Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance Savannah Rose (readnow TXT) 📖

Thanks a lot, Ramona Sanchez. You and your dead sister named Becca, the one with the dead daughter. What, that makes her your niece? I regret to hear of their passing, but we must continue to live in the moment, with an eye on the future.

That last part. About eyes on the future. Living in the moment, eyes on the future. That was a great tag line, I remembered, about a thousand years ago when I used to wear Italian three piece suits and eat Sushi at board meetings. Not now – not this moment – face down in the sand, chained like an escaped slave from a cargo ship with my bare ass pointed to the heavens.

Take a gander at this, God. Josh. Becca, whoever you are.

Chapter Twenty-Two

MADDOX

Deep in the twilight hours, time did something strange. It stopped meaning anything. For someone like me – whose every moment was scheduled, dictated, and accounted for – this was a completely alien concept. Yet, everything had become alien, hadn't it?

I must have fallen asleep. Or passed out. Apples to apples, really.

When I moved, I was chagrined to discover everything hurt. My head throbbed. My joints were stiff, and my skin was raw from spending the evening in sand. Also, my hands were missing.

A terrified gasp escaped me. I pulled what looked like stumps from the muddy sand.

I started breathing again when my wrists emerged. All ten fingers. A short lived relief, however, when I saw what the cuffs had done to my flesh. They were cut like a side of brisket. And swollen. Black and blue with bruises. Purple, too.

“Oh, what the fuck...” I said, and started stretching my fingers, making fists, and stretching them again. At least they worked. They felt as though they were stricken with a mammoth case of arthritis, but they could function. Thank God for small favors, right?

A night bird chirped from the top of the tree where I'd been locked, as if it were agreeing with me. The branch where I'd hung stuck halfway out of the water, splintered in half. I could only conclude that the lightning had missed me by that much. God must have missed.

“Not that great a shot, huh?” I chuckled, then shut myself up.

I was not a religious man. I wasn't even spiritual. No time for that shit.

Other than luck, I couldn't come up with a rational reason why I wasn't a fricasseed carcass floating in the water. But, really, why take unnecessary chances? I was in enough fucking trouble. I didn't need to piss off some unknown force that may or may not have been responsible for sparing my life.

Such as it was.

I pulled myself up to my knees, feeling about ninety years old as opposed to my virile, thirty something self, and looked to the night sky. All those stars. Clusters of them, dots of diamonds peeking through the canopy. Shining, shimmering on the pond water. They were quite pretty, actually, if you were in to that crap.

I thought of tossing a little stone into the water, disrupting the calm surface and jeweled reflection, but there were no little stones. Just sand. And my arms hurt like a mother fucker. So fuck stones.

I held my hands in front of me, trying to assess the extent of the injuries. Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess. My wrists were swelling, like what happens when a ring is too small for a finger. I'd really done a number on myself. With Sofia's help.

Or, should I say, Ramona.

Ramona Sanchez, who claimed I killed her sister, and her niece.

What the fuck, girl? And more importantly, what do I do now?

I had no god damn idea. Other than ordering venison at the Huntsman's Lodge once upon a time, nature and I were on opposite sides of the map.

A map. Surely this island was on a chartered water way. There was nothing man didn't know of, couldn't label, or define. Certainly there would be other boats, or planes, even helicopters flying past. They'd see the wreckage of the Insatiable, and come to investigate.

That's exactly where I'd be when they did – at the site of the wreck. All I had to do was find my way back to the shore – how hard could it be – and wait beside the boat. The Insatiable was a worthless shell of its former, grand self, but it was a semblance of civilization. I wanted to curl up next to it, tell it I loved it, and wait for rescue.

At the time, it was a great plan. A fucking fantastic plan, if I did say so myself, and exactly what I was going to do.

My fucking fantastic plan began falling apart approximately five seconds after I implemented it.

The soles of my feet were sore. Tender, having been forced to trudge across the terrain on the way to this fine oasis, then across the rocks and stones on the pond floor. My feet were used to Himalayan salt baths and pedicures. I used water shoes in my swimming pool, for Christ's sake. We weren't prepared for this.

I tried to ignore it, which was impossible. But I ignored it, anyway. I thought of brandy snifters and cigars. The things I'd have once the cavalry arrived. As branches and fawns slapped at my face, snagged at my skin, I put my mind on my bed. My comfortable, wonderful bed. The one in my room, back home. The one at the office, too, where I'd mistakenly had Miss Sanchez...

“No. Don't think of her,” I said, my voice coming from somewhere else. “Don't think of that, because you're looking toward the future. Not the past. You're–”

It felt like a stone lodged in the back of my throat. I was thirsty again. So I had to think my thoughts, to myself, and attempt to conserve