Trade (6 page)

Weatherly hadn’t had condoms. But
he hadn’t been marooned with a gorgeous blonde either.

Sholto checked the thigh pocket of
his pants. The ribbon of condoms was still there, safe in case they were
needed. If not, she need never know.

By the time she returned dragging
branches behind her he had woven an impressive pile of leaves. He got to his
feet and walked over to help. Tendrils of hair were damp, and her face was
flushed.

“I found a few strong sticks from
a different tree so didn’t bother with the bamboo.” She dropped all the branches
except one. “I’m sharpening the end to form a spike.” She slashed at the branch
with the lethal looking knife, then spiked it into the ground at a 45° angle.
She did the same with another few branches, forming two parallel lines, which
intersected at the top.

“Now all we have to do is fasten
this long stick across the top to form the roof. We’ll lash the leaves to the
sides and the shelter is done.”

Simple, straightforward, and
effective. “How will we fasten them?”

She pointed to a pile of leaves
awaiting processing. “We need to separate the midribs and tie them together. Coconut
leaves are very strong, we can use them to make twine.” As she spoke, she
started to strip the leaves.

Chapter
Six

He was a fast learner she’d give him that. He observed her
methods, and before long the shelter was complete.

“What’s next?”

“Food, water, and a thorough
investigation of the island.” The air was hot and humid. Her shirt was sticking
to her back, so she stripped down to her sleeveless T-shirt. The ocean looked inviting,
and right now all she wanted was to undress and go for a swim, but that could
wait. She picked up the bag and slung it over her shoulder, and jammed a hat on
her head. “Bring your machete.”

He walked next to her as they
checked the shoreline. “There are no predators on the island so we don’t need
to worry about our personal safety.” She glanced over. “Some of the other
islands have monitor lizards, but they never made this one. Food wise, we’ll
have to survive on fish, coconut and whatever else we can find.”

She noticed something half hidden
in a pile of detritus washed up by the waves, and detoured to it. “There’s a
plastic bottle.” She picked it up. It was a two-liter bottle—a soda bottle
which may have been discarded from a passing boat. It hadn’t been in the water
long, the plastic was still viable and it was intact. “We can use this.” She
shoved it into the bag.

Over the next half hour, they found
other things to add to their collection: an old piece of rope, nylon fibers
bleached and fraying from the sun’s glare. A thick shard of metal with a jagged
edge. A large, flat shell, with a mother-of-pearl interior.

Her throat was parched, and her
lips dry. “We need to find water.” Even though the hottest part of the day had
passed, the sun still beat down. She touched a hand to her exposed shoulders and
found them hot.
I shouldn’t have taken off my shirt.
Her sensitive skin
already felt itchy under the sun’s glare.

“You should cover those with
something.” He started to unbutton his shirt, then took it off. “Here, put this
over you.”

“You need that to protect you.”

“Too late.” He stopped, leaving
her no option but to stop too. His skin, unlike hers, was tanned. “I won’t
burn. I never do and right now you need this more than I do.” He draped the
shirt over her shoulders.

She breathed in his scent. He was
close enough to touch. “I thought maybe they’d airbrushed your abs on for the
movie,” she murmured.

“Nope. I earned these, all eight
of them.” He took her hand and placed it on his rippling stomach. “See? A
hundred percent real.”

Resisting him was going to be
completely impossible. There was no point in even trying. Besides, what reason
did she have to deny herself something is she so desperately wanted? It wasn’t
love—it could never be love, not with a man like Sholto. But she’d liked him
once. Once, they’d been friends. And the look in his eyes, the way his body
leaned in to hers assured her the attraction was mutual. So she let her fingers
do what they wanted. They traced every muscle, and when she was done she
flattened her palm over his belly button.

He was so still it was as though
he was carved from granite. He made no move, and didn’t even seem to be
breathing. Eventually, she looked up into his eyes. The teasing expression had
vanished. His emerald eyes blazed with heat. “Be careful, Max. I might want to
touch you back.”

“I might want you to.” It was an
invitation—a blatant invitation.

Still he made no move. “I won’t
stop at a stroke of your stomach.” His voice was deep, his tone dangerous. “If
I start to touch you, I won’t stop. I won’t be able to.” He took a step back. “So
unless you want to be sharing your body with me for the next nine days, I
suggest you don’t touch me again.”

