Tempt (Take It Off)

by Hebert, Cambria

  His face would be the last one I would see.

  His skin would be the last skin I felt.

  Both our lives would be cut short and we would be left with nothing but a bunch of what ifs.

  “I’m going to do everything I can to keep us alive,” he vowed.

  I clung to his words after he disappeared. I replayed them over and over in my head. It wasn’t a promise. It wasn’t a guarantee.

  It was all I had.

  A clap of thunder boomed through the sky and caused me to jump about a mile high in my seat. It was so close and so loud it shook the plane. The hum of the engine sputtered. I heard Nash radioing for help. I heard him begging for someone to answer. No one did.

  The tiny plane plummeted, quickly losing altitude, barreling toward the ocean as the storm raged around us. I unhooked my seatbelt, tore the mask from my face, and went for Nash. If I was going to die, I wasn’t going to be alone.

  He barely glanced at me when I sat in the seat beside him. He was pulling on the controls, sweat dotting his forehead and trailing down his face. As soon as he would manage to get the nose of the plane pulled back up, it would only force itself back down again. It was a vicious cycle—up and down, up and down.

  As the body of water drew closer, I began to brace myself for impact. I knew the force and speed we were traveling would slam us into the water like it was a wall of concrete. There wasn’t anything left to do.

  With a loud curse, Nash let go of the controls. He turned to me. We shared another of those meaningful looks, and then he was leaping over the controls separating us and covering my body with his.

  He was trying to protect me.

  Tears leaked out of my eyes and fell onto the cold, hard floor of the plane.

  Nash started speaking softly to me. In Spanish. The cadence of his words was like a song. I didn’t bother to ask him what he was saying. I didn’t care.

  I was just glad the last sound I would ever hear was his beautiful voice.

  The plane screamed on impact, buckling under the pressure of whatever we hit and groaned with such ferocity that any hope we would survive vanished.

  And then there was nothing.

  THE ISLAND…

  3

  It could have been hours. It could have been days. I didn’t know how long we floated between the living and the dead. All I knew was that time had passed. The peaceful sound of the waves crashing along a sand-filled shore was the first thing I heard when my ears came alive.

  The sound was soothing and I snuggled down in my bed, trying to get comfortable.

  But there was no comfort.

  One of my eyes opened and all I could see was chaos. Debris littered the area around me. Something poked into my side and my body began to tingle. As my mind cleared of its self-imposed fog, I became aware of the stiffness in my muscles, the pain lingering in my limbs, and of a searing, slicing pain radiating throughout in my skull.

  Plane crash.

  Dead.

  No… Alive.

  Nash.

  The final thought caused me to push up off the floor quickly. Too quickly, because I fell right back down into a pathetic heap. Refusing to accept the way I felt, I pushed up again, this time a little bit slower. I blinked, squinting through the dimness of the interior of the plane.

  Or what was left of it.

  The entire tail section was gone.

  And beyond it…

  Beyond were dense leafy greenery and the chatter of foreign-sounding birds. But I wasn’t ready to think about where we might be or what might lie in wait tucked deep inside the foliage. My first concern was for the man who tried to protect me even when we were falling from the sky.

  He was no longer on top of me.

  He was no longer beside me.

  I didn’t see him at all. Suddenly an all-encompassing panic gripped me like a vise. What if he was sucked out the back half of the plane? What if he was out there injured or… worse?

  Calm down, Ava! I demanded of myself. He didn’t fall out of the plane. He was right here, with you. If he had fallen out, you would have too.

  Thank goodness there was some voice of reason left inside me.

  I sat up, pushing away some of the debris—pieces of the plane, papers, glass—and peering into what was left of the back section of the plane. Some of the seats were missing. Some had come loose and were lying on their sides. Oxygen masks still dangled from what was left of the ceiling, some knotted together, some missing parts. A couple of the windows were busted out, allowing in a little bit of light.

  I walked carefully through the area, balancing my hand on the walls as I walked. Over toward the left, underneath a few windows, was a pile of three chairs. Sticking out from beneath them was a foot.

  I lunged forward, tripping a little and falling into the chair on the top. I grabbed it and hauled it backward. My muscles strained under the weight, but I kept at it. When it was gone, I was able to see more of Nash’s still body.

  “Nash,” I said, my voice sounding like a rusty saw scraping across metal. “Wake up. Please don’t be dead.”

  My vision was blurry from the tears soaking my eyes, but I kept working, shoving back another chair and uncovering his face. I dropped to my knees beside him and took his jaw in my hands. I tilted his head toward me and put my ear right up to his lips.

  He was breathing.

  He looked so vulnerable lying there with blood smeared across his cheek and dark curls falling over his forehead. I reached out and brushed them away, revealing a bruise on his forehead. “Nash,” I said again, his name more of a whispered prayer.

  His eyelashes fluttered. He groaned. And then he was staring up at me, disoriented and confused.

  “The plane crashed. We’re still alive. We’re okay.”

  I watched realization dawn over his features. I watched him go through the mental body check I’d just performed on myself. And then he was springing up at impossible speed, startling me, and I fell back.

  But he caught me.

