Temptation Island

by Rachel Woods

  Heart in my throat, I struggled to tell him, “I don’t think—”

  “You ever tried double penetration?” he asked, his erection evident in his black boxer’s pants. “You’ll like it. I’ll be in your ass and he can be in your—”

  “Listen,” I said, trying to stay calm. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

  “I’m glad you came,” he said, his hand landing on my face, caressing my cheek. “And I can’t wait to make you come. Over and over.”

  “I think I should go back to my hotel,” I said, voice trembling.

  “It’s a long way back to your hotel,” Apollo said, his hand sliding down my neck. “And it’s getting dark. Cabs don’t like to come to the Double-H after dark. I’ll probably have to drive you back to the Heliconia.”

  Icy sweat slid down my back. “I can call the hotel, and I know they’ll send someone to come and—”

  “Why don’t you just stay here,” Apollo said, but it wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order. “Icarus should be back soon.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said, moving away from his grasp, heading around him.

  His hand clamped around the back of my neck, stopping me. My legs trembled, turning to jelly. Apollo jerked me against him, his penis, huge and hard, pressing against my back. “I think it’s a very good idea, baby,” he whispered, sticking his tongue in my ear.

  Alarmed, I moved my head away. “Stop it!”

  “Don’t you wanna have some fun, baby?” Apollo asked, his voice husky as he reached around, delved his hand into the side of my tank top, through the armhole, and grabbed my left breast, yanking the nipple.

  My panic mutating into anger, I used the heel of my right foot to kick him in the shin. Yelping, Apollo stumbled back, releasing my breast. Encouraged by his pain, I turned, intent on kicking him in the balls, but he must have guessed what I had planned for him, because he slapped me—hard.

  Crying out in pain and shock, I stumbled back as he stalked toward me, growling curses. Turning, I lurched away from him, toward the galley kitchen, desperate to find the back door, knowing I wouldn’t get past him if I tried to escape through the front door. But the kitchen didn’t even have a window, let alone a back door I could escape out of.

  Frantic, I looked over my shoulder. Apollo was walking toward me, casual and yet predatory, like some kind of jungle cat, a teasing glint in his gaze as he stalked me. Whipping my head back to the kitchen, I scanned the area, looking for some sort of weapon, anything I could use to wound him, maybe a pot or pan I could whack him with, stunning him long enough so that I could get away.

  My eyes swept the kitchen from the refrigerator to the stove and then back again, stopping at the sink, positioned between those two appliances. There, in a plastic dish rack, I saw what I needed. A large butcher’s knife. Without thinking, I rushed toward the sink, grabbed the knife, and turned.

  An open hand cracked across my face so hard I saw lights popping and feared my jaw had been dislocated. Crying out, I stumbled back, the knife dropping from my grasp and clattering across the stained, sticky linoleum tile. Feeling nauseated from the sloshing in my head, I dropped to one knee, struggling to get my bearings.

  “Get up, bitch!” Apollo grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet.

  “Let go of me!” I screamed, trying to yank away from him.

  “Shut up!” he said, and his hand came toward my face again, quick as a cobra’s strike, and yet I was able to see that this time his hand was closed just as I felt the stinging blow of his fist near my left temple. My knees buckled and I felt my legs giving way as my eyes fluttered. Desperate not to lose consciousness, I struggled to keep my eyes open as darkness converged, but it was no use.

  The blackness pulled me into its boundless depths.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Words whispered around me, floating through my head, which ached slightly.

  The pain at the base of my skull wasn’t nearly as bad as the throbbing just above my left ear. Groggy and nauseated, I struggled to open my eyes, desperate to understand why my head hurt so badly. I couldn’t figure out how to move and couldn’t remember how to lift my eyelids so I could see where the hell I was and what was going on.

  “Quinn …” a voice said. “Sweetie. Wake up, Quinn. Honey, you have to wake up.”

