I laid there for a moment, the cold water lapping at my chest, and clenched my teeth as I waited for the pain to subside. Even a little bit would be appreciated.
After a moment or two, the fiery ache in my leg wasn't going anywhere. God damn it. One of the first rules in the world of survival was don't hurt yourself. Say, for instance, you're hundreds of miles from the nearest hospital, medical hut or medicine man, and the worst possible scenario will go from zero to sixty if you do something catastrophic, such as break a bone.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, and fuck again.
I took a deep breath, and went to wiggle my toes, hoping they would respond.
They did.
They hated me, but they moved. Which was more than I could say for my knee.
Alright. Don't panic. Assess. Rule number two was assess.
Potentially fractured, not paralyzed left leg. Locked meniscus on the other leg, just for fun. Freezing cold water splashing up toward my shoulders. Then it was at my chest just a few minutes ago. So the tide was coming in.
Lovely.
Right now it probably looked as though I was doing no more than reclining on my side in a wading pool. All that was missing was a Pina Colada and a tiny umbrella stabbed through a fruit kabob. In a few agonizing minutes, that water would be up to my nose.
Nope. Not gonna happen. That is a god damn stupid way to go, and I'd be hexed if I was going to check out like this after everything I'd gone through.
Isn't that strange? A couple of days ago, you were just fine with suicide. Now you want to live? Fascinating, really. You'd make a great case study.
There was nothing wrong with my arms, save for a few scratches and cuts, and I was in reach of the jagged rocks.
They found Rebecca in a pool of warm water. Blood makes water warm, for a while, anyway. You never asked if the bath water was warm or cold.
I gripped the side of the rock. There were finger-sized holes, natural pockets of erosion, and I could haul myself out of the water. If I was able to do that – and really why couldn't I – I'd assess the next problem, which would be me and my broken body beached on the sand like an ailing manatee.
“First things first,” I hissed, more angry than anything.
I got a firm hold in the rock holes, expelled all my air, and pulled.
Chapter Twenty-Four
MADDOX
Never once did I contemplate or reflect on the man I was.
In all my dealings, business or personal, there was never a reason to look back and consider anything. I was always right, even when I was wrong, my decisions were the correct ones.
I was an intelligent person.
A passionate man.
And while some may view my behind-the-scenes pleasures as questionable at best, detestable at worst, life was my rodeo and I was well within my rights to ride it as I saw fit.
Women. I'd ridden a lot of them. That's all they were to me – playthings for entertainment purposes only. It never occurred to me that there should be, or would be, reason for them to be anything more.
Then came Ramona.
Not Maria the maid, not Sofia the Maid, but Ramona Sanchez – a former small business owner who I'd chewed up and spit out without even knowing it. Until she brought it to my attention. Granted, in a very assertive and unique fashion, but realizations are as realizations do. Or something like that.
As far as my sexual addiction went, it was no more than par for my testosterone course. My “T” numbers were off the charts – according to my physicians. I, therefore, operated on shooting first and never asking questions later. Didn't need to. Didn't want to. I was Man, hear me roar.
Or so I thought.
Now, staring down the barrel of forty years old, and circling back from whence I came, the bottom line end-of-the-day epiphany was it wasn't my rodeo anymore.
I threw a stone into the remains of the fire, watched a gentle shower of embers rain down into the ash.
It was lonely here, by myself. After Ramona had left with her trademark 'fuck you' and heated glare, I had to fight the urge to follow her. Not that I was in any great physical shape to go trekking along the sand.
A sarcastic chuckle escaped me as I thought about asking her if she enjoyed romantic walks on the beach.
I'd imagine she'd clobber me with the closest available piece of driftwood.
That’s what I liked the most about her. She was a firecracker, a woman of passion. In all my days of bondage, sadomasochism, and sexual games – she was the only one who had ever turned the tables on me. The only one who had ever put me in the position of the submissive.
