Page 90 of Safari Murder Party
Hooking a hand beneath Fletcher’s knee, Waylon hiked her leg up, allowing him to work his way deeper. A groan slipped past her lips, and she clawed at his back, desperate for purchase. He pulsed again and again, each stroke carrying Fletcher closer and closer to dizzying bliss.
They stayed there, tangled in the sheets and each other, until the storm cleared and the clouds shifted and all Fletcher saw were stars.
23
When Fletcher stirred awake, she’d been trapped. Waylon’s sleep-heavy arm slung around her waist. The tree house mattress molded around them, as if they were one entity, and she allowed herself the small pleasure of nuzzling in tighter. She could’ve stayed in this dreamy microcosm for the rest of eternity—just them, the melting shadows and honeyed daybreak, the feel of his bare skin against hers.
Wanted to. But she knew that she couldn’t.
Jackie was their biggest remaining threat. Waylon would never forgive her if he found out she’d lied to him to take advantage of his Lydell knowledge. And, sure, this fit firmly in thedesperate times, desperate measurescategory, but that wasn’t how the heart kept score. She’d used him. Pressed the same purpled bruise left by everyone else who treated Waylon like a chessboard pawn.
But if Fletcher went back on her word to Jackie, it wouldn’t just be the Cartwright Media gig she’d lose. Revenge was a seven-letter word Jackie knew well, and as one of the industry’s mostwell-respected editors, one email to anyone in her contact list would blacklist Fletcher from every major publication. That was, if she didn’t kill her first.
“Waylon?” Fletcher whispered.
He groaned. His mouth brushed against her neck with some unintelligible assortment of consonants and vowels.
“We need to get to the marina.”
Waylon shushed her with his lips against her shoulder, and it worked, because every argument on Fletcher’s tongue dissolved like spun sugar. “Too early,” he muttered, groggy and slow. “Five more minutes.”
“You know we should—”
Wriggling around to face him, Fletcher knew her mistake immediately. One look at the relaxed planes of his face, and her treasonous heart squeezed with a twinge of emotion she couldn’t name or didn’t want to.
Half-lidded eyes batted, embers still burning from the fire they’d stoked the night before. He ran his tongue over his bottom lip and peeled his mouth into a grin. Peaceful, unbothered, satisfied.
“What’s the rush? I love seeing you undone.” Waylon pulled Fletcher flush with his chest, pinning her so there was nowhere to run. “Why don’t we just stay? The rescue crew is coming. And if I’m lucky, so are you.”
This side of him, unreserved and flirty, made lying to him so much worse.
Fletcher buried her face against his skin, never so grateful he couldn’t see the expression she made. She swallowed evenly. Breathed evenly. But her heart stirred around her chest, nervous and off-kilter. He must have felt it. He could probably read her heart’s rhythm like Morse code, decrypt her secrets like they were plain text.
The second they left this treetop perch and their feet hit solid ground, everything would change. The bubble would pop.
Maybe it didn’t have to.
Waylon’s reluctance to reach the marina was hard to argue with, especially wrapped in his cedar-and-amber scent, blissfully exhausted. No one would find them here. Even if they did, with neither of them vying for the company, no one should feel threatened by their presence once the rescue crew arrived.
Besides, once Jackie got the island out of her system, she’d come to her senses. Return to the polished, pristine woman Fletcher knew in New York. And, if Fletcher got really lucky, keep her word about offering Fletcher a position on theJet-Setterstaff.
Waylon would never have to know she’d gone behind his back.
When she didn’t immediately answer, his fingers trailed against the delicate skin behind her knee, scuttled toward her thigh. A touch so faint she thought at first she’d imagined it. The higher it inched, the more obvious it became. Playing dirty.
“Okay, okay. We can stay here while we wait for the rescue crew.” She squirmed in his grip, biting down a laugh. “That tickles.”
“What does?”
“Your hand on my leg.”
Except both of Waylon’s hands curled around her shoulders. So unless he’d grown a third arm in the last thirty seconds…
Fletcher flung the blankets off in one big ripple, and then her heart stopped beating entirely. A spider the size of a silver platter crawled up her thigh.
“Oh my god!” she yelled, at the same time that Waylon shouted, “Don’t scream!”
Easy for him to say. He didn’t have Shelob scuttling up his bare leg. Her arms flailed, one of her hands hitting the spider’s meaty legs, and it lost its grip. Its giant, fuzzy grip.
