When night fell again this time, they didn’t discuss sleeping in the same room. They just did it. They both knew that he wasn’t going back down to the third floor, which may or may not still be flooded. But more importantly, they both knew that neither of them wanted to separate.

They’d survived a hurricane together that morning. They’d clutched one another for hours. They’d heard the world tear apart around them and they’d made it to the other side. You don’t go through that and then go back to polite distance immediately after.

Mari knew that the next three days were going to be some of the strangest of her life. And she knew that she’d probably need Jay to get through them. She saw no reason to alienate him. None at all.

So he laid his space blanket out on the floor of the closet when the light around them lengthened and darkened into night. She rolled her sleeping bag up like a burrito and offered it as a pillow they could share. It was too hot for blankets anyways.

And she felt her eyes fall closed only moments later.

***

A long, sad sound woke Mari before the sun even did. A foghorn, somewhere far out at sea. The light was gray all around her. And she was hot. Blisteringly hot. She’d stripped her tank top off at some point in the night so that the only thing she wore was her bikini top and bottoms. It took her a second to realize why she felt like she’d woken up in a sauna.

For one, she was trapped on a tropical island with no air conditioning. And two, there was a hundred and eighty pounds of muscular, tall, blonde man wrapped around her.

Mari and Jay were spooned together. She was small enough that she could feel his chin on the top of her head, she could feel his breath fan out over her hair.

His knees were puzzle-pieced into the backs of hers and one of his humongous hands spread over her hip. It was almost like he was fastening her to him in their sleep.

He obviously had a lot of practice sleeping next to half naked women if he was so comfortable. If his body naturally did this during sleep.

Mari didn’t want to pull away from him. And that was very strange to her. She was not a snuggler. Never had been and never would be. But right now, she found herself deeply content within the tight bands of his arms. She found herself wanting to burrow backwards into him.

And what the hell? Why shouldn’t she? She’d just survived a hurricane for god sakes. She refused to judge herself for her comfort-seeking impulse.

Mari pressed herself backward, ever so slightly, and shivered when the smooth skin of her back came in contact with his chest hair.

“Mmmmm,” he groaned slightly and his hand flexed on her hip.

Was he awake? She couldn’t tell. So Mari pressed back into him a little more, her ass nestling into the front of his hips. Her bikini bottoms covered the essentials, but they were small, and she could feel the fabric of his swim trunks against her bare thighs. She could feel his heat against her skin.

And she could feel something else too. Something that felt suspiciously awake. And suspiciously large.

Mari froze for a second, not sure if she should nestle in any further. Was this pervy? Was she grinding her ass on him while he was asleep?

But then his hand flexed on her hip again and he tugged her backwards ever so slightly. Oh. He was awake. He was definitely awake.

So Mari wiggled just a tiny bit more, pressing herself into him. She shivered when his hand tightened on her hip and then traveled down the smooth expanse of her stomach. He leaned away from her just enough so that he could guide her down on her back. He leaned over top of her, still laying on his side.

Jay loomed over her, the gray morning light lining his face. But his brilliant blue eyes shown out of his face clear and bright, and Mari wondered how long he’d been awake. How long he’d held her like that while she’d been sleeping.

Their faces were just a foot apart and Mari’s lips parted. She couldn’t stop her gaze from darting toward Jay’s mouth. When she looked up, he was looking at her lips too.

“Toothpaste,” Mari whispered and Jay immediately grinned.

Without taking his eyes off hers he dug around in his backpack and emerged with the tube. He squeezed a bit onto her finger and then his own. They both brushed and took swallows of water before they fell back into the exact same position they’d been lying in before.

She felt so small there, his large body penning her in on one side. They were in a cocoon of sweaty warmth. Mari had one hand thrown over her head and the other around his back. Jay laid on one side, leaning over her. He shifted his weight forward, just a touch, and let his top leg nestle between hers.

Mari gasped as her legs opened just a tiny bit, as the hair on his thick, muscular leg tickled her thighs. He was trouble. No question he was trouble.

