Once Upon a Caveman

by Cassandra Gannon

  Anniah started talking a mile a minute and, even though Lucy didn’t understand a word of it, she was soon enjoying herself. Anniah was good at making herself clear, even without a shared language. Her expansive hand gestures were hilarious. Lucy actually liked this girl and Lucy wasn’t used to liking anyone except Rhawn. It was kind of awesome.

  They were so busy talking that they nearly missed Warren waking up. He made a low groaning sound and his eyes half-opened. “What?” He croaked. “How fast was I going officer?”

  “Warren?” Lucy blinked in surprise and moved to kneel down beside him, relief filling her. Thank God. She wasn’t aware of how concerned she’d been that he wouldn’t wake up until he finally woke up. “Warren, you scared me, you jackass. Can you hear me? How’s your head?”

  He tried to focus on her. “Moose-y?” He got out. “I think you killed me with a rock.”

  “I hit you with a rock, but you’re still alive.”

  He blinked groggily and then switched his attention to Anniah. “I’m not dead? Then why’s there an angel…?” He murmured and then he was out again.

  “War-ren? War-ren?” Anniah gave him a shake, trying to bring him around.

  “I think he’s okay.” Lucy assured her. “If he can use bad pickup lines, he’s on the mend.” Plus, Warren seemed to be snoring, now. That seemed like a good sign. It probably wasn’t smart for a guy with a head injury to be sleeping, but how many brain cells did Warren really have to worry about losing? “Trust me, he’s recovering.” She added an impressed “oooh, he’s doing great” facial expression to the assurance.

  Anniah gave an encouraging nod.

  “Alright. Good to know I’m not an accidental murderer.” Lucy got to her feet. “I’m outta here, then.” There was only so much socializing an anti-social person could do in one day, but that had gone pretty well. Lucy was proud of herself. “You keep watching over Warren and think about raising your standards.” She gave a very deliberate wave, trying to get her point across. “Good-bye, Anniah.” She said, spacing out the words

  Anniah tentatively waved back. “Gud… Bide… Looo… ceeee.” She pronounced one syllable at a time.

  Lucy beamed. “Perfect!” Hell, the girl was already too articulate for Warren. “I’ll see you later, alright? I gotta go home and find something vegetarian for lunch.”

  She continued up the path to Rhawn’s cave. It didn’t occur to her until she was halfway there that she’d called it “home.” Shit. That probably meant something that she didn’t want to consider, so she decided to ignore it. Instead, she headed inside and grabbed up the plate/shell full of flowers he’d left for her to eat. They seriously weren’t that bad. They sort of tasted like fennel mixed with mango.

  While she polished them off, her eyes went to all the drawings on the walls. Pieces of Earth mixed with Rhawn’s own thoughts, like the bulletin board in some eccentric professor’s office. Diagrams of a water wheel. Images of New York. The Golden Arches. A big, blue swirly thing. Plans for some kind of crop rotation on the island.

  Lucy arched a brow at that one. Oh good. He’d discovered agriculture.

  Jesus, underestimating Rhawn really would be a huge mistake. In a world where other people probably ate their own lice, he already had some kind of rudimentary table of elements sketched out on the rock. If he could correctly calculate the atomic weight of zinc in a cave, he could certainly see through her lies.

  Of course if didn’t help that Lucy kept forgetting to be wary of him. He was so frigging handsome, and he stood between Lucy and all the people wanting her dead, and he said things that made her smile and he looked at her like she was the most interesting calculus equation he’d ever come across. That was so incredibly arousing. Her whole life was a mess, but Rhawn made her feel wanted and safe. In the midst of chaos, he was the only thing that made sense to her.

  She trusted him and Lucy wasn’t a girl who trusted anybody. She’d always been a loner. Something about Rhawn just slipped past all her defenses. Like she knew him. Like she’d always known him.

  Like he was hers.

  Which was crazy. Lucy needed to forget the whole idea of keeping the guy, because it was totally impractical. Totally, totally not going to work.

  …Which was why she wasn’t at all thinking up ways to make it work.

