Savage Dom: A Dark Romance: Savage Island Book One Page 11

  “Yeah. We get mostly rain here, but it stays dry.”

  “Cy, seriously,” she says over her shoulder. “I can’t believe you had this place up your sleeve and you made me sleep in the cave with bats.”

  I smile while I check the door, make sure the foundation hasn’t been weakened by any storms, and when she isn’t looking, make sure that every damn spider is gone.

  She sets about to tidying up the place, straightening the stack of wood by the fire pit, and taking up the roughly hewn broom we crafted out of twigs, she sweeps the dirty floor clean.

  “It almost makes me look forward to sleeping tonight,” she says, whistling to herself. I’m still turned on after our little session by the cave this morning, and the reminder that she’ll be sleeping tucked up next to my side brings to mind the vision of her on her back.

  Christ, I need to get a handle on this rampant need to fuck this woman seven ways to Sunday.

  “Get your mind outta the gutter, Cy,” she says, waving the broom at me, but her own eyes are bright, and there’s a pink color to her cheeks. I swear I can smell her arousal from where I’m standing.

  “What gutter? I was just thinking about sleep.” I fake a yawn. “Cave sleeping’s for the birds. I’m tired.”

  “Suuuure,” she says, then she freezes, broom paused mid-air.

  “Did you hear that?”

  I stop and listen.

  “What’s that sound?” she whispers. “It’s like a deep, low rumble, like giants snoring or something.”

  “Thunder, babe,” I say, looking out the doorway as charcoal-gray clouds roll in. I frown at the sky. “There’s a storm coming in, and soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “No telling, but we should get some food quickly before it hits us.”

  She stands the broom up against the wall, and the two of us hike past the beach to where the palm trees sway, heavy with coconuts. We cart back half a dozen to the shelter and get her bag to get more food. I frown as we gather an ample supply of starfruit, guava, and a bunch of callaloo, a green similar to spinach that I recall from my travels. This shit wasn’t here before.

  “Oh, yes!” she hoots, pumping her fist in the air, then points to green, oval-shaped fruits. “Mangos. Perfect.”

  I don’t rejoice with her, though. I’m grateful for the food supply, and I don’t know how long I’ve been on this island, but it’s long enough that all six of us have explored every inch of this place. And there were no mangoes. No coconuts. No bright green swaths of callaloo. I would know.

  “Why do you look so down about this? This is awesome!” She looks at me curiously. “Do you not like mangoes?”

  “Harper, I’ll eat anything. It’s just weird that you arrive here and suddenly there’s all this food.”

  She shakes her head. “Well, I wouldn’t say ‘all this food,’ she says. “Honestly, some mangoes and coconuts hardly make for an abundance of food.”

  “Compared to what we were eating before? It is.”

  “Maybe you guys just didn’t know where to look.”

  “We spent days and weeks scouring every inch of this place,” I protest. There were days we literally rummaged for grubs just to get something in our belly.

  “Maybe they’re just ripe now?” she offers helpfully, gathering the fruit to her bosom. I help her pick some of the ripest ones.

  “No,” I tell her. “There has to be another reason.”

  She walks back to the shelter, laden with fruit, and yells over her shoulder. “Not sure what you’re talking about, Cy. I think the island’s getting to your head. You’re like this conspiracy theorist, but I’m not seeing it.”

  Of course she isn’t. She hasn’t seen what I have.

  Large drops of rain fall as if someone just opened up the heavens.

  “Run!” I tell her. Once this rain starts, we could lose our way too easily. It was how we lost our second man.

  She starts to run, then trips and falls in front of me, mangoes scattering on the ground around her. I leave the fruit and take her by the arm, helping her to her feet, but she’s slipping in the mud. Without thinking, I give her the fruit I’m carrying to hold, lift her into my arms and carry her back to the shelter.

  “The mangoes!” she shouts.

  “We have plenty for now,” I tell her, shouting to be heard above the sound of the wind. We make it in time, just as an enormous tree branch crashes on the ground behind us and lightning tears across the sky. I place her down in the shelter and shut and secure the door behind us.

