“Bastian,” Raine sighed. She dropped down in front of me in the sand, my T-shirt dropping a little off her shoulder and exposing her collarbone. I wanted to lick it, but I restrained myself. I didn’t want to fuck her, and licking would definitely lead to fucking. Fucking could lead to…fuck, no it couldn’t, but the fucking dream had left me paranoid of fucking. “What’s wrong?”
I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my heart and my nerves.
“What makes you think there’s anything wrong?” I finally said, knowing how fucking stupid it sounded. Bastian Stark, asshole extraordinaire, decided to make an appearance and brought his shouty voice along with him. “Why the fuck do you think I’d want to fucking talk about it, anyway? Can’t you get the fucking idea that I want to be alone?”
Raine shifted back and away from me, and I was most appalled by the lack of shock in her expression. She just looked…resigned. She stood up, turned on her bare heel in the sand, and started to walk away.
The pain rippled through my body, causing me to inhale sharply.
“Raine!”
As soon as she stopped and looked back over her shoulder, I found I could breathe again. I closed my eyes and tossed the rest of the cigarette into the water.
“I’m sorry…I’m just...fuck! I want to behave like a dick and didn’t want to be around you when I was feeling like that.”
Raine regarded me cautiously and then took a few steps closer to me again, sitting herself down in the sand a few feet away. It hurt that she didn’t want to come close to me, but I could hardly blame her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked again.
“How do you know anything’s wrong?” I responded, like it wasn’t fucking obvious.
“You want to know what my first hint was, or do you want the whole list?”
“Surprise me.”
“You have had nine of those things,” Raine pointed to the butt end of the cigarette lying in the sand, “since breakfast, not six, and I’m pretty sure you smoked a couple of them when you woke up in the middle of the night, so those count, too. You haven’t bothered to shave for three days, which isn’t all that abnormal, but you’re usually champing at the bit to shave me at least every other day. That brings me to the biggest clue – you haven’t made a move on me since the night before last. You went from trying to molest me fifteen times a day to nothing in over twenty-four hours. Now will you tell me what’s wrong?”
“Same old shit,” I mumbled. I dropped my forehead down into my hands. “I figured you were sick of hearing all of it.”
“Did you have a nightmare last night?” Raine asked gently.
“Yeah.”
“Which one?”
“A new one,” I admitted. I rubbed my knuckles into my eyes and then left my eyes covered up.
“Can you tell me about it?”
“Not yet.”
“All right.”
One of the five million things I loved about Raine – she had finally figured out when not to press. I had gotten around to telling her most everything anyway, and she seemed to know she’d get to hear it all eventually. Sometimes it was just too hard, too raw. I couldn’t talk about it then, and she understood when I couldn’t. I heard her footsteps on the sand and felt her kneel down next to me. Her hands went around my head, and she held me against her chest.
“Whatever it is,” she whispered against my cheek, “we’ll work it out together when you’re ready to tell me.”
“I don’t fucking deserve you,” I said softly.
“Yes, you do.”
I sighed, having no more energy to argue with her about it.
“Just…let me be for a while, okay?” I pleaded. “I’ll come back in a couple hours, and I swear I’ll remember the fucking mussels.”
“If that’s what you need.”
“That’s what I need,” I assured her.
Raine kissed me softly on the cheek and stood, running her fingers through my hair briefly before she turned to go. I closed my eyes again after she was out of sight behind the rocks and wondered what the fuck I did right in my life to have ended up in her presence. Raine was my life, my saving angel. I owed her something for everything she did for me, but what could I possibly do to make things better for her? I couldn’t provide her with her friends or her home. I couldn’t manufacture a wider variety of food, and I couldn’t take her to a hotel with a fucking Jacuzzi in the room.
I laughed out loud, and a wide smile crept over my face. There was something I could do for her, and I knew exactly how I would do it. I twisted around, looked up above me at the largest rock in the grouping, and immediately saw exactly what I needed. I was so fucking pleased with myself, I collected a bunch more mussels, a couple of crabs, and even shaved before I headed back. Shaving myself had definitely primed me for wanting to shave her, and I was certainly going to use that to make up for the last day and a half of not making her come.
* * * * *
“Hey, Raine!” I called and waved my arm around in the air when she looked up at me. “I’ve got something for you.”
I had a huge fucking grin on my face, and when she walked over to me, her eyes held suspicion. Chuckling softly, I took her hand and led her over to the tidal pool where I had set up my little…invention. I leaned over and whispered in her ear.
“Take your clothes off, baby.”
“Again?” she smirked. “At some point, you have to give me a minute to recuperate. I was just going to wash off…”
“I know,” I replied with another goofy grin. “Just take your fucking clothes off, baby. I’ll leave my shorts on if you think that will make you more comfortable.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head but started undressing for me anyway. I told my cock to stop paying attention, but he didn’t listen, as usual.
Once she was undressed, I told her to close her eyes for a minute. She sighed heavily and grumbled at me, but did as I had asked. I took her hand and led her back behind the largest rock.
“Keep your eyes closed, baby.”
