Island Heat (A Sexy Time Travel Romance With a Twist) by Jill Myles

about burgers and pizza, and my mouth watered, and I continued to feel sorry for myself. “Do you eat anything but bananas?” I said to him at one point, feeling irritated. “Not that I’m ungrateful, mind you, but I’d like a nice juicy steak as much as the next girl. I don’t suppose you ever eat the dinosaurs around here, instead of just the other way around? No?”
    He ignored me as I spoke, scanning the trail, and I sighed. “I suppose not.”
    We crossed another stream about midmorning, our pace a slow, easy walk through the underbrush. I’d notice a small trail every once in a while, but Salvador kept away from those. At first, I wondered why he’d do that, when the small dirt paths seemed like easier walking than the ferny under-growth that we were cutting across, but he paused at one and looked back at me.
    “Bgha,” he said, gesturing with his hand to show the reduced height of the cavemen. Oh – those were the cavemen’s trails that we were avoiding. I suddenly didn’t mind traipsing cross-country. I didn’t want to run into that little bastard again.
    I knew we kept the pace at a slow walk because of me – I’d seen glimpses of intense quickness from Salvador – but my feet were bare and I wasn’t nearly as fast or sure on the terrain as he was. Every stick or rock I stepped on made me wince.
    My latest stumble was the worst one yet, and I stopped to glance down at the soles of my feet and noticed they were scraped open from where I’d stepped on a rock. “Damn it,” I said, tugging on Salvador’s hand and making him stop. “I’m bleeding.” I gestured at my foot.
    His reaction of concern surprised me. Before I realized what was going on, I was down on my back on the forest floor, and Salvador loomed over me, my foot in his hand.
    “Uh,” I said, squirming at the intense scrutiny he was giving my dirty foot. “I’m sure it’s not that bad. Really.”
    He said something in Spanish under his breath, then glanced around, scanning the forest. I jerked my leg, trying to get it out of his grasp. To my surprise, he let me go and walked away a few feet to examine a nearby bush.
    Irritated, I sat up and glared at his back. “Geez. You sure do blow hot and cold. One moment you want to give me a foot massage, the next you’re treating me like a leper. Make up your mind, already.”
    He returned a few moments later with a few long, spiky leaves and began breaking them in his hand, and indicated I should give him my foot again. I lay back and presented my foot once more, skeptical.
    Warm fingers encircled my ankle, trapping it in his hand, and I barely had time to think about that before he smeared something cold and stinging on my foot.
    I tried to jerk it away. “Ow!”
    He wouldn’t let me escape him, and I had to sit there, cheeks burning with embarrassment as he scraped the mud and grime off my foot, applied more of the stinging plant, and then eventually wrapped the wounded appendage in soft leaves. His hands were soft as they kneaded the bruised flesh of my foot, and it got my mind thinking about other things he might tenderly stroke, and I began to get all flushed and bothered at the very thought.
    I jerked my foot away once he was done and examined it myself. It wasn’t sparkling clean, of course – I doubted you could get anything sparkly clean in this muddy hole of an island, but it was reasonably clean and the gash was well-wrapped. As I watched, he cut a long piece of fabric from his teeny tiny breech-cloth and made it even tinier, and then offered the string of fabric to me, indicating that I should wrap it around my leaf-covered foot to keep the makeshift bandage in place.
    I took it from him and gave him my thanks, adding, “Just so you know, I’m not going to be able to walk very fast in this.” I gestured at the oversized, leaf-covered end of my foot and got to my feet, hopping on one leg like a flamingo.
    He grinned at my actions and pointed at the nearest tree, no more