Holding the Cards

by Joey Hill

  "I don't know you," he said. "So I don't know how good your word is."

  Lauren stared down at him. Her entire escape to this island, at the moment, was taking on the appearance of an episode of Keystone Cops Go to Hell.

  She had envisioned herself having a flawless weekend of solitude, getting in touch with the inner Lauren, finding that calm, capable woman she knew was still in there somewhere. In short, she had imagined herself taking long contemplative walks on the beach, staring out at the waves, the heroine of a New Age self-discovery memoir. The woodland animals, feeling her amazing tranquility and strength, would approach her without fear and seek her touch.

  This was her vacation, dammit, and she was going to get on the ground, get into the house with a cup of hot chocolate, and read one of her books. She wouldn't start with a romance, one of those books where women ended up in ludicrous positions half-naked in front of strange, handsome men. Like that ever really happened.

  Well, hell, if he wasn't used to the proper social niceties, pretending everything was okay when it wasn't, then she needn't work at it. Her legs folded up to her chest and Lauren sank into the crevice of the tree, the bark scraping yet another area of exposed skin, adding to the list of abrasions she would have to address later. She turned her back on him and leaned her head up against the branch. She shut her eyes tightly, but the bitter tears fought free anyway, a knot of them jamming up her throat. Resolve number one, not to cry a single tear while she was on this island, was in shambles for the second time in less than two hours.

  She massaged her temples and jerked around as a warm hand touched her shoulder. She would have knocked him off her perch if he hadn't been prepared for her startled reaction to his climbing ability. He had one hand braced on the branch she had descended.

  Lauren had a momentary impression of wide shoulders and penetrating gray eyes studying her tear-streaked face, then she was brought into his arms, his hands pressed against her bare back, his arms gathering her close and holding her surrounded by the shelter of chest and knees.

  It wasn't an embrace that said, "I'm the big, strong man holding the feeble female". It was a gentle, firm hold that offered her comfort, offered himself up as the tree she could lean upon for a moment or forever, however long it took.

  She stiffened at the absurd thought and he brought her closer, like she was a child curled in a fetal position. His careful, tender hands stroked her back, her hair, as he muttered soothingly to her. Lauren's head fell forward, her forehead coming into contact with his chest. He put his head over hers, accepting her.

  This wasn't Jonathan. This was a total stranger, someone she didn't know, couldn't possibly trust…

  Lauren's arms shot out and she grabbed his lean, muscular bare back in both hands, dug in her fingers and held.

  Josh was very conscious of her bare body pressed against his, the gentle pressure of her breasts, the nipples sliding against his chest as she hitched with those careful, silent sobs, but he wasn't a total cad. Well, not completely.

  He tipped up her chin with one finger and settled his lips over hers. Warmth, wet and friction.

  She stopped in mid-sob, made a surprised noise, did that quick little panic jerk, then literally melted into it, her arms sliding down to his waist, her body settling against his, her side pressed against his tightening groin.

  He couldn't say what made him do it. He didn't know her, she was upset, she should react by screaming and tossing him out of the tree. Marcus said he was losing his ability to live in civilized society, that he was just starting to react in whatever manner his animal instincts dictated.

  Maybe he was right. Something about her said the kiss would be welcome, that it was essential he communicate how much he wanted her, right from the beginning. If they were on the level ground, he might have displayed it in an altogether more reverent fashion. A gentle kiss laid on the knuckles of her bare toes. He would brush his hair against her calf, an intentional caress as he raised his head for a brief look into her blue eyes, showing her his desire to please, and protect, and cherish.

  It was a strange thought, the type of thought he had never had before, but one that felt right as he thought of her again, sitting proudly in the tree gazing down at him, like a tribal goddess. His hands slid up to smooth shoulders and into her hair. He discovered spun silk, delicate ears, and a neck so fragile he could snap it with one hand. Good God, he wanted her, here and now, forever, and he didn't even know her name.

