Surviving Raine 01 (6 page)

Raine giggled.

She fucking giggled, and the sound went straight to my cock.

Damn, if she wasn’t going to be the death of me.  I was pretty confident I could survive in a life raft for quite some time, but survive Raine without my cock jumping straight out of my shorts like a divining rod?  Not so sure.

“We probably should both take it,” I said.  “The sea’s usually pretty calm after rain, but it could pick up tonight.  Being in a raft is a lot more likely to make you sick than a ship.”

“Because it’s smaller?”

“Yeah, you feel the movement more.”  I shrugged.  “Seasickness has never bothered me, but it could in this piece of shit.”

I pulled out two of the tablets, and we washed them down with a small mouthful of water.

“Don’t forget to lick your lips,” I said.

Oh man, I should
not
have told her to do that.  Watching her run her tongue out over her full lips was just…fuck hot.  I definitely wanted to run my tongue over those lips, and because I am a complete and total masochistic moron, I gave her something to eat, just so I could watch her wash it down with another mouthful of water.  I had to actually turn away from her for a few minutes, pretending to screw around with the fastenings where the ladder was attached.  Then I found myself wondering what her nipples would taste like.  Images of little Hershey’s Kisses melted over her breasts started to taunt me.

Okay, I really, really needed to stop thinking like this.  If nothing else, I already seriously pissed her off with the “blow me” comment.  I didn’t think the chances of me getting my lips anywhere near any part of her body were very good.

We’re starting over
, I reminded myself.

Yeah, I doubted that was going to include her forgetting that particular verbiage anytime soon.  I was just going to have to find some other way to occupy my mind.

So, I started wondering what DTs were going to feel like.  Why?  Because, as previously stated, I was a complete and total masochistic moron.  Shakes – yep, definitely going to be looking forward to that.  Hot and cold flashes, heart rate fluctuations, sweating, lack of muscle control – lots of fun stuff to look forward to experiencing.  Oh yeah – and the vomiting, which is the one thing that might just kill me under these circumstances.

It occurred to me that I had better teach Raine some of the more practical bits of survival knowledge she just might need if I didn’t make it.

“Come here.”

“What?”

“I want you to know how to work the water collector.”

She crawled over to the opening, and I gave her a brief overview of the gutter system, the collection tube, and bag.  I showed her how to pinch it off and replace it with a new bag without losing any water and finished off the lesson with her having a good drink and me watching her lick her lips.

“I am really hot.”

I managed not to comment.

“I feel like I could drink it all, but I guess that’s probably not a good idea.”

“Yeah, that’s a really bad idea.”

“How much water are you supposed to drink?” Raine asked.

“A liter a day will keep you healthy,” I told her.  “You can survive on a lot less.”

I looked over to her and took in her tiny frame.

“You’re going to stick with a full liter as long as we can afford it.”

“Why?”

“You’re too small,” I said, shaking my head, but I felt the corner of my mouth turn up a little because something about how much smaller she was than me was just…interesting, I guess.  “You’ll dehydrate a lot faster.”

“Is there enough?” she asked.

“For now, yes.”

“If it doesn’t rain again?”

“There are other options.”

She sat looking at her hands in her lap and biting down on her lip.

“You mean like…drinking urine, right?”

I tried to keep myself from laughing out loud, but a bit of a snicker escaped me.

“Only in movies, babe,” I said, shaking my head again.  “Urine is about as salty as sea water, and a lot more gross.”

Raine smiled and nodded.

“I’m rather glad to hear that,” she said.  “What do we do if we run out of fresh water then?”

“Long before we run out, the first thing that will happen
you
will stop eating, whether there is food or not.  Digestion takes a lot of water, especially to digest proteins.  You can have carbs a little longer.”

“Just me?  You won’t stop eating?”

“I already stopped eating,” I said, “but I’ve been through a little starvation before.  I’m not too concerned about that.”

“You should eat while we have food, shouldn’t you?”

I shook my head.

“Maybe in a couple of days,” I said.  “I won’t drink any more today, either, because I’m probably going to be really sick.  The less I take in now, the less I’m gonna lose tomorrow.”