Her hand had fallen to her side
when he moved. She looked at his shoulders, his broad chest, the strong column
of his neck. Then let her gaze drift further to his obvious erection. “You want
me.”

He made a noise closer to a growl
than a word. “Damn right I want you. But I’m not an animal. I can hold my
impulses in check.”

“I’m not sure I can,” she
whispered. She took a step forward and snaked an arm around his waist. “I’m
having a hard time fighting my attraction to you. The way I see it, what
happens on the island stays on the island.”

His fingertips stroked her neck.

She tilted her face up. Her hat
tumbled from her head onto the sand. “That feels—”

“Stop talking.” His mouth lowered
and claimed hers.

Her lips parted on a sigh. His
tongue slid over hers, taking the moment from tender to passionate in a
heartbeat. Heat bloomed in her stomach—snaking tendrils to her sensitive
nipples that pressed against his chest—and down to between her legs. She
wrapped her arms around his neck, speared her fingers through his hair, feeling
it soft and springy under her fingertips. She wanted to get naked and fuck him
on the sand.

After a few explosive moments, he
pulled away. “We need to find water and food before the sun goes down.” He
rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip. “We would have had more time if you hadn’t
made me make the damn shelter.”

“You’re right.”

“I’m always right.”

“Huh.” She felt as though she was
burning up from the inside. He looked cool and relaxed, as though the hard
bulge in his pants wasn’t affecting him at all. “I meant that you were right
about our mission for this afternoon, not about the shelter.” She picked her
hat up from the sand.

He reached for her hand. “Let’s
check the interior and see if we can find a source of fresh water.”

*****

Sholto wanted to bury his face between Max’s legs, but right
at this moment there were more important things to do than making her come.

Unfortunately his body didn’t seem
to agree.

He let go of her hand to push back
the thickening undergrowth and slash at the mass of vines hanging from a nearby
tree. A desperate sadness twisted his insides. All it had taken to switch Max
from reticent to willing was the sight of his body stripped. There had been
lust in her eyes, just like when she turned them from his image on screen to
him in the cinema.

She was just the same as every
woman at Caro’s party. They should form a support group or something and call
it
seduced by Damon Fitz and his awesome eight-pack
.

And this whole deal had come about
because some client wanted arm candy for her school reunion. He was a
commodity—bought and paid for. He mustn’t forget that.

His body and his looks had served
him well, and he’d been acting his whole life. At nine, he’d washed and ironed
his own school uniform and presented the illusion of a well-cared-for child at
the tiny Scottish village school. He’d kept the house clean, and shopped and
cooked to keep body and soul together for him and his mother. His acting was so
good, his family had stayed off the radar of the social services for years until
the one incident he couldn’t hide from the world.

He never invited friends home. But
when he was sixteen, he’d made a mistake that would haunt him for the rest of
his life. His teeth gritted at the memory.

There was a touch on his back. “Ants.”

He glanced over his shoulder to
see Max pointing into the undergrowth.

“There must be a food source
nearby.” She looked up into the trees. “Probably fruit.”

Sholto looked up. There were
things a native of every corner of the world knew. They recognized birds,
trees, flowers. They blended into their environment by understanding the
culture, by knowing it. When his mother had been committed he’d been sent to
live with her brother and his wife in Butterworth. Thrust into an alien
environment, he’d spent hours walking in nature, soaking in his surroundings,
noticing what was the same, and what was different, so he could adapt. His
accent had altered without conscious effort.

The same was true when he moved to
America—it was no accident that he tried for and won American roles on
television and now in film. In preparation for this trip, he’d poured over
pictures of Indonesian trees, animals and birds, informing and familiarizing
himself.

He scanned the trunk of a huge
tree, up into its wide, waxy leaves, to the oversized fruit suspended from its
branches. He pointed. “Jackfruit.” He slashed through the undergrowth to the
base of the tree. Half rotted carcasses of the giant fruit lay hidden in the
scrub at the tree’s base. The fruits within reach were green, but higher up
there were fruits gold and yellow.

“I’ll have to climb.” He stuck the
machete into the back of his belt, and clambered up the rough, grey bark.

“I’m impressed by your athletic
prowess.” Her tone was laced with teasing humor. “You’d make a great action
hero.”

“Stop looking at my ass and reach
up to take this.” He gripped a heavy fruit and slashed its stem with the
machete, then twisted to look down at Max.

