BOUND TO HAPPEN

by Alison Kent

  But somewhere between one breath and the next, she was the only one involved in the mouth-to-mouth contact. Anton had retreated. And so Lauren sat up, lifting her hips to release him, tamping down the urge to cry the minute he pulled free. This wasn't how this was supposed to end.

  He repaired his clothing, adjusted his still-hard penis inside his fatigues. And then he opened the passenger-side door and climbed from the Jeep. She had more to repair and adjust, but managed by the time he'd walked around to the driver's side and slid behind the wheel.

  He turned on the ignition, stared out the windshield as he asked, "You are still on the Pill, right?"

  A little late for that, wasn't it? "Yes. Don't worry. You won't be hearing the pitter patter of little feet nine months from now."

  "Good."

  The word punched her square in the stomach, making her want to curl over and retch.

  He shifted into first, let off the clutch, and the Jeep jerked from the cutaway back onto the main road. Anton had nothing else to say. He made the drive back to Belize City in silence, inside a Jeep that smelled of sex.

  Lauren stared out the partially opened window, welcoming the blowing rush of rain in her face. The fresh air was easier to breathe than the scent of desire gone wrong. The stinging drops pelting her skin were easier to withstand than the pain stabbing dagger-sharp in her belly.

  The rain forest they passed was easier to look at than the man at her side, who no longer had a heart.

  "Okay. I have a question."

  Having barely recovered from yesterday's rainy-day encounter with Ray, the next afternoon found Sydney sitting on the sundeck on the roof of the villa. She glanced from Kinsey, who sat in the twin to Sydney's own fan-back chair, to Poe, who relaxed in a matching cedar lounger, to Lauren, who did not relax where she sat in hers.

  Stereo speakers wired to the deck from the villa's main room played a recording of a local reggae band. The umbrella table was pulled close into the circle of the female four and loaded down with pineapple and starfruit, figs and mangoes, plums and tangerines, all which Auralie had picked up on the mainland.

  The men had gone fishing. And the women had joked all afternoon about keeping the cave warm while the cavemen were out spearing dinner. Except Lauren, who had wanted to spear Anton, a spearing of a sort that was not a sexual metaphor and was also not a joke.

  Actually the women were starving and waiting, fingers crossed, for the fresh fish that Auralie had promised to bake with bananas and limes and an incredibly spicy rice pilaf for dinner. Until then, the fruit—much of it rum-soaked at Lauren's insistence—would have to do. Washing it down with the leftover rum and a wee bit of Coke meant any inhibitions they'd brought to the deck had long since met an untimely fate.

  Stretching out her legs and wiggling her toes as she reached for a fig, Kinsey shot a sideways glance at Sydney. "Are you going to ask us your question, or are we supposed to snatch random answers out of the air?"

  Sydney wished she was facing all three of the others. She wanted them lined up, side by side, one, two, three, so she could get a look at their expressions when she dropped her bomb.

  As it was, she finished off a chunk of pineapple, licked her fingers clean, then shifted around to sit on one hip, making eye contact with each woman before asking, "Is there anyone here who hasn't had sex?"

  A moment of silence. And then…

  "You mean in our entire lives?" Kinsey asked, innocently disfiguring her fig. "Or while here on the island?"

  There was one in every bunch. "While here on the island, smarty-pants."

  Lauren frowned, bypassing the fruit she'd leaned forward to inspect and pouring herself another rum and Coke. "What kind of nosy question is that?"

  Make that two smarty-pants. "What do you mean, what kind of nosy question? How many kinds of nosy questions are there? It's just nosy."

  "You need to be more specific," Poe stated.

  Two smarty-pants and now a troublemaker. "How can I possibly be more specific?"

  "What, exactly, qualifies as sex?" Poe asked, intently considering the tines of the fork she held. "Are you specifically asking about intercourse? Or do you want to know about any bodily encounter? Say, kissing. Or grabbing hold of a tight male ass. And—" she pointed the fork toward Sydney "—why do you want to know?"

  "As far as what qualifies as sex…" Sydney arched a brow, narrowed an eye. She should've known this wouldn't be easy. Especially with the fuzzy state of all of their brains. "I vote for any bodily encounter." She had to. What she and Ray had done in the pagoda definitely counted as sex. And, oh, what sex it had been!

