by Alice Ward
He was in pain.
I nudged his head down. “Relax. Let me do this.”
He tried to reach for me, but I pushed him back and went down, lower, lower on him, kissing his chest, his nipples, nosing my way around the bandage, being careful not to touch him there. I reached for the waistband of his pants and easily slid them down, without unbuttoning or unzipping, past his knees. I pulled them off and cast them aside.
He propped his head up on one arm, watching me as I sat up on my knees and slowly unzipped the jacket, letting it fall away. I reached under my skirt, and rolled my panties down, lifting my legs out, one by one.
Being very careful, I lifted my skirt and straddled his thighs and leaned forward to kiss his abs. He tasted of sweat and both of us were gross, but I didn’t care. We were alive and we were together. Nothing in this world would have stopped me from giving him pleasure after all he’d done for me.
The pre-cum glistening on the tip of his cock was salty too, and I savored his taste as I licked it away.
His hand moved to my hair. “Atlee… you don’t… oh…”
I took him in my mouth, listening to his moans as I took him all the way into my throat. I wanted this. Wanted him. Nothing mattered but this.
“Oh, Atlee, the way you make me feel… I can live off of you.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes, wishing that were true. If he could live off me, I’d sacrifice myself to him. If he would let me.
He wouldn’t, I knew.
I smiled. Even in death, we’d be bickering.
But my mouth was too full to bicker now.
I sucked and licked him until I felt him twitching and trembling, then slid up his body, locking his hips between my knees, rubbing my dripping sex over his cock. He reached down, rubbing the pad of his thumb over my clit, and my head fell back on my shoulders.
We were so good together. At this, at least.
“No condom this time,” he murmured when I took him in my hand and centered my entrance over him.
I fake gaped at him. “I’m shocked by your lack of preparation.”
He let out a slow, tortured laugh. I lowered myself down, feeling him stretching me as his hands grazed up my ribcage, cupping my breasts. “You’re… this is…”
I finished for him. “Perfect.”
He rolled my nipples between his fingers. “Yes, perfect. I’ve never been bare with anyone before. Are you on birth control?”
I should lie, but I didn’t. “No. Just condoms.” I mentally calculated my cycle. “But we should be okay.”
If we lived.
As he trailed feathery-soft fingers down my sides, he stared up at me in reverent awe, his face illuminated by a halo of pale moonlight.
“That doesn’t even freak me out.”
I smiled. “Me neither.”
I began to move, in slow, gentle circles. More grinding than moving up and down. “I love having you inside me,” I admitted. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“Hell no. You feel amazing,” he murmured, his breaths coming short and quick. “Just stay here with me, for a while, will you, Atlee?”
I couldn’t argue with that. He felt so good inside me, I could almost believe that nothing was wrong. That we were home.
I didn’t know how long we stayed that way. A few minutes? An hour? Out there, there was nothing to rush us. But eventually, I had to move. I needed more of him. I rocked onto him, slowly at first, and he let out a growl of appreciation.
I arched my back as I rode him, and maybe he was feeling better now, his energy coming back. Because he started to do some of the work, pummeling me from underneath as I met his thrusts. He watched my breasts bouncing, and as he did, I saw that spark of life return to his eyes. He wound his hands around the small of my back as I screamed out my release, so loud that it echoed across the dark sea around us.
When I came, he pulled out and took his cock in his fist, pumping down his hard length until he found his own climax. He groaned deep, lurching forward and shooting semen all over his abdomen. I panted, watching his muscles ripple in that moment of weakness. That moment of intensely personal beauty.
I was weirdly drunk, exhilarated. Invincible, as though we could float there forever, living off one another. Dipping my hand in the water outside the boat, I carefully lifted what little I could and washed his belly off, taking care of him the best I could.
