“Say yes,” he whispered.
“Yes.” That one word reverberated inside her like an echo that had no ending.
While kissing her ear, her neck, her jaw, Will eased his hands downward, over her belly, across the top of her thighs, then delved between her legs, his fingers rubbing and petting. She moaned when he cupped her mound.
When he moved his hands up to her blouse and slowly but efficiently undid each button, she simply leaned back against him and enjoyed the sexual tension steadily building inside her. He covered her breasts with the palms of his hands and lifted them just enough so that he could flick the nipples with his thumbs. Hot, shivering sensation shot through her.
He adeptly undid the front snap of her bra and freed her breasts. When his hands touched her naked breasts, her rational mind tried to interfere with the pleasure, but she shoved aside cautious thoughts and allowed what she felt to dictate her actions.
Will kneaded her breasts gently, his thumbs and forefingers working magic on her nipples, which tightened and extended, sending shards of excitement shooting through her whole body. While one hand remained on her right breast, he lowered the other to her slacks and worked hurriedly to unsnap and unzip the sensible tan pants.
Within seconds, he had maneuvered the garment down her hips and over her legs. When they fell to her ankles, Gwen lifted her feet out of the slacks and kicked them aside. Wasting no time, Will slipped his hand inside her white cotton panties. As his hand inched steadily lower, she held her breath, tingling with anticipation.
As his fingers slid through the curls, Will pinched one nipple and gave her neck a sucking kiss. She whimpered, the sound a plea for him to touch her more intimately, to give her what her body yearned for. He slipped between her feminine lips and inserted two fingers inside her. She closed her thighs around his hand, trapping him. Her body shivered as his rough fingertips eased out of her and then over her highly sensitive nub. With his mouth pressed against her neck and his other hand tormenting one nipple, he increased the pressure and the tempo of his caresses between her legs, bringing her to the brink, then stopping momentarily to prolong the pleasure.
“No, please, don’t stop,” she cried softly.
He took her to the brink hurriedly, then paused again.
“No … no … “ She whimpered.
“You’re so hot … so wet … so ready.”
He ended her torture, taking her over the edge with several frantic strokes. She shook and shivered and moaned, her body gushing with release. Gasping air as the aftershocks of her climax spiraled through her, Gwen’s knees turned to rubber. With one hand still between her thighs and the other wrapped around her waist, Will kept her on her feet.
Giving her all the time she needed, he held her, kissed her temple, and whispered softly into her ear, “I loved the way you came for me, brown eyes.”
Able to stand without assistance once again, she turned in his arms. He cupped her face and brought his lips down on hers. She smelled her own musky scent on his fingers. They kissed with raw passion as Gwen ran her hands over him, ripping open his shirt and spreading her fingertips across his hard, lean chest. Oh, how she loved the feel of him.
When she undid his jeans and tugged them downward, he immediately divested himself of the jeans, taking his briefs with them. He stood there, barefoot and naked except for his gaping blue chambray shirt. Gwen kissed a trail from nipple to nipple and was rewarded with Will’s deep groans. She made her way down across his belly to the thatch of brown hair surrounding his bulging sex. When she dropped to her knees in the sand, he speared his fingers through her hair and held her head, urging her to take him into her mouth.
She had never wanted to taste a man this way, to capture him with her mouth, to pleasure him so primitively. She licked him from root to tip and loved that the action made him tremble. The heady sense of power thrilled her. She licked and teased and took the tip between her lips and sucked. She repeated these movements again and again until Will captured her head and growled.
“Take all of me,” he ordered, his voice a rough rumble.
She opened her mouth and enveloped him, taking him as fully as possible. The strong masculine scent of him, the feel of his tight, muscular legs, the vital energy of his pulsing sex excited her almost beyond reason. She made passionate love to him with her mouth, giving him release. As he shook and groaned, she savored the moment of complete control, knowing that she had rendered this big, strong man temporarily helpless.
After gently easing her mouth from him, she licked her lips, capturing his taste. Will dropped to his knees in front of her, yanked her to him and kissed her until they were both breathless.
Chapter 12
Will wasn’t surprised by the awkwardness between Gwen and him the following morning. What did surprise him was his own reaction to what they had shared during the night. After making love that first time, they had strolled back up the beach to the bonfire and the bed of palm fronds. They had shared the makeshift bed, Gwen wrapped in his arms. And they had made love again several times, with their mouths and hands, although he had wanted to be inside her more than anything he’d ever wanted in his life. In the warm darkness, they had explored each other’s bodies and had become intimately acquainted. Gwen had a lush, womanly body, with round hips and round breasts and skin as smooth as silk.
Even though love had not been involved in what they had shared, Will couldn’t deny there was something more than sex involved. Just looking at her made him hard, made him want her again. He suspected even Gwen hadn’t realized that beneath her cool, controlled exterior, she possessed the passion of a wild woman.
But only with me.
That thought both tormented him and pleased him. Of course he had only his instincts to guide him—and possibly his sizable ego—but he’d bet his last dime that Gwen had never let go with another man the way she had with him last night. The very fact that her actions had not possessed the expertise that came from repeated practice had excited him unbearably.
