by Gabi Moore
“When I thought you were gone I… it suddenly made me see things so clearly, you know? I don’t know I was pushing so hard for the wedding, Ellie, but when it comes down to it, that’s not what really matters. I don’t mind if you want to wait another few months and--”
“Shhh!”
I looked at her but her eyes were glued to some spot in the trees behind me.
“Ellie?”
“I think there’s someone there,” she whispered and pointed.
The bulge in my trousers was clearly visible when I sprang up and stood between her and the noise. She noticed it. And I noticed her noticing it. She hobbled to her feet, winced silently and came to creep beside me as we moved to a parting in the trees and tried to find the source of a soft rustling noise. My heart was pounding in my ears.
I pulled some long creepers aside and created a window we both looked into. To my amazement, her hand went down to touch me. Like a secret little mouse, her fingers ran over my body and cupped loosely over the bulge there. Still staring straight ahead, she began to stroke me idly. I couldn’t tell if I was terrified of what was in the bushes or so maddeningly turned on that the she didn’t even think it necessary to stop what she was doing. I throbbed painfully in her hands, the thrill of her touch shooting all through me and making it very hard to focus indeed. But in a second, the source of the noise became clear.
“Look, it’s them,” she whispered so quietly it was almost inaudible.
Two pale, naked bodies appeared out of the dense jungle. It was hard at first to understand the writhing knot of limbs in front of us, but one thing was clear: they were having sex. Right there, a few yards in front of us in a similar mossy clearing secluded by tangled branches. They hadn’t seen us. I felt like everything in my body stopped working – my breath, my brain, my heartbeat – and I suddenly became one thing and one thing only: my cock.
We both froze on the spot; no motion except for Ellie’s deviant little hand moving slowly but smoothly over me. Outrageously, her hand now slipped under the band of my trousers and onto my naked flesh, pulling long, secret strokes over my stiff cock. I snapped a glance over at her but her eyes were glued on the squirming couple in the bushes ahead. The sense of everything being a dream was getting deeper, and weirder.
I could do nothing but watch. And feel. And swallow hard as her expert fingers still seemed to remember where to touch me. At least some things hadn’t been destroyed by the wreck. My mind switched off and I found my body responding on its own to what was unfolding around me.
I was hungry. I was dehydrated. Maybe even traumatized. But there was something so disgustingly hot about watching those two, knowing that Ellie was watching everything as well, and that she liked it, and that I could feel how much she liked it when the pace of her hand slowly picked up…
The geometric tattoos on the guy’s shoulder rippled and pulsed as he curled again and again into the softness of his wife’s body beneath him. I couldn’t make out much of her form, except for an outstretched thigh that clung to him desperately and the full curve of her bouncing breast. They fucked feverishly, secretly, trying to stay quiet. It was wrong, watching them like that, but my body had already approved and I soon felt myself edging closer, panic rising as I wondered how I could stifle a groan in the dark, leafy stillness of this weird Eden we had stumbled into. Ellie stared and stared, hypnotized. She was timing her strokes with the wet slapping sounds coming quietly from the couple before us. It was the sexiest, dirtiest thing I’d ever done. And I couldn’t believe I was doing it with her.
When I whimpered, she shot me a wide-eyed look and then darted her eyes back to the couple. I nearly had a heart attack to see that they had stopped moving, and were now pricking their ears, aware perhaps that they weren’t alone. I tensed my muscles and made as though to dash off, but Ellie stood firm, holding me tightly and giving me a strange pleading look. I swear she was close to making me come there and then, and she knew it.
What happened next was nothing I could have expected. The couple exchanged some quiet words with one another, and, easy as can be, the woman twisted her head to the side, turned her face fully to where we were hiding and immediately made eye contact with Ellie. But she didn’t flinch. In fact, neither of them did. It was as though they were both bewitched by the other. He buried into her neck and, to my amazement, began to slowly fuck her again; all while her eyes were pinned shamelessly on Ellie.
