Island Heat (A Sexy Time Travel Romance With a Twist) (9 page)

And over the edge of the ledge, three anxious, curious faces stared down at us. I couldn’t make out their faces, haloed by the sun high in the sky behind them.

I swallowed my gasp of surprise and looked at Salvador. “Survivors? More survivors?” I wondered if the stewardess or Mr. Wingarde was somewhere in this small group, then cast that thought aside. Unless they’d managed to make their way through the treacherous inland without a guide like Salvador, I doubted it. Seeing that there were other survivors gave me hope, though, and frightened me as well.

How long had they been here? Was anyone looking for their rescue?

Salvador pried my arms off his neck and gestured at the rope ladder. Embarrassed that I was still clinging to him, I pulled away and moved toward the ladder. The rope was cleverly set up, made of old rigging and bits of fabric, and reinforced by what seemed to be long, fibrous vines that had been bleached of nearly all color. I gave it a cautious tug and then began to climb.

Who were the mysterious strangers? I wondered if it would be three men, all as has Salvador was, and my pulse hammered in my throat nervously, and I nearly slipped on the rungs.

Beneath me, I felt Salvador’s hot hand slide up my thigh, trying to brace me if I fell. I swatted it away and resumed my climb, flustered. When I neared the top of the ladder, strong hands reached out to help me up the last few feet, and just like that, I was hoisted into my new home, facing the three other inhabitants of the cave.

What I saw surprised me.

An old man stood the closest to me, long, tattered beard crawling down his face and neck, and he was dressed in rags and seemed so frail that I thought he might keel over and die at any moment. But he smiled at me, showing a set of crooked, yellow gappy teeth and a pleasant disposition, and I relaxed.

Behind him was a girl, with hair the elusive color between blonde and brown, a smatter of freckles on her face. She wore a dingy sack dress that might have been a color other than grey, once upon a time, and couldn’t have been more than twelve. She looked to be about my height, but her body was reed thin with youth, and no curves.

At her side was the third castaway, a man probably a year or so younger than me – early twenties or so. His face was clean-shaven and his hair a darker shade of the girl’s, and it was obvious from his round face that matched hers that they were siblings. He put a protective hand over her shoulders, and he wore more clothing than Salvador did, his shirt sleeves tattered and hanging off his frame, dingy with age but patched repeatedly. His pants were torn at mid-thigh, and on his feet I could see the remains of what had probably once been a sturdy pair of boots. He watched me with an unnerving amount of interest – hunger mixed with anger.

I gave the three of them a half-hearted wave and took a step back, careful not to get too close to the edge. “Hi,” I said, wondering at the motley crew. “I’m Diana.”

The small cave was silent. I watched as the girl glanced between the men, her hands calmly clasped before her. I waited for someone to say something – anything. Had I done something wrong? The looks on their faces were grave.

I felt a large presence come up behind me, and knew without glancing over that it was Salvador; the hand that looped casually around my waist was evidence enough.

This easy gesture was enough to break the silence, and send the younger man into a rage. He left his sister’s side and came to ours. “What do you think you’re doing?” His voice rose an angry octave, and I was surprised to hear the thick British accent.

“Doing?” I said, hunching closer to Salvador in the light of his anger. I hadn’t expected this. “I uh...”

“Not you,” he said, imperiously cutting me off. “Him. What is it you’re doing, Salvador? Do you want to start a war with the ape-men?”

“Eustace,” said the young girl. She took a step forward, wringing her hands in a delicate fashion. “I really don’t think this is –“

He cut her off with another angry gesture. “Stay out of this, Olivia. Salvador knows the rules as well as anyone here. He knows that the wreckage on the south beaches belong to the ape-men, and anything on the north beaches belongs to us. The fact that he deliberately ignored our hard-won truce means that he intends for all of us to die here on this island at the hands of those vile creatures.”

I turned to Salvador, then realized he didn’t understand the conversation. The man – Eustace – was railing at him for nothing. “I don’t understand what’s going on, I’m afraid. Salvador saved me from the T-Rex and brought me here.”

“T-Rex?” The old man’s brow wrinkled.

“Big dinosaur? Itty bitty arms? Big teeth? Likes to eat people?”

