by Jill Myles
Our small party skirted the beach for a mile or so, and then the cavemen ducked into the jungle, leading me for the first time into the interior of the island. It was like entering another world. Thick, ropy ferns covered the jungle floor, tall palm trees and leafy fronds raising high to the canopy above. The trees were enormous, and overhead, birds fluttered and called out. Small rodents scurried under the bushes, and while I didn’t see any dinosaurs right away, I could tell by the muddy tracks on the trail that they were still around. I swallowed hard, falling behind the cavemen and letting them lead.
Surely they wouldn’t lead me right back to the T-Rex, would they?
We walked for a time, and came to a rocky outcropping. Bgha motioned that I should climb, and I put my hands on the rocks, when dizziness swept over me. The world tilted and I fell to my knees, sick and dizzy. Something was wrong with me. My head throbbed and I shook my head at Bgha. “I can’t. I need to rest.”
He muttered something under his breath, and gestured at me.
I fell to my hands and knees, shaking my head. “Can’t. No. Let me rest.”
The others glanced at him, and he touched my hair again, then grinned, showing nasty, crooked teeth caked with grime. “Bgha meh,” he said, his voice a possessive croon, and the hackles on the back of my neck stood. “Meh. ”
He touched my backside and I stiffened, swatting his hand away. “No!”
The caveman raised his hand and slammed it across my face. “Meh! ”
My head snapped backward, ears ringing. Damn. Bgha was a little guy, but he packed a big wallop. Dazed, I shook my head to clear it, and watched him raise his hand again.
I punched him in the balls.
He gave a high, keening groan of pain, and bent double.
I got to my feet, swaying. “That’s what you get, you little bastard. I’m not your plaything.” I kicked him while he was bent over, just to get the point across.
The others jabbed me with their spears, their grunting language becoming angry. One reached for me and I turned and ran into the forest. My body felt like it was about to give out, and I was terrified that the cavemen were going to catch me and throw me down to the ground and rape me.
Raped by cavemen. Not exactly a Lifetime movie of the week. I wanted to laugh – or cry – but instead, I just ran blindly into the jungle, shoving at palm fronds as they slapped in my face. The greenery blurred together, and I forced my stumbling feet to continue on, no matter what. My breath heaved in my chest, and I could hear the hooting, angry calls of the cavemen behind me, but I didn’t slow down.
Thump thump…thump thump.
Oh, shit. I recognized that sound.
I froze in place, my eyes darting wildly, head spinning. Somewhere, there was a big dinosaur looking for a bite to eat, and here I was, alone in the wilderness. I didn’t even have the flare gun, or one of the crude spears the cavemen toted.
Ahead of me, the bushes parted and a large, plate-headed dinosaur crossed the path just ahead, oversized rounded head swaying as he looked for me.
I froze in terror.
An arm snaked around my shoulders, a hand pressed over my mouth. A hot, hard body pressed up against mine, and I heard a voice whisper in my ear. “Silencio.”
I froze in place, the stranger holding me against him, pinned into stillness. As we stood there, perfectly still, I noticed a few things about the person behind me – though I didn’t dare turn. His body radiated warm heat, and judging from the thick arm that was tossed over my shoulders, he was taller than me. I caught the faint smell of coconut and male sweat and outdoors, an oddly enticing mixture.
This wasn’t Mr. Wingarde or the stewardess…who was this man and how was he here?
The person holding his body against mine remained stock still, and I followed suit, not wanting to be the one to break and cause the dinosaur to turn. My mind was a crazy jumble as we waited for the dinosaur to pass. Who was it behind me?
The dinosaur snuffed the air, then eventually wandered away a few (eternal) minutes later.
My breath expelled in a whoosh that made me dizzy; I hadn’t realized I was holding it. “Oh, my god,” I whispered. “That was close.”
The man behind me grunted in response.