I was about to say something but Ellie’s hand started to work desperately over me again, stroking more quickly this time, and it felt so good I could scarcely summon the will to push her off. We stayed locked together like this, the woman and Ellie holding each other’s gaze, them screwing over there and Ellie stroking me quickly to an orgasm over here. Is that what we’d come to? Barely a day on this island and we were rutting in the forest like depraved savages?
As angry and uncomfortable and disgusted as it made me, my cock was still rock hard and threatening to explode any second. I was sure I was well-hidden, and I could barely see the other two that well, but that didn’t matter. It was in the eyes. It was in how utterly brazen Ellie was being, how she didn’t hesitate, not even for a second. My eyes nearly popped out of my skull when a rustle made me look down and notice that Ellie’s other hand was under her dress, bobbing just as furiously between her legs as the other one. Her knees bent softly and parted, and she bit her lower lip again and again as she gawped at the spectacle.
When the woman in the bushes came it was like a sexy chain reaction that couldn’t be stopped. It was a strangled, tortured little moan that began as an animal-like whimper and then, with each successive thrust of her husband’s hips, escaped her control and shattered the silence.
“Fuck!” she cried, and he grunted hard on top of her, delivering a few last violent thrusts before collapsing heavily on top of her. Still, even still she held Ellie’s gaze, and in the next heartbeat Ellie’s legs seemed to buckle under her and her spine arched as she threw her head back and succumbed to her own orgasm.
The sound of that hot, sweet little surrender from her lips was enough to push me right over the edge, and I shot big, juicy gobs of cum all over her hand and onto the dark green leaves hiding us.
I groaned and shuddered in her small hands as she squeezed and milked me, the waves of her own orgasm not distracting her from her rhythm. Pulsing hard and twitching as I came down, I looked over to see her with a strange, naughty look on her face. She was squeezing her knees together, her eyes nearly rolled back into her head. Looking to the couple again, I could no longer see them anymore, and realized that they were probably already moving out, getting dressed quickly and running off.
It took me a moment to catch my breath. I stared at Ellie. She stared at me.
“You liked that,” I said. I didn’t know if it was a question or a surprised statement.
“You did,” she said and wiped the white off her hand on the front of my trousers. I mean, the evidence was certainly there.
“Are you gonna get us out of here?” she whispered.
Gathering myself, I reached over, hoisted her up and tried to pad my way through the growth and back to the shoreline. I could feel her heart beat against my chest. I could smell the sweat off her.
“They saw us,” I said.
“Oh yes, they certainly did.”
“They didn’t care,” I said.
She paused before replying.
“I don’t think I cared either.”
“That was wrong, Ellie. I don’t know what to say but …what happened back there, that was…”
“Kind of hot?”
I said nothing. This whole situation suddenly took on a dirty, sour tone and I didn’t like it one bit. She disgusted me. The couple we had ‘spied’ on disgusted me. But more than all of that, I was disgusted with myself, and the fact that I had come harder than I had in as long as I could remember.
Chapter 11 - Todd
She had torn the lower half of her shirt off,
turning it into a tight crop top that exposed her midriff. She claimed it was to make more bandages for Ellie’s leg. But I knew why she had really done it.
We had worked for the last hour to put together our little sand dwelling: a seven foot by seven foot cube in the cool, packed sand, bolstered on the inside by tree branches and protected overhead by Ellie’s woven palm frond roof.
It had come together surprisingly fast, and when the daylight seemed to reach its apex and wind down into the late afternoon, I felt more confident that we’d be OK through the night. Another storm was definitely brewing, and the mood around our ‘camp’ grew darker as the light slowly left the sky. But I knew we’d be OK. We had made it this far. If I could only find a way to beat off Charlie’s advances and get something to eat by the time the sun went down, I’d call this day a success.
She was standing over the fire now, looking triumphant.
“You’re still mad, just admit it,” she said as she looked down at the flames.
