understood. The second we took off, we’d attacked each other. Ravenous to reconnect, using every inch of his private plane to join the mile-high club, drugged on lust and drunk on the knowledge we were going back to our paradise alone.
Waving at Kaly—a local vet nurse who’d done wonders with the latest shipment of chimpanzees and beagles we’d received—I padded beside Sully to the other side of the island where the helicopter waited to take us home.
Not for the first time, and probably not for the last, my stomach twisted a little as Sully hoisted me into the plush interior and kissed my wrist before climbing in himself. The image of him framed in the doorway brought back heart-hiccupping memories.
Of him falling toward the sea.
Of him splashing into the ocean and left for dead.
Of Drake taking me to Geneva to—
“Hey, stop it.” His hand landed on my knee, squeezing. “I’m not a fan of helicopters myself these days, but nothing is going to happen to either of us.”
I smiled and nodded, wriggling my way into the harness as the pilots turned on the engine and activated the ear-splintering whirring. “I know.”
Buckling himself in, Sully once again took my hand as we swooped into the sky. We looked down upon the rows of enclosures and lives we’d saved. No longer able to see the flame scorched earth or the bomb ravaged buildings but celebrating that good had triumphed over evil, and Sully was right.
Drake was dead.
That part of our lives was over.
We were safe. Our animals were safe.
Life was perfect.
Chapter Two
“COME WALK WITH ME?”
Two days after our visit to Serigala, I looked up from the text-heavy PDF about a promising drug to treat Alzheimer’s. The reading glasses I used these days slid down my nose as I looked up at the most stunning creature I’d ever seen.
Thanks to Drake putting God knew what into my eyes when he’d tortured me, I struggled in certain lights. Most of the time, I could see fine, but at night or if I’d been on my computer for too long, a haze appeared. Then again, I could just be getting old.
After all, I just celebrated my thirty-eighth birthday.
I wasn’t old, old by any means, but I wasn’t a spring chicken either. Not nearly as young as my delectable wife. I had eleven years on her. Eleven years where I’d existed and she hadn’t. Thank hell she was born, even a few years late, because I would’ve lived a lonely fucking life if she hadn’t.
Eleanor stood with her hands on her hips in an open bronze kimono that showed honey golden skin, willowy legs, and toned stomach. Her breasts filled out her black bikini and her hair—the same hair that I found such a fucking turn-on—spilled over one shoulder in a twisted chocolate rope.
Five years we’d been married, and in that time, she hadn’t cut it. She’d requested I trim it occasionally to keep the ends tidy, but every day on my shores, she seemed more and more wild. Stunning in her simplicity, breath-stealing in her natural beauty.
Tossing my e-tablet onto the deck lounger where I sat overlooking Nirvana as the waterfall splashed and crashed in the moonlight, I swallowed a sudden growl. “You come to me looking like that and think a walk is what I want?”
She grinned, running her hand through her gorgeous hair. “I deliberately wore this to bribe you into a walk. If that walk ends with me pinned against a palm tree, then so be it.” Her grey eyes sparkled as Pika and Skittles darted from the lounge behind her.
She laughed as Pika dive-bombed my hair and Skittles chirped loudly in my ear. The two cheeky caiques were on her side it seemed.
Adjusting my rapidly hardening cock, I swung my legs to the deck and stood. My legs had healed from the multiple broken bones, also courtesy of Drake, and to anyone other than my wife, I walked strong and sure.
Eleanor was the only one who noticed my slight limp, thanks to the scar tissue left behind from the harpoon wound. I didn’t need the cane she’d had made for me these days, but it still rested by my bed as a memory of the weeks of care she’d given me, all while I’d struggled to stay alive and return to her.
Her eyes raked over me, her tongue licking her lips. “You are a stunning specimen of a man.”
I let her feast on me. “I aim to please.”
“Oh, you do, you