Chapter Six
Diana
I t hasn’t even been twenty-four hours and I’m already rocking a loincloth.
When in Rome…?
I let Ike fashion a modified version of his dick pouch and mine looks kind of like a rustic bikini, which is incredibly freeing.
We’re standing in the stream in knee-deep water and I can’t remember having been this relaxed in a long time.
The orgasms probably had something to do with my loose limbs and dopey smile.
I’m sore between my legs and I’m covered in friction marks from Ike’s chest hair and beard, but they feel like little badges of pride.
I turn my face up to the sun and sigh, marveling over the fact that back home, I was never this calm. Never felt this…wanted. Like I belong and someone wants me around. When Ike brought me back to his cave, it was a given that I would try and escape or negotiate my way free, but now?
Is it completely insane that I might want to stay?
Whereas the cave was crude and basic when I first saw it, when I woke up from my post-sex coma, I saw Ike’s home through new eyes. So there was no indoor plumbing. So what? I had a seven-foot gentle giant wrapped around me, holding me like he might never let go.
Ike was definitely interested in round two when we woke up, but the sight of my virgin blood on my thighs caused him to scoop me up with a gruff sound, dress me with painstaking care and bring me down to the stream instead.
Now, he cups hands of water and rubs the red streaks away. His erection is once again stretching the confines of his cloth and he gives me a measuring look, as if I might be offended, so I reach up and stroke a hand over his long, wild hair.
He cups my womanhood and massages gently. “Did I hurt you, Diana?”
It takes me a moment to speak around the gasp lodged in my throat. “Just a little, but n-not for long. A-and then it just felt amazing.”
“Amazing.” He grunts—twice—and throws his shoulders back. “Very good.”
I laugh and he goes very still, as if hypnotized by the sound. “You are…happy with me? Here in this place?”
“It’s only been one day…” I hedge, hesitant to commit when all of this is so new and overwhelming. Especially the way Ike makes me feel.
All ooey gooey and light.
His eyebrows draw together and he nods. “Let’s move farther downstream and I will catch us some fish to eat.”
“Okay.” Hand in hand, we wade farther down the narrow body of water and after only a minute of walking, I hear the unmistakable sounds of a waterfall. I smile and bounce around on the balls of my feet. “Waterfall! Can we go look?”
“Of course,” Ike says, his attention arrested on my face. “You like waterfalls?”
“I’ve only seen them in a movies or read about them in books.”
When it comes into view, I let go of his hand and splash forward, pressure building in my chest. I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.
It’s two stories high, translucent blue water pouring down off an outcropping of rocks.
With a complete lack of self-consciousness that only Ike has ever made me feel, I reach out and touch the falling water with a squeal of excitement, taking his hand and making him do it, too, once he joins me.
“Wow,” I breathe. “Just wow. I can’t believe this has been a few miles from my house all this time.” I lean into his side and look up into his face. “I can’t believe you’ve been a few miles away, either.”
He turns me to face him, the spray from the waterfall landing on us both. “If I’d known you were even a million miles away, Diana, I would have made the journey.”
My heart whips into a dance. “Ike…” I murmur, going up on my tiptoes.
“Diana. My Diana.” He meets me halfway and our mouths slide together, his tongue entering my mouth and sampling me once, before plunging back in with unrestrained hunger.
His big, right hand settles on my butt and squeezes, sending a shock of heat straight down to my toes.
I want him inside me. It only takes seconds to turn me into a shameless fiend, rubbing my belly against his hardness and mewling into his mouth. Who knew I was such a temptress?
I’m momentarily distracted when something brushes against my leg in the water and I break the kiss, worried it might be an eel or something equally slimy.
When I see it’s a fish, I’m not sure what comes over me.
A tingling intuition causes me to angle my body and hold my breath, searching for the right timing to…
Reach into the water and catch it!
I’ve caught a fish!
I stare dumbfounded at the wriggling, silver creature in my fist, transferring my attention to Ike, who is bursting with pride. “Well done, tiny person!”
“I can’t believe I did that.”
“Even I cannot fish without a spear or a rock, Diana. And I have been fishing in this stream my entire life.” He raises an eyebrow. “This is a…what did you call it? A marketable skill?”
I suck in a breath. “Oh my gosh. You’re right!”