  "As for the why, well—" again she glanced at each of her friends "—I know one of you is having sex because I heard you. And it's been driving me crazy trying to figure out who it was. I don't know any of you the way I would need to know you to recognize your more, uh, intimate … giggles."

  Spearing a tangerine wedge with her fork, Poe turned her gaze on Sydney. "You don't know any of us biblically, you mean."

  As Poe poked the tangerine into her mouth, Lauren snorted. Then Kinsey giggled. Poe tried, but the sound was more of a throaty laugh.

  What a bunch of goobers! Sydney shook her head.

  "Pitiful, all of you. Pitiful and not even close. Try again. This time forget being silly. And you forget being such a putz," she said to Lauren. "All of you, try to imagine yourself in the throes of wild hedonistic passion. Maybe I can figure it out."

  Kinsey huffed, Lauren puffed, Poe blew the house down. All four women dissolved into hysterics.

  "Maybe it was a guy you heard giggling. Have you ever thought of that?"

  Sydney stopped to consider Kinsey's question and considered, too, the type of sound Ray made. He rarely made any. He came silently. As if it was important, he didn't reveal a hint of vulnerability. She frowned and wondered why she'd never realized that before.

  And then she wondered what part of him might be that vulnerable.

  "Yoo-hoo, Sydney?" Poe prodded.

  And Sydney blinked. "No, it's not a guy. Guys don't giggle."

  "Now, that's not exactly true," Kinsey said. "I once knew a guy who giggled. It wasn't a silly girlie type of giggle. It was more like he was laughing at being tickled." She shrugged. "I guess it's like that for some guys. Supersensitive to the touch once they come."

  As fuzzy as she was, Sydney checked to be sure she was on the other woman's wavelength. "You're talking about…"

  Kinsey nodded, reaching for her drink. "Their penis. The head, specifically. All those nerve endings and everything."

  "Come to think of it, pardon the pun, I did date a guy like that a few years ago." Poe now had pineapple, mango and plum stacked on her fork. "He loved blow jobs, but he never would get off that way. My tongue was unbearably delicious. He said the pleasure was almost painful."

  "Unbearably delicious? C'mon." Lauren snorted, then snorted again for good measure. "Guys think all sex is unbearably delicious. I don't think they could have sex without coming."

  "Oh, oh, oh." Kinsey raised her hand. "I read this book once on erotica. And the guy had learned to hold off so long that when he finally let go, he said his orgasm felt like it was ripping him in half. Very sexy."

  "Or very painful," Poe added.

  Sydney sighed, suddenly wishing Ray was here, instead of her girlfriends. Sexy was sounding very good, especially after yesterday's encounter. "Can you imagine being a man and never having a single worry that you were going to get off?"

  Poe double-sighed. "I don't know which is worse. Holding back to make sure your partner comes, or holding back because you're afraid your partner will leave you hanging."

  "Why would any woman hold back?" Lauren asked, her huffy attitude at full tilt. "I've never understood that. Unless, of course, her sexuality scares all of mankind."

  Perking up at Lauren's tone of voice, Sydney swore she was going to get to the bottom of what was going on with Ms. Hollister. "I don't think all women are as uninhibited
as you are lucky enough to be."

  "And that is wrong. Wrong, I tell you. We should all stand up and demand our sexual rights." Poe got to her feet, wobbling until she caught her balance by grabbing the back of her chair. "Men should not be the only ones having fun. And, whoa, but I think I'm over the legal limit here."

  "I don't think there's a legal limit on fruit, Poe," Kinsey said.

  "There should be when you've absorbed more rum than fiber." Crossing her ankles, Poe sank to the floor of the deck.

  "But back to Sydney's original question." Lauren had obviously been pondering the matter. "Why can't women be the aggressors? Why are men so sexually threatened by a woman who enjoys sex as much as they do?"

  Oh, now this was interesting, Sydney mused. Was it possible that it was sex, of all things, coming between Lauren and Anton? "That was a question, Lauren. That wasn't an answer."

  Lauren pouted. And, of course, huffed. "Haven't you ever heard of answering a question with a question?"