Her arms were raised high to clasp
the fruit. From this angle, he could see right down the front of her shirt, to
the shine of sweat glistening between her breasts.

“Stop looking down my shirt.” Her
lips curved upwards.

“You started it.” With the fruit
deposited in her waiting arms, he edged down the tree to the ground.

“How did you know I was looking at
your ass?”

“Everyone looks at my ass.”

Her eyebrow rose. “Take this, will
you?”

He took the jackfruit from her
arms.

She swatted his arm. “You could be
accused of being too arrogant for your own good, you know.”

“You’re denying it?” He leaned in,
staring into her eyes.

Deep in the blue depths,
awareness—attraction bloomed to life. “I’m not denying it. You have a beautiful
body. It’s just a shame your head is out of proportion. I guess it’s always
been. You were just the same at school.”

“You thought that?” He remembered
it differently. “I was a kid totally out of my element. I guess I’ve been
acting a long time.”

“Well from the sidelines, you look
pretty popular.” She took the machete from him and started to slash deeper into
the forest’s interior. “I envied the way you manage to fit in—I was in that
school for years and never managed to captivate as you did.”

“You captivated me.”

She laughed.

“I’m serious. I remember sitting
next to you in chemistry class, mixing up all sorts of weird concoctions in
test tubes. You were witty, smart, and funny. I liked you a lot in school.”

“I liked you too.” She looked down
at the ground. “That’s why I could never understand why you were so cruel—why
you did what you did.”

He wanted to explain, but anything
he said now she wouldn’t believe.

“We found it.” She pointed ahead
with the machete. “Drop that jackfruit, superstar, and help me fill the water
bottles.”

*****

The jungle opened out into a small clearing, through the
middle of which ran a small stream. The ground close to the water was carpeted
in soft moss, and emerald-green grass. Max trailed the tips of her fingers in
the cool water—so clear she could see the pebble-strewn bottom. She tracked the
stream back to an outcropping of rocks. A small waterfall tumbled over the
rock, painting it black. She cupped her hand, and brought the water to
underneath her nose and smelled it.
Fresh
. She tasted it.
Clean
.

“It’s drinkable.” She tasted more
of the cool water. “We won’t die of thirst anyway.”

Sholto took the bottles from the
bag, and filled them. Then he laid them on the grass, and unfastened his belt.

Washing in clean, salt-free water
was much preferable to swimming in the sea. Their clothes would never dry
properly once dowsed in saltwater.

She slipped Sholto’s shirt from
her shoulders. Then she removed the tank beneath.

Sholto’s fingers stilled. His gaze
was on her body. She debated leaving her underwear on for modesty, but decided
against it. She wanted to be naked. Max breathed in, reached around her back,
and unfastened her bra.

He was so still it was as though
he was a part of the forest. She took off her boots. Undid the button at her
waist, and peeled off her pants. Then she hooked her fingers into the side of
her panties, and shimmied out of them. “Aren’t you coming for a swim?”

She stepped past him, into the
clear water.

Her heart was racing. The stream
wasn’t very deep, but the silky water lapped around her knees and as she
ventured further in, it covered her bottom and flowed around her waist. She
bent her knees, extended her arms, and dipped her chest and shoulders under the
water. As her heated body cooled, she sighed, and glanced over her shoulder.

Sholto had discarded his boots,
and shed his pants. Since he’d stripped off his shirt, she’d been distracted by
his chest, his back, his strong arms. He was more lean and rangy than buff and
built—his body was the sort of body an average guy could build with long hours
at the gym or working a physical job. His muscle definition was honed, and his
abs made him look as though he’d escaped from that movie about Sparta. But with
his pants off, the grooves at his hips were visible. She’d seen him on screen
wearing less, but this was different. He wasn’t a celluloid dream, but a man
made of flesh and blood. A man she could touch.

Max swallowed. “Come on in, it’s
lovely.” In the dappled light, he was so perfect she couldn’t draw her gaze
away. Her breath hitched as he shed his underwear and stood before her, totally
naked.

His cock jutted away from his
body, fully hard.

Her nipples, chilled by the water
and aroused by the sight of Sholto’s nakedness, pebbled. Desire twisted in her
stomach, and her sex tingled and throbbed. When he stepped into the water and
walked to her, she was breathing so fast her chest rose and fell rapidly.

He stopped. Close enough to touch.
To taste.