He curses.
And then I’m concentrating on swimming to the boat as fast as I can. I’m terrified, and fear makes me paddle faster, especially when something brushes against my foot. It could be an old branch fallen into the water. It could be a twenty-foot-long snake. It could be a fish. I don’t stick around to find out. I just swim faster.
The water gets deeper toward the middle of the river and I can’t touch the bottom, but it shallows out again on the other side and I make it to the side of the boat. There’s a rope tying it to the shore, so I hide on the side of the boat and use my knife to cut it. When the boat is freed, it begins to drift, and I realize I have no idea how I’m supposed to get in the damn thing. My bad wrist aches something awful, and I don’t know that I can use it to spring myself into the boat. Then again, it’s too unwieldy to swim it back to the other side.
Something bumps against my leg in the water again, and I panic. Grabbing the side of the boat, I ignore the trembling weakness in my wrist and haul myself over the side. A blinding flash of pain shoots up my arm as I tip the boat to the side, but I manage to roll into the bottom. I lie with my legs propped up on one of the seats, and a small, choked sob escapes me. My wrist hurts worse every damn day, and right now it’s white-hot agony. I don’t have time to baby it, though. I force myself to sit up, holding my wrist against my chest. There’s a paddle at the bottom of the boat, and I reach for it. I don’t know how to work a motor, but I’m sure I can figure out how to paddle.
It’s only when I reach for the paddle that I realize there’s something else in the boat with me. With a mixture of horror and awe, I pull the heavy machine gun into my lap.
Oh, holy shit.
I’ve just stolen the boat of someone with a goddamn machine gun. Eyes wide, I stare across the river at Rafe. What the fuck do I do now?
He’s not looking in this direction, though. He’s gazing down the river, machete in hand. I’m tempted to pitch the gun into the bottom of the river, but we might need it. So I start paddling my way to the other side.
Hopefully I can get to Rafe before the owners of this gun come back.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
RAFAEL
She swam across the river for me.
I can’t get that thought out of my head. The ground I’m standing on is shaking. There’s a tectonic shift in the Earth’s crust but apparently no one can feel it but me. When she took off her shirt and her barely covered breasts jiggled in front of me, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. I couldn’t muster up a single argument to prevent her from sliding into the river, because I had no brain activity. Her tits are that magnificent.
“Look what I found!” she cries and lifts what looks like an AK-47 triumphantly above her head. There’s a long magazine dangling from the chamber of the machine gun. The gun isn’t going to get us out of the jungle faster, but we’re no longer low on the food chain. A couple of bullets from that baby and we’ll be eating something better than snake.
I mentally punch myself so I can get my head in the game. Enough with the fucking mooning. So she swam across the river. She wants to get out of this humid land of suck as much as I do. I tell myself that repeatedly, but what my head wants the rest of me to believe isn’t sticking.
My dick is as hard as ever and there’s a tightness in my left breastbone that is making me feel like a goddamn schoolgirl—the kind that writes her crush’s name in a notebook littered with flowers and hearts.
Shit.
I’m in love with this woman.
Not only do I want to bone her from here to Ecuador but I want to spirit her away to my island, put her on a throne and lie prostrate at her feet until she tells me to rise and suck her toes. And if I’m very good, I will be allowed to place my mouth between her legs and eat her * until she’s too boneless to sit upright.
If my dear mother wasn’t dead, I’d seek her out and have her take a switch to my back again. I need someone, anyone, to beat some sense into me. For both Ava’s and my sake.
I clamber down the embankment and raise my hand to wave her over to my side of the river. She picks up the paddle and dips it into the water. The boat’s prow heads downstream as she paddles on the left side.
“Switch sides,” I holler and then make rowing motions on both sides of my body. She catches on immediately and flips the paddle to the right side. I see her laboring. It must be a bitch to hold the paddle when her pinky is swollen. As she closes in, I step into the water to help her drag the boat ashore.
“Get out of the water,” she scolds me. “There’s something awful in it. Something tried to eat me when I was swimming.”