by Amber Hart
“Do you have any idea,” he says, barely a whisper, “what it’s doing to me to have your skin against mine?”
Yes, because I’m feeling it too. “No.”
He laughs. “Let me tell you, then.”
He kisses my neck softly.
“You”—he runs a finger between my breasts—“are driving me”—whispers—“insane.”
I suck in a breath. Press into his touch. He loops one bra strap around his thumb and yanks it down. Rains kisses across my shoulder. His fingers make their way to my stomach, over my hips.
“I’ve imagined touching you ever since our last time together,” he continues.
My breaths deepen.
“I want to feel myself in you,” he whispers. “I want to leave you completely satisfied.”
“Mmm,” I manage. My hand travels to the line of his boxers, which are just peeking out of his shorts. I move to the scar left on his stomach from a bullet wound, healed but forever marked.
“I need this off,” he says, tugging at my bra. “All of it.”
“Then take it off,” I say, giving him permission to have me. To do whatever he wants.
Jospin grabs the other strap and slips that down too. But he doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t undo my bra. He just looks at me. He stares at me and watches me, and I can’t tell what he is waiting for.
“Raven,” he says, before I can ask. He takes my hand in his. He kisses the inside of my wrist, surprisingly intimate. “I love you.”
My body aches with a kind of heat only Jospin can bring out in me. And then he kisses me, lips full and warm. “I love you too,” I say, my voice soft but sure.
He flips me around. His lips move down my spine, every inch, making my muscles clench in pleasure. He twirls his tongue in the soft spot in the arch of my lower back. He kisses up my spine, making me shiver. And I’m moving into him, silently asking for more. His fingers snag on my underwear. I wiggle to help him pull them down. Jospin takes his time, torturously slow. Finally my underwear is gone and my skin is bare on the cool rocks.
Jospin kisses my backside. Softly, he nips my skin with his teeth. His fingers trail down the backs of my legs, feather touches that tickle. He kisses my thighs. Spreads them open a little. His fingers run the length from my heels up the inside of my legs, stopping again over my backside.
He’s driving me wild.
And then his head lowers and I feel warm breath on the most intimate part of me. Jospin licks along the seam between my legs so softly. He spreads me wider so that I’m open for him, and he licks again. I moan. He backs away. I look over my shoulder and see him grinning at me.
I roll over, leaning up to thrust my lips against his.
My hands roam over his body. I trace the outline of his shorts and boxers and pull them both down—slowly, slowly, slowly, until Jospin can’t take it anymore. He unhooks my bra and tosses it aside. Sucks in a breath as our skin meets. Something warm presses against my breasts—a key that hangs from Jospin’s neck. I reach for it, the last piece to remove.
But suddenly Jospin pulls back. “I have to tell you about the key.”
Not now. Just keep touching me.
“It unlocks your father’s study.”
I don’t want him to talk. I don’t want to be sad. Now is not the time. Now is made for Jospin and me and nothing else. I want to stop thinking about plans and revenge and the impossibility of our situation.
“Chloe gave it to me so that I could maybe find answers,” he continues. “I promise I’ll do my best to find evidence so that you can leave the compound. I need you with me, Raven. Every day, with me.”
In a way, it seems right that the man I love will discover the answers Dad left for me, that we no longer have to hide our secrets. We can ask questions and not worry about giving too much away.
He lifts the key over his head and sets it on the rocks next to our clothes. Gently, achingly gently, Jospin’s fingers whisper over the skin between my thighs. He moves closer, sliding a leg between mine.
“Promise me you’ll hurry,” he says. “That you will find whatever it is you need from the compound and leave. I’m afraid that my father will hurt you as soon as you outlive your usefulness to him. And also promise me you’ll meet me here again in one week, at night, if you can get away. I need to see you again.”
“Okay,” I say, because I can hear the pain and the urgency in his voice. And because, honestly, I’d agree to anything at this point, if he would please keep touching me.
“Mean it,” Jospin demands, teasing me with his fingers so that I can barely focus on his words. “Look at me, Raven.” So I do. “Promise me and mean it,” Jospin says.
“I promise you. I will try. I will hurry, and I’ll meet you here in one week.” And I truly mean it.
Jospin must hear it in my voice, because he lets the topic drop. He lowers his head to mine and kisses me. I wrap both arms around him.
“Raven,” he breathes. “I need to be inside you.”
My legs spread at his request. He reaches for his discarded shorts and pulls a condom out, fitting it to himself. And then his mouth moves to my nipples. Tugging enough to make my insides clench. My hands travel his body, where hard muscles dip and curve, over his chest and farther down his stomach.
“Jospin,” I moan.
And then I guide him into me. He moves slowly at first. My back presses into cool stone as I wind my legs around him. Jospin groans, but then he stops and pulls out. And I feel the void that he leaves behind. His hands move down, fingers gliding over the spot between my legs, slowly making me come undone. He circles. Dips his fingers into me, then back out to circle me more. He keeps doing this as the pressure builds. I’m just about to lose it when he suddenly stops and grins. He likes what he does to me.
“More,” I say, needy.
He licks his lips. “Only if you say please.”
“Please,” I say, no hesitation.