Jay was in trouble. She looked up at him, dark hair and gold skin and those eyes. Somehow so innocent and so tough all at once. He’d woken up half an hour ago, and despite the oppressive heat, he hadn’t been able to roll away from her. He wanted to tangle with her. And now her lips were parted, and she smelled so unbelievably good. Like sweat and sleep and sunscreen.

His eyes fell to her lips again, they were that gorgeous mauve color. Not too pink. Not too girly. Just sexy. Just sublimely sexy.

He felt an electricity zing between them. The air around them crackled and grew fragile. Everything, he knew, would feel sharp and delicate until they met each other’s mouths. And then it would be soft. It would go perfectly soft.

He could feel her begging him to close the distance between them. He knew she wanted to be kissed. But he couldn’t be the one to do it. He was so much bigger than she was. They were alone on this island. He’d fling himself into the ocean before he made her uncomfortable, or scared her, or pushed her.

So he lowered his face toward hers until there was only two, maybe three inches between their lips. And he held there, his eyes searching hers.

Mari stared him right back. Her clear green eyes were almost yellow gold in the dim morning light. She searched him and he let himself be searched. Whatever she saw there was fine by him. He was hers to search.

And then her eyes came back to his lips. Whatever she’d found in his eyes was enough to have her hands lifting to his tangled hair, to his beard, growing thicker by the minute. The moment was slow and languid, heated, and sliding over them like honey. Even though he was on top of her, she got the vague feeling that he was luring her in. And as it was, she just sort of slid into it.

Mari’s lips came up to press against Jay’s and he couldn’t stop the guttural groan that tore through him at the first, firm contact. Her lips were so soft. He opened his mouth against hers and his head swam at the first taste of her. Jesus. She tasted like moonlight. Dark and clear and impossibly romantic. It struck him, hard, in his chest that this tough little sexy woman felt so damn romantic in his arms.

Because there was nothing romantic about the situation. They were trapped in a sweaty, sticky supply closet. But still, something about her tight little body had Jay practically swooning. It must be the heat, he thought to himself as he slicked one hand down her side and deepened the kiss.

Mari was drowning. All these years she’d been so deathly afraid of drowning and here it finally was. It wasn’t so bad, she realized as Jay’s tongue licked at her bottom lip, swept into her mouth. She tried to surface for air, but he took her under again and again. She made a sound into his mouth and was blearily confused when a foghorn sounded, again, out on the ocean.

She opened her mouth to his and pressed her tongue into him. He growled again and the only thing that kept Mari from grinning was the fact that her mouth was very busy doing other things.

Their tongues didn’t battle so much as they tangled. And Mari got the strange feeling that they were mixing, sliding into one another. Combining. Her hand fell away from his hair for a moment, weightless and lazy with the heat. But as it hit the ground, the pain in her hand shot through her body, igniting something within her.

All the fear from yesterday, the terror of the hurricane, even the fear of him, all of it came roaring back into her. But not the tight bite of horror, just the whippy, dizzy energy of it. Her body tightened under Jay’s and suddenly her hands were everywhere.

Jay sensed the change in her moments before he felt it. She was going from languid, meandering kisses to tight, racing passion. Jay tore his mouth from hers and to the side, gasping for air as she burned him alive from below. But Mari couldn’t wait for that.

Another foghorn blew on the water as she lifted her mouth to his neck, tasted the salt on his skin. The flavor made her hips buck involuntarily and she found that one of her legs had tangled with his like a vine climbing a tree.

“Fuck,” Jay growled, straining against the sublime pleasure that was Mari wrapped around his body. He wanted to lay her down and take everything she was trying to give him. He wanted to strip off that teeny bathing suit and rub her down from head to toe. He wanted to taste her everything.

And it was because that desire was so thick, so potent, that Jay rolled them. He knew he was seconds away from taking something he couldn’t give back. And he’d be damned if she didn’t give it to him. He landed on his back, his hands firmly at her hips and Mari splayed over top of him.

One of his hands opened against her bare back and his breath skipped when he realized that he could span the entire width of her with just his fingertips. God, she was just a little thing. But so strong. Her muscular leg looped over his waist and then she was no longer lying along his length, she was straddling him.