  And in the meantime, those damn dreams needed to stop rerunning in her head, reminding her of all the really nifty caveman-y things he could do to her body. His huge arms holding her still as he ripped off her clothes… The thick weight of his fingers inside of her, making her beg… That low, erotic growl in her ear, wanting submission from his mate…

  Lucy swallowed. Yeah… It was far safer to steer clear of Rhawn. In fact, she needed to stop thinking about him, too. If he popped into her mind, she’d just imagine him doing boring, unsexy things. Like working on those dry and complicated boat plans.

  Boats he’d designed, because he was brilliant.

  God, that was hot.

  And now she was thinking about him again. Damn it. Lucy turned away from the wall of pictures. This was ridiculous. She needed to…

  Something moved outside the cave.

  Lucy froze, her heart pounding. For half a second, she thought it was Skoll, come to kill her. The muscle-bound bastard was already looking for a chance to beat her to death with a rock. If he found out she was abolishing all the creepy, arranged marriages and encouraging Anniah be with Warren, he’d really be pissed.

  Instead of that criminal caveman, though, she saw a flash of neon orange fabric and a head full of professionally streaked hair.

  Lucy blinked, realization dawning. “Taffi?” It couldn’t be. Woodward High’s prom queen couldn’t possibly be on the island. The end of the world… everyone thinking she was a wicked goddess… no Cheetos for sale in this entire dimensions… She could handle all of that. But not Taffi. Not even Lucy’s luck was that bad, right?

  Wrong.

  “Lucy?” Taffi poked her head into the cave, her face wary and mascara stained. “Is it really you?” She was wearing the oversized orange t-shirt from the Ardin’s gift shop, so her beloved dress must not have survived. The withered remnants of a corsage were still on her wrist, though. “Oh my God! I thought it might be you, but I couldn’t be sure. I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me when I saw you on the beach.” She rushed forward to give Lucy a bone-crushing hug. “You have no idea what I’ve been through!”

  “Oh, I have an idea.” Lucy tried to squiggle free of her death grip. “Are you okay?”

  Taffi ignored her efforts to escape. “Of course I’m not okay! The cruise ship sank!” She wailed as if only she’d been aboard.

  “I know.”

  “And this island is full of Neanderthals!”

  “I know.”

  “I think a big volcano is going to erupt.”

  “I know.”

  Taffi frowned, not pleased that Lucy had ruined her big reveals. Her crying switched off like a light switch, replaced with strident indignation. “Well, if you know all that, what do you plan to do about it? Why are you just standing here? It’s your job to get me off this damn island.”

  Lucy’s eyebrows climbed. Taffi had said plenty of stupid things over the years, but that one might just be the all-time champ. “My job?”

  “Yes. You’ve always said you were Little Miss Special. Now’s the time you prove it.”

  “I never said anything like that! I tried not to say anything at all to you, as a matter of fact.”

  Taffi scowled as best she could through the Botox. “As head of the Alumni Committee, I need to survive and you need to help me. It’s your duty.”

  Jesus, it was a wonder Lucy hadn’t dropped out freshman year, just to escape this kind of craziness. “Take a breath, okay? I’m going to try to get everyone out of here, but it might take some time. I’m not sure where we are or…

  “Well, find out!” Taffi started to cry again. “You’re supposed to have the highest GPA –like-
- ever, but you don’t even know how to get us home?!”

  “No, I don’t know. I’m not sure we can get back to New York.” Lucy admitted quietly. She didn’t like to say that out loud, but try a she might, she couldn’t think of a way to return to Earth. It wasn’t like she could whip up another shipwreck to recreate however it was they got here. “We could be permanently stranded in whatever reality this is.”

  “Oh, you’re just like Tony. Full of excuses.” Taffi rubbed at her eyes, refusing to accept the facts. “He’s not even on the island, you know. Sickness and health obviously mean nothing to my loser husband. No wonder we’re in couples’ counseling.”

  She broke down in hysterical daddy-didn’t-buy-me-a-pony-for-my-birthday sobs. Lucy recalled them from most of Taffi’s childhood parties. …Until her father finally bought her a horse when she was eleven, right before he got busted by the IRS. Taffi hadn’t cried half as hard about him doing twenty years in the Federal pen.

  Taffi kept wailing, oblivious to Lucy’s immunity to her drama. “Tony’s probably forgotten all about me by now!”