  Lauren's first thought was that he was the best kisser, gay or straight; she'd ever had the pleasure to experience. Her second thought was a revelation that uncoiled in her stomach and sent tendrils out to tug at her vitals. Just as homosexuals often knew another homosexual just from picking up vibes, so a Dominant could pick up the scent of a submissive. She felt it in Josh, but there was an oddness to it, almost as if it had been brought into consciousness and then buried again. He had powerful hands, but they were hesitant. Not hesitant as in awkward, but as if he paused at the door, waiting for the invitation because he couldn't enter without it. That was normal for a sub, but there was a wounded quality to it.

  Normally, that would send Lauren in full retreat. D/s, consensual as it was, involved a far more deeply emotional level of sexual interplay than most people engaged in, even those who had been partners for many years. Getting into it with someone excessively damaged could be dangerous.

  Sweet baby, what happened to you, she wondered.

  "Is this a private party, or can anyone join?"

  Lauren jerked back, and Josh kept her from overbalancing with a sure grip on her shoulders. "Marcus," he explained to her.

  Lauren looked down at the man standing negligently at the base of the trunk, his face reflecting amusement. Her jaw dropped.

  Her high school art teacher had told her class that Michelangelo's David was considered one of the most perfect depictions of the male form. Her high school art teacher had never seen Marcus.

  Marcus was six foot even, his body layered in smooth muscle as if it had in fact been sculpted by an artist's fine touch. He displayed himself well in the same outfit as Josh, just a pair of jeans. She assumed they had both spent a sweaty day working on one of the houses. His dark hair was fine and flowing as her own, falling carelessly over a high forehead and to his shoulders. His sensual lips, curved in that mysterious smile, made her imagine all the places they might have been, and his green eyes were full of secret thoughts.

  He was more than riveting, he was familiar. She was in the middle of the Caribbean for the first time in her life. No one should look familiar.

  "Could you use a hand? In the getting down department, that is?"

  "Yeah. Can you see if Lisette has some rope in her workroom?"

  "White knight, here to serve. Be right back."

  Josh nodded and looked down into Lauren's face. "Think you can climb down a rope if I get you started?"

  Lauren was trying to keep up with all the shifts and nodded dumbly to this latest suggestion. Josh touched her chin with a light fingertip, a trace of a shy smile flirting about his lips. "Er… he's the one that wouldn't get anything out of looking at your body."

  Lauren swallowed. "Lisette also told me… you weren't house-trained."

  He gave her a knowing look, but said only, "She had one out of two things right."

  Marcus emerged from Lisette's basement workroom and tossed up the end of a generous coil of rope. Josh tied it to the branch and then set his hands at Lauren's waist, his palms hot on her skin. The knot of her towel had tightened during her climb, so now the terry cloth rode low on her hips. His long fingers lay inside the circle of it, grazing her hip bones. She was sure he meant his touch to be a steadying thing, to help her take a firm grasp of the rope without having to worry about her balance. Unfortunately the effect of that warm, intimate touch had the exact opposite result.

  Jonathan's face flashed through her head, along with the memory of him sitting on the top stair to their second floor,
dressed for work. It had been shortly before their breakup. She knelt between his knees, desperate for just a simple hug, the desire to be held. He had put his lips against her ear. "You are so fucked up, Lauren."

  He had said it soothingly, reinforcing what she had come to believe about herself. Rather than feeling insulted, she had felt vindicated. Like having a doctor diagnose her illness, she felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude at having it acknowledged.

  Lauren's skin crawled with the memory and her chin tightened. She knew how to climb down a damn rope. She was one of three women at the gym that could do it.

  She seized the rope and swung herself carefully into a descent position, blocking out for a moment that she was giving the man below, gay or not, a great view of her ass, and the one above quite a display of tits. Well, happiness and joy to them both.

  "Focus," her personal trainer at the gym had told her. "That's the key to getting to the top, and back down again. Never think that getting down is easier. That's when most accidents happen in climbing, because it's harder to control your descent. Psychologically your mind thinks it's made it."

