Chapter Nineteen
Eleanor
The next morning, I woke with the heat of Hunter's body molded around mine. It enveloped me with the warmth and sweet, musky scent that still lingered from the night before. He stretched and kissed my cheek.
"Good morning," he murmured against my skin.
His voice was smooth and contented, seemingly changed by the fulfillment of the desire and tension that had built up between us. As much as I enjoyed knowing how much I had satisfied him, I found myself wanting to coax it back into the husky arousal and deep, grumbling pleasure that it held the night before. As if he could hear my thoughts, Hunter rolled me onto my back. He leaned forward and ran his tongue along the side of my breast. I felt his teeth nip into my skin and I made a sound that was somewhere between a gasp and a giggle. Hunter pushed back away from me and stood, walking across the plateau where we had slept the rest of the night.
He went to the same boulder where he had hidden the supply box full of condoms and returned with a basket of fruit. The leaves were barely holding together under the weight of the fruit, but Hunter was holding it together in an effort to preserve my feelings. As he got closer I noticed that there was a knife tucked into the basket with the fruit.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” I asked.
He winked at me and lowered to his knees in front of me. He pressed one hand to the middle of my chest and eased me back from the reclining position that I was in to lying down again.
I rested my head on my bent arm so that I could watch Hunter as he took the knife out of the basket and selected one of the pieces of fruit. He cupped the fruit in his palm and sliced it open with the knife, revealing the juicy salmon-colored interior. Using the tip of his knife, he flicked out the large black seeds and then made small slits along the flesh. He put the knife back into the basket and pushed the basket aside. Setting one half of the fruit aside, he brought the other half up and squeezed it so that a stream of juice ran down onto my chest. I gasped at the unexpected feeling and Hunter dove forward, catching the dripping juice with his mouth.
He bathed me with his tongue, lapping the sweet nectar from my skin. Gathering some of it onto his lips, he lifted his head to kiss me, sharing some of the bright flavor with me. I kissed him eagerly and took my arm out from under my head to rest fully on the rocks again. Arching my back, I presented my breasts to Hunter, aching for more attention.
Hunter obliged, crushing the fruit against one of my breasts. The soft texture of the flesh stimulated my nipple and I parted my thighs, bending my knees up so that I could draw my body closer to him. He suckled the juice and bits of fruit from my breast, feeding some of it to me with another passionate kiss. I rocked my hips, but he didn’t touch me the way that I expected him to. Instead, he pressed his hand to the center of my chest and brought it down until it reached my hips. He applied guiding pressure to my hipbone to flip me over onto my belly. His hand traveled down my back and onto my thigh and he swept my leg up so it bent beside me, lifting my hips slightly. He brushed my hair over my shoulder and I felt the cool juice touch between my hipbones and trail down my spine, pooling at the small of my back. Hunter’s tongue followed it, licking it off of my spine and then sucking up the small pool like a shot. His hand tucked beneath my hips and lifted them up higher so that he could press the fruit against my core.
The soft, cool flesh stimulated me and I felt my body responding passionately, bucking back toward him and lifting my hips higher. An instant later I felt the fruit leave and his tongue delve between my thighs and into the heat of my core. Hunter’s tongue was nearly frantic, a stark contrast to the slow patience of the night before as he explored the fantasy that he had held within him and carefully played it out. Even hours later my body was still sensitive from that powerful encounter and within seconds of his focused, determined ministrations, I felt myself rushing headlong toward orgasm. Just before I tumbled over the edge, though, Hunter pulled away and I heard the tearing sound of him opening another condom. An instant later he took his position behind me again and plunged his engorged cock into me, pressing me down against the rocks as he fucked me with blinding intensity.
At that angle, every intense thrust slammed into my g-spot and it was only seconds before I exploded, crashing into tremors that made me scream out into the stillness of the morning. I looked back over my shoulder and saw Hunter pull his hips back so that he could grip the base of his cock and rub the tip through my spasming folds, occasionally nudging at my humming clit. I groaned and arched back to press toward him as he continued to tease me. Finally, he positioned the head of his erection against my opening and grabbed hold of my hips, pulling them back hard so he could plunge into me again.
Without withdrawing from me, Hunter guided me up onto my knees so that my legs were wide and my chest was pressed to the ground. This new position created an even more overwhelming sensation that was nearly too much for me. Hunter leaned forward and ran his tongue along my spine again, causing his body to envelope me. This created an exquisite balance between rough, almost dominating control and tender, gentle nurturing.