  Alarmed, I tried to force my eyes to open. Who was calling me sweetie and honey? The voice sounded familiar, but—

  “Quinn!” The voice was insistent, hoarse with tension and fear. “Wake up!”

  I felt as though I was floating up toward something, some type of surface, but I was rising too fast, and before I could prepare myself, I had burst through the barriers in my mind. My eyes opened and I stared at the face hovering over me—a handsome face. The face of the man who thrilled, entranced, and hypnotized me. The face of the man who had betrayed me in the worst possible way. Icarus.

  “Quinn, what happened?” Icarus asked, gently trailing fingers along my cheek. “Quinn …”

  “Get away from me,” I said, my voice weak and whispery as I struggled to orient myself as I rolled over onto my hip and pushed to a sitting position. I couldn’t remember where I was, though my surroundings were becoming vaguely familiar. I was absolutely certain that Icarus was the enemy. He’d stabbed me in the back. He’d pretended to be on my side when all along he was setting me up for the ultimate kill.

  That’s why I was here, I realized. I was at this house because Icarus had come here. After he’d picked up the money I’d left in the locker at Golden Lizard Beach—per his instructions—he had driven to this house. Joshua had filmed him parking his Jeep in the oyster-shell driveway, getting out and walking to the door.

  The same door I’d banged on, I remembered.

  “Quinn …”

  “Leave me alone,” I said, swatting a hand at him as the clouds in my head began to dissipate and I started to remember how I’d gotten to the house and why I was there. “Get away from me!”

  “Quinn, listen to me,” he said, his gaze intense, filled with apprehension. “You need to tell me what happened.”

  “Tell you what happened?” I looked at him, wary of his tense stare. “What are you talking about?”

  “What happened?” Icarus repeated, his voice insistent. “Tell me—”

  “Get away from me!” I practically howled at him, stumbling back. “Stay away from me! You liar! You evil bastard! I know what you did!”

  “What I did?” he asked. “What—”

  “I saw you!” I said as the kaleidoscopic haze of confusion drifted away and my mind started to clear.

  “You saw me? What? Where?”

  “At Golden Lizard Beach!” I said. “I saw you go there, to the locker room where the lockers are! I saw you go to the place where the blackmailer told me to deliver the money, and I know why you went there!”

  “No, Quinn, I can explain why I was there.”

  “I don’t need your explanation!” I said. “I know why you were there! Because you are the blackmailer! You went there to get the money—”

  “That’s not true, I swear to you,” he said. “You have to believe me. I can explain why I was there.”

  “Can you explain to me why you lied and said you couldn’t video the blackmailer because you had to work? Can you explain why you told Liberada you had some stomach virus and couldn’t come to work?” I demanded. “Can you explain why—”

  “Yes, Quinn, I can explain everything!” Icarus said, grabbing my arms and staring at me. “And I will explain everything, but not right now! Because we have a much bigger problem to deal with!”

  “What bigger problem?” I asked, my anger waning as the panic in his gaze worried me. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Henri,” he said.

  “Henri?” I shook my head, confused. “Who is Henri?”

  “Henri Monteils,” Icarus said.

  “Who is Henri Monteils?”

  “What do you mean, who is he?
” Icarus asked. “You don’t know him?”

  “No, I have no idea who he is,” I said, wary.

  “Then why did you come here, to his house?” Icarus asked.

  “I didn’t come here to talk to Henri Monteils,” I said. “I came here to ask you why the hell you blackmailed me! I came here because I saw you come here after you took the beach bag out of the locker in the changing room at Golden Lizard Beach!”

  “How did you see me?” Icarus asked. “You followed me?”

  “I had you followed,” I said. “When you said you couldn’t video the blackmail money drop, I found someone else to do it. I told them to follow whoever came to get the money. And when I saw the video, the person who came to pick up the money was you!”

  “I said I can explain,” he said, as though he was struggling for patience. “But, right now, you have to tell me what happened to Henri? When you got here, was he—”

  “When I got here, I was looking for you,” I repeated. “But you weren’t here. Some other guy came to the door. I recognized him from the hotel. I don’t know his real name.”