  Her current surroundings and situation were nothing like the gym, so perhaps it was understandable that the reminder of that lecture came after she lost her grip on the rope.

  Lauren had time for a short shriek before she was falling, flailing through the air and then landing against another warm body. Marcus was knocked off balance by the weight of her hurtling body hitting him. They thudded to the ground in a twisted tangle of limbs and muttered curses and rolled several yards down the steep incline before he managed to catch onto a protruding root and bring them to a halt.

  Lauren attempted to extricate her limbs from Marcus enough to turn and find out if he was all right. She found he was trying to do the same, but they managed it. Josh was coming down quickly, no hesitation, she noted sourly. She comforted herself with appreciation for the ripple of tense power across the shoulders and down his back, the way the jeans rode lower with his arms above his head and stomach muscles contracted tight. That's the way they'd be if his arms were tied at the wrists to a suspension bar, pulled just high enough to keep him on the balls of his feet, so his buttock muscles would be firm and clenched.

  Whoa, where had that thought come from? A silly grin twisted her lips. It was a tasty image, though. She shifted her focus to the one who had broken her fall. Marcus had pushed himself up on his elbows, and his lip was cut where her elbow had landed. "Are you all right?" she reached out to it, at the same time he offered a solicitous hand to that same offending elbow and said, "Are you okay?"

  He managed a crooked grin. "We must be, if we're both more concerned about each other."

  "No," she said, smiling back. "You're male, and so you can't admit you're in terrible pain, and I'm female and so naturally would always ask about the well-being of others before my own."

  "Another woman with an overabundance of therapy," he observed, turning his hand into a position to offer a courteous handshake, despite her current lack of clothing. "I'm Marcus."

  "Lauren," she shook his hand and then cocked a brow at Josh. "And I think we met in the tree."

  "Which explains why you flung yourself out of it," Marcus noted dryly. "Perfectly understandable."

  Josh shot him a deprecating look, then turned his attention back to Lauren. She noted with some amusement his determination to keep his gaze fixed on her face. "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "I think so." Lauren found her knees a bit unsteady as she rolled to them. She put her hand to the forest floor to push herself up. A pair of male hands supported her at either elbow, and she gazed down at her half-naked torso, stained with dirt and leaves.

  "Well, this has been an adventurous day," she murmured to no one in particular, though she thought she heard Marcus chuckle. She was going to adjust that towel, as soon as she could discreetly turn away from the two men.

  She put her weight down on her right foot and gasped, grabbing at Josh's arm to keep her balance. Sprain. Probably not a bad one, but just one more delightful thing to add to the day's charm.

  Marcus squatted and ran his hand along the back of her calf, down to the injured member. "Already swelling," he confirmed.

  She had been sucked into some parallel dimension, where every tawdry cliché from a cheap romance novel was going to be played out. If everything went true to form, one of the men, probably the one she found most irritating yet mysteriously irresistible, would swing her easily up into his arms.

  "Okay, then," Josh nodded, hooked her arms around his neck, bent and scooped her up. "We'll take you back upstairs and get that wrapped." He lifted a brow at her snort of laughter. "What?"

  "Nothing," Lauren shook her head. "Nothing at all."

  Chapter 4

  At least this parallel dimension had its perks. Being carried up a hill in a strong man's arms was decidedly pleasant, though unsettling, since her right bare breast was pressed into his unshirted chest, and she felt every shift of his fingers along her spine and thigh.

  "You could have at least let me adjust my towel," she said.

  He glanced down at her, and with her arm occupied in holding on, there was nothing she could do but endure the heated perusal.

  "Why would I want to do that?" he grinned.

  Her eyes narrowed.

  "He's always been this way, Lauren," Marcus commented. "God knows I've tried to beat it out of him."

  Josh snorted. "Like a little prissy fairy like you could beat up anyone."

