AllFreeNovel
Share Us
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Haina
I knew I was alone in the house before I even opened my eyes. I couldn’t smell them as strongly, couldn’t feel their heartbeats.
The rain had stopped, so maybe they were down at the sailboat working on patching up the holes.
Lazily, I stretched my naked body, grinning and moaning as a delicious ache pulsed through me in various places. Places my three men had paid an awful lot of attention to yesterday. Places that already craved them again.
Thankfully, I healed faster than most, so the ache wasn’t unpleasant but just a fun, reminding throb.
Pointing my toes and reaching my arms over my head as long as I could, I peeled one eye open, finding the cabin bathed in the morning light. We’d made a nest of blankets in the living room since the bed in the bedroom was too small to accommodate all of us.
Slowly, I sat up, and with the aid of the couch, stood up, wrapping one of the blankets around my body as I made my way over to the living room window to peer down through the trees at the dock.
I was fully expecting to find all of them down there working, shirts off, tanned skin glistening in the morning sun, showing off their muscular physiques and bunching muscles. But I didn’t, and it took me a full two seconds to realize that not only were they not down on the dock working on the boat, but the boat wasn’t there either.
I dropped the blanket and tore out of the house in a sprint, not caring for a second that I stepped in mud or that low-lying wet shrubs smacked at my shins. I didn’t slow down when I hit the ramp and had to windmill my arms to stop myself on the edge of the dock. Otherwise, I’d have fallen into the water.
They were gone.
Hot tears pricked my eyes as I scanned the wide bay, the towering deep green trees reflecting like stoic sentries in the calm water. And that’s when I caught the small white dot off in the distance.
The sail was still off, since we hadn’t bothered putting it back on after mending the holes. No sense in doing that until the boat was fixed.
But I knew that was our boat.
Without even thinking, I dove into the water and started swimming.
It was cold, but I didn’t care.
My confusion and hurt, my anger and sense of betrayal kept me warm and were fuel for my tired, burning muscles as I propelled myself through the water.
They must have left me because they were worried if they stayed, we’d all get killed. They were leaving me to go fight this war alone. Unwilling to acknowledge that we were no longer a three-person team and one outlier. We were a four-person team now, bound by mind, body, and soul, and we had to make these kinds of decisions together. Where they went, I went.
Or maybe they’d been kidnapped and whoever took them had pushed the boat back into the water so that I would have no way of escaping? But then why hadn’t they taken me, too?
None of this made any sense.
Just as I lifted my face out of the water for air, an ungodly scream peeled from the boat.
Oh no.
I stopped where I was only yards from the ladder, my body sinking until water went up my nose and I was forced to kick my legs and tread water. And that’s when it hit me.
How could I be so stupid?
How could I have forgotten the fate that stalked us? Was I that doped up on orgasms, affection and human interaction? God, how pathetic could I be?
They left me, to protect me.
The detox was upon them, and here I stupidly thought their words had been only placations to keep me happy and spreading my legs. But they really did care. They cared enough to leave me in the middle of the night when the symptoms probably started to set in, and get far enough away that the withdrawal didn’t make them do something they’d regret.
Did I turn back?
Another scream, this time even louder and sounding even more painful tore out of the boat cabin ricocheting against the looming bluffs of the inlet.
Rix.
