Blooming in the Wild

by Cathryn Cade

  “I’ll do it,” Joel offered. “No offense, but I can give you a few years.”

  Frank shrugged. “Whatever. Long as we get it.”

  The two men headed back into the cave, pausing at the entrance to hang their wet jackets over camp chairs.

  Bella was waiting as they turned. “Frank, can I use your phone?”

  Frank shook his head. “Sorry, Nani. Joel’s and mine won’t work either. Maybe in the morning, when the weather clears up.”

  She nodded, but her ebony eyes held worry. “We’re okay,” Joel said quietly. “We’ve got food, water and the boat. We can head back in the morning.”

  She tried to smile. “You’re right. I’m just a little nervous.”

  “’Cause you’ve got a responsibility bump that’s as big as this camp.”

  “Oh, I thought it was called being an adult.”

  He grinned. She was back in form, a lot more fun than her brief stint as a polite person. And they’d gotten what they came for, so this storm was just a bump, not a crash on his career road. As he’d told Matt, there were worse things than being marooned in paradise with beautiful women.

  They ate cold chicken, homemade bread and salads, and drank hot cocoa and coffee brewed on the little stove, and then Joel built a campfire in the mouth of the cave, and Frank pulled out his ukulele. Everyone settled down around the fire to listen, bundled in sweatshirts or jackets. The rain had indeed cooled the air several degrees, into the low seventies by Joel’s keychain thermometer.

  Spotting Tanah waiting for him, he cast a hunted glance around. Bella sat on the big log, listening to Frank play a soft, slow tune. Making a lightning-swift decision, Joel swung his leg over the back of the log beside Bella. Wrapping one arm around her waist, he pulled her sideways into the vee of his legs.

  He groaned silently as he gathered her close. She was slender and lissome in his grasp, and her scent, warm woman laced with that faint, tantalizing hint of flowers and sex, wrapped around him. Her firm, soft ass snuggled right against his balls, cradling his cock in feminine temptation.

  Bella didn’t protest, clearly caught off guard. She tilted her head back and to the side to look up into his face. Joel smiled into her startled dark eyes.

  “Follow my lead,” he murmured.

  Her gaze, still bemused, dropped to his mouth, and for one wild moment, he wanted to kiss her again, right here, just plant one on those soft, curving lips. They’d be warm, and she’d taste like wild honey.

  Then she blinked, and her brows started to slide together in a frown.

  “Bella, do not scowl at me.” He reached up with his free hand to push her hair away from her face, brushing his fingers over her cheek. Her skin was as warm and satiny as he’d remembered. “You can ream me out later to your controlling little heart’s content, but I need your help here.”

  She pasted on the fake smile that made him want to snicker. “I don’t know what you’re up to now, big shot. But go try it on someone you haven’t insulted multiple times in the last two days.” She tried to wriggle away.

  “Oh no,” he whispered, wrapping his other arm around her. “I’m not letting you go until you listen to me.”

  Tanah scowled at them across the fire, and the others stared. Camille watched the two of them with a little smile playing on her face. Frank gave the two of them a searching look and continued to play.

  “Quit squeezing my waist so hard,” Bella said through her freaky smile. “You’re going to leave bruises, and then I’ll have to grab your lilikoi and twist.”

  His grip gentled instantly, although he kept his arm around her little waist. She could move fast, and she’d fly off the log in a Honolulu minute if he let go, he was sure of it.

  “Try it,” he warned softly, inhaling the warm scent of her hair, “and I’ll throw you over my shoulder and take you somewhere I can spank your ass. That will be embarrassing for a corporate drone like yourself, yeah?”

  She cast him one swift, fulminating look, her smile flat-lining. “Yeah, you’re a real sweet-talker, aren’t you, Girand? No wonder you have to beat the women off with a stick.”

  “Aww, I’m sorry, Princess.” He stroked his thumb soothingly on her ribs. “You’re right. That was uncalled for.”

  She shrugged, folding her arms across her middle and pushing at his hand under her other arm where the others couldn’t see. “Fine, what is the point of all this?”

  “Oh, I’ve got one,” he crooned, turning his face so his mouth was close to her ear. “You know how your boss told you to keep me happy? Well, I’ve found the way, baby.”

