“Colt!” she screamed, pushing back against me on all fours, rocking into me, taking every thrust. “I’m going to come!”
With those words, I thrust into her long and hard and felt her shudder and squeeze around me, her tight pussy milking my cock. I groaned and drove hard into her orgasm, shooting come into her as she screamed in pleasure, taking every last drop.
I collapsed over her, my weight on my hands, kissing her neck. My cock still jerking inside her, giving her tremors and shivers in her ebbing orgasm.
“Mine,” I growled, licking her neck, nuzzling in, sucking her there.
“Yes,” she sighed, and I knew she felt it, too.
§
The next morning I awoke before her, both naked, my arms wrapped around her in our life raft. I never wanted to sleep any other way. My cock was still right next to her pussy, her thighs still spread for me how we’d made love last night, waking in the early morning hours, reaching for each other in the dark, our need for each other never ceasing.
I’d take her again soon, but first I’d go get her some water and more fruit. Maybe pick some coconuts from the grove down near the beach where we’d first washed up.
Out on the white expanse of sand, gathering some dried husks for a fire later on, I saw it. A seaplane flying low. It dipped down close enough to read the large plea we’d laid out in rocks and sticks: HELP. The plane circled and lowered, preparing for landing.
Reluctantly, I waved my hands over my head. Yeah, we were here. We needed to be rescued. Damn it.
CHAPTER 16
Caroline
We’d only been on the island for five days. I couldn’t believe it. It felt like a lifetime. Or, more than that, like time had stopped, suspended. The last couple of days with Colt, I’d walked around in a daze. A happy fog, so languid and stretched and filled with intense ripples of pleasure. I’d never felt anything even remotely like it.
The morning we were rescued, I was still asleep in the raft on the cave. Colt came in, gently shaking my shoulder.
“They’re here, honey.” His voice blended with my dreams, and I smiled and reached for him, wanting him beside me again. It felt so right next to him, melting into his hard, naked body.
“A rescue crew is here,” he added. That woke me up.
I sat, covering my nakedness, Eve after having bit into the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden.
“Here.” He handed me his dress shirt, helping me button it up. Then he handed me my jeans, stiff from drying in the sun.
Blinking, the sun seemed too bright outside the cave. Colt took my arm as we emerged to see a couple of men standing with First Aid kits and what looked like a plastic bag filled with water. For an emergency IV drip, I realized, remembering Colt telling me how we each needed to drink 64 ounces of water every day. And he’d made sure I did, too, always setting out those water bottles to get filled every night. Feeding me coconut milk and juicy pineapple just to be on the safe side.
“I’m fine,” I assured them, clinging to Colt, brushing back tears from my cheeks. He held me against his chest, rubbing my back.
“It’s OK,” he reassured me. “We’ve been rescued.”
I couldn’t explain the flood of emotions rushing over me, all the craziness of the plane wreck and the dire predicament of our situation mixing with the idyllic nature of our last couple of days. Lying with him, talking, kissing, bathing, making love. At first I’d desperately wanted to get rescued. Now that we had been, I never wanted to be found.
Because I knew everything would change.
§
The shower I was able to take once we were on the mainland felt like heaven. I stayed in it for far too long, letting the water pound my back. I had quite a few cuts and bruises and my whole body felt sore. Of course some of it was from the raw, animal sex Colt and I had been having. I didn’t share that with the medical crew, though. All in all, they declared that Colt and I were both in great shape. For surviving a plane crash into open waters, then five days marooned on a deserted island, we looked like movie stars.
Everyone wanted to talk to us and hear our story. From the second we landed, I barely got a moment alone with Colt. News outlets, social media reps, local officials, everyone wanted a piece of us. Microphones, TV cameras, flashbulbs going off, I hadn’t realized that many reporters could fit on Fiji’s main island. But I guessed they’d had several days to travel there to cover the story. News had hit fast that Colton Kavanaugh’s plane had gone down missing. Everyone and their cousin wanted the scoop.
