Marooned with the Rock Star (A Crazily Sensual Rock Star Romance, with Humor) (10 page)

Oh, right.

I open my mouth to retort that I am indeed
going to walk around half-naked like Tarzan. But then I think of
Rebecca’s disapproving gaze roaming all over my body, and my
testicles sort of contract a little.

Holding my head as high as possible, I stalk
towards the beach to gather the remnants of my clothes. I may not
be able to wear the shirt again, but at least the cloth will come
in handy for bandages, assuming that I would have soaked through
the one Rebecca patched on me.

Then, jutting my chin forward, I pass her
again in my way towards the forest, but not before catching the
smirk on her face.

Damn!

*

Finding water somehow proves to be a bitch.
We have been walking for hours, and this island – if it is indeed
an island – is panning out to be larger than we thought.

“Where do you think we are?” Rebecca
says.

She’s keeping up ably behind me although her
breath is coming out in shorter and shorter bursts. I am not
lessening the length of my strides just for her to keep up – that
ingrate.

“I assume we’re somewhere in the Caribbean,”
I say. “Maybe near the Bahamas. There are plenty of islands around
this chain.”

Along the way, we hear birds and cicadas and
many animal sounds that I have never heard in any zoo before this.
Then of course, I don’t expect to see lions and tigers and
bears.

Or do I?

Now and then, the undergrowth would rustle
with the sounds of an escaping animal. I’m not even sure what sort
of animals live here in these tropics. Would they be small or
large? Would they be frightened by humans – whom they may never
have glimpsed before – or curious? Would they be vegans . . . or
carnivorous?

That last bit makes me queasy. I’m not sure
I can fend off a charging wild boar or something as big and
ferocious.

My mouth is now very dry, and I can’t
remember the last time I took a leak. Rebecca hasn’t asked for any
stops either, which means both of us must be very dehydrated.

“Maybe we should take a rest,” Rebecca says.
“You know . . . to conserve water.”

Water? What water? I think my body capacity
for water is only half full by now. My blood must be thicker than
molasses.

“OK,” I concede. “But only for a while.”

“You’d think there would be plenty of water
in the tropics,” she grumbles. “Do you think they realize we are
missing?”

“Since it’s already morning, someone is
bound to notice we’re missing. You have a cabin mate, don’t
you?”

I fling myself under the shade of a
particularly large rainforest tree. We are quite a distance up
already, and I can no longer see the beach or the sea. Here, the
trees form a tangled canopy so dense that the sunlight scarcely
filters through. The ground is strewn with dead leaves and very
little growth because nothing from above can seem to penetrate
through.

My shin is throbbing. There is a patch of
red seeping through my makeshift bandage.

Rebecca flings herself beside me.

“Here, let me take a look at that,” she says
gruffly.

“It’s OK.” I brush her hand off.

“Hey!” She gives me an angry look. “I’m
trying to help, OK? I’m sorry I seemed a tad ungrateful earlier –
”

“Just a tad,” I deadpan.

She purses her lips. “OK, I’m sorry, all
right? It’s just that – ”

She is about to say something, and then
appears to think the better of it.

“Just what?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Look, we may have had
our differences, but now we have to work together if we are to find
our way out of here.”

Agreed. As much as we both hate it.

“Now let me take a look at your wound,” she
says a little more gently.

I acquiesce.

I am very aware of her warmth as she
straightens out my leg. She takes my ripped shirt and tears another
piece of cloth from it to replace the blood-sodden bandage.

I inspect the gash for the first time.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” I say.

“No,” she agrees. “At least it stopped
bleeding.”

“We finally agreed on something. This is a
cause for celebration.”

I expect her to lash out at me for making
such a snarky remark, but instead, she smiles.

“I guess.”

I swallow the sudden lump which comes to my
throat.

“Speaking of cabin mates,” I quickly say,
“I’m sure yours would have noticed you were missing by now.”

She appears chagrined. “Actually, no. We, uh
. . . or at least,
she
goes missing nights sometimes. On the
first day we were on the ship, she didn’t come back the whole
night. I can only assume she – ”

Rebecca shrugs.

