Dead Calm

Then, in one perfect moment, it crested, spitting white against the gray sky.

Puny against the glassy green, she rode its momentum all the way to the collapsing crash of soapy foam.

Over the surf noise, her laugh rang with triumph, a bright, bell-like sound, as she trudged to the sand with her board.

Arousal ripped through him. His skin rippled with it. He could smell it in the air, coming off him like bands of storm waves. He couldn’t even hear the surf over the roaring in his ears. His wet jeans flapped against his legs as he strode toward her. Even his fingertips thrummed with the need to—what?

Mid stride, he stopped, took a deep breath. A second one.

He forced himself to stroll toward her and was appalled at the struggle it took.

He’d been stupid.

Was being even more stupid. If he had an ounce of sense, he’d turn and run for the hills before she saw him.

But he didn’t.

Instead, water slopping at his heels, he approached her. Blowing off the Gulf, wind plastered his wet clothes to him. He should have been cold to the bone.

He wasn’t.

How could he be cold when his blood was pumping so damned hot through him? He half-expected to see steam rising from his every footstep. A pressure cooker of intensity, looking for an escape valve.

Burning even the roots of his wet hair.

He wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d swung around and seen a string of black, scorched footprints following him in the sand.

Flopped on the wet sand and facing the storm surge, she didn’t see him approaching her.

It gave him that extra second he needed.

It gave him the element of surprise he wanted.

Relief washed over him and left him feeling like a yellow-bellied coward as he pitched his voice lower than the booming waves. “Sophie.”

She leapt to her feet. The board bounced to the sand, kicked up a shell. “Finnegan? Finnegan?” She was breathing hard, her breasts lifting with her questions. “What—where did you come from? And why?” Strands of wet hair clung flatly to her head, lay against her cheek as she stared at him. “Judah. Here?”

“Yeah. Me. Here.” He stooped and picked up her board, handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said automatically, her face crumpled with confusion. She held the board close to her, and that pulse in her throat was going ninety miles an hour. “You—”

“Scared you?” He’d like to scare her, just a little, just enough to make her drop that brittle mask she wore around him. He wanted to see her without all that clever self-possession, just once.

“Scared? No, no, you startled me. That’s all. I thought no one was here.” She lifted the board, tamped it onto the sand.

“How’s your shoulder?”

He shrugged. He hadn’t thought about his stitches once since he’d arrived at the beach. “It’s okay.”

“Good. Do you need any pain meds?”

He must have made a sound.

“No, tough guy, I guess you wouldn’t. Need anything, that is.” She bounced the board hard against the sand, shifted.

“So, Finnegan, exactly how long have you been here?”

“Long enough to see you eat pie on that wave.”

She glanced toward the Gulf, gave a small, delighted smile. “Big waves for the Gulf. I hadn’t expected anything like this.” From the east behind her, light was beginning to stain the sand, tint the water a softer shade of gray. “That beast stripped my rash guard off, right over my head and arms. Gone.” She paused before turning her attention back to him. “I hit the backwash. It popped me right off. I couldn’t hold it.”

“Too bad.”

“That’s surfing for you.” She looked out at the Gulf. “You play in God’s ballpark, you pay the price.” Absently she rubbed her elbow, calm as all get-out.

Except for that pulse going like a bat out of hell.

Hair flattened against her head, she was a sleek, otter-like silhouette against the lightening gray in her shiny black neoprene. He wanted to sluice the water dripping from her hair with his hands, he wanted to slide those same hands, wet with salt water, down the smooth, shiny curves of her, he wanted to taste that tiny pulse beating like a trapped butterfly under her skin—

She glanced back at him, frowned, the little pulse beat going lickety-split. “So. You’ve been here a while.”

“I have.”

He knew the second she regained control. It was caused by a tone in his voice. Or the look on his face. But the confusion softening her face disappeared, the restless shifting back and forth ceased as she registered his comment. She narrowed her eyes. With a quick assessment, she considered his wet clothes, sopping hair, and the seaweed still clinging to his worn jeans. “Looks like you ate pie yourself.”

