“Jesus Christ.” Hunter turned his face, pressing his lips into my hair. “I think my soul left me when you came around my dick.”
I wasn’t sure why that made me laugh, but it did. “I think I lost my mind for a minute there.”
He raised on his forearms, his gaze searching my eyes. I waited for him to climb off me and disappear outside to shower and wash off my stickiness as Phill had each time he finished.
Hunter dropped a long kiss on my forehead. It was such a gentle gesture after what we had done and the filthy promises he had made. If I wasn’t already lying down, I’d have swooned.
“I want to learn how else to make you lose your mind,” he said.
ChapterTwenty
Last night, I’d screamed or moaned various words, mostly praising, begging, or cursing. We’d made love—I shouldn’t call it that, it was more like I had joined a Cirque du Soleil show—several times as if we couldn’t satisfy our hunger for each other, confined only by our lust. I was afraid to ask where Hunter learned so much about sex and how in the world a man could be so limber. I made a mental note to do some stretching.
I had nestled beside Hunter in the bed, his arm wrapped around me. It seemed natural to press my body against his. I was content and relaxed, but my mind started navigating the ocean of uncertainty. Would I find closure if I followed Father’s sailing pipedream, spreading his ashes? Should I invite Hunter to do it with me? Would he agree? Or should I return to my old life of never-ending battles against AI or a fourteen-year-old Russian hacker and forget altogether about this idea?
I thought of the words on my father’s urn, “Follow me at your own risk.” I knew it was a farewell joke from him, but what if it was also a sign that he knew I would find his journals and he wanted me to follow his dream to experience and appreciate the world around me? He often said that I was spending an unhealthy amount of time indoors, staring at a monitor. His notes showed he hadn’t forgotten about his sailing plans because he had updated the boat types and routes within the last ten years. I couldn’t fathom why he never spoke of it. Was he afraid I would think he was out of his mind, or did my mother not want me to know? They hadn’t spent a day apart. Did he give up something so plainly vital to him just to be with her? What did she sacrifice to be with him? What would I sacrifice for love?
The early morning promised the day to be hot, with a little breeze and calmer waters. I rummaged through drawers of clean clothes, looking for a shirt. I pulled on my Mind the Gap T-shirt and buttoned up my jean shorts. Hunter, in all his naked glory, walked into the hut with breakfast, his hair wet from his morning swim. His bottom lip sported a minor bruise where I sank my teeth too hard yesterday. He slid a Plumeria flower behind my left ear, his fingers gently tracing the side of my face. “You do not know how often I thought of doing this.”
“I love it.” I smiled, touching the petals.
He offered me a mug, and I peered inside it. “No coffee?”
“Unfortunately, we are out. From now on, only orange juice or coconut water. And I know how much you love… let me think, what did you call it earlier… a turd-colored fruit?”
“Actually, I don’t mind coconut now.” Either my taste buds gave up being prejudiced against the flavor, or being with Hunter had cured their associations with my ex.
“I think you are overdressed.” He kissed me, his hand slipping up my thigh, and the tips of his fingers curling inside my shorts. “Your body is stunning. You should always be naked.”
“What if someone comes here?”
“Then we’ll get dressed.” He traced his tongue over my bottom lip, then nipped on it.
“And would you be able to focus on anything but sex if we were naked all the time?” I asked.
Hunter’s fingers made their way around the fabric and found my aching-for-attention center. “It doesn’t matter. I can’t focus when you are fully covered either.”
That morning, we didn’t do much island exploration. By lunchtime, Hunter once again was very familiar with every inch of my body. In the afternoon, we finally made it to John’s trap for broad investigation, but not ten minutes later, my butt was propped against a mossy rock, legs hooked around Hunter’s waist, his hot mouth on my neck while he slid in and out of me.
We took the rest of the week off, and spent it like we were on our honeymoon, barely talking aboutwork(aka treasure) and learning more about each other, having sex in every position I could and couldn’t imagine. In the mornings, Hunter dragged his bare ass out of bed and went for his swim, leaving me in sheets soaked with sweat and sex, my need satisfied. When sunlight crept deeper into the hut and the smell of wood burning filled the space, I finally rolled out of the bed. Dressed only in my bikini bottoms, I washed my face in ice-cold water, brushed my teeth and landed a kiss on Hunter’s shirtless back, tasting ocean salt on his skin. During breakfast, we didn’t bother with using separate plates—just one extra dish to wash—and shared our meal out of the same skillet and bowl. Hunter would burrow his face into my neck, palm my naked breast, and murmur dirty ideas he’d planned for us later in the day. This was our new routine. And I was in a tropical paradise.
Five days later we returned to the location entirely intending to finish what we had started. No sex. Not even touching. Till we were done with work for the day, of course.
“Where do we begin?” Hunter stood on the opposite side of the hole from me. The farther he was from me, the less I felt the gravitational force that pulled our bodies together.
“We need to keep our minds and eyes open for anything that is strong, hollow, alive, dead, Greek god related, and or could kill us,” I said, staring at the skull’s hollow expression. Poor guy died here alone. I hoped his death had been quick. A giant brown spider crawled out of John’s open jaw, and I stepped away from the trap, my shoulders shaking off the feeling of the spider’s eight legs on my skin. Cats and an army of lizards in the hut kept the spider population in check, but it was a different story here in the deep jungle.
“Are there any poisonous spiders on this island that could kill us?” I walked to a tree with a complicated web between two branches. Perhaps if there were (much to our regret), we had to search for a dark place like a cave where these spiders lived.
“I don’t think so,” Hunter said, “but it doesn’t mean there aren’t.” He tapped the machete we’d brought to cut a thick network of vines, ready to clear a new way for us to walk. The plan was to explore the overgrown and hard-to-travel places at the foot of the mountain, starting from John’s hole and going up north. With any luck, we would uncover another unexplored cave or a suspicious burial site with a tombstone or rock formation in the shape of something related to the riddles.
It was a man and a woman against a tropical wildness for the next nth hours. Well, it was more of a man against it and a woman trailing behind, appreciating the man. Hunter worked hard chopping branches and vines, and I carried a backpack with provisions we needed when it was time for a break. After several minutes, Hunter’s sweat-soaked T-shirt clung to his back, exposing the strength of his muscles and taking too much of my attention away from the treasure search. At some point, while admiring Hunter, I sighed so loud that he stopped and turned to look at me with a confused face.
“Are you okay back there?” Hunter pushed the bangs off his forehead, slicking his hair back. I loved it when he wore his hair like that, especially right now, when his face had a few days of stubble. He reminded me of Chris Hemsworth, and heat pooled at the base of my spine. A week ago, I couldn’t act on my desire, and now I could, but not right at this moment because we’d agreed to focus on our work first.
“Just thinking of how proud Edward would be of you. You kept your promise and made sure Holden’s family name will be forever in history as the discoverers of the Treasure of Lima,” I said, too embarrassed to admit the meaning behind my horny sigh.
Hunter eyed me briefly before turning back and breaking off a long aerial root that grew down from the branches of a tree that could be easily mistaken for a dense forest of lean trees.
