Dom Wars: Round 6 (5 page)

“I need the damn
bathroom.”
She angled her head to look behind me. “The number one.”

Phew. I knew that the dreaded
other
number would eventually come up and dreaded when it did. Not for me but for her and how that would make her feel. I turned to Preacher. “Bathroom.”

“Oh,” Becca waved her hand with wide eyes. “Me too.”

Preacher looked around then pointed to a set of bushes. “There.”

“What?” Tara said, “We need privacy!” “Squat!” Preacher said, angling that black gaze at her. “You’re not getting lost first thing in the morning when we need to get a head start. This jungle is begging to swallow us the second twenty feet separates us. So…” He pointed to the bushes a few yards away. “Squat. We’ll be getting this flag while you do. We won’t peek.”

“Or listen!” Tara cried.

Humor had edged his deep voice that seemed even deeper in the silent morning. I leaned and kissed Tara. “Well, he’s right.”

“Fine fine,” she said lightly, briskly heading to the spot like she could care less. That was fine by me, little miss attitude, just so she did as she was told, she could throw a tantrum all she liked.

I hurried to Preacher who stared up at the flag tied in the tree. “I’ll hoist you up, you grab it?” He regarded me when I didn’t answer. “You’re not hoisting me, Bane.”

“On your shoulders?”

Preacher got on his knees and whacked the back of his neck. “Let’s do it.”

I didn’t bother wasting another second, no time for pride. I climbed aboard. “Ready.”

Preacher stood and I locked my feet around his back steadying myself. “Stocky fucker, aren’t you?” His words strained a bit under my weight and I grinned.

“I eat my Wheaties man.”

“Any day now.”

I yanked the blue material and an object fell with it followed with an eruption of smoke that burned the fuck out of my eyes.

I hit the ground with Preacher, both of us scrambling out of the smoke flooding the area while the women went on total freak out.

“Fuuuuuck!” Preacher roared. “Stay out of the smoke Becca and Tara!”

Every reflex clamped my eyes shut against the insane burning as I crawled in a direction hopefully away from the smoke.

“Here, Lucian, this way!” Tara yelled.

I followed her voice coughing through the pain in my lungs, nose, and eyes. I finally felt Tara’s hand on my arm, lifting me. “Jesus it fucking
burns!
Aaagh fuck!”

“Move out of the smoke,” Preacher ordered. I followed Tara’s pulling for several feet. “This is far enough. I’ll get some water, stay here.”

A few seconds later and Preacher’s rough voice was there again. “Open your eyes, I need to rinse them.”

I manually held my eyes open while he poured water for several seconds.

“Stay still, almost done.” A round of coughing seized Preacher while Becca and Tara coughed on and off too. “Mother fucker baits the flags,” Preacher wheezed. “We’ll be ready next time my brother. Hold still, almost done.”

“Don’t use all the water,” I gasped, jerking away as a round of violent coughing took me. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“Don’t wipe your face on your sleeve man!” Preacher boomed. “Here, use this.” He put a cloth in my hand and I couldn’t help wonder what the fuck it was and where it’d been. “It’s Becca’s, and no, I didn’t blow my nose or wipe my ass on it.”

Yeah, that’s exactly what I was wondering. I dabbed the material over my eyes carefully.

When I could finally see, the smoke clung to the air like ghost’s breath, hovering in a perfect band about six feet off the ground. “We need to move. Bane, we’ll crawl to get our stuff. That shit’s not moving out in this airless place.”

“We’re coming to help,” Becca announced, her tone saying
no
was not an option.

“Fine, stay low,” Preacher said.

We all crawled back and loaded our gear, then dragged everything out from under the smoke. Once clear, we stood and without a word, Preacher got the bug spray and handed it to Becca and we all took turns applying only exactly what we needed. We’d gotten the drill from Preacher about conserving everything, even the spit in our mouths. Nothing was to be used unless absolutely necessary.

What did he expect, to get stranded out here? I reminded him this was a game and we had an audience watching us. His response was a disturbing smirk that made me plan to speak privately with him about what the fuck it was supposed to mean. Did he know something I didn’t?

