“Get whatever you can.” I hurried upright, wincing against my break.
Conner and Pippa sprang to their feet, dancing in the phenomenon.
Rain.
Delicious, precious, drinkable rain.
Fat raindrops exploded on our skin, washing away the salt for the first time in weeks.
“Yay!” Pippa squealed, holding her face to the sky. Her tongue flicked over her chin, slurping as fast as she could. “More! More!”
Conner whirled around with his arms spread. “Yes!”
Estelle bolted to the forest edge where we kept our clothes and belongings. We still hadn’t built a shelter. We hadn’t needed to. The fire kept away most of the bugs and chilly nights and the sky had been dry up till now.
It’d been a blessing not to have to build and struggle with my broken limb. But now, we paid the price as everything we owned was drenched.
The sand pockmarked with raindrops, slowly darkening the harder it fell.
The fire hissed and spat, fighting to keep burning.
Part of me wanted to protect it. To cover the blaze so it didn’t go out. But we had my glasses. We had the sun. We could rebuild it.
“Grab whatever you can and store as much as possible.” I looked for items of use. We’d already dug holes and lined them with deflated life-jackets. We’d been prepared for this for weeks.
Estelle flew past with the three bottles we drained every night, planting them securely in the sand.
Conner dragged a piece of fuselage that would eventually lose its contents as it had no sides, but as a quick gatherer to drink from, it would do.
Pippa grabbed the pot we used to boil clams, tipped out the seawater, and held it in her skinny arms to the sky. “Fill it up. Faster!”
I laughed as Estelle looped her arm through mine. She kissed my cheek. “I’ve been dreaming of this to happen. Begging it to.”
My body came alive beneath her touch.
I was stupid to keep her away from me. For days, I’d avoided her, refusing to talk, letting every moronic excuse turn me into an ass.
I’d been miserable—we all had. Why had we segmented ourselves off from one another? Things were so much more bearable when fought side by side.
I’m sorry.
I wanted to apologise, but she wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand that I wasn’t just apologising to her but to myself, my past, the circumstances that’d made me this way.
I trembled with desperation as her eyes glittered brown and green. I dragged her closer, wrapping my arm around her waist.
Ever since dealing with the dead, we’d been linked. Despite our days and nights apart, I was achingly aware of her. I hadn’t tried to kiss her again, but it didn’t mean my heart didn’t leap whenever she was near.
I needed her with an inferno that licked every part of me but my need was more rounded now. I no longer wanted the quick satisfaction of sex but the full-bodied joy of connection.
I fell into her eyes.
Instantly, the joy of the rain disappeared and desire ignited on her face.
She looked at my lips.
She stopped breathing.
I couldn’t stop myself.
My hand crept up her back, tracing the beads of her spine that were more pronounced than before. Silently, I cupped her nape. “Do you remember my challenge?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“And?”
“What do I have to do to make it come true?”
Her cheeks pinpricked with heat. “To make me fall in love with you?”
I nodded. My throat dry like ash. My heart imitating the booming thunder.
She’d kissed me the first time. She’d taken me by surprise.
This time.
I kissed her.
My head dipped down; hers tipped up.
My lips parted; hers fluttered open.
My nose brushed hers; she sighed softly.
My arm summoned; she came closer.
And our lips...they met.
She whimpered.
She undid me, claimed me, owned my very soul with that whimper.
My tongue licked her; she licked back.
My head tilted; she mimicked.
Our lips turned from touching to embracing. Our tongues danced, heat bloomed, and the kiss turned into a meal of desire.
“God, I want you.”
She moaned. “You have me.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes. Yes, you do. Believe me. You do.” Her breathless voice wrapped around my cock, pounding my need into something I could no longer fight.
Rain mixed with our kiss, diluting her flavour. “It's raining.”
She nodded.
“Is the sky weeping or happy for us?” My lips trailed from her mouth to her ear. “Are the clouds sanctioning this or forbidding it?”
Her fingers curled on my t-shirt (the very same one she’d washed with sand and kept as sanitary as possible), pulling me tighter toward her. She whimpered again, and this time, she stole one, twenty, a million fragments of my heart, placing them in her bikini top and stealing them forever. “It’s raining because the sky wants us to survive.”
“And what of my challenge?”
“What of it?”
I bit her throat. “You know what I want.”