But when I collapsed down beside his naked body, feeling the rasp of his breath against my cheek, reality set in, and something inside me broke apart. I thought about the deep, deep sea beneath us, stretching into worlds untouched by humans. Of the miles and miles between us and civilization. Of how small and fragile we all were in the scheme of things.
It was just too easy to get lost in this world, to believe that we’d make it out alive.
His arms may have felt like home, but I knew it was only temporary.
Death would take us into its arms soon enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Wyatt
I woke to the gentle roll of the sea underneath me and felt Atlee’s wild hair tickling my chin. She was still cradled in the crook of my arm, where she’d fallen asleep, spent, after making love to me. There was a small smile on her face, like she was having good dreams.
Making love. I’d made love to a woman, for the first time in my life.
Everything else was so fucked up. But that… it had been amazing. More intensity. More feeling. More everything.
Maybe it was the dehydration making me insane. Or my current location, with none of the priorities of my company knocking down my door, stressing me out. But now, I got what the fuss was about. I felt my whole body and soul falling headlong into something. I was powerless to stop myself and didn’t want to. I was fine to keep right on falling, clinging to Atlee under this wide Asian sky, where the stars above were still putting on a show more brilliant than anything I could see back home.
It was crazy, but part of me didn’t want to go back home. I just wanted to stay there, with her, clinging to her.
I eased out from under Atlee and rested her head on a cushion. She let out a small groan and rolled over into a fetal position as I kissed her forehead and peered over the side of the boat for any sign of life.
But everything down there was much the same. Darkness upon more darkness.
Maybe I should’ve tried to row, to get us to wherever we were drifting faster. But when I looked back at Atlee, curled there, shivering, I was drawn back.
Besides, I was so fucking tired. I’d never been so tired in all my life. It was like I could feel my body starting to rebel, telling me it’d had enough of this bullshit.
I wouldn’t tell Atlee that. She’d looked so hopeful and cute when she’d caught that fish. I’d seen a subtle shift in her, a growing confidence. It’d be a cruel trick for nature to fuck us now, after everything we’d been through.
After Atlee had fallen asleep beside me so sweetly, I promised myself I would hold it together. I would not let Atlee down by losing my shit.
I would get her out of this.
I just hoped my body would hold its shit together long enough to let me.
As I laid back down, pain shot through my abdomen. I’d never been this badly injured before, but I knew something was wrong. The pain had been localized before. Now, it was growing. It felt like there were poisonous tendrils shooting out from it, invading other parts of my body. Internal bleeding. Infection. A punctured organ. Maybe all of the above.
That was why I wanted her to drink the water. Even if I had all the water in the world, there might be no saving me. At least one of us could get out of this then.
She rolled over and into my arms. Her eyelashes flickered against my chest. “Are you all right?” she murmured to me.
My hand delved under her tank top, stroking up and down her spine. She felt so fragile, so small, but so good. “Perfect.”
She laughed a little, thinking I was making a joke. But I wasn’t. Facing my o
wn immortality, my perspective was shifting. Right then, I didn’t care about sustainable goods or making WE’s investors happy, and I couldn’t give a shit if I never saw the Australian Outback. I cared nothing about the future and all about the now.
And the now was me and Atlee, so the now was great.
“If you couldn’t be an attorney, what would you be?” I asked her when the only sound was our hearts beating together and the lapping of the waves around us.
She nestled into my side and wrapped herself tighter around me. “Well, I wrote a children’s book once. About the importance of being kind to the earth, but I never had time to pursue publication. Other than that, a zookeeper.”
“Yeah?” Guess that made sense, considering the orangutan love.
She nodded. “You know that children’s book, Goodnight Gorilla? Where the zookeeper says goodnight to all the animals as he’s locking up, but the monkey takes his key, and all the animals end up in his bedroom with him? I didn’t understand it when I was a kid. I thought that that’s what a zookeeper did. He put all the animals in cages to display for zoo guests, and then at night he went home with his animals, and they all slept in his bedroom with him. I thought that was the best job.”
