Wicked Games (16 page)

She glanced down at the front of my swimsuit and rolled her eyes. I quickly glanced down as well – on top of nipples that were standing at attention, I had a gigantic wet spot over one from Dean’s mouth, directly in the center of the Y for ‘ABBY’.

How embarrassing. Shoot me now, God. I colored and wished I could get up from my seat to grab my shirt. So instead, I crossed my arms over my chest and rubbed them as if pretending to be cold...in the hundred degree oppressive tropical heat. Yeah.

Leon looked at me like I was crazy. “You guys read your Tribal Summons yet?”

“Tribal Summons?” I glanced over at the treasure chest and sure enough, a long scroll was sticking out of one side, the lid ajar. Of course. The game went on, even if Dean and I were no longer paying attention. “My ankle injury kind of distracted us,” I said, and stretched it out in front of me to remind them.

That changed the focus of the conversation entirely. Lana immediately sat down next to me and glanced at my ankle with a worried look. “How bad is it?”

“Sprain,” I admitted. “I thought I’d broke it but the game doctors told me that if I keep my weight off of it, I should be able to walk within a week or so.”

“A week!” Lana exclaimed, as if it was the end of the world.

“You gonna evac?” Leon asked me, standing over me and blotting out the sun with his huge tattooed shoulders. “Quit the game?”

“Me? No. I want to keep playing.” The thought of quitting the game and screwing Dean over? Never crossed my mind. He wanted this badly and I wanted to spend time with him. Despite the bugs and the sand and the stress of the game, I was enjoying myself, oddly enough. “I’m in this to win it.” Well, kind of. More like I was in this to pad my book deal.

Oddly enough, I hadn’t thought about my book deal much since getting on the island and meeting Dean. Thinking about it now kind of made me feel...unclean. Like I was deceiving him. I didn’t care for that much. Would he hold it against me once we were out of here?

Was there anything for us when we were out of here, I wondered. Why was I even thinking that?

Lana and Leon were still discussing my ankle, though. Did it hurt to walk? Did I think I’d be able to perform in challenges? What about helping out around camp? I endured their grilling, answering mostly with “I don’t know” and “Yes, but it hurts”. Lana finally revealed the reason behind her grilling. “Leon’s joined our alliance,” she revealed. I glanced up at the big tattooed guy and he nodded at me.

“I’ll have to tell Dean,” I murmured, not sure what to think of this. Another person? We had five for sure, then, if Will was still with us. “Do you think the other five have allied?”

“Nope,” said Leon. “Shanna’s on my team and we haven’t been approached by anyone. She’ll vote with me when the next Judgment comes.”

So that was six, really. That sure seemed like a lot of people if only ten were left. I said nothing though, since Lana was running the show and she seemed utterly confident in her actions. “So what’s the plan?”

“We’re merging, which you would know if you had checked your Island Mail,” she said with a pointed look at me that made me blush and cover my arms over my chest again. “That means ten of us, all on the same beach. With six of us voting together, that means we can pick off the other four.”

It seemed like an obvious question, but I had to ask. “And what happens when we get down to six?”

“The big prizes come at the final four,” she said, just as Dean reappeared from the underbrush, sweaty and carrying a bucket of water (and sans boner, thank goodness). “It’ll be you, me, Leon and Dean to the four. We can decide who goes after that.”

“What about Shanna and Will?”

“We don’t tell them,” Lana said with intense eyes as Dean moved toward us. “The final four pact stays with us here on this beach, since we won’t have any privacy at the new camp.”

“New camp?” Dean said, wiping at his forehead with his forearm. He flicked a concerned look over me, as if checking to see that I was doing okay, and then turned his focus back to Leon and Lana.

“We’re merging,” Leon said, gesturing at the Tribal Summons. Dean cast me a wary look and then pulled the chest open. Two bags – just like Lana and Leon’s – were left for us, along with the long parchment scroll that told us of the merge and drew a map of the new campsite.

“It’s a few miles down the beach,” Dean said, and squinted at the blue line of water just off in the distance.

My heart sank at that. “A few miles?”

“I can carry you on my back,” Leon said to me. “Won’t be nothing.”