  “Wow, that came on so fast,” she muses.

  “Yeah, tell me about it.”

  “Is that always the way it is?”

  I shake my head. “Sometimes we just get a little rain, then we go for days and days with nothing but heat. But when a storm comes in, it comes hard and fast. And they’re dangerous as hell. Flooding, winds so hard they rip full trees out of the ground, and I worry we’ll eventually see a tornado.”

  She nods, then sits on the floor cross-legged.

  “Hopefully we’ll be fine this time.”

  I nod, and we take the fruit and vegetables out of the bag.

  “So, Cy. You keep saying this food wasn’t here before. Where would it have come from? It’s not like someone air-dropped a pile of mangoes from the sky.”

  “Yeah. I have no idea.” I really don’t.

  “It’s unsettling,” she says, worrying her lip.

  “It is.” In silence, I peel some of the fruit and hand it to her. It feels like a feast, with the coconut and fresh, tropical fruit. I wish I could enjoy it, though. I like to be in control, and the unpredictable nature of this island makes me feel anything but.

  “We can use the callaloo for turtle soup later, if we can catch a turtle.”

  She grimaces but nods. “Feels wrong, but okay. I’ve eaten stuff like that before.”

  I smile at her, drinking the remains of one coconut. I’m proud of her. She’s getting over her aversions quicker than I expected. “Have you?”

  “Yes, but it was in a restaurant, not for survival.”

  I wonder who she is, that she even ate in a high-end restaurant.

  I snort. “Well that makes perfect sense. Just like how lobster used to be a mainstay for the poor and somehow became a delicacy.”

  “Not sure I’d want the lobster without butter,” she muses, and that we definitely do not have. The wind howls outside. In silence, we clean up the shells and rinds, and place them neatly by the door.

  “Are you sure that’s just the wind?” she asks.

  “What else would it be?”

  She looks to the door. “A wolf or something?”

  “Yeah.” I don’t reply at first. Then there’s another noise I haven’t heard before, not since before I was on this island, but one I’m very, very familiar with.

  I’m at the door before she can stop me, my heart thudding so hard it feels like I might burst.

  “Cy?”

  I’d know that chop chop chop sound in my fucking sleep.

  It’s a helicopter.

  Twelve

  Harper

  He hears something out there, but I don’t know what since I can’t quite place the choppy sound, and the shrieking wind and rain don’t help. But he told me it’s dangerous out there, and in my gut, I know it to be true. When he opens the door, it’s so dark outside it’s as if it’s night, and a huge branch bigger than I am goes flying past. I scream, covering my mouth when he dives headfirst into the storm. Is he crazy?

  “Be careful!” I shout, but he’s already gone. Where the hell is he going?

  “Hey!” he’s screaming, waving his arms overhead.

  And that’s when I realize what he’s doing. It’s a helicopter. My God, it’s a helicopter.

  “Cy!” I shout. “Be careful!” Though I’m as desperate as he is to be rescued, I can’t help but realize they’ll never hear us down here, they’ll never see us. He looks back at me, standing in the doorway.


  “First sign of anyone coming to save us,” he says. “I can’t not look. I can’t help but try. I have to go, but don’t follow me. You hear me, Harper? Stay inside.”

  And then he’s gone. He just turns away and runs. I take a step toward him, but the wind is so vicious and fierce, it’s a force of its own, pushing me back inside. I wrap my arms around myself and shake my head.

  Why is there a helicopter flying overhead?

  If it isn’t a plane, does that mean we’re closer to civilization than we think?

  But how would we even find that out? I look helplessly at the woods and the machete. We could make a boat, maybe.

  God.

  And then what? Sail off in shark-infested waters… where? We could die before we got anywhere.

  “Cy!” I scream, my voice dying seconds after leaving my mouth. I shield my eyes and try to peer out into the woods where he fled, but I can’t see anything but wind and trees. I’m already soaked, rivulets of rain plastering my hair to my cheeks and forehead, my dress sodden. Reluctantly, I step back inside and shut the door. I can’t do anything out there.

