Savage (2 page)

W
hen he lifted
another hollowed out coconut shell of clear liquid to my lips, I drank it. It tasted like water. A few hours later I was still alive, so my mystery Tarzan wasn’t trying to poison me after all.

Actually, the opposite seemed to be true.

After settling me into some kind of handmade hammock-like swing hanging from one of the trees close to the beach, he’d gone back to the water with his spear and, in no time at all, emerged with a couple of colorful fish hanging from the tip of his spear. He roasted them over a fire and made me a plate with what I guessed was breadfruit, and he even dished me up more once I’d finished the first round.

He never said a word—he barely even looked my way—but it was apparent he was as aware of my presence as I was of his. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening stretched out in that hammock, watching him and taking in my new surroundings. My situation was hardly ideal, but it could have been worse. Had it not been for Tarzan, I very well could have been close to dying from dehydration. Had I stumbled upon some other castaway, I very well could have been wishing I was dead.

Sure, mine didn’t seem to communicate, but he seemed preoccupied with taking care of me, all the while respecting my space and maintaining distance between us. Having him take such good care of me, yet seem so apprehensive to be near me was strange.

It made me want to know his story. I was desperate to discover it. Had he once upon a time been Dr. Grant Bridger, whose lab coat I was currently draped in? Or was he someone else entirely?

Every question I asked him was answered with more silence, so after a while, I gave up. At least for the night. Tomorrow, once I had renewed energy from the food and rest, my questions would keep coming. He had to speak sometime. If he knew a language I understood was yet to be determined, but he had to talk. Eventually.

My eyelids were just starting to droop when I felt two familiar arms scoop around my body and lift me out of the hammock. This time, he didn’t hold me away as he had at first. He let my body curl into his chest as he carried me toward the hut. When we stopped below the cutout entrance, he lifted me so I could crawl inside without having to strain my wrist by pulling myself up. I hadn’t even made it to the woven-leaf mattress before he’d crawled inside and was laying a flat piece of bark over the opening, sealing us inside for the night.

I’d never been so aware of another human being in my life as I was right then. While I was thankful for the hut that would protect me from bugs and whatever else crept out of the jungle at night, it was small for two people. Especially small for two people who were looking at each other the way he and I were.

He was staring at me laid out on the organic mattress, his eyes alive and his chest moving faster. His gaze swept down my body, lingering on where the end of the lab coat hugged my thighs. He made no move to come closer, no move to touch what he was admiring, but I wasn’t used to being looked at like that.

It wasn’t lust filling his stare—it was something else. Something more worshipful, something almost sacred. Shit, my own chest started rising and falling faster the longer I watched him admire me. Since he wasn’t being shy about letting his gaze roam my body, I did the same.

His body was truly something to behold, the kind of body that made a woman fantasize about submitting to and experiencing the kind of power those muscles possessed. They were made for work, made for movement, and I shifted when an image flashed into my head of exactly what kind of work and movement I was thinking about.

What am I thinking?
I was stranded on some unknown island with some unknown man, quite possibly never to return to civilization, and I was fantasizing about this stranger. This was not the opportune time to be thinking about romance and all that came with it. It was pretty much the worst time to be thinking about it.

Just when it looked like he was about to reach out and touch me, he moved back into the opposite corner of the hut and worked to get comfortable. I hadn’t given any thought to sleeping arrangements. This was his place, his leafy mattress—it wasn’t right for him to stuff himself into a corner and try to sleep. The guy had already saved my life, attended to my injuries, and fed, watered, and sheltered me. I couldn’t take his bed now too.

When I started to slide off of the mattress, his eyes fired open. His head shook once as his hand lifted in a stay kind of motion.

“This is your home.” I sighed, wondering how I could ever repay this stranger’s overwhelming acts of kindness.

His hand circled the hut before landing on me. That same fire I’d seen in his eyes before ignited again. “Mine.”

My eyes widened when I heard his voice. It was deep and surprisingly smooth for someone who didn’t seem to think much of talking.
Mine
. So the two times I’d heard him speak, he’d used the same word each time. At least it was English, so maybe one day my questions could actually be answered.
Mine.
What did he mean by that? The hut was his? The mattress? The damn island?