What she had done – or had not done – to me was the erectile equivalent to water boarding. I could call it tough love.
I don't think she would see it that way, though.
In fact, if we were ever to be plucked from this Eden on the Atlantic, I'd never see her again. Except, perhaps, on Good Morning America or Sixty Minutes, some network tell-all, sharing her tale about being marooned on a tropical island by the billionaire who kidnapped her.
I wondered how much detail she would go into. Whatever she decided, life as I knew and commanded it was over.
Ramona had gotten me to see things for what they really were, though. And what I was was an asshole. A lonely asshole.
I'd never really told anyone about Josh, or my family disowning me. Sure, Martin was privy to what happened, and on a lesser level so was Phyllis. No one else, however. Even if I took out ads, ran commercials, and bought out every billboard from here to the west coast, no one else would care.
That was the empire I'd constructed.
A chunk of driftwood dropped into the pile of ash.
The last of the wood, it looked like.
I shielded my eyes from the sun, and saw that it had dropped quite a bit since she'd left. In fact, it was a few degrees away from touching the horizon. Meaning it would be dark soon. Meaning it would be cold.
It hadn't taken her this long to fish before, so, what gave? She could have changed her mind, I suppose. Left me here to fend for myself and set up another camp, somewhere. Perhaps around the site of the Insatiable.
Was that logical?
Not really. All the gear was here. The food, the water, the purification straw. Blankets. The kit. My bag filled with cuffs and vibrators which I wanted to bury in the sand and leave for some misguided pirate to find. Argh, there's yer treasure, matey. You have fun with it 'cuz I be done. Ahoy, y'all.
I wanted to make love to her like a real man. Free, and unfettered, her arms wrapped around me while my hands held her face and I kissed her.
She should have been back by now, shouldn't she?
I pulled myself up off my ass, joints popping and aching in protest.
Dear Lord, I was still naked.
I shuffled over to my bag, and rummaged through it. Maybe I could find a pair of boxers, or board shorts.
Nope.
Just some KY Jelly, a pair of fur-lined shackles, and a silken blindfold.
Christ. I was a pig.
A lonely, stupid pig with a fifty degree night on its way, no fire, and no food. No Ramona.
Something's wrong, I thought. She would have come back. Should have come back. And even if she did decide to pull a Lord of the Flies and set up an opposite, enemy camp, I still wanted to talk to her. Be with her. Ask her to find it in her heart to forgive me. And if she wanted to roll a boulder on my cranium instead, so be it. I deserved it.
I took a few tentative steps away from the dying fire, finding my knees moving a little easier the more I walked. My back was getting less and less stiff the more steps I took. My strides became longer the closer I got to the dunes, and by the time I could see the white of the waves, I was almost upright.
No sign of Ramona, though.
Where was that little fishing spot she liked? The little tide pool…. left, right?
I shook my head, growing more and more disappointed in myself. Not only was I a pathetic city mouse, I had
no sense of direction, either. Which way was the boat? East, or west? Or would it be north or south? Fuck! I couldn't remember. All those head-knocks from before, perhaps, screwing with my short-term memory.
I scanned the shoreline, squinting against the setting sun, and didn't see anything. Just miles and miles of pristine white beach and the big, rolling waves. It didn't look as though there would be a moon tonight, so that ruled out God's flashlight as a source of illumination.
God's flashlight. Wow. Hadn't thought about that in years. When he was in kindergarten, Josh called the moon God's flashlight. Drew a picture of it with a combination of colored pencils and crayons and it really was pretty damn good for a five-year-old. I remembered it stayed on the refrigerator for years.
I don't remember seeing any of my stuff on the stainless steel beneath the souvenir magnets. I was already being classified as a problem by then, anyway. The only thing my parents could hang on the fridge was a fairly disturbing report from my first child psychologist – compulsory, socio-erotic tendencies. Yeah. I could see why they stuck with God's flashlight.
