Savage Love: A Dark Romance: Savage Island Book Two Read online

  Savage Love: A Dark Romance

  Savage Island Book Two

  Jane Henry

  J Henry Publications

  Copyright © 2020 by Jane Henry

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Previews

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Harper

  I sit on the white sand beach, staring out at the vast ocean in front of me. The blue-green waves lap gently on shore, and for a moment it’s almost nice here. I’m on an island in the middle of nowhere with a man who loves me as fiercely as anyone ever could. It’s idyllic and quiet, the only sounds the occasional cawing of a bird and slow rush of water on shore, before the tide pulls back.

  It isn’t utopia, though. We can’t get off this island. We were manipulated into coming. We’re manipulated still. And as the days trudge into weeks and then months, any hope of escaping our beautiful but prison-like island slips away like the sand on shore, pulled back into the ocean with the undertow.

  We shouldn’t be here. Cy should be home, pursuing his dreams and ambitions. I should be home, writing my articles and taking care of my brother Daniel.

  Instead, I’m wondering if there’s another possible combination of callaloo, the island greens, with roast duck, and maybe some fruit or something that would seem less monotonous. I wanted potatoes, but I can’t really complain, because in recent weeks we’ve found more food sources on the island. Cassava is starchy and almost like a potato. We do lots with it, like modern day pioneers. He gathers duck fat from the ducks we catch, a job I despise and won’t do, and fries slices of cassava.

  It’s almost like eating French fries. Almost. I mean, it’s nothing at all like it, but you can almost trick yourself.

  I hear him coming up behind me and don’t need to turn to look. Since we’re the only ones here now, a fact we’re both certain of, there’s only one set of footsteps I’ll hear, and I welcome them.

  “Hey, honey,” I greet Cy as he sits on the beach beside me.

  “Hey, beautiful, you okay?”

  “Oh, I’m good,” I tell him as cheerfully as I can. In recent weeks, he’s grown a little more despondent than he was before. Now that we know our being here was no accident, he wants off this island worse than ever. We both do. I try to stay positive, for the both of us, and he honestly does the same. One day I’m up and he’s down. The next the roles are reversed. As long as both of us don’t stay down, we’ll be alright. I think we will, anyway.

  “Hey, did you do the count today?” he asks. “The count” refers to the daily countdown we’ve been doing since the last living human on this island died. It’s a bittersweet reminder of how long we’ve been here, and we take turns ticking off the tally on a strip of bark inside our shelter. It makes us feel somehow more in control. Almost hopeful.

  I frown at the ocean and nod silently. “I did. Sixty-nine,” I tell him, looking back his way.

  Predictably, he smiles.

  “Sixty-nine?” he says, getting that predatory grin he gets before he’s about to attack me. Though he’s been more melancholy than he was before, his libido hasn’t slacked in the least.

  “Don’t get any ideas, Cy,” I tell him, pretending to wave him off and get to my feet. “I had a plan for the stew tonight, and I have to get going on it while we have sunlight—Hey!”

  But there’s no hope for it. I’m swept off my feet and into his arms before I can take a step away from him.

  “Uh uh, babe,” he says scoldingly, shaking his head. “You’re mine.”

  And before I know what’s happening, he’s stalking off to the shelter with me wrapped in his arms, and I’m kissing his beautiful mouth while he tangles his fingers in my hair. We know there are cameras on this island, but we also know our shelter is completely camera-free. With that in mind, we never do anything intimate or sexual we’d want anyone else to see in the open, but always go to our shelter for privacy.

  Three cameras. That was what Derek told us before he slit his own throat and took his life. Three cameras. Those are the only connection we still have to the outside world. Derek destroyed the ones he found. I’m not sure what Cy would do if we found them. But it’s been this long, and we’ve only found one.

  I wrap my arms around his neck and close my eyes as we make our way to the shelter. With a deep, cleansing breath, I take in his scent, all woodsy and masculine and clean.

  “Mmm,” I whisper. “Were you doing something with the fire?”

  He’s learned how to take the meat we find and make a sort of jerky with it by slow cooking. We have nothing to season it with, no salt or sugar or flavorings, but the slow cook method preserves it somewhat.

  “Yep,” he says. “Got some agoutis and got that meat taken care of.”

  I frown. I’d much rather eat the turtle or duck we find in plentiful portions on the island. Rodents, not so much.

  “Don’t worry, babe,” he says, as we cross over the threshold to our home. “I only saved those because I got fresh food for dinner. You hungry?”

  “Starving.”

  He nods and smiles, and my heart does a little somersault in my chest. I run a finger across his rugged jaw, covered in stubble since the razors I brought are dulling, then bring my finger to his full, masculine lips. He kisses the tip then sucks it in and gently bites. I squeal and pull my finger back.

  “Hey!”

  He grins. “I’m starving, too,” he says with a suggestive look. “But I’m glad you’re hungry. I got some eggs, too.”

