Rapture Island (The Captive Bride, III) Read online

  In Colorado, my long, thick hair would’ve completely and thoroughly dried on its own in fifteen or twenty minutes flat. Here, where a soggy dampness heavily saturated the air, I figured it could be hours before it no longer felt wet. And even then, my scalp would still be coated in a thin film of sweat. I began to wonder idly whether or not the place he was taking me had air conditioning. Already, I felt as parched and wilted as a withered rose.

  Two more steep stairs and my head broke the level of the deck. Instantly, the glaring brightness stabbed the backs of my eyeballs. I groaned and blinked furiously. Victor saw me climbing slowly through the narrow hatch, and he immediately came over and handed me a pair of sunglasses.

  “You’d better come and sit over here in the shade from the sail,” he told me, “or your retinas will soon be scorched from the sun.” He held out his hand for me, as if preparing to lead the way, but as I came up off the last step and planted both feet on the warm, gray, outdoor carpet that covered the topside of the boat, I brusquely brushed his hand away and began to walk there on my own.

  “Suit yourself,” he said, and I smirked inside at my own teeny-tiny little victory. Those, I was sure, would be few and far between from here on out. I slipped on the shades and began to head over to a padded bench that spanned half the length of the entire right side, when suddenly, my heart lurched up into my throat as he unceremoniously swept me off my feet. Hauling me against his chest, he quickly strode the rest of the way, his arms and hands holding me tightly and possessively.

  I struggled briefly with him, but of course it was in vain. Thankfully, quickly enough, we were there. He set me down near the prow, facing the ocean, and then he said wryly, “Don’t get any crazy thoughts about jumping overboard either. There isn’t anyone else around to rescue you besides me, for miles.” With that, he turned and walked away, his footsteps booming solidly with each heavily-measured tread.

  As it was, I still felt dizzy, his unanticipated touch throwing me off kilter once again. Would it always be like this, I wondered? Would I ever get to the point where he didn’t affect me at all? Maybe, I told myself placatingly. Then again, maybe not.

  The small yacht rose and fell in a lazy, predictable, undulating rhythm, so subtly soothing it was literally capable of lulling me into a lethargic daze. But the view alone was more than enough to keep me wide awake and aware. It was stunning. I’d never before in my life seen anything else so singularly beautiful.

  I’d been to the coastline of Washington State of course, spending one or two afternoons at Ocean Shores. It had sweeping and majestic beaches, stately trees, towering manses, sheer cliffs, and jutting rock walls. It had its own manner of restless beauty; a kind of elegant splendor and imperial charm. But it had a certain and distinct sharpness to it, too. That edge was quite similar, actually to that found in the massive mountain passes of Colorado. Both places were as imposing as they were pretty, meshing scenic views with dangerous gorges, narrow roads, freakish floods, unexpected accidents, and deadly rock-slides.

  This gorgeous spread was something altogether different. The sun was so brilliant it seemed to spear right through me, and it sparkled off the indolent Gulf swells as if the sea itself had somehow been turned to glass. The air was weighty and omnipresent; a distinct, living, breathing being.

  All I could see for miles and miles was an unending, unwavering, watery eternity. The air was deliciously and intrepidly fragrant, full of wind-swept florals, and the unmistakable and unapologetic scent of salty brine. Each breeze was as tender and unadulterated as a lover’s embrace, and as I gazed at the wavering, hazy horizon, I was overwhelmed with the undeniable notion that we actually were sailing off the edge of the world. I could imagine our distant forefathers, and how they thought that at the end of the ocean lay nothing at all save an unfathomable purgatory; a straightforward passageway to a depthless and eternal night.

  I would wager that after dusk had come and then long since parted, the uninhibited night sky would shine so brightly above that it would look like a vast array of sparkling diamonds; gleaming gems strewn carelessly upon sheets of inky-black. Closing my eyes now, I tried to block out all my random thoughts of Victor, and focus instead on the silky feel of the warm and heavy air as it steadily and calmingly buffeted my face. It was so different on this side of the continent than it was in Colorado. Back in Winterhaven, the air was thin, the oxygen was diminished, and the draughts were often chill and brittle. When the wind blew, it literally snatched the very breath out of your throat.

