When I Wake

by Rachel Lee

  Then he saw doubt and the flicker of fear in her blue gaze. It was as if he could feel her thoughts deep within his heart. She was wondering, what if she disappointed him? What if she did not respond to his most intimate touches? There would be no hiding in this moment. Or perhaps they were his own thoughts, for he feared the same things.

  He reached out to reassure her, and in her response to his touches, he found his own reassurance.

  One of his hands took hers and slowly pressed it down his belly to his manhood, firm and ready. She pulled his fingertips to her delicate tuft, already damp to the touch. She seemed surprised at her body’s own readiness, as if she hadn’t realized how far they had come. As if she had lost track of her growing passion in the intimacy of their connection. The thought swelled his heart, because he knew he hadn’t come to this place alone.

  “You are perfect,” he mouthed again.

  Now the delicate touches played over new nerves. Hips began to rock gently to the mounting rhythms of passion. His pupils dilated, huge black pools that beckoned her. She started to kiss him, then pulled back, clinging to his eyes with hers.

  He saw the almost-kiss form, and echoed it with one of his own. She was amazing. Exquisite. He had never before imagined, let alone experienced, so complete a connection with another human being. Just as his need began to ache, her legs began to open, and they slowly rolled into union. Union. As if a completing a circuit, for now they were joined twice.

  Joined twice. In his eyes, and in her womb. It was impossible to say which touched him more. Deep within her, muscles clenched in welcoming caresses, drawing him deeper into her heart and soul. Gentle. Their union was gentle. Gentle of heart. Gentle of spirit.

  It was difficult to keep his eyes open. This was a time when he went away into himself, rising the sea of raw sensation, letting the waves carry him. But he could not let go. She needed him, now. Her eyes and her body spoke that need. And he needed her. He needed her trust and her soul and her heart. And her body. That need pulled him to her yet again, grinding slowly, feeling her grip him from within, until it seemed his entire body was ready to rise out of itself. Up, up, up to the edge, and if only he could close his eyes, he would tumble over. If only.

  She felt the electric sparkles building along every nerve ending in her body. Her breath was ragged, as if there were not enough oxygen in the room. Every flex of their hips spurred her higher, higher, higher. With just a moment of total darkness, free to plunge into the sea of sensations that rolled over her, she could crest and ride that wave. Just a moment.

  His eyes were growing distant, but they found hers for one more split second. “Perfect,” he mouthed.

  The wave took her on its own and she rose up to meet it with raw, naked, exposed joy. He saw it happen and his own face froze for a second, as if an electric shock had passed through him. She felt him pulsing within her, and matched his pulses with her own, their eyes locked, looking deep into each other’s souls in that most ragged and vulnerable of moments. Connected in body, heart, soul, and trust.

  The clenching seemed to go on forever. He felt as if his body were alight, her eyes alone fanning the flames. On and on and on until every bit of him was spent, every muscle exhausted, every nerve numb.

  And, for the first time, their eyes closed for a kiss.

  Perfection had a price. Dugan stared up at the roof of the cabin, listening to Veronica’s soft breathing beside him, and realized that he was going to have to pay the piper. Wherever he’d gone in those otherworldly minutes with her, in that incredible free fall of lovemaking when he had surely tumbled through an abyss right into the heart of her, the fact was, reality had returned, and perfection always had a price.

  The only question that still had to be answered was what was the price going to be. Best-case scenario: She thought of this as a fling, an adrenaline-induced affirmation of life in the face of death that she would want to forget as quickly as possible.

  Yeah, that would work. That would hurt only a little bit. A wound to his pride. A small wound to his heart that wasn’t quite as indifferent to her as he kept telling it to be. But it would be survivable.

  The other best-case scenario was that they’d all be dead within twenty-four hours, and none of this would matter a hill of beans anyway.

  God, he was getting morbid.

  But what he feared, really feared, was that this hadn’t been a fling, that he was more deeply involved than he realized, and that this was going to become something with the potential to rip his heart out by the roots. Jana had turned him into an Aztec sacrifice once. He didn’t want to volunteer for a repeat performance.

  But what you wanted and what life doled out weren’t always the same thing. He had plenty of scars to prove it.

  Idiot. He needed to stop thinking about this and start thinking about what they were going to do about Emilio Zaragosa. Because, regardless of the extravagant statements he was making to himself, the best-case scenario was that he and Veronica both survived long enough to have to decide how to treat what had just happened between them.

  Being dead wasn’t an option.

  It might be unavoidable, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to do anything to encourage that outcome.

  He glanced at his watch. The luminous dial told him that he’d need to relieve Tam in a few minutes. He’d think better above deck anyway, without Veronica’s closeness to distract him. Without the incredible scent of their lovemaking thick in his nostrils. Without the awareness that if he just rolled over and touched her he could probably lose himself in her all over again.

  It was definitely not the time for that.

  Easing away from Veronica, he dressed as quietly as he could, then remembered she wouldn’t be able to hear him anyway. Which reminded him of the hours just passed, when she had drawn him into her silent world, making him share it with her.

  Something about her doing that had left him with an ache in the vicinity of his heart. As if she had shared some ineffable part of herself with him.

  And he had to stop thinking this way before he seriously messed something up. Or before he got any more messed up than he was right now.

  He shoved his feet into his deck shoes and closed the door soundlessly behind him. While she might not be able to hear it close, she could feel the vibrations, and from watching her over the past few months, he knew she was extremely sensitive to such things.

  In the galley, he made a pot of coffee. When it had finished brewing, he took two mugs above deck and handed one to Tam, who was sitting in the director’s chair with his feet up on a bench.

