“Do you know what the mana is?”
Was this the random crap I would have to deal with on the island?
I scoffed and crossed my arms. “No. Never heard of it.”
“It’s the mind force that moved those giant Moai statues from one part of Easter Island to another.”
I sighed. “So, you knew it was me because of the mana?”
He tapped his head. “I’m a little bit of a psychic.”
I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them again. “You’re bent on making this hell for me, aren’t you? Why don’t you just admit you heard my heels over the drums.”
He made a motion to the drum guys to start back up, and they did, softly this time. Connor moved a little to the beat.
“Well if I’m being honest. I don’t think a prissy girl like you can handle a place like Easter Island. Look at you.”
My blood boiled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Come now, don’t act so thick. You’re wearing those ridiculous high heels, on a Monday no less. If we were on the island you would get stuck in the sand. You look good, don’t get me wrong. And that dress? Damn girl you look poured into it. You’d turn heads walking down the street, no doubt about that. But I just don’t know if you’re going to last three hours on Easter Island let alone sixty days, where the electricity goes out sometimes? I just don’t know. What happened to that other fellow...I think his name was Jonathan.”
I clenched my teeth. For being a man who specialized in physical fighting, he was an expert in passive aggressive verbal tactics, as well. Usually, it was one or the other. “Mr. McGrath, you don’t have any options at this point. I am the one who will be on the trip with you.”
I found it ironic that not an hour ago I was fighting not to go on this trip, and now I was fighting to convince Connor that I was the one for the job. “Vikki said you wanted me to come down here to chat with me. I trust you had something valuable for me while I am integrating your style into a sixty-day schedule, planning ahead. Obviously, we will have to plan our wardrobe since it’s such an isolated location. Was there something specific you wanted to address?”
He bounced back and forth onto each foot as we spoke, like a little boy with ADD. It was a little distracting. “No, love. I’m kidding anyway. I just had Vikki send you down here because I wanted to see your pretty face.” He finally stopped bouncing and smirked at me. He paused for an elongated length of time, staring at me. “And...done. I got my daily dose of Crystal Lawson.” He looked down between his legs, and damned if I didn’t see his dick twitch in his shorts.”
My mouth fell open. He did not just do that!
“You can go now.” He winked and motioned to the drum guys to start up again, then started his ring-dancing war drum routine or whatever the hell this was.
Anger scorched through me, and I stomped away from the ring. The pointed edge of my heels drove in sharp clack clack clack into the cement floor that I just wished was his face!
“Oh, and Crystal,” Connor’s mocking laughter roared at me from where he bounced around the ring. I didn’t stop, though I was perilously close to flipping him off over my shoulder. “See you on the plane. I can’t wait. But, you might want to pack a flashlight. Power outages are pretty common on the Island.”
3 - Connor
Pissing Crystal off was the highlight of my day. It was so easy to mess with her. She had the thinnest skin I’d ever encountered on anyone. She was still mad at me from the gym stunt, and I’d kept poking at her over the past few days as we got ready to hop a plane out of the country. Most of my entourage, had flown out ahead leaving just Crystal and me with a small group to act as a buffer between us.
When she’d learned that there would be a lot of people between her and I on the long ass plane ride, she'd begun giving me the silent treatment. Still, the blonde-haired banshee and her bitchy ass mood couldn’t darken mine.
I smiled as our plane sat on the runway in Santiago, Chile. Outside it was still dark with the promise of sunrise already lighting the horizon. We’d be arriving just as the dawn broke, my favorite time of day on the island. I had one day, one full day, to enjoy Easter Island and its mysterious glory before I had to buckle down and begin training.
El Toro probably thought I’d brazenly given him the home advantage for our fight. Little did he know, Easter Island felt more like home to me than anywhere else on earth. I was re-born there, amid the mysticism and beliefs of an ancient culture, and a hard-nosed shaman who didn’t listen to me bitch and complain about my knee.
