Rapture Island (The Captive Bride, III)

by Dominique D. DuBois

  Oh heck, he’d called it “our” place! What did that mean? I found myself nodding numbly, even though he hadn’t asked me a question, and then I rested my hands on my somewhat still-sticky knees. Just about twenty minutes earlier, Victor had made me put suntan lotion all over my body, heedless to my claims that I never got sunburned, explaining casually that in Florida, the sun was different than in anywhere else on earth (even Colorado, where the elevation was so high you could get burnt on a 30 degree day) – somehow, in the Gulf, the blistering rays found the one and only way past your body’s natural defenses, and cooked you like a Thanksgiving Turkey. Your only recourse? Walking around like a broiled lobster, or slathering on some sunscreen. I wisely chose the latter.

  “You paid tens of millions of dollars for a little strip of private beach?” I queried snidely, trying to jerk myself back to my senses and thereby put some distance between Victor and I. As it was, I was quickly getting entirely too comfortable around him. “You surely didn’t get your money’s worth. Remind me sometime that I’ve got a few acres of swamp land down south here that you just might want to buy.” It was an age-old joke, that someone who wasn’t very savvy in business might be ready and willing to purchase imaginary swampland in some bogus neighborhood. Why should Victor be any different? All these years I had been putting him up on a pedestal, and yet he had made the same missteps as the rest of us. Well, at least those of us who had several million dollars to spare!

  “Actually, my island has four natural springs, so it’s got its own water source. It also has an enormous, crystal clear waterfall, with a deep, fresh pool below it, and clean enough water to provide a place to drink and bathe and swim, ad infinitum. It’s got eighteen uninterrupted miles of pristine white beach to boast of. It also has banana trees, coconuts, tangelos, lemon trees, shaded grape arbors, apple orchards, and hybrid berries I had specially grown so as to flourish in the tropical heat.

  “In addition, it has a beautiful house, with a number of generators capable of running everything from my liquor vault to my indoor spa, with back-up fuel tanks large enough to power everything for four months without ever needing a refill. The manor boasts a white-marble pool, and I even have a heli-pad and matching copter in the only clearing for emergencies. There’s also a smaller - but still lavish - guest home on the leeward side with plenty of amenities, such as jet-skis, speedboats, special, climate-controlled greenhouses full of organic fruits and vegetables, and a completely stocked medevac facility. Oh, yeah, and this island? Its value has quadrupled in the real estate market since I bought it less than two years ago. Places such as this are hard to come by.”

  His face was smug. I could see the self-satisfied derision dripping off it, even from twenty-feet away where I was still perched on that cushy seat near the bow. He was handling the Captain’s chair with ease, glancing out that open window at me as he navigated effortlessly, one hand draped casually over the big, silver steering wheel, the other by his side (just like how he drove his damn expensive cars). Right then, I finally snapped the rest of the way out of the spell that he’d been subtly weaving all around me. And that’s when I realized that I still downright loathed him. Him and all he stood for: his privileged life, his heightened sense of self-worth, his toys, his things, his money.

  “So, which of your houses will you have me ensconced in,” I asked rudely. “Your mansion? Or do I only rate the guest house?”

  “Neither,” he responded glibly. “You see, I have something else in mind for us first.”

  “Why?” I sputtered. I certainly didn’t want to dig in for the night under a palm tree!

  “Well, at first, I figured it was better for us to camp out in the wilderness like the original Chocktaws once did. At the very least, it will provide you the necessity to lean on me for your each and every need, and it will help you to appreciate the true beauty of ‘Tempest’s Wake’. Plus, we can do an awful lot of exploring – both the island and each other. When you’ve little to do, the mind and body go to extreme lengths to entertain the psyche. It demands nothing else short of complete and utter surrender to its overwhelming power.”

  So, he was suggesting that if I had very little with which to occupy myself, I’d be so bored that I’d have no choice but to fall willingly into his open and waiting arms. As if! Wait a minute, what had he said?