He puts his fingers into his mouth, tasting me, wetting them more, then rubs them along my lips and between the folds. I whimper. He stops again.
“Not nice,” I complain, but I secretly like it, the way the pressure builds and slows until I cannot take it.
Jospin stills, watching my body. An admiring smile. “So beautiful.”
He’s beautiful too, with his muscles even more pronounced in the shadowed light of the cave. I miss him too much.
“More, please,” I request. He runs fingers softly over my nipples. Gooseflesh erupts all over my skin. “Please.”
“Are you begging?” he says, grinning.
I look down to where he’s ready for me, and I know I’m not the only one affected.
“Yes,” I admit, unashamed.
I take him in my palm and start moving my hand back and forth, friction against the most sensitive parts of him. He is sitting on his knees, and his head falls back, a groan escaping his lips. I move faster, urging him to touch me again too.
Finally, he does. His tongue finds my neck, while his breath becomes erratically fast. He bites at the skin covering my ribs, at my shoulder, at the underside of my breasts.
Then he pulls away from my hand and slides fingers between my legs again. His fingers move fast this time, and I can’t hold back. I arch against the rocks. Jospin takes me to the place where light explodes behind my eyes and my body rides a wave of pleasure. He removes his fingers as he slips into me, hard and thick.
And then the pressure really explodes. I’m lost, completely lost. It’s me blissfully sinking into ecstasy. It’s Jospin groaning as I clench around him. It’s a free fall, a ball of fire, a forever moment of nothing but pleasure.
Jospin picks up his pace. I’m clawing at his back. I can’t control the need to have him everywhere.
“Fuck,” he says, as I reach down to touch him. He rides deeper into me.
I bite into Jospin’s chest to keep my screams at bay. His hands grab my breasts as he rocks into me in with hard thrusts. I move my hips to match the rhyth
m of his.
“My Raven, so sexy,” he whispers.
My arms lift above my head and fall back against uneven rocks as he slides deeper. And I know nothing but Jospin. I know the softness of his lips and the look in his eyes that tells me that he loves me, wants me, owns me.
And then I feel him stiffen, pulling me against him as he comes undone. The weight of Jospin’s body pins me in place but I love it, because it allows me to feel his heart thrashing against mine. He keeps me wrapped in his arms as we try to catch our breaths, as our panting slowly calms and fades into quiet. And with Jospin still inside me, I know only one thing.
I never want to leave this moment.
Chapter 24
Jospin
I think about Raven as I scour endless pages of notes again, not sure if I’ve ever read so many words. My eyes and my neck hurt, constantly looking down at piles of letters that outline ideas that I care nothing about. Gorilla this, lab work that.
All I keep picturing is Raven. It’s too hard to concentrate on the mess around me, on this dirty office that maybe holds evidence, the very thing I need. Evidence is the only way that Raven will come back to me. Then I can hold her again like I did yesterday.
I still cannot get into the computer files, because not even Chloe knows the password, but I’ve watched Raven’s videos several times. I replay them every time I close my eyes too. I search through notebooks. It’s pointless. Still, I do it. One at a time. I pretend it’s like making a knife. You can never have too many knives. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot find joy in this tedious work.
My blood is meant to pump with the beat of my feet on the forest floor. My lungs are meant to inhale fresh air, not the staleness of this space. This desk, this chair—they are all wrong for me.
My fingers, dark against the aging yellow of the pages, skim through words. Fly in a line across the paper to keep my eyes on track.
His name is on the front of this notebook. The man I’ve come to know simply as Raven’s father. He has an actual name.
Ransom Moore.
A strange name. Even stranger is the fact that I hadn’t known Raven’s last name until now.
Raven Moore.
Ransom and Raven.
I flip another page.
The office key is warm against my chest, hanging by its string. I keep it on me at all times. I cannot afford to lose it or have it stolen.
Another page.
I pick up a cup of coffee. It’s lukewarm. Better than nothing, but not better than the coffee I’m used to. I take a sip and wince against the bitter bite.
I miss home.
No. I don’t have a home anymore. That’s the way I need to think now. No home. No home. No home.
This jungle is my home.
Yes, that’s true. So, a jungle home. But not this place. Not these walls that enclose people and apes. Not the spaces that hold words of a dead man. Not here. This isn’t my home.
I will build a new home in the jungle.
I want fresh air and the elements and animal noises to lull me to sleep. I want the bright sun on my face every morning.
The thought helps me move past the ache of missing what I once had—a home that is most likely not even there anymore. Father probably burned it to the ground after he searched it for signs of my treachery.
I put Ransom’s notebook away—there’s nothing of worth in it—and pull out another. There are ten total. The new one starts out like the others; I drop it onto the desk, frustrated. I do not want to read more of the same. I need something different.
I grab the notebook I found in Raven’s room instead, which is lying next to me for encouragement. When I need a break, I read it. This notebook has a distinctive voice. One that speaks louder than the rest. It doesn’t contain evidence, but it talks about Raven. I like learning about her. I pick up where I last left off.
The poachers are ruining the jungle. Raven used to love it here. She used to understand that gorillas need to be saved. I wonder what she’s doing at home. I wonder if she and Jean are still friends.
