Chapter Fifteen
Eleanor
“I seriously don’t understand where he could have gone,” I said, walking out onto the beach and scanning the ocean as if I was just going to see Gavin pop up on the surface like a cork and bob his way back to shore.
“Well, we haven’t scoured the entire island,” Hunter pointed out. “There’s still a lot of the jungle that we haven’t gotten to, and the rock formations over on that end of the beach could lead to another water source. Like I said earlier, there could be wildlife on the island that-”
I held up my hand, shaking my head.
“Please don’t say it again. I am just not in that place where I can deal with thoughts of animal-eaten people spread out across the island.”
“It wouldn’t really be people,” he pointed out. “Just one person.”
“That makes it so much better.”
“We should check the boat. I know that he said that nobody should be on the boat when the weather got bad, but if he might have changed his mind when things got really serious, or he might have already been on there and not been able to do anything about it. Something could have fallen on him and knocked him unconscious.”
I nodded and we rushed toward the boat. My raft had been destroyed and the water was much higher around the boat than it had been. I looked at it for a few moments, hoping that somehow my glare would make it recede. Of course, it didn’t. In fact, it seemed to swell just a little bit higher as if in mockery of me.
“You’ve been on this island for a week now,” Hunter pointed out. “I think that that qualifies you as roughing it. You can wade through the water.”
“Maybe you should be the Cub Scout leader,” I said, glaring at him sideways.
“Nah,” Hunter said. “I never could light a fire with nothing but rocks and sticks.”
“Well, then you are fired. All of the three-year-olds can do that.”
“Those are some very young Cub Scouts.”
“Start ‘em young. That’s what Virgil always used to say.”
That one wasn’t entirely a lie. He really did used to say that. Well, except for the “’em” part, and he most certainly wasn’t talking about Cub Scouts.
I hadn’t realized it, but as we were talking, Hunter had guided me into the water and suddenly we were most of the way to the boat. The water was up to my chest and I started to flail, screaming as I felt my legs buckle and slipped down beneath the surface. Hunter grabbed me by my arm and yanked me up.
“Stand up,” he said. “Stand up!”
I got my feet under me and realized that the sand was still solid beneath my feet, and the water was only to my shoulders at its highest point. We took the final few steps to the boat and Hunter guided me up onto the ladder ahead of him. I scrambled up onto it and turned to glare at him.
“That was a mean trick,” I sputtered at him.
“It wasn’t a trick,” he said. “I just figured if I could distract you I might be able to get you to the boat without you realizing that you were in the water it might not be as traumatizing for you.”
“Well that worked out exceptionally well, didn’t it?”
“If you had held off noticing for just a few more minutes it would have been fine.”
“I don’t think that leading someone into water that is up to their chests when they don’t realize that they are doing it is a very helpful thing to do.”
“It would have been if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” I hissed.
“Apparently.”
Turning away from him and the futile conversation that we were having, I looked around the boat. It was definitely the worse for wear since the storm, but it was still lodged in place and I had another flash of the sea creature that I just knew had a hold on the broken vessel and just wasn’t going to let go.
I was going to need to go back to therapy.
“Do you want to look in the cabin?” I asked.
“Sure,” Hunter said, walking past me toward the door that was now barely hanging by one hinge.
I was so grateful that he agreed to that. I wasn’t fond of Gavin, but just as I hadn’t wanted to think about him being torn apart by the storm or shredded into little survivalist pieces by strange island monsters, I didn’t really relish the idea of being the one to find him floating around in the cabin. As Hunter walked past me I noticed the way his pants cupped to his ass and memories from the night before created a surge of desire within me.
Oh, this is so not the time.
Hunter pulled the rest of the door open and took a peek inside. When he pulled his head back and shook it at me, I let out a sigh of relief.
“OK, good. He’s not dead in the boat.”
“But that still doesn’t tell us where he actually is.”
“True.”
I turned slowly and looked around the boat. Suddenly something caught my eye and I crossed the deck. There was a narrow metal box hanging on the side of the boat and the top was open, revealing nothing but a single life jacket inside. I immediately knew what it was.
“Holy shit,” I muttered.
“What is it?” Hunter asked, coming toward me.
I wanted to kick the box, but in my current shoeless state, that wouldn’t have been a good idea. I didn’t know if I would be able to fashion a splint for myself out of twigs and dried banana leaves.