“I’ll be the one to carry Abby,” Dean said, his voice taking on a sharp edge.

“It’s not a big deal, man—“

“I’ll do it,” Dean said, and I could hear his teeth gritting. I imagined the mental image of me splayed across Leon’s back, my breasts pressing up against his shoulders, legs wrapped around his hips. Dean apparently had the same mental image I did, and he didn’t like it.

Dean moved to my side, as if to cement his claim. “If you guys can carry our bags...”

“Chill man,” Leon said. “I already got a girl.”

I blushed.

Lana looked like she wanted to murder all of us. “Can you guys stop thinking with your dicks for five minutes? We are here to win the money, not play Beach Blanket Bingo.”

“Like I said,” Dean drawled, helping me to my feet. “You guys carry our bags and we’ll be just fine. We’ll even bribe you,” he said with a wink at me.

“The peanut butter?” I said slowly. I realized what he was doing – cementing our alliance at the last moment and bribing them to forget about the small spat that had just happened. Not to mention that we’d have to share the peanut butter with the others once we got to the beach anyhow. Best to fuel our alliance.

“You guys have peanut butter?” Lana whispered. Leon slapped Dean on the back, grinning his pleasure.

I nodded and pointed at where it was buried in the sand, a stick poking up to mark the spot. “We’ve been eating before challenges to stay strong. It was my reward item,” I confessed.

“You lucky!” Lana exclaimed, her eyes wide.

Between the four of us, we quickly devoured the remaining peanut butter left in the jar. We’d carefully saved a third of it, and at Dean’s meaningful glance, I hung back on the food and let Lana and Leon eat the lion’s share, though it was hard to do so. My stomach grumbled at the rich peanut smell and I wanted to devour the whole thing on my own. Still, this was a game about allies, and mine were currently rather pleased with us.

“What about the bug oil?” Lana asked.

“Bringing that,” Dean said, and moved to the shelter to pack our bags.

Our small bits of clothing were packed into one satchel, the other full of necessities from the camp – the cooking pot, the blanket, the plates we’d made out of shells. Once the stuff was bagged up, Leon belted Dean’s machete at his waist and Dean hauled me onto his back. My legs stuck out from around his torso and I clung to his shoulders like he was giving me a piggyback ride. His feet shifted as he moved into the sand, and I was struck with a pang of guilt. “Going to be a long walk for you,” I whispered in his ear as we began to head down the beach. Lana and Leon were a few paces ahead, double-bags on their shoulders as they studied the map.

“You’re mine,” Dean said simply. “I’m not about to hand you off to someone else.”

I wondered at his choice of words.

I’m thrilled that we merged. Thrilled. Can’t you tell from the sound of my voice? No? Me either. I preferred when it was just us on the beach. Lots of alone time. – Dean Woodall, Day 20

~*~

We stopped a few times so Dean could rest, but he insisted on being the one to carry me. It was just as well – Leon was sweating in the hot afternoon sun and I wasn’t relishing the thought of rubbing up against him. Dean was sweating too, but leaning against his body and letting him carry me just let my wicked imagination run away with itself, to the point that I was ready to drag him behind the nearest tree and have my way with him.

If it weren’t for the way that Lana kept looking back at us with a frown.

And the fact that we were meeting up with six other people who were about to share living space with us.

“Are you nervous about meeting the others?” I asked Dean as we approached the new camp. I could see people standing in the distance, and smelled the smoke of a fire. The sun was setting, so I couldn’t make out who it was, though I knew the faces remaining in the game by now: Chris and Alys from Team 5 (both extremely athletic), Heather from Team 8 (the young, cute grad student), Riley whose profession I couldn’t recall, but I remembered his freckled shoulders from other challenges, and of course Will and Shanna the Bunny. I was a little surprised she’d made it this far, but then again, she was probably good at latching on to a strong man – like Leon before the switch. She seemed to be good friends with Riley now, though she squealed with delight at the sight of Leon and rushed over to hug him as we arrived in camp. She also looked like nothing but skin and bones...and a large set of implants. The others just looked skinny in comparison.

They watched me with interest as Dean moved close to the fire and set me down gently, and then the introductions began. The men slapped Dean on the back and congratulated him on arriving, and the women hugged him. I kind of sat on the bench and watched, elevating my foot and trying not to look as awkward as I felt.