There was something white hot and trembling inside Mari and she was a hundred percent certain that Jay was the only thing on this earth that could extinguish it. Her passion rode high as she dropped her head down and took his mouth again, her plush lips pressing and sucking at his. Her hair fell in a curtain around them and Mari’s hips started to move in time with each swipe of her tongue against his.

Jay’s hand traveled the length of her back, each swipe longer and longer until his fingers went under the back of her bikini on the upswing and dipped into the top inch of her bottoms on the downswing. But he didn’t press her forward. He didn’t urge her to race forward or thrust his hips up into her.

It was as if he was content to let her pace it all. He was content to let her take what she needed from him.

Wanting, needing him to join her in the race for the finish line, Mari rolled his bottom lip between her teeth. Jay groaned and his hand fisted on her back.

But he didn’t stop the soothing slide of his hands. He didn’t become frantic. He just kept touching her, slow and steady, stirring and stirring her until she was a quivering mass of jelly.

Mari tore her lips from his and collapsed over top of him. Her forehead pressing into his neck. The way he was touching her, holding her, it was stoking something deep within her, but it was also soothing her. Somehow he was ruffling her feathers and smoothing out her ragged edges all at once. Mari felt herself shedding the terror and discomfort of the last 24 hours. She felt herself rising toward a sublime happiness and pleasure, all because of the way he held her in his arms.

The first sob rolled out of her unbidden, and still, Jay’s hands didn’t stop their endless traveling over her skin. Soothing her, stoking her. The second and the third sob were expected, but infuriated her, they had to fight their way out. By the fourth one she’d given in and let her body shake and tighten over top of him. It wasn’t the release that her body had been hoping for. But after the last days and nights, Mari needed a good cry.

Jay’s hands didn’t stop moving over her until they anchored over her back. He strapped her to his chest, holding her just to the edge of too tight.

When the tremors subsided and Mari felt reasonably relieved, she brushed the tears from her face and sat up. She was certain she looked a mess, all sweaty, sticky hair and puffy eyes. But she didn’t care. She’d just been through a hurricane, damn it. A girl was allowed an image crisis after that.

Mari let her eyes drop to Jay and was stunned to see him wiping away a few tears of his own.

“You’re crying,” she whispered, swiping her thumb through one of the tracks down his cheek.

“Yeah,” he agreed, clearing his throat. “Been a hell of a few days. First I’m riding the best waves of my life, then I’m trapped in a shitty old hotel with a hurricane bearing down on me, and then I meet this girl who I wanna wrap up in my arms and protect from absolutely everything and at the same time I wanna strip her down and teach her some really, really dirty things. Hell of a few days,” he repeated, a grin slowly growing over his face.

Mari rolled her eyes and pulled herself up off of him, folding her feet and sitting next to him instead. She roughly wiped his other cheek with the back of her hand. “So,” she said after a beat. “You really think you have things to teach me, pretty boy?”

Jay laughed, really laughed, letting the rest of his tensions dissolve into the air around them. When he opened his eyes again, he let them trail the length of Mari’s body. He let his gaze linger and trip over her sexy face. Her tight, trim body. Suddenly, the few days while they waited for rescue seemed more like an interesting adventure with a desirable woman. He wasn’t going to protest that.

***

By mid afternoon that day, the water had receded back down the island for the most part. Mari and Jay decided to venture out and see what they could see. They were both stunned at the wreckage left behind. There were fish and starfish, already succumbed to the baking heat of the sun. Trees were bent nearly in two, others were simply laying on their sides.

The island had been demolished for the most part, flattened as if by a cosmic steamroller.

They returned home that evening and fed their aching stomachs with only half a bar each. That night they slept in one another’s arms, despite the heat and when they woke the next morning, Mari insisted that they go in search of the fresh water spring she’d discovered on the south side of the island.

“You stink,” she told Jay as they picked their way south through the jungle.

He didn’t dispute it. But he did lunge forward, pick her up so her legs went around his waist, pin her against a tree. “So do you. But I like it.” He lowered his head to her armpit and took a hearty sniff.