  She froze, and in a nanosecond, Joel realized how that had sounded. He chuckled, unable to help the deep sound of amusement. “Not that. Jesus, Bella, I can get women without threatening them.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see it,” she muttered.

  “Take a look across the fire,” he said drily. Tanah was pouting now, curled in a camp chair by Matt, her arms and legs crossed. Beside her, Cassie held up her phone and snapped a picture of Joel and Bella, and then winked at him.

  “Well, why don’t you just take her up on it?” she asked, sounding genuinely perplexed and grouchy at the same time, but she relaxed, her back curving to match the hollow of his groin and belly.

  “I don’t appreciate the feeling that I’m in danger of being molested any more than you did with your buddy Kobe.”

  She snorted. “She’s a lot smaller than you, Girand.”

  “‘The female of the species,’” he quoted under his breath.

  The soft notes of the ukulele filled the dusk as she considered. He shifted, enjoying the warm weight of her in his arms.

  “So you want me to pretend that we’re…we’re—”

  “That we’re hot for each other,” he finished for her, grinning against her hair. “That we’re banging bones every chance we get. Exclusively.”

  “Eww,” she muttered. “So romantic. And what on earth do you mean ‘exclusively’? Does she think you’d…go back and forth?”

  “Ah—not what I meant. Those two girls are a bit more sophisticated than you may think. Seems they aren’t averse to a threesome now and then.”

  She gasped, and Joel chuckled again, giving her a little squeeze of amused affection. Damn, Ms. Hawaii had led a sheltered existence. She was getting a fast education with this bunch. Kink and ménage.

  He stilled for a moment, wondering suddenly if she could possibly still be a virgin. The deep, visceral thrill that flamed in his groin caught him off guard as he imagined being her first, her only.

  Just like that, he was hard. And from the peculiar stillness that took her, he knew she felt it. Joel gritted his teeth, fighting the urge to flex his hips, and drive himself hard into the softness of her warm, feminine ass. He’d started this, to avoid a catfight, but he also wanted Bella. To get her, he had to go a little slower. She might have kissed him on impulse, but she was nowhere near as sophisticated as Tanah, or the much younger Cassie.

  “Does that turn you on, hotshot?” she asked. She didn’t look at him, but her fingers tugged at his agitatedly, pulling them up, then pushing them flat on her waist. He wondered if she even knew she was doing it. “The idea of women crawling all over you?”

  He cleared his throat of the sudden huskiness in his throat. “Not me, Princess,” he said, his lips brushing the tender shell of her ear. He had to clench his jaw against the urge to put out his tongue and trace the shell of her ear, taste her. “I’m more of a one-wahine kind of guy.”

  In truth, he’d tried a threesome once. He’d felt a hell of a man at first, but once they got to it, he had a hell of a time concentrating, and the two girls turned out to be more interested in each other than him.

  But he wasn’t about to try to explain that to Bella. He didn’t want to use Bella as a shield from the rapacious Tanah. He wanted this wahine just for herself. Her incredibly buttoned-up, molten-hot-centered self. The next time she had that look of sleepy satisfaction on her face
, he wanted to be the one who put it there.

  Bella spent nearly an hour of prickly, delicious torment in Joel’s embrace. Being held by him was every bit as good as she’d imagined. His body was so much bigger than hers that leaning against him meant being surrounded by strength and heat. His heavy arm rested around her waist, his hand a warm weight on her hip, while he used his other hand to torment her.

  It was all publicly acceptable. He merely enveloped her hand with his, much bigger and stronger. His were lightly calloused, the tendons and muscles firmly delineated, the mark of a man who used his hands constantly. But as they listened to Frank play, he somehow found every sensitive spot on hers. She had never realized that having another person rub her fingertips or the center of her palm could send pleasure arcing through her, tightening her nipples and making her clench her thighs together, or that when he tickled the inside her wrist with the pad of his thumb, she would want to press back against him, rubbing herself on him like a cat.

  Only the sharp hiss of his breath in her ear made her realize finally that she was doing just that.

