The swelling around her left eye had gotten worse, as he’d predicted, and as her black eye came into full view, it blasted Jack back to the present.
“What the hell are you doing, Almeida?” Even as he whispered that question to himself, he tightened his fingers when she tightened hers, letting her lead him deep into the pier, farther and farther away from the hotel. She zigzagged left and right through the pier, that was beginning to feel more like a maze, occasionally throwing that promising look back at him. The look he was sure would keep him right on her heels for life.
Soon, they were surrounded by boats; some small and some tall. Left, right, forward and behind, the boats floating gently along on the calm waters of the Marina.
She stopped at a dead end and then threw him another look, pulling him left down the only dock that remained, the dock that led to a small island in the middle of the harbor, surrounded by nothing but the quiet beginnings of the dark blue ocean.
Pulling her bag over her head, she dropped it onto the wooden slats and turned to him with a smile, pushing her hair over her head.
“I used to live in that building, right across the water.” She pointed over his shoulder. “Rented a unit from a friend of mine at half price.”
Jack followed her finger, looking back just in time to see her sweep her black cami over her head, revealing a baby blue lace bra underneath.
He was transfixed. His blood abandoned every vein and took up residence in the one place that rendered him frozen and slack-jawed at the sight of her heaving breasts, her sweet smile, and her slim fingers as they went to work on the button of her pants.
“I moved here from New York when I was twenty-one,” she continued, toeing off her boots before sliding the pants down her legs. “I thought I was going to be a famous actress.” She threw in a dramatic Vogue pose with her pants still around her ankles.
Jack’s gaze followed as she stepped out of the pants before slowly climbing back up. Her thighs curved with a womanly strength, leading the way to her plush hips and tight waist, where a cherry apple belly button ring gleamed under the setting sun. His hooded eyes hit hers only after they’d gotten their fill of her body, and he took his first breath in minutes.
“Needless to say.” Her voice lowered, and she reached behind her, popping the clasp of her bra open. “I did not become a famous actress.”
Jack inhaled when she turned away, just quickly enough to hide her breasts as she pulled her bra from her chest, throwing him that look over her shoulder.
That look.
She must’ve seen it in his eyes. How hard he was. The certifiable things he’d already done to her in his mind, because as she threw her bra over her shoulder, giggling when it landed square on his head, one of the cups shielding his right eye like a pirate, her eyes returned his lust filled gaze in much the same way.
“But I did learn all the best skinny-dipping spots, and which boats go empty for months at a time.”
Before Jack could respond, taking her bra—which smelled like her—off of his head, she’d leaped into the water. She swam out deep, a glorious smile lighting up her face when she faced him, dog paddling backward.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from falling to the water; nearly cursing the God’s when he saw it was too dark to see through. Just a hint of an areola would have kept him content for the year, but the fact that he couldn’t see anything only drove him that much deeper.
“Come on, Aries,” she said, her breathing picking up as she waddled under the water. Her hand emerged, clutching the baby blue panties she’d been wearing a moment before, and she threw them at him.
The moment they landed on the tip of his shoe, Jack’s trembling fingers flew to the bottom button of his shirt, and he was undressing as quickly as he could.
9
“You’re the craziest woman I’ve ever met,” Jack said, minutes later, holding Nina’s eyes while they circled each other in the water. The sun had faded away, leaving only the moonlight to guide them in the dark waters.
“I’m crazy,” she laughed. “And, yet, here you remain, right next to me, naked as a blue jay in the Marina Harbor.”
“You started it.” He splashed her. “You started the nakedness.”
She pressed her hands on the top of his head and tried to dunk him under the water, but he dodged it just in time, getting her thighs in his hands and spinning her.
She didn’t even have time to scream before her head disappeared under the water, and when she reemerged, coughing up a storm, he had his arms around her waist in an instant.
“Bastard!” She slapped her hands against his chest when he pulled her in close. Her faux anger was short lived, because the moment his hardness planted itself against her stomach, not only did her smile vanish, but her heart sped up, her pussy tightened, and her body responded in every way it could. She encircled his neck, letting him push the hair stuck to her forehead out of her face with a much gentler hand.
Closing his eyes, he pressed his lips to her black eye, pulled back and returned her hooded gaze
He didn’t push her. Not even with her nipples brushing against him, tickling his chest, and his direct response to it tapping at her belly button ring, he didn’t take it further.
“Why did you run, Runaway?”
Jack blinked, easing back.
“Why did you run out on your wedding?”
Groaning out a laugh, he brought a hand to his face, making water splash from his arm and back into the water.
“I didn’t want to get married,” he answered.
“No shit,” she laughed. “But why? Why wait until the very last second—until you’re looking your bride dead in the eye, in front of all her friends and family, to realize you don’t want her? Did it just hit you, right at that second, at the altar? Or did you always know?”
Jack kicked away, swimming backward.
She rolled her eyes. “I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours.”
“I don’t want to know yours,” he said. “Why do people need to know every single thing about each other? Why can’t we just allow ourselves to connect in a real way? An organic way?” He motioned between them. “Why can’t we just do this?”
“Do what?” She raised her eyebrows. “Us? You and me?”