“Why will you be sick?”

I fought the urge to tell her to use her fucking brain.  I mean, I had told her, hadn’t I?  I’d been thinking about it but not talking about it.  Just because I told her I was an alcoholic didn’t mean she understood what that really meant.  I took a deep breath and tried to control my voice.

“Because I’m a fucking alcoholic,” I said through clenched teeth.  “By tomorrow morning all the alcohol will be out of my system, and my body is going to be seriously pissed off about it.”

I held my arm out straight in front of me so my hand was just a foot away from her face.  My fingers bobbed up and down uncontrollably.

“I’ve already started getting the shakes, and I’m probably going to start throwing up continually by noon tomorrow.  I might start hallucinating, and if that happens, I know I won’t be of any use to you.  That’s why you need to remember all this shit because I may be out of it for a day or two.  You can’t drink too much or too little water.  You have to eat half a carb bar every six hours, and you have to watch for other ships or boats or anything else to come by.”

Raine looked from my shaking hand to my eyes – I felt my heart skip a beat – and then back down to my hand again.  Her brow wrinkled up in thought, and she gnawed on her bottom lip again.

“You better tell me everything I need to know pretty quickly then,” she said.  “I’ll probably want to go over it a couple of times, and it’s probably good to do that while you still can.”

I nodded, seeing the sudden determination in her eyes.  It was good to see her losing some of the panic she was feeling before.  Of course, that may have had a lot to do with me being a dick as well.  We went over the survival guide, and I continued on with the shit she really needed to know, like how to set off the flares and how to use the signal mirror.  We talked about keeping dry as much as possible and above all, saving energy.

“The more you move around or get worked up about shit, the more energy you use,” I explained.  “You have to conserve energy because energy uses water and dehydration is what is going to kill you.”

“Okay,” Raine said.  “I get it.  You’ve said that ten times now.”

“Well, then you shouldn’t fucking forget it, should you?” I snarled, and she flinched, her eyes darkening at me.  I took a deep breath and ran a hand through my hair.  “All right, what do you still have questions about?”

“What if we run out of fresh water?”

“That won’t happen before I’m back to my shitty self,” I said. “Really, you can actually drink a small amount of seawater without it making you sick, but only do that if there isn’t any fresh at all because it isn’t going to help much, either.  There are some other ways to get fresh water if it doesn’t rain.  It won’t be much, but it will keep you alive.  That won’t be for a week or so, though.  In general, hope for rain and always be prepared to collect it when it comes.”

“How do you know so much about surviving like this?” Raine asked.  “I mean, did you just learn it as part of getting a boa…er…a ship?”

“No, I learned it before that.”

“Were you a boy scout?”

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at that one.

“No, definitely fucking not.”

“May I ask how you learned?”

I glanced over at her and met her eyes.  I knew what she was doing – asking me if she could ask instead of just asking the actual question.  She was giving me the easy out.  I looked away from her and down at my hands.  The shaking was worse.  I couldn’t hold them steady at all.  I wondered how long DTs usually lasted.  I’d never made it very far in the past – it was just so much easier to take a drink instead.

“Someone taught me,” I said.  “He was a retired Navy SEAL, and he taught me just about everything I know.”

“What was his name?”

“Landon,” I answered.

“Will you tell me about him?”

Did I want to talk about Landon?  Good question.  The answer wasn’t so straightforward.  In a word, no – I didn’t want to talk about him.  However, I probably could talk about him without saying all that much, and maybe Raine would be appeased.

“He was…kind of like a father to me, I guess,” I finally said.  “I never had a father, so I think that’s what they’re supposed to be like.  I looked up to him, anyway.”

“I can’t imagine you looking up to anyone,” she said and smiled a little.  “You’re so tall, I mean.”

“I’m not that tall,” I responded.  “It’s just that you are just a couple inches away from being a midget.”

“I am not!” she cried with mock indignity.  I smiled a little.

“Landon thought it was important to be able to handle any kind of…
situation
.”

“Like surviving at sea?”