  “You named this island ‘Tempest’s Wake’?” I asked, agog with something akin to stiffly uneasy shock. “Why would you name anything after me, much less an entire island? Heck, you didn’t even know for sure that you’d ever be seeing me again!”

  “Sweetheart, I had no doubt in my mind that I’d be seeing you again. It just remained a question as to when. As far as the name, well, like I indicated earlier, it was actually called ‘Rapture Island’ at the time that I originally purchased it. But shortly after my fortuitous acquisition, I found myself willingly changing the name after I spent an entire, eye-opening evening thinking about how utterly and completely my entire life had changed in your wake.

  “You see, you blew in like a tempestuous storm, changed my world and everything in it, and then blew back out again. This island, from when first I visited it, always reminded me of you. The sun set coppery-red, just like the color of your hair, every single night. And that whole East Coast saying; ‘Red sky at night, sailors’ delight – Red sky at morning, sailors take warning’? Well, that was complete and total bunk! It was the exact opposite at my island, as you were in everything single thing you ever put me through.”

  He held up a hand as I began to jump indignantly in. “Patience,” he told me. “What I mean is, I wanted to go fast, you made me go slow. I told myself I’d never fall in love, yet I fell for you at first sight. And so on, and so forth - all of it.

  “Anyway, the first night I spent there, all I had was a pathetic little tent. I’d just bought the place and was simply trying to get a feel for it so I could decide what, when, and where to build. And then the squall came through. Seas so high, and the rain driving so hard, it beat my poor little tent into pulpy submission. It was pouring so bad, the damn droplets were coming in sideways, drenching me in my little sleeping bag and chilling me to the bone. I thought it was fitting actually, considering the anger I knew you must still have festering inside. And then and there, I realized that I was nothing more than a pathetic half of a man, left adrift and alone in the wake of your leaving me. It seemed a fitting appellation at the time.

  “Honestly today, after all the blood, sweat, tears, love, and agony I’ve put into building my own little paradise here, it remains both my biggest challenge, and my greatest physical love next to only you. If I could spend the rest of my life there at my island, simply eating coconuts and dancing naked under the stars with you, I would do it in a split-second: give up my job, my position, my power, my social standing, just to live there in peace forever, you and I.”

  “You’re out of your damn mind,” I whispered.

  He threw back his head and laughed at that. “So you say, and I can see why,” he finally told me once he’d stopped chuckling. “But wait for this place to weave its magic. Once it gets under your skin, you can never rip it out again; it’s a part of you forever. Which, incidentally, is another reason I named it after you.”

  I was fuming, but his words still had affected me. Had I really gotten under his skin so utterly and completely? Perhaps, considering he’d kidnapped me on my wedding day and taken me over a thousand miles from home just to show me his little ‘paradise’. Well, then again, he wasn’t so much showing it to me as he was preparing to imprison me in it!

  “You can’t keep me there forever,” I grouched softly, unsure of what else (if anything) I could now say.

  “Sure I can,” he replied cheerfully. Then he went back to whistling and staring off into the distance. For my part, I focused on the little islands that we passed here and there. They stretched out in a long chain, each of them spread out to the right of us, with either long or short spans of water in between
. The islands all looked different; each and every one. There was a tiny one, perhaps ten acres square, that was mere white, sandy beaches with humped sand-dunes, sea grass, and only three lone palm trees. Yet another one was less than two hundred feet wide, but it stretched for what looked like over a mile, and it had a high number of dark green pines and what looked like scraggly mesquite. A third had tall, thin, white trees, and black muck in the middle that indicated a sinister swamp. I found myself wondering what our island would look like – the place Victor was now steering us so determinedly towards.

