Page 15

He slipped into the trees and ran up the track, seizing the challenge, grateful for the sting of rain as he traversed the plateau, keeping him from overheating.
The goat track down to Turtle Beach tested his agility and the area was reassuringly empty. Logan hadn’t murdered her.
Dom decided to seek counselling when he got back to New York. This fixation he had developed wasn’t healthy.
He started climbing back up and almost ignored the sign labeled Spit, but his feet took him that direction before he’d consciously recollected Logan’s assertion that Eve had gone ahead.
A strange tingle hit him as he began jogging that direction. It was the same subconscious polarity that oriented him in an unfamiliar city back to his hotel or car. The same tingle that said, She’s here.
Just as he began to think he’d been bitten by a hallucinogenic spider, he heard a feminine voice swear a blistering and imaginative blue streak.
Relief crashed over him like a surge of surf, followed by a disorienting anger. Could she not tell time? Now they would arrive back at the resort together and have to make stupid explanations—
He came around a bend in the path and saw she was hurt. She was using a stick of driftwood as a cane. Her foot was out of her shoe with only her toes tucked into it as she limped-slid it forward. She was watching where she put her feet against the various roots protruding across the path, continuing to spill robust curses.
Her ankle was the size of a grapefruit and grossly discolored.
His heart stopped.
“Did something bite you?” That was bad. In this country, that could be very, very bad.
She snapped her head up. Her expression blanked before she cried indignantly to the sky, “Really? This is the help you send me?”
“Eve,” he said through his teeth. “Did something sting or bite you?”
“No. I turned my ankle. It’s sprained.”
He looked again and realized the bulge was actually an ice pack secured with—
“Is that a condom?”
“News flash, they can be used for other things. I took an ibuprofen, but I can’t walk on this foot. Can you go tell the boats to wait?”
“I’m sure they’ll do a head count.” He was not sure of that at all, or of its accuracy, given how people had been jumping on and off each other’s boats. “The kid in the takeaway shack won’t leave until everyone else does.” He hoped.
Dom moved to her side and slipped his arm around her. They both jolted at the electrical charge that zapped like an entire winter’s worth of static between them.
She glared at him. He glared back.
She shrugged him off and tried to continue walking without holding onto him.
“Don’t be stupid, Eve. You can’t do this without—”
“Don’t call me stupid.” She squared to face him, chin set at a belligerent angle.
Screw it. They could stand here and fight, missing the last boat, or he could duck, which he did, and throw her over his shoulder, which he also did.
“Don’t you dare!” she screamed as he straightened from grabbing her shoe. The day pack she wore slumped to knock into the top of his ass.
“Give me that.” He reached back to tug it free of her flailing arms and looped it over his free shoulder so the sack was against his chest.
“Put me down you freaking animal.” She kicked her feet and braced a hand against his spine, trying to straighten.
“Watch your head,” he commanded as he started back the way he’d come.
“Put me down.” She slapped his ass hard enough to sting.
“Bad news, Evie. I like that.” He did. Not because he had a kinky streak—although he did have a small one—but more because finally, finally, he was discharging some of his pent-up sexual energy. He wanted a tussle and a pillow fight and sex. Raw, dirty, endless sex.