I pause. I know he’s not talking about my father, but seeing my father’s name causes my heart to speed up. Plus, who the hell is Jean? Someone Raven used to know, obviously, but how well? I try not to think about the guys she might have been with before me.
And then I notice something.
There’s a strange dot over the name Jean. Like the point over a lowercase i. But there is no i in Jean. Maybe it was a mistake.
Only, I don’t think it is, because it’s over the word and too.
I flip more pages. See that there are dots over several words. Many words. None of them belong.
Intentional.
It must be.
I flip to the first page and start again from the beginning, slowly looking through everything. Making a list of all the words that have the mark. I feel sure that they mean something.
I could be wrong.
I could be right.
The notebook is thick. It will take hours.
I have the time.
—
The sun has fully set by the time I finally finish. I have a list of words that had an ink dot over them, but the list makes no sense. There has to be an order, a way to arrange them, but I keep messing up. Trying this word with that word, knowing there’s a perfect fit somewhere.
I feel like I’m playing a game. Unscramble the words, what do you get?
I don’t know yet.
I don’t know how long it will take, but I will unscramble this note left behind by a man who can no longer speak, though it frightens me. Because it contains words it shouldn’t.
Like: Jospin.
Like: Jean, Clovis, Simon.
Ransom shouldn’t have known these names.
It also has Raven’s name. Hers isn’t safe among the others. There is a danger in these names coming together.
And then there’s the word that my eyes keep falling on. It shouldn’t be here.
The word is death.
Chapter 25
Raven
I never thought I’d find myself on a gorilla hunt. It takes all I have to focus. My hands tremble with nerves. The thought of harming them is revolting, and I nearly get sick. I picture Leahcim and my eyes beg to water, but I blink the moisture away. I cannot bring myself to kill a gorilla.
“Keep your head down and eyes peeled,” Clovis instructs.
Mattius perches in a tree next to the one Clovis and I are waiting in. His legs bend at the knee, strong muscles keeping him on his toes on a branch twenty feet up. I wonder if his legs burn like mine do, or if his muscles hold the memory of perching like this for countless kills. Maybe his muscles know just what to do and maybe they work with his body, helping him to feel relaxed. That’s how he looks. Totally at ease, gun in hand. I wonder how many gorillas Mattius has killed.
Another pack member, Hervé, waits in a tree opposite us. We have the spot below us covered from all angles. Whichever gorilla walks into this small clearing will be walking into his death. I cannot stomach the thought. Another death. It makes me remember the wild that Mr. Tondjii killed.
My heart hurts for the wild whom I never knew. Did he have a family? Maybe he was only trying to feed them. Will he be missed? I wonder if Mr. Tondjii ever in his life stops to consider such things. And what about the gorillas? Does he realize that they can paint and play and care about people and one another? Does he know they have families that will mourn them, babies that will die without their mothers? Though there was a time when I didn’t understand my dad’s love for gorillas, there was never a time when I could stomach the thought of them being murdered for personal gain. I don’t understand how Mr. Tondjii and these other poachers can.
The poachers act as if this part of the jungle belongs to them. They treat the animals as if they are merely a source of income, the people as if they are disposable. If anyone or anything enters their boundaries, they kill them. Easy as that. I wonder what this part of the jungle wo
uld be like if it were allowed to exist freely—people and animals and land.
“Don’t shoot until you see Mattius’s signal,” Clovis says.
The pain in his eyes mirrors the pain I feel. He conceals it well, with a stoic expression, but I know the agony this causes him. Clovis doesn’t want to kill gorillas. He doesn’t want me here while they kill gorillas.
Whoops bounce off trees, announcing that a gorilla troop is heading our way. They’ve stopped a few times, presumably to eat. From the sounds, the troop seems to be made up of two mature males and several females.
I worry that Mattius will suspect something if both Clovis and I miss the target. Which means that today I have to kill a gorilla. Or Clovis does. It’s the only sure way to keep our cover.
I wish I could pretend to not know how to use my gun. I wish I could say that I’m inexperienced. But Mattius will know right away that I’m lying, especially since I already showed him—when I shot a wild in a tree in the dark—just how well I can aim.
My gun rests in my hands. My heart is in tatters. Is it worth it to kill a gorilla just to keep my cover? The whole point of my mission is to save them. Am I being selfish by wanting to finish what Dad started?
As I consider my options, I realize that I don’t have it in me. All of the poachers around me have been at this crossroads, just before making their first kill. Was the decision this torturous for them at the time? Maybe it was all they’d ever known, as Clovis said. Maybe they didn’t think about it at all. Perhaps they were proud to reach an age where they could impress the pack with their hunting skills.
All I know is, I do not feel proud. I feel sick.
Mattius stares at me. I know because I’m looking back at him. His eyes narrow, as if he realizes I’m having trouble with this.
Clovis notices and kisses the top of my head. Whispers in my ear so only I can hear. “I’m so sorry, Raven.”
I try not to let tears gather.
“I’ll do it, okay?” Clovis continues. “You shoot long. And when you do, look off to the side so you don’t have to see them die. I’ll make it a clean kill.”