  “His real name is Henri,” Icarus said. “At the hotel, he goes by Apollo.”

  Apollo. The guy from the waterfall fantasy I’d rejected. You’re the one who didn’t want to make love. We could have had a good time that day.

  “I didn’t know his real name was Henri,” I muttered. “I asked him where you were, and he said he didn’t know. He said you didn’t live here. So, I said I would leave and call you later, but he said I should stay …”

  We could have a good time now, just you and me.

  Trembling slightly, I said, “He wouldn’t let me leave.”

  “He wouldn’t let you leave?” Icarus asked. “Why not?”

  “He made some vulgar comments about me, you, and him having a threesome,” I said, struggling to focus, feeling as though I needed to remember exactly what had happened. “But, I kept telling him I wanted to leave. He grabbed me and then …”

  “And then?” Icarus prompted. “What happened?”

  Get up, bitch!

  “I thought he was going to rape me,” I said, the memory so acute it was as if I was experiencing the panic and terror all over again. “He had blocked the door so I couldn’t leave. I was so terrified. I had to get away from him, and so I ran into the kitchen to find something to defend myself with, and I found a knife and I grabbed it and … “

  “And then what happened?” Icarus asked. “When you grabbed the knife, what did you do?”

  Fearful and wary, I glanced away from his piercing gaze, terrorized and confused by the unfathomable look I’d seen in his whiskey-colored eyes. Had it been doubt? Suspicion? But that made no sense. Why the hell would Icarus be suspicious of me? I wasn’t the criminal. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I certainly hadn’t lied to him and conned him out of a hundred thousand dollars.

  “Quinn, I need to ask you something very important, okay?” he said, placing a hand beneath my chin and lifting my head, forcing me to look at him. “And I need you to be honest with me.”

  Saying nothing, my heart beating chaotically, I glared at him.

  “When you grabbed the knife,” Icarus said. “Did you stab Henri? Quinn, did you kill him?”

  Staring at Icarus, stunned by his question, I opened my mouth to scream, but no words came out.

  Because I had no words. I didn’t understand what Icarus was asking me. Did you kill him? Why would he ask me something like that? How could he possibly think that I would—

  “Quinn …” Icarus grabbed my hands and pulled me to my feet. “Did you—”

  “I didn’t kill anybody!” I tried to twist away from Icarus, but it was impossible. He was bigger and stronger and had no problems guiding me out of the living area and into a short hallway that led into a small bedroom.

  It was dominated by a large bed, and on top of the pale yellow quilt, Henri was sprawled on the bed with a butcher’s knife in his heart, half of the blade and the hilt jutting out of his blood-covered chest. Horrified, my stomach twisted from the gruesome sight.

  Trembling, I turned to Icarus.

  “We need to call the police,” I said. “We need to tell them … we need to … tell them …”

  “Tell them what, Quinn?”

  “The truth!”

  “And what’s the truth?” Icarus asked me. “Do you even know? Do you know what happened? Do you know who killed Henri?”

  “I know that I didn’t kill him!” I said. “I know that and I want the police to know that I did not stab him! And I don’t know who did, but I didn’t kill him!”

  “What if they don’t believe you?” Icarus asked.

  Bewildered, I asked, “What?”

  “What if the police don’t believe you?”

  I stared at him, confused. “Why wouldn’t the police believe me?”

  “Because it doesn’t look like you didn’t kill him!”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Quinn, you have blood all over you,” Icarus said. “Henri’s blood!”

  “What?” I shook my head, panic and mania taking over as I glanced down at my shirt and saw the dried, rust-colored smears. “Oh my God!”

  “Quinn—”

  “How did his blood get on me?” Hysterical, I grabbed the hem and lifted the shirt. “I don’t know how his blood got on me!”

  “Calm down!” Icarus ordered.