Hunter thrust into me at a fast, intense pace. Each stroke seemed to get harder in response to the sounds spilling from my lips getting louder and higher. He slipped his hand under my belly so that he could circle the pad of his thumb against my clit. I fought to hold back as the sensations became even more incredible, wanting for us to come together, to further meld our existence in one exceptional, exquisite moment. Hunter let out deep, guttural grunts with each thrust until he pushed forward suddenly to impale me one final time.
The almost painful, blissfully pleasurable sensation sent me plummeting over the brink and I screamed out his name, immediately sending him into his own climax. The pulses of his cock were frantic and I could feel the rush of his orgasm into the condom, pushing me into another powerful wave. He finally rested down on top of me and wrapped his arms around my chest, cupping my breasts with his hands. He lay there for a few sweet moments before pulling out and walking away to dispose of the condom. When he came back I had sat up and I tilted my face toward him for a kiss.
“Good morning,” I said, realizing that I hadn’t offered him the greeting.
He smiled and took my hands, helping me to my feet before giving me another kiss.
“What do you say we go down to the water and take a bath before we get started on the shelter again?”
“That sounds wonderful,” I said.
As much as I didn’t want to wash away his touch, the thought of the cool water in the already-hot day sounded delightful. Even working on the shelter again sounded delightful since I knew that I would be doing it with Hunter. Somehow working alongside him didn’t have the same feeling of miserable work that it had when we were contending with Gavin. The thought of the other man sent pinpricks of anger through the veil of delicious, humming afterglow and I quickly pushed it away. This was beyond anything that I could have dreamed of and I didn’t want to give anything the power to take it away.
****
Gavin
The conversation with my client had gone less than well and I was still feeling the sting of the shouting in my ear when I woke up the next morning. I was curled in on myself in a hammock that Sophie had apparently woven and I struggled to get out as it swung and twisted on the trees where it hung. I would have preferred to just sleep on the ground, but Sophie and Edwin had insisted that no guest of theirs was going to go without the best accommodations. I hadn’t bothered to point out that I wasn’t so much a guest of theirs as a hostage of the island. My aged hosts had fed me until I couldn’t eat another bite and provided me with a constant flow of the tea, so I wasn’t going to argue with them.
I finally fought myself out of the grip of the hammock and got to my feet. I headed toward the house and found Sophie and Edwin already moving around the clearing, hanging wet laundry on a clothesline and stirring a fragrant stew that hung over the fire. They looked as though they had been awake for hours and I wondered how long they had let me sleep.
“There you are,” Sophie said in her cheery voice. “You sure must have been exhausted. I haven’t seen anyone sleep like that since my nursing days.”
“I was,” I agreed.
“Well, I’m glad you’re up. You have some company,” she said as she gestured behind me.
I felt my heart sink a little and turned around. My client was standing on the other side of the clearing, glaring at me through a vicious, tight-lipped smile. Her arms were crossed over her chest, her hair pulled back into a severe bun, and she looked even angrier than she had sounded when I spoke to her the night before.
“Did you sleep well, Gavin?” she asked.
“I did,” I said, not wanting to offend Sophie and Edwin.
“Good,” she said.
Yeah, because after seeing that face I might never sleep again. I had seen a lot in my military career, but the deadness in this woman’s eyes rivaled it.
“Thank you very much for your hospitality,” I said to the pair and then started across the clearing. “Come on, Lucille, we should get going.”
I didn’t pause to hear her response. I stalked through the trees and toward the rock ridge, knowing that helicopter was the only way that she would have been able to get to the island so quickly. She fell into step behind me and I could hear her stomping through the undergrowth as Sophie and Edwin called goodbye to me. I actually wished that I could have spent a little more time with them, given them a more complete goodbye, but I didn’t want Lucille to say anything about why I was actually there. Whatever Sophie and Edwin thought of me, I felt the strange need to preserve it. They were the first people I had met who I didn’t feel had a preconceived notion of me and even though I wouldn’t see them again, I liked the idea of there being at least two people in the world who actually looked at me kindly.
Lucille had the decency to wait until we were several yards into the trees before she started growling at me. Maybe “decency” was giving her too much credit. More likely she was too busy trying to fight her way through the undergrowth in shoes that were almost as absurd as the ones that Eleanor had been gripping when she climbed onto my boat.