“Oh wow, you didn’t evac?” Shanna said as she looked over at me. “I thought you broke your foot.”

“Just a sprain,” I repeated for the billionth time. “Should be better in a few days.”

“Huh.”

I couldn’t tell if that was an insulting noise or an ‘I underestimated you’ noise. A few of the others crowded around as if just now noticing that I was here, but I noticed that Dean seemed to be the star of the show. I fielded questions about my ankle as I watched him, laughing and rubbing his shoulders where I’d leaned earlier for several hours. A camera-man hovered nearby, just on the fringes of camp, and I noticed the others paid no more attention to him than I did.

“We have a Tribal Summons,” Heather said, waving the others to the back of the camp.

“Already?” said Chris.

“It looks like food!”

That was all it took for all of the remaining players to flood over to the edge of camp and head to the decorated, ornate trunk. In the darkness I couldn’t see anything, and I couldn’t get up to follow. Depressed, I noticed that not even Dean had hung around camp to see if I wanted to join them.

It was just a momentary slip, I reasoned, but it still stung. I stared at the flickering fire and ignored the camera-man as he zoomed in on my face. Stupid ankle. Stupid team not even noticing that I was here alone.

“Sandwiches! And champagne!” I heard Shanna squeal, and the others erupted into a flurry of conversation.

My stomach growled. I wanted to weep as I imagined them scarfing down the food, hands grabbing. Maybe someone would save me a sandwich.

A female giggle arose from the group. “Don’t drink all of it now – save some for later!”

Sigh. Maybe not.

I supposed that I could call out and remind them that I was stuck here on the bench, but I kept my mouth shut. Arriving at camp had been a bit awkward – my foot injury had made them unsure of what to do with me. I had no doubt that if we were still playing on teams, I’d be voted off first. Now that we were all one big team and all challenges and rewards, I was pretty much safe – I’d be extremely safe, actually. I wasn’t going to win any challenges on my own now, after all.

Safe as could be, as long as I didn’t starve to death.

“Here,” a familiar voice said, and I felt something cold touch my shoulder.

I jerked around in surprise and stared at the champagne bottle pressed against my skin, and Dean’s grinning face.

“Thought I’d bring you something. There’s enough for everyone, but not for long.” In his other hand, he held out a large end of a massive sub sandwich.

Happiness swept over me as he sat next to me and handed me the sandwich. More than the food, it was that he hadn't forgotten me.

“Did I ever mention that you are my favorite man on the island?” I said as he offered the champagne to me and I took a swig. It tingled in my mouth, all fizz and alcohol, and it was lovely.

“I’d better be,” is all he said, and we didn’t talk as we ate the sandwich and drank more alcohol. I blushed at the meaningful look he gave me, wondering if he was feeling that same swelling in his heart that I was.

That swelling that told me that I was completely, ridiculously head over heels for the guy.

Eventually others trickled back to camp, eating their sandwiches and passing around more champagne. Bottle after icy bottle was produced from a cooler shaped to look like a treasure chest, and another two camera-men had arrived. I guessed what was going on – good TV was a bunch of starving idiots getting drunk on champagne and partying, and the team was all too willing to comply. Heck, I was too.

The revelry went on for a few hours, it seemed, until someone laughingly pointed out, “Hey, we have a new shelter.”

All heads turned in that direction.

I was struck by a sudden bout of nervousness – who would be sleeping where? Luckily at that moment, no one seemed to be in much of a mood to sleep. They crawled all over the shelter, exploring and exclaiming over the fact that we had pillows – the first ones in three weeks. Instead, the drunks staggered over it and laughed, and then the partying continued.

My own head was feeling swimmy at the moment, the result of too much alcohol on too-starved and tired a body. I was feeling good, too, and I looked over at Dean and wished at that moment that we were alone together instead of stuck with all of these people.

He glanced over at me and seemed to share the same thought. Desire flicked across his face, then quickly concealed itself again. He glanced at the group, laughing and hanging all over each other. They were singing songs by the campfire, though a few less-hardy had collapsed in the shelter in the distance and were making use of the new pillows.