I stood on the shore for a few minutes, trying to see what wasn't there, trying to hear over the crashing waves. They were getting closer, it appeared. The tide was coming in for its nightly romp, and I should just leave the beach to its own devices and head back to the camp site. If I wandered too far, I'd get lost. Like an idiot. And even though the fire was more than likely out by this point, there were blankets and a half a bar of chocolate.
I turned around to make my way back to the dying fire – having convinced myself that Ramona had indeed, returned to the Insatiable – when I didn't.
Like I said, I wasn't a contemplative man. I didn't have that inner voice everyone claims to have, listen to, the invisible guide in one's soul that points out right from wrong. Good from bad. Truth from lie.
So it made no sense to me why I was lingering on the dunes. It was almost as if there was a force field around me, and the little voice I didn't have said –You should go down to the shore… just to check. Just to see.
I scratched my head and felt stubble for the first time in years. I ran my hand down to my chin, and felt it there, too. My fingertips grazed the cut on my cheek, which didn't feel nearly as awful as it had since Ramona slammed a glass in my face.
Although I was tired, achy, and desperately needed to sleep, I followed the bestower of the unseen advice. I didn't believe in spiritual guides, or the indefinable 'feeling' people get that prevents them from, say, getting on the plane that ends up crashing into the mountain.
Chugging across the dunes was much like trodding through dry, deep snow without snowshoes or skis. It was a bitch, really, and my body was screaming out that I was in no shape to do this kind of weird pilgrimage. I told my body to take it up with the new, talkative presence in my head. We'd have chocolate later.
I don't know how long I was arguing with myself, when I saw the little outcropping of rocks in the breakwater. Ramona's tide pool. White water crashed all around it, waves exploding upon impact – albescent, violent fireworks – erupting all around Ramona's ole fishing hole. Just no Ramona.
“See?” I told myself. Bad sign, by the way. Talking to myself. My fatigue meter must be pegged all the way into the red zone. Debilitating hunger wasn't helping.
I was ready to give in to my weariness, just lay down in the sand and fall asleep. I'd done it before, I could do it again. No big deal. I'd have a nice snooze, and wake up in the morning. Find the Insatiable. Find Ramona.
It felt as though I was being pushed. Touched, without any physical contact. At the time I chalked it up to pure exhaustion. And as I clawed my way up the jagged outcrop, the spray of the ocean hit me like the slap of a thousand, angry palms.
Her knuckles were white – locked into the eroded, hollowed out portions of the boulders. Her hair was plastered against her face, and her entire body shook so badly, it looked like she was in the throes of a grand mal seizure.
My heart froze.
“Ramona?” I reached down to touch her. She was colder than ice. “Hey, Ramona!”
Her head turned toward me, slowly. Her eyes didn't even look like eyes anymore. They were glazed over, glassy, as if the lights were out but someone was home. Sort of.
I dropped to my belly, the rocky ledge like shards of ice, scraping and cutting my skin. To say nothing of what it was doing to the rest of me. Everything below the belt was exposed and dragging against frozen sandpaper. Industrial grade. I cupped my hand beneath her armpit, intending to pull her out, when the glaze in her eyes turned clear. Clear as crystal.
She screamed louder than humanly possible. “NO!”
“Ramona, it's okay. I'm not going to–”
“Get fucking bent and get your hand off me!”
Jesus Christ. She was a wildcat in a steel trap. If I had a blanket, I'd throw it over her head just to calm her the shit down.
The ocean spray hit again, slamming into us, as if we were on a crab boat in the Bering Sea. “You want to stay here? Now who's the dumb ass?”
“My leg's broken, you piece of shit!”
“All the more reason not to stay here,” I said, and reached down again.
“It's gonna hurt...” she put her face into her elbow, her teeth chattering so violently I thought she may shatter them.
“Yep. It's gonna hurt, and it's gonna suck. You ready?”
“I hate you.”
“On three,” I said, and saw her fingers relax their grip. “One. Two,” Her eyes squeezed shut. “Three.”