  But then, on an island several football fields away from us, I saw a boat. A boat! A possible avenue of rescue and escape! It was a pontoon boat, meant for short jaunts, which indicated that the actual shoreline of Florida itself wasn’t very far from where we were now. Seeing a cluster of people around a day-time campfire, my heart began to pound fast. They were pretty far away, but still, I could tell that three were men, four were women, and they were all dressed in swimsuits. Now, I just needed to signal for help. But how?

  I glanced slyly over my shoulder at Victor, trying to see whether or not he had noticed. Of course he had. He was looking at me now with a smile on his face, as if to ask, “So, what are you going to do now?”

  Angered, I shot to my feet and began screaming bloody murder. Jumping up and down and waving my arms frenziedly. “Help, help me, I’ve been kidnapped,” I shrieked.

  Way far away on that distant beach, the revelers looked up. They’d seen me! I was saved! But then they began whooping and hollering and waving back, and as their garbled words reached me, I quickly realized that they couldn’t hear a thing I was saying. They most likely thought I was just being friendly. Victor laughed behind me and I stopped jumping around, sat back down, and hung my head. I felt like a fool.

  “Do you really think I’d take you close enough to anyone that rescue may be an option?” he queried lightly.

  Victor thought hard about everything. He might’ve made split-second decisions as a scion of cut-throat business, but it didn’t mean that his calculations weren’t coldly-deliberate and entirely strategic. Of course he wouldn’t take me the way he did, only to allow for failure at this late juncture. I was doomed.

  “Don’t look so glum,” he said softly. “We’ll be there soon.”

  The rest of the journey passed in silence, the only sounds; the lap of the waves, the whistle of the wind, and the soulful screech of the seagulls up above. They circled us as if we were bird-Gods, as if we had some unknown secret answer for their entire existence. Through miles of waves and past an interminable number of small, uninhabited, deserted isles, they continued their methodic loops, diving and soaring as they wound through the humid air around and around our boat without pause. Perhaps they recognized Victor, I thought crazily; perhaps he fed them and fattened them up when he was here, and now that he was once again about to occupy his evil little island, they were greeting him, honoring him, and following him home.

  The sun had risen even higher in the sky, the rays growing brighter and stronger over each rolling stretch of ocean we traversed. The undulating motion of the seat beneath me lulled me once again – this time into a somnolent state via which, I was practically hypnotized. It was like watching a movie in slow motion, with fitful stops and starts here and there. We bobbed up and down, up and down, and then one big wave would roll into us and jar me back into awareness again.

  The salty air continued to invade me, conquering all of my senses. I felt it, smelled it, tasted it, heard it blowing against the boat, and saw it lifting my untamed hair up and blowing it wildly about my face. The thin, gauzy robe billowed out around me as we churned onward through the tossing waves.

  In that skimpy little string bikini, I would’ve thought I’d have easily gotten chilled. Heck, back in Colorado, the nights were still hitting 40 degrees on a regular basis, and the snow was due for one last hurrah before spring. But here, we were literally a world away, and Victor had selected my attire more-than appropriately; the sun was beating down on me, warming me, and the feel of the dense air as it wafted over my bare skin was damn-near sensual.

  I found myself sighing every few minutes, feeling the angst and anger and anxiety and frustration, gradually seeping out of me by bit by bit. My honeymoon with Charlie should have been just like this: not the two of us holed up in his antiquated, pre-hippie home as we tried to truly get to know each other for the very first time.

  Thinking of what could’ve been my first night alone, in bed with Charlie, I almost giggled. Looking out at the waves, being careful that Victor couldn’t see my face, I finally let my emotions escape. My brow creased, and I found my mouth caught in a half-smile, half-frown. Part of me longed for what could’ve been, and the other part (the bigger part I was ashamed to admit), was actually glad that the ceremony had not gone through. I could actually admit that freely to myself now. I think it was this wide, open ocean – this freedom – this severing of the restraints that had so carefully bound me. I had been literally suffocating under them.