I laughed. “Wait. How many pets do you have?”
She sighed. “None. My apartment doesn’t allow pets, but I’m going to have a thousand pets when I have my own place. And they’ll all sleep in bed with me.”
I liked that she was talking in terms of when, not if, showing off that confidence. “Sounds crowded.”
“You don’t like animals?”
“I love animals. On my dinner plate, especially.”
She shoved me, and whatever it did, it knocked the breath out of me. I started to cough, and it wracked my body so hard that I really thought all my insides were going to spill from my wound. It hurt like a fucker, worse than being trampled by elephants. I threw myself back on our makeshift bed as she patted my back.
“Oh, my god, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I could use some whiskey,” I croaked. She looked around, alarmed, so I said, “I’m kidding. I’m fine. Just… lost my breath for a second.”
She nestled against me, cautiously this time. Damn, I didn’t want her to be cautious around me or worry about me. If she did enough of that, she wouldn’t be strong enough to concentrate on herself.
“I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up,” I said, changing the subject.
The worry crease in her forehead smoothed out, as I’d hoped. “Oh?”
“Yeah. My grandfather used to take me out and show me the planets. See that pale white star over there?” I pointed above us. “That’s Jupiter.”
She squinted, and I’d forgotten that she couldn’t see very well. “I didn’t know that you could even see Jupiter.”
“Yeah. You can see five planets with the naked eye. Maybe not all of them from Manhattan because of the light pollution. There’s Venus, and…” I scanned my memory banks. I forgot where the other ones were. Or maybe I was just fucking losing it, my brain shriveling and dehydrating so I was lying here, happily dying.
“How do know which are planets and which are stars?”
“Easy. Hold your thumb out like this.” I held my thumb up to demonstrate, and she followed. “And just pass it over the light. If it dims out slowly, it’s a planet, but if it blinks out quickly, it’s a star.”
She moved her thumb around in the air like some drunken hitchhiker. “Um. It’s not working for me.”
Right… because she couldn’t see. “You can try it again when you have your glasses.” I hoped I’d be around to teach her then.
“Yep. I’ll do that.” She lowered her hand and curled up against me again.
As I stared up at the planet, a memory came back, making me smile. “When I was a kid, I had this dream that I was going to be the first human to ever set foot on Jupiter. You know, because it was the biggest planet, and therefore the best. Which was completely ridiculous since well, Jupiter is just a massive ball of hydrogen with no solid surface, so if anyone tried to land on it, they’d just keep falling and falling and eventually burst into flames.”
“Hmm. Good thing you didn’t make that your career choice.” She laughed. “Men and their preoccupation with size.”
I nodded, conceding. “But my Jupiter aspirations went away when I learned my career was already picked out for me, and I wasn’t really given the choice to stray.”
“Really? Your parents made you…”
“Not made. I never found anything I wanted to do more. Anything realistic, anyway. I’m an only child, so I was pretty much bred to take over WE from the second I was conceived. So once my Jupiter dreams were dashed, I never explored anything else. It would’ve been a waste of time.”
“No brothers or sisters?”
“Nope. Apparently, I was a miracle child, the only one to survive a number of miscarriages.”
“That’s… sad.” She sighed. “Not just the miscarriages, but the fact you were pressured into only one career.”
I shook my head. “Not really. I mean, I still have the stars, right? They’re still up there.”
“But if you love something, what’s the point of holding it at a distance? Don’t you ever wish you could get closer?”
“Sometimes,” I murmured. “But sometimes you just see things for what they are. Impossible. And you can’t do a thing to change it, so why bother?”
She sat up and looked at me, and I could feel her frown, heavy on me. “I guess that’s the difference between you and me. I don’t see anything as impossible.”
