Page 84 of Safari Murder Party
“I’m sorry I made you.”
His mouth latched on to the pulse point, lingering. She wanted more of him. More everything. Entirely too much wanting. So much it threatened to burn her to ash.
“Waylon,” she said, but what she really meant wasyesandpleaseandoh my god, are we actually doing this?
When he drew back, his thumb touched the crease of her mouth.
“Okay,” he said, as if convincing himself. To trust her. To give in to this thing between them. He leaned in for another kiss that left Fletcher’s lips tingling and then rested his forehead against hers. “Come with me.”
Around them, the chirp of the brush bugs had died, the birds had fallen silent. One monkey howled, and the branches above them shifted with the weight of them leaving until everything stilled.
As a general rule, anxious girlies should not trust gut feelings. Fletcher’s gut frequently lied to her.Everyone in this meeting is staring at your unsteamed blouse. Eat the cheese Danish—you’re notthatlactose intolerant. The restructuring meeting is at eleven, but if you don’t have these memos stapled three hours early, you’re first on the chopping block.
Usually she kept those thoughts at bay with an antianxiety prescription, a bottle of Lactaid, and a color-coded Google calendar.
In the wild, there was only instinct.
And as her fingers laced with his, instinct told Fletcher that taking Waylon’s hand might be the most dangerous thing she’d ever done.
21
If Fletcher hadn’t been so distracted, she would have noticed the tree house. It wasn’t some boyish construction with mismatched edges.Tree housesurely wasn’t even the correct terminology. This was an arboreal chalet. A timber mansion.
The wood-slat exterior had been stained and weather-sealed a rich brown, and the roof shingled with flat green slate. From way down here, it was impossible to discern its floor plan, only that ithad one, which was more than her apartment could say.
Climbing the roots as pathways up the trunk, Waylon swung himself up onto the lowest branch and used the knife for its true purpose—to cut a rope that had been knotted around the base of the tree. A ladder loosed itself from the canopy, made of uneven rungs and frayed knots. Real reassuring.
Fletcher obviously let Waylon climb it first. At the top, he nudged open a hatch. You couldn’t be afraid of heights when you worked on the sixty-fifth floor, but Fletcher’s arms didn’t get the memo. They shook all the way up.
Inside, Fletcher fought gravity as her jaw threatened to drop.
Unlike the estate with its gaudy grandeur or the staff building, which felt more like a Hilton than a home, the tree house conjured a whole suite of adjectives Fletcher never imagined she’d find on the island. Cozy, inviting, and sunny somehow, despite the ongoing storm.
“One of my grandfathers built this as a hunting cabin, I think. My dad never bothered with it, so my mom used it occasionally as her studio.” He ruffled the damp curls at the back of his head. Bashful, almost. Another adjective she hadn’t expected ever needing to deploy in Waylon’s presence.
This wasn’t just a tree house. It was a hideaway, a sanctuary. A priceless reprieve from the dangers awaiting them beyond the four walls, and he’d been willing to share it with her. The intimacy stuck to the back of Fletcher’s throat and made it harder to breathe.
“All right,MTV Cribs,” she said, an elbow ribbing him, anything to touch him again. “Give me the tour.”
Most of the tree house was one room: an open-concept kitchen, dining, and living space. Windows mapped across the far wall, right up to the pointed roof, offering an unimpeded view of the canopy. There was a sunroom off to one side, where an easel and some dried-up watercolors had been forgotten, and a glass door walked out to the wraparound balcony. On the other side, a spiral staircase wound to a loft where she imagined a bed. (Wrapped in Egyptian cotton sheets, she hoped longingly. One night of glamping was plenty to satiate her morbid curiosity.)
Waylon walked her through the amenities, a hand tethering to the small of her back the whole time. The kitchen taunted a propane stove squished between the cabinets. A solar-powered generator fed lamps Waylon flicked on as they went, avoiding the Big Light altogether. Best of all? A rain catcher and a filtration system meant that—
“Holy shit, is there a bathroom?”
Waylon laughed, buttery. “There very much is.”
A tiny yolk-yellow attempt at a bathroom, but a bathroom nonetheless. Fletcher would never look a gift shower-tub combo in the mouth.
As Waylon padded off to hunt down linens, Fletcher was forced to face the reality of her reflection. She didn’t know where to start: the tangles in her hair, the hollow look in her eyes, or the way her lips were still plump with the aftertaste of Waylon.
Desire threaded through her skin at the thought, her fingers lifting to her lips like she might still feel him there, but it dissipated at the sight of the dirt caking her nails. Tiny lacerations marred her arms from the jungle. A ring of purple laced around her throat, bruised from the telephone cord.
Her clothes hadn’t fared any better. Blood—hers, others, it was hard to keep up—crusted the fabric. Mud stained her shirt within an inch of its life. Grass and twigs and those prickly seedpods burrowed in the weave of her skirt. No washing machine in the world would be able to salvage it.
The thought of scrubbing her skin within an inch of its life under scalding hot water and then sliding back into her grimy clothes was horrifying enough to keep her awake for weeks.
Thiswas who Waylon had kissed?