And now, this morning, watching her as she dabbled in the ocean, cleaning herself, totally unashamed of her partial nudity, a sense of possessiveness engulfed Will. On some purely primeval level, he had claimed her as his woman.
When she emerged from the ocean, she shook her head, flipping the strands of her long, dark hair around her shoulders, spraying a circle of water droplets in every direction. Her tight nipples pressed against the thin barrier of her white cotton bra, and a dark triangle was visible through her white cotton panties. One thing for sure—he’d never look at white cotton underwear in the same way, ever again.
“What’s for breakfast?” she asked as she shimmied into her wrinkled slacks.
He eyed the two apples, two granola bars and two bottles of water he’d laid out atop the knapsack. “A gourmet delight,” he told her.
She offered him a hesitant smile, her gaze not quite connecting with his as she picked up her blouse from their palm-frond bed and slipped into it. “I’d kill for a cup of coffee.”
And I’d kill to be buried deep inside you. “If we can find a freshwater spring or maybe even a lagoon, we can have coffee later.”
“I’m glad I put coffee and tea in your knapsack.” As she buttoned her blouse, she came toward him.
“I didn’t want to waste our few bottles of water making coffee, but if we can find fresh water on the island, then we’re set.”
Gwen nodded, her gaze focused on his unbuttoned shirt instead of his face. He glanced down at where the top three buttons were missing. Her cheeks flamed hot pink. He chuckled. Apparently she’d just realized that she had ripped open his shirt last night, popping off several buttons.
When he reached out to grasp her arm, she tensed. “Come on. Let’s sit down and eat. After that, we’ll explore the island.”
Relaxing, she nodded and allowed him to help her down onto their makeshift bed. He tossed an apple and granola bar into her lap, then handed her a bottle of water before he sat b
eside her.
“I wonder how big this island is,” Gwen said, then unwrapped the granola bar and took a bite.
“I have no idea. But it can’t be all that big since no one has ever charted its existence.” He unscrewed the cap on his water bottle and took a hefty swig. “Then again, it can’t be all that small because the shoreline seems to go on endlessly in both directions.”
“What do you think we’ll find when we go into the jungle?” Gwen alternated between bites of the granola bar and bites of the apple.
“Trees.”
She swatted his arm playfully. “Very funny.”
“I figure we’ll find fruit trees, maybe coconut at the very least. And possibly some small wild animals.”
“Wild animals?”
“Small wild animals, which I can trap and we can roast and—”
“Yuck.”
“I figure there’s a freshwater source somewhere, which means we won’t die of thirst and we can bathe in salt-free water.”
They ate in relative silence, each devouring the meager fare. After Will put on his shoes and strapped the knapsack to his back, Gwen slipped into her shoes. Preparing for their trek into the wooded area, he studied her already pink face.
“You’re going to blister in this hot sun,” he told her. “But it can’t be helped. No cap—” he tapped her bare head “—and no sunscreen.” He ran his fingertips across her cheek.
She drew in a deep breath when he touched her. “I’ll manage.”
“Yeah, honey, I know you will.” I’ll make sure you do.
In the early morning hours, the sun low in the eastern horizon, they entered the jungle not far from the beach. Will tore away vines that clogged their path, but the underbrush grew so heavily in places that they simply waded through it, scraping their legs and arms on briars and low branches. The deeper into the jungle they went, the more certain Will became that he had underestimated the island’s size. Approximately an hour into their trek, when they emerged into a clearing, Will paused, then slowly turned in a circle. When he faced due east, he did a double take. There in the distance a mountain rose high and wide into the blue sky. How was that possible? Was he hallucinating?
“I see it, too,” Gwen said, as if reading his mind.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Will stared at the unbelievable. “This island is much larger than I thought, which means it can’t be an uncharted island.”
“What if it is? What if … Oh, God, Will, what if this really is my father’s island?”
“This isn’t some mythical island. It can’t be. There has to be another explanation.” But what?
“I know it’s difficult to believe that this might be—”
“I don’t know what’s going on,” he admitted. “But our main concern is survival. That means finding fresh water.”
Gwen stood, riveted to the spot, staring dreamily at the mist-shrouded mountain.
“Come on.” He gave her a gentle shove. “Let’s get going.”
He chose east, directly toward the mountain, although he surmised it would take days to reach the distant foothills.
By the time the sun shone directly overhead, Will sensed that Gwen needed to rest, but suddenly and unexpectedly, before he mentioned stopping, they came upon another clearing, this one wide and vast, as if it had been cleared recently. Not a clearing created by nature but by man. A shiver of uncertainty hit him square in the gut, instinct telling him that he and Gwen were not alone on this island. In the distance, toward the east, he thought he saw a path.
“I’m tired, Will. I need to rest,” Gwen told him.
“Not yet. In a minute.” He grabbed her arm and all but dragged her toward the path.
She grumbled but went with him. A few minutes later they stopped dead still, at the edge of a winding stone pathway. Standing immobile, silent and unmoving, Will heard the sound of rushing water.
