Tempt (Take It Off #3)(14)
Author: Cambria Hebert

Sex romp? What the hell was I thinking? I didn’t even know what a sex romp was. I bet he does.

I jumped at the unexpected thought.

“Ava?” he murmured, his voice and body still entirely too close. I skittered away like a nervous filly.

“Thank you,” I said, pulling my hair over my shoulder and quickly braiding the length of it. When I got to the end of the braid, I realized I didn’t have anything to tie it with. I went to release it and he stopped me.

“Wait.” He tore a strip off of the worn gray T-shirt he’d been wearing. He came close again, wrapping the scrap around the ends of my hair and tying it tightly into a bow. Then he stepped back to admire his craftiness.

“Thank you,” I said, reaching for my T-shirt, feeling way underdressed. I couldn’t help but notice the way his gaze lingered over my bare skin and on the triangles of my black bikini top.

He cleared his throat. “I’m going to go look around for wood for the bonfire.”

“I’ll help.” I moved our belongings farther up, closer to the plane, and then started looking around for wood. I wasn’t very successful, but I did manage to find a few things I thought would burn. Then I figured I would be more useful creating an area to actually burn the fire so I began to clear out a space in the pristine, white sand.

By the time I was finished, the sun was beginning to slip behind the horizon and I was covered in sand. I felt gross all over again. I dared a glance around me, noting that Nash was still nowhere in sight.

Leaving the bonfire site and the meager offerings I found to burn, I went down to the water, discarding my shorts and shirt. The water was cooler now than earlier because the sun wasn’t as hot, but it was still refreshing and felt great against my overheated skin.

A fish swam by my leg and I lunged at it, thinking I would capture it and make it dinner. Of course, all I ended up with was a mouthful of salt water.

I heard a yell and looked over my shoulder at Nash. He had his hands full of wood, and as I watched him, he dumped it onto the sand and jogged forward. I stood, wondering what the alarm was about, and then he stopped and put his hands on his hips.

I made my way out of the surf and walked up the sand to where he was standing. “What’s the matter?”

“I thought you had fallen,” he said, his gaze sweeping over my body. My nipples hardened and I fought the urge to cross my hands over my chest.

“I was trying to catch us a fish.”

He laughed. “With your bare hands?”

“At least I tried,” I snapped.

He patted me on the top of the head. “Thank you.”

I growled.

“Here,” he said, grinning, pulling his ratty gray T-shirt out of the back pocket of his shorts. “You can use it to dry off.”

“Thanks,” I said, accepting it and toweling off my arms. It smelled just like him. I wondered if my skin would bear his scent after I finished drying.

“You did good clearing a space,” he said and then got to work on the fire. He had the wood stacked in no time, and then I watched in fascination as he adeptly used two sticks to create a flame, which he then used some of the stuff (mostly foliage) as kindling and started what would be a very decent-sized fire.

“Where did you learn how to do that?” I asked.

“My abuelo taught me,” he replied, staring at the flames. “My grandfather,” he corrected. “He thought it would be good to teach me basic survival since I was going to be flying a plane.”

“Looks like it came in handy.”

Once the fire was in full swing, he disappeared toward the plane and I put my clothes back on. He returned with one of the plane chairs and sat it in the sand near the fire. Then he went back and got another one, sitting it right beside the first one.

It was like having a couch outside on the beach. I snickered.

“Beats getting eaten by sand fleas.”

I wrinkled my nose. “You’re right.”

We sat down as the smoke from the bonfire wafted up into the twilight sky and created a heady, thick smell in the air around us.

We sat there for a long time, watching what was left of the sunset, while I realized that our second day on this island passed without a single trace of anyone else. Not one airplane, not one boat, nothing.

It made me wonder what our chances of being found really were.

In truth, we didn’t even know where we were. We had no idea how close or far civilization could be. Suddenly, the theme song for Gilligan’s Island was playing through my head.

“Marianne or Ginger?” I asked him.

“What?”

“You ever see reruns of Gilligan’s Island?”

He laughed. “A couple.” He turned thoughtful. “I’m partial to blondes.”

Oh. Well.

Thank goodness it was getting dark because I knew I was blushing.

“What about you?” he asked after a minute.

“You want to know who I prefer?” I laughed.

He shook his head, the fire casting an orange glow over his features. “What kind of guys do you prefer?”

“I actually haven’t dated in a while.”

“What’s a while?”

“A couple years.”

He made a sound of disbelief.

“It’s true,” I said, shrugging. It really didn’t matter if he believed me or not.

“I don’t get it,” he said, sitting forward and leaning his elbows on his knees. “A girl like you—”

“What’s a girl like me?”

“Tall, blond hair, blue eyes, legs that go on for miles…” he said, glancing at me. “And you know you seem pretty cool too.”

“Or maybe I’m just an easy target for jerks.” The words came out before I could stop them. I didn’t look at him for a reaction. I just stared into the flickering red and orange flames.

“If someone hasn’t treated you right, he was well beyond a jerk,” he said, his voice taking on a steely tone.

I didn’t say anything. My past wasn’t something I cared to relive. “You don’t have a very thick accent for living in Puerto Rico.”

He went with the change of topic, thank the stars. “I went to high school and flight school in the States. I lost my accent somewhere along the line. My father lived in the States before he married my mother.”

“You went to, like, a private school?” I asked, curious.

“Yeah, my family wanted me to have a good education.”

“What was it like, being away from home?”