“I’ll have you know that I don’t appreciate being ordered around by someone who I have hired for a job,” she said. “You are my subordinate and I expect you to treat me with respect.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just didn’t think that it was a good idea for us to linger around there with them. You want to get this done, we need to get going.”
“Speaking of which,” Lucille said. “You told me that you would explain what was going on when I got here. I’m here. Now tell me why the hell I am paying you a tremendous amount of money to bring Eleanor McIntire to me, and not only did you not do that, but you could have and you just walked away from her.”
“It wasn’t exactly like that,” I said.
“So, what was it like?”
We had nearly made it to the base of the rocks and I kept myself focused on them, telling myself that all I needed to do was get to them. Get to the rocks, get in the helicopter, and this nightmare would almost be over.
“They got up onto my boat before I even had a chance to figure out who they were.”
“They?” Lucille asked, her voice high with her growing anger and frustration.
“There was a man with her. They jumped off of the cruise ship and swam to my boat.”
“What man? Who was he?”
“I don’t know who he is other than his name is Hunter.”
I heard Lucille draw in a breath behind me, the type of breath that told me it was a surprising revelation and she knew exactly who Hunter was.
“Hunter,” she whispered.
“You know him?” I asked.
“That doesn’t really concern you, does it?”
I gritted my teeth and tried to increase my pace.
“By the time that I figured out who she was, she was already on my boat and there wasn’t a lot that I could do. People up on the ship were going to see us if I stayed around any longer.”
“You said that they jumped from the ship. Why would they do that?”
“All they said was that there was somebody after her.”
There were a few seconds of uncomfortable silence and I could almost feel Lucille’s mind working behind me.
“You didn’t tell anybody that I had hired you, did you?” she accused.
“I am more than capable of following instructions. You said not to mention it to anyone, so I didn’t mention it to anyone.”
Not that I had anybody in particular that I would tell.
“Then who could she possibly be running from?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t tell me. They weren’t on the boat very long when a storm came and we were too busy trying not to get killed to discuss our personal backstories. After that we crashed on the island. That’s where they still are.”
“You left her?” Lucille asked, her voice sounding genuinely horrified. “You had her on an island that she couldn’t escape, and you just left her? What the hell do you think that I hired you for? You were supposed to deliver her up to me, not just let her wriggle away from you.”
“I don’t think leaving her on an island that she can’t get off of and very well might end up getting herself killed on is letting her wriggle away from me.”
We were climbing up the rocks now and she paused long enough to get up to the helicopter. A man was sitting in the cockpit, staring through the windshield as if our approach hadn’t affected him.
“Where is she now?”
“Like I said, she’s still on the island. Both of them are.”
“Where is it?”
“Not far from here. It took a few hours on the raft.”
“Fine. The helicopter will get us there much faster than that.”
“You sure are splashing out a lot of money to get your hands on this woman,” I said.
Lucille glared at me, her hands planted on her straight hips.
“I had a very good prenuptial agreement and my lawyer ensured that it was upheld after my divorce. At least most of it.”
There was vitriol in her voice and I wondered if I had stumbled on the reason that she was after Eleanor.
“Is that it?” I asked. “Did Eleanor have something to do with your marriage ending?”
Lucille scoffed, her hands falling away from her hips as she looked away and then glared back at me as if the entire concept was so preposterous she couldn’t even believe I would suggest it.
“Are you serious?” she asked. “That old biddy?”
“She’s barely middle-aged,” I pointed out, feeling suddenly uncomfortable about the way that Lucille was talking about Eleanor. “Besides, if it didn’t have to do with your marriage, what could it be? She seems like a fairly run-of-the-mill rich lady. Obnoxious and pretty well useless in anything even slightly outside of her comfort zone, though she did make a valiant attempt at some baskets and fruit-picking, but nothing that I would think would warrant this kind of treatment.”
“Well, you really don’t have any idea what you’re talking about do you?” Lucille snapped. “And who do you think you are, anyway? You have no right to ask me questions about my motivations. You don’t need to know why I want you to do it, you just need to know that I want you to do it, and then to do it. You are being paid, very well, I’ll point out, to get her and bring her to me. Not to know my personal business and not to know what happens after you hand her over.”
“You’ve already given me half my pay,” I pointed out, “and like you said, even that’s a handsome amount. Your deposit is enough to keep me going for months, so you don’t really have any leverage. I do. I know which island she’s on. So, let’s level here. You tell me what it is about Eleanor that has pissed you off so much, and I’ll make sure you get to her. Then you pay me and we’ll go about the rest of our lives as if this wonderful little relationship that we have going here never happened. How does that sound?”
