Surviving Raine 01 (20 page)

I used a little of the water to clean the meat from the fragile bones.  Bird meat isn’t that great to eat raw because of their predilection for parasites, so I cleaned it carefully.  Making sure it was relatively safe was worth a little water waste.  I cut the meat into strips and lay them out on the canopy of the raft to dry in the sun.  It would make it a little more palatable at least.

When I slid back through the opening, Raine was awake and taking a drink of water.

“Full water rations today,” I told her.  “Tomorrow we go to two-thirds.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Raine responded dryly.  I stared at her for a minute, a dozen insults forming on my lips.  Then I remembered how I woke up, with her hand still tangled through my hair and my head using her stomach as a pillow.  She was warm and soft and…

Damnit.

“Good morning,” I mumbled.  “We’ll be having a late lunch, but we will be eating.”

“You found fish?”

“No,” I said.  “Pelican.  I’m sure it’s a delicacy somewhere, too.”

Raine snickered, and I smiled at the sight of her bright eyes and the sound of her laughter.  We passed the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon talking bullshit.  She talked about friends of hers and their crazy shopping habits, and I talked about how much juvenile detention sucked.  When I checked the meat again, it was dry enough to eat at least, so I pulled half of it in, handed Raine a chunk, and showed her how to tear it into smaller chunks to eat it.

“It’s your turn,” I told her.

“What do you want me to talk about?” Raine asked.

“Tell me about your mom,” I suggested, silently hoping I wasn’t treading on ground best left untraveled.  Then I wondered where the hell that thought even came from.  Since when did I give a shit?  Oh yeah, since now, apparently.  “You never mention her.”

“There isn’t a lot to say,” Raine responded.  She placed a small bit of pelican meat into her mouth and made a face while she chewed it.  I wasn’t sure if it was because of the taste or my question.  “When I was four, she died in a car accident.  I was in the backseat, but I don’t remember anything about it.  Icy roads, nasty curve that she must have taken too fast for the road conditions.  Dad almost wasn’t going to let me learn how to drive when I turned sixteen.  He never really got over her.”

“Do you remember her at all?”

“Yes, some things.” Raine looked up to me, then back down to her hands again.  “She was your typical post-sixties eccentric hippie.  I remember her always taking me places to plant trees and pick up paper along the road to recycle.  We even made our own paper from the stuff we found once, and then I drew pictures on it for my dad’s desk at the station.  She worked part-time at the hospital, so she was always around when I got home from school.  When I was little, Dad said she took me to the playground at a nearby park every day to ride the merry-go-round.  Apparently, I liked spinning in circles until I puked.”

Raine chuckled quietly.

“It sounds like you were close,” I said.  I’d long stopped feeling jealous of people’s relationships with their parents, but I still found myself wondering if my mother had ever done anything like that with me.

“We were,” Raine acknowledged.  “Her passing probably made me a lot closer to my dad than I might have been otherwise.  Being a single parent was hard for him, especially when I got older and he had to explain the facts of life to me.  I think he just about turned red when he had to talk about
feminine hygiene
!”

This time, Raine laughed out loud.  Her comment sparked another question.

“Um, speaking of such things…” I raised an eyebrow at her.  “We’ve been out here two weeks now and...well…are we going to run into
that
problem?”

Raine looked at me through narrowed eyes for a moment and then opened them wide with understanding.

“Oh!” she exclaimed.  “No, no…no worries there.  I have crazy cycles and really bad cramps, so I get that birth control shot.  I don’t have cycles at all anymore.  I had a shot right before I left for the cruise, and they are good for three months, maybe longer.”

“Well, that’s damn handy, given the circumstances.”

“No kidding!”

Like such topics tend to do, the conversation was killed.  We sat back, and I divvied out water and a little more bird meat.  I pretended not to watch her take the cup of water, lick her lips, drink, lick her lips again, and wipe her mouth.  After a couple minutes of that, I had to stop looking or it was going to be pretty obvious what I was really thinking about when it came to that mouth and those lips.

“Why aren’t you making me suck the spinal fluid out of birds?”

Raine shifted back on her heels and made another horrific face as she quickly chewed and swallowed the slim strand of pelican meat.