  Here, the atmosphere was weighty and sensuous; like the fondling of a familiar lover. The breeze didn’t so much blow over you as it sank into you, weaving itself into the spongy center of your very bones. Even experiencing it for the very first time, it was still entrancing, and I had the brief but aberrant thought that I wished I could stay right here forever.

  The perpetual gusts of salt-studded wind wafted ceaselessly over the bow of the boat, threading their fingers through my still-wet hair. Each gentle current carried something negative and bleak away from me, leaving me lighter and freer and happier in the process. How could I have lived obliviously all of my life thus far, with never having seen this particular part of the world? Had I actually married Charlie, I knew I would’ve never again made it out of Seattle. He hadn’t been interested at all in traveling, exploring, expanding his horizons. And as much as he liked to scrimp and save on money, his idea of a vacation had been taking time off work to sit around the house in his bathrobe and skivvies.

  Suddenly, I heard a sound behind me and my eyes flew open. Quickly swiveling around so that Victor couldn’t catch me off-guard once again, I almost knocked the glass he was holding right out of his hand. “Watch it there,” he said as the liquid inside sloshed over the edge and onto the weatherproof cushion I was sitting on. He brushed off the sugary droplets before bending over and casually handing the frosty drink over to me.

  “Here,” he said, “have some iced lemonade.”

  I looked at it suspiciously for a long and noticeable moment of glaring hesitation. He chuckled and said, “Don’t worry, babe, it’s not drugged. This time.”

  Scowling at him, I licked my lips and realized how parched I actually was. As reluctant as I was to take anything from him, I still reached out and snatched it, sloshing more of the icy drink over my own hand in the process. Still, it was worth it just to be able to move away from him as soon as possible, because every time his skin touched mine, it was like being shocked with a high voltage wire.

  He looked at me knowingly for a moment before turning his back and sauntering away. I waited until he was several paces away from me, then I brought the glass to my lips and quickly slugged half of it down. It was tartly-sweet, and obviously freshly-squeezed. Had Victor done that himself, I wondered? Or, more likely, had he gotten some poor lackey to squeeze bushels of lemons for him, sweating over the laborious task for hour upon hour until the refrigerator was fully and duly stocked? That sounded much more feasible. As such, what else had Victor paid to have prearranged before our little clandestine ‘trip’? He sure had been certain of a complete and absolute victory. Most men would’ve at least prepared for the possibility of not being able to abduct a woman out from under the noses of a hundred-plus well-wishers, family, and friends. But not Victor. He only planned for success, the possibility of failure not even making the slightest ‘blip’ on the radar screen of his life.

  Snorting a little in disgust, I put the glass to my lips and began to drink again. Only it was so damn good, I was soon chugging it down. The ice had made it so cold, though, it wasn’t long before I got a splitting ice-headache. It stabbed me right in the middle of my temples, and I quickly pushed my tongue against the roof of my mouth as hard as I could while I waited gamely for it to pass. Gradually, the shape bite in my brain lessened, and I began to drink again - albeit much more slowly this time.

  When the drink was all but gone and my thirst was finally slaked, I tucked the nearly empty glass into
a built-in cup holder that had been discreetly crafted into the luxurious seat. Then I greedily turned my full attention back to the gorgeous vistas that spread out in each direction all around me.

  But as I looked out over the bright, sparkling waves, I suddenly was overtaken with the inescapable realization that the sun was moving from just above the horizon, up towards the apex of the sky. Since Victor had taken me right before my wedding, factoring in the flight that had taken us more than half way across the total length of the United States, the sun ought to be getting lower, not higher. In fact, in all honesty the sun should be just about ready to sink beneath the edge of the waves right now. Yet it was getting decidedly brighter and hotter with each minute that ticked past.

  Abruptly, I was hit with the jarring realization that I had lost the better part of a day. After Victor had knocked me out with that drug, I’d obviously been asleep for hours. And we must be a hell of a lot more further into the midst of the ocean than I’d even realized. He’d said earlier that we were cruising slowly along towards our destination. I just hadn’t realized how slowly.