  Poor Tony was probably trying.

  “Taffi, it’s not going to do any good to…”

  She cut Lucy off. “I never should have married him. His mother locked up all the family money in some stupid trust, anyway. It’s for my kids, she says. I’m not having kids! Do you have any idea how fat I’d get?! Maybe you’re okay with being huge, but I’m not.”

  Lucy rubbed her forehead. “Taffi, can we please focus on the real problems here?”

  “I’m broke, my hair is a mess, and my husband thinks I’m sleeping with the dog groomer. Those are real problems.” She sniffed, the tragic heroine of her own soap opera. “I barely got to second base with Carl. Tony blows everything out of proportion. He’s the one who wanted that stupid Pekinese, in the first place. It’s really his fault that I got so lonely during Taffi-Two’s weekly blowouts and needed Carl’s companionship.”

  “Let’s not bring cute little dogs into this.” Lucy warned. She was going get a cute little dog one of these days, so she felt the need to defend Taffi-Two. “I mean, you’ve already done enough damage, just naming her something so stupid.”

  “It’s a boy.” Taffi snapped, barely paying attention. “Why doesn’t anything ever work out like it’s supposed to, huh? Why does everything always go wrong for me?”

  “Probably karma.”

  Taffi missed that insult. “I was going to be a movie star, you know. Everyone said so. I was too beautiful to me anything else. It was going to me up there on screen. I knew it. I just don’t understand what happened to ruin my dreams.”

  Lucy considered the idea that Taffi was in some kind of shock, but quickly dismissed it. The girl had always been like this. “Do you really want me to stand here and tell you you’re pretty, Taffi? Is that what you need?”

  Taffi ignored that, too. She was a champ at ignoring things she didn’t want to hear. “And I had so much talent.” She gave a small smile, lost in her own maudlin thoughts. “I was really good in My Fair Lady, wasn’t I?”

  “You were.” Lucy said in a humoring tone, going along with Taffi’s sad remising. And it wasn’t a lie. The senior play hadn’t sucked nearly so much as Lucy had anticipated. Taffi’s Liza Doolittle was no Audrey Hepburn, but even Lucy had been impressed. On some level, she’d always expected Taffi to make it big.

  So had everyone else.

  …Especially Taffi.

  “And I never doubted it would happen, you know?” Taffi mused. “Never doubted I’d be an A-lister. I knew I was born to do something great.” She stared at nothing for a long moment. “High school was the best time of my life. I had everything in front of me. So many possibilities.” She sniffed again, shooting Lucy a frown. “I guess that sounds silly to you.”

  “No, it doesn’t.” High school had sucked for Lucy, but she understood the confusion and disappointed of looking back and not being able to see where you even started.

  In a way, the regrets were much quieter on the island, though. Being stuck here made Lucy reevaluate everything else in her life. It burned away the bullshit that cluttered her days. Lucy had never really fit in, back on Earth. She’d always been out of step. The island had a way of clarifying her thoughts and linking her to other people. Sometimes, she almost liked it better here.

  Also, there was Rhawn. It was hard to think your life had turned out too bad when you were kind of dating the hottest, smartest, kindest guy in whatever-the-hell universe this was.

  Damn it, she was thinking about him again.

  “I just want a do-over.” Taffi complained. “A chance to start fresh and be the me who I was supposed to be, before I screwed it all up.” She shook her head. “The shipwreck was a wake-up call. I’ve got nothing to look forward to now to except expanding thighs. This is the prettiest and youngest I’ll ever be again. I blew my whole life.”

  “You’re only thirty-three. You have plenty of life left.” Assuming they didn’t get swallowed up by lava, anyway. “Listen, even if we’re marooned here for good, you’ll be okay. We just have to use our heads.”

  Sadly, logical thought had never been Taffi’s forte. “I just wish…” She swallowed hard. “I just wish we got to grow up to be who we planned to be when we were eighteen, you know? I was so great back then.”

  “You were a raging bitch at eighteen, Taffi.”

  That undeniable fact startled a laugh out of her. “I really was, wasn’t I?” She wiped at her cheeks, chuckling with pleasure. “I made soooo many girls cry. Janna Simmons switched schools, because I emailed everyone copies of her stupid fan-fic about sleeping with the whole cast of Friends.”