“I’m still thinking about it,” I told her.  “There’s more likely to be other things in a bird’s spinal fluid – parasites, viruses, and shit.  Birds are a lot dirtier than fish.  I wouldn’t even be eating it, but I’ve looked all over for a drive through and there aren’t any Golden Arches in sight.”

Raine giggled and pushed at my arm.  I leaned away with the slight force of her push and let myself rock back until my shoulder hit hers.  I gave her the half-smile I had been known to use on a few occasions before and watched her take her lower lip between her teeth and her eyes darken.  I licked my own lips and swallowed involuntarily.

“Is that why you went for fish before?”

“I went for fish because there weren’t any birds,” I replied.  “If I have to eat raw something, I’d rather eat fish.  This shit sucks big time.”

Raine laughed again, and I realized I was starting to say things just to make her laugh.  Another feminine laugh filled the ears of my memory, but this time I managed to push it away.

What I didn’t say to Raine, because I didn’t want to get her hopes up, was that pelicans never travel too far from land.  Their mere presence meant we were close, but without the means to guide us one direction or the other, we were completely at the mercy of the currents.  I glanced over at the wooden paddle where it hung, strapped to one side of the raft, teasing me with its ineffectiveness against the currents.

When I looked up, Raine had a very odd smile on her face that slowly turned into a bigger smile and then a fit of giggles.

“What are you laughing about?” I demanded.

“You’ve got…um…”  She started laughing harder.

“What the fuck, Raine?”

“You’ve got pelican in your beard!”  Raine’s eyes closed and she rolled over onto her side, holding her stomach and guffawing like the village idiot.  I reached up and picked a bit of pelican flesh off my chin and tossed it out the raft opening.  Raine continued to wail hysterically.  I tried to feel pissed off about it, but it wasn’t really working.

“Why is that so funny?” I asked.  Raine attempted – somewhat successfully – to respond between chortles.

“You’ve…got…a…
pelican
!” she screeched, laughing even harder, “in your…
beard
!”

Well, I still didn’t get it, but I wasn’t going to put up with any more of that crap.  I dove at her, grabbed her, and started tickling her sides.  The raft bobbed and rocked with the force, tossing us both around.  Raine screamed and tried twisting away, but I held her against my chest with one arm and tickled her with the opposite hand.  She slapped at the arm holding her and then tried to grab and hold the hand tickling her.  She was not the least bit successful in this endeavor because even when she did get a hold of me, she wasn’t anywhere near strong enough to hold me off.

“Stop, Bastian…
please
!” she begged.  I stopped the tickling long enough to let her catch her breath but kept my hold on her.  I swiftly turned her around so she was facing me and wrapped both arms around her middle with her legs straddling my thighs.

“I’ll stop if you kiss me,” I told her.

“Fine!” she cried out, raising her eyebrows at me.

“You have to kiss me right…here…”  I let go with one hand and pointed to the spot on my chin where the bit of pelican had been stuck.  Raine lost it, started laughing again, and kept trying to squirm out of my grip.  We ended up rolling to the other side of the raft until I finally stopped while lying on my back with Raine perched on top of me.

“Do you give up yet?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“Going to kiss me now?”

“Not there!”

“If you won’t kiss me there,” I teased, “you will have to kiss me wherever else I choose.”

“No way!” Raine said.  “Who knows what your perverted mind would choose!”

“Actually, it’s probably pretty obvious,” I smirked, raising an eyebrow at her.  “I do have a particular fondness for…”

“Don’t say it!”

Raine wrenched one hand away from my grasp and tried to tickle me.  I wasn’t particularly ticklish anyway, so she wasn’t successful.  I flipped us both over, causing the raft the lurch again, grabbed her hands and pinned them over her head.  She tried kicking, but I wrapped my legs around hers, slid my feet down her calves, and pinned her ankles with mine.

She was totally immobile under me, which my dick really, really liked.

“Let me up!” Raine cried, laughing again.  She struggled in my grasp for a moment before giving up and lying still.  She looked up at me, her chest rising and falling with her rapid breaths.  I pulled her wrists together, gripping them with one hand and used the other to point to my chin.