I reached over and smoothed her wild hair behind her ear. Yeah. I knew exactly what she meant. That was what I was beginning to really love about her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Atlee
Sunday. When I woke, I found myself repeating that to myself, in case I forgot it. I’d gotten here Thursday. Met Wyatt Thursday afternoon. Gone on this trip upcountry with him Friday. We’d escaped with the boat Friday night, spent all day Saturday floating in the sun… and now it was Sunday… December tenth.
Or was it the eleventh?
Shit.
I scanned all directions to see nothing but ocean. This time, it was angrier, with whitecaps forming here and there. The sun was rising, swathed in clouds.
Clouds. Maybe Wyatt was right about the rain, after all.
Please, please, please let him be right about this, I prayed silently as I wiped the salty hair from my face.
I sat back against the side of the boat, rested my elbows on my knees, and watched Wyatt sleep. It’d been over thirty-six hours since we’d boarded this boat. Last night, we’d made love, something we couldn’t not do. I’d wanted him so bad, I’d wanted to cry with desperation. But my body was so dehydrated that there were no tears.
Maybe it was the extreme circumstances that had thrown us together, but I already knew that even though I’d only known him for such a short time, as long as I lived, I’d never forget him. Even if we were rescued today and went our separate ways, I’d think of him fifty years from now.
I was falling in love with him.
And that scared me.
You weren’t supposed to love someone you’d only just met. A person who, under ordinary circumstances, would be your mortal enemy.
But I was in the process of doing that very thing.
I couldn’t see him fitting into my life at home. I couldn’t see us going and getting those margaritas in my neighborhood. Or hanging out with his rich friends on the Upper West Side. It was like pieces from different puzzles thrown together. Maybe some would connect, but most would be totally wrong for each other and never make a perfect picture.
But that didn’t matter. As I sat there, I tried to imagine going back to my life without him.
It just seemed wrong.
I needed him.
His eyes blinked open, and the first thing he did was wince. When he raised his head and saw me looking, he
relaxed his face. He’d been hiding the pain from me, trying to be tough in my presence, as he always did. “Hey.”
“Hi,” I said, crawling over to him and kissing him gently on the lips. “There are clouds today.”
“You don’t say.” He sat up and scanned the horizon. I knew he was looking for land, but there wasn’t any. I’d been trying to focus on the positive. “I’m thinking that when I get back home, I may take a sick day from work.”
“Will the boss allow that?”
“No. But you know what… I feel a little like shit.” Just then, the boat pitched a little, and I swayed against him. He caught me. “Where are your sea legs, captain?”
I smiled as he lowered the zipper on the jacket and inspected the damage on my shoulders. Yellow blisters, the size of quarters, protruded from the skin, bumpy and angry. From what I could see, they were bad, and some had popped and were oozing, but… I’d survive. For now.
“They don’t hurt,” I said, to get him to stop saying what I knew he’d say — that I should use the last of the cream. “I’ve gotten bad burns before.”
“Damn, girl, you’re a mess,” he breathed.
I pointed to his side. It wasn’t bleeding now so much as weeping, leaking a gross, yellowish fluid. “Damn boy, you’re a bigger mess than I am.”
He smiled lazily. “Fine. I win. You catch breakfast yet?”
“On it,” I said, standing and grabbing the spear, flexing my muscles to show what a warrior I was. “Just you wait. I’m going to make you fish tacos. With slaw. And lime wedges.”
“Coronas?”
“Hell yeah. Coronas.”
He licked his dry lips, which were beginning to peel. “Keep that jacket on, or your blisters will get blisters.”
I gave him a little salute and moved to the end of the boat to peer over the edge. I could feel his eyes on my backside, and when I looked back, I was right.
I wiggled it a little. “What are you going to do? Sit and gaze at my perfect ass all day?”
I’d been joking, obviously. I didn’t want his help. With that injury, what he really needed to do was take it easy. But he pulled himself to his feet and grabbed the other oar. “I think I’ll try to row us in some definite direction. We’ve been going with the current southwesterly, so if I keep us going that way, we’ll eventually end up in Borneo.”
