Island Heat (A Sexy Time Travel Romance With a Twist) (18 page)

“Eustace?” I whispered, not wanting the sound to carry.

Salvador agreed, a low chuckle in his throat. “Eustace is many things, but a great,
silent
hunter, he is not.”

“Well, no more courting presents, even if you go after them by yourself, do you hear me?”

“I hear you,
belleza
,” he said, amusement in his voice, and kissed me again before I emerged from the cave.

I’m quite sure the two of us looked a fright when we emerged. My hair was a tangled, snarled mess on my head, and Salvador’s breechcloth had been ripped on one side and re-knotted. My clothes were spattered with his blood, and he had new, fresh gouges in his arms and a cut on his lip from where I’d bitten him so hard. His green eyes had a lazy, satisfied look in them that nearly took my breath away, though, and he looked content.

Eustace was bent over the dead cat carcass, butchering it into large hunks of meat, and Olivia stood off to the side, playing with the kittens, letting them chase a scrap of vine. Harold sat near the fire, slowly turning the spit.

All of them stared at us when we emerged, tousled and damp with sweat. I stood there awkwardly, arms crossed over my chest, wondering what – if anything – that I could say.

Eustace was my savior. He gestured at the carcass. “Well, Salvador,” he said. “It’s not going to skin itself, now is it?”

Salvador chuckled and hobbled over to his side, favoring his ankle. I hurried over with a stool and insisted on wrapping Salvador’s ankle before he went any further, and the men did their best to ignore my fussing administrations.

“Diana,” Olivia called. “Come and play with the kittens! They’re so marvelous!” She giggled again, so full of light and happiness that it made me smile as well, and I sat down next to her.

And that was that.

“Give that back!”

I chased after the playful kitten through the cave, amidst Olivia’s giggles of delight. The darn thing had my bikini top and was dragging it all around the cave, fighting the material with the long incisors that jutted from his lips. “Siegfried! Give that back!”

“He’s not listening to you,” Olivia noted, stroking her kitten, Roy, where he curled up on her lap. “Perhaps you could sneak up on him?”

I looked over at her in annoyed disgust, watching as Roy calmly batted at a nearby coconut. “Why is it that I got the fierce one and you got the nice, sweet, calm one?”

She grinned and just hugged her kitten closer to her. I’d seen a real transformation in Olivia since her brother had returned and the kittens had arrived. She smiled all the time now, and laughed, and the cave had never been such a happy place. Even Eustace had come out of his sulk, and Harold smiled, even though he never spoke.

Me, I walked around like a dreamy idiot I was so happy. Sure, we lived in a cave, but the people were nice and Salvador...I sighed just thinking about him, and the kitten scampered out of reach again. Salvador took my breath away.

He’d taken my breath away again just last night, when he’d—

Olivia’s laugh interrupted my dreamy, naughty thoughts. “You seem slow this morning, Diana. Are you not getting enough rest?”

I flushed beet-red at her innocent question and sat down near the fire, pretending to ignore the kitten as he dragged the bikini-top around, just waiting for me to take notice again. “I slept fine. Just odd dreams is all.”

“What sort of dreams?”

I shrugged. “Footprints, mostly. I always dream about footprints for some reason.” I still saw the crash site, with all it’s terrible clarity, as clear as day in my mind.

Olivia shrugged her thin shoulders. “What do you suppose it is about them?”

I didn’t know. Even after weeks on the island, I still didn’t know. Something about it bothered me, however, and it still lingered in the back of my mind. “When do the boys get back?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation into safer territory.

Soon, I hope,” she said, glancing anxiously at the palm canopy, where a thick rain spattered against it and left the entire cave in a muggy mist. “They won’t find anything in all this rain except mud and more mud.”

I noticed the kitten had settled down to chew on my bikini-straps and I reached over and snatched it before he could get it again. “Got it! Take that, Siegfried,” I said, and gave the kitten a rough scratch behind the ear in delight. “You can’t chew up my only swimsuit, you little beast, you.”

The kitten purred at the scratching, and I petted him for a good long while before heading to the ledge out of worry again.