“Not me. You couldn’t pay me enough to go out there at this time of day. I sure do admire a shark’s efficiency, but I’m not right fond of having breakfast with them. Or being their breakfast. Didn’t you know this was feeding time, Yankee Girl?”

“Not much of a risk on this coast. Different if we were down in the Keys.”

“There’s always a risk.”

“Hey, Finnegan, life’s full of risks. Don’t you know that?” Her laugh was a ripple of sound that furred along his nerve endings and made him catch his breath.

“Remember a couple of years ago? That huge migration of sharks in the Gulf off Tampa? Hundreds of them?”

She shrugged. “Surfing’s a controllable risk. I like surfing these fat storm waves. They’re as close as I can get to Hawaii. I like dawn patrol. And I like taking risks.” She ran her hands over her hair, spraying water onto his bare feet.

“Do you now?” The drops burned against his skin. An errant scent drifted to him and it took him a second to realize that it was the scent of her skin flavored by Gulf and an unknown tension.

“I’m an adrenaline junkie. Otherwise, I’d have chosen some other profession.”

“And here I’ve been thinking it was pure compassion that put you in your doctor whities.”

The wind carried the light sound of her laugh behind them, to the east and the still-shrouded sun. “Oh, come on, Finnegan. You know exactly what I’m talking about. Cops feed off that rush. Isn’t that fine testosterone rush why most of them go into the job? Isn’t it why you became a fine boyo in blue? And don’t try to play the innocent,” she mocked as he hesitated. “Because I know better.”

“I never thought about it.”

“You should…think about it.”

“Are we still talking about cops and robbers? Because all my fine detecting skills pick up something else here,” he drawled.

“Really? How perceptive of you.” She wrung water out of her hair, sent it spattering again onto his feet. “By the way, where are your shoes, Finnegan? Or are you the original barefoot boy with cheek of tan?” Her eyelashes sparkled with drops of water. Giving off a heat of their own, her eyes glittered.

“I’m a Florida cracker. Of course I’m barefoot.” He gave in, yielded to temptation and that siren heat. Reaching out, making himself move slowly, he brushed his forefinger along the edge of her lashes, let it skate slowly down her cheek until his finger rested in the hollow of her neck, just above the zipper of her neoprene vest.

The leap of her vein against his finger sent a painful pulse straight south. He stepped closer, stepped into the heat rising from her.

“Where did the seaweed come from, Finnegan?” Her breath puffed against his chin as he dipped to her face.

“Same place you did, Dr. Sugar.”

She stepped closer. Against him, through his clothes, through his jacket, she was a cold, supple shape moving in his arms.

And then, with a breath, hot skin everywhere his fingers slid. Cold neoprene and hot skin.

Unbelievable, the heat radiating from her.

From her cheeks, from the lobes of her ears.

All that silky skin should have been cold, blue-tinged.

Yet it blistered the palms of his hands as he cupped her face and tasted the salt lingering on her eyelashes. Dimly he wondered, why?

But the clean, salty smell of her skin spun him away from his memories of the night and its ugliness, sent him spiraling into a place where there was light and peace. “Delicious,” he murmured, absorbed in the scent and taste of Sophie.

He thought she would hesitate, expected her to step back, figured she would push him away. He hoped she would. But her eyes darkened, the pupils huge as she curled one black-clad arm around his neck and pulled him to her.

“Share, Finnegan,” she murmured into his mouth, her lips soft and pliant, as soft and pliant as the woman standing on tiptoes and stretching herself against him, one thigh slipping between his legs. “Nice,” she said. “I’d forgotten how nice touching you could be. I didn’t remember.”

He spread his legs and made room for her, let her come as close as wetsuit and soggy jeans would allow, and as he did, she reached up with her other hand and slid her fingers through his hair, holding his face still as she sipped at the corner of his mouth and sighed.

He wanted to believe it was a sigh of pleasure.

But deep in the sigh, he heard the sadness.

He hesitated, his fingers fumbling with the broad tab of her zippered vest. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“I don’t know about you, Finnegan, but this is the best idea I’ve had in weeks.”

He brushed her cheek with his thumb, trying to get his thoughts in some kind of order. “But—”

“If you stop now, Judah, I swear I’ll hunt you down and kill you. And no jury on earth would convict me.” Her voice was low and breathy as she slipped her hand between their bodies, closed it over his, tugged down, the slippery material opening as he slid his hand inside and found softness and heat, found the hard bump of her nipple.