  Where did he go? He was trying to attract the attention of the people flying the helicopter, but without fire or any way to get a signal to them, how would they even see us?

  And as I pace around the cabin, I make myself think about what it would be like if he didn’t come back. What if I’m all alone here?

  What if… what if the other man really has turned into a savage, and he and I are the only ones on this island? I snort to myself, momentarily amused. As if Cy’s any better.

  He is, though. I know he is.

  How has he built those fires? Do I even know how to do it if I had to?

  How would I catch the fish he’s talking about?

  I’d have to… clean them and… I dunno, scale them or something. Whatever you do with fish before you can eat them.

  I shudder. If he dies, I’m becoming a vegetarian.

  Am I really thinking like this? He can’t die. He won’t die.

  I walk back to the door. How did they even construct this thing? I couldn’t build a house of cards, much less a real shelter with a real working door. How would I fix it if it somehow broke?

  Oh, Jesus God, I cannot be the only person on this island. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. I will go crazy. I’ll go literally insane.

  And then a pang hits my chest so hard and fast, tears spring to my eyes.

  I don’t want him to die.

  I like the barbaric guy. I really like him. And even though I’d give fucking anything to get off this island, if I have to spend it here with him, there are worse ways to be stranded. I miss him. I want him back. The loss is a physical pang in my chest. I blame whatever force has driven us together to tear each other’s clothes off for what I’m feeling now.

  I don’t love him. I can’t love him. But hell, if a part of me doesn’t want these feelings I have inside to go there.

  I pause my pacing when the torrential sound of rain and wind stops as suddenly as it started. Is it over that quickly? I stand in the middle of the darkened room, listening. It’s quiet.

  Too quiet.

  The quiet after a storm should be peaceful, not like this. Utter silence devoid of the sound of birds twittering or wildlife scurrying through underbrush. This silence is deadly.

  I open the door and tentatively peer into the woods in front of me. The storm that came so suddenly ravaged the woods around us. Huge, massive limbs are strewn about everywhere, full tree trunks uprooted, like a giant just went through here having a temper tantrum.

  At least we’ll have firewood when it dries.

  “Cy!” I yell, then clamp my hand on my mouth. Screaming for him when the other man is still out there is fucking stupid. I might as well put a spotlight on me.

  If I’m alone… if I’m the only survivor…

  A sob rises in my chest, and I have to swallow it down. I’m letting the island get to me. There’s no reason to believe that either of them—Cy or Will—didn’t make it.

  I’m probably not alone. He’ll probably come back.

  To my right, a pile of coconuts litters the ground like overgrown hail, and a hundred or so more paces in front of me lies a bed of fallen fruit. I pick them up and haul them back to the shelter. I’ll have food for days. I shiver, and then remember I’m soaking wet. If I’m going to be taking care of myself here, I need to use my head and some common sense already.

  I strip out of my drenched clothing and pull on dry clothes, grateful I have at least these two items of clothing to wear for now. I find some low-hanging, wide branches, and hang my wet clothes up to dry, when I realize I’m super thirsty. I haven’t had any plain water today, just the coconut water earlier, and Cy said one of the most important things for survival was staying hydrated.

  Dammit, how do I get to the fresh water area from here? I shake my head. I can drink some coconut water until he gets back.

  If he gets back.

  I go back to the shelter and take a coconut in my hand and shake it, as if hearing the sloshing of water inside assures me this is a good one. I eye his machete, the huge, ominous knife, as if it’s a snake about to bite. I stroke one finger along the handle, like I’m trying to make friends with it or something.

  “You can’t be that hard to use,” I say to it, and when I realize I’m talking to an inanimate object, I get a little nervous.

  Is this how insanity begins?

  “Okay, alright,” I say out loud. “We’re going to work together, you and I.”

  Not much better, Harper.

  Deep inside, in the darker recesses of my brain I’m currently denying, I know there might come a time I use this thing for more gruesome tasks than splitting open a coconut.

