Well, we were certainly having our ‘adventure’ now.

I consider myself a cool, collected man. A rational man. But the last few days felt like I had been blasted with ten years’ worth of emotional turmoil and I had no idea how to process it all. The landscape all around felt empty compared to the tumult inside my head. Just as soon as I grabbed hold of one thought, another, completely different one beckoned. And when I grabbed hold of that one instead, yet another one popped up to taunt me.

On the raft, I had felt nothing but pure, intense devotion to Ellie. It felt so obvious and easy at the time. She was the perfect woman, my future wife, nothing less than an earthly goddess that I’d chosen to be the mother of my children. But there were ugly scratches on this vision, and the fact that we had fought the night of the storm hadn’t escaped me. And now those ugly thoughts were as plain as the day in front of me, unavoidable.

What had she been doing… before the storm hit? Was she doing it with …him? What exactly had happened on the raft? Whatever she was doing that night when I told her to leave me alone and go and find adventure if she wanted it so bad… why had she chosen to do it wearing that dress?

I pushed the thoughts out of my mind for the time being, hoping I would come to some sort of resolution in the background while I focused on the more pressing problem: food. The truth is, I had never fished for any damn thing in my life and even if I was a pro, I’m not sure how I was supposed to do anything with my bare hands. I waded out into the water till my knees. The water was blue and clear. And empty. I waded further out to my neck, dunked my head in and opened stinging eyes to peer underneath. Still nothing, and now my eyes hurt.

I waded back out of the water again.

I had died and gone to hell, that was what was happening to me. I had spent my life setting myself up as a high earner so I could provide for my future family. I had painstakingly made long term investments, devoted myself to earning an education in a field I knew would be the most lucrative and was soon going to buy a three bedroom house with a garden for Ellie to sit in and read during her pregnancy.

And yet, none of that mattered now. It was just me, my pasty ass, and the blinding fact that I was going to starve soon if I couldn’t conjure up some real sustenance.

Why hadn’t I ever spent more time at the gym? If that buff army asshole thought he was such hot shit, why wasn’t he out here, ‘fishing’? I wanted to say Ellie wasn’t capable of that. She wasn’t the kind of woman to be impressed by some hot jock and throw away a promising life with a real man. But maybe, you know …maybe she was.

After unsuccessfully trying to find something swimming in the water and realizing how hopeless that was, I drifted further out and found some rocks. I could try pick mussels off them or find a crab in the pools or something. The thought was truly appalling but I sure as hell wasn’t going to turn up to the group empty handed.

I cast my eyes back to the island.

I couldn’t see anyone. For all I knew she was spreading her legs this very minute, letting that asshole take advantage of her. I picked up a rock and hurled it to the ground with a scream, shattering it into shards that went flying into the rock pools. Sea birds overhead peeped and cried but a second after my tantrum the world was exactly the same as before. I shook my head to clear it, told myself to just man up and look for something to fucking eat.

I had hit her once or twice, sure. If I could imagine myself in a court of law right now, defending my actions, I’d be hard pressed. But we had moved on from all of that. She knew that I didn’t really mean it, that I just had a problem with managing my stress and she just had a problem provoking me when she knew I needed to be left alone. She knew it was all just an accident. We had both realized how dangerous alcohol was for me, and we’d moved on. Or at least I thought we had moved on.

My eye caught the beautiful blue gleam of mother-of-pearl on some black rocks. I hobbled over, the sharp rocks cutting me underfoot. There were a few clusters of mussel shells wedged in the cracks of some rocks and I crouched down to examine them. I had never been so happy to see something in all my life. My stomach growled.

With shaking, sore fingers, I got to work tearing the mussels off, watching some of them slowly and sinuously shut their shells on me. I stuck my fingers in one, wrenched the shell open and took a look inside. It was a wet, pale ball that looked like snot. But it was food.

There was enough here for all six of us. I peered around, and decided I’d have to make some kind of container to carry them back to the others. After some thought I pulled my shirt off, knotted it at the open end and made a makeshift bag. I stuffed this so full of mussels it made the cotton bulge and stretch. Clutching the bag like Santa, I waded back into the water and swam slowly back to shore, feeling a little more upbeat. Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard to play Robinson Crusoe out here after all.

The sky was blue overhead, and the water felt delicious and cool on my bare chest. She had looked beautiful, I’d give her that. As I swam I let her image float into my mind. The torn bodice of her dress. The way her hair was all wild and knotted around her face. Her wide open eyes and god, those tits. Nevermind tropical beach paradises, Ellie’s breasts were the real heaven on earth. By the time I arrived back at the shore, I had settled on my next move: I would forgive her. Then I would have to fuck her.

