Lost

What did the little hut smell like to him? To her the air was thick with their scents. All of them. The two men, their hot, sticky bodies giving off their distinct masculine odors, and that musk of sex, the scent she'd just discovered when she'd gotten close enough to Derrek's cock and balls to touch and taste. And her own scent, that was in the air, too. Her body. Her sex.

She finished her piece of fruit and joined the men.

"What do you think, sleeping beauty?" she teased Derrek, "Want to hike up the bluff and tend the signal fires with me?"

She slipped her arm around his waist and rested her head against his chest. Derrek shrugged off the familiar gesture and flinched away, then stood there, shaking, his arms crossed defensively. Good thing he'd decided to be a marine biologist and not a spy or a card sharp.

Giving her dad a casual 'what's up with him?' smile she said, "Fine. I'll go on my own. And I'll check on Nirina and the baby on my way back."

"You two have a fight?" Victor asked when Cat had gone.

Derrek's cheeks flushed. "No. She's just getting on my nerves today."

"She do something to upset you?"

"She's just... She needs to be more careful. She's so goddamned reckless. Goes off swimming by herself. She knows damn well there are sharks in these waters."

"You swim, too. We all do."

"It's just, I'm her big brother, right? I'm supposed to protect her. And she acts like nothing's dangerous. She thinks she can cliff dive and swim with sharks, and nothing's going to hurt her. And I can't look after her if she's going to be so fucking stupid."

"Look, Derrek. Cat's not like us. She doesn't spend a week analyzing every move before she makes it. And I don't think that's a bad thing. There are no guarantees, even if you're careful. I was careful, planning our expedition here. And look."

Victor drew a deep breath and let it go silently.

"Cat lost a lot, coming here. More than we did, in some ways. Apart from you and me, everything she's always loved sank, for her, when the boat capsized. Her books. Her laptop and all her writing. Her violin. Even her notebooks, she gave them to us. Gave up writing so we could record our findings.

"We still have our work. But no matter how much she's learned, how much she helps, it's not her work. Her life. What is there for her to do here but enjoy her youth, her strength, and enjoy the pleasures of nature?"

Without answering, Derrek put on his shoes and left. He caught up with Cat and they made their way toward the signal fire. Before they'd gone a third of the way, in the dense, darkening jungle Derrek stopped.

"Cat."

She stopped and turned.

"No more of that. Alright?"

"Why?"

"Come on, Cat. You know why."

"No. I don't."

"Fuck, Cat. You're my sister. What we're doing..."

"What? Scared of the word? Incest."

"Yes. Incest. We haven't really... I won't. I won't even flirt with it. Not after today."

"Why won't you?" she asked in her quiet, vulnerable way.

"Because, Cat. I don't want to hurt you."

"Derrek. You're not hurting me. You won't hurt me. We're not hurting anyone."

"Well, it hurts me. I feel like an asshole. Molesting my kid sister."

"Please. Who's molesting who, here?"

"It doesn't matter, Cat. You're ten years younger than I am."

"I'm not a child, Derrek. I'm old enough to decide this for myself."

"Yeah, well, so am I. And I say 'no'."

Cat smiled. "Next time, try saying 'no' before you come all over my tits. Before you fill my mouth with your—"

"Damn it, Cat!" Derrek cut her off. "I don't want to hurt Dad. And when we get off this goddamned island, and we go back to our normal lives, I don't want to have to stand before my colleagues, presenting the data we gathered here, our findings, with the fear in the back of my mind that all the work we've done here would be discredited in a second if proof, fuck, even a rumor leaked that something like this had happened while we were stuck here. I don't want to have to explain to the women I date that I fucked my sister while I was stranded on our tropical paradise. Alright?"

Cat stood there in the waning light, pale, shaking, tears pooling along her bottom lids, spilling through her lashes, streaming down her cheeks.

"Aw, god, Cat."

Derrek stepped close and reached to put his arms around her, but she backed out of his embrace.

"Cat. Come on," he pleaded.

"Look, Derrek. I've adjusted to a lot of disappointments in my life. Car wreck at twelve, can't have kids. Fine. I'll adopt if I decide I want a family. Chance to go to Paris for the summer my junior year with the writer's program, but get dragged off to some no-man's land in the middle of the Pacific instead to watch you and Dad collect vials of sediment and scrape fungus off of plants? Fine. Get stranded here. Miss prom and probably being valedictorian of my high school. Miss finishing high school altogether. Fine. Miss dating and starting college and doing all the things normal people with normal families do, fine.