And lingered, tugging, entranced by the contrast of cold suit and flushed skin.

Touching her, he remembered again how it had been for him the first time he’d seen her, the rush of wanting, the physical ache of needing to touch her.

Touching her, he could forget the past, could escape the prison of his soul by losing himself in her.

That was what he wanted most on this dismal, storm-wrecked morning, escape was what he’d craved and hadn’t known he needed.

Here, with her smacked up against him, he didn’t have to think about the creeps spraying graffiti around town, didn’t have to think about the jackasses stealing from the Christmas charity kettles. He didn’t have to think about the baby left in the manger, didn’t have to think about George. Didn’t have to think.

That was the blessing. It had been a lifetime since he’d felt anything, not anger, not joy. Nothing. But with Sophie in his arms, he could just feel.

This, he thought as he moved his mouth along the long line of her neck, this salvation in Sophie’s scent, touch, in the very texture of her skin under his seeking fingers, this was the light in the darkness. “Closer,” he muttered against the slope of her breast. His chin scraped against the metal zipper teeth as he nudged the vest opening wider. “You’re not close enough. I want you closer.” He cupped her butt with one hand and pulled her tightly to him.

From that first moment, he’d known it would be like this.

In this moment, only Sophie. Beginning and end of thought, of regret, of anger.

Right now. Alpha and omega.

Now.

Sophie.

She tasted the hunger in his lips and fed on it, felt his seeking fingers at her waistband.

“Two-piece?”

“Yes,” she exhaled into his ear. “Easier to get into.” She wiggled her fanny, and felt him shudder against her. “And out of.”

“Excellent.” He flattened his palm into the curve of her back.

She twisted upward. “Good hands, Finnegan. Ah, but you have good hands.” Her brain turned to mush as he edged a forefinger between the tight fabric and her spine.

The adrenaline rampaging through her had a focus now, and she leaned into it, just the way she would lean into a wave. Judah’s lean form. Judah’s hands on her. The movement of his hard body against her took all the energy the surfing hadn’t touched and channeled it, a straight line from him to her. She should have grabbed Finnegan instead of her surf board, she thought muzzily as his thumbs met in her belly button and pressed, circled lower.

How long had it been since she’d been touched like this? She couldn’t remember, oh, he was taking her breath away, she couldn’t breathe….

Her knees buckled, and he went with her, their knees bouncing on the packed sand, but she couldn’t turn him loose. Her fingertips hummed with the sensation of his hot skin against them.

His hands were on either side of her face, framing it and holding her still. “Inside. We need to go inside.”

“Too far,” she gasped.

“I can run.” He pulled her to her feet and lifted her off the sand, snugging one arm under her behind and staggering to his feet.

“If you think so.” She locked her legs behind his waist and buried her face in the crook of his neck, breathed and went dizzy with the feel of his skin against her cheek. “Go for it, tiger.”

He lurched with her up the slope of sand and sea oats toward the shadowy house. The rise and fall of his chest matched her own. “Damn. How much farther?”

“Two hundred yards. More or less.” She nipped at his ear and ran her hand down from his belt as far as she could.

“Not much farther, big guy.” His arousal surged against the heel of her hand, and she moved coaxingly against it.

He stumbled. She slid down his body. The soggy fabric of his jeans rubbed against her, sent sparks shooting through her.

“We’re not going to make it,” he muttered, frustration in every syllable.

Laughing, she let all the night’s misery drift away in the wind. “You don’t have to look so grim.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” He still held her snagged against him as he marched her backwards toward her house.

“Really?” she whispered slyly. “How…impressive.”

Stomping onward, he glowered at her. “What? What?”

“Nothing.” She stroked her hand down the hard front of his jeans, felt him throb into her curving palm.

“Oh.”

“Oh, indeed.” She laughed again. She could never have hoped for this kind of ending to the horrible night. In Finnegan’s arms, all the destruction of the ER melted away.

Here was life. Here was pleasure. She moved her flat palm against him again. Here was power. His.

Hers.