In my excitement, I drop the squirming fish back into the gurgling current in favor of throwing my arms around Ike’s thick waist. He rubs circles into my back, chuckling into the space above my head. “I do not know the proper names for the fish. Was that a sex fish, Diana?”
Trying to subdue my giggle, I look up into his earnest face.
“Oh, Ike. I think we need to have a chat.” My face burns a little bit over having to talk about such an intimate subject in the daylight when I’ve never spoken about it—period.
“Sex is what we did this morning in your cave. When you were on top of me. That was sex.”
Ike strokes his chin. “I see.” He glances toward the waterfall, his gaze distant. “I only learned some things from my father before he passed. Once my mother died from the snake bite, he…he couldn’t bear to be without her.”
I’m able to piece together the fact that his father took his own life without Ike having to say it out loud. How awful. To lose both parents in such quick succession…it’s unimaginable. I lay a hand on his arm. “How long have you been living alone in these hills, Ike?”
“It’s hard to keep track of the years, but my mother used to make me a special meal and sing the birthday song. She’d learned it from my grandmother,” he says. “The last time she sang it, she told me I was eleven.”
“Eleven,” I whisper, throwing my arms around him again. “I’m so sorry.”
He scrubs a hand down my back. “There is no need to be sad for me, Diana. I have you now.”
I’m never leaving him. I know that now. I woke with peace inside me this morning, and deep in my bones, there is a certainty that I will never experience this sense of belonging with anyone else.
Any where else. Perhaps my means of arriving here were wrong and borne of ugliness, but there is nothing but beauty between me and Ike.
He is beautiful, inside and out. How can I do anything but cling to what I’ve found?
This man who values me and is inherently, authentically good?
I’m about to tell him I want to stay forever with him in these woods, but he tips my chin up and distracts me with a penetrating look.
“Are there other things you can tell me about sex, Diana?”
Remembering what he did between my legs with his tongue, I shake my head. “I’m pretty sure you don’t need any further instructions.”
He gives me a lopsided smile and it’s a good thing he’s holding me up, because otherwise I’d be melting down into the water. “How did you know it was called sex?” he asks suddenly, a thundercloud passing over his face. “No man has spoken to you about these things, right?”
“Not directly. But you can’t really live down in the real world without hearing about sex. Almost every song is about it.” Ike still doesn’t look happy that I had knowledge of sex before I knew him. “I’ve never been touched by anyone. I’ve never wanted to be touched. Not until you.”
His shoulders relax somewhat. “I call this a cock,” he says, reaching down to grasp his erection. “Do your girl parts have a name?”
My cheeks flame. “You want me to say it out loud ?”
He nods firmly. “Yes.”
Maybe I’m being silly, but I crook my finger, signaling Ike to lean down. “Um. The technical term is vagina,” I whisper in his ear. “But…like, I think most people say pussy.”
“Pussy,” he purrs against my temple. “I had my cock in your pussy.”
“Yeah,” I manage. “You totally did.”
His hands slide over my bottom. “I love your sweet, little pussy.”
My head falls back and he kisses my exposed neck. “It l-loves you, too.”
Ike uses his grip on my backside to lift me up. “I want to have sex with you now , Diana.”
Slowly, I rub my core against his arousal, turning his jaw slack. “There’s another word for that, too.”
“What is it?” he growls, watching my lower body undulate on his lap.
“Fucking,” I murmur at his lips. “You want to fuck me.”
His groan is animalistic as his mouth crashes down on mine—
“Oh Jesus. Again? ” comes a drunken sneer from the banks of the stream. “This morning we watch you beat yourself off and now this? Take your victim somewhere private, Ike.”
“Or better yet,” says Clown Number Two. “Give her to someone who doesn’t belong in her nightmares.”
“Yeah. We’re more than available.”
Snickering and high fiving ensues behind me, along with the clink of bottles.
Ike’s body has turned to steel against mine and he tears his mouth away, his resulting growl rife with the promise of violence.
And this time, I’m not planning on saving their disgusting hides, but I have something better in mind first. Ike has been called a beast by the villagers.
The way I reacted to him in the moonlight last night probably made him feel terrible.
Now I find out he’s been having to deal with these marauding punks who just called me his victim .
As if that’s the only way he could have me.
Well I’m not having it. I want Ike to know he’s my only choice. I want him to know how desirable I find him and…I kind of want everyone else to know it, too.