The island sat three thousand miles off the coast of Chile. It was so remote that they only allowed one plane to fly there at a time. Our commercial flight out of Chicago had been a long haul--over twenty-four hours straight before we took this puddle jumper over to the Mataveri International Airport, the most remote airport in the world. The juxtaposition of the old and new existed in sublime balance on Easter Island. I couldn’t wait for Crystal’s reaction when she saw the enormous moai statues flanking the runway.
On the first flight, out of the states, I’d slept some, and now I was enjoying the takeoff from the Chilean airport. The pilot got on the intercom and spoke Spanish to us for a few minutes, running through the same pre-flight bullshit that American pilots did.
Crystal sat several rows in front of me. I couldn’t see much of her, just a puff of blonde hair over the back of her seat. When she’d glanced at our tickets, and seen that our seat numbers with our group were right next to each other, she’d switched with someone else on our team who was coming over on the same flight, claiming “she loved being by the window seat.”
I watched her closely from behind, and for someone who loved the window so much she was nervous as hell. She bit the edge of her nail without breaking them, I doubt she could bite through her manicure. Every time the plane shook or shifted as it started taxing, her head twitched, whipping back and forth as if making sure this was normal. I suspected she was a poor flyer. I decided it was only right for me to make sure she had a welcoming, comforting face next to her as we arrived at the Island.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman next to me with a polite Irish smile. “I need to get up if you please.” I pantomimed the polite version of pissing, just in case she didn’t speak English.
“Of course,” the woman said with a thick German burr. All kinds of people went to Easter Island, and for various reasons. Who knew what hers was.
I’d donned jeans and a “Kiss me I’m Irish t-shirt” for the plane ride, for maximum comfort. Crystal was the only one, outside of the crew, who insisted on wearing full makeup, a skirt, and a professional white blouse that did nothing to hide her very big tits. Thus, I’d been having very unprofessional thoughts about her the whole plane ride over from Chicago to Chile. She’d even been in my dreams, which hadn’t helped my thoughts any. How was a man supposed to wake up anything less than horny when he’d spent the better part enacting a very dirty fantasy in his head?
I wondered if she was a member of the mile-high club, and if not, had she ever thought about it? I sure as fuck thought about it, and wanted to punch Crystal’s ticket. Was her mind as pristine and classy as those outfits of hers? Or did her fastidious clothing choices hide a dirty girl who needed a bad man to spank her ass? I’d seen her three times in our short professional relationship, and each time she was dressed to the nines. I wouldn’t deny that peeling those tight skirts, and frilly blouses off had been occupying a large portion of my thoughts.
My take on her was that she was a woman who planned and didn’t like being caught off-guard. I mean, shit, she was the only woman I knew who carried around a giant notebook planner, where she actually wrote things down with a pencil. Who did that anymore? Had she not heard of e-calendars?
I ambled down the narrow aisle until I arrived at her row. A young American tourist with a sideways Jaguars ball cap sat in the middle seat next to her. He had good taste in a sports team, and I gave him my best camera-
worthy smile.
Crystal, on the other hand, acted as if the Devil had paid her a visit. When she saw me, she clutched the pendant on her neck.
I used my over-charming polite Irish accent that never seemed to let me down. “Excuse me young man, but I have a favor to ask. You wouldn’t mind trading seats with me so that I can sit next to my wife here, would you?” I nodded toward Crystal.
The young guy’s eyes widened. “Holy shit! You’re Connor McGrath!”
I winked. “Guilty as charged.”
“Yeah, of course! Oh, my gosh can I get a selfie with you?”
I nodded, mugged with the kid a picture, and switched seats.
His jaw was still slack. “My friends are gonna freak. Holy shit, sorry for sitting next to your wife, man. I wasn’t checking her out or anything.”
I put on my serious face for a moment. “Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead.”
His face went stark white as he stumbled back a few rows to take my seat.
Crystal crossed her arms underneath her breasts and shot me a glare.
“Really? Wife? Now, what if he goes and posts about that on Facebook or something?”
