Hours to Cherish
Page 21
Suddenly she realized the numbness was gone, his touch had reawakened her. She was warm and trembling, her flesh burned at every spot he had tenderly coursed.
It hit her with an aching tremor that she was being a tremendous fool. The world was hers, all the world that she desired, all the world she would ever need. And like an absolute idiot, she was allowing him, her world, to slip through her fingers.
Cat stood in the dinghy, heedless as it rocked beneath her jolted movement. “Clay!” she shouted, stopping his smooth crawl through the water. Forgetting the dinghy entirely, Cat dove after him, surfacing to a swim that sheared the water, not pausing until she reached him, threw her arms around him, and brought them both spiraling into the depths. She didn’t care. As long as he was with her, she wasn’t even sure she needed to breathe.
Near the crystal surface, her lips caught his, returning with a thirst all that he had given her. Clay gave a powerful kick, catapulting them both back above the sun-dazzled sheet of the water’s surface where they laughed as they trod water, both gulping in air.
“Oh, Clay,” Cat gasped, “I do want you, I do love you, I do need you! I’m ready to put in my own hundred percent, more, much more, than that. But Clay, you’re going to have to be prepared. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to watch you leave again. I wouldn’t be able to stand it! So you will always be with me, my love, just like the song, and you’re going to have to really talk to me, too, because I’m going to want to know all about those lost years … all the things that bother you, because if you dream again, the only woman you’ll have there is going to be me. …”
Once again they spiraled below the surface as Clay shut off Cat’s monologue with a deepening kiss that consumed her, his tongue plunging deeply, filling her with a warmth that radiated from her body within the crystal cool of the ocean. Once more they surfaced, gasping but still clinging together, only the efforts of seaworthy legs keeping them afloat.
“It’s a damned good thing we’re both strong swimmers,” Clay chuckled, his voice low and hoarse, “since you only seem to be able to find your voice in the sea!”
Cat grinned in return. “No more, Mr. Miller. I’m afraid you may find me very vocal in the future!”
Clay smiled and arched his brows. “Really?”
“What else can one do with a domineering, dripping-wet man?”
“Lots of things,” Clay replied, raised brows hiking up a shade further. “Want to find out? Except I do think we should leave the water. If I’m going to drown, I would prefer to do it metaphorically in ecstasy, rather than in water.”
Cat smiled wickedly and began to swim toward the Sea Witch II. A second boat, she thought with a deep and loving poignancy, and a second chance. She would never let either go.
As they reached the aft ladder, Cat turned to Clay. “By the way, you won’t be asking Peter or Ariel to find employment elsewhere.”
Clay frowned. “But Cat, if being near Ariel bothers you.”
“It will bother me, sometimes, Clay, but I think I’m mature enough to handle it. And I’m grateful to her, too, Clay. She must have done a great deal for you at a time when I was unable to. I think I love you enough to live with that … no, I’m positive I love you enough. In fact …” Her tone lost its serious note and the sun that dazzled the water lit a tantalizing enchantment into her eyes, “I love you so much, that at this moment, at this precise moment, I don’t give a damn who’s aboard our boat. I’m going to sail right through to our cabin and happily, very, very happily, try to show just how much I do love you.”
Clay chuckled, planting a nipping kiss on her shoulder as he propelled her up the ladder. “I don’t think anyone will notice,” he said, his voice a husky velvet. “Sam will be keeping an eye out while Ariel and Peter dive. We found the treasure chambers, they’ll be ready to find and bring up the gold and silver ingots.”
“Oh!” Cat exclaimed, pausing halfway up. “Oh, Clay, I forgot! Don’t you want to be there to find the gold?”
“No.” Cat was stunned as he planted a hand on her derriere and pushed her over the edge into Sea Witch II. Before she could protest or pick herself up from the decking, he had come behind her and swept her dripping form into his equally dripping but marvelously strong and heated arms. “I came searching for a treasure, my love, but all the treasure that I sought is here, here in my arms.” Whimsically he kissed her eyes. “Emeralds far more dazzling than those of the Aztec jewels, and”—he began a delightful patter of moist, feathered kisses along her shoulder to the sensitive flesh of her throat and added huskily—“here I have a found a gold more beautiful and volatile than that even of the sun.”
