Honeymoon Hideout Read online

  “Brooks, it’s Beth. Do you copy?”

  I simply hand over a complimentary bottle of approved sunscreen and take away the other stuff, slipping it into my pocket while I walk away, ignoring the family’s outrage at my blatant theft. I don’t care. I’d take it away whether I was paid to behave this way or not.

  Grudgingly I answer. “This is Brooks. Go.” Trudging around the protected dune, I find a shady palm tree and listen to Beth.

  “Have you been checking your Google docs?”

  I told the previous concierge to radio me when a guest expressed interest in one of my guided nature outings. I keep a handwritten chart in my wallet. This new one, Beth, insists on using Google docs.

  “My phone is for emergencies,” I say. “That’s all I use it for.” That, and also for watching Jax Pierce gallivant around her bedroom and backyard, giving makeup, hair, fitness, and style tutorials.

  Beth grumbles something. “Fine. Can you come to the lobby and look at this, please?”

  “On my way,” I mutter on the way back to the hotel from the beach. Being indoors is like a punishment for me. Using technology to keep a schedule, even more so.

  Beth shoots me a look of exasperation when I trudge over to her mahogany desk in the open-air lobby, next to an enormous glass urn full of fruit water. On my way over, I go out of my way to switch off the lamps in the lobby that no one is using at the moment. Beth stands aside and gestures for me to take a look at her computer screen.

  What I see there might be even better than an all-night binge of Jax Pierce’s YouTube channel. Every single one of my nature excursions has been booked for the next two weeks. And the name of the guest who signed up? Jax Pierce. On every single line.

  I feel an urge to thump my chest and announce I’m the king of the jungle. Hell yes. The day after tomorrow, I’m taking my childhood crush on a hike in the wilderness. Alone.

  And that’s just the beginning.

  Is this what it feels like to be one of the cool guys in school? That’s child’s play.

  This is what it felt like at man’s discovery of fire.

  Chapter Four

  Jax

  “What’s a naturalist?” Sierra asks, sipping her mango juice over breakfast.

  She’s looking radiant and relaxed after yesterday’s massage and nap on the beach. I’m sure it has nothing to do with her run-in with that sexy pilot Austin.

  Today we’re hiking the volcano crater, so we’re taking full advantage of the breakfast buffet to build up our strength.

  I’ve just been telling her about my conversation with the kayak guide and that I’ve signed up for every stinking excursion the guy offers for resort guests.

  I have to think about Sierra’s question because I didn’t ask Brooks. “I don’t know. Like a park ranger, I guess? Well, a park ranger who can’t arrest people.”

  Sierra takes a bite of her toast. “Park rangers already cannot arrest people,” she snorts.

  “Oh yes, they can. Remember my 19th birthday party?”

  Sierra scrunches up her face in thought. If only I were kidding. Leave it to my father’s business associates to cause such a scene at a ski lodge that the forestry authorities showed up and asked them to leave. It was supposed to be a low-key trip with just a few of my friends, but it had turned into … something else. My father and the people who finance his record label are loud, overbearing, and obnoxious.

  “I hope our pilot stud friend appreciates that chipmunk face of yours.”

  Sierra blushes and shoots me a look just as my phone rings. I check the screen and promptly ignore it.

  “Was that Louis?” Sierra asks, looking a little freaked.

  No. Worse than my would-be fiancé. I shake my head. “My dad’s security guy, Damian.”

  “Are you going to answer?”

  “Not today. Not while I’m on vacation.”

  “Sooner or later, you’re going to have to tell your dad where you are.”

  I blink and glance down at the screen where I see he’s left a voicemail.

  “Then my father should call me himself instead of passing it off to his flunky,” I say.

  Chapter Five

  Brooks

  I knew I should not have let Jax’s interest in my activities put thoughts into my head. I knew I would let it tell me stories that aren’t real.

  All morning I’ve been preening like a peacock in the mirror, combing my hair, and practicing charming things to say to Jax. I let myself get carried away on the idea that her signing up for two weeks’ worth of hikes and adventures meant she was into me.

  But upon arrival at the tour, I learn it was all too good to be true. She’s here with her friend Sierra and Austin Fisher, the ruggedly handsome bush pilot. Of course, she’d be interested in the pilot. He’s got that quiet, broody side that women like. He’s a man of action. Austin has game coming out of his ears.

  Sure, I can identify the genus and species of any exotic bird in this jungle, but I can’t talk about beer or sports or whatever other dudes talk about. I certainly can’t captivate a girl with stories about dangerous fighter jet missions around the world. I’m a geek in cargo shorts and a pith helmet, administering organic bug spray to resort guests.

  As if to illustrate that point, Austin saves the day when the worst possible thing that could happen on one of my tours happens. A child, who has been falling behind the tour group because he’s become distracted by the wildlife, tumbles off the trail and falls down the slope of the crater. Not minutes after I’ve told him not to sit on the back of a tortoise. The little shit.

  Everyone panics, except Austin. In superhero fashion, he uses a vine to rappel down to where the kid is barely hanging on. I mean, the scene could be straight out of a movie, and he might as well have been using a whip to pull him and the kid up. Who’s Dr. Jones now?