I hated it when Salvador went out with Eustace. Most of the time the men went separately – to make the hunting faster – but today Eustace had wanted the company, and Salvador had obliged him, as he was still favoring his ankle and could not make his usual runs.

To my relief, I saw them down below, a flurry of motion running along the slick paths that led to our cave. I lowered the rope ladder and leaned over the edge, waving, as they approached. A nice fat island mammal – the size of a gopher – hung over Eustace’s shoulder, enough for all of us to eat on tonight.

“Careful at the ledge,” Eustace called up. “It’s slippery when it rains.”

I stepped back, watching as the two men slid in the trampled mud down below, made slushy due to the two days of rains we’d had. Eustace’s long, pale toes cut into the mud, and I watched it squish between them, wrinkling my nose. Yuck.

And froze when he lifted his foot and I saw the perfect impression of five rounded toes, followed by the body of his foot.

Images of the beach flashed through my mind, images that were so clear just last night. The dead pilot. The trample of footprints all around the wreckage.

Some had been small, uneven at the top like the footprint Eustace had left below. Those had trailed all around the wreckage and disappeared into the thick jungle undergrowth.

I saw in my mind, with perfect clarity, the crisp, rounded forefront of a print, and knew what had been bugging me all along.

Someone had been wearing shoes, and had walked around the plane.

One of the others – the stewardess, or Mr. Wingarde – were alive.

My entire body trembled with that realization, and I suddenly felt so weak that I had to drop to the ground where I sat, and catch my breath. The cavemen must have rescued someone else. Someone from my small, doomed flight was alive. Someone else was out there, with the cavemen. What if the stewardess was still alive, and they were doing...awful things to her? I shuddered at the thought. I couldn’t leave her like that.

A gentle hand touched my chin, and I looked up into Salvador’s concerned face. “What is wrong?”

I drew myself to my feet quickly and grabbed the oil lamp, lighting it by the fire. “We need to talk for a minute, please.” Lamp in hand, I pulled him by the hand into our little back cave-nook. The others looked at us with interest, but no one followed us, and we were alone within moments.

“What is it?”

Making sure the flap was down, I turned to him and set the oil lamp down in the corner on its stand. “Salvador...” I fought the silly urge to wring my hands and cry. “When you found me, did you see any of the others?”

He shook his head. “There were no others. You were the only one in the ship.”

“It wasn’t a ship, it was a plane,” I said irritably, then put my hands over my face when I realized I was snapping at him. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just...” I took a deep breath to compose myself. “I was on that plane with four people. Two men and a woman. And I think at least one of them was still alive when the plane crashed.”

When he said nothing, I peeked through my fingers over at him and frowned. “You’re not surprised?”

He pulled me into his arms and stroked my hair. “
Belleza
, it does not matter now. You are here. You are safe. The terrible lizards cannot get you.”

“You’re not listening to me,” I said in tearful frustration. “Someone is out there—“

“Not any more,” he said, his voice surprisingly harsh. “You know as well as I do that the creatures here are unforgiving. If they were alive when you landed, they are not alive now.”

I sagged, realizing he was right, and shut my eyes. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the image of the footprints scattered in the sands out of my mind. There were both kinds, in my mental image – barefoot and otherwise. “What if the cavemen – what if Bgha’s people got to them? Couldn’t we go save them?”

“No!” Salvador’s reply was fierce. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of my arms. “We must leave the cavemen alone! They must forget all about you. They are not to know that you are still here, or they will come after you.”

“I can’t just leave the others,” I shouted.

“They are already dead!” He said back at me, his voice firm. “I have seen men get up from a wreckage moments after hitting land, only to be devoured by the terrible lizards. They are dead, Diana, and there is nothing you can do about it! Do you understand me?”

Stunned at his response, I rocked backward on my heels and jerked out of his arms. “Don’t touch me.”

He dropped his hands, then ran one down his face, trying to compose himself. Silence fell between us, and utter silence on the other side of the curtain, which meant that everyone in the cave was listening as well. “Diana, what you ask is dangerous,” he said quietly. “We cannot stir Bgha and his men up again, not so soon after your capture. Leave them alone. Your friends are already dead.”

With that, he stalked out of the small side-cave and shut the flap behind him, closing me in the darkness with only the lantern.

