Wicked Games (Games #1)(10)
Author: Jessica Clare

I laughed at that. “Well, Dean’s the biggest dick on this island, so he came to the right place.”

She grinned but the shrewd look returned. “Really? You two seemed cozy earlier. I noticed you were holding back in the reward challenge, too.”

She had noticed all of that? Crap, Lana was far more observant than I liked. “I thought it might be a little obvious if we placed in first.”

“It’s a genius plan,” Lana admitted. “When I saw you hesitating with that puzzle and then yelling at Dean, I thought you were pretty smart.”

“I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to anyone else,” I said hesitantly. That she’d pegged both Dean and me so fast made me nervous.

“Say anything?” Her face broadened into a smile, and I realized for the millionth time how beautiful every single woman on this island was. “I’m not going to say a word. I think the four of us would work better as allies.”

I squatted next to the fire, poking the giant log we’d thrown over it before the challenge to keep it smoldering. Sure enough, the flames had died down but the coals at the bottom were still red. It wouldn’t take much to get them hot again. “How are you going to carry this back?”

“Good question,” Lana said. “I don’t think we thought that far ahead. We were just desperate enough to try anything.”

I held out our boiling pot. “Dean and I haven’t had a chance to use this yet. We can put some coals into this to carry over to your camp.”

“That sounds good,” she said, and Lana paced around our small camp, as if taking notes. “Your shelter is amazing,” she gushed, leaning over it and examining where I’d woven the palm leaves together. “How did you get everything to hold together? I tried to build something but it fell apart the first night because of the wind.”

I gestured at the shelter and tried not to feel too smug. “I used my string bikini to hold it together.”

Lana gave me a startled look, then laughed again. “They are a little revealing,” she agreed, though I noticed she was currently wearing hers. “And a blanket, too. Nice. Will got fishhooks and I have some spices. What did you get?”

“I…” Oh lord, I really didn’t want to tell her about my peanut butter. “I got a jar of some sort of food, but I dropped it in the water before I even hit shore,” I said, making up the lie as I went along. “Pretty disappointing.”

She made sympathetic noises. “I’ll bet.”

Once she’d finished boiling the water, we filled the pot up with hot coals and carried it down the beach to their campsite, adding tinder to keep the fire going. Team Nine’s beach was situated a mile or so away and across a small inlet. Not too long, really. A quick check of their camp revealed what I’d suspected—it really sucked. No fire pit, no shelter, nothing. With Lana’s help, I set out creating a new fire for them, building the wood into a small pyramid and sending Lana to get tinder and other bits.

Dean and Will returned while we were building the fire, their arms full of fruit, and discussed where they’d found the fruit and the best places to find more. They seemed friendly enough, and when Will showed Dean the hooks, the men were determined to try to catch a fish. They spent most of the afternoon in the water while I helped Lana try and build a shelter similar to ours, though slightly bigger.

“It’s not as cozy as yours, but I don’t want to sleep snuggled up to Will unless it’s cold,” she said with a teasing note in her voice.

My throat froze at that. I wanted to point out that I’d originally built my shelter for me alone, but then that would reveal that the dislike Dean and I had affected wasn’t always pretend. So I changed topics. “Do you want to tear strips from your shirt to lash the frame together or should we use your bikini too?”

Lana wanted to keep her bikini, so we tore a few small strips from the bottom of the hem of her shirt that had been provided, and set about building the rest of the shelter. By the time the sun was going down, we had a decent shelter built, the fire was crackling and merry, and there was freshly boiled water, coconut, and the men had even managed to catch two tiny fish, which were split four ways. There was a ton of merry conversation over the meager dinner, about Lana’s overbearing Filipino parents, my job as a book reviewer, and laughing over how bad Dean and I had seemed the first day of challenges.

And when Lana brought up the alliance again, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. We agreed, all four of us placing our hands atop one another.

“To the end,” Lana said, her cat-eyes gleaming in the darkness. “Final four.”

“Final four,” Dean, Will and I agreed.

Chapter Seven

You know, on day one, I wanted to be here with any woman but Abby. Now, I can’t see anyone but her.—Dean Woodall, Day Six

“Are we sure that was the wisest decision?” I asked Dean as we walked back to our camp on the far end of the beach, our bellies (relatively) full and tired after a long day. The sun was down and the night air was getting chilly, which put the kibosh on our impromptu luau. I carried our cook pot in my arms again, a few coals flickering with fire at the bottom so we could rebuild our own. Dean walked beside me, his tall form shadowing mine, and we chatted as we headed back to our camp. “I mean,” I said, “I like Lana and Will but I still think they’re playing the game to win on their own and not win for us.”

