Shadow Haven

by AJ Schippers

  “If you are waiting for me to say ‘please,’ I regret to inform you that it will not happen. Feel free to answer my question when you are ready. I have all the time in the world.”

  Julia sighed and wondered when she had turned to behaving like a petulant child. Although, to be fair, that was exactly what she always did when she felt insecure. To her, giving someone the silent treatment meant they couldn’t get to her. It was her way of protecting herself from harm or, in this case, embarrassment. She was no stranger to lashing out when she felt attacked; lashing out was something everyone did in foster and group homes a lot. Whatever it was that Alexandra had just displayed, it had left Julia utterly confused. Her body had reacted to the whispered words in a way that her mind wasn’t quite able to grasp just yet.

  “We should be getting back to the house,” Alexandra said. “I am sure you are looking forward to some quiet time to yourself.” Her hand rested on Julia’s knee for a brief moment, seemingly to get her attention.

  As her skin crawled, Julia jerked her knee away. Except that her skin didn’t crawl in a bad way. Alexandra’s touch felt warm, and it gave her goose bumps.

  “Oh dear,” Alexandra said with a light chuckle. “I really did a number on you, hmm?”

  Julia whipped her head around at the statement. “You didn’t, thank you very much,” she spat out. She rolled her eyes when Alexandra smiled. Whatever game the woman was playing, she didn’t particularly enjoy it. At least she hoped she would start to believe that, if she kept repeating it enough to herself.

  Reading was something Julia thoroughly enjoyed, but ever since arriving at Shadow Haven, books couldn’t hold her attention anymore. Her mind kept wandering to what had happened earlier today and how her body had betrayed her. That wasn’t an exaggeration. It did feel like that—a betrayal of the highest order. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Alexandra’s breath tickling her ear, could hear her murmuring those words that were now branded into her skin. When they had arrived back at the cabin, Julia had practically fled to her bedroom and hadn’t come out for lunch. Now starving, she decided to venture out into the house and tucked her hair behind her ear as she walked to the living room.

  She offered a small smile in response to Alexandra’s. “That a good one?” she asked as Alexandra returned her gaze down to the book in her hands.

  “My favorite.” Alexandra held it up for Julia to see. “Jane Austen’s Emma.”

  “Am I an uncultured swine if I tell you I’ve never read it?” Julia sat down on the couch opposite Alexandra and played with a loose string on the sleeve of her sweater.

  “I would never resort to such language, Ms. Quinn. If you are interested in reading it, then I shall leave it on the coffee table for you.”

  “Thanks. I’d appreciate that. Do…do you think we could talk for a second?”

  “Certainly. What’s on your mind?”

  It was a good question. Julia had no idea what was on her mind, and yet it seemed as if everything was on her mind. “I feel like we got off on a bad start,” she started provisionally, letting the words come to her without planning as she spoke. “I know I haven’t been the easiest to deal with, but I hope you can understand why. Coming here has been quite an adjustment, and I don’t do well with changes.”

  “That’s understandable.” Alexandra nodded.

  “Maybe we could start again. If I am going to stay, I don’t want things to be uncomfortable, and I’d prefer to have an actual vacation, rather than leaving the island and getting back to work. That is, if we can set some ground rules.”

  Alexandra’s eyebrows raised. “What would those be?”

  “I haven’t actually thought that far ahead. But I would really appreciate it if you would call me Julia, rather than Ms. Quinn, for starters.”

  “That seems fair…Julia.”

  Julia smiled. “Thank you. The only other thing I can think of right now is that you have to give me some time. Like I said before, changes are difficult for me, and I need some time to adjust. I am not saying you have to avoid me or anything, just…give me some time.”

  “Of course.” Alexandra nodded again. “Perhaps we could have dinner together, but you’d be in charge of your own breakfast and lunch? That way you can spend the day doing whatever pleases you, and we could get to know each other a bit better in the evenings.”

  “I would like that.” Julia smiled. “Speaking of dinner, what are we having tonight? I’m starving.” Her cheeks burned up as she blushed. “Skipping lunch wasn’t the smartest idea.”

  “I was going to heat up the lasagna that was left over and make a salad to go with it. Living on the island has gotten me into the habit of eating leftovers. But if you’d rather have something else, then I’d be happy to cook for you.”

  Julia’s mouth watered at the thought of Alexandra’s cooking. It had smelled and tasted heavenly. “Lasagna sounds great.”

  “Remember when I told you there’s a vegetable garden? Maybe you could go out the back and get me some vegetables for the salad. I like to pick them fresh. There should be some tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce.”

  “Sure thing.” She sighed a breath of relief. Her talk with Alexandra had relieved some of the tension she had felt in her shoulders. Maybe it all would work out, and she could still have an enjoyable vacation at Shadow Haven.

  It turned out that saying she was going to get the vegetables was a whole lot easier than actually getting them. As soon as Julia opened the door of the glass greenhouse, a sea of green greeted her.

  “And this is why I’d rather go to a supermarket,” Julia sighed.