  Ever since Derek died, we haven’t had any sort of famine. It’s not only been plentiful, but we’ve found a few other crucial foods that became an integral part of our diet. Breadfruit. A skinny sort of onion. Still plenty of coconuts, cassava, callaloo, and we’ve even recently found pineapples, my favorite find of all. God, what a nice change from the typical starfruit and guava we’d been eating.

  We’re convinced the food sources never were removed entirely, but somehow hidden from us. When we reach the shelter, he lays me down on the mattress, then his eyes travel to the countdown I keep.

  “It isn’t sixty-nine days,” he says. “You lied.”

  I grin at him. “I know. It’s more like sixty-five. I was just trying to plant an idea in your head…”

  “You lied,” he repeats, raising a stern brow at me and wagging a finger. My heartbeat races a bit, because I know when he’s serious he can be heavy-handed, and maybe I kinda like it.

  No. Sigh. Correction. I love it. I can’t believe before I came to this island that I used to say domination was the antithesis of romanticism. I thought it was wrong that women liked to be overpowered by alpha males, at least in fantasy or fiction.

  Not anymore. God, not anymore.

  “Naughty girls get punished when they lie, you know.”

  I bite my lip. “I know.”

  Don’t I know it. Being alone on an island with a barbaric alpha male makes for fun times. I never knew I’d be the type into the h
eavy-handed dominant, but I love this man. I love him so much it hurts.

  He leans down and brings his mouth to my ear, his stubble tickling my cheek. His deep, raspy voice makes heat pulse low in my belly. “Do you need to be punished, Harper?”

  I close my eyes and shrug. “Mmm, dunno,” I say, with a sigh of contentment. I love when we play this game.

  “Maybe you don’t deserve my cock,” he teases.

  “Maybe you don’t deserve my pussy,” I retort.

  He rolls me over to give me a playful smack on the rear, though even his playful smack stings like hell, before pinning my wrists above my head and kissing me. I lose myself in the kiss.

  The future is uncertain, the past uncontrollable. With Cy, all I have is the present.

  We make the most of it.

  I’m eager for this, eager for the connection and momentary bliss that takes us from our circumstances. I need this. He needs this. But as he’s making his way down my body, kissing and licking and suckling in every delicious way possible, a terrifying scream rents the air right outside our shelter.

  He’s on his feet before I’ve even processed what just happened.

  It sounded… human. But that isn’t possible. We’re the only humans on this island.

  At least, we were.

  His eyes meet mine. “What was that?” I whisper.

  “Don’t know,” he responds, but he’s already reaching for one of the weapons we have lined up by the door. I look down. He chose one of the knives.

  I sit up and reach for a knife myself. God. It sounded like a woman screaming.

  “Let me look first,” he says, and I don’t protest. Most of the time in dangerous situations, he lets me follow him, but sometimes he likes to be the one scoping out details first. I’ll stand back this time, ready to defend him if necessary.

  So, I wait by the door. Watching.

  Knife raised, he looks first to the left, then the right. He takes a few more steps away, frowning.

  “Christ,” he finally says, shaking his head. “It’s a red fox, Harper.”

  “They sound like a woman?”

  He nods. “They can, yeah.”

  “Why have we never seen one before?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. “Why was I here for months before I found cassava? Why do wolves prowl outside sometimes?” He turns to face me. “Who the hell knows.”

  Since we buried Derek and Will’s dead bodies, Cy has grown more wild. Rugged. Savage. Now bent on finding a way off this island, it permeates everything he does. I know he’s feeling more desperate than he ever was before, so eager to get us both off this island the thought’s become his obsession.

  Placing his knife back into the loop on his faded jeans, he comes back to me. I stare at him, watching the muscles on his body ripple under rays of sunlight that filter through the leaves. He’s slightly burnt around the shoulders from fishing yesterday, but he’s been working his body hard, and it shows.

  I loop a hand around his neck when he reaches me. “You’re looking good, there,” I say to him. “What workouts have you been doing?”

  He bends down and kisses my forehead, but he’s distracted now. “There’s a lot you can do with body weight alone,” he says. “We’re getting off this island, and I’ll be damned if I let myself go to pot while we’re here. Been alternating upper body, cardio, and lower body.”

  “You sure have, and you’ve most certainly not atrophied in any way.” I say appreciatively, as we head back inside. “Now, where were we?”

  But he doesn’t appear to be in the mood anymore. He gives me a chaste kiss on the cheek.

  “We need to think harder,” he says. “Why have we only found one camera?”

  “Honestly, I was wondering that myself,” I say thoughtfully. “I guess I took it for granted it’d be easier than it actually is. I mean, the other guy found a bunch of them.”

  “Where, though? Where did he find them?”

  I shake my head. “No idea.” I sit in one of the rustic chairs Cy made out of carved wood. Thinking.

