Page 60 of Ship Wrecked

Is that... a cotton candy machine? I guess we’ll find out shortly.

Once we walk inside, those glass doors shut behind us, and the lock turns.

“So...” I flick on the lights, then turn to Burly Beardo. “I’m Cassia. You’re Cyprian?”

He merely grunts and walks away, because of course he does.

Man, what a dick.

14

With a sly grin, the entertainment reporter leaned forward in her chair. “As all your fans know, you two are close friends as well as castmates. Those fans have posted popular compilations of your joint interviews on YouTube and created Twitter gifs from moments when you’ve stared adoringly at one another. Not just on the show, but in real life too. You’ve even been given a couple name: Marter, a combination of Maria and Peter.”

Ah, the lead-up to one of many inevitable press-junket questions. Peter knew it well.

Any moment now, the reporter would stop tap-dancing around the topic and just ask outright:Have you two ever dated?

It was a classic interview question, along with a few others: What did they admire most about each other? Would they enjoy working together again? What was it like filming for so long in such an isolated place? Did they plan to return to the island at some point? What were their favorite Cassia-Cyprian moments?

At this point, they had stock answers for almost every possible query. The tricky part was keeping those answers sounding fresh and off-the-cuff, instead of prepackaged and tired.

Maria, unsurprisingly, was better at that than he was. He’d improved over time, though. And they’d both become experts inthe fine art of entertaining themselves during interviews with relentless banter and over-the-top bickering.

Reporters might not get answers to all their questions, but they got good sound-bites. Not to mention lots and lots of visitors to their various social media channels, because people fucking loved Peter and Maria’s joint interviews.

He kind of loved them too, though he’d never admit it. Just like he’d never admit to watching them on YouTube during lengthier breaks in filming, when they’d been apart so long he literally ached to see her face and hear her voice.

She caught his eye and raised a brow, silently asking whether he wanted to handle the dating question. Subtly, he tilted his head toward her in answer, and she returned her attention to the interviewer. Expression calm, she took a swig from her water bottle and wiggled her phenomenal ass in a futile attempt to find a more comfortable position on the too-hard hotel love seat. Still stiff from her long flight, no doubt.

Each time she wiggled—and she’d done it a lot; like,a lot—her soft, warm thigh rubbed against his. Her soft, warm, mostlybarethigh, since she’d chosen to wear a very short, swingy dress that day, in what he could only assume was a deliberate effort to demolish his faltering sanity.

She’d donned that dress after rushing into their hotel suite and showering that morning, all while shouting from behind the bathroom door about a late plane and heavy traffic. The hair and makeup artist and the rest of the crew had arrived while she was still drying off, so there’d been no chance to even kiss before the first reporter arrived, much less fuck.

Her flight was originally scheduled to arrive late last night, and he’d had plans for her. Very detailed, very naked plans. None ofwhich had come to fruition, clearly. So he’d already been stewing in stymied lust and frustration, and then—

Jesus H. Christ.

Wiggle. Wiggle. Wigglewigglewiggle.

Her dress slowly crept higher, revealing more of her pale, dimpled flesh, and he wanted to tear out his hair.

Holy shit, she needed tostop fucking wiggling.

All that squirming, and now he couldn’t find a comfortable position anywhere on their little couch either. Would it be too obvious if he tugged a cushion over his crotch?

Yeah. Probably.

Good thing the camera had been positioned to film them from the waist up, because the two of them were quite a pair. At this point, the camera op could probably see Paris, France, and Maria’s underpants, and Peter might as well be headlining an ad campaign for Bulges “R” Us. Smothering a wince, he shifted in his seat, strategically placed his clasped hands over his lap, and hoped like hell his jeans placket was up to its stern task.

A split second after he fidgeted, the corner of her wide, gloss-slick mouth twitched, and he suddenly knew.

She was doing it on purpose.

That gorgeous, amazing, diabolical Swedish bitch.

“Which brings me to my next question, and it’s one all our viewers are curious about.” The reporter’s gaze flicked from him to Maria and back again. “Have you two ever dated?”

It wasn’t the reporter’s fault, really. Her viewers most likelywerecurious. But so were the viewers and readers of every other media outlet that coveredGods of the Gates, so he and Maria had been answering the same question every ten to fifteen minutes for several hours and counting.

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