Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance by Savannah Rose (best ereader for pdf and epub .TXT) 📗

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