I curled up on the blankets, thinking hard. Salvador wasn’t even going to give this a try, and that made me upset. I understood his reasoning, sure. Underneath his angry bluster, he was terrified they’d find me again somehow, and hurt me or take me away. But I knew, deep in my belly, I knew the stewardess or Mr. Wingarde was still alive – had to be – and I just had to figure out a way to get there. If they were alive, the cavemen with Bgha would have them.

I just needed to find out for myself.

And I knew just who to hit up for help.

Still hurt by Salvador’s refusal to help me, I didn’t speak to him all evening, and we went to bed in silence. I woke up in the middle of the night with the insane urge to kiss him, just in case this was goodbye, and he’d responded to my impromptu kiss. We’d made love quietly, slowly, under the blankets, for hours. When I woke up the next morning, he was gone hunting, and Eustace was in the cave with Olivia.

“I’m to take you girls to the bathing pool today,” Eustace said when he saw me, his voice gruff. Olivia seemed perfectly cheerful, but I knew from the odd way that Eustace was eyeing me that he had spoken to Salvador this morning and heard of our argument.

He was right, of course. No sooner had we arrived at the bathing pool and Olivia knelt to wash her clothes, I pulled Eustace aside. “What has Salvador said to you?” I asked.

Eustace leaned on his spear and gave me a suspicious look. “Why?”

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Look. I have reason to believe that when I crash-landed here, that someone else survived, and I want to go looking for them.”

The smug smirk on his face grew as I spoke, and I knew he’d already discussed this with Salvador. “That’s impossible,” he said in a no-discussion-about-this tone. “If you’re by yourself on the beach, you pretty much done for.”

“I was alone,” I argued. “I survived.”

“Sheer luck on your part,” he said, unmoved. “I’ve seen it happen too many times, you can trust me on that. The only reason your man would have survived is if the natives got him, and the natives aren’t big on us humans.” He gave me a sly look. “So you’d best forget all about your old beau, and make Salvador happy. He’s like a brother to me, you know. He cares for you, so you’d better be good to him.”

“What?” I blinked in surprise. “I – what? No! No one is my ‘beau’.” I gave him a disgusted look. “Good lord. Wouldn’t you want to save someone if you thought they were in danger?”

“I would,” he agreed, glancing over at his sister where she worked dutifully on the shore, pounding soap onto the wet clothes. “If I thought they were still alive. But since I don’t, I’m not going to help you. Now hurry and do your laundry so we can head back to the caves.”

What a dismissive, arrogant jerk. I was almost of a mind to tell him that he could stuff the laundry up his ass, but I forced myself to choke down the words. “That’s a shame, then,” I gritted out, trying to sound sad and pathetic. “Because on the plane with me was a real pretty woman, about my age.” I shrugged idly, watching as he stiffened and riveted his attention back on me. “Real sweet, too. Pretty blonde curls, freckles. You’d have liked her. If she were alive, I bet she’d be real happy for a rescue.” I gave him a pointed look.

Oh, I had his attention now. Eustace blinked wide eyes at me, then glanced over at his sister again. “Another woman?”

I nodded. “I can’t leave her in the hands of the cavem— uh, the natives. I can only imagine the terrible things they’re doing to her.”

I watched him, waiting for him to respond. I could almost see the gears whirling in his mind, and stark loneliness shone in his eyes. “You’re not lying to me, are you?” His voice was slightly hoarse, and he cleared it once, then grew angry. “Because if you are, that is a horrible thing to torment a man with—“

Pity surged through me, but I tamped it down. No time to be weakened by other emotions – I needed to take his reaction and use it for my plan. I raised my hands defensively, remaining calm despite my growing excitement. He’d fallen for the bait – not that it was bait. I wasn’t lying. “There were four people on my plane,” I repeated. “Myself, the stewardess, and two men. I found the pilot, dead, and I never found any trace of the other two, but I remember seeing their footprints on the shore. I think Bgha’s people have them.”

A serious, fervent look came over his face. “If the natives have them, they could be…in danger.”

I knew he was thinking of the same thing I was, and I remembered Bgha’s dirty hand on my thigh with a shudder. “Now do you see why I want to rescue them?”