Tempt (Take It Off #3)(15)
Author: Cambria Hebert

He gave a small shrug. “At first it was hard. But they visited often and I spent all the holidays and vacations at home.”

It made me wonder how wealthy his family was to afford all of that. ‘Course, I didn’t say it because that would be rude.

“Looking back,” he continued, drawing my attention. “It was a good experience. Made me who I am today.”

Something deep inside me whispered he was better than most.

I leaned back in my seat and looked up at the cobalt sky. Stars were starting to bloom above and I knew out here, away from city lights and distractions, lying under nothing but the moon and the stars would be incredible. They would spread across the sky like the ocean spread across the Atlantic.

I could hear the loud sounds of the cicadas taking over the wilderness behind us; not even the crashing waves could drown out their song. The gentle ocean breeze tugged at my hair, pulling loose strands out of the braid and whipping them against my cheek.

If I closed my eyes and didn’t look at the downed plane, it would be easy to believe this was just a vacation, a getaway from life. Not essentially a prison.

“What about you?” Nash’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Did you go to college?”

“For a year.” I admitted. “I hated it. My mother tried to make me keep going, telling me I couldn’t do anything without a degree.” I sighed. “I told her a degree wouldn’t help me if I couldn’t decide what I wanted the degree in. It would have been a waste of money for me to keep going and taking classes when I didn’t even know if they would help me earn whatever degree I might decide on.”

“I can see your point.”

“I felt caged sitting in a classroom all day. I hated it. Listening to someone drone on and on about stuff they thought I should know. Who really cares what x plus y equals? No one. Who cares what the elements on the periodic table mean? I feel like there are a lot of different kinds of smart out there and not all of them come from a textbook.”

“I hear some passion,” he said, his tone laced with amusement.

I snorted. “That’d be the first time anyone’s ever said that.”

He glanced at me. “Are you serious?”

I nodded. “Back home, I’m the family member who drifts through life. The girl who doesn’t finish school and who gets let go from her job. I’m the girl no one wants to date and everyone thinks is broken.”

“People think you’re broken?” he echoed.

Had I really just said all that? The fumes from the bonfire must have been going to my head. “Not all of me. Just certain parts.”

I clamped my lips shut. Yep. The fumes were really getting to me.

“What parts?” he asked, his voice turning serious and a little hard.

“Forget it,” I said, waving him away, trying not to die of embarrassment.

He caught my arm in a solid grip. “Tell me.”

“No.”

His green eyes glittered with the glow from the fire and his dark curls cast shadows across the side of his face. His jaw looked like rock-hard granite as it jutted out in anger because I refused to answer his question. His fingers tightened around me a little more and I prepared to yank away my arm.

But that’s when we heard it.

An odd sort of sound.

Almost like the rhythm of drums.

Our eyes collided, both of us not daring to speak as we listened and scarcely breathed. He didn’t release my wrist and I was suddenly glad because I was scared. It seemed strange to me that my first thought after realizing we may not be alone as we originally thought wasn’t relief or excitement.

It was fear.

The kind of slippery fear that brushed against you like too-long grass in an empty field. The kind of fear that haunted you, that never quite went away, and you walked around feeling spooked and uneasy every second of every day. Sure, sometimes I let my head overrule my gut and I’d learned some hard lessons that way. But this time… this time my gut was screaming so loudly that I couldn’t have ignored it if I tried.

The pounding of the drums continued. It was an intense and driving sound. It made my belly feel funny. And then came another sound. The sound of a loud yell or cry. I jerked and sank down in my seat.

Nash worked quickly, extinguishing the fire. We sat there for a long time, listening to the call of the drums, staring up at the starlit sky, and wondering just what in the hell was on this island with us.

7

I awoke grumpy and with a kink in my neck. Memories of last night pushed through my foul mood, and I realized we had far bigger problems. The sounds from last night, the drums… it could only mean one thing.

We weren’t alone on this island.

Given the inhabited and native condition of this island, the idea of not being alone here gave me the willies. Who knew what else was living here? As if freefalling from the sky, crashing on a beach, having Nash stitch up my head with a needle, and having no food, water, or means of getting help wasn’t scary enough, now we had to worry about some weird tribe of pigmies with machetes and weird beads in their dreads coming to make us some weird sacrifice in a pagan ritual. (What? I was dehydrated and hungry. You’d think strange things too.)

God. My life was so turning into one of those bad made-for-TV movies.

I was drained. After coming back to the plane last night, we sat huddled inside, listening for more strange sounds, both alert and ready for something bad to happen. I guess at some point, exhaustion won out and we both fell asleep.

Tossing off the blanket, I stretched out my wicked sore body and then went quickly into the cockpit. I knew it was probably a waste of time, but I had to try again.

I retrieved the broken radio from where Nash kicked it and sat down, tucking it into my lap. I pressed the buttons. I shook it around beside my ear, listening for—well, I don’t know what I was listening for—and holding the microphone up to my mouth and calling for help.

Of course, nothing happened.

Well, actually, something did happen.

My panic got worse.

I tossed down the radio moved from the front of the plane, going back to where Nash was still sleeping. Nash was in one of the airline seats, his dark lashes fanned out over the dark circles that smudged beneath his eyes. He couldn’t have been comfortable. He looked way too big for the chair he was slumped in.

He almost looked boyish sleeping like that. His hair was mussed, his body appeared boneless where it rested, and he had this air of innocence that wrapped around him, making my heart squeeze. However, the boyish comparisons ended the second my gaze settled on his lips. They were full and well-defined. The lower lip was curved and almost pouty, giving me an overwhelming urge to peruse them slowly with my own mouth. Just looking at them, thinking of how it felt to have those lips scorch my skin, made my body tingle.