I turned to face my savior and gasped in surprise. It was the beautiful, blonde man from my wild fever dreams. Perhaps I hadn’t dreamed him after all. I should have guessed as the dreams were so vivid. Tousled, bleached blonde hair swept around his cheekbones, ragged and loose. His face was darkly tanned, and his entire body was the same, dark buttery shade of gold, rippling with muscles. Impossibly green eyes stared down at me under a chiseled brow. He was a golden Tarzan, dressed only in a loincloth. He was gorgeous.
He was frowning at me.
The stranger muttered something I didn’t understand. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t make it out. I shook my head to explain that I didn’t understand him.
Tarzan reached out and touched the corner of my mouth with the back of his knuckles. The skin stung at the light touch, and I realized that he was touching the now-bruised skin where the caveman had backhanded me.
I gave a hesitant smile and ducked my head, suddenly shy at his unspoken question. “I pissed someone off.”
His fingers touched under my chin, and he lifted my face to his.
Awestruck and feeling dizzy again, I stared up at the man. Lord, but he was beautiful. His eyes were the greenest I’d ever seen, and a few days of blonde stubble coated his jaw. He smelled warm and musky and wonderful.
He was frowning at my forehead, and his fingers brushed a lock of my dark hair off my forehead.
“I don’t understand you,” I complained. How frustrating to find someone – another survivor – and I couldn’t even speak to him. I wanted to ask who he was, how long he’d been here, but I felt exhausted, my knees weak. The close call from the dinosaur had drained me.
I sagged with sudden exhaustion. He reached out, one strong arm reaching around my waist to bolster me. I let him hold me – so far he hadn’t tried to touch me in hideous ways like Bgha had.
“Bgha meh!”
Speak of the devil. The bellow came from the far end of the jungle, and I turned to see the caveman racing towards us, followed close behind by his followers.
“Oh boy.” I began to feel dizzy and lightheaded again – most likely from heat exhaustion. “How did that little bastard find me?” Instinctively, I ducked behind Tarzan. I felt safe and protected next to him.
The feeling grew as Tarzan put a possessive arm in front of me, separating me from the angry caveman. “Bgha,” he greeted, his voice a pleasant warning. His voice modulated, and lowered into the garbled, harsh language that the cavemen were speaking.
Whatever he was saying, it pissed Bgha off. The caveman beat his chest with a fist, spitting words at the two of us and waving his spear. “Bgha meh! MEH! MEH! Voschay cos zuay! Na Sav dor! Meh! ”
The blonde man shook his head, gesturing with his hand in a way that meant he wasn’t putting up with Bgha’s shit. Tarzan motioned at me, his voice becoming angry on my behalf, clearly. I didn’t know what he was saying, but it sounded outraged. “You tell him,” I whispered, egging him on. “Tell that sorry bastard to back off and leave me alone.”
Tarzan turned his intense green eyes to me and pointed at my cheek, saying something I didn’t understand.
Bgha came forward and tried to put a hand on my thigh possessively.
I cringed and slapped at his small, brutish hands. His touch made me feel faint with disgust, and my stomach churned so violently I thought I might be sick.
My Tarzan growled low in his throat and shook his head. He pointed at my forehead, and then at himself.
I touched my forehead, echoing his gesture. What did that mean?
The blonde god pointed at his own forehead again and spat a word at Bgha. “Meh. ”
Oh boy. I was starting to recognize that ‘meh’ word very well. It seemed to be native for ‘min
e’.
So now I was being claimed by the blonde god?
“What is this, Ebay?” I shoved at Tarzan’s shoulder. Suddenly his protective clasping of my body didn’t come across as protective as much as it seemed…interested. I wasn’t a blow-up doll they could fight over. And if this guy’s tan was any indication as to how long he’d been shipwrecked, he’d been a while without a girl.
From the frying pan into the fire, and right back to the frying pan.
Bgha wasn’t taking no for an answer, either. He shook his head violently at my new captor, then gestured angrily, taking a step back when the blond man lunged forward in a threat.
“Hey now,” I said, alarmed. I didn’t want them to fight – the blond man had no weapons on him, and Bgha was surrounded by a bunch of spear-toting, angry cavemen. I didn’t want to put odds on this one.
“Meh,” said the blond man once more, calmly.