After the bug repellent, we had breakfast which was several bites of the beef jerky and plenty of the water the women had boiled last night and refilled our empty bottles with. Wasn’t sure why I was worried about shitting in the woods, with such little food consumption, we’d be lucky not to collapse from starvation. As long as we could boil water, though, we’d make it.

When the going got ridiculously rough and hot several hours later, Tara muttered ahead of me, “Million dollars. Million dollars.” I was sure she wasn’t the only one singing that song as we picked our precious way through that suffocating jungle.

We hiked and we hiked and we fucking hiked toward the stream that was supposedly just before the second flag. But six hours later and I was sure we’d been given a bogus map or compass, one or the other.

Finally, we
heard
the stream. Heard it
long
before we’d ever reach it.

“What is it, the Niagara fucking Falls, or what?” I finally said.

“There it is!” Tara pointed. “Oh my God, finally, yes yes.”

Becca followed with gasped and moaned foreign words. Relief must be a global language, apparently because it was clear that’s what she expressed.

We came to a stop at the river at a fairly calm stretched. But to the right, several hundred feet downriver, it gradually descended and disappeared, I guessed, over falls, which I also assumed accounted for the growling noise it produced. How the fuck were we supposed to get across with all our fucking
shit
?

“Look,” Becca pointed, clapping with more foreign language.

On the land several yards to the right was a sort of raft. We all stumble-hurried to it and found slender hewn logs tied together to form a Huckleberry Finn floatation device, waiting to carry us across.

“Are you
kidding me
?’ Tara squealed.

“Two at a time,” Preacher said. “It’s definitely a two man ship.”

“Ship,” Tara cried pitifully.

“Tara goes first,” Bella suggested.

“No,” Preacher said. “We need a man on the other side, I’m not leaving a woman over there alone.”

“How long is our rope?” I asked.

“Not nearly long enough to reach the other side.”

“Well what if you and I push the raft, swim behind it with the women and gear on it.”

Preacher looked around and I was about to add that it was getting dark quick when he nodded. “Let’s do it.”

We loaded them carefully and evenly on the raft with the gear and waded out into the water. “What the
fuck
man,” I gasped, “this water is cold!”

“Like a liquid A/C,” Preacher chuckled. “Keep tight hold.”

“Like you need to tell me.”

“Sorry, force of habit.”

“Just focus on steering this boat, Lucian,” Tara cried. “Oh my God that is a waterfall. A waterfall Lucian. On an island in the middle of the ocean.”

“It’s fine love, we’ve got you, nothing is going to—“

“Oh my God! Oh my God! The sticks are coming apart!”

We both swam to the front as the women fought to keep our stuff from falling through the large cracks between the logs.

“It’s not stopping!” Tara screamed while Becca screeched in another language.

“Shit!” I yelled, fighting to hold the logs together. “Be still! You’re making it worse!”

“I can’t be still, it’s falling apart! Oh my God the bags!”

I watched one of the duffels float away and Preacher swam like a mad man for it, leaving me to hold the quickly crumbling boat together. “Get in the water, both of you, we need to keep the stuff dry, help me hold it together!”

They both jumped in and I watched helpless as all our shit floated around us. We were now torn between holding the logs together or losing the escaping bags to the current. “Grab what you can and swim to the other side! Tara, can you do it.”

She nodded rapidly, her jaw quivering as she reached for one of the bags. We all latched our arm around what we could and rescued them like drowned victims.

“Lucian! Lucian!” Tara screamed, “The current!”

Panic slammed me as Tara began to drift away from us. “Let the bag go, let the bag go!”

She released it and began swimming toward me, panic in her eyes as I swam to meet her.

“Get her Bane, leave the bag if you have to man!”

“I can’t do it!” she screamed, fighting the current.

“Fuck!” I let go of the bag and closed the sudden gap the current created in three hard strokes. “Got you! Now help me!”

We swam as hard as we could, but the current had us. Fear fueled my muscles as I dragged Tara by her outer shirt, my eyes on the bank maybe ten feet off. Could have been ten fucking miles with the roar of the falls in my ears. I looked up the bank and fresh terror slammed me as Preacher climbed out of the water and ran along the land toward us.

