by Henry, Jane
I punctuate my words with measured smacks of my palm on her bare skin.
“Work. Those. Nipples.”
She gasps and writhes but does as I tell her, fondling her breasts.
“Good girl.”
She’s earned this. It’s time I gave her orgasm number one.
I bury my face between her legs and suckle her clit. She keens with pleasure, bucking beneath me. I lap and suck lazily, stroking and suckling, while she moans and does what I tell her. I know she’s at the edge of climax when she tenses.
“Ask me,” I instruct.
“Please, sir. Please.”
I give her one lazy stroke of my tongue. “Beg.”
“Please. Oh, God, Cy. I’m dying here. Please, sir. Let me come. Please let me come.”
The strong woman who holds her own is reduced to begging and pleading, and it makes me so fucking hard I feel like a goddamn king.
“Good girl. That’s my very good girl.”
I return to her pussy but don’t give her permission to come yet. Releasing one of her ass cheeks, I take my fingers and plunge them in her core, flexing and pumping while I suck her clit.
“Sir. Oh, God, sir, please sir. Please…” her voice pitches off into a whine.
I nod my head. “Good girl. Come, baby.”
I pump and suck and work her pussy until she tenses, throws her head back and screams while she comes on my mouth.
Fucking.
Gorgeous.
I don’t stop until she’s panting and falls back to the bed. I want in her so bad my balls ache.
“On your knees,” I order with a swift slap to her thigh. “Now.”
She scrambles beneath me and I can feel her fall to her chest and do what I say.
“I want your ass,” I tell her. “Next time, I’m taking your ass.”
“Oh, fuck,” she whispers, still trembling when I line up my cock at her pussy, gliding the head through her slickness, and dragging it to her asshole. “Not tonight,” I tell her. “But I will fuck every hole in this sweet body of yours until you’re fully owned by me.”
“Mmm,” she says, letting me know she’s as turned on as I am. Maybe I don’t need to take it easy on her. She’s fucking perfect.
I slide my cock in her center and groan with relief. She’s so tight and wet, I effortlessly glide in and out, pumping hard into her while I hold her hips. She braces beneath me, able to withstand the savage thrusts. I reach for her hair and wrap it around my fingers, giving it such a hard tug, she gasps, but she doesn’t quake or tell me to stop. She knows I need to own her, and she doesn’t try to stop me.
I thrust in and out, a perfect rhythm ratcheting up my own need, until I can’t hold back anymore. Yanking her head back by the hair, I bend down and kiss her neck as I thrust one final time into her and fly into euphoria. Fuck, this is good, so fucking good. My heart pounds as I spill into her, spasms of bliss wracking my body with a powerful, earth-shattering orgasm, the best I’ve ever had, and our lovemaking has been fucking epic.
“So fucking beautiful,” I groan, pumping harder and harder, and she withstands every stroke of my cock, every tug of her hair. “Fucking perfect.”
I lay my face on her bare back holding her to me. Feeling her pulse. Savoring every second of this.
I love you.
I’m not a sentimental man. I’ve never felt this way about a woman. But with Harper, I do.
But I don’t say it. Not yet. I don’t want to scare her.
But I will show her. I love this woman. No matter what happens, I won’t let her forget that.
Fourteen
Harper
I’m snuggled up on his chest. Boneless. Still riding the high, I can’t deny how I feel toward him.
We’ve been with each other removed from all civilization and the complications of polite society. There’s a stark, beautiful honesty about our relationship I didn’t know could exist between two people. It makes me wonder. Is this what people experienced on the frontier? Did pioneers have this desolate sort of longing for one another? Two people who otherwise might never have even given each other the time of day… falling in love?
You’re just sex drunk, I admonish myself.
But I remember what it was like when I thought about losing him.
You just don’t want to be alone.
Maybe I am affected by the sex. But honestly? Every time we come together like that, every time we unite our bodies and minds and pleasure into one, we grow a little closer.
It can’t be helped.
But if I were transported back home right this very minute, miraculously rescued from this island, and back to where I was even a month ago… would I still remember him? Would I want to do normal things with him? Have a cup of coffee… get dinner… go to a play or movie.
Would I be able to bear an alpha male like him? I’ve been alone so long I’ve come to like it. I like being in control of everything in my life, from my income, to my surroundings, to when I go to the gym, and when I visit my brother.
My brother.
I close my eyes at the sudden rush of emotion. I miss Daniel so badly, it’s physically painful. I have to accept the fact that he’s in good hands now. Legally, once they think I’m dead…
Do they? Do they think I won’t come back?
I swallow hard. Will I?
Still holding me to his chest, he reaches for my hand and entwines my fingers with his. “What’s on your mind, babe? I can feel the shift.”
“You can feel it?” I whisper. “How?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know. The same power that makes me want to fuck you day and night makes me understand you better, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it. But I felt you happy and all blissed out, and then the temperature shifted a little. What’s troubling you?”
I sigh. It’s a little odd being so easy to read like that.
“Daniel.”
“Your brother.”
“Yeah.”
“Tell me about him?”