“I hear water,” Gwen said.
He nodded.
“Will?”
“Shh.”
He listened closely, halfway expecting to hear human voices. All he heard was the water.
“Follow me,” he told her. “But stay behind me. And if I issue you an order, just do what I tell you to do without question. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
They followed the stone path, a path not made by Mother Nature, until they reached a thirty-foot waterfall that flowed into a small, rocky lagoon. The water was clear, the surface shimmery with golden sunlight. Thick, lush vegetation grew in abundance around the pond.
“It’s beautiful,” Gwen said.
“Yeah, but the main thing is that it’s freshwater.”
“Can we rest now?” she asked. “Is it safe?”
“We can rest. But I’m not sure how safe this place is. I’m not sure of anything right about now.”
“There are—” she cleared her throat “—or there were at one time, people on this island. Human beings made that stone path.”
“Yeah, you’re right. That clearing and the stone path were man-made.”
“Don’t you think that there’s a chance, even if just a slight chance, that this is the island my father discovered when he was twenty?”
Puzzled, confused and uneasy, Will didn’t respond. He found a boulder near the lagoon’s edge, removed the backpack, dropped it on the boulder and then sat. Gwen followed his lead and sat beside him. While they stared at the cascading waterfall, Will tried to put his thoughts in order, to make some sense of their surroundings. A landmass large enough to hold an enormous mountain range would hardly have gone uncharted. Something this huge couldn’t hide, not even in four hundred thousand miles of ocean. So that meant that either the cruiser had veered into a charted island and they simply hadn’t reached civilization yet or they were on some mysterious island, perhaps even the one Emery Arnell claimed he had discovered fifty years ago.
“Did your father ever tell you any details about the island he claims to have discovered?” Will asked.
“Then you do believe it’s possible—”
“Just answer my question, will you?”
“He talked about this place—this fabulous island—with a mixture of awe and excitement in his voice,” Gwen said. “But I don’t remember him talking about details, other than the fact that a magical youth plant grew here, one that somehow enabled the people of the island to live, free of illness for two hundred years.”
“Do you remember him mentioning a mountain range?”
“No.”
“Waterfalls? Rock pathways?”
Gwen shook her head. “No. His only real interest seemed to be in the plant and its effect on the people.”
“What about the people? What did he tell you about them?”
“Not much, only that they lived, on average, to be two hundred, that they were never sick and … well, that’s about it.”
“Did he say what they looked like, if they were dark or fair or—”
“He referred to them as natives, so I assumed they were dark-skinned, dark-eyed, but he never actually described their physical appearance.”
“Didn’t you think that odd, along with the fact that this island of his had no name? You’d have thought the natives would have told him where he was and the name of their country. You’d have thought he would ask. I would, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, I suppose I would. But you have to remember that my father was only twenty, he’d just lost his entire family and he’d been near death when he washed ashore here.”
Will gripped her hand tightly and squeezed. “Maybe this island is where your father landed fifty years ago, but he could easily have hallucinated about the natives and their magical plant. If he ran a high fever, if he was ill.”
“You’re saying it’s all right to believe the island exists, that we may actually be on my father’s island, but that I shouldn’t believe there’s magic involved, because you don’t believe it’s possible.”
He released her hand. “
There’s only one way to find out. We get back on the rock path and follow it to its conclusion.”
“You’re right.” She stood. “I’m ready when you are.”
Will stood, picked up the knapsack and strapped it to his back. Then, taking the lead, he returned to the stone path. Gwen kept up with him, but only because he adjusted his gait to hers.
Less than fifteen minutes later they came to a junction. The stone path formed a cross in the middle of the jungle. The north and south sections remained narrow, while the east and west sections broadened to the width of a one-lane road.
“It’s a road,” Gwen said.
“So it is.”
“There are people on this island. You can’t deny that fact.”
He nodded. “There were people here. The stones in the path are worn deep into the earth and are smooth on top, which means the path and that road—” he pointed to the east “—have been here for a very long time, perhaps hundreds of years.”
“These people could be the natives my father talked about. And don’t tell me that it’s not possible.”
Will grunted. How could he tell her that her father’s mad, rambling stories were not possible? He couldn’t. Not when he stood on an ancient path, obviously man-made, on an enormous, uncharted island.
Judging from where the sun rested in the middle of the western sky, Gwen surmised that it was early afternoon, probably around two o’clock, give or take. It seemed to her that they had been following the stone road for days instead of a couple of hours. Will had stopped twice to let her take a breather and drink some water. It irritated her no end that she was worn to a frazzle, while their long trek seemed to have had no effect on him.
As they rounded a bend in the road, Will stopped abruptly and yanked her with him as he dove into the thick jungle that lined either side of the road. Dragging her behind a tree and down on her haunches, Will put his finger to his lips. Widening her eyes, she silently questioned his actions.
And then she heard what Will had apparently heard. Voices!
Although the sound came from too far away for her to understand what was being said, she recognized human voices when she heard them.
Ready for Anything, Anywhere! Page 14