“It’s an emergency kit,” I said, gesturing toward the box. “Well, it used to be. This box had a life raft in it.”
“A life raft?” Hunter asked, coming to my side and looking down into the box.
“The son of a bitch left us,” I said. “When you were unconscious he told me that he was going to come get some supplies, but he didn’t come back. Turns out he just jumped ship.”
Hunter looked at me with a pursed face.
“That’s probably not the best choice of words.”
I looked at him.
“How could he do this to us? How could he find a life raft and just leave by himself?”
“Does that really surprise you?” Hunter asked. “He hasn’t exactly been the most civil to us throughout this experience.”
“He saved your life when the snake bit you.”
“I don’t think that that necessarily counts as civil. I think that that is more along the lines of human.”
“Where do you think he went?” I asked.
“Well, it depends on when he left. If he left long enough before the storm, there’s a chance that he might have gotten somewhere, but even before the storm hit here, it would have been out in the water. Something as flimsy as a life raft wouldn’t have been able to withstand the kind of water conditions that would have been out there. In that case, he probably went to the bottom of the ocean.”
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“I don’t think that there’s much that we can do,” Hunter admitted. “Him leaving doesn’t really change anything. We’re still here and we still don’t know how we are going to get away, which means that we still need to figure out how we are going to survive here. That’s our first priority.”
“Stay alive.”
“Yes.”
“Good priority. Where do we start?”
“I guess we clean up. We’ll find the supplies and salvage what we can, clean up the debris from the shelter, and then…”
“Rebuild the damn shelter.”
“Rebuild the shelter.”
“Fantastic. I suppose we’re going to try the geodesic dome this time?”
“Gavin isn’t here to tell me no, so unless you are going to stop me for some reason, I still think that that’s the way to do it.”
“I’m sorry that he was so awful to you,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t said that to him yet.
“You have no reason to say that you’re sorry,” he said. “You didn’t do anything.”
“I still feel like I should apologize for him. There was no need for him to treat you like that. And I did plenty. I haven’t exactly been helpful since we got here.”
“You’ve been dealing with a lot,” Hunter said. “You did what you could.”
“Complained and asked stupid questions?”
Hunter laughed, but shook his head.
“You did more than that.”
I felt heat shook between my legs, settling into my core as I thought about exactly what I had done the night before. We stared at each other for a few long seconds before he stepped up to close the space between us. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me up against him, staring at me for a moment longer before leaning down to touch his mouth to mine. It was soft at first, almost hesitant as if he was trying to remember the way that we had kissed the night before, and I rose up slightly on my toes to encourage him. This seemed to give him greater confidence and he deepened the kiss, holding me tightly against him.
I was starting to reach up to bury my fingers in his hair when the deck beneath our feet lurched. I gasped and clung to Hunter’s shoulders.
“What the hell was that?”
The deck lurched again and I heard an ominous cracking sound.
“We need to get off the boat,” he said.
“What?”
There was another crack and I felt the wood of the deck drop several inches.
“Get off the boat!” Hunter demanded.
He pushed me gently toward the ladder and I followed his guidance, scrambling down the rungs and back into the water. Hunter followed behind and he was barely off of the bottom rung of the ladder when I heard a series of loud, deep cracking sounds and the boat seemed to collapse in on itself. He reached out and curled around me, turning his back to the boat until the majority of the sound deadened and then guiding me to swim toward the beach. I splashed my way through the pool and up onto the sand. As soon as I was a decent distance away, I turned and watched as the boat split and pulled away from the sandbar that had been holding it since we crashed onto it.
The waves, still choppy from the storm, grabbed onto the pieces and started dragging them out into the water. It seemed like it happened in an instant, but I didn’t truly know how long I was standing there watching as the pieces disappeared. Soon all that was left was a few bits of debris floating on top.
“I guess I’m not sleeping in the cabin tonight,” I said. I whipped around to face Hunter. “Now what the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Exactly what we said. We clean up. We rebuild. It’s not like that boat was a viable transportation method.”
He walked up further onto the beach and started scooping debris up and tossing it to the side. I watched him as he moved along the sand and noticed that different piles were forming. He was dividing the debris that he was finding and weeding out the supplies, separating them into a pile of items that had been destroyed by the storm and those that could still be used. There had been a hint of anger in his voice when he said that last sentence and I tried to understand what he was feeling, what had changed so drastically. I watched him toss an armful of broken branches toward the pile of tattered shelter remains and saw his jaw twitch, then saw him pick up an empty supply box. He glared at it for a few seconds and then threw it toward the pile of supplies he didn’t think that he could salvage.
