Seduced (Submission Island Book 2)

by Q. Zayne

  “We’ll take the easy tour around the island first.” He motioned to an eco-friendly cart with a jaunty green sun shade. “Here, allow me.” He took my hand and I stepped into it.

  I made myself comfortable on the bench seat, and he slid in beside me. We a surprising, quiet purr, we started off. It was a relief that the island’s tranquility wasn’t ruptured by golf cart noise.

  When he got it up to speed, there was a breeze. I hung my head out past the bug screen like a happy dog. I’d rather have air conditioning, but moving air at least kept me cooler. I took the palm frond fan he gave me everywhere.

  The circuit of the island overwhelmed me. It was larger than I’d imagined. I couldn’t take it all in. There was the huge manor house, a mansion really, where Isabella lived with what seemed a staff of dozens. There were cabins of various sizes, made in the local way with thatched roofs. There was jungle, a pointy mountain, stretches of white beaches and a turquoise sea with such clear water, it looked faked. It didn’t seem that such a postcard setting could exist in real life.

  Chuck pointed out a sauna as we approached the manor. I felt faint. I was living in a sauna. No one could pay me to take a steam bath in that climate.

  “Alphonse enjoyed his sauna in the states, so Isabella built one here. It gets some use in the cooler season.”

  “Right.” I was far more interested in the unheated swimming pool, the gardens, the wildlife, and the history of the island.

  I couldn’t kid myself. Most of all, I wanted to see Marcus again. But I was a guest, and the tour seemed to be part of the experience here. I’d cope.

  “How about changing into comfortable walking shoes, and I’ll show you some of the island’s most appealing features?

  “It’s a deal.”

  He dropped me off at the house and I fled to my air-conditioned room. I couldn’t see wearing hiking boots, the only serious walking shoes I had with me, so I compromised with some flats with tread.

  Steeling myself for the return to the broiler, I braved the front door and met Chuck on the porch.

  “Those will do much better for walking. Good. Come on.” He led the way along a path, no doubt heading for some scenic spot.

  “Okay.” I gave thanks the day wasn’t at full broil.

  I wasn’t so thankful when he led me up a steep hillside. I consoled myself with the scenery. The tropical flowers were knockouts, all shades from cream to baboon-butt scarlet.

  The hill became more steep. Was he torturing me? Just another perk in BDSM paradise.

  “Where are we going?” I did my best not to pant, but I longed to return to the cart and the breeze, or better yet, any air-conditioned building.

  “The volcano. We’re on it, but you can’t see it well until we reach the summit.”

  Volcano. Shades of Pompeii. I studied Pompeii at an early age and the images of trapped people captured forever in their death throes remained etched in my mind. Volcanic ash preserved them like statues. We were walking up a volcano. To the summit. This place truly was perverted.

  I huffed behind him, wondering how a husky older guy made the trek seem effortless. I supposed he was better acclimated to the heat. Though ‘heat’ was a flaccid understatement for the climate. My brain was too baked to come up with an appropriate analogy, maybe Hell with steam.

  At last he stopped. I climbed the last couple of steps and stood beside him, not sure I liked him any more after what he’d just put the through. He reached into his satchel and handed me a bottle of ice-cold water.

  I drank thirstily and smiled at him. This could be love.

  I exaggerated, due to the sheer pleasure of the water cooling me. Without my heels, my guide and I were about the same height. He did have kind eyes. But now that I’d been spanked by a master, the incomparable Marcus, I was ruined for other men. My mooning about Marcus embarrassed me. I was 28, not an adolescent.

  Chuck gestured around us and I broke out of my thoughts to take in what he wanted to show me. The volcano was junior sized—good thing, or I would have died on the hike—and its caldera looked inactive, black and eerie like a moonscape, showing it had once bubbled and spilled over. The jagged landscape of its interior was otherworldly. Chuck grinned and gestured to the slope. Monkeys swung through the tree canopy. A snake lazed on a high branch. A stunning red and blue bird swooped low over fragrant blossoms.