“Right here,” I said.

Raine contemplated for only a moment before raising her head just enough to give me a peck on the chin, then started giggling uncontrollably again.  I shook my head and released her, rolling off to the side and pulling her by her hip so she was still lying down but facing me.  I tried to glare at her, but her laughing was making me smile, which didn’t make for an effective glare.  Once she calmed down, she reached out to stroke the side of my face, then moved a little closer and pressed her lips against mine.

I felt her open her mouth and run her tongue over my lips.  I opened to her slowly, though I couldn’t explain my hesitancy, but as soon as her tongue touched mine, I couldn’t stop myself from pressing back and seeking out her mouth.  She felt good; she tasted good, and all I wanted to do was to make her feel the way I did when I was touching her.

Then I remembered there was something else I was supposed to do, so I pulled back much sooner than I would have preferred.  Raine looked at me with questioning eyes that were still dark with desire.  Yes, I needed to do something right now.

“I think you’re ready,” I said softly.

“Ready for what?”

“To feel an orgasm,” I said, raising my eyebrows and mentally daring her to say she didn’t want to do it.  She stared at me a moment, then nodded slowly.  I moved my hand away from her hip.

“Lie down on your back,” I instructed, making sure to keep my voice both quiet and low.  Raine did as I told her, and I could hear her breathing already becoming a little irregular.

I knew how to be charming, and I knew how to make a woman feel good.  When I had first told her I could make her come without touching her, it wasn’t a bluff – I had done it before, and I was pretty sure I could do it again.

Once she was settled, she looked up at me, her eyes wide and expectant.  I just looked at them for a moment before I moved very, very slowly towards her, balancing myself on one arm while the other reached across her, careful not to touch any part of her.  My head moved as well until it hovered over her, and I stared down into her eyes.  I moved a little closer, bringing my lips just a few millimeters away from hers.  Her back arched, giving me advanced notice of her intent to reach up to me.  I moved away as she tried to bring our lips together and gave her a crooked smile.

“No touching,” I reminded her gently.  I raised my eyebrows as she groaned quietly and settled back into place.  Her tongue darted out over her lips, and I had to stop myself from crushing my mouth down on hers and taking anything and everything I could get.  Looking down at her like this was more than enough to make my cock grow even harder.

I moved back, bringing my lips close to hers again, then I slowly moved over the edge of her jaw, exhaling warm air against her skin as I moved up to her ear.

“Reach your hand up and touch under the edge of your jaw with the pads of your fingers,” I told her.  Her eyes narrowed a little, questioning.  I smirked.  “I said
I
wasn’t going to touch you – that doesn’t mean
you
aren’t going to touch you.”

Raine’s mouth turned up into a smile, and she reached up to quickly run her hand over her cheek.

“Not like that,” I corrected.  “Always move very slowly, using a light touch with the tips of your fingers.  Barely touch your skin.  You’ll feel like you are only touching the hair on your skin, and it should tickle a little.”

Raine tried again.

“Yeah…that’s it.” I looked back into her eyes.  “Move your fingers down your jaw line and touch your lips with them.  That’s it…close your eyes and remember what it was like when my lips were on yours.  Warm…soft…”

I blew warm air across her ear again and watched her shiver a little.

“Take your other hand and put it at the hem of your…
my
shirt,” I felt myself smile.  I shifted my weight and moved across her face, my nose almost grazing her skin, but not quite, until I reached her other ear.  “I love seeing you in my clothes.  Your pussy is covered by the same cloth that touched my cock, you know.  I get so hard when I think about that.  Do you ever think about that, Raine?  Do you ever think about how my cock was in those same shorts?  The same shorts touching your pussy right now?”

“Yes,” Raine whisper-moaned.

“Did it make the muscles between your legs tighten when you thought of my cock being close to your pussy?  Did it make you wet to think of me there?”

She gasped and her fingers gripped the edge of my shirt.

“I thought so,” I growled into her ear.  “Touch your stomach, Raine.  Pull the shirt back and run your fingers across your stomach.  Gently now…just like the other ones.  Good…run your middle finger around your navel.  God, I wish that was my tongue on you.”