Oh, no. Gavin. That’s what was bothering him.
I climbed up the sand toward him and reached for Hunter. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and I felt the electricity between us as my fingertips touched the sun-warmed skin of his back. He shrugged me away, but I grasped his upper arm anyway, turning him around to face me.
“The only reason that I care where Gavin is or what happened to him is because I’m angry that he found a way to get off of here and he just left us. It’s not him that I care about. That’s not what matters to me.”
I saw his eyes scan my body and knew that he was looking at the clothing that I was wearing. I didn’t think of them as anything but the clothes that I had grabbed from the supply chest. It barely occurred to me that they were Gavin’s, that he had once worn them. I tucked my finger beneath Hunter’s chin and tilted his head up, kissing him, then took a step back away from him. I took hold of the hem of the shirt and pulled it off over my head, letting it slip from my fingers onto the sand. Hunter swallowed as his eyes traveled down my body and onto my breasts.
When I could see that I had his full attention, I tucked my thumbs into the waistband of the shorts and eased them down so that I could kick them off.
“Go ahead,” I said softly. “Touch me.”
Hunter stepped forward and lifted one hand to stroke his fingertips along my collarbones the way that I had trailed kisses along his, the night before. He brought them down, tracing the swell of the side of my breast. That soft touch was intoxicating, but I didn’t push him to go any faster. His fingers curved beneath my breast and then up the center of my chest, applying light pressure so that I could feel his touch against the bone. When they reached the soft spot between my collarbones again, he repeated the slow exploration along my other breast. It was barely a touch, yet it had an impact on me that was indescribable. I felt my breath getting shallower, gasping from me raggedly as my skin started to tingle under his fingertips and radiate across me.
He finished the circuit and then ran his fingertips down the center of my chest again, following the bone down until it reached my belly and continuing on to stroke down my stomach and dip into my navel. Hunter brought his fingers across my lower belly from hipbone to hipbone and then rested both hands on my hips. I felt him guiding me down as he lowered to his knees on the sand. He pressed his hand to my chest, guiding me back to lie down the way that I had stretched him out on the pallet. I drew in a shuddering breath trying to quiet my shaking as he continued to explore me slowly and carefully. He touched me with the same patience and reverence that I had touched him and I offered my body to him, not wanting to rush him or to push him to go any further than he was ready to go.
Hunter came down to lie on his side beside me, close enough that I could feel the warmth radiating off of his body. He leaned down and kissed me again, then ran his fingertips down the center of my body again, gliding closer to the apex of my thighs, but hesitating, seeming unsure of going any further. Finally, I rested my hand over his, easing it down toward my core. Before I brought it fully down, I looked up into his eyes. If I had seen any hesitation there, any questions, I would have stopped him, but I didn’t. Instead his eyes were like embers, the middles glowing intrigue, desire crackling at the edges.
I eased his hand down further and parted my thighs to open myself to him. We both gasped as his hand slipped between my legs and his fingers touched the warm wetness of my body. I guided him, easing his fingers through my folds so that he could become acquainted with the curves and dips of my body. Our hands moved together as I taught him how to touch me, showing him where to brush his fingertips and how hard to push to bring my desire up higher and higher. I felt him pulling his hand out from beneath mine and I felt a glimmer of worry, but then I saw him adjust his position so that he was propped up and leaning over me slightly.
Hunter reached up and brushed strands of my hair away from my shoulders. He ran his fingertips along each of my nipples briefly, and then he rose up over me slightly higher and blew a stream of cool air along my skin. My eyes closed and I shivered at the delicious, unusual sensation of his breath dancing across my chest and over the taut peaks of my nipples. He brought himself down further and continued to blow air lightly over my skin. I could feel my muscles trembling in response and the arousal of my entire body reaching an exquisite level that I had never experienced. I wanted to open my thighs, to invite him to touch me, but something held me back. Something told me that I needed to remain just as I was, allowing him to do as he pleased.