  He took my hand. I was startled, but he put his finger to his lips and led me along a narrow path around the lip of the volcano’s crater. I realized he wanted to help me feel secure on the tricky path. I took care not to look down until we reached a wider spot. He crouched down and I copied him, unsure what we were doing.

  Oh. I covered my mouth to keep from exclaiming. A big cat stalked through the jungle and disappeared amid tumbled stones. I stared. I’d just seen a wild great cat of some kind, and those sure as hell looked like ruins. Questions rushed through me, but I didn’t dare speak.

  I waited with respect to allow the cat to pass without being disturbed.

  Chuck glanced over his shoulder at me and grinned.

  “Do you want to see the ruins?”

  “Hell yes!”

  “The descent is more difficult here, because there’s not much of a path. You can hold my shoulder for balance and we’ll take it one step at a time.”

  It was kind of him to offer, but I could picture bowling him over.

  “I think I can manage.”

  “Alright. Let me know if you want to stop for a breather.”

  It wasn’t so bad, even though hoofing it down the steep slope in the volcanic soil wasn’t easy. Vines helped reduce erosion and provide traction. I didn’t want to fall. I pictured obsidian slicing me open. I wasn’t sure what the surface was like under the soil, but I had a strong imagination. Everything here was so foreign to me, I might as well have been on another planet.

  Did Marcus have an affinity to big cats, too?

  Chuck offered his hand, and I scrambled over a rockfall at the base of the volcano, arriving on level land. I felt accomplished. He rewarded me with another bottle of ice water.

  We picked our way to the ruins with him in the lead. My eyes must have been huge. Getting to see the remains of an ancient civilization up close was a thrill.

  Square-shaped columns, a platform with steps leading up to it and what might have been an altar took me into the past. It was all made with fitted stones. The work must have been grueling. At least the jungle offered shade.

  We walked around the structures. Some of them were low, broken walls, with no clue what they might have been when they were intact. The large platform with the columns and altar was the most impressive. I couldn’t help thinking it was a temple.

  Chuck led me to one side of it and pulled vines away from a mass of stone. A snarling jaguar faced me.

  I gasped. The face was as big as mine. It was amazing, deft craftsmanship brought its fierce visage to life, the teeth ready to bite. It felt like a warning.

  “Who lived here? Who built this?” Thinking of the long flight over the featureless ocean, it seemed unimaginable that ancient people came here in basic boats. Why?

  “No one is sure. Isabella considered having an archaeologist come out, but for obvious reasons, she doesn’t want to attract publicity. Marcus thinks it may have been a Maya ceremonial center. They chose coastal locations such as Tulum and El Rey on the Yucatan peninsula. Archaeology reveals that travel and trade were more extensive in the ancient world than was originally thought. For a long time, the cultures of this region got short shrift. Finds were prone to misinterpretation, due to the biases of the colonizers and researchers. Racist assumptions are finally no longer left unquestioned, and local archaeologists are active. They treat the region’s ancient cultures with respect, so a more complete vision is emerging. But much of the entire region’s art and manuscripts were destroyed by colonizers who considered the indigenous people heathens.” He looked pained.

  It surprised me to encounter a kindred sp
irit in such an unexpected place. My mind perked up at the mention of Marcus, too. No reason people at a sex club shouldn’t be educated. I was here, after all. It just caught me off guard.

  The jaguar transfixed me. Chuck let me take my time. I couldn’t be certain of the sculpted cat’s species, yet it struck me as a jaguar, knowing the importance of that animal in Maya culture.

  It seemed meant, somehow, that I saw a wild feline for the first time, and then this masterful sculpture that captured its spirit and the reverence of the sculptor.

  “Thank you,” I whispered to Chuck.

  “You’re welcome.” He offered his hand and helped me rise.

  I felt reborn.

  “Come.” He smiled.

  He led me up the steps, and we walked to the center of the temple together. Chuck rested his hand on the altar. It was as long as a body and hip height.