  I manage to inch myself down the rocky slope far enough to help Austin hand the kid off to me. I forget all about Jax for a minute while I’m making sure the kid is all right and not injured. After I make arrangements for Isaac and his parents to have the golf carts meet them at the rim of the crater, I fully expect the woman in my dreams to be fawning all over the guy.

  But Jax surprises me once again.

  “I’ll go with you to the rim to see them off,” she says.

  I look from her to her friend and Austin, and I’m confused. “You don’t have to….”

  Jax unexpectedly slides her arm through mine. “You look a little shaken.”

  What is happening? Why is she doing this instead of finishing the hike with her friend?

  “I didn’t think you’d want to miss out on the hot spring. Some people say it’s the best part of the tour,” I stammer, feeling anxiety sweat at her touch, on top of the usual layer of tropics sweat. I’m anxious not because I don’t want her to touch me but because I know how this goes. One false move on my part, one misinterpreted flirtation, and I’m out in the cold.

  She replies, “The best part of the tour was watching you save that kid.”

  “Austin did most of the work,” I say.

  Jax laughs as we make our way down the side of the mountain, following the golf cart carrying the kid’s family.

  “You should learn how to take a compliment,” she says.

  Thoughtlessly, I say, “You must be very used to compliments.”

  “Why, because I’m a model?”

  “No, because you’re angelically beautiful.”

  Chapter Six

  Jax

  People all my life told me I was pretty. When I grew up, they said I was “hot.”

  Nobody ever said “angelically beautiful.”

  As soon as we drop Isaac and his family back at the villas, I can tell Brooks wants to ask me something. For starters, he cuts the motor of our little electric golf cart. The sudden silence enhances the crashing of waves, the sea bird calls, the sounds of complete relaxation. I lower my shoulders, remembering what yesterday’s yoga instructor kept telling me.


  “May I treat you to lunch?”

  I blink at him. “You do know my lunches are included in the resort package.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  Oh, no. Does he think I just turned him down?

  But then his face breaks into a shy smile as he rests his sunglasses on top of his head. “Please tell me you’re fucking with me again because offering food is about all I know how to do around a beautiful woman.”

  I shouldn’t fuck with my new nerd friend. But he’s so adorable when he’s flustered; I can’t resist fucking with him.

  “Sure,” I tell him. “I could emotionally stuff my face with something after nearly watching that kid plummet to his death.”

  His gaze leaves mine like he’s thinking of a place to go.

  “I know the perfect place for emotional face stuffing, but it’s just outside the resort. I know it well.”

  If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Brooks was trying to be charming.

  “I thought Cerulean owned the entire island.”

  He nods. “It does. We have to go by boat to one of the keys.”

  “As long as you don’t grab my ass again,” I tease.

  He blanches. “I’m so sorry about that. And I’m doing the paddling.”

  This is too easy. “No paddling me, either.”

  The poor man is now the same shade of red that my lobster was at dinner last night.

  “Kidding!”

  He groans.

  “Stop worrying about all that. You have a good grip,” I say with a smirk.

  Brooks’s expression moves from flustered to hungry before he catches himself. The change happens around his eyes, like someone in a vampire movie. It’s just a dim flash of need like he forgot all about his embarrassment at my teasing and wants to eat me. And then the look disappears like he’s working hard to get control of his emotions.

  He starts the motor once again, and we’re off.

  My phone rings, startling me out of getting lost in Brooks’s eyes. The name that appears on the screen: “Damian.” My knee-jerk reaction is to silence it, drop it in my pocket, and fidget with my hands.

  “I don’t mind if you need to take a call. You don’t need to feel like this is a date.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Ah, well, I mean. Do you want it to be a date?”

  “What do you want this to be, Brooks?”

  He’s quiet until we arrive at a remote dock on the island’s south end, tucked away in a cove surrounded by dense trees. Here, he helps me into a small sailboat. Thank god, the water is calm today. And, thank god, no more kayaks.

  He doesn’t answer my question until he’s rowed us well offshore.

  “No one has ever asked me what I want. I don’t particularly enjoy dating. It’s difficult. I don’t know how to flirt. What I want is to spend time with you, and that’s all I know.”

  My body stills as my fingers grip the weathered wooden bench at the approach of a slight swell in the water, rocking the sailboat gently. I breathe it all in, every word he just said.

  I don’t want to dump too much information on him, but the truth is, he has no idea what that means to me. My entire life has been in the presence of people who want things from me, not people who simply want to spend time with me. Sierra has always been the only exception to that. And now, there’s Brooks.

  “Lunch” turns out to be an impromptu al fresco picnic on a tiny, untouched beach on the opposite side of the smallest island in The Pearl Crescent. Sitting here on a piece of driftwood while Brooks expertly chops open a coconut in the groove of a palm tree, while looking out onto the open sea, away from the view of the other islands on the horizon, feels like we’re stranded together on a deserted island.

  “You’re the person I would take with me,” I say.

  He splits open the coconut and offers me a drink after showing me how to drink it straight out of the fruit.

  “What person?” Brooks asks.

