CHAPTER SEVEN GIVE THEM THE TEASE
The drone arrived over breakfast carrying a red envelope and the voice of Unfiltered Wild's host.
“Congratulations, Grant and Cody. Audience metrics identify you as the most compelling partnership in program history.”
Grant threw a coconut shell at it. The drone climbed out of range.
The night in the sea cave had altered Grant's relationship with the machines. Before, they had been irritants. Now every lens seemed capable of converting Cody's terror into a trailer.
“They will use the rescue,” he said.
“Probably.” Cody's mouth tightened. “The contract gives them emergency footage.”
“Not your face afterward.”
“You cannot protect me from every image.”
“I can object.”
Cody set down his breakfast. “Then object beside me, not for me.”
Grant heard the distinction. Rescue instinct said stand in front. Partnership required standing at the same line.
“What do you want them to use?”
“The rescue. The truth of it. Not a slow-motion montage that makes me look helpless for loving you.”
“Agreed.”
Cody touched his knee. “That is how we beat them. Choice by choice.”
The recording continued. “Complete today's chemistry course and win a raised bed, hot meals for forty-eight hours, and a pressurized shower.”
Cody opened the envelope. “Mud crawl. Blindfold navigation. Partner carry. Rope wall. Final suspended hold.”
Grant took the card. At the bottom, in cheerful red type, were two words: CLOTHING PROHIBITED.
“No.”
“We are already naked.”
“That isn't the point.”
“I know.” Cody's playful expression disappeared. “The point is whether they decide what our nakedness means.”
“They want us performing sex for ratings.”
“Then we don't give them sex. We give them chemistry.”
Grant glanced toward the cameras. “Difference?”
“Sex is ours. Chemistry is what happens when you tell me not to do something.” Cody stepped close, put one finger beneath Grant's chin, and tilted it. “We show them exactly enough to make them desperate. Then we take the bed into the cave.”
Grant's resistance lasted until he imagined Cody beneath a hot shower.
“We set the limits,” he said.
“Together.”
The course began in a trench of warm jungle mud. They crawled side by side under a lattice of vines while cameras tracked from both ends. Cody moved faster. Grant caught his ankle and dragged him backward.
“Sabotage,” Cody said.
“Team-building.”
The course had been designed to create compromising angles, but it underestimated their ability to turn spectacle into competition.
They moved fast enough that cameras missed the obvious shots.
Grant used Cody's shoulder as a step. Cody vaulted Grant's back.
At one station, they had to pass a wooden ring from one body to the other without using their hands.
“They are subtle,” Grant said.
“We are subtler.”
Cody maneuvered the ring from his neck across Grant's linked arms, down their pressed chests, and onto Grant's thigh. The crowd watching remotely would see skin, concentration, and two men laughing too hard to perform desire convincingly.
At the finish of the station, Cody kissed Grant's muddy nose.
That spontaneous affection felt more intimate than any pose the producers had planned.
At the exit, Grant rolled Cody through the mud until no sun-darkened skin remained visible. Cody retaliated by smearing two handprints down Grant's chest, then lower, grinning at the abrupt change in Grant's breathing.
The blindfold came next.
Cody covered his eyes, turned three times, and placed both hands on Grant's shoulders. The route crossed stepping stones, a hanging bridge, and a field of buried pressure plates.
“Guide me,” Cody said.
Grant talked him forward. Cody's palms traveled whenever footing changed: shoulders to chest, chest to waist, waist to hips. On a narrow beam, he moved directly behind Grant and kept one hand at Grant's stomach, the other lower against his thigh.
“Necessary?” Grant asked.
“Navigation.”
“You know where north is.”
“I know where everything is.”
They cleared the field without a penalty.
The partner carry required Grant to take Cody over his shoulder through the mud. Halfway across, Cody slipped his hands down Grant's back and whispered suggestions that made Grant miss the next flag entirely.
For the return, Cody crouched. “Get on.”
“I outweigh you.”
“And I saved you.”
Grant climbed onto his back. Cody stood, legs shaking once, then carried him the full distance while Grant's arms locked around his chest. The display of strength silenced the producers long enough for Grant to kiss the nape of Cody's neck.
The rope wall was twenty feet high. Cody climbed Grant's body from behind to reach the first line, thighs locking around Grant's waist. Grant supported him with one hand under each hip.
“The audience is getting its money's worth,” Cody murmured.
“We are giving it away.”
“The bed had better be excellent.”
At the top, Cody hauled Grant beside him. They crossed the platform and dropped into the final station: one hanging ring and a clock set for three minutes.
Neither man's feet could touch the ground.
Grant took the ring with both hands. Cody climbed him, wrapped arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist, and lifted his feet just as the timer started.
Every camera closed in.
At thirty seconds, the position was intimate.
At ninety, it was obscene.
Grant's arms burned. Cody adjusted higher, then slid back into place with a slow movement that nearly made Grant lose the ring.
“Still want the shower?” Cody whispered.
“Stop moving.”
“I'm slipping.”
“You're lying.”
“Two minutes,” the host announced.
Cody's mouth found Grant's ear. “Think about hot water.”
“I'm thinking about throwing you into it.”
“Think about what comes after.”
Grant's grip tightened. The timer crawled to zero.
A siren sounded. Cody kissed him before Grant could lower them, one hand tangled in Grant's hair, the other gripping his shoulder. Grant held both their weights and kissed back until a producer shouted through the speaker that the live feed had cut away.
“Cowards,” Cody said.
The prize crate arrived by zip line.
They ate roasted chicken with their hands and made indecent noises over potatoes. Then they hauled the collapsible bed and shower equipment to the grotto. Grant rigged the water reservoir beneath the warm spring; Cody assembled the frame where sunlight fell through the ceiling.
They saved half the food for the next day despite the temptation to eat everything. Grant divided portions with the knife. Cody licked salt from Grant's thumb and accepted the smaller share only after Grant proved both were equal.
“You count calories on dates?” Cody asked.
“This is not a date.”
“We are naked, sharing a candlelit chicken in a volcanic cave.”
“There is no candle.”
“Sun shaft. More dramatic.”
Grant looked around at the bed, the waterfall, and Cody sitting cross-legged with a potato in one hand. “Worst date I have ever had.”
“You said that in Denver.”
“Then you improved it.”
Cody's expression warmed. “Give me an hour.”
The first pressurized stream struck Cody's shoulders. Mud spiraled down his body.
“Worth it?” he asked.
Grant stepped beneath the water with him. “Ask me later.”
He washed Cody from the hairline down, using soap that smelled faintly of cedar. Cody returned the care, scrubbing mud from Grant's chest and kissing each newly clean patch. Steam gathered against the volcanic walls.
They reached the bed wet.
The mattress squeaked when Cody pushed Grant onto it. Grant laughed, caught Cody's waist, and reversed them. The softness made every movement unfamiliar after weeks of sand and stone. They tested it thoroughly, traded the lead, and ruined the clean sheets before they had fully dried.
Later, they returned to the shower. Cody stood beneath the stream with his head tipped back while Grant washed him slowly enough to make the task a promise.
Outside, the fixed cameras recorded an empty camp. The microphones at the cave entrance captured only the waterfall and, occasionally, an echo that made the sound technician remove his headphones.
They emerged near midnight.
The drone's lens angled toward their satisfied faces.
Cody blew it a kiss. Grant carried the empty soap dish like a trophy.