“They’re not,” Dean agreed with me. “But as long as we go in aware of that, I think we’ll be fine. And we stand a better chance of making it to the end if we’re four-strong instead of just two. They’ll have our back and we’ll have theirs… at least until we get closer to the end.” On the moonlit beach, he looked over at me and grinned. “It’s pretty smart, really. No one will think anyone is stupid enough to ally with us.”

“We do seem to be a bad bet at the moment,” I teased, glancing over at him and feeling that curious body flush when he looked my way. I resisted the urge to smile at him, knowing that it would come out goofy and wrong, and oh-so-obvious as to how I was feeling. Heck, I felt like I was wearing my emotions on my chest as boldly as I wore my name.

I had a thing for my partner.

I had no clue how that had happened, either. One day I was throwing paint on him for yelling at me and the next I could think about nothing else but rubbing more bug lotion on his rock-hard muscles. Just a physical attraction, I told myself. Dean was by far the most attractive man on the island—tall, muscular, a beautiful smile, intelligent—but it could have also had something to do with the fact that he was the only man on the island, so to speak. At any rate, I was pretty sure it was one-sided, so the best thing to do would be to nip it in the bud. After all, there were a dozen hot women on this island, especially Lana. She was gorgeous and delicate and filled out her string bikini in ways that would have been embarrassing on me.

“Something on your mind?” Dean said as we stepped back into our own small camp, and I knelt next to the now-out fire to dump the red-hot coals. “You seem quiet.”

“Just tired,” I said, trying to keep a cheerful note in my voice.

Before I even asked, Dean was handing me tinder and dried leaves to stoke up the fire, and his fingers were brushing mine. The simple action made my stomach flutter, and to my embarrassment, my n**ples went hard.

“Cold?” Dean asked.

I grew even more flustered. Was he looking at my br**sts? I turned away from the fire on the pretense of gathering more wood. “A little.” My voice sounded strained. “They didn’t leave us much to wear,” I felt like I had to explain.

“Mmm,” Dean said, staring at the fire as I tossed more bits and small pieces of wood onto it to build it into a decent flame. “Can’t say I’m complaining.”

I had to laugh at that, relaxing a little. Dean was just being Dean, and I was making myself crazy over nothing. “Yeah, well, you’re not the one with your butt hanging out of a swimsuit the size of a hanky, either.”

“Think I should complain to Chip that if the production crew is truly equal opportunity, they’d put us in Speedos?”

Now that would be a sight. “You’d probably have an island revolt from the other guys,” I said, standing and brushing the sand off of my legs. “No straight man in his right mind would wear one of those things and expect to keep his pride intact. Now help me get some of this wood.” I chuckled at the mental image and moved over to the far side of camp for a big, heavy log. We kept one or two of them nearby to bank the fire, and I thought it might be good to do before morning, so we could cook some of our rice bright and early.

“So you don’t like Speedos, huh?”

“It’s not that I don’t like them,” I called back, dragging the log forward. “But look at professional swimmers. It’s hard to look straight in a Speedo, Dean. I think any guy that decides to shave his body, oil up and put on the equivalent of a man thong… well, I think he’s looking to impress other guys, if you know what I mean.”

“I do,” he said in a weird voice.

I turned back to the fire and Dean had an odd look on his face. “Something the matter?”

He glanced back at me and then stood, as if trying to shake it off. “No, I’m good. Ready to hit the sack?”

“Ready,” I said. With his help, we lay the heavy log over the fire and banked it for the evening. Dean picked up his blanket and shook it out, sending a spray of sand into the wind.

I glanced over at the small shelter at the edge of our camp, a safe distance away from the fire pit. We’d spent all day at Lana and Will’s camp, helping them build their shelter and fishing. Now, Lana and Will had a decent place to sleep and my partner didn’t. It somehow didn’t seem very fair. I realized Dean came to the same conclusion as he looked over at the snug shelter, and then began scanning the ground for a decent place to lay his blanket.

“We can both fit in there,” I blurted, surprising even myself. “I’m sure we can both fit.”

He seemed equally surprised at the offer. “Are you sure? It looks like it will only sleep one person.”

Well, of course it looked like that. I had built it for one person. But I was irritated that now I felt like an a**hole for being so petty as to build a shelter for one in the first place. “We can both fit and share the blanket. Come on.” When he hesitated a moment more, I added, “I don’t bite, but the sand fleas do. So either sleep out there and be miserable or crawl into bed with me, okay?”

He gestured at the small shelter. “After you, then.”

I knelt and crawled into the small shelter, suspecting that Dean was going to either change his mind or push the entire rickety thing down on me. Something. And to be honest, I totally wouldn’t blame him for doing it, either.

To my surprise, his head popped into the small lean-to a moment later, his broad shoulders barely clearing the tiny A-frame. Dean paused a moment, looking down at the shelter, no more than two (maybe two and a half) feet wide. “Damn, this is small.”