn’t have saved him. Probably. That’s what everyone kept saying, like probably was supposed to make me feel less insane.
The information existed, but it didn’t reach us until it was useless.
” He gives a shaky laugh and hides behind a sip from his oversized mug.
“So I gave my fucked-up brain someplace productive to put its obsessive impulses.”
“Jesus,” I say. “I’d probably build a company out of spite too.”
“Thank you.” He tips the mug toward me. “Totally normal founder origin story.”
His eyes shine before he looks away.
“Tell me about your art,” he says. “Please.”
“Oh.” My lie is waiting for me, polished and hollow. “Yeah. Well.”
I could give him Marcus Wilder again. The artist. The beautiful fake. The man who’s only as deep as whatever answers I put into Alistair’s Kink List.
But Jake telling me something real makes me hesitate.
“I’m sorry,” I say instead. “About your brother.”
His gaze stays on me for another second, long enough for me to know he noticed what I didn’t answer. Then his fingers return to the keyboard, slower this time. “Thanks.”
The charge settles out of the air, leaving lapping waves, cooling breakfast, and the soft percussion of Jake’s typing. I sit beside him while the morning does its best impression of peace. After last night, it’s a goddamn miracle the impression holds.
It’s because of Jake. He makes the island feel less like a trap without ever pretending it isn’t one. Maybe because he knows the rules. Maybe because he sees more than he says.
Useful too, my fucked-up brain supplies.
I hate that it isn’t wrong.
The sun climbs high enough to shrink the umbrella shadows around our feet. Jake works while I pretend not to watch him, and every so often one of us says something that makes the other laugh.
No billionaire sex cult here. We could almost be two guys hanging out instead of one guy undercover and another tangled in Alistair’s web.
We stay there until Jake’s fingers begin hesitating over the keys, each pause longer than the last, before he curses and gives up altogether.
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
“Uhh. Sounds ominously dangerous.”
“Not for you. Though I’m counting on this just being me stating the obvious.” Jake’s fingers rest on the keyboard, still for the first time since he opened the laptop. “Did you read my Kink List?”
I laugh because it has to be the setup for a punchline. “Let’s just say I skimmed it.”
“You stared at me all night, but sure, Marky. You skimmed.”
My heart gives one warning thud, followed by the whole drumline kicking in.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because I read yours.”
“Figured Alistair passed it around like a résumé.”
“It didn’t read like a résumé to me.”
“What did it read like?”
He finally looks at me. “Like someone who might be compatible with the kind of dynamic I need.”
Okay. What the fuck are we talking about?
I don’t answer fast enough, and something in his face changes. It’s small, but suddenly he’s waiting for me in a way that sends a cold little thrill through my gut.
“Dynamic?” I finally manage.
“Protocol. Service.”
Service.
The words all sound loaded. I’ve never been asked out by a guy before, but I’m pretty sure flirting usually involves fewer words that sound like legally binding contracts. When he shuts his laptop, his hand lingers on the lid, like everything he’s trying not to say is fucking overflowing.
I try to keep from drowning by kicking toward shore with a joke. “Got all that from a checklist, huh?”
“Not just the list,” Jake says, eyes on the ocean. “You pay attention.”
“Everyone seems pretty on edge here.”
“That’s not what I mean.” His fingers tighten slightly on the laptop. “Everyone else watches to see who’s winning. You watch to see who’s okay. When I stopped you from volunteering last night, you listened,” he adds. “You didn’t even ask why.”
“I didn’t want to end up strapped to a table.”
“Sure.” He finally looks at me. “But you cared whether the people who did were enjoying it. You care if something’s too much, don’t you?
” While my mind tries to find footing, he keeps going.
“I’ve never seen you on the apps. Or the forums. Or anywhere I’d expect to find someone with answers like yours. ”
I should shut this down. Make a joke. Retreat to the version of us where he’s the tech founder with a tragic backstory and I’m the charming liar with avocado toast. But Jake is watching me like my next answer matters to more than his pride, and I just stare at him.
“I don’t know you,” he says. “I know that. But I know me. I know what I need, and maybe…” His mouth tightens, fighting the admission right up until he loses. “Maybe you could give it to me.”
The words could sound playful if not for his body.
Jake’s gaze drops to my arm where it rests between us, then moves slowly back to my face, and I’m suddenly back on the path during his island tour, when his hand closed around my bicep and Marcus Wilder flexed on instinct.
I’d called it useful then, because useful was the only part of my reaction I could stand.
Jake keeps one hand braced on the closed laptop while the other lifts toward my arm. He stops half an inch from touching me. Waiting.
Jake is waiting on me.
I came out here to ask for his help, so I nod.
If letting him touch me gets me there, that’s all this is.
Letting his fingers close around my bicep.
Letting myself feel whatever his veiled request knocked loose.
Only this time, when my arm tightens under his hand, I’m not sure who I’m showing off for.
His thumb drags over the muscle, slow and testing, and his inhale catches exactly like it did before. But that’s not where he stops.
He slides off his lounge chair and onto his knees in the sand between us. He leans in and presses his mouth to the inside of my bicep, lips parted against my skin, breath trembling and hot. His nose drags against my arm like he’s taking me in before his tongue follows.
Heat shoots straight down my spine.
“Oh,” I say, which is not one of my better lies.
His mouth closes gently over the muscle, just enough pressure to draw my skin taut between his teeth. Jake makes a low sound at the flex, and I forget the beach, the game, and how cameras are probably hidden everywhere.
He looks up from my arm.
There’s sand on his knees, sun in his hair, and a waiting look on his face that should not be what finally pulls the truth straight out of me.
“I need your help,” I say softly.
The request comes out wrong. Too bare. Nothing like the careful, padded version I’d rehearsed for the moment I finally asked him to corroborate my story.
Jake looks almost relieved to be asked. “Anything.”
“I’m not really here to play the game.”
“I was piecing that together,” he says, his fingers massaging my arm right where his mouth had been. “The office. The Wi-Fi. Your deeply suspicious interest in napkins.”
Despite everything, I almost smile.
“I’m serious, Jake. I’m trying to end this.”
His fingers tighten around my arm, but the rest of him goes still. I try to read it as relief, the reaction of someone finally being handed a chance to take down the bastard putting him through all of this, but his body won’t support the lie.
“Whatever you need from me, I’ll do it,” he says.
I believe him.
Then his grip loosens. “But I only have one test left.”
I stare at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“I am.”
“Jake, you don’t have to win to get off this island. Together we could—”
“Mr. Quinn?”
Samuel’s voice cuts in from behind me.
Jake and I both jolt. His face returns to innocence, and he’s brushing sand from his knees before Samuel reaches the umbrella.
“What is it?” Jake asks.
Samuel keeps his gaze fixed ahead, and I can only wonder what the hell it looked like from back there. I don’t even know what it was, and I was sitting right fucking here.
“Mr. Blackwood would like a word,” Samuel says.
Jake doesn’t look at me, which is how I know he wants to.
“Of course.” He tucks his laptop beneath his arm, but before following Samuel, he leans toward me. “Think about what I said. Hear me out. Give me a chance.”
A chance.
To complete his third test?
To help me like he said he would?
To be… compatible?
It’s the last one that makes my cock strain against my briefs, answering a question I don’t even understand.