. . .
I
was his?

That thought should have made me more uneasy than it did.

When I moved to slide off of the mattress again, his body tensed; I even detected his jaw doing the same beneath the thickness of his beard.

“Okay, okay,” I said, laying back down. I didn’t doubt, based on the look he’d given me, that he’d throw me right back on if I tried rolling off.

After a minute, he seemed content that I wasn’t going to move, and he closed his eyes. Every time he started to doze off, his head would rock forward, his chest following, which would snap him awake only to restart the process all over again.

When it happened for a fourth time, I exhaled and scooted to the edge of the mattress. Then I patted the empty space beside me.

At first he looked at me curiously, like he wasn’t sure what I was asking, but then realization settled in his eyes. His head shook as he tried for the fifth time to fall asleep propped up in his corner of the hut.

“Come on,” I urged, patting the empty space again. “This is big enough for two. It’s fine.”

It might have been big enough for two normal-sized people, but it was really only big enough for one Tarzan. That was okay though. I could curl up on my side and make room, but I couldn’t stand to watch him spend the night snapping awake every few minutes.

“Listen, I’m not scared of you,” I said when he stayed where he was. “If you were going to hurt me, I think you would have already. It’s okay. Just, please, come lay down.”

After that, I lay back on my side, scooting as close to the wall as I could to make room for him. When he still didn’t budge, I came at it from a different angle. Wrapping my arms around my core, I shivered as best as I could in what I guessed was seventy-degree temperatures. I did it again, and before the third shiver started to quake through my body, I heard the sounds of movement as he crawled toward me.

His breaths were uneven. I felt the mattress move beneath me as his body lowered onto it. For a minute, there was nothing. Both of us seemed to be holding our breaths as an inexplicable energy charged between us. It felt tangible and impossible to ignore. I soon discovered, as I felt my body fight to angle toward him, that it was impossible to deny. My hands curled into fists as I fought against touching his flesh.

Just as I was about to lose the battle, his solid, heavy arm curled around me before drawing my body close to his. My feigned shivers from being chilled were replaced by real ones from being aroused.

Warmth enveloped me everywhere his skin touched mine, until I could feel it making its way deep into my core, straight into my heart. This man, whose name and history I didn’t know, had found his way into my heart. The first one ever and, quite foreseeably, the last.

Long after his breathing had evened out, I stayed awake, reveling in the feel of being so close to another soul. Overwhelmed by the way that, even in sleep, his hold on me never once loosened.

As I fell asleep, one word snuck out from deep within me, tumbling past my lips before I could swallow it back. “Mine.”

M
y second morning
waking up on the island was infinitely more pleasurable than my first morning had been. Possibly because my head didn’t feel like it was about to split open, but most likely because I woke up with Tarzan’s body still secured around mine and nestling me against him as though his existence depended on me as much as mine did on him.

His even breath was warm against the back of my neck, sending chills down my spine. His lips brushed against my skin every few exhales. Sometime in the night, his hold around me had wandered. One arm had drifted higher, so his hard forearm was pillowed against my chest, and the other had drifted far enough south that I awoke to find the space between my legs wet with desire.

Shit
. I didn’t have any underwear on. In fact, I didn’t have anything on beneath this lab coat. This was not the ideal time to let my body get all hot and bothered. Especially with the way Tarzan’s leg had managed to wedge between mine, digging halfway up my thighs. God, another few inches and his leg would be pressed hard against my wet sex. We’d made progress last night; I didn’t want to go back to him ignoring me if he woke up to find me panting in heat.

Ever so gently, I tried to shift just enough out of his hold that I could talk myself back from the aroused ledge, but the moment I moved, his whole body framed around me tighter.

“Oh, god,” I breathed when his leg rode higher up my thighs. I could feel his skin against mine. His leg hard against my pussy, making it ache with desire. At the same time, his arm around my chest tightened, making my nipples harden from the touch.