  “I want it off!” Crying, I pulled the shirt up and stretched it out away from me at the same time, desperate to get it off, and trying not to get the bloody fabric on my face or anywhere near me. “Get it off me!”

  “Quinn, don’t—”

  “I have to get out of here!” Flinging the bloody shirt away from me, I bolted out of the bedroom, through the hallway and into the living area, gasping and gulping, desperate to get out of the house. My eyes on the front door, I sprinted to it, grabbed the knob, twisted it and yanked it open.

  “Quinn, wait!” Icarus grabbed me, hands clamped around the back of my arms like shackles.

  “No, leave me alone! I have to go!” With a feral strength I wasn’t aware I had, I wrenched away from him and fled out of the house and into the night.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “We should call the cops,” I said, lying on the velvet-tufted chaise across from the wardrobe in the bedroom of my hotel suite. “We need to let the police know what happened to Henri.”

  “I’ll call them,” Icarus said.

  After my mad, panicked dash from Henri’s small blue house, Icarus had followed, chasing me before I accidentally ran into the road and got hit by a car. Crying and shell-shocked, I couldn’t calm down as my mind swirled with images of blood and knives.

  Somehow, Icarus managed to calm me down enough to walk me to his Jeep. Inside, he gave me a jacket to put on. Now, I cringed, remembering my desperate flight out of the house, clad in only shorts and a see-through lace push-up bra.

  After arriving back at the Heliconia, Icarus escorted me to my room, guiding me along a deserted maze of hallways at the rear of the hotel, making sure we didn’t attract the attention of any staff or guests who might question my frantic, disheveled demeanor.

  “What are you going to tell the police?” I asked.

  “I’ll just say I want to report that a man was stabbed and give them Henri’s address.”

  “You’re not going to mention me?” I stared at him, biting my bottom lip, wary of my own reasons for asking the question. Was I asking because I didn’t want him to mention me, or because I couldn’t believe he wasn’t going to be honest with the cops?

  “Why would I mention you?” Icarus sat on the corner of the bed, diagonally across from the chaise.

  “Because I was there,” I reminded him. “I had Henri’s blood all over me.”

  “They don’t need to know that.”

  “So, you’re going to lie to the cops?” I asked, my tone a mix of condemnation and relief; wasn’t sure if I was glad, or disappo
inted in his decision.

  “I’m going to make sure you don’t get arrested for something you didn’t do.”

  What he said made sense, but it felt wrong. “How do we know I didn’t?”

  “What do you mean?” Icarus said. “You told me you didn’t stab him.”

  “I don’t remember stabbing him.” I jumped up and started to pace, wringing my hands, near hysteria. “But what if I did and I just don’t remember? What if—”

  “What if we talk about what you do remember,” Icarus suggested. “Tell me the whole story.”

  “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “The beginning.”

  “The beginning is when I saw that video of you taking the beach bag out of the locker at Golden Lizard Beach!”

  “I told you I can explain.”

  “But you haven’t explained,” I reminded him. “So when will you?”

  “First, let’s figure out what you remember.”

  “I remember seeing that video of you,” I persisted. “You took the beach bag out of the locker and then you got in your Jeep and drove to Henri’s house. You knocked on the door, and someone opened it. I couldn’t see who because of the angle of the video—”

  “Who did you get to follow me?” Icarus interrupted.

  “Don’t try to change the subject,” I warned. “Tell me why you took the money!”

  “Because I had suspected Henri was the blackmailer, but I couldn’t prove it,” he said. “So, I took the money and went to his house to confront him. I planned to offer him a deal. If he confessed to the extortion scam—on camera—then I would give him the money. You would have a videotaped confession which would, hopefully, stop him from trying to extort more money from you.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me that you wanted to change the plan?” I asked, not sure I believed him.

  “I know our original plan was that I would follow whoever came to pick up the money,” Icarus said. “But I started thinking, what if that person had been told to pass the money to someone else.”