Why is he shaking his head?
“No, we can’t.”
“Why not?” I ask, and I almost manage to make it sound like a reasonable question and not the plea it actually is. “It would be better if we forgot it happened…please.”
He pushes out a heavy breath and walks away. Then he turns back. “I think we might be attracted to one another,” he says. “In fact, there’s no doubt in my mind that we are. We’ve been thrown together in trying circumstances, so perhaps it isn’t all that surprising. We’re not in the real world right now. We’re operating differently. I didn’t mean for you to walk in on me…for you to see me. I didn’t want to go too far away, just in case, and I needed to…take care of…” He shrugs.
“Your morning erection.”
He nods. “Yep. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable around me.”
“I don’t. It’s fine. Guys do that.”
“Guys?” He lifts his brows. “It’s a guy thing?”
“Women do it too…but…do we really need to talk about this?” I groan. “It’s really embarrassing.”
“We do, Carla. You watched me jerk off. You liked it.”
I cover my face with my hand. “You make it sound like I’m a pervert or something.”
“You’re not, and neither am I. We’ve noticed one another out here.”
“Hard not to. You’re naked,” I tell him.
“And you may as well be.” He rubs a hand over his face. “We’re not thinking straight. We probably wouldn’t even look twice at each other back on the Mainland.”
“Exactly.” I giggle. It sounds shrill because I was kind of checking out his ass on the Mainland, so that isn’t true.
“Here’s the thing though. And this is important.” He turns to face me fully. “You can’t run like that, Carla.”
“I was embarrassed,” I say. “I needed to get away from?—”
“Do not run from me. Not ever!”
I open my mouth.
“Firstly, running blindly in the jungle can get you into all kinds of trouble.”
“I never thought of that.” I swallow thickly.
“And secondly, you almost sent my beast into hunt mode,” he says.
I stare at him. “Hunt mode?” I repeat it back because I need a second. “You weren’t going to hurt me, were you? You didn’t look like you wanted to hurt me. Did you want to hurt me?” I sound a little panicked.
The smile that crosses his face is the most unexpectedly devastating thing I have seen in a long time.
It knocks the air from me. He gets this dimple in his right cheek. His eyes dance.
He shakes his head. “I would never hurt you.” He turns deadly serious.
I get this weird feeling in my lower belly, and the throbbing starts back up between my legs.
“Okay,” I say slowly. “You didn’t want to hurt me. So what did you want to…um do?”
“I wanted to fuck you.” A pause. “My beast wanted me to take you. To push you to the ground and—” He stops. “He could smell that you were wet and ready for me. I had a hold on him, but only just. And then you went and ran, and my control slipped. Youwanted me, and I was a few seconds from taking everything you were offering.”
My mouth has fallen open. I make this weird noise that doesn’t pass as a word.