Jack slowed his paddling, his eyes going over her shoulder and catching the moon. “I think this… whatever this is… isn’t something that could happen with just anyone.” He breathed in. “It had to be you. And it had to be me. Otherwise, it’s just insanity.”
“I agree,” she nodded.
“Why can’t that be enough?”
“Because it isn’t.” She shrugged. “Eventually, one way or another, it isn’t. There has to be more. Fate has a very short shelf life.”
“Is that what this is? Fate?”
She smirked. “I just happened to miss my original flight to New York—by thirty seconds? Then, I just happened to get rolled over to your flight? I just happened to get upgraded to first class—in the seat right next to you? Our plane just happened to crash? A crash that I wouldn’t have survived if it hadn’t been for you? There just happened to be one hotel room left in the entire city? We just so happened to fall off the edge of a train? Air Traffic Control just happened to launch a countrywide strike? The first one in thirty years?” She watched him avoiding her eyes and laughed. “If this ain’t fate, Runaway, I just don’t know what is. The universe has a funny way of bringing things together that need to be together. I totally believe in that.”
Jack’s eyes met hers. “I don’t remember, you know. You keep telling me that I saved your life. That you want to pay me back for that. But I don’t remember the crash.”
“Nothing?” she beamed. “For three days you haven’t stopped moaning about how I tried to kill you.”
He shrugged. “You told me I saved your life, and I assumed that involved risking my own, but all I can remember is the lights blowing out, and I guess my body followed suit. Everything went black. I o
pened my eyes, and I was already at the bottom of the slide, bleeding on the tarmac.”
“You’re one lucky son of a bitch then because it was the most terrifying experience I’ve ever been through. If the horrified screaming and crying I can’t get out of my head are any indication, our fellow Delta crashees would agree with me.”
“Would you call that fate? The other hundred crashees? Were they meant to be in your life?”
“They would be, if they were still here with me, swimming naked in Marina Del Rey. They’re not. You are.”
Jack chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose I am.”
They swam slow circles around each other, panting when staying afloat began to test their strength, but neither making a move to leave the water.
“My seatbelt wasn’t buckled,” she said.
Jack raised his eyebrows.
“And by the time the lights came back on… I was on the ceiling.” Nina’s eyes widened. “I had, literally, hit the ceiling. I guess the plane was upside down. You were obviously annoyed with me from the moment I sat down next to you at the gate, so when you looked up and saw me pasted to the fuselage, I never expected…” She looked off, biting her bottom lip. “I would’ve never expected you to undo your belt, too.”
“I did what now?” Jack beamed.
“Right? It doesn’t seem like you, at all, does it?” She splashed him. “But, yeah, you did. You tried to reach out to me with your seatbelt still on, and I was reaching for you, but there was a tiny sliver of space between us, and we couldn’t reach.” She reached out to him, and her fingernails stopped just short of the tip of his nose. “It was so, so close… painfully close, but in the end, we couldn’t.” She let him entwined their fingers. He pulled her through the water, closer. “So you undid your seatbelt, and you wrapped the strap around your wrist, enough to give you a few more inches, and you tried again. Then, our fingers locked, like this…” She brought their clasped fingers between them. “And you pulled me back into my seat like it was nothing. You helped me put my seatbelt back on because I was shaking like a leaf, and only when mine was on did you redo yours. Literally, a second later, the plane banked again, and this time, it was really hard. If your belt hadn’t been on, I doubt you’d have survived it.”
Jack exhaled hard, shaking his head. “I don’t remember…”
“Like I said,” she whispered. “Thank your lucky stars.”
He nodded.
“So, yes, Jack, I believe we were fated to know each other. I didn’t share a bed with you, and tolerate your piss poor attitude, and latch onto you like a woman who hasn’t had any in years because I’m crazy… or weird… or desperate—even though I suppose you could make an argument that I really am all of those things. I feel like I saw a part of you on that plane, the part you work like hell to keep away.”
Jack wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her in, waiting until her arms were around his neck. “I ran out on my wedding because I didn’t love my fiancé. I never loved her. In fact, the only reason I agreed to marry her in the first place was to get closer to the woman I really wanted. The woman I was out to take back from my baby brother.”
“God. It’s always the quiet ones who bring all the drama. I need a minute to process all that drama.” She dragged, trying not to laugh. “And what was this woman’s name?”
He took a moment. “Lila.”
“And what does this Lila look like? She must be a knockout if she’s got two brothers going head to head.”
“Jesus, I don’t know, Nina…” He looked off, bringing his hand out of the water to run it down his face before motioning to her. “I suppose she looks a little like you. About the same complexion. Same loud mouth. Same penchant for driving me to the brink of insanity.”
“God.” Nina bit her lip, trying to hide a smile. “I knew it. You have a thing for the sistas.”
“I do not have a thing for the sistas.”
“You fell in love with a sista, and then ditched your wedding to the blonde—who was very much not a sista—because the sista you really wanted was with your brother. Then you found yourself on the top of a moving train, trying to swap spit with this sista.” She pointed to herself. “You have a thing for the sistas.”
