Free Wicked Games by Jill Myles

much they’d needed fire. They were probably desperate for something to drink that didn’t come out of a coconut.
    Will handed the fruit over to Dean, who handed me a banana. I immediately began to peel it and eat it – the fruit inside was a little green and hard, but it was still one of the best things I’d eaten in a long time. I noticed Dean was eating his as well, and we made no pretense of trying to have a conversation as we scarfed the food down.
    When I’d eaten the last bites of the banana and sighed, I pondered what to do with the peel. Maybe we could boil something in it later. Or...something.
    “Fire?” Lana said expectantly.
    Dean glanced over at me and nodded. He put his arm around Will’s shoulders and gestured at the heavy thick of palms in the distance. “Why don’t I have Will show me where the food is, and you show Lana the fire?”
    I nodded and we split up, the girls heading back to our camp while the guys tromped into the heavy underbrush. Lana gave me a scrutinizing look as soon as they were out of sight. “So how are things with Dean?”
    “Fine,” I said slowly, not sure how much to reveal or how much she’d already guessed. “How are things with Will?”
    “Very platonic,” she said with a faint half-smile. “He’s gay.”
    “Oh.” I wasn’t sure how to take that. Will was the only black man on the show, well-built and utterly gorgeous to look at. “So I guess you two aren’t an item?”
    Lana snorted, the sound overloud out of the petite asian woman. “He’s been talking about your partner, Dean, for days now. No, I’m afraid that boy likes dick.”
    I laughed at that. “Well, Dean’s the biggest dick on this island, so he came to the right place.”
    She grinned but the shrewd look returned. “Really? You two seemed cozy earlier. I noticed you were holding back in the reward challenge, too.”
    She had noticed all of that? Crap, Lana was far more observant than I liked. “I thought it might be a little obvious if we placed in first.”
    “It’s a genius plan,” Lana admitted. “When I saw you hesitating with that puzzle and then yelling at Dean, I thought you were pretty smart.”
    “I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to anyone else,” I said hesitantly. That she’d pegged both Dean and I so fast made me nervous.
    “Say anything?” Her face broadened into a smile, and I realized for the millionth time how beautiful every single woman on this island was. “I’m not going to say a thing. I think the four of us would work better as allies.”
    I squatted next to the fire, poking the giant log we’d thrown over it before the challenge to keep it smoldering. Sure enough, the flames had died down but the coals at the bottom were still red. It wouldn’t take much to get them hot again. “How are you going to carry this back?”
    “Good question,” Lana said. “I don’t think we thought that far ahead. We were just desperate enough to try anything.
    I held out our boiling pot. “Dean and I haven’t had a chance to use this yet. We can put some coals into this to carry over to your camp.”
    “That sounds good,” she said, and Lana paced around our small camp, as if taking notes. “Your shelter is amazing,” she gushed, leaning over it and examining where I’d woven the palm leaves together. “How did you get everything to hold together? I tried to build something but it fell apart the first night because of the wind.”
    I gestured at the shelter and tried not to feel too smug. “I used my string bikini to hold it together.”
    Lana gave me a startled look, then laughed again. “They are a little revealing,” she agreed, though I noticed she was currently wearing hers. “And a blanket, too. Nice. Will got fish-hooks and I have some spices. What did you get?”
    “I...” Oh lord, I really didn’t want to tell her about my peanut butter. “I got a jar of some sort of food, but I dropped it in the water before I even hit