“So you’re saying she might not have come
back to your cabin to notice you’re missing today.”

“Um . . . ” She flushes. “That’s one way of
looking at it. But she may also have come back last night and
thought nothing of it if I were to go missing . . . ”

She trails off.

Right.

I grin. “Does she know you were out on a
date with me?”

“It wasn’t a date!”

“Dinner with a guy. The two of us together .
. . alone. Read like a date to me.” I’m saying all this just to
needle her.

For answer, she secures the new bandage a
little extra tightly.

“Ouch,” I say.

“Touche.”

“So your roommate was expecting you to
vanish all night.” I grin, flexing my leg.

I am still half-naked, of course, and I am
aware of Rebecca surreptitiously eyeing my sweaty and gleaming
body. I have a great body and I don’t mind flaunting it just to
embarrass her. Besides, over two hundred million people have seen
this body if you go by the amount of YouTube hits my videos have,
though I concede some of those may not be unique users.

“I told her there was no way in hell I was
going to do anything but have dinner,” she retorts.

Is she coloring even more than ever?

“What did she say?” I say slyly.

It’s her turn to smile. “She thought I was
having dinner with the hunky Captain.”

“Huh?”

“You heard it right.” Her smile is smug. “My
roommate, Natasha, thought I was going out with the hunky
Captain.”

The Captain! I am aghast. That old guy? What
does Rebecca see in him?

“Did he ask you out?” I demand.

“Why? You jealous?” she shoots back.

Actually, I am. Just a little. But there is
no way in hell I’m ever going to let Rebecca know that.

“I think he’d be good for you,” I say.
“Considering his age and your maturity level.”

Her chin drops.

“Oh!”

She swats at me and I put my arms up in mock
defense.

“I’m kidding, OK? I’m just kidding,” I say.
“Seriously, though, you can date whomever you like. I won’t
care.”

“You won’t?” She sounds a little
disappointed, although she is trying hard to conceal it.

“I won’t,” I say firmly, although I know it
is a lie.

The awkward pause between us sits like a
pregnant lady, choked with unresolved longings. I have always known
and realized the attraction between Rebecca and myself. It was
present that night four or five years ago, and it is present now,
though we’d rather swallow hobnails than to acknowledge it.

The plop of something falling into the
undergrowth arrests us. We look up.

“What is it?” she whispers.

I can see the pulse hammering in her pretty
throat. Tic-tic-tic. Lifting the warm artery beneath her soft
skin.

I swivel my head to the direction of the
sound. Upward.

“Look,” I say in a low voice, pointing to
the trees. “Monkeys.”

Indeed, there are monkeys in the trees.
These are brown and small, with long tails they use for swinging
from one branch to the next with alacrity. Their faces are streaked
with white fur, and they carry their cute babies around their
shoulders. Some are bigger than others, denoting males. They
chatter to one another in their gibberish. Occasionally, a couple
would dart glances in our direction. They are very aware of our
presence all right.

“Do you think they would hurt us?” Rebecca
says worriedly.

“Monkeys? Nah.”

“But these are wild monkeys. You know the
HIV virus came from a monkey.”

“That’s Africa. We are in the
Caribbean.”

“It might be worse. We might be the first to
be bitten by a monkey infected with a new virus strain.”

“Haha.”

“I’m serious!”

“Relax, Rebecca. I don’t think the monkeys
will hurt us. But look at what they are eating.”

She looks.

The monkeys are plucking coconuts off the
coconut trees and having a right blast of a feast on the tall
branches.

“God, I could do with a coconut,” she says
longingly. “I’m not sure whether I’m thirstier or hungrier.”

My growling stomach and shriveled leather of
a tongue suggest that I feel the same way.

“I wish they’d drop us a coconut,” she
says.

“If we wait here long enough, maybe they
might.”

We wait.

And wait.

Then, finally, a monkey drops an empty
coconut. It falls to the ground with a loud thud near us.

“Quick, get it!” I say.

We scurry to the dropped coconut. But it was
empty of all water. The monkey had scooped out most of the white
coconut flesh and left us with just bits and pieces.