Laughter kept bubbling up from deep inside. Her body fizzed and sparkled, everything inside her coiling and tumbling. And still he marched her relentlessly backwards, bumping against her, struggling with the waistband of her suit bottom as he kept moving. Trapped by his arms, the sides of her open vest bent back under her arms.

The wind blew against her bare breasts, tickling her with sand and cold. Her nipples brushed against his wet shirt, hardened.

“This is crazy, Sophie.” But he didn’t stop. Didn’t stop touching, didn’t stop moving her back to the house, his bare feet tangling with hers at every step, his pants legs flapping against her bare calves and knees.

Sensation everywhere. She was drowning in touch and smell. Drowning in Judah.

Careening backward, she tripped on the root of one of the pine trees and fell, a dizzying swoon of gray sky and his blue eyes.

Landing on the cushion of pine needles with Judah coming right after her, his arms still wrapped around her, she couldn’t stop laughing at the silliness of it all. Oh, she’d needed this, this laughter, this touching, this. How could she not have known how much she needed his touch? She slid her palms under his wet jacket, let them slip down wet skin, traced the contours of muscles, felt their response to her touch. Some rawness in her soul eased under the balm of touching and being touched and laughing.

And in some distant place in her brain she pictured them tangled together on the beach, a mess of sloppy wet clothes and sandy bodies and she laughed again.

“What’s so funny, Sophie?” His tongue traced the curve of her mouth, gently, dampening her lips, and the wind touched them, too, and everything in her shivered with delight.

She just wished Judah didn’t look so grim.

So lost.

She didn’t want him lost. She didn’t want emotion now, not his, not hers, only this physical exhilaration that blanked out memories and thought and everything except this.

“Easy,” she murmured. She smoothed the frown between his ocean-blue eyes. “It’s not the end of the world.”

Not answering, not meeting her gaze, he lowered himself over her, fitting his pelvis against hers, sliding his arms under her. “Any chance of getting this damn bottom off?”

“Finnegan, if I’ve learned one thing in this life, it’s that there’s always a chance.” She squirmed encouragingly, every nerve ending in her thighs and belly quivering with pleasure, with life. “If there’s a will, there’s a way.”

Tomorrow would come soon enough.

And in the meantime, here was Judah, filling her world with taste, with touch, with himself.

Easy, for the moment, so easy to let herself forget the ugliness. So tempting, this surrender to feeling, to the physical anodyne of what they were doing. Surrender to the power, to the wave of pleasure.

There were worse ways to end a day.

Chapter 4

He should have gone home.

Even as Judah slicked back the tangled hair hiding her ear and tasted her, he knew he should get up from the heat of her body, the salty tang of her skin, and leave.

He knew it. Like fingernails scraping down a chalkboard, his brain screeched warnings. Yet he lingered in the illusive comfort of her arms.

Stayed.

And hated himself.

Weakness, this craving to touch and taste. He despised himself for the need, for the loss of will. He hated this weakness that mewed stay when he knew he should flee as if the hounds of hell were on his heels.

Weakness.

And yet…

He stroked the slight swell of her flattened breast and lost himself in the warming whiteness of it, spellbound by the rose flush that crept upward from his touch.

A murmur. A sharp inhalation. Hers. The subtle accommodation of her hips to him fascinated him, whispered to the maleness in him, sang a silent siren song of movement and scent and urgency.

“This doesn’t make sense,” he said.

“You’re wrong. At the moment it makes all the sense in the world.”

“You? Me? No.” His brain kept jabbering and screeching, a discordancy of mind and logic against the need for touch and taste. “This is stupid.” He braced himself on his forearms, his hands framing her face and made himself look at her, forced himself to breathe the cool air and not her scent, made himself look at the woman who’d caused George’s death.

Dark streaks against white sand and green pine, her hair fanned out from her round face. She looked back at him, knowledge and sadness and sympathy blurring the blue-gray of her eyes.

“Don’t look at me like that, Sophie.”

“How am I looking at you, Judah?” Quiet as sunlight moving across a wood floor, her voice feathered over him.

“I’m only—”

“Don’t,” he said again.

“Don’t what, Judah?”

“Just…don’t.”

