Page 34 of Uncharted Desires

She bit her lip. This was it. If she said yes, their relationship would never be the same.

She gazed up at him, at the hunger in his eyes, and desire shot through her. Kat couldn’t even have imagined this moment in her dreams.

“Yes,” she said, more confidently than she felt.

His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her mouth to his, and then Kat forgot to think. What was she supposed to do?

Kiss back, you dummy.

She opened her mouth with a moan as his tongue pushed past her lips. He was warm and strong and made her body light up as the music pumped loudly around them. She felt like the main character in some ridiculous movie where the rock star falls for the fan in the crowd or something.

His hand moved to her jaw, adjusting the angle. And holy hell. He kissed Kat so thoroughly that she had experienced nothing like it before. The hand not igniting every nerve in her scalp slid down her body, and she had never wanted her clothes off so badly.

His tongue played with hers, and Kat pulled back, nipping his lip, eliciting a low groan from him. Emboldened by his praise, she moved her hands up his chest and around his neck, finally digging her nails into his thick hair, reveling in its softness. She thought about his hair way too much and would die happy knowing it was as soft as it looked.

“Fuck, Kat, you taste so good,” he murmured in her ear and Kat almost took off her underwear that second.

A noise sounded from behind them, making Kat jump and West groan.

“What, Dec?” he growled out.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Kat heard but couldn’t see Declan.

West looked like he might commit murder, but his eyes softened when he turned back to her. She felt embarrassed to be seen like this, especially by Declan.

“I’ll be right back. Don’t go anywhere,” West told her.

With one quick kiss, he turned, leaving her in the dark hallway.

He never came back.

Kat awoke with a start realizing she had been dreaming about that night. The night that had changed her and West’s relationship. The night he had left her in a dark hallway with nothing but the taste of him on her lips and a broken heart. Not because she loved him or anything, but because he had rejected her for no reason other than she was apparently not good enough for him.

She was feverish, and while a lot of that had to do with the oozing bullet wound in her arm, she couldn’t deny that her dream had been way too realistic. She didn’t even like West, and yet all she could think about was his lips, and how they would feel if they had truly kissed again on the beach. What the hell was she thinking? Years ago, he’d walked away from her, making it clear that he didn’t see her like that. The only thing that had changed was she no longer worked with him. He was not going to care about her. He didn’t even know how. He didn’t even know what love was.

Oh god, where did that come from?

She should never even put the word love in the same stratosphere as Weston Monroe. They didn’t go together. He probably never even remotely thought about the term, but Kat did all those nights when she was alone in bed. Someone who would be with her until the end of her days. Someone who would love and cherish her and put her above everyone else. It was why she had remained single. She wanted it all, not some one-night stand while they were on the road. West didn’t do love or commitment. He lasted a year with Gia, but that was a toxic shit show of a relationship.

Kat dropped her head between her knees, groaning. The echo reverberated around the cave and through her. “Why are you so helpless?” She had never considered herself a romantic. She had forgotten what it was like to be cared for by someone other than herself. She had forgotten what it was like to have someone else wonder what she was thinking or feeling. But West was only doing all those things because they were lost on an island. It was like Stockholm syndrome or something adjacent to that.

Before he left to sneak into whatever was on top of the mountain, he had forced her to lay her head in his lap and sleep, stroking her hair. She had never felt so safe in her life, and she had slept easily. It was those little things, like holding her while she slept, that had her falling for him just as easily as the sparks that flew through her body every time she felt his skin on hers. She was dying to touch him again, and he had only been gone for maybe an hour, risking his life for her. The problem was she knew if she let him touch her more intimately, once would never be enough, and in the end, she would be the one left broken.

Her wound had stopped gushing, but she had lost a lot of blood and couldn’t sit up straight without falling back down. She tipped over rather ungracefully onto the cave floor. Her body tingled from head to toe and then suddenly went numb as the world plunged into darkness.

West learned the best thing about skulking about on an uncharted island was that the moon provided enough light to see. He reached the mountainside and quickly scaled it, cursing himself yet again for kicking his shoes off that night on the yacht when he had been piss-ass drunk. The first thing he would look for after a first aid kit was going to be shoes.

His feet were torn up beyond recognition at this point and would probably never look the same again. He could hear his dad in his head telling him to stop worrying about his prissy feet. There was nothing wrong with a man taking care of his feet in West’s mind.

Finally, he reached a plateau and, muscles screaming in protest, walked shakily to the other side. Terraces had been cut into the mountainside and it was clear that some sort of crop was being cultivated. That answered one of their questions. The island was definitely inhabited. People were farming on it. He walked up to the plants and looked at them closely. It was dark, but he saw the little red buds that were unmistakably the coca plant that was used to make cocaine.

Christ! No wonder the men had been chasing them. What the fuck had they stumbled into?

There were a series of huts that he assumed were where the workers slept. He didn’t want to go near those, but he wanted a pair of shoes. He also noticed a large structure that he hoped would be their main supply area, where it might have items like first aid. Two guards walked by the door and he cursed his bad luck. They were on a deserted island, who did they think would come around trying to take their cocaine?

His eyes scanned the rest of the compound, noticing a few smaller buildings and some Jeeps, which must mean there were roads on the other side of the mountain. The dock had to be on this side of the island too.

Sticking to the shadows, he inched his way to the largest building first. He watched the guard turn the corner, and then West snuck through the primitive wood door. It was a large room that looked like a mess hall with a kitchen at one end. He made straight for it and, grabbing a canvas bag off a hook, he opened the pantry and had to stop himself from completely emptying the shelf. He couldn’t carry everything.