  "Sure. When the question is an answer." Sydney speared another pineapple chunk. "All you did was raise more questions."

  "You know, I really hate to be the dumbass here, but I didn't follow any of that," Poe said, now leaning on the seat of her lounger.

  "Well, it makes sense if you think about it." Here was where Sydney needed to step carefully. "I asked who here had been having sex. And Lauren asked why women can't be the aggressors. Which automatically leads me to believe that Lauren has aggressed."

  "Aggressed is not a word, Sydney." Kinsey upended her rum and Coke, frowning into the bottom of the empty glass.

  "Well, it should be." On a roll now, Sydney pried further. "C'mon, Lauren. Time to fess up."

  "Yes, as a matter of fact I have aggressed," Lauren admitted, not looking too happy about it at all.

  Before Sydney could dig even deeper, Poe raised a hand and said, "Me, too," to which Kinsey replied, "Me, three."

  Sydney looked from one woman to the next to the next. "Wow. I'm either impressed or envious."

  "Does that mean you and Ray aren't having sex? By your definition, of course," Poe asked with an amazing amount of impertinence for someone having trouble standing on her own two feet.

  "Yeah. Time for you to fess up, sister." Of course Lauren was equally bossy and brusque.

  "What about it, Sydney?" When Kinsey chimed in, Sydney knew the gig was up.

  She sighed. "Me, four."

  "We are such a bunch of sluts." Pushing back to her feet, Poe fluffed both hands through her hair. "Whoo-hoo!"

  "We are not sluts." Lauren punctuated her protest by thumping her glass on the arm of her chair. "We are Women on Vacation."

  Funny, Sydney mused, deciding that, fiber or no fiber, she, too, had reached her legal limit of rum-soaked fruit. "Women on Vacation. That sounds like it should be a movie title."

  Kinsey was still pondering her glass. "An X-rated movie title?"

  "Either that or a documentary." Sydney frowned, realizing she hadn't made any progress whatsoever. "But I still haven't figured out who it was I heard on the balcony."

  "Well, that's pretty obvious." Poe's hands went to her hips. "It was one of us."

  All four started laughing.

  "Do you think the guys are talking about sex?" Lauren asked with a faraway expression on her face.

  The expression worried Sydney. She was really beginning to be afraid things for the couple had gone downhill. "You mean sex with any of us or sex in general?"

  "I don't think guys talk about sex." That earned Kinsey a pelting of several chunks of fruit. "I mean, of course they talk about sex. But not the way we talk about sex. They don't talk about feelings. They talk about the way it … feels. All that ripe and plump and juicy and suction-as-hard-as-a-vacuum-hose talk."

  "Vacuum hose, my ass." Poe was winding up into rare Poe form. "I, for one, think we should act just like guys and talk about all that hard and swollen staff. I mean, does anything feel better than getting your hands on a really hard body? All those muscles and ripples and bulges?"

  "Yum-yum." Kinsey clapped. "That really did sound like something a guy would say. Good job, Poe."

  Sydney was starting to have way too much fun due to way too much rum. "I watched the guys playing beach Frisbee the other day. Unbelievable. Y'all should've gotten a look at those pecs and abs in action. Talk about drool!"

  "Ooh, ooh." Kinsey hopped up and down in her seat. "Naked beach Frisbee. Now that's something I would love to see."

  "I don't know," Lauren groused. "I'd think there'd be a lot of stuff wobbling around."

  "But we're thinking like guys here, remember?" Sydney said. "Don't they like to watch body parts bounce?"

  "They must because they do that bug-eyed thing any time they see a breast move." Poe took hold of the strings of her bikini top and set her chest to bouncing.

  "Oh, no kidding," Lauren said, filling her glass again with even more rum and less Coke than before. "I think they prefer a good jiggle beneath a sweater more than a set of twirling pasties."

  "I don't know." Kinsey shook her head. "Have you ever seen a group of guys at a strip club? They definitely seem to be under the impression that the less clothing, the more skin and, as much twirling they can get, the better."

  "And how many strip clubs have you been to?" Sydney asked.

  Kinsey's perky little nose went up in the air. "Enough to know I could do a better pole dance than half the strippers I've seen."