  Marrying Charlie had been my way of trying to escape my fate, my destiny, my belief that my life was supposed to be so much different than what it had somehow become. All I wanted my entire life was just to be free. Free to live, free to love, free to be myself. And yet, after Victor dumped me so cruelly, all I’d seemed to try to do was tie myself down; settling into a secure but uneventful job, accumulating a steady but benign group of friends, and a seeking out a sheltering, but anodyne marriage that would’ve kept me hemmed in forever. All of which, would’ve led to a safe (but tedious) existence for the rest of my life.

  Yet deep inside me, I craved so much more. I guess it was just because of my father – because of how he had wounded me – that I’d been scared to claim it.

  Two years ago, my relationship with Victor had spoken to that deepest heart of me, my most secret heart of hearts. He had saved me from a life of safety, and mediocrity. And now, I realized that, in all honestly, I truly had not wanted that life with Charlie, after all; did not want that security and that shelter, did not want that bland subsistence.

  But, neither did I want to be taken in by Victor, overwhelmed, consumed to the depths of my soul, only to be broken and shattered once again. Victor had offered me a certain freedom from the constraints of every day society, giving me a glimpse into a life I had previously only dreamed about. And then he’d destroyed it. And once was enough for me. So, although I could finally admit (to myself, at least) that I was thankful for him stopping my wedding: my gratitude ended there.

  Victor had pretty much taken my “virginity” all over again; forcing his way into me, conforming my body to his, and claiming me as his own. And it was too much. He was too much. He had the potential to literally destroy me, right there in the palms of his oh-so capable hands. As such, I simply had to find some way out of this once and for all. Then, I could re-invent my life one final time: this time living honestly and truly instead of hiding behind the cloak of a well-orchestrated world.

  Suddenly, I felt the boat begin to turn to the right. I’d been so lost in thought, focusing only on the play of sunshine against the wavering water and my deep, inner thoughts, that I hadn’t even realized what was looming up beside me. It was a gorgeous, lush, and beautiful island.

  It had been miles now since we’d passed any other land mass, so this place was extremely deserted, for certain. But it was so big, so expansive, so fertile; it put all the other places we’d passed on the way here to shame.

  We were just now trolling past the very tip of the island - a tapered edge with an endless-looking span of beach shooting off on both sides. We could either go to the right side or the left, and Victor chose the latter. As he angled the small yacht we were on to the side and started cruising slowly along the coastline, I began to try and absorb every tiny detail about the place that was now to be my home for the foreseeable future.

  Looking down, I could see almost all the way to the bottom of the ocean
. The water here was as clear and blue as stained glass. The beaches were white sand, as blinding and bright as if they’d been carved from long, untainted stretches of pure, cane sugar. About twenty yards back from the shoreline, began the trees. Palms dominated in height, towering above the other flora. But there were scraggly pines and stunted, gnarled oaks, too, along with a whole plethora of bush-like trees covered with big pink and white blossoms. It truly was a rapturous island, as once upon a time its name had declared it. But somehow, someway, ‘Tempest’s Wake’ seemed to fit now, too, although I’d never, ever admit that to Victor.

  The forest here was abundant, but every so often it parted enough to create natural paths through the jungle-like terrain. I’d seen so many flat, plain, sandy stretches of land along the coast thus far, or islands with only pines or muck; the difference in this island was rather startling. It was as if God had picked this one place out as a tiny little Eden, hidden and secreted amidst the miles and miles of jewel-covered waves.

  The shoreline was dotted with natural coves, and at a rather large one, Victor finally angled our large watercraft inside it. He’d had a special dock built there, complete with ropes and stairs and landings and everything we’d need to anchor ourselves to it and easily alight. The little yacht we were on had been comfortable enough, but I was more than ready to get on solid ground once again, so as soon as Victor guided us next to an open landing, tied all the ropes, and finally secured us, I was running to the little door on the side that would let me out onto the warm, sanded planks.