It was predictable, I know. But I had to claim my territory. Call it the brute in me, I was guilty as charged. But all the old rules of my life didn’t seem to hold here anyway. I’d find her, take her somewhere quiet, and let her know that it was all OK, that I was going to take care of her, and I forgave her everything. None of it mattered anymore, not after the brush with death we’d both endured. Marriage is all about compromise, about adapting to the challenges life throws your way and making the best of it that you can. I would do that for her. She was afraid. She had made some bad decisions. But that was all in the past now.

By the time I waded onto the dry sand an hour later, I was horny as hell and could think of nothing but taking her, right here and right now, under the sun.

Thankfully, I found her alone. She was sitting in a sea of green, and as I walked closer, I could see it more clearly: she was surrounded by palm fronds. She was sitting in an awkward cross-legged position, a long frond over her lap as her little white hands worked quickly over the torn leaf ribbons. She looked up at me and tried to smile.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked her and looked down at the woven leaves. It was remarkable.

“This? It’s just braiding. If I can make a few layers of these, it’ll make a nice roof. I don’t know how waterproof it’ll be, but if it’s slanted, like this, and I put a few more fronds on top to channel the water off, it’ll hopefully keep us all dry.”

Maybe we’d never speak again about the wreck. Maybe we’d just live the rest of our lives talking about this and that. Maybe we’d live here forever.

“Ellie? Ellie, I’m sorry,” I said, dumped my bag of mussels on the sand and came to sit beside her.

“I’m sorry too,” she said, and her fingers kept working, flicking the long thin leaves up, over and down again. I tried to help by feeding her the next branch when she reached the end of her current one. We worked together for a while like this, in silence.

“What happened, Ellie?”

Her hands paused.

“I went out. I met up with him. He saved my life. Nothing happened.”

I hated that she seemed to be using as few words as possible. At least she knew how bad it looked.

“You dressed up,” I said quietly. Her dress seemed to be disintegrating all around her. I had the wild thought of it falling to pieces completely, leaving her some kind of wild beach woman with a coconut bra and a grass skirt. I hated that I still wanted her. Badly.

“I’m not mad, Ellie.”

“Good, you have nothing to be mad about.”

Silence.

“I fetched some mussels for us.”

“Great. Once Todd makes some fire, we can cook them.”

Fucking Todd. I bristled at the mention of his name.

“Ellie, can we… let’s go somewhere private. I just want to speak to you, alone.”

She looked at me.

“We are alone.”

I sighed.

“I just want some privacy…”

She seemed to understand what I was saying. She gently let the frond fall from her fingers and stroked her hands over her thighs.

“Of course. Can you carry me though? My foot is really fucked up.”

I caught her eye and we stared at one another for a moment. She was the same Ellie as always. Only now there was an entire storm between us. And there was Todd, taking up too much fucking room.

I leant forward, gently took her in my arms and she dutifully linked her own arms around me and rested her head gently against my chest. Without a word, I carried her into the dark green forest at the heart of the island.

It was a dream. A dirty, delicious fantasy. My woman. Half naked, unable to flee. I was hungry, and angry, and who knew if either of us would see another day.

She was heavy, but I knew she was sensitive about her weight and so I tried as hard as I could to not show any strain. None of us had had a drop of fresh water or a bite to eat since the night before, but I wasn’t going to let that get in the way. I picked my way over twisted branches, and the light grew dimmer around us as we crept deeper and deeper into the growth. It was an alien landscape, all broad leaves and twisting plants that clamored over ones another, so that you couldn’t make out one individual plant in the whole mess. Maybe she’d be more thrilled to come out here with me if I was brandishing a manly machete.

“Is this really happening, Anthony? How did we even get here? I still can’t believe that any of this is happening. Like this is all just a dream and any second I’m going to wake up in my bed, on the ship, and you’ll be there with me and none of this would ever have happened…”

We had come to a clearing in the trees, and I lowered her down onto a soft mat of moss ringed loosely with ferns. It was completely shaded, silent, and cool in this place.

“It feels like a dream to me as well,” I said.

It was the kind of landscape out of which a jaguar could appear, or else a mysterious pygmy warrior. And ancient place. All around us was shadowy, and smelt like damp wood and crushed leaves. I crouched down beside her and stroked my hands down her legs, lingering gently over the scratches and bruises on her pretty skin.

She was strange. Receptive, but different somehow. She couldn’t look me in the eyes, but her hands easily went to mine and followed my tracing, guiding them up higher on her thighs to lift the ragged lace of her dress. There was nothing but the sound of our breathing. Even here the wind and soft roar of the ocean was muffled by the wall of vegetation surrounding us.

“I never want to lose you,” I said, fingertips finding her naked skin.

Her only response was to lay back a little, and pull her knees up closer around her. She looked like she had something just on the tip of her tongue, something she wanted to say. When she didn’t speak, I cleared my throat and spoke myself.

“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.