  He bent his head forward over her shoulder, his low, deep voice following his warm breath into her ear. “You wanna take this into the other cave, Princess? ‘Cause I’d like nothing better.”

  Bella’s face burned, and she was relieved that the fire had burned down to glowing embers so that everyone’s faces were visible only as shifting patterns of red and gold.

  To cover her embarrassment at being caught, she cast him a slumberous look. “Payback’s a bitch, yeah?”

  But instead of being angry, he chuckled. “Damn, you’ve got a mean streak. I like that about you.”

  He rested his chin on the top of her head. “So, you’re a Ho’omalu, huh?” he asked. “And Frank’s a friend of these folks too?”

  She nodded, feeling the roughness of his five-o’clock shadow catch in her hair. “My—my father is one of the family.”

  “Oh, so you’ve spent a lot of time over here with him, huh?”

  “No,” Bella found herself admitting. “I just met him, um, last month. When I came over for my best friend Melia’s wedding to David Ho’omalu.”

  ”Whoa.” He gave her a little squeeze. “You just met him? Did he, ah, not know about you?”

  “He knew, but I didn’t.” Her heart pinched with the remembered hurt of learning that her mother had kept them apart Bella’s whole life. “He and my mom had a vacation fling here, and I was the result. But then he admitted that he’s, um, gay. So she…” She stared into the fire, her hand tightening on his fingers. “She cut him out of our lives.”

  “Damn,” Joel breathed. “That was tough on you.”

  She nodded, blinking back tears.

  “So, now you have beaucoup Hawaiian relatives, huh?” he asked. “You like them?”

  She nodded. “They’re the best. In fact, my other best friend, Claire, is marrying Daniel Ho’omalu soon.”

  He whistled softly. “That’s a wedding epidemic. You’re not gonna marry one of ’em, are you?”

  The pugnacious edge to his question surprised a giggle out of her. “No. They’re my cousins.”

  Frank ended his song on a flourish. Joel let Bella go, arcing into a stretch behind her.

  “That was great, Frank,” Joel said. “Well, I’m gonna lay out my bedroll.” He patted Bella on the hip. “I’ll get yours for you, Nani.”

  Bella slipped off the log, turning to look down at him.

  He looked at her from under his brows, his face edged in faint firelight, waiting for her to answer. And she knew with a sudden breathless surge of longing that if she so much as nodded, she’d find herself slipping into his sleeping bag instead of her own. They were in a cave full of other people, she reminded herself.

  “I can do it, thanks.”

  With a shrug, Joel flipped his leg over the log and stood up behind it. The mustachioed Vandal leered cheerfully at her from his broad chest.

  By the time everyone was yawning, Bella’s small watch read ten o’clock. She used the latrine, took a cup of water outside to brush her teeth and wash her face. Rain still misted down through the trees, pattering on the lava shelf before the caves.

  She thought longingly of bathing in the pool. With the intense humidity, her skin felt sticky. But she knew leaving the camp was a really bad idea, so she settled for washing off her face, throat and arms and brushing out her hair.

  Camille and Li opted to sleep in the smaller cave. The rest of them laid out their beds in the big cave. Cassie and Tanah nabbed the flat areas of the natural shelf in the rear, and Matt unrolled his mattress on the cave floor below them.

  Frank chose the flat area near the cave mouth, which left a large open area along the far wall. Bella unrolled her mattress next to the wall, and laid out her sleeping bag on top. She made sure her boxers and clean tank were where she could find them in the dark. Then she sat cross-legged on her bed, and waited for the others to settle down and turn off their lights so she could change into her sleepwear.

  Joel was the last one into the cave. In the light of the lanterns, his hair was damp with rain. He spoke quietly with Frank and then walked purposefully back toward Bella.

  Her heart thumped, matching the rhythm of the surf pounding on the shore, as he paused beside her bedroll and bent to pick up his own. Out of his sphere, away from that dangerous field of magnetism he seemed to wear like an aura, she’d had time to remember why lying down next to him was a bad idea.

  “Oh no.” She shook her head. “You’re not—”

  He cast her a darkling look before tossing his sleeping bag out on his unfurled mattress. “Oh yes, I am.” He dropped to one knee and leaned over to her. “Bella, I’m afraid of redheads that go bump in the night. I need you to protect me.”

