with Gerald. Gerald was cute, but Luke is . . . a man. Hard, masculine, every part of his body big and sculpted and . . . almost too much to think about.
When Luke’s gone, I take a heavenly shower, watching as caked-on mud that I wasn’t able to get off in the airport bathroom turns the drain at my feet black. I think about Gerald, wonder if he’ll be watching the show, but only for a moment, because my mind soon finds its way back to Luke. His ass. He has those little dimples on the sides. I bet you could bounce a quarter on each cheek. I find my hands lingering near my sex and force myself to do what I came into the shower to do.
When the water runs clear, I step out, slip into my pajamas, towel-dry my hair, and settle down in the center of the big bed. Au naturel? If he thinks he’s going to bring his au naturel ass into this bed, he’s sorely mistaken.
As perfect and hard and amazing as it is, no.
Just no.
A minute later, I hear it. A banging noise coming from the cabin next door.
I scoot to the edge of the bed, open the door, and peer out.
It’s coming from Marta and Ace’s cabin. Are they . . . having sex in there? Oh my god. Gross. They’ve barely known each other for two days.
I go back to bed, pull the covers to my chin, and try to sleep through the noise as a thought occurs to me: Whatever chemistry they have, it’s working for them. They aced the Marriage Test, and they’re in first place.
But it doesn’t mean I’m about to do the same with Luke. If that’s what it takes to win, no thanks. Sure, we worked together all right in the corn maze, but then it all fell apart after that.
We’re just too different.
Case in point: I can’t wait to curl into bed and go to sleep. Him? He never comes back to the cabin. He stays out all night long.
I thought that would’ve made me happy. But I was wrong.
Luke
The lock challenge was a killer. It was made worse because it was pure luck, hitting upon the right key. We weren’t lucky. I thought with her brains and my brawn we’d have something, but I guess you don’t got nothin’ unless you got luck. I need a drink.
—Luke’s Confessional, Day 2
I rub my hands over my face and look down through bloodshot eyes at my hands. My fingers are raw and sting from turning those keys.
But it’d been a good night. Once I lost Dr. Carpenter, Her Royal Bitchiness, I found a watering hole behind the mess hall, stocked with a full bar. Tim’s doesn’t close until two, so I rarely haul my ass to bed until four. I found myself downing tequila shots with Ivy, Brad, Zach, and Charity.
We talked a little about the game. I learned that Webb and Daphne had been eliminated. Webb, a swimmer and one of my athletic alliance, had looked like a threat, but his coupling with Daphne had damn near been suicide. The rumor was, the second it started to get a little muddy, she asked to leave.
After that, we bitched about our spouses. It was good to hear that everyone was having the same problems.
Then we bitched about Ace and Marta. Brad, the most. Brad hated Ace since he’d very nearly had his balloon burst by him too. “I think,” I’d said as I lit a cigarette, “we’re all just jealous that that asshole is having all the luck.”
“Why?” Charity asked me. Charity is a bikini model—blonde, skinny, big tits. Where I was chosen to pick up the female audience, I get the feeling Charity was picked to get the guys. She’d been paired with Tony, a rocket scientist. “Aren’t you happy with your wife?”
I’d shrugged, motioning to the camera filming behind the bar. “She’s all right.”
She didn’t seem to get the picture. She leaned in closer, pressing her tits into me, and said, “I can’t even understand a thing Tony says half the time.”
Zach begged off early, and then there was just the four of us. Then Ivy and Brad, the two serious athletes who obviously didn’t give a shit about their “spouses,” went off together, to who knows where, probably to compare muscles. That left me with Charity.
And I could tell what was on her mind. I spun on my chair and told her I