“Whatever,” she mumbled. She sounded just like me, which made me smile even more.
“Just another minute here.” I reached up to the crack in the rock where the portion of the gutter system was lodged. There was a scrap of the raft’s side walls wrapped around the end of it, and I had stabbed a bunch of little holes all over the middle of the piece. One of the clamps that had been used to hold the ladder on the raft pinched the end of the gutter canal, holding back the water stored in a larger piece of the raft’s canopy – the clear plastic part which had been used on top of the solar still. The water had been there over the past two days, soaking up the heat from the sun’s rays on top of the rock. I released the valve and tested the temperature of the water. It wasn’t hot by any means, but it was pretty warm.
I took Raine’s hand and held it out, letting the warm water dribble over her from the holes in the homemade spigot.
“Open your eyes, baby,” I whispered against her ear. She did, and her eyes narrowed as the water splashed in her palm. “Want to take a shower?”
“Oh my God,” Raine gasped, looking up over her head. “Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.” I grinned, unable to contain myself any longer. I kissed her softly on the lips, then placed the end of the spigot back at the top of the rock overhang and released the valve completely, so water began to pour out of it. I took Raine by her arms and guided her into the warm stream.
“Oh, Bastian!” Raine screeched. “This feels fantastic!”
“It’s all fresh water, too, baby. Less dry skin, right?”
Raine tilted her head up into the stream and closed her eyes, a smile plastered on her face. Her arms went up and gathered her hair together, holding it under the spout and letting it fall over her face and shoulders as well.
“There’s only enough water for about three minutes,” I admitted, “and it takes a couple of days to really warm up enough, but you should be able to use it ab
out every other day as long as there’s enough water to fill it.”
“This is fantastic!” Raine turned in a circle, letting the warm turrets of water pour over every inch of her. My cock took notice again, but I told him to shut the fuck up. This was for her, not him. Raine hummed as she turned her face up into the stream again. She twirled, she laughed, and she made me feel like a million fucking dollars for making it happen. Way too soon, the water slowed, then stopped, but her smile continued.
“Want this?” I asked, holding up one of the blanket-towels for her to use to dry off. I wrapped one of them around her body and then used the second one to dry her face and hair.
“Bastian Stark,” Raine said, looking me straight in the eye, “you are the most incredible man I have ever known.”
I beamed and stopped drying her face long enough to kiss her.
“You like it, then?”
“Like it?” she cried. “I love it! Thank you, Bastian. Thank you so much.”
She wrapped her arms around me and hugged me as tight as she could. When she loosened her grip, she leaned back and gazed up at me.
“This, Bastian Stark,” she said, waving her hand towards the shower, “this is why I love you.”
I didn’t know if it was doing something like that for her or just her reaction to having it done, but something that afternoon was a turning point for me. I felt different. I felt lighter, more at ease. It’s not that I ever doubted her feelings for me, but maybe I was finally starting to really accept them. Whatever it was, I didn’t have that particular dream again, and the others slacked off a lot, too. They didn’t go away – they never went away – but they weren’t nearly as frequent.
Over the next couple of weeks, we got into a pretty picture-perfect rhythm – we’d wake up shortly after the sun rose, mess around in bed for a while, then eat and do whatever it was we needed to do that day. There usually wasn’t much, and we did most shit together, so it went by pretty fast. We’d go up the hill to get water if it hadn’t rained recently, but usually we only needed to do that every three days or so. If the weather was bad, we usually had enough food gathered and enough fish dried that we didn’t need to go out in the wet. Raine told me more stories about Lindsay, and honestly, I think I was afraid to ever meet the girl; she sounded fucking crazy. I told her how I met John Paul at the shooting range where Landon took us for target practice and how he used to make me work out in the fucking gym six hours a day.
We would eat again when the sun was high, usually something more like vegetables and coconut meat or the stew Raine had invented. I had actually grown to like it quite a bit, and she’d make it for me most days. After lunch, I’d take advantage of her and then I would smoke while she rolled her eyes at me. I kept it down to three a day most of the time. When she was looking.
Usually while I smoked, Raine would bathe in the shallow water. Every couple of days I went down to the water with her, shaved her everywhere she would let me, and then fucked her in the sand with the waves sliding all around us. Those were my favorite days. Then in the evening, when the sun got low, we’d sit by the fire and watch it set down over the water. Sometimes I’d tell her fucked up stuff that happened to me, and sometimes she’d cry when she missed her friends or wondered if she’d ever be able to go back to school again. I’d hold her when she was sad because she told me that was all she needed me to do, and I was really, really trying to believe her.
It was fucking hard, though.
* * * * *
I loved mornings on the island. Fucking loved them. Emphasis on fucking.
I usually woke up before Raine, took care of any human needs, built up the cooking fire, then crawled back onto the makeshift mattress and held her until she woke up. Once she did, she’d go take a morning piss, then come back for a few minutes of lying around, getting herself felt up by me, fucked hard, fucked soft, and then maybe get some breakfast.
I fucking loved mornings here.
Did I mention that?
Fucking loved them.