  “A prime example of why my karma-biting-you-in-the-ass-now theory is a good one.”

  “Oh please. Like it’s my fault she couldn’t take a joke?” Taffi tossed her hair back. “And you deserved me snarking at you all the time. I was afraid to raise my hand in class, because I knew you’d have some wiseass remark about my answer and make me feel dumb.”

  Lucy blinked. She hadn’t known that. “I’m sorry.” She said automatically. “I shouldn’t have…”

  Taffi cut her off. “Of course you should have.” She straightened her shoulders, regaining her normal self-assurance. “We’ve been enemies since kindergarten, Lucy. No sense in pretending otherwise. Beautiful girls and fat girls will always be at war.”

  So much for bonding.

  Lucy pinched the bridge of her nose. There really didn’t seem to be a way to exclude Taffi from the rescue efforts, but it was damn tempting. “Look, all that matters is finding our way off this island. We’re building boats and we’re leaving. All of us. Even you.”

  “Good.” Taffi nodded, adopting a brave face. “I can’t stay a prisoner of Fraggle Rock for much longer. I’m missing Project Runway, and I’ve wrecked my nails, and had to eat bugs for dinner. Besides, I have a strict rule against sleeping with longhaired men, so my dating options are --like-- zero around here.”

  That was so stupid on so many different levels, it boggled the mind. Lucy went with the simplest objection. “You’re hardly a prisoner, Taffi. No one even knows you’re here.”

  “That’s because I’ve had to hide in the woods, afraid some T-Rex would eat me!”

  “Trust me, that’s the least of your worries. Everything here seems to be following pretty close to our Ice Age and dinosaurs were extinct millions of years before that.”

  Taffi snorted that incontrovertible paleontological fact. “Not all scientists agree with you.”

  “Yes, they do. Unless they’re really dumb scientists.”

  “You’re always so disagreeable! Would it kill you to be nice to me, for once? Why does no one understand what I’m going through? I can’t believe I’m all alone here and nobody even cares that I’ve…” She stopped mid-word, her eyes going wide. “Whoa.” She breathed in something like awe.

  Without even turning around, Lucy knew Rhawn had followed her back to the cave.
>
  Chapter Eight

  Rhawn strokes the small nub of flesh hidden in the soft folds of the woman’s body. He uses circles first, then he tugs it gently experimenting to see what she likes best. Tugging. He barely starts and her body is already arching into his touch.

  “Oh God… Please.” She begs.

  Rhawn smiles, pleased with the reaction. He wonders what would happen if he tugs and then slips his other fingers inside her so she…

  The woman cries out in pleasure, her channel constricting. She is panting for breath, completely opened to him. Rhawn analyzes the facts and realizes that she is close to release. Can women reach orgasm? He isn’t sure, but --gods-- how he wants to find out.

  Rhawn and Lucy’s Dream- Eight Years Ago

  Lucy turned and immediately spotted a certain shirtless caveman standing in the mouth of the cave, looking like an ad for the Pleistocene Olympics. For once Taffi seemed to be speechless and Lucy didn’t blame her. It was hard to think with all that golden skin shining at you.

  Lucy sighed. For real, there was no way she was going to be able to avoid this guy. It would be like Charlie trying to stay away from the chocolate factory.

  “This is Taffi.” She told Rhawn by way of introduction. “Before you ask, no. She’s not a god.”

  Fathomless brown eyes surveyed Taffi with math-geek concentration. “But she has come with you and War-en? She is from Newyork?”

  “Sort of.”

  “I live in Queens.” Taffi told him, rallying quickly. She beamed like the head cheerleader she’d once been and hurried towards him, her aversion to long-haired men forgotten. “I’m super happy to meet someone who speaks English. I was beginning to think we were stranded in some icky foreign place.”

  Rhawn clearly had no idea what she was talking about. Lucy could see him sorting through her words, trying to make sense of them. “You are a queen?”

  “Why yes! Yes, I am.”

  “You’re not a queen, Taffi.” Lucy snapped.

  “I was prom queen, wasn’t I?” Taffi hissed back. “Shut up. I think he likes me.”