Still, we cored it out hungrily and ate
every bit we can.

“It’s not enough,” Rebecca complains. “So
what do we do? Wait till another monkey throws us some shreds?”

Indeed, the monkeys seem to be contemptuous
of us. They jabber shrilly on their perches, plucking more coconuts
and taking their leisurely time. They seem to be taunting us.

They have to know we are starving.

“How do we get them to throw us some fresh
coconuts?” Rebecca asks.

I stare at the moneys, and then at the
undergrowth, and back at the monkeys again.

“I think I’ve got an idea,” I say.

REBECCA

I watch in amazement as Kurt uncurls himself
and picks up a rock.

“What’re you doing?” I say.

“Annoying a lot of somebodies.”

He aims the rock at a cluster of coconuts
high up in the tree nearest to us, and flings it with all his
might.

For a moment, I thought he was trying to
wing down a coconut or two. His aim is not that accurate, is it?
But then, I remember that he was a basketball player.

The stone strikes a coconut with a loud
‘thuck!’. And then it falls to the ground.

No coconuts were unhinged in the
process.

“Okayyyyy,” I say. I am about to make a
sarcastic remark like ‘Planning to single-handedly boomerang down
those coconuts, Taylor?’ when I remember I’m supposed to be on my
best behavior for the enhancement of our survival.

Yeah, right.

He grins at me. “No. Watch.”

The monkeys go into a cacophony of agitated
screeching. There is a lot of jumping from one branch to the next
and a lot of leaf rustling and tail swinging. They jabber at us
wildly.

“Uh oh,” I say, “I think you’ve made them
mad.”

“That’s exactly the point.”

Kurt picks up another stone and begins
flinging this one into a bunch of monkeys instead.

“What are you doing?” I cry, alarmed. “Do
you want to bring them all down on our heads?”

The monkeys start to furiously pluck off the
coconuts and they are now flinging them back at us.

“Run!” Kurt says.

We run.

We duck and dive for cover under lower lying
trees. I find a particularly nice spot beneath a ledge made by
earth and a huge tree root to seek shelter in. It smells of leafy
moss in here and the soil is damp and loamy.

“Kurt!” I call to him.

He scoots in with me under the ledge. It’s a
tight fit, but we push against each other’s bodies. Kurt’s arms go
around my shoulders and he crushes me in a bear embrace. His long
hair worms into my nostrils and mouth. I blow a tendril of it
out.

“Sssssh,” he whispers.

His body is sticky and as warm as a furnace.
His breath is coming out in heaves. My heart pounds so hard in
excitement that I am sure he must have felt its vibration through
my tits. Speaking of my tits, they are smashed against his hard
chest. I’m sure he must have felt my nipples poking beneath my
dress.

Something else is sticking into me lower
down. Something hard. I am aware of what it is.

My blood is electric in my veins.

Surely he can’t be – ?

He is listening very hard to the sounds above
us. The pandemonium continues for a while. Many things are dropped
onto the ground, and there is a constant chittering and squawking
that makes me think of gremlins.

Meanwhile, Kurt continues to hold me, and I
continue to breathe in his sweaty, manly scent. He smells very
masculine to me, especially since he’s covered in grime.

When the sounds have died down, Kurt relaxes
his hold on me.

“I think they have gone now,” he says in my
ear.

We slowly peel ourselves off each other. My
limbs are cramped, but I make myself straighten out. I need to get
myself straight about a lot of things, and not just my body.

Don’t, don’t, don’t be attracted to him . .
. fight it! Hard!

“Come on,” Kurt says, dusting himself. I
wonder if he is trying to erase my lingering traces off him. “Let’s
see what the harvest brings us.”

When we go back to the monkey spot, the
ground is littered with fresh coconuts. A couple of monkeys still
swing from the trees, but when they screech at us and bare their
teeth, Kurt bares his teeth back.

“Grrrrr!” he yells, shaking his fist, and
they vanish into the overgrowth.

We fall onto the coconuts in frenzy. Soon,
with the help of a couple of splitting rocks, we have a veritable
feast of sweet coconut water and succulent white coconut flesh.