  “Stretch out on it, if you like. I saw things when I did, and I’m curious if it will have the same effect on you. You seem sensitive.”

  A chill went through me. It might have been used for sacrifice. The bloody rituals fascinated me, and the ancient Maya had many of them. A problem being that taken out of context, they created a limited vision of the culture. People got the impression that ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death, yet their art, inscriptions and literature showed a passion for life. As outsiders, we couldn’t know the full meaning of Maya rituals and sacrifices. Treating those as key elements of an entire civilization that spanned centuries and a large geographic area only added to misconceptions. Despite knowing how limited and biased our knowledge was, the blood rites of the ancient people thrilled me.

  I touched the altar, but I hesitated to follow Chuck’s suggestion. Not because I was squeamish, but because I was excited. He was right that I was sensitive. I was the day dreamer, the imaginative one, and I frustrated my practical parents to no end. I often thought some mix-up occurred at my birth. I was sent home from the hospital with them by mistake, and chided forever after for disrupting their dull lives with my imagination.

  Shaking, I extended my hand and touched the warm stone. Warm as flesh. No surprise there. Anything on this island that wasn’t in the vicinity of air conditioning was warm. Still, it gave me an uncomfortable feeling, as though the altar retained some essence from all the people who bled out on it.

  I climbed up on it before I could stop myself, Chuck giving me a friendly boost without getting too familiar. I felt comfortable with him.

  I tucked my dress in around my legs though, in an excess of modesty. The position felt uniquely sexual and vulnerable. Jen was going to love this story. Nothing like a strange man inviting you to envision yourself as a virgin sacrifice in some remote ruins.

  I couldn’t help imagining it and feeling sexy, although there was nothing erotic about the real deaths that might have happened in that place. I knew the sacrifices were generally young, often, to our sensibilities, too young.

  With my body resting on the stone, I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to force it, but I wondered if the experience Chuck suggested would come.

  My eyelids fluttered. I could doze right there. Sore places from the volcano trek made themselves known. Colors shifted in the dark. I saw a cavern. A fire. The flames mesmerized me.

  The priest in his cat pelt made me sad. The jaguar hide looked far better on the animal than on the wizened man.

  His face looked fierce as he said the words, as he consecrated me to the great one.

  He raised the knife. Sun shone between the stones. I closed my eyes tight.

  Pain below my breast, a deep swirling, ribbons coming undone, me coming undone, going down. So dark. Chilled. My arms around myself, my body small.

  Hovering, sensing the cave to the underworld, my feet ready to take me down. Rising higher at the same time. Looking down at the priest standing over my body with my heart in his hand, my blood running down his arm, my body open, empty.

  I exhaled, jolting like a dream of falling, coming back with a shock.

  “Are you alright?” Chuck leaned over me.

  “Shaken up.” I reached out to him.

  Stranger that he was, yet I needed to touch a live human being in that moment. I was there. I was her. I died here. I clambered off the altar as though burned.

  He held my hand.

  “I’m sorry. It was a foolish idea.”

  “No.” I shook my head, gasping as though I’d run for my life. “No. It was real. I saw it, felt it, everything. I was the sacrifice.”

  He sucked in his breath.

  “Tell Marcus,” he whispered, glancing around as though he feared someone might hear. “But don’t tell anyone else.”

  I nodded. I didn’t understand his warning, but it made sense. From early on, I learned not to tell anyone when I saw things that weren’t physically there. It didn’t take many rounds of being beaten for ‘lying’ to know my mother didn’t see the things I saw and didn’t want me to speak of them. I understood later that it was her anger and fear she lashed me with, but that came after years of therapy. The greatest relief came from cutting her out of my life.

  “Let’s get away from here.” I had a lot of questions, and Chuck might be able to answer some of them, but for now, I just wanted to get away from the ruins.

  I’d be back, though. The flow of time drew me, the way the sirens’ songs called Odysseus and his sailors. I couldn’t resist it. The ancients were more immediate to me than the people around me.