Watching him, so polished and composed under all of the scrutiny, I gained a whole new level of respect for him. He really knew how to handle pressure. Looking tanned and healthy, as if fresh off the resort vacation we had originally planned, Colt fielded every question sent his way with exactly the right answer.
“She’s the real hero,” he liked saying, wrapping his arm around me. “She’s a professional chef, this one. Owns her own bakery back in Southern Oregon, Tasty Bakes. So how lucky was I, stuck on an island with her?” So suave, even managing to get in a plug for my business. He knew how to take advantage of every opportunity.
I was a lot less composed. Shrinking under the bright lights, I stuck to one-word answers. How did I feel? OK. Had I been scared? Yes. What was the first thing I did when I got back to civilization? Shower.
And I called my family, of course, letting them know I was all right. They cried and I cried, all of us a hot mess.
“And you were trapped with that CEO! That cold, ruthless—”
“He saved my life, Mom.”
“Well, I’m sure you stood on your own two feet.”
“He was incredible.”
“Let’s just get you home safe and sound.”
I looked forward to seeing them, I did. The only problem was I felt like the whole world had shifted on its axis. When they said the word home, it meant one, clearly defined thing to them. I wasn’t sure anymore. I’d felt more at home, in the true sense of the word, relaxed and content and my real, full self, lying in Colt’s arms in a cave in the middle of nowhere then I ever had in my 26 years in that small Oregon town.
Now that I’d been rescued, I felt lost again. Everything was such a whirlwind around us, medical checks and interviews and making arrangements to fly back to the states, it wasn’t as if I had much time to sit around thinking about it. But I sure felt it, everything swirling around me. I felt disoriented, as if I were sitting on the bottom of a swimming pool watching everyone else float around on top.
Maybe that was normal. Maybe everyone who’d been marooned on a deserted tropical island felt that way upon the return to civilization. I didn’t exactly have that select group of people on the phone to ask.
And I didn’t even get a chance to have a meaningful conversation with Colt. After hours pressed against him, literally nothing between us, it felt like we’d been torn apart even as we sat next to each other answering questions for a press conference. After feeling so connected, in tune, I suddenly felt like I didn’t know him anymore. Seeing him, all dressed up, back to the consummate CEO, I almost wondered if he was even the same person. He’d smile at me and give me a quick kiss and I’d feel all warm and tingly, but it wasn’t the same. How could it be? And why should I want that, anyway? We’d been in dire straits. What if one of us had fallen and injured ourselves? Been attacked by a wild animal? Eaten a poisonous berry? It made no sense that I wished we were back on the island.
But I did.
§
We flew home on a commercial flight, by my request. Up in first class, with a full crew including a pilot plus a co-pilot, I still couldn’t exactly say that I relaxed and enjoyed the ride. But the couple of Xanax I took did help.
Colt insisted on flying with me back to Oregon. I sat on board that giant whale of a plane, the window next to me shut so I’d have no reminders that we were actually up in the air, Colt holding my hand the whole time. We watched movies I didn’t fully process. I ate some foo
d that I barely tasted.
“You know you didn’t have to fly me back.” I leaned against him, grateful for his presence, but aware duty called. For both of us. We’d been rescued. We’d passed our medical checks. Hooray. Too bad it felt like we got ejected from paradise.
“I want to,” he assured me, wrapping an arm around me. “I need to see you home safe.”
There, he was using the word, too. Home. And he seemed to have the same definition as my family, that my home was back in Redwood Bay. Back in my prior life. How exactly did Colt fit into that, if at all?
We landed in LAX, cameras flashing, catching our arrival. Reporters jostled for our attention but airport security escorted us through to our next gate. I slept most of the way through the second short leg up to Portland, and whenever I managed to open my eyes Colt was on his laptop, completely dialed back into his old life. It made me close my eyes again, shutting out reality for a little while longer.
A driver met us at the airport to take us the last leg.
