I guess I really didn’t need a schooner after all.
Chapter 2 – Heat
I woke to screaming.
“Holy shit!” I sat up in complete darkness and reached around towards the noise until I got a hold of the girl’s arm. She swung at me wildly, so I gripped both her wrists to keep her from hitting me as she continued to scream. “Come on, babe, relax! It’s all right. You’re all right!”
She went from screaming to throwing herself against my chest and clinging to me. I let go of her wrists and felt her hands go up and over my shoulders with her nails digging into the skin on my back and her sobs shaking both her body and mine.
Comforting someone else was definitely not a strong point of mine. I just didn’t do that. I rarely even wanted to touch a girl after I fucked her. I didn’t have the slightest idea where to put my hands, and I couldn’t even see her anyway, but she was holding onto me, and didn’t show any signs of letting go. I was too damn tired to argue with her about it, so I didn’t push her away. I mean, she did almost die, and though I didn’t really want to think about it, I knew how far we were from land. If we found the others at first light, we’d probably be okay, but otherwise our chances weren’t all that great.
So I let her hold onto me, and I even put my arms around her awkwardly. She kept crying, and I didn’t say anything because I had no idea what I should say. I guess I could have lied to her and told her everything was fine, but I didn’t think there was much point in that. I reached over and grabbed th
e waterproof flashlight from its sealed bag, secured it in one of the loops on the inside of the raft, and turned it on.
She jumped when the light went on, and her breathing caught in her throat as she let out a soft sob. Her fingers dug into my flesh again but not quite as hard as before. I didn’t think she was actually breaking the skin or anything. She glanced quickly around the raft, pressed her cheek into my chest, and closed her eyes.
She went still kind of suddenly, and I listened to make sure she hadn’t stopped breathing again. I noticed her breathing was now really steady and figured she must have passed out or maybe just fallen back asleep. I didn’t want to wake her up and listen to her start screaming again, and I really, really wanted to lie back down. I shuffled our positions around a bit until I managed to lie down on my back with her still sprawled over my chest, holding tightly to my shoulders even in sleep.
It wasn’t comfortable, not in the least. I was still completely exhausted and figured I’d drop right back off anyway, but I was wrong. Between her lying on top of me and the crashing waves and wind from outside the canopy, I couldn’t fall back asleep at all. I sighed heavily and looked down at the young woman lying on top of me, bathed in the light of the flashlight.
She was in her early twenties, maybe, with long hair, bits of which were plastered all over her face, shoulders, and back. She was slim and wore a blue one-piece bathing suit with a pair of shorts on over it and no shoes on her feet. If she had been in flip flops or sandals like a lot of the ship’s passengers wore, she probably lost them to the storm.
She had really nice skin – all smooth and lightly tanned all over, not like a lot of chicks who were tan with blotches and shit when she didn’t get her suntan lotion put on in the right place. I kind of wanted to run my hands over it and see if it was as soft as it looked, but I figured that probably had its own special scale of inappropriateness. It reminded me of warm caramel, and I had the idiotic notion that she might taste like caramel, too.
I settled for checking out the rest of her visually instead. She was pretty small – I didn’t think she could have been much over five foot two and maybe a hundred and twenty pounds or so. Next to my six-two, ten-years-of-body-building frame, she looked like a child. I could probably lift her over my head with one hand. Of course, she had been lying on top of me for a while now, and she was starting to feel a little heavier.
Her leg shifted, and holy fuck if she didn’t rub her thigh up against my groin. We were in a life raft, for the love of God, in the middle of the fucking Caribbean, and I was getting a hard on from a half-drowned stranger lying on top of me.
Well, at least we know I’m still a guy.
She was kind of hot, from what I could tell anyway. She was also breathing and female, which is all I usually required. I tried to remember what her boob felt like when I grabbed it in the water, but I had been a little too preoccupied with trying to stay alive to commit it to memory.
Damn, I was fucked up.
Besides, she was just another one of the high society bitches that chartered ships for their little personal pleasure cruises because they were far too good for the “normal” cruise ships that went all over the place carrying “normal” people. She wasn’t my type, and I definitely wasn’t hers. My type was more likely to cost me a little cash, but at least I knew where I stood, and I didn’t have to call them later or buy them any fucking flowers. Who knew what her type might be? One thing I knew, I didn’t have the blue blood that was always the top requirement on the list. Maybe if I took a shower and shaved, she’d probably look me over and maybe consider giving me a tumble. In the end I wouldn’t be good enough to wash her Chihuahua.
I must have fallen asleep eventually because the next thing I knew there was natural light coming through the translucent sides of the raft, and it was really getting hot. This was partially because the sun was cooking us in there, but also because I had a sweaty girl lying on me.
I slid out from under her, cringing when our stuck-together skin peeled apart audibly. I set her down relatively gently and scooted myself over to the raft canopy opening. I pulled back the seal and opened up the front piece, nearly blinding myself as the sunlight flooded in.
I took a deep breath and shook my head, trying to get the sleep out of my system. My head was pounding, but without my usual spiked morning coffee and half pack of cigarettes, I didn’t think it was going to improve anytime soon. My arms and shoulders were sore and my back was stiff. It was also really fucking hot in what was basically a small greenhouse on the ocean with the equatorial sun beating down on it. All and all, I felt like shit.
The waves were a lot calmer than they had been the previous night, thankfully. I glanced back over at the girl, who was still out of it, and then whipped open my fly and pissed over the side. I managed to tuck myself back in just as she rolled a little and groaned. Not that I really cared, but she probably didn’t want to wake up to me waving my cock around. She only murmured something unintelligible and stilled, not yet awake.
I looked over the horizon and saw…water.
I maneuvered part way out of the small opening in the canopy and looked all the way around us.
More water.
Shit.
With no sign of any other lifeboats, I had to fight down the nervousness I was starting to feel in the pit of my stomach. The life raft was equipped with three days worth of food and water for four people. I could collect more water as long as it rained, and I could certainly make the food last for more than six days – probably as many as ten or twelve – but after that it was going to get nasty. I looked over at the sleeping form behind me. With her size, she was going to dehydrate fast. She was probably on the verge anyway, considering the amount of seawater she swallowed. I’d last a lot longer than she would. My stomach lurched a little again. It occurred to me I hadn’t felt that particular pang since the last time I was in a tournament.
I crouched with my head out of the opening and secured the flap to the top of the raft. In the back of the raft, near the sleeping passenger, was another, smaller opening. I released that one, too, so we could get a crosswind going through the inside of the raft. It wasn’t going to make much of a difference with the heat, but it was marginally better than nothing.
I really wanted a drink.