Savage Read Free

they’d stopped talking had no use for me.
    The story of my life was repeating itself right here on the heated sand of this small island in the middle of the Eastern hemisphere. Alone. Unwanted. Abandoned. All over again.
    My sobs were quiet, but my tears flowed freely, wetting the sand molded around my face. My parents hadn’t wanted me, the foster families I’d been shuffled between hadn’t wanted me, even the few boys I’d dated along the way hadn’t wanted me—at least they hadn’t wanted me for anything other than what resided between my legs.
    Unwanted. Even on this island, my apparent birthright had found me.
    I felt a break from the harsh sun beating down on me right before a tall, dark shadow lowered beside me. Without a word or grunt, his arms wound beneath me, lifting me from my pyre of baking sand. He carried me like I weighed nothing at all, leaving his spear in the spot my body had just been.
    He held me out away from his body as he carried me down the beach, but after a while, his body relaxed and I settled into the cradle of his arms. He never seemed to tire, yet despite the strength I felt in his hold, he had a gentleness I did not expect. I had not expected to find anything soft or gentle or compassionate in this stranger who had been alone, isolated, forced to live every moment in a state of survival.
    But in my twenty-four years of life, I wasn’t sure I’d ever been touched with such tenderness. Treated with such concern. I couldn’t remember a single time I’d ever been held, not even as a child, and feeling it now made me want to cry all over again.
    It wasn’t the feeling of coming home. It was, for the first time, feeling what could be home.

3
    Jane
    W hen he lifted another hollowed out coconut shell of clear liquid to my lips, I drank it. It tasted like water. A few hours later I was still alive, so my mystery Tarzan wasn’t trying to poison me after all.
    Actually, the opposite seemed to be true.
    After settling me into some kind of handmade hammock-like swing hanging from one of the trees close to the beach, he’d gone back to the water with his spear and, in no time at all, emerged with a couple of colorful fish hanging from the tip of his spear. He roasted them over a fire and made me a plate with what I guessed was breadfruit, and he even dished me up more once I’d finished the first round.
    He never said a word—he barely even looked my way—but it was apparent he was as aware of my presence as I was of his. I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening stretched out in that hammock, watching him and taking in my new surroundings. My situation was hardly ideal, but it could have been worse. Had it not been for Tarzan, I very well could have been close to dying from dehydration. Had I stumbled upon some other castaway, I very well could have been wishing I was dead.
    Sure, mine didn’t seem to communicate, but he seemed preoccupied with taking care of me, all the while respecting my space and maintaining distance between us. Having him take such good care of me, yet seem so apprehensive to be near me was strange.
    It made me want to know his story. I was desperate to discover it. Had he once upon a time been Dr. Grant Bridger, whose lab coat I was currently draped in? Or was he someone else entirely?
    Every question I asked him was answered with more silence, so after a while, I gave up. At least for the night. Tomorrow, once I had renewed energy from the food and rest, my questions would keep coming. He had to speak sometime. If he knew a language I understood was yet to be determined, but he had to talk. Eventually.
    My eyelids were just starting to droop when I felt two familiar arms scoop around my body and lift me out of the hammock. This time, he didn’t hold me away as he had at first. He let my body curl into his chest as he carried me toward the hut. When we stopped below the cutout entrance, he lifted me so I could crawl inside without having to strain my wrist by