I laughed as Estelle looped her arm through mine. She kissed my cheek. “I’ve been dreaming of this to happen. Begging it to.”

My body came alive beneath her touch.

I was stupid to keep her away from me. For days, I’d avoided her, refusing to talk, letting every moronic excuse turn me into an ass.

I’d been miserable—we all had. Why had we segmented ourselves off from one another? Things were so much more bearable when fought side by side.

I’m sorry.

I wanted to apologise, but she wouldn’t understand. She wouldn’t understand that I wasn’t just apologising to her but to myself, my past, the circumstances that’d made me this way.

I trembled with desperation as her eyes glittered brown and green. I dragged her closer, wrapping my arm around her waist.

Ever since dealing with the dead, we’d been linked. Despite our days and nights apart, I was achingly aware of her. I hadn’t tried to kiss her again, but it didn’t mean my heart didn’t leap whenever she was near.

I needed her with an inferno that licked every part of me but my need was more rounded now. I no longer wanted the quick satisfaction of sex but the full-bodied joy of connection.

I fell into her eyes.

Instantly, the joy of the rain disappeared and desire ignited on her face.

She looked at my lips.

She stopped breathing.

I couldn’t stop myself.

My hand crept up her back, tracing the beads of her spine that were more pronounced than before. Silently, I cupped her nape. “Do you remember my challenge?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And?”

“What do I have to do to make it come true?”

Her cheeks pinpricked with heat. “To make me fall in love with you?”

I nodded. My throat dry like ash. My heart imitating the booming thunder.

She’d kissed me the first time. She’d taken me by surprise.

This time.

I kissed her.

My head dipped down; hers tipped up.

My lips parted; hers fluttered open.

My nose brushed hers; she sighed softly.

My arm summoned; she came closer.

And our lips...they met.

She whimpered.

She undid me, claimed me, owned my very soul with that whimper.

My tongue licked her; she licked back.

My head tilted; she mimicked.

Our lips turned from touching to embracing. Our tongues danced, heat bloomed, and the kiss turned into a meal of desire.

“God, I want you.”

She moaned. “You have me.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes. Yes, you do. Believe me. You do.” Her breathless voice wrapped around my cock, pounding my need into something I could no longer fight.

Rain mixed with our kiss, diluting her flavour. “It's raining.”

She nodded.

“Is the sky weeping or happy for us?” My lips trailed from her mouth to her ear. “Are the clouds sanctioning this or forbidding it?”

Her fingers curled on my t-shirt (the very same one she’d washed with sand and kept as sanitary as possible), pulling me tighter toward her. She whimpered again, and this time, she stole one, twenty, a million fragments of my heart, placing them in her bikini top and stealing them forever. “It’s raining because the sky wants us to survive.”

“And what of my challenge?”

“What of it?”

I bit her throat. “You know what I want.”

Her heart drummed against mine, our bodies as close as we could get. “What if I said there is no challenge. That whatever you’re doing...it’s working.”

Whatever I was doing? I wasn’t doing enough. I’d reached my limit mobility-wise, and spent my days hobbling or resting. I was of no use to her.

To say there was no challenge; that she was falling for me just as surely as I was falling for her.

Christ.

I kissed her again.

Hard.

Fast.

Brutal.

She matched me lick for lick, turning a simple kiss into a complex sin.

Breaking apart, she breathed, “I’m glad it’s you on this island. I’m glad it’s you beside me.”

I had no defences left. All I could do was cling to a raft of wishes and potential possibilities. Potential possibilities of actually winning her, of seducing her, of calling her mine.

“Eww, what are you guys doing?” Conner’s hair was plastered to his head.

We pulled apart.

“Nothing, silly.” Estelle recovered first. With a quick glance, she jogged down the beach and took Pippa’s hand. They danced around the pot, filling quickly with water. Pippa’s back had scabbed and scarred, slowly erasing the method of how we’d arrived.

“Come on.” Grabbing the discarded coconut shells, I gave one to Conner and hopped down the beach to my stranded family.

Scooping the half-shell into the pot, I filled it to the brim with drinkable liquid. Holding it aloft, loving the way the heavens drowned us, I said, “To us and surviving.”

Everyone followed suit, filling up their fancy goblets and toasting.

“To rain and drinking.”

We drank. Fast. And repetitively.

We drank as quickly as the rain refilled.

We drank until our stomachs bloated.

We drank until we replaced every hydration.

And still it rained.

It poured and stormed; lightning flashed and thunder boomed until midnight turned to midday, and our island glittered with droplets in the new sunshine.