by Skye Warren
“Evie?”
I blinked and Hunter came into focus. He looked worried.
“Hi.”
“Shit,” he said. “God fucking damn it, why didn’t you tell me you were dehydrated?”
I frowned. “I just had a drink.”
He wasn’t listening though. He steered me down from the small ledge we’d been walking and onto the dirt. I let him lead me beneath a tree and lay me down on one of the sleeping bags. Sitting down beside me, he lifted my head and helped me drink.
Nausea assailed me. I pushed the bottle away.
He produced a washcloth from our pack and poured water from the canteen.
“No,” I protested. “There won’t be enough.”
He shushed me, pressing the cloth gently on the overheated skin of my neck, cooling me down with every soft wipe. “Then I’ll be thirsty.”
I smiled weakly. “Sorry I’m a lightweight.”
He leaned down and kissed my forehead. “It was my fault. I never should have pushed you so hard.”
“I wanted to keep up.”
“You will. One day soon, you’ll run circles around me. It takes time to build up.”
I blinked up at him in the waning light. All along, I’d thought Hunter was the hermit in the story, but as I watched him at ease against the earth, his silhouette a sleek extension of the ground and sky, I realized it had been me all along. I’d been the one cut off from society, dangling off a ledge on a waterfall just to feel alive. I wasn’t used to this activity…but I would be. He would see to that, and so would I.
“How are you feeling?” he asked, concerned. “I can go ahead and bring back help.”
“No, I swear I feel better.”
It was true. Like a colt standing for the first time, I was wobbly. It would take time and practice before I could walk and run and gallop on my own.
“I’ll rest tonight and we’ll go back in the morning. And I’ll be more careful from now on, let you know if you’re going too fast.”
At that, he smiled with remorse. “Not that I’ve done a great job at listening so far.”
“You will,” I mocked him gently. “One day soon you’ll be the most sensitive guy around.”
He laughed, squeezing some of the water from the compress onto my face. I shrieked and laughed too, drinking down the drops that fell into my mouth.
He wouldn’t let me help put up the tent, but that was okay. I was learning my limits, what they were and how to respect them. He needed to be kind and I needed to receive kindness.
That night he pulled back the top of the tent, and we lay in the jumble of sleeping bags and pillows staring up at the stars. I rested my face on his chest, feeling the steady rise and fall while the crinkly hair tickled my nose.
“Tell me,” I said softly.
Beating beneath me was a strong heart, one that had started off pure but tainted now. Poisoned when no one had believed in him, poisoned when the men in jail had hurt him.
There was poison inside me too. Because of what had happened to me with Allen, because of the guilt from my mother. Neither of us could purge ourselves of it completely, but we could help each other. Like the way I’d read the old settlers of this place would deal with snake bites, lancing the wound and sucking out the venom.
And so the words began to flow.
“He was my mentor in seminary school. The man who gave me that rosary. Norman had already graduated but while he was working as a missionary, he’d had a crisis of faith. Some of the things he’d seen…the atrocities that men will commit on other men. On women.”
My heart swelled with sadness for him—that man, but mostly for Hunter.
“We became friends though. I was starry-eyed, naïve. Idealistic in the extreme. He started off jaded, but he seemed to calm over the years I was there. Norm taught me what he knew, and he told me later it felt like he was relearning it. Neither of us questioned that it was God who had brought us together as the best of friends.”
He went silent.
“What happened?” I whispered.
I already knew the way this story ended, but I wanted to hear it. And maybe he needed to tell it.
“We were lucky. When I graduated, two positions opened up in the same parish. We loved that place, the church, the community. At night we would talk over dinner, debating the same passages over again. It was…” I felt him swallow. “It was everything I had dreamed of having.”
“And then?”
“There was one family there with a teenaged daughter. The parents were wealthy but both very busy. The daughter had come to our Sunday school, she joined the choir. She started having trouble in school. Nothing too alarming, skipping school and hanging with the wrong crowd, but they wanted counseling for her.”
This time even I fell silent, reluctant to hear how his peace was shattered. Nervous to learn of the woman I’d reminded him of, at least at first.
“She told me…She said she’d been waiting until she was of age, she said. It wasn’t the first time a parishioner had confessed to a crush, but it was the first time she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I was uncomfortable... embarrassed. I told her I couldn’t speak to her one-on-one anymore. I considered talking to her parents, but then she was nineteen and living on her own. She started having regular sessions with Norm, and I figured the problem was solved.”
He pulled me tighter, so tight I couldn’t breathe. I stroked him, running my fingers over the goose-bumped skin on his chest.
“I didn’t realize it, but she was saying the same things to him. Earning his trust. He thought she loved him. He loved her back. And then she told him that I’d taken advantage of her. That I’d touched her even though I hadn’t. Not ever.”
“I know,” I said quietly, though I was sure he wasn’t listening. He was tense, sweating, back in the past that hurt him.
“He called the police. They showed up to take me away in handcuffs while he watched from the curb. He wouldn’t listen to me, refused to talk about me or see me. I was convicted without ever hearing him speak another word to me.”