She laughed and shimmied down from him. “You’re such a freak.”

But he delighted her. He’d delighted her a million times over the last days. He was quiet and funny and compassionate. Her heart pinched in an uncomfortable way when she thought about their pending rescue. They’d be taken to Grand Bahama, no doubt. And then she’d go one way and he’d go another.

She wanted to get the hell off this island, but it was beyond confusing for her that that also meant getting away from Jay.

But try as she might, she couldn’t imagine being with him anywhere but the island. What, was he going to call her on her cellphone? Visit her in Boston? She didn’t see a long distance relationship in her future, not even with Jay.

She supposed that there was a slim chance that he also lived in Boston. But she hadn’t asked. She didn’t really want to know. She didn’t want to hear all about his life off the island. His real life. Because she knew that she would never have a place in that real life. Hearing about it was too painful.

She wondered if he was having similar thoughts. Because he never asked her about her life back home either. That conversation about their jobs was still the closest they’d gotten to those kinds of details. She wondered if he realized that they hadn’t even exchanged last names yet.

Mari attempted to shake those thoughts loose from her head as she reached back for Jay’s hand and continued forward into the jungle. They’d kissed a few more times since that first kiss yesterday morning. And each had been more passionate than the last. But both of them were holding something slightly back from the other.

Mari knew what she was holding back. And it shocked her. After her parents had died, she didn’t think she had any more love to give. But there was something about Jay. The way his face was so blindingly beautiful when his eyes were open, but closed, he became a normal man again. His voice in the morning, more gravel than bass. And always, the way he’d held her through the storm, his arms never loosening their grip around her.

He’d brought her through to the other side. And for that, she knew she was in very real danger of loving him.

“Ah, gracias a Dios!” Mari groaned in extreme gratitude when they finally stumbled on the fresh water spring. Cool, clear water trickled in a small waterfall out of a craggy rock. After two days of heat and salt water humidity drying on her skin, she would have killed for a hot shower right about now. But this cool, fresh waterfall was a very close second.

“If you’re happy to see that, then I think you’re about to propose to me,” Jay said from behind her.

“What?” she asked, turning to him.

He grinned and pulled a small tube of Dr. Bronner’s all-purpose soap out of his pocket.

“Ah!” She threw her arms in the air and kissed the absolute breath out of him. “And you even have the peppermint kind? I love how it makes your naughty parts all tingly.”

He laughed and handed it over, eyeing the spring. He shucked his tennis shoes off and then his swim trunks. Mari blinked after him as he walked, completely unabashed, naked as the day he was born, to the waterfall.

Jesus. He was…breathtaking. His body was a work of art. He was all cut lines and firm muscles. He was a collection of angles and shadows, his golden hair dusting him almost everywhere. He stepped under the water and groaned when it wetted him down, turning his face into it. And Mari was grateful that he had his eyes closed because she was straight up ogling him.

His tattoo was large and blue but she couldn’t quite make it out from where she stood. Quickly giving up, she let her eyes linger elsewhere.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from what he was packing between his legs. The man was stacked. And strangely beautiful. Again, she thought of artwork. When she dragged her eyes up from between his legs, she realized that he had opened his eyes under the spray of the waterfall and he was watching her watch him.

She felt a knee jerk pinch of embarrassment, but her personality squelched it almost immediately. He was the one who’d gotten naked in front of her. What did she need to be embarrassed for?

From anyone else, she might have expected a snarky or suggestive comment. But not from Jay. He simply watched her. His face was drawn with desire for her and satisfaction from the cool water at his back. But he was quiet, unassuming. Nothing about him was aggressive.

Mari took a step forward. She paused, realizing that she was getting pulled into his magic. Just like before. He was somehow quietly reeling her in. Making her come to him. Well. Two could play at that game.

She tossed him the bottle of soap and his attention immediately fell to washing himself. So Mari didn’t look up when she stepped out of her sandals. She didn’t look up when she carefully, gently removed her bikini top. She didn’t look up when she tossed it on the ground beside her, shook her hair back. If he were looking at her, he’d see her in profile, but she didn’t look up to see if he was looking. Instead she just hooked her thumbs into the waist of her bikini bottoms and bent at the waist to bring them to the ground.