I looked her dead in the eye, ignoring how large she made her boobs by squeezing her arms together. If I weren’t a more disciplined man, I’d have looked right at them. They were like two giant suns begging me to stare at them.
“Well now if a guy can’t have a little fun with his wife, who can he now, am I right?” I asked the question to no one in particular. The guy next to me spoke Spanish, and I was sure even if he did understand English, my Irish accent would give him a tough time. Unless you had an ear for my brogue, it was hard as fuck to understand me.
“I specifically requested this seat so I wouldn’t have to put up with you,” she snarled, shifting in her seat.
I stretched out and flashed her my gap-toothed grin. “I know you did. I just saw you were a bit nervous is all. Thought I would come say hi. Maybe see if you need anything to relax.” Only then, when the lurid words were in the air, did I let my gaze dip down and get a nice look at her big ol’ titties. Fuck, the girl was stacked.
“I always get nervous before big flights. It’s no big deal. I’ve flown before.” She lifted her chin and added a touch of hauteur to her statement. “By the way, why are we flying commercial? Why didn’t you want our company to charter a jet?”
I shrugged. “Old habits die hard.” I didn’t need to tell her how I’d arrived at the island the first time I arrived years ago. She’d have a conniption fit if she knew the conditions of my first vessel to Easter Island.
The pilot got back on the PA system and made another announcement in Spanish.
Crystal shifted beside me, agitation stamped on every line of her buxom body. “Why haven’t we left yet? They already did the demonstration! The flight attendants are strapped in. What’s taking so long?”
“Patience you must have, my young Padawan.”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t start Yoda-ing me.”
I cracked a slight smile. It wasn’t lost on me that she’d at least caught onto my casual Star Wars reference, even if her response was to dismiss me. Maybe the southern belle had hope yet to be brought back down to earth.
She glanced out the window again, and her lower body shifted toward mine, pushing the warmth of her legs into mine. Shit, that felt nice.
I felt like my Grandpa, who’d told me once that it used to be improper for women to show their ankles in public as I viewed the flesh of her lower leg. My cock stirred, urging on my thoughts. How nice would it be to grab hold of both of her ankles, spread her open, and run my tongue up the side of her legs, grazing her calves and tickling her inner thigh until I reached her center? I wondered what she’d taste like. She kept up such a hard exterior. Even now, her arms still crossed with her hair and makeup still precisely in place after eighteen hours of flying, I knew she had to be hiding some cherry-sweet flavor inside her. And I was going to get to the bottom of this.
She looked back over at me, sighed, and shook her head in my direction. The flight powered up and barreled down the runway. My cock was hard as we took off into the air over the Pacific Ocean, and I swallowed.
Fuck me, I decided. I was fucked.
I had the hottest distraction I’d ever known as I headed into the biggest fight of my career. I needed to make sure my head was on straight, or else everything I worked for would crumble.
Not fucking happening.
I helped Crystal get her luggage off the track because that’s what nice guys do, and I was pretending to be a nice guy. Fuck, though, her suitcases weighed a ton.
She had exactly four giant suitcases of clothes with her. Through my investigative skills, basically unzipping the thing and peeking inside, I found that one of the four was entirely for shoes. Who the fuck needed that many black pumps?
I had one carry-on with some jeans and t-shirts and another smallish checked back with some fighting gear and essentials, like a water purifier in case things got real.
“Where is the Hotel de Lujo?” she asked as an attendant rolled her four suitcases on one giant wheeler.
“It’s on the east side of the island.” The Hotel de Lujo was luxurious, and most of the fight promoters, agents, other fighters, and big wigs from Pay-Per-View would be staying there.
“I’m not staying in the same room as you or anything, am I?”
I smirked. “No, love. I’ll be staying on the west side of the island, in a cabana off the beaten path.” My home away from home.
“Uh, yeah no. That’s not happening. Jeff hired me to keep a watch over you. We’re staying in the same spot.”