She came up like a fish in a barrel. Not to be funny, but that's how easy it was. It was the shrieking that was terrible. So loud, so painful, my eardrum shut itself off with a protective little hum.
“You're good, you're good,” I said, getting her up on the ledge, and seriously not knowing what the fuck to do next. “What… what should I do?”
“Are you fucking high?” she screeched. Ramona was not a screecher, but really, I couldn't blame her right now.
“Cut me some slack, huh? You've got a broken leg and I don't want to break it more, okay?”
Two waves broke in rapid succession, as if the ocean was done with our human shit, and wanted us off her rocks.
“Just… just get us off of here...”
“Carry you?”
“Like a fucking bride across a threshold,” she bit back against the pain, and locked her arms around my neck.
Getting us down from the outcrop was like getting out of the world's most poorly designed Jacuzzi. She was so cold; I may as well have been carrying a hundred pounds worth of ice bags.
My wrists were aching hot, grit and gravel were sliding into my ass, and trying to be gentle with her wasn't an option. The waves kept spilling over us, shards of boulder scraped into the back of my thighs, and when my feet finally hit the sand, I almost dropped her.
I almost dropped both of us. My knees threatened to buckle, her grip around my neck increased to vice-like proportions, and I fought against both gravity and exhaustion as I stumbled forward.
The camp was so far away. I had a vague recollection of what direction to take, but actually getting there...?
“Put me down...” she said.
“But, your leg.”
“Let me try.” She sucked in a huge, snotty breath through her nostrils, and unlocked her arms.
She cried out when her battered leg straightened beneath her. I held on tightly, my hand around her waist, supporting her like a drunk frat buddy limping across the quad.
“Can you do this?” I asked, looking down at her leg. Her knee was swollen, a patchwork of cuts and abrasions on her skin. It looked as though it had gone through a battlefield. And lost.
“Can you?” she shot back.
The glassy look was long gone. In its place was anger.
She was hurting, badly, but she wasn't about to admit it. She could be standing next to me with an amputated appendage, bleeding out on the sand and still be staring at me wi
th her patented 'eff you' expression.
I smiled. “You're a hell of a woman, Ramona.”
“You're a sexist shit,” she replied, placing her hand on my shoulder, and taking one tentative step with the good leg.
“You think I'm sexist?”
“Because you fucking are,” she seethed.
Another step.
“You're right,” I nodded, adjusting my grip around her torso. A great big naked crutch with wet sand rubbing between his butt cheeks. That was me. “But what if I told you I've changed?”
“Save it,” she said, concentrating on each awful stride. “People like you,” she gasped, pretending nothing hurt. “Men like you don't change.”
“Oh, yeah? Now who's being sexist?”
“I can be sexist if I want.”
“But it's not okay for me?”
“Nope,” she spoke through gritted teeth.
I glanced over my shoulder, back at the outcropping. So far we'd gotten all of twenty yards. And in front of us, the dunes. They looked bigger. Menacing. Just daring us to make it up and over and back to camp.
“You need… you need to take a break?” I said, attempting not to sound as winded as I was.
There was plenty of oxygen out here. You'd think I'd be able to breathe some of it in.
Ramona stopped, looking ahead. Puzzled. “Where's the smoke?”
“What smoke?”
“From the fire!” she yelled, which hurt like shit, apparently. She dug her fingernails into my shoulder. My sunburn. “You let it go out?”
“I… well, I didn't–”
“Oh, my good Jesus,” she said. “How the hell did you make it this long?”
“This long what? What are you saying? How many people do you know that can keep a fire going?”
She muttered something under her breath, and shook her head. I think she said 'lame', but I wasn't sure.
“What did you say?”
“I said you're lame.” She put her focus on the sand in front of her, and took another tiny step. At this rate, we'd make it back to the campsite sometime before Christmas. I didn't want to wait until Christmas.
Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Page 21