I told myself that I wasn’t going to do this. This time was going to be different. Mouthing off at my client is what had landed me unable to work for months and I wasn’t really looking to have that happen again. I wasn’t lying when I said that the money she had already given me would carry me through for quite some time, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t want to get the rest of it. Something about Lucille got under my skin, however. I had dealt with some of the lowest, slimiest people I could imagine, and yet few of them had even come close to creating the repellant feelings in me that this woman did. I just couldn’t take any more of it.
Lucille drew in a breath and let it out slowly. I had a sudden flash that it was like someone who had been through extensive anger management therapy. She cocked one hip and tilted her head at me, shaking it slightly. There was the hint of a smile on her lips and it seemed to hold more amusement than I’d ever seen in her.
“I think you’re going to be disappointed,” she said. “It’s really not that interesting a story.”
“Then why are you so determined not to tell me?”
“Fine. It’s not really Eleanor who I’m concerned with. I don’t even know the woman. The only reason I would even be able to tell you who she was if I ran into her in a dark alley is because I met her once during an extremely awkward and uncomfortable cocktail party at my now-ex-husband’s house. Of course, that was before I found out that her brother was the man who was going to snatch my then-husband’s company out from under me and hand it over to her nephew.”
“So, is that it? They took your ex’s business so you’re pissed at her family?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “That would be ridiculous. If there was anyone in that situation who I would want revenge against, it would be my ex. No, I’m after Eleanor because of Snow.”
“Snow?”
Is this some sort of reverse global warming activism that I don’t understand? Was Eleanor a bad environmentalist? A good environmentalist?
“Yes. Snow Whitman. Well, not Whitman anymore. She has been the bane of my existence from the time that we were in school together all the way through thwarting my career at every turn and up until she had me ousted from my position running the advertising agency and then marrying the man who took my place.”
“She married Eleanor’s nephew?” I asked, making sure that I had gotten all of the strings of the web in place.
“Yes. She just keeps finding new and creative ways to destroy my life.”
“Let me get this straight. You hired me to kidnap a woman because she is the aunt of the husband of a woman who you think got married as some sort of plot to ruin your life?”
“If it wasn’t for Snow, I would be married, wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, with the career that I have always deserved. She has done nothing but make me suffer for most of my life. So now it’s time to make her suffer.”
The deadness was evident in her eyes again and was now creeping into her voice.
“By kidnapping her husband’s aunt?” I asked.
“Don’t you see?” she asked. “Eleanor is the most important person in Noah’s life. Other than Snow, now. I get to Eleanor, I get to Noah. I get to Noah, I get to Snow. If something should happen to Eleanor, it would devastate Noah, and he couldn’t possibly make his spoiled, self-centered wife happy if he’s not thinking about her every moment. They’ll get divorced, she’ll be out on her ass both in her personal and professional life, and I will finally have my revenge.”
I was sickened by what Lucille had just said. Eleanor had done literally nothing to her, but Lucille was willing to put her through hell just to get to a woman who she was brutally envious of. Lucille was climbing into the helicopter, but I stayed where I was standing. She looked out and me and held out her hands in a questioning gesture.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked. “Get in so we can leave.”
“No,” I told her.
“What do you mean ‘no’?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.
“I know that’s not a word you’ve heard very much, except from your husband and, of course, this woman Snow, but when I say ‘no’ that means I’m not going to do what you want me to do. I’m not going to be a part of this.”
“You are already a part of this,” Lucille said. “You can’t get out of it.”
“I’m not going to be a part of it anymore. What you’re doing is disgusting.”
“Seriously?” Lucille scoffed. “You’re judging me? How do you think I was able to hire you? Where do you think I got your name? Does ‘Asher Roux’ sound familiar to you?” I felt all the muscles in my body tense at the sound of that name. I had never wanted to hear it again. “That’s right,” she said with a sneer. “He told me everything that you’ve done, and from the sound of it, you don’t have place calling other people disgusting. Now get your ass into this helicopter and show me the island. Earn the money that I know you so desperately need.”
That was enough. I stepped back from the helicopter and shook my head.
“You go on without me,” I said. “I’m not involved in this anymore.” I took a few steps away from her and then turned back. “And I’m not your subordinate. You have to be in a position of respect to have someone below you.”
The sound of Lucille’s indignant gasp in my ears, I climbed back down the rocks and into the trees, setting back toward Edwin and Sophie’s house.