We walked through the automatic doors of the tiny airport to the outside, where the weather was a perfect eighty-five degrees, and the sky was the pale color of a robin’s egg.
I inhaled the peace and harmony and exhaled negative energy.
God, I loved this place.
I shook my head. “Nah., You wouldn’t make it a half-day in the place I’m going to be living. Here, I’ll grab you a cab.”
All the tourist-helping employees spoke basic English, but Crystal didn’t have to know that. I needed to separate us now. Set the boundaries to make it clear what they would be over the next sixty days. And if I had a big, juicy, apple of voluptuous temptation sitting right in front of me while I was training for the fight, I might just lose my shit.
I flagged the nearest cab and spoke to the man in rapid fire Rapa Nui, the language of the Island, so Crystal wouldn’t understand me. “Take her to the Hotel de Lujo no matter what she says. I’ve got a twenty for you right here. Also, don’t speak English.”
The man got the idea right away and grabbed her bags to put them in the trunk.
“Connor.” She spoke with her arms crossed. “I’m not going to a completely different spot on the island than you, so just get those bags out of the trunk right now.” She raised an eyebrow and just dared me to say no.
Damn, that got my dick hard. She would be a hellcat in bed. I fucking knew it.
I let out a loud, exaggerated huff. “Fine, fine. I’ll come to Hotel de Lujo with you.” I played defeated. I opened the door for her, she got in, and I followed her. I said a few more words in Rapa Nui to the driver and slipped him the twenty.
“Buckle up now!” he said with a giant smile.
Crystal did as she was told, then glanced over at me with a funny look. “Wait, he speaks English?”
I nodded.
“Hey, where are your bags? You forgot them,” Crystal pointed out.
“Oh, did I? My gosh”
I jumped out of the car, closed the door, and tapped the trunk twice. As I’d instructed him, the driver took off flying out of the airport.
“Connor!” she poked her head out of the window, her blonde hair whipped around her face as she yelled at me. My name, my greeting to the island, came in long, shrill syllables as she was driven out of sight.
I smiled and waved unti
l the taxi turned the corner, and she was gone. The island was tiny, but I still doubted she’d find me where I was disappearing to.
Whistling a cheery tune, I grabbed my bags and hailed another taxi.
4- Crystal
Ohh that asshole!
Fury rode me hard, and without an outlet, I silently fumed in the back of the cab while plotting all the ways I could murder Connor.
I couldn’t even enjoy the sights around me, though as the taxi navigated through the narrow streets, shaking off the small town built up around the airport, and towards the far side of the island, I found my anger dissipating.
God, it was gorgeous. Easter Island was everything a Polynesian island should be: verdant, exotic, and bordered by deep blue seas fading to turquoise against the beach.
Maybe this wasn’t a terrible idea after all. I could enjoy sixty days of sand and sun. I could work on my tan, and admire the hot as hell fighters that were flying in for the daily fights Connor was scheduling.
I scowled and shunned the scenery. He’d ditched me, in a foreign country. When he’d known it was my job to shadow him so that he didn’t do something stupid. There were no rules here, which meant that if someone wanted to play dirty, they could and who would stop them? The MMA fighting commission didn’t have arms this long.
I leaned towards the patchwork seat and cleared my throat. “I’ll pay you double what he did.”
The driver swerved, and while he eased his foot off the gas, he didn’t stop. His tobacco-brown eyes squinted at me in the rearview. Some sort of beaded lariat hung from it.
I knew, being how damn sneaky Connor was, he’d paid the man. If he wanted to play that way, I could. “Don’t even pretend you can’t speak English to me. I heard you at the airport. How much did he pay you?”
Oh, I had the ice-bitch voice going on, the one that said I wasn’t going to take any of his bullshit. I probably should have used it on Connor, instead of turning into a sputtering, idiotic, crushing girl. Then maybe he’d stop looking at me as if I were his favorite bimbo and treat me like the valuable employee I was.
Fantasy Island Page 3