Body Games (A Games Novel) (14 page)

“Just on the mouth,” he whispered. “Caress your lips with mine, and then taste you with my tongue to see if you taste as good as you look.”

I shivered again.

Abruptly, his expression changed. He examined me, and his hands briskly rubbed my goose bump-covered arms. “You cold? You’re always shivering when I see you.”

“Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but we
are
naked.”

His mouth crooked into a smile. “Should be a cool one tonight. I hope Kip’s keeping you warm in that shelter.”

I grimaced. “I’m lucky if I get any shelter.”

Jendan continued to rub my arms. I didn’t know if it was because he thought it was warming me or if he just wanted to touch me. “So…what do you do if you get cold?”

“Um, huddle under a leaf and wait for dawn?”

He thought for a moment longer, then said, “Do you want to stay out here with me tonight?”

I frowned. “Won’t Sunnie be worried?”

He shook his head. “She never wonders where I’ve gone. Half the time, I don’t think she even notices other people are on the island. She thinks it’s her own private TV show.” Jendan chuckled and rubbed my arm again. “I’ll drop the roots off with her and come back with a blanket, and we can bunk down. I hate the thought of you freezing and Kip being no help.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be a bother.”

“It’s no bother at all,” Jendan said softly. He leaned in, and for a brief moment, I thought - hoped - that he was going to kiss me. I tilted my face up, half hopeful, half afraid. At the last moment, though, he only tweaked a lock of my stringy, salt-water tangled hair. “Be back in about an hour.”

“I’ll head to camp and boil water and then be back, too.”

“See you soon,” he told me, and then turned, heading back to his camp.

I waved, pushing down the ridiculous giddiness I felt. I was going to cuddle with Jendan tonight. Jendan and a blanket. This was my lucky day. With that happy thought in mind, I headed back to my own camp.

The fire was nothing but embers, Kip curled up in the shelter. Swallowing my irritation at his uselessness, I stoked the fire again, gathered some wood, and then put the water on. I tapped my feet impatiently as the sun went down and I waited for the water to boil, but it was finally ready. I poured it into our two canteens - okay, so I was having a weak moment - and then headed to the lean-to and put Kip’s newly filled bottle next to his leg. “I’m going to go and see if I can find more taro roots,” I told him.

He rolled over in the shelter, taking up more room. “It’s dark.”

“Yeah, but I’m hungry. Don’t wait up.”

“Whatever,” he said, brushing sand off of one of my woven palm frond mats again. “Did you fill my water?”

“I did. Back later.” I headed off without giving Kip another thought. Why think about that guy when there was sexy Jendan with a blanket waiting for me in the jungle?

Mind you, it was a sexily platonic sort of relationship, but I’d still take it.

When I returned to the waterfall safely after stumbling through the dark, Jendan was sitting at our normal meeting rock, the blanket folded in his arms. He looked over at me as I approached, and the sleepy smile he gave me in the fading light made my heart do a crazy little flip. “You came back.”

“Of course I did. You have a blanket.”

“Figures. I find a pretty girl on the island, and she only wants me for my linens.” Jendan got to his feet, shaking out his blanket. “Story of my life.”

“That’s not entirely true,” I said lightly. “I also want your body heat.”

“Well in that case, come over here.” Jendan said, heading a short distance away from the falls, to the base of the forked tree.

My heart skipped a beat as he approached it. Had he figured out that I’d already found Pandora’s Box and dug it up? Was he bringing me here to confront me? Did he want me to share it with him? What if that compromised my game? I realized I was using Jendan’s attraction to me and still not being completely honest with him on my end, but I wasn’t ready to expose myself (ha, the irony) and risk being voted out.

But he sat at the base of the roots, right where they came together and formed a cradle, and then patted the ground next to him. “Come on.”

Oh. Well, now I just felt stupid. And overly suspicious of him, when I was the one being the sneak. “You sure your partner won’t be mad?”

