by Jenna Chase
Carlos
I’d been taking careful measurements and assessing what looked like it could be turned into a reasonable air strip for most of the morning.
In what seemed like the few moments that I’d walked from one end of the point to the open beach at the other side, a huge bank of foreboding black clouds had arrived from nowhere.
From above, the island looked like a huge, flat frying pan with a semi-circular coral reef that encased most of it like a halo. I stood on the tip of what would be the frying pan’s handle and looked like a sensible airstrip for a small plane to land. The centre of the island rose no more than some fifteen feet above sea level, but it also contained dense tropical bush, giving it a look of having a central plateau.
From my study of the information that had been supplied by the owners of the lease, a few villagers lived on the opposite side of the island from where the proposed resort was sited and from where I now stood.
As I looked out across the lagoon, I could see a massive wall of black moving towards me.
I’d never seen anything like it. A swirling mass of lighter, grey cloud swam in front of the foreboding wall of black. The sun still shone on the light turquoise water and the white sand of the beach, making the entire scene look like some kind of surreal over-exposed photograph.
The colour faded as the sun receded behind the ever increasing cloud mass. I took off my glasses and stowed them in my satchel.
I spied Julia walking towards me from her bungalow which was nestled in the part of the island where the pan handle met the pan.
With the incoming and increasing wind now whipping at the baggy material of her trousers, they hid little of the curves around her hips and legs. It dawned on me for the first time that I may have made a huge mistake not climbing aboard the chopper with Jim.
“You need to head in,” Julia said as she reached me, her cheeks flushed pink from the exertion of her walk across the sandy headland. “The rain isn’t far away and there’s a huge storm sitting behind that bank of cloud.”
“Do they always arrive this quickly?” I decided that I’d better take advice. The weather had a habit of being changeable in Auckland, but I’d never seen a bank of cloud roll in at this kind of speed. Already the wind was beginning to whistle around us and I could see the outline of coconut palms leaning away from the incoming dark mass of cloud.
Julia shrugged. “This one seems to be moving quickly. That’s why Jim shot through this morning.”
No wonder I’d been unable to get anyone to bring me over here. Jim must be some kind of maverick if he was even willing to bring me with with the threat of those clouds looming in the background. I had a new respect for the man.
“The wind’s picking up,” Julia said, “we need to get inside before it gets any worse.”
As I turned into the wind with Julia to return to her bungalow, a sudden gust blew a fine layer of sand into my eyes.
I blinked trying to clear the grit and I heard a yelp from Julia.
“Shit!” she said.
Blinking, my vision cleared and I saw that she had a graze on her forehead that was bleeding.
“What the hell happened?” I asked.
She held a hand to her head, “Come on we need to get out of the open. The wind’s going to turn anything it can get hold of into a lethal weapon.”
Julia strode out toward her bungalow, redoubling her speed.
“What hit you?”
“A husk from one of the palms. It’s nothing. Just a bit of a scrape. I’ll clean it up when we’re safely in the house.”
I wasn’t going to hang around asking questions anymore. The wind seemed to be doubling in speed and that huge bank of cloud was pressing down on us. The turquoise lagoon that looked like a warm swimming pool when I arrived this morning had turned into a terrifying, frothing cauldron of green water. Suddenly, the comfort and security of my apartment in Auckland seemed a very long way away.
Carlos
I couldn’t believe the difference in the bungalow. Wooden shutters that I hadn’t noticed before were now secured over the front windows that faced the sea. All the furniture that had been sitting on the veranda had been removed and it looked as if anything that couldn’t be tied or nailed down had been put away somewhere else.
Julia closed the front door behind us and then proceeded to lift a large piece of wood and slip it into two brackets that sat either side of the door. Effectively preventing the door from opening.
“Is that necessary?” I asked.
“Wind’s blowing in off the sea,” she said as she wiped another trickle of blood from her face with the back of her hand. “If those brackets don’t hold, then there’s a hammer and nails over there on the cabinet.” She took a good look at me, “You can use a hammer and nails, right?”
“Of course,” I huffed.
“From what I understand,” she said with a half smile, “you spend your days on the end of a phone and a computer. Not that either of those are going to be any use to us when this storm hits.”
I didn’t like the sound of that. “What, you mean we’ll be cut off communication wise?”
“There’s not much in the way of cell phone reception around here in case you hadn’t noticed.”
In fact I hadn’t, but I did wonder why my phone remained silent the entire time I’d been here.
“I have a generator for my power that’s likely to crap out when the wind really gets up.”
“What’s the wind got to do with your generator?”
“It’ll run out of diesel and neither of us will be going out in the wind to refuel it,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“And internet connections? Surely you’ve got a laptop with a battery?”
“I have,” she said as she pulled a tissue from a box on the counter and pressed it against her forehead. “But I rely on satellite for my internet connection and with the atmospherics its unlikely that we’ll have any kind of a connection until the bad weather passes.”