As I struggled to regain my breath, I cycled through a whole myriad of thoughts I hoped would shake some sense into me. But the reminders of being stranded with a person who didn’t talk, never to see the face of civilization again, failed to bring me down from the high his body was driving me closer to with every passing second.

When his body stirred against mine, I was sure he was waking up . . . but he wasn’t. Well, a certain part of him was waking up.

With his hips pressed behind mine, I felt his erection stiffen against my backside, growing impossibly long and hard. I’d never felt a man’s body against mine like this, but now that I had, I realized how much I liked it. How much I craved it.

He was still asleep, his steel straining against me and making me dizzy with need. I felt a pressure building between my legs, the kind that felt like it needed to be released or else it just might split me in half. I might have been inexperienced when it came to intimacy, but I knew enough to guess what was happening.

Arching my back, I didn’t stop until his erection was pressed so deeply into the flesh of my backside that I guessed it would leave a bruise. Then I started to ride his leg, driving myself closer with the friction it offered.

I tried to veil my ragged breaths, but as my orgasm climbed closer, restraint became impossible. His leg was dripping wet from the way I was riding him, and his cock felt like it was throbbing against my ass, begging for its own release.

“Yes,” I whimpered, my head throwing itself back harder than I intended.

That was when he stirred awake, his whole body going rigid against mine. Tipping my head back, I stared at him, breathless from the pleasure winding through my body. It took a moment for him to realize what was happening, his body remaining stiff and still around mine.

When it looked like he was about to get up and disappear, I circled my backside against his straining erection and whispered, “Please.”

Before his eyes closed, I didn’t miss the way they almost rolled back in his head. He liked that. So I rolled my ass against his erection again, stroking it a few times through the dip between my cheeks.

His body came to life then. His arm curved around my chest, lifting enough that his hand could take one of my heavy breasts in his hold. He palmed it urgently through the fabric of the lab coat as his leg pressed against my pussy in the exact place I needed it.

As he pulled my orgasm from the depths, his face hovered above mine, watching me take my pleasure with a hungry look in his eyes. It didn’t take long after that. With his body working in unison with mine, my orgasm surged through me like a bolt of lightning touching down, and right as it was reaching its peak, he rolled my nipple between his fingers, pinching it to draw the pleasure from even deeper within.

My pussy pulsed in on itself, longing for something to come around, as fresh wetness spilled out of my body, coating his leg. It never stopped rubbing against me until I was shivering from the aftershocks of my release.

Oh, good god. What was that?

“Thank you,” I breathed, draping my arm up around his neck as I struggled to recompose myself. “Thank you.”

It was all I could say, all I could express. Not only for the unparalleled release he’d just given me, but for everything else. Here on this island, with this stranger, I’d experienced things I’d never had in two decades of life. It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t rational, but it didn’t need to be. I felt a connection with this man I’d only met mere hours ago. I felt connected to him in a way that made the years of solitude seem worthwhile.

Could it be that everything I’d been looking for in life had been waiting for me right here on this island?

So much was coming at me, but someone was still behind me, his own need waiting to be satisfied. His erection had grown harder against me, feeling more insistent, but just as I began to twist in his arms to take care of him, his body unwound from mine. He rose to stand.

In the time it took me to sit up, he’d managed to get across the hut and slide the bark aside. Before he leapt out of the hut, his head turned my way. Despite the beard and unruly mess of hair, I didn’t miss the tipped smile that formed, his eyes still burning with the fire I knew had been in mine moments ago. His gaze didn’t leave mine until he’d leapt out of the hut, leaving me to try to figure out what man in the world was content to walk away when he could have gotten his too.

A goddamned saint, that’s what he must have been. That was the only explanation. It certainly explained everything else he’d done for me.

“By the way, my name’s Jane,” I muttered to the walls, unable to help my smile.

Names didn’t matter here. Who he’d been or who I’d been didn’t matter. Hell, language didn’t even matter because in terms of words, we hadn’t had a single conversation, but we’d experienced a depth of communication on a different level. He could be my Tarzan and I could be his Jane, and this island could be our whole entire world.