“At sea, in the desert, in the jungle, in a cave, downtown Manhattan – whatever.”

She giggled again.

Holy shit.  What was it about that sound that got me so worked up?  I took a deep breath and said a mental “down boy” prayer to my crotch.

“Is he…still alive?” she asked.

“As far as I know,” I said.  We were approaching dangerous territory faster than I would have liked.  “I haven’t talked to him in a while.”

“I lost my father a few years ago,” Raine said.

I had expected as much.  I tilted my head in what I hoped came off as a sympathetic gesture.  I debated asking her what happened to him, but I really didn’t want to get into such depth of conversation – not with her or anyone else.  Too much talking about oneself was dangerous.  I kind of liked listening to her talk, though.  About the time I decided to go ahead and ask her, she opened up her mouth and told me anyway.

“He was a police officer,” she said quietly.  “He died in the line of duty.”

Great.

I wasn’t sure if it was irony, karma, Murphy’s Law, or fucking feng shui, but it just figured her dad had been a cop.

“I was still in high school when it happened,” she continued.  “And all that was kind of a nightmare, really, so I got my GED, got emancipated, and spent a couple years in college.  I couldn’t really cope and dropped out last spring.  I’m planning to start again in the fall, though.  My friend Lindsay convinced me to take this cruise so I could relax and have a good time before I start my life over again.”

Raine issued a short, humorless laugh.

“Relaxing, huh?”

“I’ll let you know when the spa opens,” I said.  I meant it as a joke and hoped it didn’t come out too harsh.  “You picked the wrong vacation.”

“I would say so, yes,” Raine agreed, “but it could be worse.”

“How the fuck could it be worse?” I snorted.

“Well, at least you found me,” she said, shrugging.  “I could have drowned, or I could have ended up on a raft by myself and not know what to do.  If I have to be on a life raft out in the middle of nowhere, I have the feeling you are the person to be with.”

I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to think about exactly what she was saying.  I knew she just meant I had essential survival skills, but she just sounded so
grateful
.  I don’t think anyone ever really talked to me – or about me – in that particular tone before.

“Yeah, if you were really unlucky, you would have ended up with John Paul.”

“I thought John Paul was sweet.”

“You talked to him?”  Stupid question.  Of course she had talked to him; he was practically a one-man cruise director.  He talked to everyone.

“Yes,” she confirmed.  “Alejandro was making waffles for breakfast, and John Paul told me to have it with blueberries instead of strawberries.  He said Alejandro bought the strawberries super cheap and they were absolutely nasty.”

She giggled again.  Damn.

“The blueberries were really good.” Raine smiled, looked straight into my eyes with her dark brown lashes half obscuring her irises, and giggled again.

Holy shit.  I had to stop breathing for a second.  She said something else, but I totally missed it.

“What?”

“I said, did you have the waffles with blueberries, too?”

“No.” I shook my head, “not my kind of breakfast.”

“What is your kind of breakfast?”

“Coffee with Kahlua and a half pack of cigarettes.”

“Seriously?”

“Only thing that keeps me awake.”

“What about lunch?”

“Oh, I usually eat lunch,” I said.  “Whatever Alejandro brought to the pilothouse I would eat.  I’m not too picky about food, as long as it isn’t crappy food.”

“What’s crappy food?” she asked.

“You know – like chips and red meat and candy and shit.  I never eat that stuff.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not good for you.”

She laughed out loud, which was almost as cute as the giggling, but not quite.

“You drink and smoke breakfast, but you won’t eat a candy bar?”

“Yep.”

“Does that really make sense to you?”

“Yep.”

“Do you think you could explain it?” she asked, tossing a handful of hair over her shoulder.  “Because I think that sounds absolutely ridiculous.”

“It isn’t fucking ridiculous,” I growled, glaring at her.  “Alcohol gets processed by your liver and doesn’t affect muscle mass.  Chips and other shit like that are wasted calories in fat which slows you the fuck down.  Red meat is too hard to digest, has too much protein and too much fat.”

“What about the candy?”

“It rots your teeth.”

Raine smiled with one eyebrow arched towards me but didn’t laugh again.