Before I could protest, Tarzan picked me up and swung me over his shoulder. His hand rested on my bikini bottom. “Meh,” he repeated.
“We really should talk about this,” I protested, but my pleas fell on silent ears.
CHAPTER FIVE
The undulating motion of Tarzan’s shoulder against my abdomen made me sick. I closed my eyes in an effort not to throw up, and passed out again, letting the heat exhaustion win. The world blacked out around me.
Rippling shades of darkness took over for a time, and I vaguely remembered a soothing, low male voice murmuring in my ear, speaking words I didn’t understand. I faded in and out of consciousness, the one driving thought in my mind was thirst, and the terrible pain in my head, throat, and the hot, dull ache of my sunburned skin. I hurt everywhere, and the world was so hot. I couldn’t cool off.
The scent of coconuts wavered in and out of my feverish dreams, and I thought at one point that my Tarzan cradled me in his lap and brushed coconut juice into my parched, cracked mouth. Before I could thank him, I went under again.
A feeling of coolness washing over me, and the pain in my head finally gone. My body felt light and airy, and something tickled my feet with feather-light touches. I heard the sound of rushing water very close nearby.
Finally, I felt cool. My eyes fluttered open.
I stared into the moonlit face of Tarzan. He loomed over me, all cheekbones and firm jaw. Tarzan murmured something low under his breath, and it took me a moment to realize that he was cradling me against his chest. Even now, my face was almost embarrassingly close to one flat nipple. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on the man’s divine body.
Water lapped around my waist and legs. Tarzan held me in the middle of a stream, and the tickle against my feet was the current rushing past my legs. I floated, half cupped against his body, half in the water, and the water was so cold it felt like heaven against my super-heated skin.
“Where are we?” Just that simple question seemed to take far too much effort.
He shook his head at me, cupped his hand in the water, and slowly trickled water over my bare shoulders.
Oh good lord, I was naked.
I opened my mouth to protest, when I felt his hand skim over the flesh of my wet shoulder, and all thoughts skittered out the window at that light touch. He caressed my shoulder as if it were the most fragile thing in the world, stroking me like he would a precious treasure. Goosebumps rose on my skin, and I watched his hand move over my body, dark, large hand against my pale skin.
His fingers rubbed my arm, and I realized he was washing the dried blood off of me. How thoughtful of him, I thought to myself as my eyelids started to droop again.
Feather-light fingers brushed against the tip of my breast, reverent in that brief touch, and I shivered, a low aching moan building in the back of my throat. That felt good. I arched against his hand, and felt his fingertips brush my jaw, felt his thumb graze my full lower lip.
He whispered against my cheek. “Duerme bien. ”
My eyelids drooped shut. I burrowed against his chest closer, letting the darkness close back over me again, feeling safe for the first time in days. Tarzan would keep me safe – the real one had kept Jane safe for all those years, right?
I fell back to sleep as his wet hands skimmed my limbs and his soft, dark voice hummed me back into my dreams.
*** *** ***
I dreamed about the T-Rex again, standing in the churned up sand. Dozens of footprints covered the beach, and with one swipe of his tail, he wiped them away. In my dream, he moved forward, and he was suddenly able to get in the cockpit, eating bites out of the plane all around me, moving slowly toward me.
My eyes flew open just as the massive jaws reached for me.
I stared at the unfamiliar cave wall over me, trying to place where I was. A cave? I didn’t remember a cave. I did, however, remember being totally naked and pressed up against a hot, hard male form.
And I was still naked. And so was he. As soon as that registered, I skittered away on my hands and knees, disturbing the large palm fronds that were thoughtfully placed over our bodies. When I was out of arm’s reach, I turned and grabbed one of the leaves, wrapping it around my torso and trying to hide my nudity.
Tarzan simply yawned and propped up on one elbow, rubbing his eyes clean of sleep and watching me. He seemed unashamed of his nudity, and merely regarded me, his gaze possessive.
“What is all this?” I tempered my voice from the outraged screech that I wanted to do – remembering the dinosaurs outside – and settled for an outraged whisper. “Where are my clothes?”
