The Christmas Surprise

by R. R. Banks

  Hunter opened his mouth over my breast, drawing it in so that his tongue stroked along the bottom curve and the gentle pressure tantalized my nipple. Just at that moment, a larger wave crashed over me, bringing with it a sudden orgasm that made me cry out and arch against the sand. I grasped at Hunter beside me, digging my fingers into his thigh as I rode out the throbbing spasms of pleasure that coursed through me. When they ended, I lay breathless against the sand, letting the surging and waning waves cool my skin and relax my twitching, trembling muscles.

  Finally, I felt like I could open my eyes and I looked up at him. I gave a tremulous smile at the look of surprised awe in his eyes and reached my arms up for him. Hunter folded down into them, easing his body up and over so that he stretched over me. I relished the feeling of his weight pressing down on me and his mouth capturing mine for a long, languid kiss. I could have laid there for the rest of the day just enjoying the feeling of his heartbeat against my chest and his tongue sliding against mine, but all too soon the tide got too high and we had to move to prevent the waves from washing up over our heads.

  I was still processing the incredible, unexpected climax when we stood and made our way back up the sand toward the piles of debris that Hunter had created. The sun warmed my bare skin and I felt strangely comfortable though I was walking completely naked along the beach. I knew that I was going to need to put clothes on again at some point if only to protect myself from the plants and bugs in the jungle, but I wasn’t in any hurry to cover myself and lose the awakening, delirious feeling that I had found. It was as though Hunter had opened something within me, connecting me to the natural essence within me, and I was ready to discover more of that wild.

  Hunter and I exchanged smiles and went about gathering the debris that he hadn’t gotten to before I stripped down. I was gradually piecing together the collection of knives and tools that we had been using when I glanced back toward Hunter and saw him carrying a metal box tucked under his arm as he stared down at the sand. He was walking slowly, methodically, as though he were scouring the beach for something specific. As I watched, he suddenly dipped down and scooped something out of the sand. He shook it off and dropped it into the box and then kicked at the sand around him before moving on another two steps and repeating the scouring process. I was fascinated by the progress, unsure of what he was trying to find. He dipped down again and picked something else up. As he shook the sand off of it, I saw the sunlight glint off of it and realized that he was holding the foil packet of one of the condoms that had tumbled out of the supply box when he was getting a knife to work on the shelter before the storm.

  My heart fluttered in my chest, and I looked away before he had a chance to notice me watching him, for some reason not wanting Hunter to know that I had seen him.

  Talk about searching for hidden treasure.

  I went back to gathering up the tools and setting them in a pile, intending to put them in the first box that I found cast onto the beach. Even though my body was still humming from the climax he had just given me, my mind was racing with thoughts of how much more we could discover together with those little treasures he was so carefully stocking away.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gavin

  I tore my shirt into long strips and wound one of them around the gash in my arm, using my teeth to help me tighten it. My arm ached and I could feel the blood pumping into it, trying to force itself against the pressure of the bandage. I opened and closed my hand a few times, trying to release the tension and ease the discomfort in the injury.

  “I told them that the fucking storm was coming,” I muttered to myself because, frankly, there was no one else around for me to mutter to. “I told them. But did they care? Did they listen to me? Of course not. They are so wrapped up in making goo goo eyes at each other and not just fucking and getting it over with, or getting bit by fucking snakes and sprawling out in a cave to actually get ready for it.”

  I tried to think of a few more ways that I could spit out some profanity, but I seemed to have lost the groove and just gave a defeated sigh and finished the knot of my bandage by tucking the ends underneath. The last thing I needed right then was to get the ends caught on one of the fallen trees and dislocate my shoulder. The storm had battered this island and I wondered how the other two had fared. If they had stayed in the cave, they might have gotten through it alright, but if they had tried to use the half-finished shelter they were likely pinned to the jungle floor with palm shards at this point. I spent a few seconds contemplating this, trying to determine if I really cared either way.

  Of course, it hadn’t been the storm that had caused the injury that I was now hoping that I could keep from getting infected for however long I was going to be here. Open wounds in hot, humid weather were never a pleasant prospect. No, that had been my realization that in my haste to hop into the life raft and make my way to this island I hadn’t through to bring any food with me and that I needed to scavenge some. The other island had been abundant in fruit trees and the shallow tide pools near the shore made it easy to catch fish. This island, however, seemed little more than a tangle of trees and what few fish I had seen flitting around the water were not as simple to catch when I was without my spear. This had brought me up into the branches of one of the trees having a distinct difference of opinion with a large rat. I thought that it would make a tasty lunch and it thought that that wasn’t something that it was interested in doing.

  I had perched on the edge of the branch, planning to drop down on the rat with the large stick that I held, but as soon as I started to shift my weight, the branch had given way under me and I fell down through the rest of the branches and into the undergrowth, catching my arm on the sharply pointed edge of one of the plants beneath. If I hadn’t actually seen it happen, I would have thought that I had been bitten by the plant because the wound was so deep and so painful.