  "C'mon, sweetie. Let's do it." Poe stepped up onto the seat of the cedar lounger and began to shake her booty to the reggae rhythm, a rhythm that called for more of a figure-eight swivel than anything.

  Sydney rescued the platter of fruit, the bottle of rum and the remaining soda cans from the table, moving them to the deck beneath before Kinsey climbed on top. The umbrella was open, so she stayed on her knees, instead of standing upright. And then, like Poe, Kinsey got into the music with a sensuous bump and grind against the pole.

  And then Lauren was up and out of her chair, dancing for no one's entertainment but her own and taking off her clothes as she did. She stripped off her T-shirt, which left her wearing her shorts and a teeny-weeny bikini top, and twisted the material into a rope she worked down her back to her rump, then slid back and forth between her legs. All the while she tossed her head, her hair slapping back and forth like a braided whip.

  Sydney looked from one to the other to the next, all three of her friends exuding enough sexuality to seduce the entire western Caribbean's male population. Getting to her feet, she sighed.

  If she couldn't beat 'em she might as well join 'em.

  Returning from an evening spent fishing the north end of the island with Menga Duarte as their guide, Ray followed Anton, Doug and Jess along the path from the boat dock to the villa. Menga had taken the catch to Auralie to be cleaned and prepared for a late dinner.

  Ray had spent a good part of the fishing trip discussing housing options with Anton and Doug. Houston's real-estate market was hot with available spaces in dozens of prime locations around the city.

  Ray still wasn't sure if he wanted to buy loft space in one of the downtown area's renovated buildings similar to Lauren Hollister's. Or if he preferred to explore the possibilities of a place in one of the historic wards, like the house where Eric Haydon lived with Chloe Zuniga.

  Sydney lived in a Galleria area high-rise, complete with doorman and all the amenities. It wasn't Ray's scene, but Sydney certainly fit with the elegant surroundings. Ray was more a suburban kind of guy. Not necessarily the white-picket-fence type, but he liked the idea of sitting on a porch swing and watching the neighborhood kids play.

  He couldn't exactly picture Sydney sitting beside him. And that was okay. He wasn't looking to spend his life with Sydney Ford. He wasn't looking to do any more than enjoy her as a woman.

  Just as he wasn't looking to do any more than staying alive, making it through every mission he was called out for, minimizing collateral damage by getting in, get
ting the job done and getting himself and any victims out in one piece.

  That was the determination that drove him. And that would keep him out of trouble here on Coconut Caye. He knew well how to cover his backside. How to go into dangerous situations and emerge whole. Sydney Ford had the potential for causing a man serious distraction. Ray had been forced to learn to be indistractable.

  And a good thing, too, considering the sight that greeted the four men after climbing the stairs to the sundeck on top of the villa. It wasn't the scenery, though the gorgeous sunset and expanse of tropical foliage in one direction, the wide Caribbean sea in the other, sure made a hell of a backdrop for the four half-naked dancing women.

  The group could've put any men's club strip show to shame. Ray had been the first one to climb the circular staircase to the villa's roof. And now Jess came to a sudden stop on his right, Anton on his left. Doug nearly plowed into Ray's back before barging between him and Jess and coming to a halt.

  The music that had drawn them up to the sundeck was blaring from speakers mounted in weatherproof boxes in the four corners of the railing. Bob Marley singing "No Woman, No Cry." A sexy haunting sound that set an intoxicating mood. The scents of citrus and female bodies and rum hung in the air. He hadn't had a thing to drink, but was well on his way to being wasted.

  Poe stood on the seat of one of the loungers, her arms raised over her head, her head cast down, her hips swiveling in a belly dance made even more exotic by the low-slung sarong pants tied beneath her hipbones and showing off a helluva lot of her ivory skin. Her bikini top, in a matching peacock blue, barely covered her impressively visible assets. Off to Ray's side, Jess made a strangled sound.

  Kinsey was on her knees in the center of the cedar table, her pelvis thrust against the umbrella pole, her thighs on either side, doing exactly what she looked like she was doing. A pole dance. With her head tossed back, her shoulder-length hair nearly brushed the soles of her bare feet. Her eyes were closed, her face wearing an expression as sensual as her skimpy red thong and bandeau top. Doug, on Ray's other side, struggled to breathe.