Page 66 of Safari Murder Party
His eyes lowered.
A third, he swiped off the corner of her mouth. His thumb lingered there, gentle against her full bottom lip. Fletcher’s blood raced readily through her veins, like it had been crouched at the starting line waiting for the flare to fire.
Her skin thrummed beneath his touch. Some part of her wondered if she’d remembered to drink enough water or if this was a dehydration hallucination and, if it was, she really needed to have a stern talk with her subconscious mind for conjuring Waylon as the protagonist of her fever dreams.
“You can’t see shit, can you?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“Get on.”
Fletcher blinked. “On?”
“Me.”
Again. “What?”
“My shoulders.” Waylon scrubbed his knuckles through his hair. In the sun, it was blonder than usual, coils of molten gold and alabaster white. “Get on my shoulders so you can see.”
She didn’t have time to argue before he ducked down in front of her, hands poised to lock around her calves like a Nebraska state fair carnival ride. Admittedly, she felt surer of her fate on the Tilt-o-Matic 3000 than she did with skin-to-skin contact. Her right leg heaved over his shoulder before she could muster a good enough reason not to, and the left leg followed.
Waylon’s palms roughed against her calves, then slid higher. Kneecaps. Higher. His fingers brushed the hem of her skirt, hiked perilously high around her thighs, and she felt the echo of his touch in her hip creases.
She squashed a yelp as he stood without warning, and his shoulders shook with a restrained chuckle, clearly amusing himself. All her indignation subsided as soon as he rose to full height.
“Wow, you live like this?”
Waylon hummed, and the vibrations coursed straight to her bone marrow.
“You can seeeverything.” Fletcher considered herself firmly of average height, creeping into the upper middle class of the height economy when she wore her work heels. This was the 1 percent.
“Including?” Waylon asked. Bait. Her stubborn lips stayed superglued shut. “The jungle. Right where I said it was.”
Fletcher huffed. Okay, fine. Somehow, he’d navigated them toward the jungle without getting them irrevocably lost. Without thinking, she touched the curve of his finger where a handkerchief hid a jagged red line carving knuckle to knuckle. “Why’d you fist-fight the map case if you have such an aversion to longitudinal lines? You clearly know this island inside out.”
“You wanted it.”
Her cheeks burned. She really should have reapplied her SPF before running for her life. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
“I know.” Haughty. Arrogant. And yet. “One day you’ll figure out how to ask for what you want.”
A breeze lifted Fletcher’s hair, looser than usual in a haphazard bun, save the few strands around her face. Here, the sun’s unimpeded glow tested the limits of Fletcher’s ability to avoid a sweaty upper lip, but the breeze hadn’t gotten the memo. It smelled like petrichor and soot. Like a snuffed candle.
Twisting, Fletcher peeked behind them, following the path they trod away from the cliffs. A storm blotted out the estate fire. The manor’s foreboding walls still stood tall, if a bit charred, but a few petulant embers splashed the gardens orange.
“Have you seen anyone else since we left the manor?” Fletcher asked instead of what she really wanted to know:Did you hear Jackie last night? Is anyone else following us?
Waylon shook his head, and she felt it between her thighs. Which was not a situation she ever expected to be in. Her body was not adequately prepared, limbs turning a little too gooey given the topic at hand. “No. Who’s left?”
She’d obsessed far too much over her mental checklist in the dawn-dim savanna, committing the remaining players to memory. “You and me, obviously. Most of Sales: Opal and Sheila and Asshole Rick.”
“Oh, is that what Rick is short for?” A smile tilted his words.
“Most people assume Richard, but most people are wrong.”
Waylon laughed, and Fletcher lapped up the sound, the honesty of it. No barbed fence, no alligator moat keeping her out. Just laughter: deep and resonating. When he wasn’t too busy playing the spoiled, rich, estranged slash prodigal son, his company wasn’tthatbad.
Or maybe her standards for companionship were lowering toanyone who hasn’t actively tried to mutilate me in the last twenty-four hours.
