Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance

by Savannah Rose

  Climbing into the ship's crooked cockpit was like trying to scale a giant bathtub. It reminded me of the time the Petersen & Stiller PR guy suggested one of those bullshit team-building events where we were supposed to pretend to be mountaineers and haul ourselves up a big block of styrofoam. I told Martin to have a nice fucking time, and fired the PR guy before lunch.

  I lowered myself into the cabin, the creeeak and moaning of the ship growing louder, and began to rummage around for stuff I could use. I wanted water, a beer, maybe a soda or something. Maybe some sunblock for my head. All I could find were broken glasses, chunks of wood, and the steering wheel bent and broken against the shattered dashboard.

  A small chuckle escaped me as I thought of Sofia loca steering this ship in all her beautiful nakedness, trying to shake me off like a bull trying to dislodge a cowboy. An A for effort, that I'd give her. I'd like to give her somethin' else, too, but she was sleeping with the fishes, as it's been said.

  “Martin's the brains of the operation. What does that make you?”

  I stood up so fast I slammed my head against a cross beam. Instant, incredible pain shot through the center of my skull, making friends with my concussion and singed scalp. My vision doubled, and I bit my tongue. I tasted a hint of copper as I remembered Sofia said Martin was the brains of the operation.

  That meant she wasn't just some scorned lover I couldn't remember. She knew about Martin, and his role in the company. Everybody always said he was the smart one, the real businessman, and that I was little more than idiot eye candy living off my father's money (as she also mentioned when she wagged an asparagus spear at me). That meant Sofia did her homework. Sofia knew something. Why she would want to shoot me for being good looking or riding my dad's coattails, however, would forever remain a mystery.

  That would never set well with me. I never did not know. I always knew.

  I hit the wheel.

  “Fuck you, Sofee,” I growled.

  I'd find out who she was. Yes, sir. Once I was out of here, I'd spend every waking moment getting to the bottom of her. For now, though, my head was threatening to throb its way off my neck. It hurt. I hurt. I shouldn't have hit the wheel so hard, either. My palm felt like it was swelling up, and god damn it, I needed a drink.

  What I needed to do was think. Think about my next move. The kitchen was just underneath where I stood, so getting to it would be a fairly feasible excursion. I picked my way down toward it. That's where the water was. Beer, too. And bourbon. All three.

  The boat didn't like the movement. Its creaking grew into a groan.

  “Fuck you, boat,” I said, just as I found the refrigerator.

  Its contents were spilled, the bottles all broken. Nothing salvageable. And the more it seemed as if I couldn't have something to drink, the more my throat wanted what it couldn't have.

  I was getting angrier. I always got what I wanted. Drinks, food, women. Sports cars, mansions, you name it, I'd have it. This situation was no different. Why? Because I said so, that's why. And as I crawled through the wreckage, the groaning increased.

  “You're already capsized, you piece of shit. Quit your bitching,” I told it, stepped over piles of ruined, pre-packaged entrees, and found the door to the master cabin. That's where all my stuff was. My suitcase, my bag of tricks, all the toys I was going to use on Sofia until she went nuts, beached us on a sandbar and then probably walked into the ocean and drowned herself.

  “Dumb bitch,” I said, and rummaged through the remains of the bedroom. It wasn't as bad as the rest of the boat. Everything was upended, but the cabinets where I'd stored my things were still closed, safe and sound, so at least I had that going for me.

  I wrenched open the first one, and discovered I was completely wrong.

  Empty.

  It couldn't be empty. This cabinet, closest to the bed, was where I'd put my playthings. I opened the next, and the next. All of them coming up zero. No toys, no suitcase, even my fucking shaving kit was gone.

  What in the fuck?

  I was just discombobulated, was all. Understandable. I had a head trauma, was very thirsty, and the skin on my scalp felt like shrink wrap. Also the groaning. Louder. Going from its standard creeeak to a horrendous, terrible craaaack.

  All the cabinet doors swung outward, gaping like wooden mouths, as the Insatiable tipped over. To starboard, I think it was, right before I lost consciousness.