"But I swear, Derrek. I am not going to rot away on this fucking island, and die a virgin like some dried up old nun. We've been here for almost three fucking years, Derrek. Do you get it? We may never get off this shitty island. For all we know, we are all going to get old and fucking die here."

The tears streaming down her face were dripping from her chin, spattering down on her white tank top.

"Alright," Derrek cooed, trying to soothe her. "Alright."

This time she let him put his arms around her, let him pull her to him.

Shuddering in his arms, her voice hiccuping over her sobs she said, "I deserve a full life. To experience everything. And so do you. You don't have to sneak off to your cave and jack off every time you want to feel pleasure. You deserve to be touched. Kissed and held. You deserve to be loved."

***

Strange, seeing her so still, sitting in one place, just watching. Because Cat was always, always moving. He stayed still, too, so the lemur wouldn't startle. So Cat wouldn't know he was there. Watching.

Her gaze fixed on those queer little wide-eyed creatures, their bodies like tiny, hairy people, Cat looked happier than Derrek remembered ever seeing her. At least since the accident. Definitely since the boat had sunk. Rapturous. That was the word for that kind of look.

It shamed him a little, that he and his father had devoted their lives to studying and preserving the things of this realm—the animals and the trees and flowers—but that they hardly saw it, felt it. They, both of them, were connected to Gondwana by a membrane of data, statistical averages, variables and relationships. Cat's love was direct. Pure.

As silently as he'd closed in he faded away and headed home. When he'd poured a cup of Cat's tea and gathered his notes, he spread out at the big table outside. He'd been letting his work slip lately. More and more. Somewhere, there was a part of him who thought it, too. They'd never be rescued. He'd never get to defend the dissertation based on his years of work on Gondwana. The proof was stranded there, with them. They'd all die, and the proof would fade away, along with Gondwana itself.

But he wanted to believe. And his dad needed him to believe. Derrek suspected that Doctor Victor Golding could more easily survive the death of his two children than abandon his work.

***

Derrek finished off his glass of tea and scrawled a few hasty notes as the evening light waned. Against the scratch of the pencil over paper he heard Cat approach, but kept his eyes fixed on the page. Just the sight of her these days wrecked his focus.

"Kitten? What is it?" he heard his father ask.

"Nirina's baby died."

Cat looked small. Wounded. But Victor was staring at the sand at his feet. Cat saw a mother with a dead infant. Victor, Derrek knew, saw a gradual erosion of an ecosystem. A dark omen for the world.

"Did you bring the specimen back?"

Cat set the tiny bundle she'd been holding against her chest, something wrapped up in the t-shirt she'd been wearing when she set out that morning, on the table.

"Good. Make a note of the age and weight of the infant," Victor said, still staring at the ground. "And detail your observations with regard to the mother's post-partum diet and foraging habits."

Cat nodded and walked off.

"Dad!" Derrek scolded.

Victor looked up, startled from his dark musings. And his whole expression altered. Derrek rose to go after her but Victor said, "No. Let me."

Through the thin screen of bamboo that separated inside from outside their little hut, Derrek heard his father saying, "Oh, Kitten, I'm sorry." Derrek went to the door. Watched them together. Cat's face veiled behind her dark hair hanging from her bowed head, their father's broad hand caressing her back.

"Poor Nirina," he heard Cat say, her voice rough and wet, "I think he was already dead when I found them this morning. But she carried him around all day. And she was crying. Her song was so pitiful. And she'd look down at him, and touch his little face. And then she'd just hold him. All day, Daddy. And then she just dropped him. Dropped him from the branch she was sitting on and let him fall. And he just landed in this little heap on the ground. With this soft little thud."

Victor pulled Cat against him, wrapped his arms around her. Rocked her slowly, side to side. And Cat broke down, sobbing, clinging to him. Wracked sobs. Went limp and sank, but Victor caught her, sank with her, cradled her on his lap, stroking her glossy dark hair, holding her warm, lithe body against him, kissing her wet face, kissing her hair, rocking her back and forth, back and forth.

A seed, a pit, hard and heavy and dark took root in Derrek's gut and sprouted there, roots twisting and knotting, filling him up, sharp and searing.

***

God, fuck, what was he doing? But she was so... Beauty wasn't the word for it. What attracted. Her vibrancy. The lithe power of her.

