Savage by Kat Austen Page A

end me that night, but maybe it had been trying to give me the new beginning I’d been searching for. “I’m sorry I wasn’t the Coast Guard or someone who could have saved you. That was quite the smoke signal you sent into the sky.”
    Grant shot me a confused look for a moment before it ironed out. His palm lifted to my cheek. “I didn’t make that fire to try to save me, Jane.” My spine tingled when he said my name. “I made that fire to try to save you .”
    When I realized what he was saying, my eyes welled instantly. He hadn’t started that fire in an attempt to save himself—he’d made it as a beacon of hope and safety for me.
    “You knew the storm was coming?” I had to swallow to keep going. “You knew it was going to get bad?”
    “I’ve lived on this ocean for years. I can sense a storm coming before the sky even begins to darken.”
    Instead of wiping my eyes to erase my tears, I let them fall. Out here, with him, I didn’t feel the need to hide my emotions. It felt like the one place on Earth I could let them be real and raw.
    “My ship went down when it was dark. How did you know I needed help?”
    He was quiet, something new in his eyes when he looked at me. “It was a feeling.”
    The corners of my mouth twitched. “A feeling?”
    He didn’t blink. “A feeling. My instinct has kept me alive out here this long, so I trust it when it’s telling me something. And that night, it was telling me someone needed my help.”
    I had no idea which side of this island my boat had gone down or how far I’d been out from the shore. The island was large, and the ocean was endless.
    “How in the world did you find me out there?” I breathed, overwhelmed.
    Grant’s thumb wiped one of the fresh tears from my cheek, his eyes softening. “I could find you anywhere in this universe. Especially this ocean.”

9
    Grant
    E verything I’d been looking for was right here, in my arms. That was the thought I awoke to, finding the sun almost directly overhead. It was a good thing I’d moved us beneath the palm tree’s shade before we’d drifted asleep early this morning. We’d both been too exhausted to talk another word or exchange another touch.
    Jane was still resting peacefully, her head settled on my chest with her arm and leg draped over my body, clinging to me in her sleep as I clung to her. Feeling her naked and pressed against me, my arousal stirred instantly, but I wouldn’t wake her—I’d let her wake on her own, once she was good and rested. If it was up to me, we’d spend most of the rest of our lives with our bodies joined the way they’d been last night, taking a few minutes in between to sleep.
    But this wasn’t about what I wanted—this was about what she needed. What she wanted. That was my life’s new mission. Mere survival took a backseat to making sure her every need and whim was met.
    We’d talked about so much earlier. She knew my story—my life before this island and my life since—she knew me, and here she was, still tucked against me, breathing soundly and her expression peaceful.
    My whole life, I’d searched for the kind of connection I’d found with this woman the moment my arms had wound around her to pull her from the ocean’s clutches. Everything I’d been searching for out there had been waiting for me here. This island wasn’t the hell I’d been banished to, as I’d originally thought when my small seaplane went down and I’d somehow survived to swim my way here. This wasn’t hell on Earth—no, it was heaven. I’d found it. My own personal heaven on Earth, and I knew it was Jane who made it so. I knew she would make that true no matter where we wound up on this planet.
    She was my heaven, my saving grace. I’d give anything to make her happy. I’d sacrifice everything to keep her safe. Fuck, I’d give my life just to save her the discomfort of a scratch. She was precious to me in a way that made everything else pale in comparison—including my