As if on cue, the sound of rain began to hit the side of the bungalow.
“Here we go,” Julia said.
“Don’t you think you should do something about that cut on your face?” I said as I reached out and clasped Julia’s face between my hands. “Here, let me take a look.” Julia’s entire body went rigid the moment I touched her face and I could have sworn that a tingle of the static electricity that hung in the air outside had passed between us.
“What are you now a doctor?” she gasped.
I wasn’t a doctor, but there was something about Julia that drove me to investigate her luscious curves. An adult game of doctors and nurses could easily be on the agenda. As far as I could ascertain, I had at least the next twenty-four hours to try and find out what would drive a woman as beautiful and capable as Julia to lock herself up here on her own away from the rest of the world.
Julia
“Now hold still.” Carlos was in his element, standing over me in my tiny bathroom and giving orders. He’d run a small basin of water, donned a set of latex medical gloves and was now bathing the cut on my head.
The smell of antiseptic hung in the air around us, but it wasn’t enough to mask the underlying masculine scent of Carlos.
I noted a hint of something woody and warm. Maybe cinnamon. I couldn’t be sure it had been so long since I’d noticed or even been affected by the scent of a man.
My body began to tremble as Carlos, with tender care, dried the site of the wound and then fixed a small plaster over the offending cut.
“There,” he said, sounding pleased with himself. He ripped off the latex gloves and then took my chin between his forefinger and thumb and tipped my head so he could finally inspect his handiwork. He swept a lock of my hair away with his other hand, placing it with care behind my ear.
My entire body began to tremble.
“I think you’ll live,” Carlos said as he looked down into my eyes. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had treated me wit
h this much care. It was a silly little cut that I wouldn’t even have bothered about, but the way that Carlos had bathed it and taken care of me did something to my insides that I couldn’t describe.
“My mother used to kiss it better when I hurt myself,” he said.
I reached out to grip the hand basin. I could feel the world beginning to spin. Maybe that coconut frond had hit me a hell of a lot harder than I thought.
He was toying with me. I knew he was toying with me and I was powerless to resist him. I felt like a possum sat in a car’s headlights. Those eyes of his—intense pools of blue that held me captive under his gaze.
Carlos’ hand slipped around my waist. Could he sense that I was about to slide to the floor of the bathroom without support?
“Would you like me to kiss it better, Julia?” he asked as he pulled me closer to him.
“Yes,” I heard myself say. I couldn’t be thinking straight. I didn’t kiss strange men—especially strange men I was likely to be locked inside a cabin with for at least the next twenty-four hours.
His lips were on mine in an instant.
Now I couldn’t think. All I could do was feel.
My body reacted to the touch of his lips. As if on auto-pilot, my hands found their way up around the back of his strong neck and my fingers wound their way into his short, cropped hair.
Carlos’ tongue slipped into my mouth and I moaned.
He slid his hands down to my butt cheeks and pulled me tight against his hard body. I could feel the length of his erect cock and something inside of me snapped. Years of pent up frustration and desire flooded my body.
The wind howled outside and an almighty crash shook the little bungalow’s foundations.
“What the fuck was that?” Carlos yelled above the sound of the howling gale outside.
“Could be anything,” I panted as I broke away from the hold that he had on my out-of-control body.
“Do we need to check?”
I shook my head. “No. We’re not going outside until the storm passes.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously,” I said as I tried to squeeze my curves past the bulk of his body. I needed to get a little space between me and Carlos before I did anything that I regretted. I retreated to the other room and wondered how the hell I was going to avoid getting naked with this man in the next twenty-four hours.
CHAPTER THREE
Carlos
I looked at my watch. It was just after 10pm. I’d been on this island for more than twelve hours and locked inside this tiny bungalow for almost half of that time.
It sounded as if a 747 engine was blasting the front of the bungalow. There would be an occasional ‘thud’ or smashing sound as something hit the side of the small building.
Despite the terrifying conditions outside, Julia remained scarily calm.
I’d watched her prepare dinner for the two of us and helped in the best way that I could. I didn’t prepare food, so I wasn’t a lot of assistance.
She’d sat across the tiny table from me and I fantasised about being a piece of mango, or pineapple as I’d watched her consume the tropical fruits.
We continued to dance around the chemistry that we both knew was seething between us and neither of us had mentioned the interlude in the bathroom.
The longer I spent locked inside this tiny space with this woman, the more obsessed I was becoming with what drove her to live this kind of isolated life.
“Don’t you miss people?” I eventually asked.
“Not really,” she said, “people have always let me down and I see enough of the villagers and people like Jim. I’m still connected to the outside world.”
“Not at the moment,” I said as another piece of something battered itself against the side of the bungalow. There was an almighty crash, the door flew open and all hell broke loose. I felt as if I was sitting in the middle of a turbo-charged washing machine.