  I take a drink, and though coconut water has never been my favorite, this is so much better than I thought it would be. “The person I’d take if I were allowed to choose five things to take to a desert island to survive. You’d be the one to find food and build a raft.”

  He shrugs and begins wandering into the trees again. I get the feeling we’re not headed to a restaurant for lunch, but we’re going to live off the land instead for the next hour, or two, or three. All of that sounds perfect to me. “Eh, most people could find it in themselves to find food and shelter, even build a raft.”

  Snorting, I respond that I would be the one to capsize the raft and ruin everyone’s rescue.

  He laughs. “Then I guess we’d be stuck here together for the rest of our lives. I can think of worse punishments.”

  God, he’s so corny. So corny, I would not think twice about sitting on his face to keep him quiet.

  “What else would you bring to your desert island?”

  I need more information. “How many items do I get?”

  Brooks has been climbing trees, cutting down fruit. Now, he’s retrieved a stash of fishing poles and has me standing in the water because I suppose we’re going to catch our lunch now.

  “Hmm,” he says, thinking. “Five things in addition to your choice of a person.”

  “Besides you? I’d bring my playlist that Sierra made for my sweet sixteen.”

  “That assumes you’d be bringing something to play it on,” Brooks says.

  “Well, then I’d have to bring my phone. And my Bluetooth speaker,” I add.

  “Presumably, we’d have nothing to play it on as there would be nowhere to charge your phone.”

  I raise a finger into the air. “Aha! I’m also bringing a solar-powered charger.”

  “Fair enough. One more item.”

  I answer instantly. “My USB rechargeable vibrator.”

  All is quiet for several moments. I stare into the water and pray for a fish to swim along and take the bait. I thought with Brooks being a naturalist; he wouldn’t be embarrassed by the topic of human biological needs.

  He clears his throat, and I no longer am praying for a fish on the hook. I wish for the Kraken to surface and swallow me whole.

  Chapter Seven

  Brooks

  All rational thought has left the building. My brain has transitioned into horny degenerate territory, and it may never recover.

  Bugs? Birds? Animal facts? All gone. In their place is my imagination’s picture of the beautiful Jax, spread-eagle on a raft, naked from the waist down, pleasuring herself with…what? I don’t even know. She freely talks about devices from time to time on her YouTube channel, but I never know what she’s talking about.

  All I know for sure is whatever she’s thinking about inserting into her vee on this hypothetical desert island is going to have to get out of the way to make room for daddy.

  Did I just call myself “daddy”? Yuck. What’s happening to me?

  “Moving right along,” I say, which is me stalling for time.

  “Did I embarrass you, Brooks?”

  “Me? Embarrassed? No, why would you think that?”

  “Because you said nothing for a very long time.”

  I clear my throat. “I was thinking about…thinking about my list.”

  “You tell me your favorite sex toy, and I’ll tell you mine.”

  “Avatar.”

  What? “Is that what you named your fleshlight? Is the pussy part, like, blue or something?”

  “The movie I would take to the desert island. Avatar.”

  She laughs at her mistake. “Once again, assuming you have something to watch it on.”

  I turn to her, and once again, I feel a flash of that hunger. This time, I don’t bother hiding it.

  Jax turns away and drinks from her water bottle. While her eyes leave mine, I can’t help but see the way her lips turn a darker shade of pink. I’d like to find out if what they say is true about nipples matching the lips. For science. But not here
…not on our first date.

  “Well, if we’re together on this island, then you have a phone and a charger, so we’re all set, aren’t we?”

  Jax smiles shyly. She’s not shy as a rule, but I’m sure my awkwardness makes her uncomfortable. My pulse races. My throat feels dry. This whole conversation was meant to be lighthearted, but now there seems to be a lot more going on under the surface.

  “Right. We’re together,” she rasps.

  “So I’ve got you, my favorite movie. And after that, I suppose I’d have my copy of Origin of Species.”

  Jax pretends to snore. “I’m sorry, what book?”

  “It’s got all my notes in the margins. I’ve had it since I was 11 years old,” I say, chuckling. I know; I’ve gotten shit over my preferred reading material my entire life.

  “All right, I guess I’ll have to write my own erotica. What else?”

  I’m quiet for another moment, then I say, “A machete for clearing brush and cutting bamboo to make a shelter. And my Bowie knife for hunting and making spears for fishing. And that’s it.”

  “You’ve got two more items, plus a person, Doctor.”

  “That’s all I need as long as I have you.”

  I enjoy watching her face react in surprise. Her eyebrows go up, and she’s speechless. For a few seconds, anyway. And then, she licks her lips; my cock twitches.

  “Because I’m the one with the charger and the phone,” Jax says. “I feel overpacked in comparison.”

  Finally, our protein arrives in the form of an unsuspecting grouper. Minutes later, the two of us are stuffing our faces with a feast of fruit, fish, and crab over a campfire.

  “As restaurants go, this one gets a five-star review from me on Yelp,” she comments.

  I’m glad she’s happy, but my lizard brain is still thinking about that vibrator.

  Her phone rings again, disquieting our little zen moment.

  Again, she’s not answering it.