“Ah, Judah.” There was something like regret in that barely heard exhalation, something too much like pity.

From the corner of his eye, he saw her palm lift toward him. Before she could touch him, he fanned his hand across her face, stroked the skin at the corner of her eyes and drew her eyelids closed.

He hated her for the way she made him feel. Hated her for the sympathy in her eyes. Hated her most of all for the understanding glimmering there, an understanding so close to pity he couldn’t bear it. She had no right to see straight down to whatever passed for a soul in the darkness of his heart.

And yet he wanted her. Wanted her. Hated her. And despised himself. A sickness of body and mind he didn’t want to escape.

In that moment when the wind ceased, when all he heard was the pounding of his blood in his head, he learned a truth.

Despite logic, despite loyalty, despite everything, he was going to have Sophie Brennan.

He didn’t want to think about how he was going to live with that choice. Not with her soft and yielding beneath him.

With a quick, fierce movement, he pulled open the fastener of her pants. Her hands were right there on top of his, urging the skintight material down. Caught in the immediacy, he gritted his teeth and struggled with his jeans. Their hands bumped, tangled. She pushed his bumbling fingers aside. He pushed right back, hands and fingers melding in a dance of their own.

“Wait.” She lifted her pelvis and shoved the fabric past her belly.

“No.” Cool, damp, that skin suddenly under his palm. He dipped his mouth to her navel and blew softly against her.

Her belly fluttered beneath his mouth. “Ah,” she said, a tight, sharp sound of surprise.

He flattened his hand against her and pressed, his fingers stroking, testing her inner heat. “Here?”

“Oh, yes. There is good. There is perfect. There…ah.” One of her hands tightened in his hair, the other slid between them, seeking him as he continued pressing and stroking.

“Oh, yes,” and she surged upward, riding the rhythm of his touch as she’d melded with the storm waves. Urgency swamped finesse and he was clumsy, pushing and probing, the blind eye of need driving him into her. Awkward in his haste, no grace in the hurrying, no skill in his movements.

A sixteen-year-old would have had more control.

But she was in the moment with him, just as urgent, just as needy. The impatient sounds of her breathing merged with his, spoke to him in the silence.

He felt the wet denim of his jeans snick open, felt her warm hand, exploring, moving against his belly. Not shy, not delicate, her hands were those of a woman used to touching and examining, accustomed to the feel of the human body. Knowing. Confident. Incredibly seductive, that confidence. Behind his eyes a red haze burned. Then she freed him into the small curl of her hand and he bucked, thrust against her.

Need. Ugly.

Hunger roared through him, primal, finally blanking the monkey chatter in his brain. “Now,” he ground out through teeth clenched against the pleasure racing through him. “Now.”

He lifted her hips higher, positioned her, but she was ahead of him, already moving into him, her body welcoming and warm.

“Don’t—” She shifted, her body opening and taking him deeper, toward the limits of his shaky control.

“You want me to stop?” The muscles in his arms trembled. But he stopped. He would have sworn he couldn’t have. But he did. Head lowered, teeth clenched against a suddenly dry mouth, his whole body shuddering, he said again, “Stop? Is that what you’re saying?”

“No. Not that. Heaven help me, not that.” Her laugh was rueful, a coil of tension deep inside her that vibrated unbearably through him. Rising upward, she framed his face with her hands. “Don’t stop. That’s what I was trying to say.” Her head dipped into his shoulder, and she felt her breath against his skin as she murmured, “Don’t be careful with me. I don’t want politeness.”

“Believe me, manners are the last thing on my mind.” His thighs quivered with the effort needed to stay unmoving.

“What…do you want?” He heard himself and was stunned. He couldn’t say her name. Drowning in her, he couldn’t say her name. Didn’t want to. “Tell me.”

“The storm wave. Wildness. The deep blue sea. Can you give me that? I need—” She nipped at his skin, the scrape of her teeth a tiny command that slammed him over the edge.

Nothing but sensation in this moment, nothing but the blessed relief of skin against skin, touch and taste. Her body milking his, his palms sliding over the hot skin of her thigh, his touch sending shudders through her, through him.

Sex.

Simple. Something clear in his life for a change. Sex.