Heat Wave

Suddenly a strong hand is wrapped around my elbow, literally pulling me back mid-step.

“Don’t. Move. Another. Fucking. Step.”

Logan’s hot breath is at my neck.

“Let go of me,” I seethe, my teeth nearly grinding together.

My body stiffens.

His grip tightens.

“One step and you’d go right over the edge of cliff. They’d be scraping your body off the rocks in the morning.”

The gravity in his tone is leveling. And yet, some rebellious, stubborn part of me wants to test his theory.

I move.

He yanks me back.

“That’s it,” he growls.

Before I can even protest, he’s picking me up like I weigh nothing more than a feather and carrying me back to the campsite. His arms are like fucking tree trunks wrapped across my chest.

Naturally, I fight against him. I’m angry. I don’t want to go sailing off cliffs but I don’t want to be in this makeshift campsite with him either, and I obviously don’t want to be manhandled like he’s an actual Neanderthal.

It doesn’t do me much good. He sits back down where we were before, his back against the cliff, the dead fire at our feet.

But he doesn’t let go of me. I’m held against him tight, my back against his hard chest, my ass pressed against his crotch. I can feel his breaths coming in and out, his heart pounding against my spine. He’s breathing hard against my ear; my head is back against his collarbone.

“This is ridiculous,” I tell him, my words caught in my throat.

“Agreed,” he says gruffly, his voice causing the skin on my neck to prickle. “But I’m not going to let you march out into that jungle just because you’re pissed at me.”

“I won’t go.” I try and move again but he holds on tighter.

“Easy, Freckles,” he murmurs, his lips dangerously close to my ear.

“Ronnie,” I manage to blurt out. “It’s not Freckles, it’s not Veronica, it’s Ronnie.”

“I know,” he says, his arms not loosening. “And I’ll call you what everyone else doesn’t.”

I exhale loudly, my voice shaking. My aggravation against him is fading—he’s just too close to me in every single way. It’s like I can feel the blood beneath his skin, the way his body is telling me everything I want to hear.

He relaxes slightly, his arms slipping down an inch. My skin is sweaty, hot, the friction of his skin on mine is making my nerves sizzle like an electrical fire. My breasts are nearly popping out of my tank top, the sides of them pressed against his arms. The moon’s light makes them glow, their curves highlighted by a slick sheen of sweat.

Everything around us slows down again, that sticky reduction. My breath swirls in my chest, my heart beating unsteadily at first, then slowing as my body starts to turn on me.

I’m a radio, an antenna; I’m tuning into every feeling between us. My neck is exposed to his mouth; my legs are spread. I’m pulsing with a primitive kind of heat that I hadn’t felt for a long time. The kind that makes you want to close your eyes and give into everything.

My mind is running away on me. No, it’s galloping, a wild horse, desperate to reach a brand-new land. I’m imagining what it would be like if he let his hands slip a few inches lower. Beneath the waistband of my shorts. Under my panties. Down to where I know I’m slick and aching.

The thought makes me stiffen. Not from fear, but from want. A terrible kind of want.

What’s wrong with me?

“You’re very tense,” he whispers to me, his breath tickling my cheek.

I can barely speak. “Because I’m being held against my will.”

“Is that why?” he asks, his voice becoming rougher, huskier. I feel it in my bones.

I try and nod. No sound escapes my mouth.

If I turn my head to look at him, my lips will be just inches from his.

Don’t turn your head.

I turn my head. Meet his eyes.

If there’s a crazy battle raging inside my own heart, battling my mind and hormones, there’s something similar going on inside his. I see myself in his eyes, the confusion, the fight.

The lust.

But like always, it can’t be anything more than what I want to see.

I close my eyes and move my head away.

He makes a sound that might be disappointment.

His arms loosen, then come off of me.

“Promise you won’t go anywhere,” he says. He sounds gravely, torn up. “No matter how much you hate me.”

“I promise,” I tell him. And against everything I’d felt in the last five minutes, I get up and move away from him, lying back down against the wall in the fetal position.

Neither of us say anything for a few minutes. The air is too heavy. Not with humidity but with things unsaid. After everything, I feel like we’re back at square one with each other, back into the roles we knew each other in before. I’m no better to understanding him, if anything I’m even more confused.

And then his deep voice punctuates the darkness.

“Goodnight, Ronnie.”

It’s a small victory.





CHAPTER ELEVEN