She stripped off her top and her skirt. Had she stopped wearing panties altogether? After three years of sea water and salt air, maybe they'd all fallen apart.

Feral. That was how he thought of her, lately. A tame creature turned wild. Only rarely did he catch himself thinking it was he who'd changed, not her.

In the deep freshwater lagoon she frolicked, rather than swam. Floating, diving, turning forward and backward somersaults, evocative of the play of porpoises and orcas. Except each revolution of her body through the frothing surface showed him her gleaming, tawny body, her narrow, muscular back, the peaks of her shoulder blades, the channel of her spine, the muscular spheres and deep cleft of her ass, her sleek thighs. Or the swells of her breasts heralding the rise of naval, then hip bones, then the black fur of her cunt.

His cock was full, full of hot want. Want for the swells of her breasts and the cleft of her ass and the warm wet hidden between those long lean thighs. That want was easy.

The harder want was in him, clenching his chest, making his belly light and hollow, blurring his thoughts. The want for her, his sister, bold and eager, hurt and stoic, earnest, vulnerable.

When she emerged and perched on a rock where the sinking sun would dry and keep her warm, her thighs parted and her hand slid down. Watching her from the lush screen of the jungle's flora and their shadows, Derrek ran his hand over his shorts, over the hard bulge swelling against his touch.

It felt sinister, hiding in the shadows, watching her so vulnerable there in the open, in the light. But he was so hard with want, so drawn to her, he didn't have the strength to leave.

So he went to her. Crept up on her like predator to prey. Watched the beads of water on her arms, on her breasts, on her taut belly shrink and dwindle in number. Watched the fine wisps framing her face dry and come loose from the dark ropes of wet hair hanging and dripping onto the pale limestone. Watched her fingers slip between her thighs, glide between her plump vulva, emerge glistening and slide between again. Watched her moss green eyes open and fix him. As if she'd known he was there, all along.

God, that smile. Her lashes fanned down and she watched her hand move between her legs, then turned her gaze back up to him. How could she do that? Recline naked on a rock, fingering her cunt like some girl in a porn flick, and look up at him with such hopeful, vulnerable eyes?

She took her hand away, but left her legs open, offering her cunt, flushed and wet and open, to his gaze. To his touch. To his mouth. To his body.

Reaching forward, she slid her hand between his thighs, under his balls, and gave them a gentle squeeze. Then she curved her fingers at the base of his rigid shaft and caressed up the length of him. When she reached the head she feathered her touch over the fabric, pulled tight against his straining erection.

He stepped back. Broke their contact.

"I just," he whispered. "I saw you. I was watching you. I didn't want to spy."

"You can spy. Sometimes I imagine that. You watching me while I'm getting off. But I'm glad you're here. Now you can do more than watch."

His gut dropped. His eyes stung and his throat swelled.

"No. I can't."

"Derrek, it's alright."

"Please. Just lie there. Do what you were doing before. We can just watch each other, like before."

"Derrek. You want to have me."

Want. Yes. Spread her thighs, lean and smooth. Spread her open. Open her cunt. Part the furry lips, bare the wet pink of her slit. Smell her cunt's smell. Taste. Burrow into her with his tongue. Eat. Fuck. Fuck, yes, spread her legs and push his hard cock inside.

"Cat, don't."

"You want to hold me against you. You want to kiss me. You want to be inside me."

"I won't, Cat. I can't."

"You will, Derrek. You can't help it. Just like you couldn't help letting me suck you. Couldn't help pulling me down on you, couldn't help filling my mouth with your—"

"Stop it, Cat."

He felt tears spill from his burning eyes and tickle down his cheeks.

"It's not your fault you can't help it. I made it so you can't."

"You frolicking naked isn't an excuse."

Watching him cry, she looked scared.

"Derrek." He watched her pull herself in, make herself brave. "I drugged you."

"What are you talking about?"

"The tea."

"The tea?"

"It's a...like an herbal ecstasy, sort of."

"You drugged me?" He was too shocked to be angry or scared or to feel the guilt that had dogged him for weeks, since that first time in the cave.

"You want this, Derrek. I mean, even before the drug. But you're trying so hard to be good. Now you don't have to. You can't. The surge of testosterone, the lowered inhibitions, you can't control it. Whatever happens, it's not your fault."

There was still fear in her eyes, that soft vulnerability, but her smile was warm and welcoming. She leaned forward and, still holding his gaze, she ran her hand over his erection.

