Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 57240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 57240 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 286(@200wpm)___ 229(@250wpm)___ 191(@300wpm)
“And if they don’t?”
I turn her around to face me, placing one knuckle under her chin so her gaze doesn’t waver. I make a promise I will keep, no matter the cost.
“We’ll find our way off this island even if it takes us forever, Harper. We will. We’ll get you home.”
She’s got a brother, a house, a job, a fucking life at home.
I’ve got nothing but her.
But I love this woman, and I’m getting her off this godforsaken island if it’s the last thing I do.
Chapter 3
Harper
I know he’s right, even if he can be all arrogant and domineering sometimes. I know it. I mean, I’m not stupid, even if I can be impulsive. I’m just driven. I see something I want to do, and I want it done yesterday. I’ve been like this for as long as I remember. A go-getter. Goal-oriented and focused, I get shit done. Just how I am.
And now, my primary focus is finding that damn camera.
A part of me is glad he’s as bossy as he is. If he were any less dominant, he couldn’t stand a girl like me. I’d probably walk all over him. And if I’m honest? I’d hate that.
I need a man strong enough to withstand my tempests and fire. And even though there are times that he makes me so mad I can’t see straight, I know that we work well together.
Within minutes, the sun has set so low that only moonlight filters through the leaves to the forest floor right outside the door.
He was right again. Goddamnit.
He threatened to make me stay if I got it into my head that I was out of here, and I know him well enough that I know he meant it. A dominant through and through, Cy is used to being obeyed.
How would the two of us have ever even gotten along off this island? He’d have given me one taste of his domineering ways, and I wouldn’t have granted him submission but a piece of my mind.
Who knew it was hot when a guy like Cy got all growly alpha?
Not me.
But hell is it ever.
And he’s right, too. He’s bigger than I am, and I can’t outrun him. And if I’d gone down to the watering hole at dusk to go looking, I not only would’ve not found anything, he’d have stopped me. Probably tied me up and spanked my ass, and not in the good way. I know him well enough to know that.
Even if we get off this island. How would two people like us even stand each other anymore? And for the first time since I landed here, a thought hits me out of nowhere, so startling in its intensity that I blink in surprise.
I don’t want off this island.
What?
Of course I do. I don’t know why my thoughts went there so quickly.
I need to get off this island, I argue with myself. But then the thought of… of whatever we have here no longer being as precious as it is now, somehow being tainted by others… it kills me.
I fall asleep with the certain knowledge that I will not let Cy move away from me. Not now. Not if we get off this island.
Not ever.
I have a weird, troubling dream, about my brother Daniel. He’s on the island with me, eager to go swimming, younger even than when I left him as if somehow time’s reversed while I’ve been away.
“You can’t swim out there, Daniel,” I tell him. “There are sharks.”
But he doesn’t listen. I scream for him not to go, but he goes anyway. Panic sweeps through me. Flailing, I wake to the sound of my own screams, my heart pounding so hard I feel nauseous.
“Harper?” It’s pitch black in here, but I can feel Cy sitting up beside me. I blink, as my current state of reality comes flooding back in.
Daniel isn’t going to swim in shark-infested waters.
Daniel isn’t here.
“You okay, baby?”
I breathe in deeply. It was a dream. Just a dream.
I shake my head, even though he can’t see me. “Just a bad dream,” I tell him. I’m glad for the darkness, so he can’t see me wipe away my tears. I miss my baby brother so much my heart aches sometimes.
He pulls me close to his chest, tucking me against him as he spoons me from behind.
“Alright, baby,” he says. “You’re alright.”
I close my eyes, willing myself to accept this from him, his reminder and assurance. He needs this as much as I do, someone to protect.
But am I alright? What if I’m not? How would I even know anymore? What if the two of us have gone insane and neither of us even realizes it? What if insanity’s become our new norm?
And as I close my eyes, I hear it. Thunder cracking and rain falling against our shelter in torrents. I sigh. It’s pouring out. Another storm.