  In the supermarket, everything was easy. Vegetables were chopped and in bags, ready to go, something for which she was very grateful. Telling Alexandra that she couldn’t cook hadn’t been a lie. No one had ever taught her, and at some point in her life, Julia had lost all desire to learn.

  The greenhouse was quite impressive, though. It wasn’t hard to understand that a greenhouse was something that was absolutely necessary if you wanted to live in a remote area and still enjoy fresh food. She took small steps forward and looked around for something that resembled lettuce: she didn’t want to give Alexandra another opportunity to tease her by accidentally bringing back something that wasn’t even lettuce.

  She grimaced when a slimy worm slowly wriggled its way from underneath one of the bricks that lay on the ground. “You better stay far from my bed, mister,” she told it and grabbed a basket that stood on a small bench at the end of the greenhouse. She figured it was meant for carrying the harvest back to the house. But she couldn’t find what she was looking for. In search of the lettuce, she found rows of tomatoes and cucumbers instead.

  “It really shouldn’t be this hard,” she said aloud to the quiet of the garden. “It’s lettuce, it’s green, and it probably has a million bugs on it.”

  She felt like quite the idiot when she returned to the kitchen after what seemed like an eternity. Placing the basket on the counter, she sighed and shook her head when Alexandra lifted her eyebrows. “I swear to God, if you make fun of me for bringing back the wrong vegetables, I’m swimming back to the mainland.”

  “A swim back home seems more like a punishment for you than it would be for me.” Alexandra gave her a friendly smile as she rummaged through the basket. “Lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Perfect.”

  Another sigh of relief left Julia’s body. “I’m not going to lie. I was worried for a moment that I would bring back spinach, so it took me a bit longer than I thought.” Melodic laughter bounced through the kitchen, and Julia looked up in surprise.

  “I promise I’m not laughing at you,” Alexandra said. “It’s just the image of you rummaging through the greenhouse to find lettuce… There are little signs in front of the vegetables that say exactly what each of them are.”

  Julia groaned. “I totally missed that.”

  Alexandra stretched as she leaned back in her office chair. For the past two days, she had been
mostly cooped up in her office, trying to give Julia all the space she needed. So far, she hadn’t seen much of her aside from the dinners that they’d had together. Alexandra didn’t particularly enjoy sitting in her office all day, but it did provide her with the perfect opportunity to do her administration.

  She looked at the time and smiled as she opened Skype to see if Caroline was online. Ignoring the red symbol beside her name, she typed a message to her best friend, knowing the response would be quick:

  Alexandra: Playing hostess is exhausting. I’ve been banished from my own home.

  Caroline: I’m sure that’s not true. You always did like to exaggerate.

  Alexandra: Fine. I’m not banished, but I have been staying in my office a lot.

  Caroline: Are you being nice to Julia?

  Alexandra: Of course. When am I ever not nice?

  Caroline: All the time. Is she behaving?

  Alexandra: She is reading a lot of books, and she goes for a long swim every morning. I have shown her around the island, so I’m waiting for her to leave the house. We have been trying to get to know each other a bit whenever we have dinner.

  Caroline: And?

  Alexandra: It’s not fair that you’ve sent me a beautiful, innocent little flower.

  Caroline: She would kill you if you called her that to her face.

  Alexandra frowned when her Skype started ringing. She pressed the ignore button and made a mental note to punish her client later for not asking permission to call first.

  Alexandra: I don’t think she likes me very much.

  Caroline: Just be patient with her, Alex.

  Alexandra: I hate it when you call me that.

  Caroline: Get used to it. I’ve called you that for longer than I can remember. I’m not going to change now. Julia is sweet, intelligent, funny, and loyal. She has a lot of qualities that you admire in people. So, if you think she doesn’t like you, dial down the attitude a bit.

  Alexandra: What attitude?

  Caroline: The one where you pretend to be a big, bad Domme.

  Alexandra: I AM a big, bad Domme.

  Caroline: See? That attitude. You may be a Domme on the street, but you’re a fluff ball in the sheets. Anyway, I have to go. Give my love to Julia. Please be nice to her. She really needed a break from work before she had a complete meltdown. You always talk about layers. Julia has a million layers, and you’ve just seen one. Give her a chance to open up, and keep yourself open to the possibility of a new friendship. Who knows? Wonderful things may happen.

  She grumbled when Caroline’s status changed to offline. It was something Caroline did a lot when she was convinced the only right way was her way and didn’t feel like arguing about it.

  Alexandra’s Skype rang again, and she glared at the screen. “You are in so much trouble. Get naked and get on your knees.” All of her thoughts of Julia vanished when she hissed into the microphone of her headset. “Please remind me what happened last time you told me ‘no.’”

  Her client’s response was exactly why she was one of her favorite people to play with. No one understood her quite like Dorian did when it came to play. While most of her clients understood that a blow to an ass cheek wasn’t ill-intentioned, Dorian’s understanding went deeper than that. She knew that playing was about Alexandra’s pleasure as well, knew her mean streak was just playing with words to enhance the scene. Some of her other clients took the dynamic too seriously. Not Dorian, though. No, Dorian was special because she understood that BDSM was an art and that whenever Alexandra played with her, Dorian was her canvas.