"Derrek. Please."

She bowed her head and through his shorts, mouthed his hard cock. A fierce, hot rage surged through him. He shoved her back and slapped her.

Time stopped.

Then her face flushed red and tears rose, rose up over those moss green irises. But she didn't cry.

Cat got to her feet and, arms crossed over her naked body, walked to her clothes. Her hands shook as she fumbled with her top, getting it turned the right way out, and pulled it on. As she stepped into her skirt and pulled it up, her whole body seemed to be trembling. She laced up her shoes and ran into the jungle.

Something hot and bitter spilled through him. He didn't like it, not being able to see her. Not having her close. He ran after her.

Into the shadows among the stalks and vines, the ferns and flowers. He chased her. Caught her.

"Where are you going?" he growled.

"Home."

She shrugged him off and kept walking.

"Home. Home to Daddy? He's been drinking your tea, too. Hasn't he?"

Derrek grabbed her arm and yanked her to a halt.

"Knock it off!" she barked, and shoved him back.

He staggered back. A root caught his foot. He slammed to the ground. A thorn or branch cut his cheek.

Rage pounding his veins, Derrek scrambled to his feet and lunged. Pulled her down. Felled his prey.

His. His.

Hot and trembling under him, he could smell her, hear her fast breathing as he pulled her skirt up, bared that deep cleft, and underneath, her flushed, sticky sex. He reached under the elastic of his shorts, grabbed his hard cock, and found her hot wet opening.

He tried to drive his cock into her, but her body resisted. With his knees he drove her legs wider apart, he drove her shoulders down, forced her hips up high. Presenting like a cat, like a bitch in heat.

He thrust again, driving his hardness into her wet heat, against that stubborn, resistant barrier, and she made a little noise. Another thrust, and her flesh yielded and gave way. He tore into her, drove his cock deep into that slick, flushed cunt. Fuck god yes. Yes. He fucked her, fucked her hard and desperate. His dark hot need knotted, blew apart. Clinging and thrusting, he emptied himself into her.

After, he clung to her while he caught his breath, until his trembling stopped. Then he let go of her. Got off of her. She stayed still, prostrate.

Now that he wasn't inside her, he felt a lack. A gap. He needed something.

He flipped her onto her back. Fear kaleidescoped her irises, yellow-tinted greens under water, like intricate tile work at the bottom of a shallow pool. She crossed her arms over her middle and pulled her knees in close, like a fetus. But he still wanted, still needed.

He pushed her knees open, splayed her thighs. Exposed her. Tense, quivering, she shuddered when he touched her cunt, running his thumb along her slit, feeling the slick fluids mingled among her folds. His body and hers, seeping together. That hot, bitter need burned through him again. He needed more from her. More. The semen seeping from her swollen, inflamed cunt like sap from a rose, it was something he'd lost. Lost to her.

He put his mouth to her sex and she whimpered and convulsed under him. Godfuck, her blood and her sex and his semen, and those delicate pink crenelations, soft little petals, fragrant flesh, warm and alive to his tongue. He licked. Her petals parted under his tongue, gave up her little pearl of pink flesh, left her open to this other penetration, shallower, gentler. In tiny teasing tastes he devoured her, until her tense resistance melted, until her legs stopped squeezing in on his shoulders and her knees dropped open, yielding everything to him. Until her squirmy flexing, her meek efforts to evade, to escape ceased, and she was rising to his mouth, writhing for his tongue. Until she let out a soft cry, then sobbed and shuddered and flexed and her cunt spasmed against him.

Tasting her, feeling her swollen, tender flesh respond to his mouth, he was hard again. And now, looking at her, her pleasure twined up with fear, he felt that other want, that other need that was about them.

He slipped over her, brought his hips between her thighs. Touched her face. She'd bitten her lip—in pleasure or pain—and drawn blood.

"Is this what you want?" he asked.

Cat nodded, and he sank into her. She startled and whimpered, and he held himself there, still, deep inside her. Her full lips were soft, so soft and yielding, parting for his lips, taking his tongue. Her hot wet mouth drew him in, her tongue teased over his.

When he moved, when he pumped his hips and slipped from her heat, then plunged into her again, she whimpered into his mouth and he pulled her tight to his chest. So close, together and warm, their bodies twined up, legs and arms and fingers and hair, inside her, all wrapped up in her. Like melting, like her wetness and his semen mingled inside of her, merging until they were one. The same one.