Surviving Raine (Surviving Raine 1)

“Bastian! Bastian, please stop! Stop, Bastian! He’s dead, Bastian…please stop…”

Eventually I heard her, though I’m not sure how long Raine had been begging me to stop. Her hands were on my shoulders, trying to pull me from the mutilated corpse underneath me. I stopped the movement of my aching arms and leaned back on my heels. Slender fingers wrapped around my bicep and yanked at my arm. A sharp pain in the back of my leg shot up my thigh from its focal point above my knee and then cascaded all the way down to my ankle. My leg tried to buckle, but I told it to cut that shit out and stood up straight.

My chest heaved as I tried to take in enough breath to counter the adrenaline surging through my system. It didn’t work, and I just ended up panting. I had to make myself stop, or I was going to hyperventilate. I looked around the beach. Were there any more of them? There were four – where’s the fourth body? Then I remembered – he was left to die in the water. There were three bodies on the beach, one at my feet and two a little farther away.

Raine’s fingers were tracing up and down my arm. When I glanced down, I saw her fingers had stopped at the point where the blood covering my arm and hand started. It was even worse on the other side. My stomach and chest were splattered with the red fluid.

A hundred images passed through my brain. How many times had I stood in the center of an arena, bloodied hands held high in victory while I heard the cheers of rich fuckers betting on the deaths of those who played against me? How many times had the elation of winning rolled over me as the blood of my opponents dripped down my arms?

“Come wash off,” I heard her tiny voice say. Mindlessly, I let her lead me to the water’s edge, then inside the shallow waves where I could clean the blood from my hands, my arms, my legs, and my stomach. Fuck, it was pretty much everywhere. I walked out farther and ducked under the waves for a brief moment. Raine stayed close to me, which was good. If she had tried to walk away from me, I just might have lost whatever control I had left.

When I stepped back into the shallow water, Raine took my hands in hers and turned them, palms up, then palms down again. I watched her fingers trail over my cracked and bloodied knuckles. It should have hurt, but I felt nothing. I needed to feel something.

I grabbed onto her hands and then ran my fingers up her arms. When I reached her shoulders, I pulled her to me, crashing my lips down to hers. She winced, and I tasted her blood on my tongue, stupidly remembering too late that her lip was split. I moved to the side of her mouth that wasn’t injured, and one of my hands wrapped around her hair. My lips moved over her jaw while my other hand dropped down to her waist and wrapped around her back. The heat from her body covered my wet skin, demanding attention. It was all I could feel – her heat, her life. It was mine. She was mine. I thought about how she looked at me in the life raft while she held my hand and cried. Visions of her laughing as I tickled her danced through my head. I remembered the sensation of joining with her for the very first time and how right it felt. I knew those men had wanted to take that from me – take her from me – and my anger and hatred came rushing back.

“I need you,” I growled and grasped her more tightly around the waist, bringing my immediately hard cock closer to her core. “Now.”

I practically shoved her down on her back in the sand and only barely stopped myself from tearing the sopping wet clothes from her back. Instead, I ripped my boxers down her legs and threw them off to the side. I yanked her shirt over her head before fumbling at the buttons of my pants. Once they were out of the way, I lay on top of her and hitched her leg up over my hip. I was buried inside her a second later.

Maybe I thought I was going to be instantly calmed once I was inside of her, but I wasn’t. If anything, I felt more desperate and volatile. They had tried to take her from me. If I had still been in the jungle…if I hadn’t gotten back to the beach in time…I would have just come back to find her gone.

“Mine,” I growled and slammed my hips against her, feeling my balls smack against her round ass as my cock rammed into her.

What would I have done? If I had come back and not been able to find her, what could I have done? I would have seen the footprints and maybe found evidence of where their boat had landed. I would have known what they were or what they likely were. She wouldn’t have left voluntarily without me, would she?

“Only I do this to you,” I hissed into her ear. “Only me! Do you understand?”

I didn’t wait for an answer; I just increased the speed of my hips as they collided with hers. Images of what they would have been doing to her now if I hadn’t shown up when I did accosted my brain. With four of them, they could have easily restrained her, held her down in the sand, and taken their time…if I had been even ten minutes later than I was, I would have seen…

“NO!” I heard myself scream. One of my arms wrapped around her shoulders while the other one dropped down to put pressure on her lower back, bringing her up and against me harder. “You’re mine…they can’t…never, ever…I won’t let anyone…”

I felt Raine’s arms coil around my shoulders and her legs wrap around my waist. Her fingers fanned out over my shoulder blades, and then gripped down on my shoulders. I didn’t slow down. Pressure began to build up in my legs, and again I felt a shooting pain behind my thigh but ignored it. I was concentrating a little higher up and was not to be distracted by something as frivolous as pain.

“Mine,” I muttered as I pounded into her again, my words keeping time with my thrusts. “You’re mine…mine…mine…no one else...ever…ever touches you…”

I was over the edge a second later, thrusting into her forcefully and muffling my screams in the crook of her neck. I shoved my hips against her a couple more times before collapsing on her body with my lips pressed to her throat. My hot breath blew out of my mouth in heavy pants, reflecting off her skin and warming my face.

My arms were still underneath her, one on the small of her back and the other between her shoulder blades. I tightened my muscles to bring her closer to me as images of the four dead bastards and what they might have done to her danced around my masochistic head. I don’t know how long we were lying like that, but as my mind returned to the present and focused on what was happening around me, I suddenly felt her trembling and realized she was crying.

Holy shit.

She wasn’t just crying, she was literally sobbing silently underneath me. Her shoulders were shaking, and when I moved off of her, regretting the cool feeling of the evening winds on my dick as I slid out of her, Raine let out a long, heart-clenching wail. She didn’t let go of my back, and her forehead was up against my shoulder. I could feel tears moistening my skin.

A thousand thoughts went through my head. Had I hurt her? The raw emotions I felt when I had to be inside of her were overwhelming and undeniably strong, and I realized I had been rough with her in my need to make her mine again. I hadn’t even made her come. I wasn’t any better than the fucker who had taken her virginity and given her nothing in return. No…I wasn’t like him. I was far, far worse. I had gone and killed four people in front of her and then fucked her to make myself feel better.

Fuck.

There had been no cheering when I killed the last of the bastards. No one was passing money back and forth with smiles and congratulations. No one was handing me a wad of cash and clapping their hands on my back. She had been crying when she pulled me away from Buzz-cut’s body. She had undoubtedly been terrified when they were holding her and probably even more frightened of me as she watched me murder four people.

Then I fucked her in the sand.

“I’m sorry, Raine…I’m so fucking sorry…” I tried to wipe tears off her cheeks, but they were coming too fast. “I didn’t mean to…”

Didn’t mean to what? Kill them? Fuck her? I did mean it. I wanted it. I needed all of it.

“You shouldn’t have watched…” I continued to stammer. “Fuck, baby…I’m so fucking sorry…I’m sorry…I’m sorry!”

It occurred to me that I was probably the last person she wanted around her at the moment, and she might very well be better off on her own for a while. I let go of her, feeling her slump back into the sand before I started to stand back up. Before I could move very far, her hands grabbed my wrists like shackles and she screamed.