“Does the bite still hurt?” I asked.
Hunter shook his head.
“No,” he said. “Not really. A little achy, maybe, but nothing like it was.”
“That’s good,” I said.
I was nearly against him now, my wet clothes the only thing that was keeping me from being able to feel the warmth of his skin on my breasts. I ran my hands over his shoulders and along his arms, savoring the smoothness and the feeling of the muscles just beneath. This man was young. Too young. But I couldn’t resist him. I ran my hands around to the front of his body and over the top of his chest so that they just grazed his collarbones.
“Turn around,” I whispered in his ear.
He complied with my request and turned. The water was low enough that it hovered just beneath the delectable deep V of muscles over his hips. When he shifted, the water moved, revealing the hint of coarse, curly hair at the bottom of the V. I flattened my hands on his chest and let out a long breath, comparing the rhythm of our hearts as I felt his against my palm and mine against my ribcage. I was so invested in Hunter that I didn’t even notice that the sky had darkened and the pressure of the air around us had gotten more intense until it felt like the jungle itself was closing in around us. In an instant, though, the sky opened up and a deluge of hot, steaming rain cam streaming down on us.
I let out a cry of surprise and jumped back from Hunter.
“Get back to the cave!” he commanded and I did as he said, fighting against the resistance of the water to get back to the bank.
The ground was already slick as I ran back toward the cave and I nearly lost my footing. As I started to stumble, I felt Hunter grab onto my arm and lift me so that I didn’t fall. Above us, a bolt of lightning sliced through the sky and the jungle rumbled with a massive crash of thunder. It reminded me of the night that we had escaped from the cruise ship, but this storm seemed to have come on faster and far more vicious than even the storm on the water. I was thankful when I got beyond the mouth of the cave and into the dryness beyond. I went as far inside the cave as I could see with the light from outside.
Hunter ran in after me and I noticed that he had gotten back into his pants.
I guess running through the jungle naked wasn’t nearly as appealing as National Geographic would make it seem. Even Tarzan made himself a fancy loin cloth.
“Oh, no, what animal was that?”
“What?”
I looked up at Hunter, not realizing that I had spoken out loud. I shook my head.
“Oh, um, I was just thinking about Tarzan.”
“You were thinking about Tarzan?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“He was human.”
“What?”
“You asked what kind of animal he was.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “Not him. I was thinking about his loin cloth. It was obviously made out of fur. So, which of his little animal friends and family did he kill off to turn into his wardrobe?”
Hunter stared back at me and blinked a few times as if he was trying to process what I was saying in the context of something that actually mattered.
“I ---” he started, but then stopped.
“Never mind,” I said, trying to brush some of the water off of my skin.
“Have you ever wondered why people run out of the water when it starts raining?” he asked. “It seems kind of silly. Like ‘oh no, we need to stop swimming, we’re going to get wet!’”
I laughed.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily the rain,” I said. A bolt of lightning lit up the cave and I pointed at the entrance. “It’s that.”
I was walking toward the pile of supplies that I had built just inside the cave when a clap of thunder crashed overhead, so loud it felt like the Earth was going to split. I gasped and jumped toward Hunter. He reached out and caught me, drawing me close to him so that I was pressed to his chest. I lifted my eyes to look at him and found him staring back at me, his eyes darker. Suddenly I didn’t care about the storm around us anymore. All that mattered was the feeling of his arms around me and his chest against mine. Without thinking, I rose up onto my toes and touched my mouth to his. He tasted warm and delicious and I parted my lips slightly to seek more of it.
Hunter’s hands pressed to the small of my back and he tilted his head to deepen the kiss. I looped my arms around his neck and pulled myself up closer to him, not wanting any space between our bodies. As we kissed, I started to walk backwards, drawing him with me. I was easing myself down to my knees, trying to bring him down so that we could lie on the pallet that he had rested on as he recovered from the bite, when I felt him ease me away from him again. My stomach sank. This couldn’t be happening again. We had already gone through this and then back around in circles. With the storm raging outside, I didn’t have anywhere to hide and I certainly didn’t have any champagne to drown my embarrassment in.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, hoping I didn’t sound anywhere near as shrill as I thought that I might.
“Nothing,” Hunter said. “It’s not that anything’s wrong, it’s just that…”
He hesitated and I tilted my head to look into his face better.
“What?” I asked. “What is it?”
“What Gavin said.”
I shook my head.
“Don’t let him bother you,” I said. “There’s no point in giving him any more puff than he already has. He doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.”
“That’s just the thing,” he said. “He wasn’t too far off.”
I felt my mouth fall open, the surprise at his words palpable. My arms slipped from around his neck and he took a step back.
“Exactly,” he said, starting to walk around me toward the back of the cave.
“No,” I said, grabbing his wrist and gently pulling him back toward me so that he didn’t walk away. “Not ‘exactly’. Talk to me.”
Hunter turned back to look at me and I could see the strain in his expression. This was obviously something that bothered him.
“What is it that you want to hear? That I’m completely inexperienced with women and he humiliated me?”
“Is that why you stopped me after the wedding?” I asked.
My voice sounded weaker and more vulnerable than I would have wanted it to, but I couldn’t help it. I needed to understand what had happened between us, even if that meant putting myself in a position that I shouldn’t be in, that I didn’t want to be in.
Hunter looked at me quizzically, as if he couldn’t understand why I would even ask that.
“What else would it be?” he asked.
“The fact that I’m so much older than you,” I admitted.
Hunter scoffed and stepped up closer to me.
“I don’t care how old you are,” he said. “You’re gorgeous. I noticed that the first moment I saw you.”
“Then what?”
“You are so beautiful and so confident. I’m intimidated.”
“There’s no reason to be intimidated.”
“That’s easy for you to say. I doubt you’ve ever had trouble attracting people.”
“Hunter, you are beyond sexy. I haven’t been able to control myself since I saw you at the wedding.”
“You’re the only one.”
“So, you’ve never…”
I hesitated, not really knowing how to word the question in such a way that I would get the information that I wanted without embarrassing him any further.
Because this is just one of those casual questions that everybody asks all the time.
“Once,” Hunter admitted without me even having to complete my thought. “And my confidence about whether that one time even happened is a little bit shady.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was in college. The one time that I decided to go to a party. I had heard about how much fun they were and that that was all I needed to get settled in and start having a good time in college rather than spending all of my time studying.”
“And?”
“Well, I quickly learned why people like me don’t generally go to those parties.”
“People like you?” I asked.
“Nerds,” he said without hesitation.