“Why don’t you come, baby,” he suggests in my ear, fingering me for only seconds before returning to my ass. He spanks me again, and I moan, the beginning of a climax building. Another spank, and I’m holding my breath, trembling over his knee. Another, and I fly into my climax.
I give myself over to him as pleasure ripples through my body. I pant and groan, my palms steadying myself on the floor, as he gives me one solid spank after another, spanking me straight through my orgasm. Finally, I’m spent, and I slacken over his lap.
“Good girl,” he says approvingly, rubbing that wicked palm over my heated skin. “How are you feeling?”
“Mmm,” is all I say in return. He rolls me over with a chuckle, tucking me into the crook of his arm. “I fucking love that, Harper.”
“Love what?” I ask, drunk.
“Love that you come over my lap,” he says. “Love how easily you let yourself go. Not all women could get to that place, you know.”
“What place?”
He bends down and kisses my forehead. “Surrender.”
I swallow. For some reason, it makes me a little emotional to think of that. Is this what it means to surrender to someone else? Is this what it means to love them? To still hold onto who you are, while respecting who they are, in turn?
“Now do you feel calmer?”
I nod. “I feel totally chill.”
“Good,” he says with a grin. “My plan worked, then. Let’s do this, baby. Let’s find that fucking camera.”Chapter 4CyI watch her as she stands in front of me, feet spread apart, knees bent, her weapons at the ready. She’s like Joan of Arc, ready to mount her steed and head boldly into battle. It’s why I insisted on keeping her head on straight before we charged out there. If she’s calm before we go searching, it might help her when we don’t find the camera.
I’m nowhere near as certain as she is that we’ll find it here. We’ve fucking combed this island from top to bottom and haven’t found it yet, so I’m not convinced the place we go to every single day holds the key. And I don’t want to see her pin her hopes up so high she crashes when they fall. It matters to me that she’s happy, goddamn it, and if there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s how we can set ourselves up for failure with our expectations.
But now that she’s armed and ready, her enthusiasm’s kinda contagious.
Will we find that camera today? And even if we do, if my suspicion’s right… will that be the next step we need to take in ending whatever fucking’s brought us to this island?
I tuck a strand of wild hair behind her ear, but it only flops out again, as if to remind me that she’s still my untamed, unfettered girl. My girl.
“Let’s go,” she says with a determined nod.
I smile at her. “Let’s go.”
And I realize as we traipse down to our water supply, that a part of me hopes we don’t find the fucking camera. What we have here on the island, as much as I want to get off it, is almost magical. Our love affair is otherworldly, spellbinding in its intensity.
And what happens when we get out of here? When she returns to her life and me to mine, and we’re no longer stranded together but thrown back in the midst of the throng of people and places and things that could keep us apart?
Will the love we found when desperate and lonely sustain us when we’re back to reality?
I know she fears the same thing, too. She’s courageous enough to voice those fears. I still keep them hidden. I tell myself if I don’t face them, maybe they won’t materialize. Maybe we’ll stay together. But even as I mull this over, I know. We cannot live on this island together forever. We cannot.
“Let’s find that camera.”
“Let’s do it!” she shouts into the woods, and I grin at how adorable she is, all wild woman and determination. It takes us a few minutes to get to our water source, and she doesn’t even drink but starts looking immediately, pouring over every inch of shrubbery, the trees, the ground and rocks.
I follow suit. We’ve been here before, we’ve looked and found nothing, so it feels almost like déjà vu. Sunlight filters through raindrop-covered leaves, glittering like diamonds, and the ground is sodden. It’s so warm here, though, it hits its peak by midday. By the time that comes around, the ground will be almost dry again.
“What would camouflage it?” she muses aloud.
“Leaves?” I suggest. Frowning, she puts her knife down beside a tree, leaps up, and grabs a branch, swinging her legs to the trunk. I watch her expertly climb the tree, having done it dozens of times now. A month or so ago she spent two straight days climbing trees, mastering her skills. It was inspiring to watch. She ignored the scrapes on her legs and the falls when she lost her footing, determined to make the trees her bitch. I stood below, ready to catch her, but she didn’t need me. She became as adept as a koala and given that she’s smaller and thinner than I am, she can move with more ease among the trees.