  He pulled me into his chest, crushing me against him. Rocking us back and forth while he palmed the back of my head. I held on to him as tightly as I could, ignoring the protest in my joints, the tremor of my hands.

  We were both alive. Thank you, God.

  His body stiffened and he pulled me back, his eyes searching my face. “Are you hurt? How badly are you injured?”

  “I’m not sure. What about you?”

  “I think I’m okay. Nothing too serious.”

  “You’re bleeding,” I said softly, reaching up to touch the red smeared on his cheek.

  “So are you,” he murmured, grasping my head and tilting it down. “You have a gash in your head. It looks pretty deep, but I can’t be sure because it’s caked with dried blood and your hair.”

  “That explains the headache,” I joked, though it wasn’t funny.

  “We need to get up, move around, and really find out how badly we’re injured.”

  I nodded.

  Gently, he sat me away from him and stood. He reached down and helped me to my feet and then linked our fingers. “We stay together.”

  I nodded again.

  He moved back toward the cockpit and started digging through the rubble. When the plane’s radio came into sight, a shaky sigh escaped my lips. That radio was our lifeline. That radio was our ticket to getting help. I watched Nash as he flipped the switches, as he used the controls and held the little microphone at his lips.

  “Mayday, Mayday,” he said into the radio.

  Silence followed.

  Nash fiddled with the switches some more. He shook the radio and cursed at it impolitely.

  Still, the electronic was unresponsive.

  “Shit!” Nash said, kicking it to the side. He pushed his hand through the tangled mass of curls on his head and growled. “It’s broken.”

  Well, yeah, I kind of figured that when he kicked it.

  The sharp swell of disappointment was strong. So was the fear. Wou
ld anyone know where to look for us? How long until someone noticed we never landed? I pressed a hand to my head gingerly. All this worrying and thinking only made it hurt worse.

  I caught Nash looking at me with a heavy frown on his face. I gave him what I hoped was an encouraging smile and released my head. He waded through the mess, moving things out of this way, until he reached a little cabinet built into the wall of the plane. Using the side of his fist, Nash hit the little cabinet door and it sprang open. A large white first aid kit spilled out.

  “Sweet,” he said, scooping it up. He scrounged around a few more minutes and came up with two bottles of water. Just looking at them made me realize how thirsty I was.

  He uncapped one of the bottles and extended it to me. I took it, lifting the lukewarm liquid to my lips. It slid across my tongue and down my throat with ease, rinsing away some of the dryness. A small sound of appreciation ripped from my chest, and I greedily took another gulping sip.

  I caught Nash watching me from over the bottle still stuck to my lips. I stopped drinking immediately and held it out to him. I felt selfish just then, hogging down the water when he likely was just as thirsty as I.

  He gave me a small shake of his head and held up the other bottle. “That one is yours.”

  I watched as he uncapped his own bottle and took a drink. My gaze fastened right to his throat when his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down with every swallow. He had another smear of blood on his neck and some splotches of dirt. My fingers itched to reach out and brush it away, to feel for his steady pulse at the base of his neck. The need to touch him—to reassure myself that we were indeed alive and breathing—was almost overwhelming.

  I pulled the bottle away from my lips, my thirst satiated but an all-new need arising within in.

  He seemed to sense the change in the air around us and he too lowered the bottle from his lips and recapped it. Keeping his green-eyed stare on me, he reached out and took my bottle, twisting the cap back onto it as well.

  “We need to drink slowly, try and save this until we know what we’re dealing with.”

  I saw his lips move. I heard the deep timbre of his voice. But I barely heard his words. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around his waist, bringing myself tightly up against him. I rested my ear over his chest, just like I had craved to do, and pressed it there, seeking out the sound I so badly needed.

  He gave it to me without even trying. The rhythm of his heart echoed through his chest and filled me up. My eyes slid closed as I stood there, wrapped around him, listening to the proof that we had survived, that we really were alive.

  One of his arms came up, hovered over my back, and then descended, wrapping around me with strength and purpose. He took a deep breath and my ear rose with his chest, his heartbeat getting just a little bit closer.

  “I really thought we were going to die.” I confessed.

  “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think that too.”

  He hugged me just a little bit tighter and I felt his cheek press against the top of my head. I winced, sharp pain cutting into our moment.

  “I need to look at you,” he murmured, pulling away gently.

  He handed me the first-aid kit and then grabbed one of the fallen plane seats and righted it, motioning for me to come and sit down. I did and he stood over me, his fingers gently probing my head.

  “You have a piece of shrapnel stuck in your head,” he muttered.

  He continued to search around for a moment and then squatted down before me, turning the kit in my lap and then clicking it open and rummaging through its contents. He came out with a pair of tweezers, and I cringed.

  “I’ll be gentle,” he promised.

  I figured the pain couldn’t be any worse than falling from the sky in a plane so I nodded and gave him full access to my wound. It didn’t take him long to pull out the scrap of metal, my teeth grinding together as he did. It stung. It felt like it was a mile long, and I sensed every single inch as he yanked.

  “Hold out your hand,” he said, and when I did he dropped a fairly sizeable piece of the plane into my palm. It was smeared with rust-colored blood and was probably two inches in length.