Cat circled her arms around his neck. “Do go on,” she murmured, every bit as aware as he that, indeed, they had both truly found treasure.
Clay smiled and began to stride with her in his arms across the deck. “My love,” he murmured, “I intend to do just that.”
EPILOGUE
IN THE HEAT OF the night he was running, running.
A low-lying ground fog shielded him, putting him on another plane of reality, as if he were racing on a treadmill through endless clouds. He could hear the sound of his breathing. It was a good sound, as was the feel of his run, long legs stretching, muscles released, each slap of his feet carrying him onward over the coolness of damp sand.
He ran for the joy of running, for the delicious feel of the air filling his lungs, the energy and vitality that soared throughout his body. And because ahead of him, he could see her. …
An ethereal figure in the mist, she was clothed in a cloak of deepest sable hair; it draped her slender, figure like velvet, drifted in a fan of silk, framed the fine features of her face … a slow-curving, enticing smile … emerald eyes that lured with challenge and promise. …
He knew her, he knew the smile, he knew the eyes that glittered their beguilement. Oh, so well he knew the stunning sea witch who haunted his dreams day and night.
She laughed, a sound that was melody on air, the delightful tinkle of water, breathy and light. And she turned to run, that cloak of luxurious hair spinning behind her, long lean legs agile as she padded swiftly across the sand.
He increased his own pace. Laughter filled his own chest, and the sound was good. It, too, was breathy and light.
He reached out for her. And his fingers tangled into that cloak of richest night velvet.
Her laughter became a tiny exclamation, and then they were no longer running. They were tumbling to the sand, laughing as they rolled along its delectable dampness. His hands were touching silk, that of her hair, that of her sleek, golden flesh.
He leaned over her, smiling as his fingers curled gently over her shoulders. Her emerald eyes met his, brilliant with love and laughter. …
He awoke in a cold sweat, and it took him several seconds to assimilate his surroundings. Then a smile curved his lips. Dawn was breaking, yet the remainder of their nighttime fire still flickered in the sand. He reached a hand beside him, then his smile became a frown as he touched nothing but sand.
He looked up, toward the shore, and his smile tenderly returned as he lifted a brow in appreciative query. She was coming to him, from the sea, golden skin damp and shimmering, her lips ever so slightly parted, her eyes a glistening seduction of the enigmatic sea itself. She moved to him slowly, her walk steady and lithe, her slender form at radiant perfection with the gentle sway of her bare hips.
Her smile deepened as she stood before him; a smile of deepest beguilement and sweetest ultimate promise.
He reached out to touch her. His hands encountered silk and velvet, vibrant and alive, pulsing with warmth and heat.
She was in his arms and they were rolling in the sand … emerald and jet eyes meeting in a dazzling flame to challenge that of the crimson burst of the morning sun.
He reached for her, and she was there.
It was summer again.
The season of the sea witch.
And he was home.
A Biography of Heather Graham
Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.
Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.
After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel, When Next We Love (1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.
In 1989 Graham published Sweet Savage Eden, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in Runaway (1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.
In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as Tall, Dark, and Deadly (1999), Long, Lean, and Lethal (2000), and Dying to Have Her (2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s Haunted she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.
Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.
Graham (left) with her sister.
Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.
Graham at a photo shoot in Key West for the promotion of the Flynn Brothers trilogy.
Graham at the haunted Myrtles plantation, Francisville, Louisiana.
Graham and the Slushpile Band playing the Memnoch the Devil Ball at the Undead Con in New Orleans, 2010.
Graham with dear friend, actor Doug Jones.
Graham (third from left) with F. Paul Wilson, R. L. Stine, Jon Land, and other friends at the seventh annual ThrillerFest, held in New York City, 2011. The authors participated in the “Be Book Smart” campaign organized by Reading Is Fundamental, the nation’s oldest and largest children’s literacy organization.
Graham (seated center) with her local Romance Writers of America group in Broward County, Florida, 2011.
Graham (second from left) with fellow authors Stephen Jay Schwartz, F. Paul Wilson, and Barry Eisler participating in a panel at the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention, Los Angeles, 2011.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
copyright © 1984 by Heather Graham Pozzessere
cover design by Connie Gabbert
978-1-4804-0831-9
This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media
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