“It’s only swollen; it’ll be fine tomorrow. Are you thirsty?” he asks. “Maybe you should drink it.”
He’s watching me with that curiously intense gaze I remember from the lunch together. It makes me want to blush under his scrutiny, but now’s not the time to be prissy. I’m thirsty, too, but I’m also practical. I have no idea how to survive in the jungle. If Mendoza knows even rudimentary camping shit, he’s leagues ahead of me. He’s my ticket out of here, and so he’s going to get the clean water for his eye. “Wounds first,” I tell him. “Then we’ll see what we have left over.”
“I was right,” he says with a chuckle. “You are bossy.”
“No,” I tease back. “You’re just a bad listener. Now tilt your head back and let me look at your eye.”
After a few minutes of examining, I have come to a single medical conclusion about Mendoza’s eye: it’s gross. I dribble clean water into it to try to flush out some of the crusty stuff, but I’m not sure what else to do other than bandage it and keep it clean. So that’s what we do. With the clothing from the bag, I pack a clean white undershirt against his eye and then hold it in place with strips of the Hawaiian shirt. It might be the only extra clothing we find in the jungle, and it might be a bad idea to destroy it, but to me, losing an eye seems worse.
I tie the knot behind Mendoza’s head and try to ignore that my movements are pushing my breasts into his face and he’s probably getting an eyeful of tit meat. “There,” I tell him. “That should at least keep bugs and things out of it until we get out of here.”
“Thank you, Ava,” he says in that low, soft voice. It sounds like a caress when he says my name.
“You didn’t tell me how you know my name,” I point out.
“I’m Rafael,” he tells me. “Before when we spoke, I gave you my real name.”
“And you totally just avoided my question,” I reply pertly. “So unless you want to lose that other eye, you should answer me.”
Instead of being threatened by my cruel words, he just grins at me like he’s proud.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RAFAEL
The ricochet of the bullet has swollen my eye shut. I might be slightly concussed from the free fall from six thousand feet into the jungle. I’ve no clue where we are and we have no supplies, but I’ve never been happier than when Ava stuck her tits in my face. Those babies felt like the softest pillows ever created and I would’ve been happy to suffocate in the damp valley of cleavage. Maybe I’d even get the chance to lick her sweat away.
I might have groaned and pretended my injury was worse to lengthen the moment. Her delicate hands smoothed over my forehead and, it may have been my imagination, but it seemed liked she might’ve lingered over my hair. Dig in, I want to grunt.
“What the heck is that sound?” Ava clutches me to her.
If I don’t answer, does that mean I can stay in this position forever? Because I want to. Actually, no, I’d like to move over and suck one fat tit into my mouth until it’s hard as a diamond. Then I’d like to slide down until my mouth is level with her * and see how salty sweet she tastes between her legs. The beast between my legs roars to life and it’s a good thing that the monkeys above us scream again, causing her to jump and strike my good eye with her elbow. The pain serves as a reminder of where we are, who I am, and what the fuck I should be paying attention to.
“It’s the howler monkey. They sound like humans screaming or sometimes like the jaguar. They’re kind of dumb and if we found Afonso’s gun, we’d be able to kill one and have meat every night for a week.”
She shudders. “I don’t want to eat monkey.”
The jungle is hot and wet during the day and cold at night. If the mosquitos don’t eat you alive, the jaguars and anacondas might. Not very many people can crash-land into the middle of the Amazon and make it out alive, but I’m upping our odds from around 20 percent to 50 percent based on Ava’s positive attitude. Unless my eye heals up, I’m not giving us more than that. If we could find the Boy Scout bag, though, we could bring our odds up significantly.
“There’s plenty of food in the Amazon from plantains to fish, so if you don’t like monkey, we won’t eat it.”
She shudders again. “Thank you.”
“You a vegetarian?”
No, that couldn’t be right. Didn’t she eat some prosciutto at the café? But I want to hear it from her. I want to know everything about her.
“No, but for some reason eating something that screams like a human freaks me out.”
“Monkey is off the menu,” I say, making no attempt to move away from her rack. “I have a knife in my belt.”
“Do you have anything else besides the knife?” she asks. Her tone is accusatory like I’m holding out on her.
“No,” I say slowly. “Just the knife.”