  She bit her lips against the snicker that wanted to erupt. Just when she was irritated with him, he made her want to laugh. Although her smile was quickly followed by a frown. She was more than a smokescreen, and he’d better not forget it.

  She glared at him as he sat down to kick off his sandals.

  “Ready for lights out?” Frank asked, kneeling before the big lantern. “Ready,” Joel answered. The two men exchanged a look, and the cave went black.

  “Wow, that’s really dark,” Matt said over the surf.

  “No starlight,” Frank called back. “Maybe get some later. Moon should be about half full too.”

  Cassie let out a yelp. “Ouch. Tanah, you kicked me.”

  Tanah mumbled something, and Matt answered; then the three of them laughed.

  Bella waited for a moment to let her eyes adjust. Satisfied that it was truly dark and no one could see her, she patted her hand over her pillow for her tank and boxers. Finding them, she tugged her tank off over her head and pulled on the clean one. Her panties felt damp, so she wriggled out of them along with her shorts and tugged on the boxers.

  She could sense Joel tugging off his sweatshirt beside her, and the waft of air as he dropped it beside his bedroll. Then she heard the tug of a zipper and felt him shift as he pulled his shorts off. The thought of him naked so close to her sent heat throbbing in her pussy. She clenched her hands into fists to keep from reaching for him.

  “Damn, wet undies,” he muttered.

  “Me too,” she blurted, then felt her face burn.

  He was still for a moment. “Does that mean you’re not wearing any?” he asked.

  “Maybe.” Let him wonder.

  He groaned softly, and she was smiling as she lay down. She pulled the light cover of her bag over herself, propped one arm behind her head, and gazed out into the night.

  Strangely, even though it was still raining, the trees outside the cave seemed to glow with a soft phosphorescence, their leaves glimmering in the rain.

  Bella leaned up on her elbow, watching. It was beautiful, and bewildering. “Joel?” she whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you see that?”

  “See what?”

>   “Out there.”

  She heard the swish of fabric as he sat up. “Can’t see a thing.” He slid down in his sleeping bag, and when he spoke again, his voice was much nearer. “You’re safe, Princess. I’m here, and so is Frank.”

  A cloak of inevitability settled over her, feather-light. He couldn’t see what she saw—the trees glowing with their mist of raindrops, as if they were bejeweled. It was just for her. A gift in the wake of the storm.

  “I know,” she murmured. “I’m not worried.”

  He moved again, and she felt his heat as he leaned up over her, a dark shape that blocked out the gentle light of the trees. Another thrill took her, this one a purely feminine one.

  “Nani,” he murmured, the nickname a caress in his deep voice.

  “Mm-hmm?” She waited, pleasure already melting through her as his arms bracketed her, the hot skin of his inner forearms against her bare shoulders. She wanted it, and more. Wanted the heavy weight of his big, muscular body pressing hers into her mattress, wanted his hardness between her thighs.

  “I really liked that kiss you gave me, out on the rocks.”

  “Did you?”

  “Oh yeah. If I kiss you good night, you gonna sucker punch me?”

  “Maybe.” Her lips parted, waiting for that blissful moment when that warm, wicked mouth would settle on hers. “Aren’t you supposed to be brave and tough, ready for any challenge?”

  He sighed, his breath gusting across her lips. “You’re right. Better live up to my rep, huh?”

  His warm lips brushed hers, a soft touch that zinged through her entire body. “Besides, I wanna know that trademark move you told me about.”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” she advised. “I save it for guys who deserve it.”

  He was smiling as he kissed her. And Bella discovered that, as exhilarating as it had been to kiss him on the rocks, having him kiss her now, when he leaned over her in the dark, was much, much better. Or maybe it was simply better because it was now.

  Whichever, the man didn’t just kiss; he made love to her mouth. He sipped and tasted and explored with those lips, and then did the same with his tongue, before rearing up farther over her and cocking his head to seal their mouths together in a deep, seamless kiss that made Bella writhe under him. Her arms slid up around his neck, holding him to her as she kissed him back.