“Would you drop it? I don’t care anymore, really.”
“You don’t care somebody tried to drug you?” She pushed some sand around the fire with her foot to make a windbreak.
“Well, shit, Charlie, what do you want me to say?”
She shrugged and frowned, crouching down to shape the sand with her hands.
“It’s hard for me too, Todd. I don’t know why I did it. But last night, when I didn’t know if any of us would even live to the morning, I really got to thinking…”
I tried to ignore her yacking and focus on the task at hand. I was exhausted and my muscles ached, but I wouldn’t stop till I knew I’d tied these branches on as firmly as I could.
“I realized that I want to live my life differently, Todd. I had a breakthrough moment, and something just …snapped. I had an insight. Why I am like I am. I felt so bad about what I did to you, and it seemed like the end was so close, you know? And I realized, I needed to change, I needed to be different…”
“Could you just hold this for a second?” I said. She came forward and held down a piece while I twisted some fiber around it to bind it to the others.
“Are you even listening?” she asked as I worked away. I tied a knot, wiped my brow and looked out over the choppy ocean water.
“Charlie, no offense, I’m glad you’re feeling better, but I think all that stuff’s your own business.”
Her expression fell.
“I was just trying to apologize, to explain--”
“You don’t have to explain anything,” I said and looked her straight in the eyes. “I get it. I’m not mad. Can we just stop talking about it, please?” I had the strong sense that this conversation hadn’t exactly gone the way she planned it.
“So, you and that girl… what’s going on with that?” she said, trying to sound casual.
The look I gave her was harsh, but I didn’t feel too guilty about that. She immediately shut up.
“I’m done talking Charlie, about this or any other topic.”
We both worked silently on our pit for a while, she tamping down the sand walls and me checking for holes in the ‘ceiling’. I wanted to see Ellie again. I didn’t care about her meathead fiancé. I didn’t care that I couldn’t have her. I just had to see her again. As pathetic as it was, the thought that I may get the chance to huddle close to her in this two-bit dwelling tonight was something small to look forward to.
Charlie was over at the fire again, this time swirling around the mussels in the ashes with a stick, sending steam billowing into the air.
“You know, you might as well forget about her,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“That girl. She’s taken. It sucks but you’re not going to get anywhere with that.”
I said nothing.
“But I’m here.”
I stopped my work and looked at her.
“You can hate me as much as you want, but we work well together, Todd, and you know it. I’ve kept quiet for a long time, but I don’t know, I guess being out here and with things being the way they are, I can finally just be blunt with you. I’m available. OK? I’m here. Maybe it’s fate. But the offer’s there. I want you. There, I said it.”
I let out a long, low sigh.
“Charlie, I told you how I feel about relationships, and how I’m not ready to--”
“Who said anything about a relationship?”
She stirred the mussels again, their blue shells clinking in the fire. It wasn’t enough food. Not by a long shot.
Why was I resisting her, anyway? If help didn’t come to rescue us, I didn’t see how we’d survive for long out here. Charlie made me uneasy, and she always had. But did that matter now? With my brief little Ellie fantasy gone up in a puff of smoke? I frowned as I realized Charlie wasn’t exactly being unreasonable. She was a fit, no-nonsense woman and she was offering me sex. Could I live with myself if I took her up on her offer? If I wasn’t even going to live anyway, did that change anything?
“Tonight,” she said, “after it gets dark, let’s go off somewhere, just you and I. I think I saw some interesting things over that way. What do you say?”
Before I could answer, some rustling in the bushes announced the arrival of the married couple, who came marching over towards us with a bundle of roots and leaves tied up with a vine. They both looked a little flushed. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but they seemed almost suspiciously happy for people who were stranded on a desert island and had no escape in sight.
“We have no idea what this stuff is but we tried some and it tastes OK, no ill effects so far,” Carl said and dumped the bundle by the fire. “I don’t know what these leaves are but Livvy says they taste a bit like rocket, so we could try eating them.”