"What are you thinking about that has such a grin plastered on your face?" Raine re-entered the shelter and lay back down next to me, her back against my chest. I wrapped my arms around her, tossed one leg over hers, and put my lips up to her ear.
"I was thinking about getting my dick in your pussy," I murmured low into her ear.
"Such the romantic!" Raine chided. I didn't need to be looking at her face to know she was rolling her eyes. "Do you think you could be a little less crass?"
"I want to put my penis in your vagina?" I couldn't help but smirk.
"Being more scientifically correct is not the same as less crass!"
"Hrm," I hummed. "It could be worse."
"I'm not sure how," Raine grumbled, but I could still hear the smile in her voice. I wrapped my arm around her waist a little tighter, effectively pushing my erection into her back.
"I'm just dying to get my cock in your cunt."
"Bastian Stark!" Raine screeched and tried to wriggle out of my grasp. I laughed and held her tighter as she struggled ineffectively. My finger grazed over her side and she laughed and twisted to get away from my tickling touch, which put some lovely pressure on my dick. "You know, if you keep that as your modus operandi to get sex, you may never find yourself in that particular position again!"
"Oh," I said, feigning hurt. I shifted down a little, positioning myself against her backside. "Can I fuck you in the ass then?"
Raine squealed and began wiggling around again, trying to pull my arms away with her tiny little hands. I was laughing, letting her make a little headway before reeling her back in. She giggled and rolled, trying to push up with her hands on the shelter floor. I let her get just far enough to make it easier to pull her over on top of me.
"You didn't say no," I told her.
"Absolutely not!" Raine yelled and pushed at my chest with her palms. I held her tight.
"You are absolutely not telling me no?" I teased.
"Stop that!" she giggled. "You know what I meant."
"I have no idea."
"I absolutely do not want you to do that," she clarified.
"Do what?" I pressed with a grin.
"Bastian! You know what!"
"Go on and say it," I commanded.
"I don't want you to..." she erupted in another fit of giggles. "What you said."
"Say it,” I growled, trying to keep a straight face but utterly failing.
"Argh!" she finally cried. "I don't want you to...fuck my ass."
We both fell into a fit of laughter at that point. When I could breathe again, I gently pulled Raine down to my level and kissed her softly. I reached my hand around and grabbed her ass, pulling downwards and holding her against my growing erection while I kissed her harder. She pulled back and straddled me, shaking her head and smiling.
"You are incorrigible."
"I know," I responded with a shrug. I reached up to touch the side of her face, slowly running my fingers over her skin. The way she was looking at me pulled at my heart. She had looked at me in the past that way, and I hadn't understood it. Now I knew what it was because the same feeling was reflected back in mine.
"I love you, Raine." I pulled her face back to mine and kissed her softly, not giving her the chance to respond verbally. I didn't need it. Her eyes said it all. Without moving my lips from hers, I gave her what she wanted to hear. "I want to make love to you."
"That's more like it." She grinned and opened her mouth against my lips.
“I want to make love to you,” I repeated, and because ultimately I am still an asshole, I added, “with my big…hard…cock.”
“Bastian!” Raine smacked her hand on my chest but still laughed. “Did you really have to ruin that for me?”
I took her face in my hands and touched my forehead to hers.
“No matter what actual words come out of my mouth – every time I think of you, every time I touch you, and every time I speak to you – I am making love to you.”
>
“Is that a poem?” Raine asked softly.
“Only if I write it down and publish it.” I smiled and touched my lips to hers. The light touch became more, and I sucked her bottom lip into my mouth, teasing her with the tip of my tongue. Her hands found the back of my head and pulled me close. I loved the fact that I didn’t have to waste a fucking minute taking her clothes off, and immediately started caressing her breasts, her hips, her legs. She was so fucking beautiful, it fucking hurt sometimes. I kissed a line up her jaw and to her ear, humming softly against her skin.
“I love how responsive you are,” I murmured low in her ear. “Every time I touch you, I feel your skin react. I hear it in your breathing, your heartbeat. You do the same to me. You know that, right? You know how fucking much I want you all the time?”
“I know,” she breathed against my shoulder. “I love you…I want you, please…”
“You never have to beg for this,” I assured her. I rolled us over until she was on her back. “I’m yours always…anytime, anyplace, anyway you want me.”
“I want you…now, please.”
I pulled back and looked down into her dark brown eyes, slightly hooded from want and need, but there was so much more in them as well. There was trust. There was love. It was still so new and so unexpected, it took my breath away.
“When you look at me like that,” I said softly, “it’s like I’m looking at your soul, and you’re looking into mine. You make me feel like I’m worth something when you look at me like that.”
“You are,” she said, smiling up at me and placing her hand on the side of my face, and while she held me there, I believed her. I leaned down and placed my lips on her forehead, then her eyes, across her cheekbones, down to her throat. I kissed right above her left breast and felt her heart beating underneath her skin. Raine’s hands grasped my shoulders, moved down over my arms and back up again, circling my back and pulling me to her breasts. I was only too fucking happy to oblige.