  Trekking out of the jungle, I moved faster than I had since I arrived at the island. Chuck kept pace with me. I noticed his downcast expression.

  “Thank you.” I squeezed his shoulder. The man had a lot of muscle. He was just soft around the middle. It struck me that as much as I disliked other people judging me based on my body, I wasn’t immune to doing it to others. “I mean it, Chuck. This was a—I can’t say once in a lifetime experience, because it’s happened before—but a peak experience. Something I’ll always remember.”

  “I’m glad. I felt bad, seeing you so upset.”

  “Let it go. I wouldn’t have missed that for anything.”

  He regained the bounce in his step and his smile.

  “What did you see?”

  He stopped and met my eyes. “I died. It was so fast and violent, the blade swooping down like a raven’s wing, a blast of pain and cold. I fell into the darkness. The sight of that arm surging toward me—I felt so powerless.” He closed his eyes. “It was a rush, too. I saw colored patterns, like serpents leading into the underworld, their scales iridescent in torch light. I was more alive in that death than I’ve felt before or since.” He sighed. “I think about going back, but I’m not sure I should. At my age, I’ll be descending into the dark all too soon.”

  “You’re not that old,” I quipped to break the undertow to that hidden, seductive place. I’d felt it too, at times in my life when I thought often of death. There was something there that wanted you, if you let it lure you.

  Chuck swallowed and grinned. He offered me his hand to step up to the passenger seat.

  Climbing into the cart was a relief.

  He got behind the wheel and stepped on it, going as fast as the thing would go. I basked in the breeze.

  At the mansion, he gave me his hand again. My legs shook as I got out of the cart. I was glad of his support, and longed to be back in my room. He nodded and accompanied me into the house and up the stairs. I hoped he wasn’t expecting sex. His presence struck me as more protective than lecherous, but I’d learned to be wary with men. Some of them assumed big women were easy. Despite Jen’s enjoyment of casting me as a major pervert, I had standards. It still rocked me that Marcus exceeded them.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Cleo. Remember, tell no one but Marcus.”

  “Thank you. Alright. Don’t worry, I’m not eager to share that experience.”

  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  At the door, I squeezed Chuck’s hand goodbye. It seemed he wasn’t
only my guide on Submission Island, he was my ally. We had a secret ability in common. He sensed I was ‘sensitive.’ Over the years, I looked into words for the things I sensed. Extrasensory Perception, clairvoyance. Recognition of such abilities rose and fell in the skeptical, contemporary world. Of course, many times and places were prone to charlatans. Fakes made it easy for some people to dismiss things they didn’t understand.

  “Thank you for the wonderful tour. I mean it.” Maybe before I left, I’d talk to him more about what I experienced.

  The depth of his eyes told me he’d understand. I read about people who remembered past lives. I found the books eerily familiar and unsettling. I had to go months at a time without going near the topic. Sometimes I feared I inherited my mother’s mental instability. Today, what I experienced felt normal and right, not crazy at all. Part of that good feeling came from Chuck’s acceptance. I smiled at him.

  His kiss surprised me. Quick, firm, with a burst of connection that made colors flare behind my eyes.

  “See you tomorrow.” He loped down the stairs.

  I went into the room, closed the door, and stood against it, blinking.

  He was a good man, a kind man. Intelligent and connected to the unseen in the way I was. I felt something with him. More than comfort.

  I sighed. He didn’t light me up as Marcus did. If I’d seen the kiss coming, I would have discouraged him. I wouldn’t lead a man on. Not that I’d had scores of suitors vying for my hand. None, really. Josh would never have married me.

  I sighed, pushed off from the door and kicked off my shoes. The cool tiles soothed my feet.

  A shower. Then I’d collapse on the bed. I wasn’t ready to lie flat on my back. There, there be demons, as old maps used to say about monsters of the deep.

  I found something more powerful than monsters. I found a piece of me.

  I just wasn’t ready to revisit her yet.

  Asking for Marcus