“Nope. She’s already asleep and will be until dawn. I went back and the fire was out.” He grimaced. “Don’t suppose you’d share some water with me while you’re here?”

I giggled. If I thought my camp was dysfunctional, it was nothing compared to poor Jendan’s. At least Kip would tend the fire. Sometimes. “Of course. As long as we’re sharing blankets.”

He lifted one edge of the blanket like a cape, indicating I should get under his arm. His naked silhouette was revealed, all lean muscle and tanned skin. God, that looked inviting. It wasn’t just cuddling with Jendan - though that had a lot of appeal all on its own - it was the warmth he offered. I hadn’t spent one warm night since I’d gotten to the island. Being constantly naked was chilly, especially at night. Today had been overcast all day, and the wind was up, and I’d never felt truly warm. The offer of that blanket was more than I could resist.

So I slid in next to Jendan, sat down, and let him put his arm around my shoulders. The blanket was long enough that I could tuck around my front, and then we were both cocooned in warmth and shared body heat.

And man, it was nice.

I closed my eyes for a moment, just enjoying the warmth coming off of Jendan, warmth that the blanket trapped against my skin. “This is heaven.”

“It is pretty damn nice.” I felt him shift against me, his arm flexing. “You warm enough?”

“I think so,” I told him, giving the blanket a little tug to pull it closer. “I can’t thank you enough for sharing your blanket with me.”

“What are friends for?” His hand squeezed my shoulder a little on the word
friends
.

I was reminded of our conversation earlier that day. “Are we okay with being just friends?”

“Absolutely. I’d never push myself on someone that wasn’t interested.”

I looked up at Jendan’s face in the darkness, unable to make out more than the lines of his jaw and his eyes. “It’s not that I’m not interested,” I admitted. “It’s that the timing is rotten for both of us.”

“I know.” He rubbed my shoulder, staring off into the trees that rustled and moved around us. “Don’t worry about it. I didn’t invite you out here to try and take advantage of you.” He glanced back down at me, and I saw his face move in a hint of a grin. “I invited you out here because I needed your water.”

I snorted and offered him my canteen. “You prince, you.”

He chuckled, but still took the canteen from my hand, unscrewing the lid and taking several large gulps. Once he’d drank his fill, he closed it, handed it back to me, and then rested his head against the tree we leaned back against. “Man, that was good. Thank you.”

I leaned against him, relaxing a bit. “Glad I could help.”

We sat in silence, just enjoying the warmth of each other’s body. At least, I assumed that was what Jendan was doing. I couldn’t help but notice that my breast was rubbing up against his side, and his big, strong thigh was pressed against my own, his arm around my shoulders. And we were both totally naked.

It made for a lot of distraction, at least on my end.

“You got quiet,” Jendan murmured, distracting me. “I’d say penny for your thoughts, but I don’t have one. Coconut shell?”

“Nothing important,” I told him.
Liar liar, pants on fire.
“Just trying to think ahead in the game a little.”

“Mmm. I was thinking about how strange it is that we’re both naked, pressed up against each other, attracted to each other, and yet no one’s making a move.”

I laughed. “Okay, you caught me. I was thinking the same thing.”

“So it’s not just weird for me? Good.”

“I don’t know if ‘weird’ is the right way to phrase it. Maybe ‘extremely, extremely platonic’ is,” I teased. “I don’t think I’ve ever had such a platonic relationship.”

“Lucky me,” he said dryly.

I laughed at his disgruntled tone, my hand automatically going to his knee. Just that small touch sent a charge straight through my body, and I gasped to feel his warm skin against my fingers. Okay, I was not doing so good with this whole ‘platonic’ thing. Unable to help myself, my hand slid a little higher up his thigh, exploring his muscles. I heard him suck in a breath and looked up into the darkness at his face. He was gazing down at me, his expression intense.

We shifted a little closer. My breast pressed against his arm, and a little sigh of contentment – and, okay, arousal – slipped out of my throat.

“You good?” he asked, voice husky.