  “Listen to me carefully this time, because you know how I hate to repeat myself. Get naked, and get on your knees. You have thirty seconds, and I am sure you are aware how very generous that is of me. So I suggest you thank me properly while you undress.”

  She rewarded Dorian with a compliment when she did exactly as Alexandra had asked.

  “You know what to do. I want it fast, and I want to hear you. Every little gasp, moan, and mewl.” Slouching down in her seat some, she listened as she twirled the wire from her headset around her finger. “Faster.”

  Dorian’s response elicited a snort from Alexandra. “Honestly, Dori. I did not ask for your opinion. In fact…stop. Get your gag.”

  Julia looked up from behind her camera and tried to telepathically will the bird to sit still so she could take its picture. She had contemplated leaving her camera and laptop at home; it was her vacation, after all. Figuring that this was a hobby, though, rather than work, she had brought them along. Over the last couple of days, she had taken pictures of and around the house—the view from her window and some shots in the greenhouse of a little sign that spelled lettuce.

  She really wanted to get out and explore the island, but the weather had been constantly changing the last couple of days. One moment, the sun would shine brightly, and the next, she would be soaked from the rain. Still, even in the rain she found enjoyment, running through muddy puddles as if she were a four-year-old.

  Alexandra was nowhere to be seen during the day, so Julia felt freer to follow her own path. At night, they would have dinner together and engage in a casual conversation, but during the day…it felt as if the island were hers. There had been a couple of times when she had started to venture along one of the dirt tracks before reminding herself that Alexandra wanted to know if she was going to explore.

  Perhaps, if the weather allowed it, she could go out tomorrow and bring her camera for some awesome nature shots.

  Photography had always been her hobby, but it was exactly that—a hobby. She snapped pictures of the most random things. Pallets on the side of the road, a pigeon wandering into a store, or a bug on a green leaf. Rarely did she ever take a picture of herself. She preferred to take pictures of others when they were unaware they were being photographed; that was when you got the most honest expressions. She loved having all those people reduced to a tiny megabyte on her hard disk.

  Part of her was eager to photograph Alexandra, but Julia would be damned if she was going to ask her for a picture. No, if she was going to snap a picture of her, it would have to be while Alexandra was unaware of it. And since they were alone on an island, that would prove hard to do. Still, Alexandra was absolutely gorgeous. Her eyes would probably dominate the camera the way she dominated her clients.

  Julia sighed. No matter what she did, her thoughts always seemed to go back to Alexandra, who wasn’t even aware that she was doing it. She shook her head and focused her attention back on the bird in front of her. “Now listen up, you little shit…”

  Chapter 4

  It took Julia a few moments to grasp exactly what had woken her up. She jumped when the loud rumbling in the sky announced itself, immediately followed by a lightning flash that lit up her entire room. Breathing in deeply through her nose, she wrapped the covers tightly around herself. Storms had always frightened her; they were a force of nature that no one could control, and for some reason, that scared her even more.

  She turned on the small lamp that stood on the dresser next to her bed. There was no way in hell she could go back to sleep now, not with the storm raging like it was. With a yawn, she grabbed the book she had been trying to read and opened it to the right page.

  The tiniest of smiles appeared on Julia’s face as she unfolded the small corner and smoothed out the crease. When she was five years old, her foster mother would read her bedtime stories and fold over the corner of the page they ended on that night. She’d snuggle Julia tightly to her, and together they’d have a giggle over the dog ears before she’d give Julia a good night kiss and tuck her in for the night. She had stayed with that family for five years until she was placed in a group home. No one had taken the time to explain to her why she had to leave, and to this day, it was still a mystery to her. With a heavy sigh, she wiped away the tear that slowly ran down her cheek. It would do her no good to think about it; it was in the past, and nothing was going to change what had happened.

&nb
sp; She focused her attention back to the words on the page when a knock on the door startled her.

  “Julia?”

  “Come in,” she said. She put the book away, her slender fingers gently stroking the cover as she waited for Alexandra to enter the room.

  “I noticed the light was on, and it’s still quite early. Is everything okay?”

  Julia nodded and stifled a yawn. “The storm woke me up, and it scared me, so I was just reading to—” A loud boom made her gasp, and she clutched the covers tighter with her hands. Her entire body trembled as she looked up at Alexandra. Surely the woman thought she was completely ridiculous being this scared of thunder. But a flash of lightning lit up the room, and what she saw in Alexandra’s eyes when the lightning hit could only be described as concern and compassion.

  “Can I entice you to get dressed so I can show you something?” Alexandra said. “I understand being frightened, but sometimes there’s beauty to be found in the things that scare us. I would like a chance to show you.”

  Julia’s eyes narrowed for a moment, contemplating Alexandra’s offer. The kindness Alexandra was showing her made her feel at ease. “Okay.”

  “I’ll see you in the living room when you’re ready.”