  I felt myself being swept up in a near-irrepressible anger. Victor hadn’t just kidnapped me and violated me, he’d also stolen a day right out of my life! What exactly had he been doing while I was druggedly slumbering? I know he hadn’t ravaged my body – otherwise, he’d have already known I hadn’t slept with Charlie yet, before I’d even woken up. Also, I surely would’ve felt the after-effects of his actions instantly upon coming awake.

  Glancing over my shoulder at the Captain’s Cabin now, I furrowed my brow and frowned as I watched him casually leaning back in his big, leather chair, coolly and calmly manning the helm. There was a huge, plexi-glass window along the front of the cabin, to keep out bugs and seagulls and whatever else might fly into the face of a seaman and disrupt his careful perusal of the ocean, but he had that slid right open now so as to better keep an eye and ear on me. As such, he could quickly feel my eyes upon him. Within moments, he had turned his square jaw my way and addressed me.

  “Yes?” he queried quizzically with a rather mocking grin. Surprisingly, I could hear him with crystal-clear clarity, even though we were twenty feet apart or so, and the wind was steadily blowing.

  “You, you…” I spluttered furiously. He chuckled as he waited patiently for me to gather my wits enough to rail at him. “You lied to me!” I finally managed.

  “Which time?” he asked with a derisive laugh. Then he seemed to steel himself to at least act as if he had a tiny iota of serious sincerity as he waited for me to reply.

  “You said it had only been a few hours since my wedding!” I said shrilly.

  “No,” he reminded me gravely. “You inferred that. I simply didn’t bother to correct your inaccurate musings.”

  “Semantics!” I screamed. “You knew that I thought it was the same day, and you let me go on thinking it. How could you?”

  “Well, I figured – and correctly so, by the way – that you’d be unduly upset when you realized how muchtime had passed. So I was hoping that you’d get so caught up in the moment, in this beautiful, glorious day and in being with me, that you really wouldn’t stop to think overly much about it.”

  “How could you give me such a high dose of that drug…that, whatever it was you gave me…that I’d sleep for like fifteen or sixteen hours?” I was really working myself up into a frenzy now, totally and utterly chagrined that he would risk my health in such a way.

  But, “I didn’t,” he responded simply, quite literally taking the wind right out of my sails. “I only gave you enough medication to knock you out for five or six hours. When the time for you to wake up came and went, I checked you out, made sure that you were okay, and let you keep on sleeping. You obviously needed the rest. What’s the reason, by the way, that given a chance to escape into oblivion, you found it so very difficult to find your way back again? You must have really and truly been dreading that marriage. Regardless, you look rested and beautiful, your skin has its color back, your eyes have regained their luster, and your energy level is quite sufficient. That long ‘nap’ did wonders for you.”

  At that, I didn’t know what else to say. I guess perhaps I could argue that I’d been sleeping to escape the reality of the fact that Victor had just kidnapped me. Yet I knew that wasn’t even remotely true. As it was, when I woke up I didn’t even remember he’d shown up at the wedding, much less that he’d drugged me and stolen me away from it. No, I’d woken up with a pervasive and unrelenting anxiety about the ceremony and my intended husband. Victor was right. I’d been dreading the idea of having gotten married to a man I didn’t honestly love. Of course, I could keep arguing with Victor and try to make him think otherwise, but it was pointless. He already knew the truth.

  And he was also right about how much better I seemed now that I had gotten a full night’s slumber. I don’t think I’d gone an hour without waking up and tossing and turning or battling nightmares, in the three entire months since I’d agreed to be Charlie’s bride. Even though I hadn’t wanted to admit it, especially to myself, my subconscious obviously knew what my own mind didn’t want to face: that marrying Charlie would have been an immeasurable mistake. Whatever else Victor had done to me, I had to admit that was one thing he had gotten right. Charlie was not the man for me, and even if Victor released me this moment, I still wouldn’t be able to go back to my old existence, much less marry the man. If nothing else, at least I understood that now.

  Victor was still looking at me intently, obviously expecting a battle, but I had no more fight left in me at the moment. Instead, I just looked back out over the ocean waves, practically melting inside as I pushed away the pointless anger, and let the peace, tranquility, and serenity, all bleed back slowly over me once again.

