Claimed

1 ARIELLA My thoughts were on p*****s. It never failed. Harvesting the phallic-shaped, gooseneck barnacles always brought male genitalia to mind. There was no denying living out here in the boondocks, I was so deprived of man flesh, the mere suggestion of a p***s got me fixated. I was amped up just thinking about seeing my very first erection in real life. Human erection, that was. Not the kind that hung dangling from a rock over sea spray. Dammit. While daydreaming about hard-ons, as per usual, I dropped my cat’s paw into the swirling surf of the tide pools below. Now it was stuck between two rocks, and I’d have to swim for it. I folded my clothes and slid into the Pacific, whose waters were colder than a witch’s tit in a brass b*a. No way was the tide taking out my best tool for harvesting shellfish. I’d warm up next to the fire inside in a bit. Nice save, Ariella. I patted myself on the back, throwing the hand holding the claw over a boulder ridge and heaving myself to the top. Yup, it was butt-assed cold. I made a futile attempt to get dressed in my drenched state, but the clothes just stuck to my body like barnacle kisses, so I pulled on my rubber boots and lowered myself onto the black gravel sand after skittering across the slippery, waterside rocks. The nippy wind off the Pacific tossed my hair and shoved its way through the tunnel of my n***d lady bits, cooling down the fiery pounding that a freaking arthropod had instigated. This was pathetic. I was going to have to do something about the fact that I had bumping and grinding on the brain at the drop of a hat. Maybe sss Prime delivered hot men by now. I could lose my virginity in two days’ time. The tide had come in, and I dumped my bucket of barnacles into the Styrofoam cooler and filled it just to the brim. I’d keep a handful to myself for dinner tonight, simmering them in butter, sherry, and shallots. Though gooseneck barnacles looked like oddly shaped male organs, shriveled and gray, they tasted like angel kisses when simmered in sherry, shallots, cream, and butter. The fog on the ocean shore and the lighting it cast on the rocks looked other-planetary. The kelp-covered boulders at low tide slumbered like sea creatures that might come to life at any moment. Did they breathe? Their sides rising and falling with the intake of air? I heard my aunt’s chastising, “Don't be such a chowderhead, Ariella. Of course boulders can't come to life.” Even here, on the shores of nowhere, voices from the past wrapped themselves around my mind like floating ribbons of seaweed. And I had to admit, I was prone to flights of fancy. Maybe living on the farthest edge of the Lost Coast, all alone, all inside my head with no one to talk to made it worse, but this was the bargain I had struck with my aunt. Out here, no one was privy to my thoughts except me and Sasha. Having only a dog for company didn’t exactly boost my powers of concentration. Sasha read my mind as if he lived inside of it. My protector. My guard and my champion. I still remembered the day he came slinking up to me after some dumbass dumped him here, in the middle of nowhere, to fend for himself. His little puppy ribs had been showing. Where did he go? I clapped my hands to the rhythm of “Shave and a Haircut” so Sasha would come. An unusual command for a dog, but with his high level of intelligence, it worked. He dashed out from behind a boulder and whined until I walked toward him. I swore Sasha spoke better than I did. I glanced down at the Styrofoam chest on the sand. Peggy, the mail lady, would pick it up this afternoon and send it off to my buyer in Portland, Oregon. Upscale restaurants there paid sixty-five dollars a pound for the butt-ugly crustaceans. Sasha whined again—strange for him. He was desperate now for me to follow him around the huge boulder jutting out of the sand, blocking our view of the sea. The serious sound of his whimper landed slick and cool over my heart, grasped with chilly tentacles in a way impossible to ignore. These trivial events occurred right before the incident which put its paddle into the peaceful waters of my isolated world and splashed it apart. A man. Holy s**t, someone had heard my prayers. This wasn’t just any man. He had rough, calloused hands, the hands of a construction worker. Inked bands looped around his bulging arms. I wanted to take advantage of his unconscious state and touch him to see if his muscles would give when I pushed down on them with my fingers. Although at rest, the brawny body looked to be carved from granite. His face was beat to s**t, but the rest of his frame conveyed “big and strong,” as if the words were lit up in neon lights across his chest. All these thoughts raced through my mind in a matter of seconds. Dear God, please say he’s passed out and not dead. He was wet, his face swollen from bumps and bruises marring his features and making it hard to tell what he looked like. I ran to him at the surf’s edge, put a finger to the inside of his wrist, and plopped my butt down on my heels at the sight of his chest rising and falling and the feel of his strong pulse. Where had he come from? How long had he spent in the water? Judging from the temperature of his skin, too long. His shivering lips were the color of stormy, gray-blue ocean water. I needed to get him warm. Sasha whined again, nudging me with his insistent nose, and I took a few seconds to pet his neck reassuringly. His dense fur collar comforted me when I dove into it with my fingers. I signed “stay” to Sasha, so he would stand guard and come after me if, God forbid, the man’s breathing stopped. I shucked my rubber boots and sprinted up the beach slope to my cottage on the grassy bluff above. My strength and stamina above average, I still had no earthly idea how to move that mega man closer to my home, away from the incoming waters, to care for him. Muscles tight and jaw tense, I pulled open the shed doors and fetched a large plastic tarp. I bolted back to the beach, grabbing two straight driftwood poles on the way. Who knew how long he’d lingered submerged in the icy waters offshore? I needed to get him away from the rising tide and warm him up so he didn’t get hypothermia. He shivered. Not a good sign. The stretcher I made with the tarp and poles was badass, but that was the straightforward part. I shoved the stranger so his body rested sideways on the sand and bulldozed one section of him at a time across the soft shore with my hands at his backside, away from the salt water that licked the shore, closer and closer behind us. Once I had him aligned with the driftwood stretcher poles, I rolled him on his back again so his weight held the tarp, folded around the wood, in place. Now came the hard part. I bent my legs and crouched down, then heaved upwards with my legs to lift his body off the ground. He didn’t budge. I’d never make it back to my home this way. Again, I dashed back to my cabin, snapping up a pair of scissors, matches, a wool blanket, old newspaper, and kindling. I’d make him a bonfire as hot as hell if I had to. Back at his side with my fire-starter in hand, I used the bulldozing technique again, shoving his body one section at a time up the slope of the beach and out of the tide’s reach. His clothes. The water had soaked them through, and they needed to come off. The scissors snicked in the sea air as I hacked his shirt and pants away from his chiseled body. My experience with the male form thus far was pure fantasy, but in real life, this man made my ovary lay an egg, and the saltwater, testosterone scent of him did something deranged to my head. Tanned. Muscular. His chest dusted with brunette and silver hair, and a dark brown trail leading straight to the button at the top of his pants like a promise. Pay attention, Ariella. This was an emergency, not a horse show. Quit ogling his appearance. I stacked dry driftwood in a pile, doused it with a generous squirt of lighter fluid, and flamed it to life. Then I stood back, satisfied with the heat soon l*****g my face from the stack of burning fuel. There wasn’t a moment to lose. I just hoped to God the fire kindled him back to life again. Who knew what trouble this man was in or what danger he’d bring to my door given his current beat-to-s**t state? Life had taught me thus far there was a certain kind that went chasing after heartache, and he might be one of them. It was still my job to make sure he survived the thing that kicked his a*s out there in the deep. I’d do everything I possibly could to make sure if he was looking for trouble, the only kind he’d find was me. But first, I needed to put on some clothes.