His blank look didn’t ease until I mentioned the teeth, and then his face cleared. “Ah, one of the terrible lizards. Yes, we know of that one.” His accent was English as well. “It doesn’t matter. If you were on the south beach, you belong to the cavemen.”

I echoed, looking to the other two, then back at Salvador. “You mean, you guys have a deal with the cavemen?” It explained their anger at Salvador for showing up with me here.

“Did your craft land on the south beach?” Eustace was in my face again, grabbing me by the arm and trying to pry me away from Salvador.

I stumbled at the rough gesture and fell to my knees. “Hey,” I protested.

The words died in my throat at Salvador’s low growl. He flung Eustace backward with a sudden, violent motion, and then moved back to my side, helping me back to my feet.

Eustace would not be deterred. “If she landed on the south beach,” he said, pointing at me as he got back to his feet, “you are invoking war with the others by stealing her out from under them. Do they know she exists?”

The girl interrupted again, uncomfortable. “Eustace–”

“Do they?” Eustace’s voice raised into a shout.

I could feel Salvador’s fingers tighten on my waist, and sensed things were about to get ugly, fast. I raised my hands, trying to calm Eustace down. “The cavemen know I’m here, yes. And it’s no good screaming at Salvador, since he doesn’t speak English.”

All eyes turned to me.

“What did you say?” Eustace gave me a perplexed look.

“I said that Salvador doesn’t speak English,” I began again, and stopped when the young girl frowned.

“But of course he does,” she said, her pale brows knitting together. “He speaks the King’s English as well as you or I. How else would we communicate with him?”

I turned to Salvador in surprise, but all I got from him was a stony, expressionless look.

It didn’t matter; the truth had outed itself. “You...speak...English?” I thought of all those hours I’d spent, chattering to myself, thankful that he couldn’t understand me. I thought of all the times when a nice explanation would have helped so much, or a few comforting words.

And I’d gotten silence. Not because the man couldn’t speak, but because he didn’t want to speak to me.

“You bastard,” I said, my angry voice echoing in the low cave. I swung my hand, trying to punch him in the gut. “You lying sack of—“

He caught my hand in his own before I could do any harm, and brilliant green eyes gazed down at me, cat-like and glittering with anger. “We need to talk, you and I.”

And just like that, he slung me over his shoulder again and headed deeper into the caves, ignoring my protests and that of the others.

Fist pummeling did nothing. Incoherent screams of rage did nothing. Even biting, kicking, scratching – none of this persuaded Salvador to let me go until he’d reached the back of the cave. I heard him draw aside a heavy cloth of some sort, and then we moved into darkness.

I smothered a gasp of fright as the world around us plunged into black, and then Salvador lifted me off his shoulder and set me down on a warm jumble of furs on the floor. His gentle fingers brushed my cheek. “Wait here.”

As I watched, Salvador raised the flap and stepped back out of the small, private pocket of the cave and left me alone.

Feeling huffy and a bit abused, I sat up on the pile of furs and debated going after him. What if this room wasn’t safe? What if one of those cavemen were nearby? What if there were more caterpillars the size of my arm?

What if rabid Eustace came after me and decided he wasn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer?

Salvador returned a moment later, calming my fears. In his hands, he held a rickety lantern, the lit wick giving off a faint, flickering light. The faint scent of smoke and coconut wafted into the room as he put the lantern down on a small, crude table and crouched next to me. “Well?” he said.

I looked around the room, now that we had some light. It was as clean as the rest of the small cave – no moss growing on the walls, no dirty animal remains or leaves or anything in the corners. It was almost like a stone house – was like a stone house, I amended, thinking of the palm-leaf roof and the mud brick protecting the ledge. I stared up at the smooth rock walls in wonder. Something had been written along one wall, in a flowing script that I didn’t recognize. A neat pile of belongings lay in the far corner – I recognized a spear and another large bundle of furs. To my side was a crude wooden stool, a few other scattered belongings, and a small, warped wooden chest that had seen better years. Across the door was a heavy curtain of leather, making this a private room inasmuch as one could have in a cave. To the side was more strange writing, and a series of hash-marks on the wall.