“I’m really fine from here,” I tried again, now slightly nervous about Colt accompanying me all the way back to Redwood Bay. He’d meet everyone, all at once. Mother, father, brother, sister, all assembled since they’d thought I was dead. And they weren’t exactly pre-disposed to like him.
“Let me see you back.” He insisted, kindly. “You’ve been through a lot.”
“So have you,” I countered.
Still, he stayed with me. We both stepped out to more cameras, news crews clustered around the little apartment my sister and I rented, which was really just a converted floor in an old, large three-story house. My neighbors and landlord were all there, plus Hannah and Shelly and even Nora, my environmental protest buddy. And, of course, my family stood there, everyone cheering our arrival, and a few crying, all of us hugging.
Shelly had thought to make sure we had food for everyone upstairs and everyone packed in, crowding around, wanting the whole story.
“How did you survive the plane crash?” Hannah wanted to know, eyes wide. “That’s my biggest fear. Did you ever see that movie Open Water?”
“No, and I’m never going to!” I assured her. I remembered hearing about that movie about a couple of scuba divers who’d been left behind during a dive. Apparently the whole movie was about them trying to survive in open waters only to eventually fail. It had never been at the top of my “to watch” list. Now, I hoped I never heard about it again.
“What was the island like?” My adventurer brother, Wyatt, was back in town, and of course wanted to hear all about the terrain and our survival strategies. Colt settled right into a groove talking with him, sharing tips about starting fires and spearing fish.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” my mother kept saying, hugging me, patting my hair. I hadn’t had this much maternal affection and emotion from her in years. Maybe ever?
“Thanks, Mom.” I hugged her back and felt grateful for the warm welcome, but honestly also wanted the attention to die down. I’d never been comfortable in the spotlight. Now I had so many mixed emotions vying for space in my head and heart. What I really wanted was some time to myself.
Thankfully, my father started ushering people out, probably feeling the strain himself as well. He’d never been a big fan of crowds, either.
Soon, it was down to just my brother, sister, parents and Colt. One of these things was not like the other. Even dressed down in an oxford shirt and pants, Colt still looked like a million bucks. He’d gotten a haircut back on the main island and somehow even with light stubble he looked perfectly groomed and poised. I felt rumpled and done-in, like a wrung-out rag.
“We appreciate all you’ve done to keep our daughter safe.” My father extended his hand, as formal as I’d ever seen him. Which still wasn’t that formal. His hair hung back in a loose ponytail and he wore a beach bum hemp-woven hoodie with a big front pouch. At least he was wearing clothes. My parents did live in a nudist colony, after all.
“I assume you’re cancelling your plans for ruining our coastline with your mega hotel,” my mother spat out, a protective, angry arm around my shoulders.
“I’ve been fairly busy, what with the plane crash and surviving on the island. So I honestly haven’t given that project too much thought, Mrs. Porter.”
I bristled at his assumption that my mother’s last name was the same as my own. Not because I was offended, personally, but because I knew it was my mother’s pet peeve. The domination of the patriarchy and all that.
“You can call me Ms. Hudson, for your information,” she began, and launched into a harangue about men and their stupid, chauvinistic assumptions about women taking their husband’s names. I rested my forehead in my hands. I’d heard my mother give this speech on more than one occasion, though never before to a man I’d just spent the past 72 hours with having wild, abandoned, passionate sex. Only it wasn’t the past 72 hours, it was like the 72 hours before the past 72 hours and somehow that thought made tears come to my eyes. Our time together was fading into the past, already growing smaller in the rear-view mirror.
“See how you’ve upset her!” my mother exclaimed, wagging her finger at him. “You one-percenters of the world think you can run around doing whatever you want.”
“Mom—” I started.
“Well, I’ve got news for you! Carrie’s not for sale! You can’t buy her!”
OK, now she wasn’t even making any sense, but there was no reining her in once she really got cranking into a political speech. There was nothing she liked more than championing the underdog. Even if in this particular case she had it all wrong.