“I’m awesome,” I said. “Never felt better.” And it was true. There was sand between my toes, and the remnants of a sunburn fading on my shoulders and I hadn’t washed my hair in over a week. I felt great. Sitting next to Jendan, cuddled under a blanket, I could honestly say that I was utterly content.

And, okay, starting to get turned on.

For one, he had big thigh muscles. Big, rock-hard thighs, and I felt them flex every time he shifted in his seat. His arm occasionally moved, and my breast would brush up against it. My nipples were aching with the need to be touched, but I closed my eyes and tried not to think about those sorts of things. Instead, I put my cheek on his shoulder and tried to think about sleep.

“I like being here with you, you know,” he murmured, and his voice was so husky and deep that a shiver rippled through me.

“You do?”

“Yeah. You always give one hundred percent. And you’re willing to help me out even though I haven’t done much to help you.”

“It’s because you have a blanket,” I teased, though I felt a little shaky at his soft words.

“You’ve been helping me since before that,” he said with a nudge, and I opened my eyes to see him staring down at me. “I feel like we’re in this together, even though we’re on different teams.”

And his mouth crooked into that little half smile that sent my hormones racing.

And although it was a terrible idea, I was going to kiss him. I kind of had to. I wanted to know what I was missing out on. The moment was impossible to resist. I leaned in, and as I did, he leaned closer to me. His nose brushed against my cheek, then the tip of my own nose. His mouth was so close to mine that I could smell a hint of coconut on his breath, could see the stubble along his strong jaw, and—

Something crashed through the underbrush nearby.

We immediately broke apart, and I jerked to my feet. “What was that?”

Jendan stood and pushed the blanket into my hands. “Hold onto this. I’ll check it out.”

Before he could step forward, though, someone pushed through the bushes and stepped into the trees near us. Someone with curly, shoulder length hair and cussed when he stepped on a rock.

Kip. My partner.

I sighed in annoyance, tucking the blanket around my body. Was there no escaping the jerk? “Kip, what are you doing here?”

“
I
should be asking that, Annabelle. After all, I’m the one you abandoned to come snuggle with the enemy.”

I said nothing. I
had
abandoned him to come and snuggle with the enemy. But the enemy was just so darn sexy.

“Hey man,” Jendan said, his tone of voice easy. “Annabelle said she was cold at night so I offered to share my blanket with her. It’s no big deal.”

But Kip ignored him, stomping over to my side. “I can’t believe you,” he hissed. “There are other people on this island and you didn’t tell me?”

I refused to be guilted by my partner. “You might have noticed if you ever set foot from camp.”

“I might have known if you’d have said something,” Kip snarled. “Did you ever think I was tired of just talking with you?”

I ignored the stab of guilt I felt. It hadn’t occurred to me that Kip wanted to meet Sunnie and Jendan, mostly because Kip was so unpleasant I couldn’t wait to get away from him. Maybe he’d have been more pleasant if he was around other people. I supposed we could have pooled our resources…

“Or did you decide to whore your way into a few more allies? Is that why I wasn’t invited to hang out?” Kip snarled.

“Hey,” growled an angry male voice, and I was shocked to see Jendan step in front of Kip and push him away from me before he could grab my arm and shake me again. “Watch what you fucking say,” Jendan told Kip. “Annabelle’s done nothing wrong.”

“Oh, trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve fucked her,” Kip said with a sneer. “I know how shitty she is in bed.”

Annnnd my humiliation was now complete. I wanted to shrink into the trees and disappear.

“You need to turn around and leave,” Jendan said in a soft voice to Kip. He didn’t look back at me cowering behind him. “If you keep saying that shit, I’m going to mess your face up with my fists. Understand?”

“Fine, fine, whatever. Just tell my partner,” he sneered the word, “that I’d like to have a nice talk with her on the beach when she gets done here twisting you around her finger so you can do her bidding.” With one final look of disgust at me, Kip turned and stalked back into the trees, heading for our camp.