  Then he abandoned the tweezers and quickly reached for a thick wad of gauze, pressing into my scalp. “You’re bleeding again,” he said grimly.

  I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything I could say that would make the blood stop flowing.

  “Hold this,” he instructed, and I reached up to apply pressure to the wound. I could feel the warm liquid already soaking through the gauze to coat my fingers. Vaguely, I wondered how much blood I already lost, how much more blood I could afford to lose.

  Nash was searching through the first aid kit, which thank goodness was a good size and stocked full. He lined up a few items on the top of the pile and then looked up.

  “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.” How could I not trust a man who tried to save us and when it became obvious he couldn’t, he still covered my body with his?

  “I’m going to clean your wound and then stitch it closed. It’s going to hurt. I’m sorry.”

  The bottom dropped out of my stomach. “Have you ever stitched up someone’s head?”

  “You’re my first.”

  “Words every girl longs to hear,” I quipped.

  He grinned. It made me forget for just a moment that I was bleeding profusely from my scalp.

  “We gotta get this bleeding stopped,” he said gently, reaching up and pulling away my hand. The gauze came with it. It was completely soaked in red.

  “Don’t look at it,” he said, tossing it aside and ripping open some kind of wipe or something. He swiped it across my head and I gave a shout of pain.

  “Shit!” I yelled. “That hurts.”

  “I like it when women talk dirty to me,” he said, continuing the torture.

  “I’ll just bet you do,” I muttered darkly.

  He chuckled and reached for another wipe. My heart pounded and my vision became a little blurry.

  “You’re doing good,” he would say every few minutes.

  Then he reached for a needle and some black thread. I thought I might pass out. I started shaking uncontrollably, my teeth chattering together like we were sitting in an igloo in shorts and T-shirts.

  “Ava,” he said. He sounded so far away.

  Then his warm hands were gripping my chin and he was turning my face up so he could stare down into my eyes. “Don’t you dare pass out on me.”

  I just kept shaking. He cursed.

  And then he climbed into my lap.

  That was one way to get a girl’s attention.

  His weight settled over me like a heavy blanket. His warmth was like a sauna and my skin soaked him in like a blooming flower on the first day of spring. His thighs were huge and they rested on each side of my waist, the core of him meeting my middle and his body pinning me back against the seat.

  “You’re going into shock,” he explained. “Just breathe.”

  I thought his weight might seem crushing, but it wasn’t. It was security; it was something solid in a tentative world. My hands twisted in the hem of his shirt and held on, their shaking slowing to a fine tremble.

  “That’s a girl,” he murmured, placing his lips against my forehead.

  My body calmed. My heart rate returned to normal. What he did for me nothing in that first aid kit could do.

  “I’m going to go as fast as I can,” he promised.

  I wondered what he was talking about.

  And then the needled jabbed into my skin. I yelped and he bore his weight down on me even further, pinning me to the chair and keeping me still.

  I hoped I never had to feel this kind of pain again. I felt every jab, every pull of the needle. It hurt so bad I sort of went numb. It was as if my body refused to feel that amount of pain.

  And then he pulled his hands away.

  I collapsed against the back of the chair like I’d just completed a maratho
n.

  “Hey,” he murmured softly, taking my face in his hands. “You still with me?”

  I nodded.

  He kissed me.

  The first brush of his lips was balm to my pain-laden soul. It was a soft, lingering kiss that stole my senses and made everything, including the pain, disappear. He titled his head just slightly, his lips dragging over mine. Mine parted and our mouths met again. His tongue teased the entrance of my mouth, tracing the outline of my lips, and then he planted his lips fully upon mine once more.

  It was the best pain medicine I would ever know.

  A small whimper left my mouth and traveled into his. He swallowed it like he was trying to capture some of my pain and take it away, like he was willing to shoulder some of my hurt so I would know relief.

  It wasn’t really about romance. It wasn’t about passion.

  It was more.

  When he pulled back, he dropped a soft kiss to the tip of my nose. “Bella,” he whispered, the word sounding poetic as he spoke it in his native language.

  It was probably the only word I knew in Spanish. It meant “beautiful.”

  “I’m going to cover this now,” he said gently, reaching down beside us, cleaning off his hands and then rummaging around for more supplies out of the kit. “The worst of the pain is over.”

  His kiss lingered on my lips. The taste of him clung to the inside of my mouth while he finished cleaning the area around my new stitches and then applied some sort of covering.

  “There,” he said, climbing off my lap. I instantly missed his weight. “That’s the best I could do considering all this hair.” He reached out and fingered a thick lock of my wavy, long blond hair.

  “Thank you.” I looked up. Noticing the blood and gash on his cheek once more. “Your turn.”

  I motioned for him to take my seat and I crouched, searching around for some supplies of my own to clean his injury. I lined them up on his lap, kneeled between his knees, and leaned into him to clean off the area.

  The muscle in his jaw ticked as I cleaned off the worst of the area. It wasn’t still bleeding so I figured a butterfly bandage would do just fine. I tried not to be distracted by the way his hand found the side of my hip and held on to me while I worked.