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He laughed. “He left the cloth for her. I don’t know why, maybe he got suspicious or she just needed to confess, but somehow she ended up telling him the truth. Did she think he would stay with her anyway? He got proof to my lawyer, and they overturned the sentence. In a way, it was too late for me. I was already so fucked up. So many fights…those nights in the ER…I didn’t want to be like this. I had to survive. I couldn’t…”
“I know. I understand. You couldn’t let them.”
“The craziest part of the whole thing was when I was released from prison. I got it into my head that he’d be there waiting for me. He would apologize, and I’d already forgiven him. I knew I could never go back to the priesthood, but at least I’d have a friend.”
I pulled myself up to face him. “You have a friend.”
He tucked a strand of hair behind my head. “I don’t deserve one. You, least of all.”
“I know I’m pretty great,” I said blithely.
He grinned. “A saint.”
I rested my forehead against his the way I had in his truck. It brought me closer to him, like I could pull the pain from him and take it into my own body. He did the same for me, really, and we were both conduits for the pain, the currents between us grounding us together. He was the god of thunder, retreating from the world that had rejected him. I was the maiden he’d caught going over the edge, who he’d secreted away in his lair beneath the falls.
“Sometimes I think Norm was a bastard. A stupid, horrible person,” he continued, “and I curse him to Hell. Then other days…I knew my friend too well. He believed her. Maybe he was blindsided by her looks or interest in him. Or maybe he was too messed up by what he’d already seen. But either way, he truly believed it of me and that hurt the worst. He’s been out there, somewhere, feeling like shit, and I can’t stop it. I don’t even want to care about that, but I do.”<
br />
I knew the feeling exactly. My mother wasn’t the best, but she hadn’t wanted me hurt. She hadn’t realized what Allen was doing to me until it was too late. Like Hunter, too late.
And yet, here we both were. Two second chances. Almost a miracle.
“Forgive yourself. It’s the only way we can be together.”
His lip quirked. “Are you preaching to me, Evie?”
“You know what they say. Those who can, do. Those who can’t, preach.”
“Do they say that?”
“I have no idea. I’ve spoken to approximately five people my whole life.”
He grinned and kissed me, his lips curved as they pressed against mine.
It was the first time we had really kissed. His tongue met mine in a sensual meeting, a languid caress followed by another and another. He explored me there as thoroughly as he knew the rest of my body, learning each contour and sweetly sensitive shadow.
Though I felt the usual heat flaring between us, there was no urgency, no expectation that it would turn into more. It touched me that he would spare me sex now when he thought I was weak, but he still didn’t quite realize that sex with him strengthened me. It was the most intimate of embraces, a show of support and desire unequaled.
Anticipation warm in my belly, I began to kiss my way down his neck, his chest, and lower, lower, but he stopped me.
Glancing up, I asked, “No?”
He shook his head. “You don’t need the added salt intake when you’re already dehydrated.”
I snorted, then licked the curve of his abs. “You’re not that salty.”
“Not yet.”
My laugh was cut short by the shock of cool water on my belly. He had found that damned washcloth again and he used it to full advantage this time, rubbing it along my body and limbs, over my hardened nipples and down into the soft, damp valley below. He teased me through the rough cloth, dragging me higher to a sharp-sweet crescendo.
I shook in his arms, until he released me and moved downward.
His tongue replaced the cloth, a caress infused with the absolution we needed in the past, a prayer spoken against tender, swollen skin. He took me to heaven and then pulled me back down again with the sharp, swift thrust of him inside me.
It would always be this way, the ecstasy and the pain. They twined together in a path we would walk, unknowing and unseeing, each glad to have found a friend. All I wanted was to be with Hunter wherever his rig should take us. Across the country, around the world.
Like chasing rainbows and capturing each one in the smile it gave us.
THE END
Thank you!
Thank you for reading Wanderlust! I very much appreciate anything you can do to spread the word including leaving a review or sharing this book through Amazon’s lending program.
Yours,
Skye Warren
Check out these dark erotic books from Skye Warren:
HEAR ME
She doesn’t remember her past, only her training. She can’t talk, not that a good slave should speak out of turn. None of that matters when she wakes up in the warm, rustic room. Her new master is distant but kind. There’s only one problem: he doesn’t want her.
Longing for the shackles of safety, she pulls from the last dregs of her will to prove her worth as a slave. It seems to be working. He responds first to her body and next to her submission. The secrets of his past haunt the cabin, fraying the tightening bond between Master and slave, but it is her own memories that may finally unravel it.
Excerpt from Hear Me:
Thuds on the floorboards signaled the return of her Master.
He didn’t have a cane or whip with him, and that lent credence to the worry that he was getting rid of her, but she was too distracted by the food. He carried a glass of water and a plate with fragrant bread. Her stomach grumbled. She cringed in fear of reprisal and a small amount of embarrassment.
He set the plate down in front of her and pushed the glass into her hands. “Drink.”