  Now I was sitting on the beach among the rest of the casualties of the storm, staring out over the grey ocean as it sloshed around, seeming to still be getting over the drama of the storm. I was trying to remember why I had gotten into this line of work, trying to remind myself why I hadn’t just gone into the meat packing business like the rest of my family, but right at that moment I wasn’t able to remember. It seemed like I had been doing this for my entire existence. As long as I could remember, this is what I had done, this is what had defined me as a person and had influenced not only my position in the world around me, but also how I perceived everything and everyone I encountered. It was difficult to form any type of relationships with the people I met when in the back of my mind there was always the possibility that the next week I could get assigned to snatching one of them and serving them up to people they had wronged. I made it a point to never seek out details about what happened to those people after I had given them over and cashed my check. It wasn’t like there was anything that I could do about it. What was done would have already been done and there was nothing that could fix it. Especially considering alerting any authorities to what had happened would have just sacrificed myself.

  This meant that I went about my life fairly isolated. I had gotten to the point that I eschewed using the internet because I didn’t want to stumble on news stories about one of the people I had been assigned by a client. This kept me from much of the communication and social interaction that everyone else had, only pushing me further into the lone wolf lifestyle. While this served my purposes and I was not one to long for a large passel of friends, and most definitely not a wife, there were times like this when I did wish that I had someone in my life who might notice that I had left on my boat and just not come back. At least then I could have a little glimmer of confidence that there might be someone looking for me.

  As soon as that thought went through my mind, it occurred to me that there was someone who was going to notice my seeming disappearance, if it hadn’t already been noticed. My client. Though there was a little bit of wiggle room when it came to when I was suppo
sed to deliver Eleanor, considering it had been pretty difficult to pinpoint exactly when I would be able to connect with the cruise ship and how long it would take me to get ahold of her and get her back to the mainland and the meeting point, the days were drifting by and soon my client was going to notice that I hadn’t shown up with my human cargo.

  This was a client that had been hard for me to really wrap my head around. It wasn’t that I always knew why my clients wanted me to kidnap a particular person. In fact, I rarely got the whole story unless I was working for one of those particular type of wealthy man who got most of his personal joy from sitting around in his study sipping scotch older than my parents and waxing philosophical about how the person had unforgivably damaged their perfect lives. I usually had the opportunity to get a few little details about them, however, and could use those details to mask whatever personal feelings did manage to bubble up through the hard shell that I had formed over the years. When it came to Eleanor, I didn’t have that.

  This was my first job since coming back after the long months that I hadn’t been able to work and I was eager to take whatever came to me. When I met with this client, though, I immediately felt like something was a little off. I couldn’t identify a reason why Eleanor would be a target to this person. Just like any wealthy woman, I knew that she had to have some jewel-encrusted skeletons dangling in her walk-in closet, and that those were probably enough to piss someone off enough to justify hiring me, but not understanding the background had a strange effect on me. It prevented me from being able to give myself an out when thinking about what might happen to her, but rather than making me sympathize with her or have any level of concern for her, it seemed to have the opposite effect. When I looked at her, I felt irrational disdain. The fact that it wasn’t immediately clear why she had a bullseye on her back meant that she was one of the slimy, reprehensible human beings who were able to hide their misdeeds behind calm, beautiful exteriors, allowing them to move through their lives and weave through the people they encountered without anyone ever knowing what they had done.

  Soon enough the fact that I hadn’t shown up would become troublesome and I didn’t know what the reaction would be. I couldn’t imagine that someone willing to hire a person to capture an enemy by whatever means necessary would have a tremendous amount of patience or goodwill when disappointed.

  Feeling as though I had spent enough time wallowing in my own misery, I stood and headed toward the tree line. The pressing need for shelter wasn’t any different here than it had been on the first island. The only difference was that I was the only person who would be working on this shelter and wouldn’t have to listen to anyone else try to convince me that building a big dome was going to be worth the effort that it would take. I roamed slowly along the trees, trying to choose the one that would be best to be the basis for my shelter. I had dragged the life raft up onto the beach with me and intended to use it to create a roof for the shelter, not at all interested in having another drop of rain hit me. That, though, meant that I needed to find a place that would have enough room to fit the raft without the branches being too far apart so the raft either fell down on top of me while I was in the shelter, or flew away the second that any wind hit.

  I had made my way all the way to the end of the beach and found a craggy rock formation. I scrambled up it and used the vantage point to look out over the water and what of the island I could see. The trees were too thick to see much, but I could see that the rocks continued along the shore until I couldn’t see any further. This gave me some hope that I would find another waterfall or pool that I could use for fresh water and maybe some fruit trees. Abandoning my plan to build a shelter in the trees, I decided that I would make my way around the island on the rocks, using any caves or dips in the rocks that I found to protect me if the need came. Staying on the rocks would keep me at a distance from the dangers that might be amongst the trees and gave me some hope of being visible if there was a boat or helicopter sweeping past. Hoping for the best, but fully expecting that I was going to end up in the mouth of a volcano because that was just the way that this entire experience was unfolding for me, I started along the jagged rocks, constantly looking back toward the water, hoping that somewhere out there, someone was looking for me, even if that meant not knowing exactly what was going to happen when they found me.