“I’ll show Colt out,” I suggested, looking up at him with resignation.
“It was good meeting you all.” Colt still worked the room, shaking hands with Wyatt and suggesting the two of them meet up for some fly fishing one day soon. I didn’t see that happening, but Wyatt looked enthusiastic. Zoe gave him a wary handshake, as did my father. But my mother made no move to bid him goodbye. She simply kept a distrustful, squinty-eyed gaze trained on him as if he were going to try to steal the silverware. Not that we had actual silverware.
I walked him downstairs to the front door, but he put his hand on the knob before I opened it.
“Reporters,” he reminded me, and as soon as he said it I could hear a couple of voices right outside the door. People were waiting to catch one or both of us as we came out, wanting to get a picture or an exclusive scoop on our story.
“Right,” I sighed. He and I weren’t even going to get a minute, were we?
“You look so sad,” he observed, tucking a finger under my downcast chin and tilting my gaze up to meet his. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, sure,” I replied automatically. I felt like my heart was breaking but that made no sense so I didn’t mention it. “I think I’m just exhausted.”
“Of course.” He nodded, searching my face for more. I don’t think he found anything else, though, because he dropped his hand to his side, then raked it through his hair, seeming at a rare loss for words. “Listen, Caroline—”
“It’s fine, Colt.” I jumped in, not wanting to hear what he said next since his tone, his manner, everything about this felt like the intro to a classic rejection. “I’m fine.”
“All right.” He surveyed me again with an inscrutable look in his eyes. “Well, I have to get back to New York. As you might imagine, one or two things need my attention.” He looked slightly rueful as he said it, but who knew what that was about. He could be feeling glum that he hadn’t been able to return, yet, sidelined by me and my crazy family.
“But I’ll call you when I land, let you know I arrive safely.”
“No water landings.” I made a feeble attempt at humor.
“No water landings,” he promised, giving me a kiss that was like the chaste, G-rated cousin of the ones we’d shared together on the island.
He paused, hand on the doorknob. I pictured the men on the other side, readying their cameras. “Yo
u know you’re not getting rid of me this easy, Caroline.”
I gave him a weak smile and raised my hand to wish him goodbye. “Travel safe.”
“Talk to you soon. Take care of yourself.” And he was out the door.
I felt pretty proud of myself that I made it back up the stairs and into my apartment, actually closing the door before I started crying.
“What did he do to you?” Mom rushed at me, suddenly choosing this moment in time to access her inner protective Mama Bear.
“No, I’m fine.” I waved away her concern. “I’m just exhausted.”
“I’ll make dinner tonight,” Zoe offered. “I learned how to make spaghetti!”
“That’s great.” I thanked her, heading toward my bedroom. “I think I’ll lie down for a little while.”
“That’s a good idea,” my father agreed. “Think I will, too.” He stretched out on the couch.
I didn’t even change out of my clothes or get under the blankets. I crashed down, face first on the pillow, asleep before I completed my last thought. Which was a good thing, because my thought ran toward melodrama, somewhere along the lines of “all hope is lost.” That was how you felt, all steep peaks plummeting into deep valleys of emotion, when you realized that you’d fallen in love and said goodbye to the man you loved at exactly the same time.
CHAPTER 17
Colt
New York City. Back on the island of Manhattan, I got right into the swing of things, nonstop meetings, phone calls and events. I was even more in demand than I had been before, now the hero of a bonafide life-threatening adventure in addition to the long list of my other accomplishments. Within days, I had two different studios contact my assistant wanting to discuss movie rights.
Leonard, my COO, had rather giddily taken the reins of Kavanaugh Investors in my absence, calling all kinds of shots while I’d been out of the saddle. I had my hands full just getting briefed on all that had taken place in my absence, never mind setting things right, the way I wanted them. But I did it, juggled all the balls in the air, said all the right things to the right people, made the magic happen.
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