  Hours ticked by like glazed, sugary confections – or then again, perhaps it had only been a matter of minutes. Here, in the Gulf, in the gorgeous Florida Panhandle; time was all but irrelevant. I didn’t know if I was coming or going, if it was today or yesterday or last year. All I knew was that the heady breeze had intoxicated me as surely as if it were 90 proof, and I had a sudden and irrevocable feeling in my gut that I was stuck in the middle of eternity.

  But then, in the distance, a blurred smudge. I made out green hues, mixed with glaring white stretches, broken only by gullies the waves had carved out over eons of incomprehensible time. I knew that we were cruising westward along the bottom of the entire continent, passing just a little bit due south of places like Panama City and Sunnyside. I had no innate knowledge of Florida geography, but every now and then Victor would call out some random tidbit of information.

  We hadn’t seen a shoreline for hours until just now, so I wasn’t sure how he’d been pinpointing our location so accurately, yet still, somehow he knew. Undoubtedly, one of those mysterious boxes in the Captain’s Cabin was spouting out all our coordinates. I pretended like I wasn’t listening to him, but I avidly absorbed it all.

  And yet now, there was that little blemish amidst the blue right before us, and I still had no idea what it was. Finally, he spoke.

  “If we kept going west, we’d sooner or later hit Ft. Walton, Mary Esther, Navarre Beach, Tiger Point, Gulf Breeze, Pensacola, and then Alabama – well, you get the picture. Basically, there are any number of beautiful little islets, or narrow, long strips of sand-dune filled isle-ways that directly face out onto the Gulf. Behind them, they’re backed by deep spans of navy-blue bays, and then you get to the actual mainland of Florida.

  “In fact, this particular part of the Panhandle here is truly my favorite place in the whole entire state. Down in the Peninsula, you have all those over-priced tourist traps and theme parks like Miami and Tampa, Disneyland and Universal Studios. Here, there’s simply a limitless list of various features that set it apart from every single other place in the world. It has beautiful old historic towns with plantation-style, clapboard houses and gnarled oaks in their front yards, draped with Spanish moss. And yet le
ss than a tenth of a mile away, lay ostentatious, multi-million dollar beachfront mansions. There are sugar-white beaches with open-roofed, straw hut bars, touting old-school karaoke, and sporting jet-ski, water-side parking. While right next door, you’ve got flashy dance clubs blasting house music, or featuring live hard rock groups. Next to that, you may find Country Clubs with upper-crust golf courses, across the street from down-home country cooking eateries and expensive gourmet bistros. There’s also live bands on the piers at night, fireworks, parades, fresh seafood, dairy-farms, two hundred year old churches, pre-Civil War cemeteries, a rich Native American heritage, and decent, honest, down-to-earth, hard-working people. And did I mention that it also has the most stunning sunsets on the planet?

  “The towns and cities here are eclectic, to say the least. Of course, we’re not going into those actual towns – at least not quite yet. First, as I already mentioned, we’re going to spend some lengthy, leisurely, quality time together on that private little island of mine.”

  “Is that it,” I asked, my finger outstretched towards the little smudge, before I could think to stop myself. I knew I hadn’t been able to completely hide that traitorous edge of excitement underlying my voice. Why was I beginning to find myself looking forward to this? This was an outrage, dammit! But I knew what it was; Victor’s description of this magical place had really gotten to me. If it was as wonderful as he’d just described it to me, I may even find myself wanting to live here forever. And that was a scary thing, indeed.

  “No, that’s not it just yet,” Victor told me mildly. “Right now we’re just coming into the waters around the Destin/Sandestin area. There are a lot of uninhabited islands out here, of which, we’ll hit several others like that one there first,” he said, indicating the one I’d pointed out, “before we get to our place. But then about eight or nine more miles westward, we’ll cut north and come across the privately owned ones – the ones that even tourists with wads of cash and glass-bottomed boats at their beck and call, can’t get anyone to take them to. You see, people here respect the privacy of the rich and possibly-even famous. They wouldn’t dream of violating the ‘seaspace’ around those islands that very few of us can afford to shell out tens of millions of dollars to own.”