  ****

  Noah

  “You what? ”

  I heard Snow shouting from the living room and I rushed from the shower toward her, wondering what had happened. She was standing in the middle of the room, one hand cupped over her mouth and the other gripping her phone to her ear.

  “What is it?” I asked, crossing to her as I tossed the towel I had been using to dry my hair onto a chair.

  She turned and looked at me, her bright blue eyes wide, making the bold contrast between them and her shock of silky black hair even more noticeable. She took her hand from her mouth and reached out with it, grasping my shirt.

  “You call me back the second that you know anything, do you understand me?” she demanded. She waited a few seconds and rolled her eyes. “Yes, that means that the telephone ban is lifted until further notice.”

  She ended the call and dropped her phone to the sofa beside her before turning to me.

  “Who was that?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Robin,” she answered, her voice sounding tremulous with fear. “Those people missing from the cruise ship?”

  “Yeah,” I said, nodding to encourage her to keep going.

  “It was Eleanor and Hunter.”

  I felt my heart drop into my stomach and something felt like it exploded in my brain. I shook my head, trying to clear my mind enough to speak. I couldn’t possibly have just heard what I thought I did. That couldn’t be what she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Eleanor and Hunter,” Snow repeated. “They haven’t been seen in several days. They didn’t attend any of the activities that Eleanor had planned and she missed her night at the Captain’s table. Finally, Robin started to worry and he went to the crew. They tried to get in touch with both of them, but their phones went directly to voicemail, so they eventually accessed their cabins and realized that neither of them had been used in days.”

  “It took that fucking long for them to realize that?” I shouted. “When did that happen?”

  “Three days ago.”

  “Three days?” I exploded, knowing that my voice was far too loud but not caring. “He’s known that my aunt had disappeared off of a cruise ship for three days and he didn’t bother to call you? The news outlets know that people are missing, but we didn’t get informed?”

  “He didn’t want to disturb us.”

  “Well, I’m pretty fucking disturbed.”

  “I can’t believe he didn’t call. I know that I told him not to, but this…”

  “He thought that he was doing the right thing,” I said, trying to comfort her even though it was the last thing that I really wanted to be doing.

  The thought that Eleanor and Hunter had disappeared off of the ship was already upsetting enough. I didn’t need her going through the additional stress of feeling like her best friend had betrayed her.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” she asked. “Why haven’t the authorities contacted us?”

  “Technically they don’t have to,” I told her. “I’m not the next of kin.”

  “Who is?” she asked. “Your father?”

  I shrugged.

  “Maybe. But if he was, he would have called me.”

  Suddenly I could feel the color drain from my face.

  “What is it?” Snow asked.

  “Virgil,” I said. “They called Virgil.”

  “Who’s Virgil?”

  “Her ex-husband.”

  “Ex?” Snow asked. “If he’s an ex, he wouldn’t be her next of kin.”

  “Virgil is anything that he wants to be when it comes to Eleanor. At least he was until she finally got
up the nerve to divorce him.”

  “The nerve?” Snow asked. “What do you mean?”

  This was the one thing about my family that I hadn’t told her about in the little more than a year that we had been together. It was a dark blot in their history that I didn’t want to think about much less give any more attention to by sharing it with my wife. Now, though, he realized that by ignoring it, he might have made the situation even worse than it already was.

  “Eleanor’s marriage to Virgil was not exactly the picture of domestic bliss. I was only seven when she married him, but I remember what it was like before he came around and the way that things changed after they got married. She and I have always been really close. I don’t even remember my mother, so she was the closest thing that I had when I was little. We were together almost every day. She and my father had always been close, too, so the whole family would have outings or eat together. Go on vacation together, the very rare occasions when we could pry Dad away from his work long enough to take them. Once she married Virgil, though, things changed. She still came around, but not nearly as often, and when she did, there was something different about her.”

  “That must have been really hard for you.”

  “It was. I was too young to really understand it and it broke my heart to see what it did to my father. Part of what made it easy for her to understand me was that she had lost her mother, too. My grandfather and her brothers were all she had. They were all each other had. Then her other brother died. It was suddenly just the three of them. Having her pull away from him made my father feel like his world was falling apart.”

  “You and Eleanor don’t seem like you had a falling out.”

  “We didn’t,” I insisted. “There was never any fighting. Never any animosity. Virgil just kept her from us and when she was away, the way he treated her chipped away at the woman that we knew until she seemed like she was just a shadow of the Auntie I had always known and loved so much. When I got old enough, I started going to her house to check on her. Virgil hated that. He hated any time that she was with anyone but him, but I wouldn’t let him stop me. That’s how I found out what he was involved with.”