They certainly weren’t in the cave. In fact, the only thing in the cave was Tarzan himself, the bed of palm fronds he’d so thoughtfully created for us, and the remnants of a fire at the entrance of the small cave.
He regarded me with mild interest, not responding.
I sighed. “Right. I bet you don’t speak English.” I drummed my fingers on the palm leaf wrapped around my breasts, trying to think. Like most people I knew, I’d never bothered to learn a second language. So, I tried the easy route. I tapped my chest and announced, “Diana. I’m Diana.”
Tarzan gave an interested look to my overflowing palm leaf and grinned.
I blushed and tried again. “Me, Diana.” I gestured at myself. “Diana.” Then gestured at him, waiting.
He chuckled, the low, sexy sound doing terrible things to my overclocked nerves. “Diana,” he acknowledged, the word a heavily accented, throaty thrum that made my already-weak knees want to collapse. Then, he gestured at himself. “Salvador.” His accent was so thick, I almost didn’t understand him at first.
“Salvador,” I repeated, unable to roll my ‘r’ and pronounce it just like he did. “Oh,” I blurted. “You’re Spanish,” I said, excited that I’d finally pieced together his unfamiliar accent. In the next moment, I was crestfallen. “I don’t know Spanish.”
He simply regarded me with a cocked eyebrow.
I waved a hand in exasperation. “Never mind. We’ll find some other way to communicate.” I pointed at the palm leaf again. “Clothing?”
I repeated the gesture a few more times, trying to explain what I was looking for by strategically moving the palm leaves, and at last, he seemed to grasp what I was trying to communicate. He stood up, buck naked, and strolled to the front of the cave.
Oh jeez, I’d seen too much – and not nearly enough – in those few glorious moments.
The man had a flawless body. Not that much had been covered by his loincloth from yesterday, mind you, but what it had covered brought a heavy blush to my cheeks, and I wasn’t a virgin.
Salvador was one lucky, lucky man.
And you’re going to be a lucky girl, my traitorous brain said to me, and I shut it down, pat.
Not going to think about those kinds of things, nope.
I averted my eyes, trying not to be hideously embarrassed. After all, I recalled flashes of a memory of being cradled up against his chest and letting him wash me. Surely it was too late to be embarrassed by nudity, right?
&nb
sp; Didn’t matter. I wasn’t losing my palm frond until I could cover it with bikini, damn it.
A few moments later, a hand appeared at the edge of my vision, and I glanced over, nearly finding myself at eye level with certain dry-mouth inducing parts of Salvador’s anatomy. “Oh, my,” I exclaimed and turned away, wanting to die of embarrassment.
His laugh rumbled through the cave, and he draped my swimsuit over my shoulder instead, taking the hint and walking away, presenting me only with a view of butt-cheeks that were as deliciously taut and tanned as the rest of him.
“Don’t you have a loincloth to put on?” I said in protest as I turned to the cave wall and hastily dressed.
He didn’t answer me, but I was starting to expect that.
I tied the strings of my swimsuit behind my neck, noticing that he’d cleaned my clothing – and while it wasn’t exactly store-bought clean, it wasn’t covered with dirt and other people’s dried blood. “Thank you for cleaning my things,” I said, knowing he couldn’t understand me. I still wanted to say it.
He grunted from the far end of the cave, as if grasping my meaning. By the time I turned to face him again, he was fully dressed once more – the amused look on his face expressing that it was more for my benefit than his. I refused to thank him for that.
Salvador gestured for me to sit down, and I did so, choosing a spot on our makeshift palm-frond bed. The cave was little more than a nook in the rocky cliff, so it wasn’t as if there was much of anywhere else to go. He gestured for me to remain seated, and then disappeared out the front of the cave, hopping off the narrow ledge.
“Wait!” I panicked, surging to my feet so quickly it made my still-weak body dizzy. “You’re leaving me?” I stumbled to the front of the cave and wobbled at the lip, hugging the wall to support myself. My fingers tightened on the cave wall at the sight of the jungle below me.