Charlie and I started to examine the bundle just as Anthony came clamoring through the same bushes with Ellie in his arms. They, too, had strained looks on their faces. Nevermind. Everyone’s nerves were fried, that was understandable. Charlie and I exchanged knowing looks but I put my head back down and got to work stripping the tough skin off what looked like an edible tuber.
“I see the mussels have gone onto the fire,” Anthony said.
The last thing I wanted to do was talk to that useless fucker so I held my tongue.
“Yeah,” Charlie said, “they’re OK, trouble was, a lot of the shells were empty.”
“Empty?”
“Yeah, next time you should check inside – not all of them had a mussel inside, or else the mussel was dead and gross, you know?”
Anthony nodded but looked like he was trying hard not argue with her. I’ve dealt with men like him all my life: they think that because they’re a big shot in one area, they’re automatically big shots in every area. That if he has a fancy law degree, it means he couldn’t possibly suck at knowing how to gather mussels. Well, if he thought we weren’t going to call him out on the fact that he failed at his only task on this island, he had another thing coming.
Everyone sat silently around our meager dinner, a little dejected. The couple sat together on the sand and the rest of us found a few seats in misshapen pieces of driftwood. A few crudely steamed mussels and a handful of raw roots was hardly a nourishing dinner, but by the looks on everyone’s faces, it was better than the gnawing hunger that had been growing all day. I looked out over the fading sunset and thought about the size of the problem we were really facing. Even if we found food, another day would always come, the challenge would reset and we’d need to find it all over again.
Anthony was now looking over the dwelling, examining the rough ‘stitches’ I’d made to loop Ellie’s frond mats together.
“No way this’ll hold if the wind picks up,” he said matter-of-factly. I lifted my eyebrows at him.
“You’re welcome to build your own hut, buddy.”
Though everyone was silent, I could feel their attention swivel over to us. I was tired, hungry and miserable, but I wasn’t averse to kicking this guy’s ass if he came looking for it a s
econd time today.
“Todd, please,” Ellie said. Anthony shot her a dark look.
“The mussels are ready,” Charlie said and sprang to her feet. “Looks like everybody gets four of them, plus some roots and things to chew on. It’s too dark to go swimming out there now, but tomorrow we can gather more, and maybe get some fish, too.”
I hated to admit it to myself, but I was thinking about her offer. Thinking about how good it would be to have one hard, angry fuck, just once, just to get it out of my system and clear my head. I noticed how the cooling night air was bringing tiny goosebumps to the skin on her belly.
“I’ll go and hunt for the mussels tomorrow,” I said.
Anthony flung aside a rock he had been passing from hand to hand and glared at me.
“Yeah? Well, you do that then. I’ll stay here and build us a shelter that’s not going to cave in and kill us all in our sleep, deal?”
I said nothing. My fists were itching and I wanted nothing more than to show this guy what I thought of him. But it wasn’t worth it. Ellie wasn’t mine. There was no use being angry about something that never could have happened, and wasn’t ever going to. She had made a mistake. I was just a quick holiday she took from her real life, a life she seemed firmly plugged back into now.
“It’s not much, but it’ll hold,” I said and stared into the fire. “I hope y’all are happy to huddle close tonight. We’re all going to get to know each other real well…”
“Oh, I think we’re all already well acquainted,” Livvy said and caught Ellie’s eye. They just stared at each other for a moment, really intensely.
Strange.
I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the look they exchanged was disconcerting.
I didn’t understand it.
And I didn’t like it.
Chapter 12 - Ellie
Rather than everything gearing down for the evening, it seemed like the darkness only brought things up an uncomfortable notch. The entire island revved up like a machine filled with unseen but scary sounding insects, and weird bird cries punctured the air and kept everyone from falling asleep. The temperature dropped, and everyone’s bodies, finally finished with the hard labor of the day, were slowly going cold and stiff inside our makeshift bunker.
