Page 3 of Heat & Hard Candies

“It’s time,” Ian called out, as he opened the door to the plane. A few of the guys shifted to their fae forms and jumped out immediately, wanting to be the first to get a look at the new girl.

“You okay?” Nate asked me, as a few more guys jumped.

“I’m good.” I flashed him a grin that didn’t meet my eyes.

Yeah, he was nicer than me.

Way too nice forSurvival.

The two of us were the last to jump. Instead of looking down at the new woman from above, I let myself appreciate the view of our island. We’d had to move to another part of the world after the many storms of the second season, but it was stunning. Bright blue water, crisp white sand, and tall, leafy palm trees.

It didn’t get better than that.

I landed beside Nate, and finally looked at the woman standing next to Jordan.

Damn.

I didn’t particularly care what a woman looked like. I liked all of them. Skinny, curvy, round… a woman was a woman, and they were all beautiful.

But this one, even more so.

She was taller than most human females, with naturally tan skin and dark brown hair parted down the middle, then woven in two French braids. Her eyes were sharp, though I couldn’t see the color from where I stood.

She was built strong, not slim, and wore a pair of tight black shorts that came to the middle of her thighs. A well-worn, oversized pink t-shirt hung over a good portion of the shorts and said,“I like big books and I cannot lie”.

Jordan introduced her as Launa, a human female who had just graduated with a master’s degree in English.

It was kind of a useless degree, unless you knew you were going to be mated to a fae. Being mated to a fae meant there was no need to work or make money, and left the woman free to pursue her interests.

Launa wouldn’t be into me. I wouldn’t let myself consider that a possibility. Getting my hopes up was pointless.

Instead, I glanced down the row of men, trying to decide which of them I’d end up pairing with her. Somehow, I’d become Cupid.

I’d decided to hedge my bets on Kaden when Jordan announced the beginning of the challenge. It was a bag hunt, like the first challenge always was. Thanks to the luck of the genetic draw, my senses were better than any of the other guys’, so challenges like that came easy.

Letting someone else win would ruin my chance to help hook the new girl up with Kaden. So, I had to win the way I always did.

Even if I was too exhausted to truly care.

I flew into the jungle at Jordan’s signal, ready to get the challenge over with. A few of the guys followed me, hoping they’d spot the bags before I did, but they didn’t. And no one bothered starting a fight over it anymore. Living on the island was rough enough without adding bleeding wounds to it.

I scooped the bag up without a problem, and grabbed a spare no one had noticed on the way back, before I broke through the tree line alongside a few other bastards.

They whooped, and I did the same, though I didn’t feel a damn shred of enthusiasm.

One last month.

I could survive one last month on the island.

It wasn’t even a month—the game had been reduced to twenty-six days after the storms forced us to cut the second season short.

I could handle twenty-six more days.

On top of shortening the game after that season, they’d altered the rewards for all of the challenges. Every reward was at least twelve hours away from the island, and they were one-on-one, so it was just the winner and the compatible female.

I usually won five or six of the nine challenges, so I really only had to survive twenty-one days.

That was even more manageable.

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