  Chapter Twelve

  MADDOX

  “Don't say I didn't warn you,” Josh said, watching me puke for the fiftieth time. My knuckles were white as I held tight to the Insatiable's railing, and I didn't understand how he could be here, because he was dead. “I told you it was a bad idea. No shame in taking Dramamine, bro. You got nothing to prove to me.”

  I wiped my mouth. I tasted like… vinegar.

  Josh leaned over the rail, standing beside me, and watched the waves that weren't waves, but sand dunes. We were sailing on sand dunes. He was wearing an obnoxious Hawaiian shirt, the one Mom bought him. He was too polite to tell her it was hideous, what with its parrots and frawns and nonsensical splashes of plasma yellow.

  I didn't know why he thought he needed to wear his football helmet, either. I guess because he loved that helmet. Number eight. Varsity quarterback, Florida Gators.

  We buried him with that helmet. Yeah, I remember that, which meant he was definitely dead.

  “How's Mom?” he asked, looking out at what wasn't an ocean, but a desert.

  I hadn't talked to her for months. I shrugged and said, “Fine, I guess.”

  “You shouldn't guess, Maddy. She's your mom, too, so you shouldn't be a dick.”

  He turned toward me. It was hard to see him through the facemask, but I could tell his eyes were dark. Sunken in.

  His hair, which he'd always kept short, was peeking out from the sides of his helmet. Long locks of red, falling to his shoulders.

  “Ginger Rapunzel,” I snorted.

  “Ppphbt. Whatever,” he returned, and now I could see his eyes weren't there anymore. His face was decaying. “Here,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a prescription bottle. “Better than Dramamine.”

  I didn't like it when he did this. The doctors said it was okay, though, so he kept taking the pills to offset the pain. It was the Gator's fault. Quarterbacks shouldn't get sacked three times in the first quarter. This year's offense was crap. They couldn't hold back a fart, let alone a thousand pounds of defensive tackles.

  Josh took my hand and turned it palm up. Held the bottle above it, shook out a few capsules, and when I looked down, all I saw were bones. Gripping my fingers and not letting go.

  “First one's free, bro,” he laughed.

  I pulled my hand away, slicing my skin open against his fingernails. They had grown long and taken on a gruesome hue of yellow, a lot like the splotches on his shirt.

  I kept stumbling backwards, cycling my arms for balance, until I felt the boat railing against my ass. Then nothing, as I pitched overboard. I didn't hit water, I didn't hit sand, I didn't hit anything. I just kept falling, falling, falling into a bottomless abyss, Josh's skull smiling down at me.

  “Hut! Hut hut!” he yelled and waved.

  I watched him disappear, but I didn't want him to go. I wanted to cry out for help, and just as I was about to scream his name, a giant marshmallow swallowed my head. I could no longer breathe, let alone yell.

  I flailed about like a fish in a net, struggling, groping, trying to pull the marshmallow off my face.

  It was a pillow.

  I sat straight up, gasping for air and quickly realizing it was just a nightmare, and here I was, in the master cabin of a shipwrecked boat. A night sky shone through the cracked windows, and other than the crashing of waves, there wasn't a sound to be heard.

  The first thing I would do, I decided, was not to let myself get knocked out again. This made three times in twenty four hours. Which was exactly three times too many. It was the cabinet door above th
e bed that popped me. It was hanging at an absolute right angle, because the boat had fallen completely on its side.

  I was about to start clamoring out of the cabin, when something inside that cabinet gave me reason to pause.

  I couldn't really identify what was there. Or not there. There were wires, small thin ones, that looked as though they had been cut. They trundled out from the back panel like so many spider legs.

  It occurred to me that even though I'd not bothered to read the Insatiable's safety manual, I had an inkling this is where the GPS tracking system should be.

  The second thing I would do was sue Atlantic Charter for gross negligence. Whether they were replacing the system, upgrading it, reinstalling it, they'd allowed one of their crafts to leave the docks without its GPS.

  I'd had it with this fucking crate.