  "If you're going to act like a homophobic Neanderthal," Marcus remarked, moving ahead to open the side door of Lisette's house, "I'm not going to play with you anymore. Do you need some help?"

  Josh's grip on Lauren tightened and Marcus clucked. "You see," he informed Lauren. "He doesn't share."

  Josh's face suffused with color. He looked as if he might defend his actions with some excuse, but in the end he said nothing. He shouldered by Marcus, jabbing him in the chest with his elbow.

  "Ow," his friend said mildly, and shut the door after them.

  Outside, where her options were limited, being half naked had been embarrassing but not fatal, just part of the whole ludicrous situation. Carried up the stairs and into Lisette's living room, furnished with every comfort of the civilized world, Lauren felt a keen urge to have the floor open and suck her in. It was so much easier when she was in control, with all the right trappings in place. Even though she knew they were just trappings, and the real control came from within.

  "Put me down, we're in the house," she said, struggling a bit to underscore the order.

  "I don't think it's going to do you much good to stand on your feet," Josh observed. "Where do you want me to put you down?"

  "Over there," she snapped, pointing at a comfortable chair. Her robe lay on the ottoman, next to the cursed sliding glass door that had started the whole incident.

  Josh nodded. "Marcus, go see if Lisette has an ice pack and some bandages."

  "I don't need—" Lauren closed her eyes and fought the desire to scream as he sat her gently in the cushioned embrace of the chair. They had helped her. There was no reason to take them off at the neck because she felt helpless.

  "Lauren," Josh's fingers touched her jaw and she opened her eyes. That lean, half-bare body curved over hers. His eyes were on her face, not on her naked breasts or the low riding towel.

  "Shit happens," he said quietly. "We're not teenagers here. We all know what we look like under our clothes. You were in trouble, we're neighbors, we helped. There's no 911, nothing but the three of us to take care of one another. If you're going to look at this in any way, think of it as a good story to tell Lisette later. Don't beat yourself up over it."

  "Easy for you to say," Lauren managed, trying not to look away, a cowardly way to deal with the overpowering sense of invasion his sincerity caused. "You weren't the idiot that —"

  "You're not an idiot." Lauren jerked at the hand that came down and clamped on hers. J
osh squeezed her fingers. "You didn't know the door would lock behind you, you didn't know if someone would be coming to give you a hand, so you took the initiative and tried to help yourself out. That took guts. Okay?" His tone softened on the last word, and he released her fingers to touch her face again, one light brush, tentative.

  Lauren studied him, swallowing at the sheer…energy she saw behind those marvelous gray eyes. She had read a book, or maybe it was a sci-fi movie she had seen, where an entire galaxy was enclosed in a pendant. What she saw in his gaze reminded her of that. His proximity, his words and those eyes were all dragging her under. She struggled to stay above water. "You're being too nice about all this," she said.

  "You're right about that," he said, surprising her. "If you'd stop being so pitiful, I could drop the whole chivalry thing and stare at your tits."

  Lauren choked on a laugh. A smile eased across his face, stopping her breath. He rose, moving out of her personal space, physically at least. "I'll see what we can make for dinner," he said.

  "Dinner?" she squeaked at his back as she snatched the robe and worked her way into it. "I don't need… I don't recall inviting you to dinner," she wiggled the towel out from beneath the robe and belted the latter just as Marcus returned.

  "But you were going to, because we rescued you," Marcus pointed out. "Besides which, Josh is a terrific cook. Here," he knelt before her with a first aid kit and a brush. He opened the kit and unrolled a bandage. "First I'm going to rub this with a wet cloth, and get a bit of the forest off…"

  * * * * *

  Lauren found herself at the mercy of a miracle, two nurturing men. Marcus cleaned and wrapped her ankle and then applied warm and cold compresses to it, exercising consideration to both her physical and mental discomfort. He dropped the arrogant wit in favor of comfortable questions about her visit to the island. Her history with Lisette, how she had gotten here, and then how she had learned to sail so well. Pleasant small talk.