  “Come back, Cy,” I whisper, swallowing the lump in my throat as I raise the machete. I prep the coconut and swing the machete hard, hitting the coconut straight across the middle the way I’ve see him. It cracks just a little, a few dribbles of water leaking onto the shell beneath it. I lift the machete and slam it down again, this time cracking the thing in half.

  I lift the coconut shell half and drink it greedily, feeling pretty damn badass about using the weapon to open the coconut all by myself. I swear it even tastes better, having been procured by my own two hands. Maybe I can even build a fire.

  I look out to the woods. Yeah, that’s not happening anytime soon. The woods are absolutely soaked.

  How long has he been gone? Is he coming back? I stand in the doorway and frown, looking down to where the beach is. I’m sure I could find my way back here from the beach.

  I don’t like that I’m so in my head. It’s weird, having no one to talk to and nothing to do with myself.

  “Hello,” I say quietly, just to hear the sound of my own voice. I clear my throat. “Hello,” I repeat. My voice sounds scratchy from disuse.

  What if I get to the beach and he goes back to the shelter? Will he wonder where I am?

  A lump rises in my throat again. I haven’t been here long, but it feels like an eternity, and I miss the guy. I miss the arrogant, bossy jerk. I don’t like being alone. And if I’m honest? I’m afraid.

  Could I take care of myself? Yes. Do I want to?

  Hell no.

  And maybe it’s contrary to everything I’ve worked for, to everything I write about. But when I advocated for the modern woman, there was no chance of being stranded alone on an island. And it isn’t that I need him just because he’s a man. I mean, another woman here would be helpful, too.

  I frown.

  Why are there no other women?

  I make it to the beach, grateful now that the sun has come out as quickly as the rain came. It’s hot as hell, the sand already scorching hot on my bare feet, but it feels good after the cold of the rain. It’s a surprise to me how quickly the temperature changes, but it’s indicative of us being in a tropical climate. I shake my head. Duh. I ate coconuts and mangoes. Of course, we’re in a tropical climate. />
  I make my way to the inlet.

  “Hey.”

  I nearly jump out of my skin when I see Cy sitting by the edge of the pool. He has an angry-looking gash on his arm, which he’s bathing by the water.

  “Cy! Oh my God what happened to you?” I run to him, my thankfulness that he’s okay quickly overshadowed by concern.

  “Yeah,” he says, but he’s dejected. “I missed the helicopter. No idea if it was even real or just a vision.” He looks to me. “Was it a hallucination? Did you see it, too?”

  A little pang of sadness hits me in the chest. He’s been here so long; he’s got to be feeling hopeless, questioning his own sanity like that.

  “I did, Cy. It wasn’t just in your head.”

  He sighs. “Yeah.” He quirks a smile. “But God, it’s good to see you.” He lifts one arm for me to come over to him. I sit beside him and dip my feet into the water.

  “It’s good to see you, too.” I don’t tell him that I worried he didn’t make it, or that I went through the mental gymnastics of having to fend for myself here. “What happened? Why are you cut?”

  “Tree limb hit me. I should’ve known better than to run out in that. It’s too fucking dangerous.” There’s a note of resignation in his voice that wasn’t there before.

  “Yeah. Why was there a helicopter anyway?”

  “Who knows?”

  “I was thinking if there was one, that we couldn’t be as far from civilization as we might think. Right?”

  He shakes his head. “Not sure if that’s true. Military helicopters can fly a lot further than regular ones, and even regular ones can fly up to three hundred and fifty miles. Far enough that no matter where they originated, it’s not possible for us to get there without knowing where we’re going.”

  I don’t protest. He was in the Navy. He ought to know.

  I speak to him in what I hope is a cheerful tone. “In good news, the storm knocked down tons of fruit. I carried a bunch back to the shelter.”

  He nods. “Good girl,” he says approvingly. My chest warms a little. I like it when he calls me that. I like the approval.

  “Do you think after the storm is a good time to fish?”