  I clamored out from under the mess, and squeezed my way through the window frame. The sand was nice enough to break my fall, but my entire head felt like a bowling ball after a league night, my throat was parched, and now I was getting hungry, too.

  Why I hadn't thought about it before, I supposed I could blame on the overall shock of the fucking situation. This kind of thing didn't happen in real life. Shipwrecks and castaways only happened on television and in the movies.

  Bottom line; this was bullshit. So I pulled out my phone to call for help. Or text for help. Or use the emergency feature that would broadcast my current location to the local Search and Rescue's satellite.

  I was impressed with the fact that the Samsung's military grade casing kept it safe. There wasn’t so much as a crack on the screen. There was no real reason for me to have military grade casing other than it looked cool as shit, and the ladies seemed to like it. Also impressive was it was still functioning, further proving I was right (again) not to go for the latest Apple product.

  But.

  No bars.

  The little WiFi icon had an aggressive, almost angry, X through it.

  No service.

  There comes a point when everything gets so damn ludicrous, there's nothing to do but laugh. Which was exactly what I started doing, until the cut on my cheek reminded me laughing required smiling, and doing so stung like a hornet.

  “God damn it!” I screamed, further anguishing my desiccated larynx, and dropped to my knees. This fucking sucked.

  I tried to coax some saliva from my mouth, but came up dry.

  This was her fault. All her fault.

  I wasn't going to die of thirst, was I?

  No. Fuck no. That kind of demise happened to idiots that got lost on a hike, or wandered too far from the moors. They happened to people like Sofia who wandered into the wrong office with the wrong things on their minds. They did not happen to me. Not to Maddox Fucking Petersen. I was a billionaire. I was a CEO. CEOs don't die on desert islands.

  Wait. Was this a desert island? Or tropical?

  Tropical. I was going to go with tropical. We were, after all, on our way to the Bahamas. Nassau, to be precise. There was going to be a ton of sex, she was going to be my little firecracker. I'd brought along so many accessories for the occasion, and now… look at me. No, this wasn’t right. Not in the least fucking bit.

  I laid back on the sand and stared at the stars. There were way too many of them. People think they're pretty and majestic, but to me they were just oppressive.

  “Martin's the brains of the operation,” I’d heard her say.

  I shut my eyes, and thought of her. Holding a gun, aiming it at me, standing in my bathroom. The look of total disbelief when I'd grabbed the barrel and taken it away. The lovely way she'd been presented to me, bound to my bed and helpless, those beautiful breasts exposed and heaving.

  My phone may have had no internet, but it did have battery life. Pictures. I opened my eyes, held the screen in front of me, and brought up my favorite image.

  I spread my fingers and zoomed in on her chest, those pink and luscious nipples. They'd felt so good against my tongue, my teeth. They tasted like heaven, too. And when she had tried to writhe away from my advances, they tasted even better.

  Remembering that, my mouth began to water.

  Not much, but enough. Not real relief, just a slight coat of moisture. Her brow was moist, when I'd hovered above her. Small beads of perspiration on her forehead, a slight sheen of sweat on her chest, toned biceps clenched as she struggled against the cuffs.

  I knew what would make me feel better. I would give the hand not holding the phone a job to do. I was halfway to fully erect anyway, and with her vision firmly in my mind, I put the phone aside, and unbuckled my pants.

  Her lips would have tasted heavenly, too. I pictured them slightly apart, waiting for me to devour them. Pleading for me to devour them. I'd want to go down on her, first. Keep her teased, bring her to the brink, then back off.

  My non-dominant hand was doing its due diligence – and as I imagined her begging me to come inside her, the heat of my climax blossoming within my groin, her pussy so hot and tight – my hand clenching me harder and harder…until...

  Smoke.

  A pungent, sickeningly sweet aroma wafted through the air – the aroma of a distant campfire. It blended with the salty scent of the ocean, and settled against my senses.

  I clenched my teeth. I fucking hated campfires. I hated camping in general. There is no more offensive stench than that singed, spicy wreak of the great outdoors. And it was ruining my pleasure.