The touch of his fingertips was replaced by his mouth and Hunter kissed the valley between my breasts before following the trial that was still tingling with the touch of his fingers. As he made his way down my body, I felt the first waves of high tide touch my toes. The incredible contrast between the cold water and his hot breath sent a shiver of pleasure through me, seeming to cause my mind to sharpen its focus on Hunter’s touch. His hand returned to my thighs. I thought he was going to press them apart, but he didn’t. Instead, he ran his fingers in a feathery touch along as deep in my inner thighs as he could reach. He ran them all the way to my knees and then back to my hips, resuming the progress of tracing his fingers back and forth across my hipbones.
The longer he touched me, the more my desire grew. Though he seemed to be purposely avoiding touching me as I so desperately wanted him to, the way that he was exploring my body felt incredibly intimate, the warmth of his fingers seeming to partner with the cool of the waves that crept ever higher on my body, until I trembled against the sand. The waves were sliding along my legs now, licking at my thighs so that tiny, frothy bubbles slipped between them and danced on my clit. Beside me Hunter brought his mouth down to run across the side of my neck, his lips open just enough that I could feel the heat of his breath. He kissed down to my shoulder and the tip of his tongue traced the bone.
His fingertips seemed to count my ribs as they traveled down my side, then dipped into my waist. The waves were washing up higher now and I could feel the water sweeping over my hips. The pull of the waves rushing back into the ocean dragged the sand out from beneath me, creating another delicious sensation. It pulled me closer to the ocean and onto flatter sand, causing me to lay back completely. As if the position lifting my breasts up toward him was an invitation, Hunter dipped his head down and I felt the tip of his tongue rush across one nipple. He repeated this on the other side and I felt myself shaking harder, unexpected pressure building throughout my body.
Hunter opened his mouth over my breast, drawing it in so that his tongue stroked along the bottom curve and the gentle pressure tantalized my nipple. Just at that moment, a larger wave crashed over me, bringing with it a sudden orgasm that made me cry out and arch against the sand. I grasped at Hunter beside me, digging my fingers into his thigh as I rode out the throbbing spasms of pleasure that coursed through me. When they ended, I lay breathless against the sand, letting the surging and waning waves cool my skin and relax my twitching, trembling muscles.
Finally, I felt like I could open my eyes and I looked up at him. I gave a tremulous smile at the look of surprised awe in his eyes and reached my arms up for him. Hunter folded down into them, easing his body up and over so that he stretched over me. I relished the feeling of his weight pressing down on me and his mouth capturing mine for a long, languid kiss. I could have laid there for the rest of the day just enjoying the feeling of his heartbeat against my chest and his tongue sliding against mine, but all too soon the tide got too high and we had to move to prevent the waves from washing up over our heads.
I was still processing the incredible, unexpected climax when we stood and made our way back up the sand toward the piles of debris that Hunter had created. The sun warmed my bare skin and I felt strangely comfortable though I was walking completely naked along the beach. I knew that I was going to need to put clothes on again at some point if only to protect myself from the plants and bugs in the jungle, but I wasn’t in any hurry to cover myself and lose the awakening, delirious feeling that I had found. It was as though Hunter had opened something within me, connecting me to the natural essence within me, and I was ready to discover more of that wild.
Hunter and I exchanged smiles and went about gathering the debris that he hadn’t gotten to before I stripped down. I was gradually piecing together the collection of knives and tools that we had been using when I glanced back toward Hunter and saw him carrying a metal box tucked under his arm as he stared down at the sand. He was walking slowly, methodically, as though he were scouring the beach for something specific. As I watched, he suddenly dipped down and scooped something out of the sand. He shook it off and dropped it into the box and then kicked at the sand around him before moving on another two steps and repeating the scouring process. I was fascinated by the progress, unsure of what he was trying to find. He dipped down again and picked something else up. As he shook the sand off of it, I saw the sunlight glint off of it and realized that he was holding the foil packet of one of the condoms that had tumbled out of the supply box when he was getting a knife to work on the shelter before the storm.
My heart fluttered in my chest, and I looked away before he had a chance to notice me watching him, for some reason not wanting Hunter to know that I had seen him.
Talk about searching for hidden treasure.
I went back to gathering up the tools and setting them in a pile, intending to put them in the first box that I found cast onto the beach. Even though my body was still humming from the climax he had just given me, my mind was racing with thoughts of how much more we could discover together with those little treasures he was so carefully stocking away.