Savage Read Free Page A

pulling myself up. I hadn’t even made it to the woven-leaf mattress before he’d crawled inside and was laying a flat piece of bark over the opening, sealing us inside for the night.
    I’d never been so aware of another human being in my life as I was right then. While I was thankful for the hut that would protect me from bugs and whatever else crept out of the jungle at night, it was small for two people. Especially small for two people who were looking at each other the way he and I were.
    He was staring at me laid out on the organic mattress, his eyes alive and his chest moving faster. His gaze swept down my body, lingering on where the end of the lab coat hugged my thighs. He made no move to come closer, no move to touch what he was admiring, but I wasn’t used to being looked at like that.
    It wasn’t lust filling his stare—it was something else. Something more worshipful, something almost sacred. Shit, my own chest started rising and falling faster the longer I watched him admire me. Since he wasn’t being shy about letting his gaze roam my body, I did the same.
    His body was truly something to behold, the kind of body that made a woman fantasize about submitting to and experiencing the kind of power those muscles possessed. They were made for work, made for movement, and I shifted when an image flashed into my head of exactly what kind of work and movement I was thinking about.
    What am I thinking? I was stranded on some unknown island with some unknown man, quite possibly never to return to civilization, and I was fantasizing about this stranger. This was not the opportune time to be thinking about romance and all that came with it. It was pretty much the worst time to be thinking about it.
    Just when it looked like he was about to reach out and touch me, he moved back into the opposite corner of the hut and worked to get comfortable. I hadn’t given any thought to sleeping arrangements. This was his place, his leafy mattress—it wasn’t right for him to stuff himself into a corner and try to sleep. The guy had already saved my life, attended to my injuries, and fed, watered, and sheltered me. I couldn’t take his bed now too.
    When I started to slide off of the mattress, his eyes fired open. His head shook once as his hand lifted in a stay kind of motion.
    “This is your home.” I sighed, wondering how I could ever repay this stranger’s overwhelming acts of kindness.
    His hand circled the hut before landing on me. That same fire I’d seen in his eyes before ignited again. “Mine.”
    My eyes widened when I heard his voice. It was deep and surprisingly smooth for someone who didn’t seem to think much of talking. Mine . So the two times I’d heard him speak, he’d used the same word each time. At least it was English, so maybe one day my questions could actually be answered. Mine. What did he mean by that? The hut was his? The mattress? The damn island?
    . . . I was his?
    That thought should have made me more uneasy than it did.
    When I moved to slide off of the mattress again, his body tensed; I even detected his jaw doing the same beneath the thickness of his beard.
    “Okay, okay,” I said, laying back down. I didn’t doubt, based on the look he’d given me, that he’d throw me right back on if I tried rolling off.
    After a minute, he seemed content that I wasn’t going to move, and he closed his eyes. Every time he started to doze off, his head would rock forward, his chest following, which would snap him awake only to restart the process all over again.
    When it happened for a fourth time, I exhaled and scooted to the edge of the mattress. Then I patted the empty space beside me.
    At first he looked at me curiously, like he wasn’t sure what I was asking, but then realization settled in his eyes. His head shook as he tried for the fifth time to fall asleep propped up in his corner of the hut.
    “Come on,” I urged, patting the empty space again. “This is big enough for two. It’s