And so, I do. I tell him everything. How Daniel, my younger brother, looked up to me. How I would take him with me when I went shopping or to the movies, and how we had a standing Friday night tradition of going to see a movie together. Before the accident. When movies could hold his attention.
I tell him about the accident, but I don’t go into details. I don’t like reliving the particulars of the tragedy of losing my parents and losing the brother I knew.
“Brain damage,” I whisper. “He lived, but now he’ll mentally be a child forever. He can’t live on his own, and with my job, the demands and travel, I couldn’t watch him as often as needed. He has a seizure condition and needs constant supervision. So he lives in a state-funded group home. I visit as often as I can.” I smile. “And every day’s his birthday.”
He smiles sadly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I tell him how Daniel thinks when he wakes up every day that today’s his birthday. How the staff at his residence celebrates in small ways, with balloons or birthday cupcakes or ice cream.
“It must be nice to have a birthday every day,” Cy says, and there’s something about the way he says it that makes me smile. I like that he finds my brother’s quirks cute. I want him to meet him. Daniel would love him, and for some reason this knowledge makes me pull even closer to Cy.
“Eh, I dunno,” I tell him wryly. “A birthday a day and you’d age pretty damn quickly.”
He chuckles. “You haven’t aged a day. How old are you again?”
“Twenty-five.”
“You look like a teen.”
“Does that make you a creeper?”
Our conversation’s cut short with a howling sound outside our walls so loud and insistent we both freeze. There’s a second, then a third. I draw closer to Cy and he holds me tight.
“Wolves,” he whispers.
“There are no wolves in the Caymans.”
“Babe, we aren’t in the Caymans.”
I shiver.
“Then where are we?”
“No fucking idea.”
The howls are so loud and insistent, it seems as if an entire pack is prowling the perimeter of the shelter.
“Don’t be afraid,” he whispers. “They can’t get to us.”
“But where did they come from? How did they get here?”
He shrugs and doesn’t reply.
It goes on for hours, the howling and pacing outside our shelter. We try to sleep, but it’s nearly impossible with the sounds outside. It isn’t until the wee hours of the morning that the noise finally dies down, and I fall into a shallow, restless sleep.
We both wake to the sound of rain pelting down so hard, it sounds as if the ceiling itself will buckle under the weight of it, and the wind outside is coming through the slats in the walls.
Cy sits up and quickly dresses. I do the same.
Just as the sound of wolves fade, a more savage sound rents the air around us. Another howl.
Human? My blood runs cold.
“Wolves are gone, only to bring the storm,” I muse out loud. “It’s weird.”
But Cy only stalks to the door, tight-lipped.
“Don’t do this to me again, Cy. Please,” I beg.
“Do what?” he says, turning to me with his hand on the latch.
“Leave me,” I say in a voice that quavers and doesn’t sound like my own. “Make me wonder if you’ll come back. Make me think about what it would be like to be here, stranded, and all alone. Take me with you.”
His eyes gentle and he comes to me, wrapping me into his arms and pulling me to his chest. “Baby,” he says softly, bending down to kiss my forehead. “I’m not leaving you. Do you understand me? I’m not leaving you here alone.” And right there in that moment, I wonder if I’m falling in love with this wild barbarian of a man. Because who wouldn’t love a man like that?
“No one ever says, ‘today is the day I’ll die,’” I protest.
He sighs, as the wind howls outside the door. “And what are you going to do out there anyway? We should just stay inside where it’s safe. I need to be sure the roof stays put. That no huge branches crash into this place and kill us. Gotta make sure we’re safe. I want to make sure the motherfucking wolves are gone,” he says. “Wish I had a goddamn gun.”
I wonder inanely if he’d know how to use a gun and then I realize, of course he would. He’s military, a street fighter, and something tells me if he had a weapon, he’d find his way around it easily.
“Take me with you, then,” I insist. “I can handle myself.”
“No,” he says stoutly.
“Cy, I can—”
But a quick tug of my hair interrupts me.
“Hey!”
“Hey yourself,” he says, and the tone of his voice brooks no argument. “You’ll do what I say or I’ll tie you up, and once things settle, punish you for giving me shit.”
Goddamn it, even as the threat of a punishment raises my ire, I still feel the little tingle in my chest that turns me on. I love being dominated by him, even when I hate it.
Figure that one out.
“I don’t have to do what you tell me,” I protest, though I know the argument’s weak. Of course I do. He’s stronger than I am, and there’s nowhere else for me to go.
“We playing that game again?” he asks, with his hand under my chin. “Really, Harper? Did you somehow forget in the middle of the night who I am? Who you are? And what happens if you get all headstrong and silly on me?”
“It’s not headstrong and silly to want to go out there with you,” I insist, mustering up my courage, because defying a man like Cy is no small task. I swear my butt tingles just thinking about him pulling me over his lap again, and even though a part of me likes it, it also fucking hurts.
“Cy, we can compromise,” I try.
“No.”
“Yes.”
He growls, tugging my hair again. I still his hand in mine, put my hand on his chin and give him my most pleading look. “Please?” I ask.
He looks into my eyes, and I can tell he’s softening when he whispers, “Goddamn you, woman.”