  “You know,” I say thoughtfully after some time, “maybe we need to think strategically. First of all, who do we think is responsible for the cameras?”

  “Whoever got us on this fucking island,” he says, as if that’s the most obvious answer in the world.

  “Yes, of course,” I respond. “But I mean, which group might target us?” I shake my head. I have no idea myself.

  “Whoever it was had military involvement,” he says. “Obviously, if the men kidnapped were all military.”

  “Right,” I muse. “Although how would you explain me?” Why was I the one lone woman chosen and sent?

  “Easy.” he says with a shrug. “You’re my opposite. Your interests and desires are so wildly different from mine.”

  The way he says it makes a little pang hit my chest.

  He’s right. Everything about me is the direct opposite of him. I’m a woman, and he’s a man. I came from a strong, close-knit family, and he was in foster care his whole life. I’m scholarly and educated, and he barely squeaked by getting his degree before he enlisted. Before I came here, I wrote articles championing women’s rights and the plight of the modern-day female. And now…

  Now what?

  What if right here, right this very moment, someone arrived here with a magical contraption that would bring us right back to life as we knew it before the island?

  Would I still be his?

  Would he still be mine?

  He’s talking, and I realize I haven’t heard a word he said.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “I was just saying, that whoever it was would have to have a shit ton of money to be able to orchestrate what they did.”

  “Damn right,” I agree. I think about it. The island itself. The abduction of six men. The cruise ship… “would have to be someone deranged too.”

  I nod slowly. Thinking. Why would they even need hidden cameras? What purpose would they serve? Do they want to watch us when we’re starving? Poke fun at the plights they’ve managed to orchestrate with their own hands?

  Or is there another purpose?

  “Where have we looked so far?” Cy asks, stroking his chin, asking himself as much as he’s asking me.

  I sigh. “Everywhere.”

  “Not everywhere. There are still two cameras missing.”

  “We found the other one by the cave,” I tell him. “And they know that we used that as a shelter. We’ve combed this shelter inside and out, and we know for a fact that it’s clear. However…” my voice trails off. I’m thinking.

  “Yeah, baby?” he asks. “I know you’re onto something. You get that look in your eyes just before you have a stroke of genius.”

  My heart thumps a little harder at his praise, and the revelation I just had.

  “We need to re-think where they’d want to video us. Clearly, in places where we’re most likely to go. I mean, they’re not going to be hidden under some random leaf on the other side of the island.”

  “We’ve already looked in every major place—”

  “Not the waterfall,” I say pointedly. “We haven’t looked there.”

  “I did,” he says. “I looked when I went hunting there.”

  I shake my head. “We haven’t looked together,” I tell him. “And remember… I see things differently than you. You just said it yourself, didn’t you?”

  A corner of his lips quirks up, and he reaches for the small of my back, drawing me closer to him. “We do indeed.” He nods. “Okay, let’s go. It’s worth another look.”

  “Is the fox going to hurt us?” I ask. “Should we take our weapons?”

  He frowns. “The fox isn’t going to hurt anyone,” he says. “Not unless it’s rabid, which is not outside the realm of possibility. But there’s no fucking doubt in my mind we should bring our weapons.”

  We arm ourselves and head to the waterfall.

  Shortly after Derek died, we poured ourselves
into finding whatever we could. Looking for every single damn camera. It took us several weeks before we finally found one, tucked way above the very top of the cave. And then we went searching, looking for whatever we could. I didn’t want to go with him to the waterfall. I almost lost him there, and I didn’t want the memory of that again.

  When he said he didn’t see anything, I took it for granted. I convinced myself that the two remaining cameras were somewhere else or hidden so deeply that we’d never find them.

  When we reach the waterfall, he reaches for my hand and squeezes. I squeeze back. It was devastating nearly losing him. I had to do everything I could to save him. Even though I hate that we’re here, that we’re stranded in the middle of fucking nowhere, every possible modern convenience gone, a part of me loves this. Him. Us. I pull a little closer to him.

  “I love you,” I say simply.

  He pauses in his walk and turns to look at me, his vibrant blue eyes boring into me with the passion only Cy possesses. It never gets old, telling him this. Watching him savor the exchange between us, drinking it in. Accepting that I love him, stripped down as it were, in the middle of nowhere. Just the two of us.

  “And I love you.” Leaning down, he cups my jaw with his palm and brushes his lips across my cheek. “And no matter what, as badly as I want off this island, it’s one thing that I’ll never forget.”

  He’ll never forget that he loves me? What does he mean? For some reason, his words don’t give me the assurance they usually do but stir something fearful in me instead. Does he think when we get off this island that we won’t be together anymore?

  Will we?

  When he pulls away, I hear a whirring sound. Frowning, I look at him. His ice blue eyes are narrowed, his jaw tight. On instinct, he draws closer to me, framing me with his body to protect me.