It seemed unbearably luxurious, compared to the greasy scraps she was accustomed to. This room too, with its plain wood furniture and open window. Her new cage, gilded with cleanliness. She ached to keep it.
The cool water soothed her, revived her. He replaced the empty glass with a chunk of warm, crusty bread. She gobbled it up like the ravening animal she was. He tore off another piece from the plate and handed it to her, continuing to feed her from his hand until the plate was empty.
Warmth settled in her core and spread to her limbs, sated by both the sustenance and his kindness. No dog bowl held fetid water. No mealy scraps picked off the floor. Charity like this was unheard of, but she thought she understood the message. If she pleased him, this could be hers.
Whatever he wanted, she would do. She would have done it anyway, because he was her Master. She paid her keep with obedience. She might earn reprieve from the pain with obeisance. But this generosity came freely, and gratitude suffused her. Maybe he liked her.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
Her heart sank. They must not have told him about her. So much for pleasing him.
Bracing herself, she slowly shook her head.
He grasped her chin and raised her head. Prompted by his touch, she raised her gaze to meet his. His eyes flickered, as if a dam barely leashed something within.
She flinched.
His fingers tightened, not enough to bruise. “Tell me.”
Her mouth worked, but nothing came out. Nothing ever came out.
She couldn’t remember her name, but that wasn’t the problem. She could have told him that it was “slave,” or if she could manage without sounding precocious, asked him what he wanted it to be. She could have explained that she couldn’t remember anything before her captivity.
The real problem was she couldn’t talk.
He sighed. “Do you have someone I can call?”
Oh God, he really was sending her back. The ultimate failure as a slave—rejection—and she’d managed to achieve it within an hour.
No. She would never survive the punishment. And besides, she liked this Master with his gentle touch and cozy bed. It was presumptuous to think she had a choice, blasphemous even, but there it was.
For as long as she could remember, which albeit wasn’t long, she had wanted to be owned. Not in the compound amid the huddle of slaves and litany of trainers but by one Master. Now she stood on a precipice between a generic slave and one with hope. She wanted this Master.
She flipped through the ways she knew to please and placate, all of them sexual. Her body was torn to bits, not pretty or sexy right now, if it ever was. She had no feminine wiles – none. Her body was too skinny, all the trainers berated her for it. Scrawny, weak.
In a reckless burst of courage, she reached out and put her hand directly on his cock. At first it felt like nothing, just the flat stiffness of his jeans. But then, there, it jumped beneath her palm, lengthened.
This was solid ground. She could arouse him, then she would get him off. Any way he wanted it, she had probably done it before, or she could learn. He would see her value then. It wasn’t exactly obedient to grope your Master without express orders to do so. The opposite, really, but she was desperate.
He put his hand on the top of her head, not pushing her closer or away. It was sweet, his hesitation, and she thought for a moment that he would let her get away with it. God, she would do anything. Please.
He gently pushed her hand away.
She wanted to live. How pathetic.
Tears fell in hot tracks down her cheeks.
“Someone really did a number on you, didn’t they?”
Want to read more? Hear Me is available now.
Trust in Me
Mia longs for the daily torture to end, but one last task keeps her holding on. In a betrayal of the crime lord who pulled her from the gutter, she’ll free the shipment of human cargo, and if she’s lucky, die in the process. The alternative is unfatho
mable, even to a woman well-versed in erotic torture. But luck abandons her yet again when she meets the security expert in charge of the shipment and finds herself face to face with her childhood crush. The man she once begged for help. The man who failed her.
Tyler Martinez is an undercover FBI agent with one chance to right the wrongs of his past. Thrust deep into the seedy world of human trafficking, he must put aside his guilt over abandoning Mia all those years ago in order to save her now.
Someone’s pulling the strings in this sadistic play on trust, but Tyler and Mia may not live long enough to see the curtain fall. Trust in Me is a story of erotic pain and incipient romance, spiraling ever faster toward betrayal or redemption.
Excerpt from Trust in Me:
“Come, bitch.”
His words dragged my body across the floor, invisible chains. I hated him for calling me that way. I hated myself more for going to him. And I went the way I knew he wanted me to—crawling. A layer of grime covered the concrete floor of the warehouse, but it was only fitting to crawl through muck. This whole game was dirty, and so was I.
Carlos looked down at me from his seat with a half-smile. The guy next to him was speaking in low, urgent tones, but I had his attention.
Other whores might try coy smiles or a flash of cleavage, but if you really knew El Jefe—and, unfortunately, I did—then you knew all you had to do was drop to his feet. I knew what he wanted and how he liked it, knowledge born of years of training. As long as I behaved, he wouldn’t kill me. I craved the release of death, but I was too well trained to earn it.
I reached his leather shoes and waited. The same Italian leather shoes that had kicked me only recently, but they weren’t a danger to me now. Carlos didn’t like to get too messy when he had guests. Even though I didn’t like performing, I could be glad this new guy was around today. Then again, I’d probably have to service him next.