She thought she might have heard an intake of breath from his general vicinity, but she still didn’t look. Instead she folded up her bathing suit and placed it carefully over her sandals. And then, in a fluid movement, she rose and turned at the same second, facing the waterfall and Jay all at once.

His eyes burned into her. She could feel them, like a touch, on her body. Every step she took toward the waterfall felt as if it were a mile. She picked her way over the rocks and moss, stepping into the cool water that pooled at Jay’s feet.

He was as still as a bird on a branch as he watched her come closer, the water beating on his back.

Jesus, she was so, achingly, good looking. Everything about her, the shadows under her breasts, the flair of her hip, the gentle slope of her shoulder. It was all so perfect. So strong and so delicate at the same time.

Another woman might have made a joke, or looked at him coyly. Another woman might have intentionally brushed against him. Put on a little show.

But not Mari. She just held his eyes, quiet and confident, as she stepped under the spray of the cool water. And when the water had painted her hair an even deeper black and she tipped her head back and up, Jay was undone. Undone by the look on her face. Sublime, pleasured, content.

He knew then that he wanted to be where she was. After they were rescued. He didn’t know what she was thinking, but he knew what he wanted. Just to be with her. Next to her, around her. He didn't need a commitment if she wasn’t ready for that. But he did know that unless she lived in Ocean City, he was going to be moving.

She opened her eyes and brushed the water off her face, looking up at him. They stood maybe a foot apart from one another and Jay’s body absolutely ached to close that gap, to smash her body against his. To feel her against him. Warm and wet.

He let out a low breath and handed the soap over to her. Mari’s lips twitched, like she knew exactly how difficult this was for him. And then, in a tenuous, balancing moment, she slowly pushed the soap back into his hand. Mari lifted her hands to the side in a gesture of surrender. She was asking him to wash her.

Jay snicked open the cap of the soap and sudsed his hands together. Reaching out for her hands, he started there. Paying particular attention to her fingernails. From there he worked his way down each arm. She giggled and squirmed when he got to her armpits and he took the moment to tug her forward.

Mari’s small breasts landed against his chest, the water sluicing down between them. He felt her heart stutter against him and he let out a long breath. Clearing his throat, he guided the soap up around her neck, behind her ears, even over her face and hair. And then he pulled her away and back so the water washed those suds away.

Next, holding her eyes, Jay got more soap on his hands. He worked the soap over her shoulders and he looped his hands around to her back. Then slowly, carefully, his hands came around front and his large hands framed her breasts.

They both gasped as one of his thumbs strummed over her nipple. He did the same to the other side. He was torturing himself.

Dropping to his knees, Jay started at her ankles, soaping upward little by little. He got to her inner thigh and paused. His eyes going back up to Mari’s.

He was stunned by the sight that greeted him. Her mouth open and panting, her eyes lazily half lidded and aroused. Her tan lines made her breasts glow in the shady light all around them, soap slicked and slid over her. Jay lifted his hands and stroked soap over her belly, into her navel.

He finally let his eyes trail down to the trimmed, dark patch of hair between her legs. He couldn’t stop the growl that rolled out of him. He couldn’t sit here at eye level. If he did he was going to lose his mind and devour her in the middle of a jungle. So instead Jay rose up, breathing heavily.

Holding her eyes, Jay slicked a bit more soap on his hand before he trailed his hand down one hip. Mari parted her legs just an inch or two and licked her lips, her eyes on his mouth.

Giving both of them exactly what they wanted, Jay let his hand brush between her thighs. He washed her there and let his hand linger. Mari, moaning, went up on her toes and caught his lips with hers. She hitched one leg up around his waist, giving him her weight and free reign.

But Jay didn’t push the situation further. The moment wasn’t quite right yet and he feared pushing her too far. He cupped her down below until he could bully himself into gently pulling his hand away, holding her as close to him as he could.

“We should get back before it gets dark,” he whispered in her ear.

Mari rolled her head to one side, onto his shoulder, and peered up at him with eyes that saw way too much.