“What?” I say, giving him my most innocent expression.
“You know I can’t tell you no when you look at me that way,” he growls. “I should punish you for trying to manipulate me.”
“Or better yet,” I say brightly. “You can let me manipulate you and then punish me later.”
His lips twitch as his eyes narrow. “Deal.”
Welp.
“So you’ll let me go?”
“I’ll let you go,” he says. “But I’ll warn you, I have an excellent memory.”
I nod. Something tells me I might regret this bargain with the devil, but I don’t care right now. “Got it. Let’s go!”
He sighs, takes me by the hand, and reaches for the latch.
“Fine,” he says. “We’re only checking out the perimeter for now, but I want it clear that you’ll do exactly what I say, and if you don’t, I will bring you back here, tie you up, and whip your pretty ass when we’re done.”
“Deal,” I squeak, because he’s a man of his word and hell if that doesn’t scare me.
And I know right then, while the winds howl outside the shelter, and the memory of wolves pacing outside is still fresh in my memory, isolated on this island in the middle of nowhere, I know.
I like being with a man that scares me a little.
I can’t think anymore, though, because the next thing I know, he’s opening the door, and we’re covering our heads as we survey around the cabin. There’s no sign of any wolves, and rain beats down so hard and fast, it’s hard to see anything.
“Harper!” he’s yelling at the top of his lungs. I look to him just in time as a small palm tree comes toppling over. I duck as he pulls me to the forest floor. We’re safe for now, but we need to get back to the shelter.
“I don’t see anything,” he says, and as we get to our feet, a flash goes by several yards in front of me so quickly I stifle a scream. I peer into the darkness and see masculine features and dark blond hair before he’s gone.
It was a person. I saw a person. I know I did.
“Cy!” I shout, but my voice is drowned out in the wind. “Cy!” I scream so loudly it hurts. He’s dragging me to the shelter, but what if the other person—Will, or whoever the hell it is—went inside? So I pull back on his hand. He gives me a quizzical look and shakes his head.
He mouths something to me, but I can’t hear him. And what good does it do staying away from the shelter anyway? If someone’s in there, we’ll have to deal with it. We aren’t safe out here with the winds and rain.
My heart pounds in my chest, and I wish I could warn him.
“Cy!” I scream, tugging his hand. He finally turns back to me, lifts me up in his arms and bends his face down to me.
“I saw someone!” I scream, my voice drowned out quickly with the gust of wind.
“What?”
“A person!” I shriek. “There was a person!”
“Where?” he screams back, and I point vaguely ahead. He nods, places me back on the ground, lifts a huge stick off the ground and hands it to me, then wrenches a branch as big as a small tree trunk from the earth. We walk hand in hand, slower now, but prepared to defend ourselves.
We fight the wind and rain as we go the few paces toward the shelter, and he opens the door ahead of me. He’s got his stick in his hand, and he’s posed like a baseball player up to bat. Ready to strike. He’s prepared to attack if he has to, fight anyone who might’ve gone in before us, but there’s no one there.
“Come out if you’re hiding!” he screams, his voice sounding so much louder now that we’re out of the storm and in the shelter. But no one responds, neither inside nor out. He looks to me and holds the stick—I guess it could be called a club, it’s so big—in his hands like a baseball bat. I wouldn’t want to cross him now. Seriously, anyone who did would have cast iron balls.
Or�
� be reduced to savage instincts.
Not merely a man anymore.
He’s told me that’s what happened to some of the others, how some of them became savage, like animals, not like him but beyond human comprehension or reason.
“What did you see?”
“Just a blur, but it was definitely a human,” I tell him. “But I couldn’t see in the rain. He was a man for sure.”
He curses under his breath and paces the room.
“Must’ve been Will,” he says. But when he describes him, it doesn’t meet the description at all.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I didn’t get a good view at all, but that’s nothing like what I saw. This man was smaller than you, but he had dark blond hair. He wasn’t little. He was big, but not as big as you, and I couldn’t see much else.”
He frowns. “That’s not possible.”
What?
“I know what I saw.”
“Maybe you’re hallucinating,” he says. “You’re positive it was a human?”
His denial of what I’m telling him makes me angry. I take a step toward him.
I saw the savage look in the man’s eyes. I glare at Cy.
“No less than the man who tried to rape me.”
His eyes darken and his jaw clenches at the reminder of my assault.
“So someone’s here, then,” he says. “But it can’t be…”
His voice trails off.
“What? What are you talking about?”
He shakes his head. “Harper, the blond guy... the only other blond guy on this island… he’s dead.”
The wind has begun to die down, the rain slowing as well, but I shiver as if a gust of wind just ripped through the shelter.
“How is that possible?” I whisper.
He shakes his head and changes the subject. “No fucking idea. But if what you’re telling me is true…” his voice trails off, and his gaze comes back to me. “We’re not alone.”
I swallow hard.
“But we’re together.”
He drags me to his chest and holds me, then kisses the top of my head so fiercely it hurts. I close my eyes. Something tells me this is going to get harder before it gets easier. I swallow but don’t speak. His next sentence takes me off guard.