Julia lunged for the door and began trying to push it back against the pounding wind and rain.
An explosion of noise surrounded us making it impossible to communicate. I could see that she was yelling something and then I remembered the hammer and nails on the cupboard.
In a few seconds we were soaking and the wind and rain continued to howl into the small space. I knew if we didn’t get the door closed, the entire building was likely to be ripped of its foundations. How the hell the roof hadn’t exploded off by now I didn’t know.
Together we managed to push the door closed, despite the incredible strength of the battering wind and rain. The force of the storm had pushed one of the brackets from the wall.
Once we had the door closed, Julia grabbed the piece of wood that had been across the door way from where it had landed against the side of the cupboard. She was hammering it across the door again before I’d even begun to think of a solution.
“You’ve done this before?”
“On the odd occasion,” she said as she continued to swing a hammer like a pro hammer-hand.
“How the hell do you do this on your own?” I asked.
The back windows will have blown out,” Julia said as if it was something that happened every day. “It evens up the pressure. Otherwise we’d never have gotten the door closed.”
And here was I, thinking she needed the brute strength of a man around. How wrong could I be?
“Right, that should hold it,” she said in a satisfied tone after she’d hammered the last nail in.
She left me standing in the middle of the sodden room, while she went and sorted out windows at the back of the building.
For the first time in my life, I had to admit that I was way out of my depth here, in so many ways.
Julia
There was little chance of me getting any sleep with the way the wind continued to howl around the bungalow. I knew if the door blew in again, we’d have to make a run for it and spend the rest of the night in the concrete block storage shed. I wasn’t going to make that call yet, but I certainly wasn’t going to try and settle into bed for the night.
Aside from which, I didn’t want to be separated from Carlos. He might have no idea how to cope with this kind of weather and, if I wanted to get some sleep, that meant I’d have to entice him into my bed.
I knew he wouldn’t turn me down, but the idea of even trying to sleep beside him… Well, I knew that was some kind of a pipe dream.
The longer I stayed trapped in the same room as him, the more out of control my longing and desire. I couldn’t get out of my mind the wonderful long emails that he’d written to me. Had he been seducing me from afar for all this time?
I began to shiver. We were both soaked to the skin. Now the adrenal rush had subsided, I knew we needed to get warm and dry again.
What I called the living room was awash with debris and water from the storm. The only dry place in the bungalow happened to be my bedroom or the bathroom. I knew we couldn’t hole up on the tiled floor in the bathroom until the storm passed.
The universe was conspiring against me.
“We need to get warm and dry,” I said trying hard not to look at the way Carlos’ soaked t-shirt seemed to have become translucent. It had moulded itself to the muscles of his chest and stomach like a second skin.
I could feel the heat of my own longing beginning to burn between my legs.
Desire glittered from Carlos’ eyes as he followed my every movement around the room like a hungry predator. We’d said nothing about the kiss in the bathroom. Despite the fact we could write long correspondence to each other, we’d become strangely shy since we kissed. But now, in the wake of the burst of activity and adrenaline, all I wanted to do was lean up against the heat of his body.
I was tired.
Tired of running from men and tired of being alone.
As if he’d somehow read my thoughts, Carlos picked me up and carried me into my bedroom.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world to allow him to peel the sodden cotton from
my body.
“You have the most beautiful curves,” he murmured as the soft caress of his whiskers tickled the sensitive skin around my throat and his hands explored my trembling body.
To hell with it, I thought, as I peeled off his soaking t-shirt. He gasped as my hands brushed the taught muscles of his abdomen.
“I’ve wanted to do this all day,” I finally admitted.
The deep sound of Carlos’ laugh rumbled through the tiny bedroom. “Why didn’t you just say?” He said as he began to shrug himself out of the balance of his wet clothes.
“I’ve not been with a man for a very long time,” I whispered.
“I’ll be gentle with you, then,” he said as he cupped my face in his hands and smothered my smile with his lips.
Carlos
I don’t know quite when I fell in love with Julia, it was somewhere between the last few emails she’d sent me outlining her daily routines on the island and the moment she’d picked up that hammer and belted those nails into that doorframe.
The fact that she didn’t need me in her life made her all the more attractive to me. I could sense she was a survivor and I knew I wasn’t rushing in here to rescue a damsel in distress—far from it—Julia was the most capable woman I’d ever had the pleasure to get to know.
Now I was planning to get to know her intimately.
The vision of her lying on the bed, her red hair contrasting with the bright green of the sheets and pillows, she looked like a Goddess lying in amongst the lush vegetation of her island home.
I was about to join her on the bed, when the lights flickered and everything went dark.
“What now?” I sighed as the room was plunged into darkness.
“Just the generator out of fuel,” she said in that level way she had of pointing out the facts.
“How the hell can you stay so calm?”
“Sit down,” she said and I heard her patting the bed, “before you hurt yourself.”