The soft furs beneath my legs, I realized, were blankets and bedding, and I flushed as I realized I was sprawled in the middle of Salvador’s bed. Realizing at last that he was waiting for me to speak, I raised my chin defensively. “Well what? You’re the one that dragged me in here.”

He gave an easy, leonine shrug. “You are upset.”

I was momentarily fascinated by the beautiful way that he mispronounced my language. Swallowed consonants and over-exaggerated syllables had never sounded quite so sensual. Forcing myself to concentrate on his words rather than his voice, I found my frown and gave him the full-force blast of my glare. “Upset? Upset?” I laughed, the sound coming out echoing and shrill in the small room. “Why would I be upset? I mean, here I am, stranded on a deserted island and I’m rescued by some man who doesn’t bother to tell me that he speaks English? And so I’ve been mucking about for two days, trying to communicate with him and failing miserably? And I’m thinking of all the times when a quick “No, Diana” or “It’s ok, Diana,” or “How are you feeling, Diana,” or maybe even “There are other survivors, Diana” would have felt damn good, but you couldn’t do that for me, could you. You couldn’t be bothered–”

“Diana,” he said. “You have to understand—“

I fisted my hands in the blankets. “No,” I ground out. “I don’t have to understand. There’s nothing to understand. You were being a selfish bastard.”

His expression darkened in the shadows, and I watched the corners of his mouth tighten. Good, I was getting to him. Maybe he’d start to feel an ounce of the betrayal I felt right now.

Strangely enough, his unhappiness didn’t make me feel any better, just worse. “You’re a bastard,” I repeated, my hands fisting roughly in the furs.

He slunk down close to me and I instinctively shied away. Within two steps, he was in my face, his breath hovering caressing mine, his dark eyes searching my face. “The others can hear your shouting,” he said. “I brought you in here for some privacy.”

“Let them hear me shout,” I bellowed. “Let them know how fucking pissed off I am at you—“

Before I could finish my sentence, his hand was on my chin, grasping my mouth. I stiffened, thinking that he was going to shut me up physically. Instead, his mouth swooped over mine. I stood in silence, surprised as his tongue swept against my lips, coaxing my mouth open. And when I opened for him, stroked suggestively against my tongue, conquering my arguments with the playful caress. This was not the soft, feather-light kiss of before. This was a kiss to claim, to put down stakes. This was Salvador branding me as his.

And I was all for it. My hands, previously fisted in the blankets, uncurled and wrapped around his neck. I moaned into his mouth as he gently sucked on my lower lip.

“You have the sweetest tongue,” he whispered against my skin, the words so thickly accented that I had a hard time understanding what he was saying. His softly murmured Spanish words were drowned out by my frantically beating heart.

There was nothing outside of this cave, nothing in the world except his hot, hungry mouth on mine, the feel of his skin pressed against my own, and the soft flickers of light that cast shadows over our bodies.

Salvador’s hand slid over my breast, and my brain immediately flashed back to the waterfall, remembering the delicious things he’d done to me there, and I drew in a ragged breath. “Say that you’re mine,” he whispered against my skin.

That threw a bit of cold water over the flames of ardor. I pushed at him with my hands and turned my face away. What was with the people on this island wanting to own someone? Jeezus. “I don’t belong to anyone,” I gritted out, trying to shove him off of me.

“You heard the woman,” said a calm, rich English voice behind us, and both of us turned to stare at the figure that loomed at the curtain. Eustace had pulled it back and was staring down at the two of us, entwined in Salvador’s furs, with hot, wild eyes. “She doesn’t belong to you. Let her go.”

I heard the angry rumble in Salvador’s throat. He leapt off of me, pulling himself up to his full height in the small doorway. His face loomed too close to Eustace’s.

“She is mine.” Salvador’s voice was low and deadly with menace.

“Then I will challenge you for her,” the Englishman shouted in his face, then turned on his heel and marched away.

“So be it.” Salvador disappeared behind the curtain. I was left alone in his room, blinking in surprise.

Fight? Over me?

Were they
serious
?

I heard the young girl scream, and I bolted out of the bed. “Wait,” I called, shoving my way out of the room and back toward the sunlit main portion of the cave. “This is ridiculous. Nobody should be fighting over anything, least of all me!”