“Lucian!” She sobbed my name, compounding my terror. Preacher ran ahead and then out into the shallow part of the rapids, a limb thrust out in the water for me to catch. Fuck, we were moving fast.

“Don’t you fucking miss, Bane!” he bellowed.

The long stick came toward us and I fought to right myself to get a good angle. I made contact with it and clawed at the bark as it slid through my fingers. I clamped on a fork in the branch and it jolted us, jerking Tara’s shirt from my hand. I lunged for her and latched desperate fingers into her hair as she went under. I went under next, fighting to hold the branch as she clawed at my wrist.

The branch nearly pulled out of my hand and I held on to it, and her, for dear life. Please God, please help me, fucking help me!

The Preacher’s roar filled my ears as his strong hands grabbed hold of me and threw me toward settled waters while dragging a sputtering and fighting Tara out of the water like a wet doll.

“That was close,” Preacher grumbled, like it happened every day.

All I could do was fight to get air in my burning lungs as I crawled to land. Once there, I collapsed next to Tara, my head on her chest, both of us heaving like twin boars sharing half a lung.

But we were alive. We were fucking alive. And I thanked God for it. And Preacher.

Chapter Five

I looked at Lucian for the fifth time in five minutes. His handsome face looked different than I’d ever seen it. The tension was…dreadful. Like a man who had been to the edge of death and... oh wait. He had. We both had.

My heart fluttered hard when his blue eyes, darkened with that haunted look, met mine. God he was worried about me. The feeling was mutual. I knew he needed to hold me, his body was tense with it. Again the feeling was mutual, I needed to give him what he craved. My scalp was still tender where he’d held on to me. I winked at him, realizing how terrified he’d been to have held me with such a brutal force. But a thought about why, made sense. Going over a waterfall was
not
once in my list of possible ways I might die scenarios.

The contents in the two bags we’d managed to salvage were drenched. Not ruined, the Preacher had corrected me. How the Preacher and Becca got that fire started was a miracle to me. But watching the two of them work, you’d swear they did it three times a day. And given their background, maybe they had.

The second flag was again in a tree and we were definitely not getting it down tonight, but oh so cautiously in the morning.

“Taking Becca to the river, don’t go anywhere,” Preacher mumbled, standing.

No problem there. Lucian fiddled with the stick that was attempting to hold up the tarp. The constant ripple of muscle under his glowing white skin distracted me. Not only were we drenched, it was somehow chilly, and try as I might, not rattling like a sack of bones was impossible.

I scooted closer to the fire and Lucian sat next to me and put his arms around my trembling limbs, warming me against his hot body. Him walking around in only his pants was unfair. Jesus, was I really horny out in the middle of nowhere after nearly drowning and being killed over falls? Oh yeah. Very much so.

But all I knew was if I didn’t have him in some way, some capacity, I would go insane very soon. I suddenly turned to him in a total act of desperation and pulled his face to mine, kissing him, hungry and desperate. His hands and body reacted likewise, pulling me against him only to groan in frustration when he was met with awkward angles and wet clothing.

Winded with need, he stood and looked around. He held out his hand and pulled me to my feet the second I took it. He wasted no time leading me behind the tarp where he yanked my wet pants over my thighs and plunged his finger inside me, his mouth a growling storm crashing down on mine.

I clutched at his strong shoulders, needing something to hold on to, my legs a mess of butter from the savage thrusts of his finger, God no
fingers
inside me. “Come for me. I want you to fucking come, do you hear me? On my fingers.”

I cried out and pumped into his thrusts, his words spearing my body as much as his assault did.

He bit my lip and gasped in my mouth, sliding deep inside and jabbing hard then retreating to rain fire on my clit with his wet fingers, then slamming back in for another round. He repeated the steps until I was there, there on that edge.

“I feel it, fucking come hard for me. You’re there!” His hot mouth sucked along my neck with a bruising force and I pressed into his hand, meeting his frantic thrusts, needing so badly what was right there.

“Oh fuck,” I gasped.

The second my body locked up in orgasm, Lucian’s mouth was back on mine with that searing hunger, his tongue matching the tempo of his fingers inside me, sliding in and out, licking the outside with that tormenting inferno that now flooded my body with delicious shudders.