“Perhaps I simply have a thing for clinically insane women,” Jack offered. “Who just so happen to be pigmentally gifted.”
“Pigmentally gifted? You are such a lawyer, I swear.” She jammed a finger at him. “And stop lying to yourself, Aries. You loves you a sista, because she will never hesitate to call you on your bullshit, and you secretly love that. I can spot your kind a mile away.”
“My kind?”
“The truth will set you free, Aries. Just be real with yourself. Life is so much nicer that way.”
Jack searched her eyes. “There isn’t a living creature alive stronger than a black woman.”
“And that attracts you…”
“Very much.” Jack nodded. “There’s a love there that can’t be taught. The kind of love that shines brightest… only on the heels of enormous pain.”
Nina’s mouth fell.
Jack shrugged. “I would be a fool not to appreciate that.”
She nodded, pursing her lips.
Jack looked away. “Having said all that… if I have a thing for the sistas, then you have a thing for Greenwich Village pretty boys who are… what were your words?” he asked. “So morose they’re practically postmortem?”
“So you do listen when I talk.”
“Only when I can’t help myself.” His eyebrows jumped. “So do you? Do you have a thing for Greenwich pretty boys, so morose they’re practically postmortem?”
She smiled. “Who wants to know?”
“Inquiring minds.”
“Well, if inquiring minds really want to know, I just so happen to prefer pigmentally gifted men.”
“How… pigmentally gifted?”
Her eyes fell to his deeply golden, olive forearms, wet and gleaming under the moonlight. He was darker than the average white boy, but still, very much, a white boy.
“Extremely… pigmentally gifted,” she answered. “Like, if there was a Harvard University for the pigmentally gifted…”
Jack chuckled.
“You’ve got a little color,” she said, running her hands up his arms, catching his eyes. “But you’d never be admitted to the Harvard for the pigmentally gifted.”
“Who said I wanted to?” Jack frowned. “There are people who bake on tanning beds weekly, risking a plethora of skin cancers and premature aging, just to get skin like mine.”
“Enough with the modesty, Runaway, honestly.” She laughed. “You do have a little extra something. I’ll give you that. You got some Latino in you?”
“Portuguese. Half.”
“Ah… and the other half?”
“Greek.”
“The pigmentally gifted of the Mediterranean. Certainly explains that sun-kissed skin of yours.”
“Can we stop saying pigmentally gifted?”
“Fine.” She breathed. “So this Lila? Was she yours first? Or your brother’s?”
“Emotionally, she was his. Physically, she was mine.”
“Emotion will always win with the woman.”
“I had to learn that the hard way. When I first went after Lila, my brother told me he would never forgive me if I took her, but I didn’t care. Just like I didn’t care when I fled that church.”
“Wow.”
“See…” Jack licked his lips. “The man who saved you on that plane is the real anomaly, Nina. Not the other way around. The man who ran out on his wedding? Who tried to steal the girl his brother always loved? That is the man I am, and that is the man I will always be.”
They searched each other’s eyes, and when Jack looked away from her with a defeated shrug, she pushed at his shoulders.
“Come on,” she said. “I’m tired of swimming. Let’s go to bed. By the time we wake up, I bet the strike will be over, and we can finally go home.”<
br />
Jack watched her swim to the edge of the pier and reclaim her bra and panties, putting them back on while her body was still underwater.
His eyes filled with confusion. “Bed?”
***
“This is highly illegal,” Jack frowned. “Off the top of my head, I can list about fifteen different ways that this is highly illegal.”
“Can you flip off that lawyer switch for five seconds, Aries, and just live your life?”
“No, I cannot.”
Still in her bra and panties, Nina looked over her shoulder where Jack was watching her from the pier. This was the third boat she’d boarded since they’d gotten out of the water.
“So leave,” she said.
“I can’t leave. You have my pants.”
With the same arm she was using to cradle their wet clothes, she wrapped a hand around the door handle of the boat’s interior. When it didn’t open, she sighed.
“Dammit.” She stood tall, catching Jack’s eyes. “Locked. On to the next one.” She leaped off the boat and down onto the pier next to him, pressing his pants and shirt into his chest. “Your pants, my good man.”
Jack tilted his head at her and accepted his wet clothes, holding them to his bare chest.
“You’re free to go now. I’m on to the next boat with or without you.” Holding his exasperated gaze, she crossed over to the boat on the opposite side, rapping the lyrics to Jay-Z’s On to the Next One. She gave him a playful look over her shoulder as she shimmied in her bra and panties.
“Nina,” Jack protested, watching her hop onto the next boat. “Stop this madness and let’s get a hotel room.”
Nina turned to him. “Where’s the fun in that? I want to live my life, Aries. I just want to live. Now will you stop being such a pussy? I used to do this all the time when I lived here. Half the boats in this Marina belong to retirees who only come out here in the summer, and most of them are too stupid to lock up their boats. They’ll never know we’re here.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I have returned your pants—and your shirt—and still you are choosing to stay. Which means you’re probably crazier than me. The only thing crazier than a crazy person is a crazy person who doesn’t know he’s crazy.”
Lightning Strikes (The Almeida Brothers Trilogy #3) Page 12