  I could jerk off anytime, anywhere, under any circumstance. Save for this one.

  My molars ground together as I let go of myself, essentially tossing my own cock away. It was swollen, engulfed, and demanded I finish what I started. It couldn't understand why I didn't. It wasn't used to being unfulfilled, and it expressed its disappointment in an unlivable ache that gravitated from my shaft, to my balls and further up.

  I rolled over on my stomach, clutching at the sand with my fists, hating the smell, hating the ocean, hating everything. They say hell hath no fury as a woman scorned. Try living with a contemptible cock such as mine. Hell ain’t seen nothing yet.

  I groaned, my erection disappearing like the Terminator sinking into a vat of fiery acid. It will be back, indeed, I reasoned. And the good news was– if there could be a silver lining in this cloud of erectile disappointment – that campfires would mean campers. At the very least, tourists.

  It wasn't too far-fetched of a suspicion either.

  The Southeast coast, from the tip of Florida to the Bahamas and beyond were littered with hundreds of little islands, some of which were inhabited. Most of which were not.

  These tiny plots of land, little chunks of tropical oasis floating around close to the Mediterranean, were on a lot of people's radars. High end people. High end property dealers. I'd never looked into it, myself, but I did have a colleague who, in fact, bought his own fucking island.

  Having one's own island was the status symbols of all status symbols. Way too off the grid for me, though. Even though he'd had it wired for electricity, plumbing, all the luxuries he'd need, there was something about being so far removed from civilized society that made me uneasy. Reverse agoraphobia, perhaps.

  How funny would it be if I'd been beached on that guy's slice of paradise?

  I picked myself up from the sand, having to take it slow and easy. I may have sustained not one, but two god damn concussions, and the slightest move to vertical made me dizzy.

  I held out my arms like a tightrope walker, until the vertigo dissipated. One foot in front of the other. One step at a time.

  The smell was atrocious. The sky so dark, I couldn't see where the plume was coming from. No little orange glow anywhere in the tree lines. Nothing to light my way, no beacon to follow. I was all alone, who knew how many miles away from civilization, and I had sand in my pants.

  That's why I hated the beach. Well, one of the reasons why I hated the beach. Doesn't matter how careful you are, how many precautions you take, you're always going to wind up with gritty l
ittle granules wedged into sensitive, hidden orifices. Along with the beer I was going to have, eventually, I was also going to have a shower. A jacuzzi. Hot tub and champagne.

  It all awaited me. Rescue was in my reach. All I needed to do was to find out where this fire was coming from.

  Trouble was, I didn't know how.

  I chose to keep walking, thinking that if the smell got stronger, I'd be on the right track. If it got weaker, I'd simply turn around and follow my nose. Follow my nose to paradise.

  That'd be a great song title, I thought, and grinned. I was careful to only grin on one side of my face. I'd better not get a god damn infection because of that. See? See why removing oneself from the amenities of a municipality is an inherently bad idea?

  It would be okay, though. Everything always worked out for me. I was, quite clearly, one of the few, the proud, the blessed. This little adventure of mine would make for great news fodder, too. It may even give some heart to the faceless Petersen & Stiller corporation. Renowned chief executive officer survives horrific boat incident. Oh, how endearing that would be to the public. Not that I cared.

  I did wonder, though, if the mysterious Sofia would have to be explained. Atlantic Charter had been paid to keep their mouths shut, so no problemo there. I'd told Phyllis to scrub the contract with Jericho Armored, and all their videos and surveillance footage that may show Sofia en route to my office was boxed and tucked away by this time, so I had that base covered.

  Peter and Robin Dumbass would never jeopardize their padded bank accounts by reneging on their non-disclosure agreements, and by God, they had done a decent job of keeping Sofia in a delightfully compromising position until I could get to her.

  Unfortunately, I never really got to her. Not in the biblical sense, anyway.

  I wanted to just brush that aside, say 'well, her loss', and move on. My obsessive compulsions weren't going to make that easy. I knew me, and knew my not knowing would grind my nerves for quite possibly, eternity.