  “Quiet,” Tam said, accepting the mug. “Not a peep.”

  “Hmph.” Dugan sat on the bench, resting his elbows on his knees, cradling the mug in his hands. The difference between the daytime temperatures and those at night couldn’t have been much more than ten degrees, but he still felt the night air like a chill.

  “Weird, huh?” said Tam. “It’s almost like the Keystone Kops. Do these guys even know what they’re doing?”

  “I suspect Emilio isn’t usually a hands-on sort of thug,” Dugan replied. “He probably has people do the dirty work for him.”

  “Or maybe he’s a thief who’s never needed to kill before.”

  “Don’t say that word.”

  “Okay. But maybe he’s not.”

  That was a possibility, Dugan thought.

  “Maybe there’s a language problem,” Tam said. “Maybe he didn’t really mean to threaten to ram us.”

  “Are you prepared to wager your life on that?”

  “Uh . . . no.”

  Dugan shook his head and sipped his coffee.

  “It’s still weird,” Tam said. “They’re sitting over there, and we’re sitting over here, and how are they going to stop us if we try to sail away right this minute?”

  Dugan was thinking the same thing. For all he felt the other boat must have far better engines than his there was still a reasonable chance that if they could pull away they
could keep ahead.

  Tam spoke. “Veronica doesn’t want to leave, does she?”

  “No.”

  “I heard some of what she said about abandoning the site. And she’s probably right. They’d trash the whole thing. But what’s more important, Dugan? Us or the damn wreck.”

  “I know, I know.” But the simple truth was, if he were to be brutally honest about it, Veronica was more important to him than any of it. And if he took off from the site, she’d probably never forgive him.

  “Why are you letting her push you around like this?” Tam wanted to know. “She’s crazy. I figured that out months ago. Got her head fixed on this search until there’s no room for anything else.”

  It was true. “On the other hand,” he reminded Tam, “Zaragosa wasn’t making a whole lot of sense earlier. First he wants to join our expedition. Then he’s going to ram us if we don’t cooperate. Then he wanders off and just leaves us. I’m not sure he isn’t just blustering.”

  “So we’re going to hang around and find out?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Why? Why for God’s sake? Just because Veronica’s afraid he might mess things up a little?”

  “There’s a lot at stake for her in this.” And he was surprising himself by defending her stupidity. Not too long ago, he’d been telling her she was crazy, too.

  Tam jumped up from his chair and pointed a finger at Dugan. “You, my friend, are being led around by your nose by a little bit of pussy.”

  Then Tam disappeared down the hatch, slamming it behind him.

  Maybe he was, Dugan thought, looking up at the stars. Maybe he was. But the simple fact was, if he couldn’t get away without someone on the Conchita seeing him go, then he probably wasn’t going to get away at all. His belief in that had been bolstered by the way Emilio seemed utterly unconcerned that they might try to sail away.

  He looked at the yacht again, and realized it had moved a lot closer since sundown. It was no longer a quarter mile away. Not even half that far now. Which meant that Zaragosa had no intention of giving them a head start.

  “They’re closer.”

  The sound of Veronica’s voice startled him, and he swung around. She was half out of the hatch, looking toward the Conchita.

  “Yeah,” he said, wondering if she could hear him.

  “Who slammed the hatch?” she asked.

  “Tam.” Damn his eyes.

  She came the rest of the way up the ladder and closed the hatch, then came to sit beside him. “What now, skipper?”

  It was the first time she had called him that. He wondered if it was deliberate.

  “I vote we get the hell out of here now. We can be back with the Coast Guard by late tomorrow afternoon, Veronica. He can’t do much damage by then.”

  “You’re sure we can get away safely?”

  No, he wasn’t sure. He sure as hell wasn’t. But he wasn’t sure either if he wanted to hang around to discover that Emilio wasn’t as much of a turkey as he seemed. “I don’t know.”

  She cocked her head toward the other boat. “He doesn’t seem to think so. If he did, we’d have a guard on us.”

  He nodded, agreeing with her assessment. “Probably.”

  “On the other hand,” she continued, “maybe that’s what he wants us to think.”

  He sighed heavily. “You know, I’m getting tired of trying to second guess that slimeball. That entire conversation with him didn’t make sense. And I know he couldn’t be that stupid or impulsive because he managed to get information out of Tam for weeks. Which means the guy does think ahead.”

  “Most likely.”

  “And that means his entire visit this afternoon was nothing but a delaying tactic of some kind.”

  “A delay for what?”

  “Damned if I know.” It still didn’t make any sense, and the more he thought about the whole thing, the less clear it became. There was something he didn’t know about what was going on here.

  In fact, the more he thought about it, the more ridiculous the entire pseudoconfrontation had been early that evening. Almost as if Zaragosa had simply been buying time.

  But for what? All he had succeeded in doing was keeping them from diving all afternoon. Hardly a major accomplishment.

  “We’ve got to go for help,” he said.

  He expected Veronica to argue with him, to cling to her insistence that Emilio could have whatever he wanted if only she could have the mask. But she didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” he said, “I’ll hightail it for shore, and we’ll get the Coast Guard out here right away. He can’t possibly do that much damage in a few hours.”

  “You mean go right now?”

  “Yes. We’ll pull into port before sunrise. We can have a cutter out here by noon.”

  She nodded “But . . . don’t you think he’s thought of that?”

  “I don’t know what he’s thought of. And considering that the more I think about it, the more nonsensical that whole conversation becomes, I’m not sure the guy isn’t a few bricks shy of a load, if you follow me. Maybe he’s just a dingbat.”

  “A dangerous dingbat.”

  “All the more reason to get the hell out of here now.”

  “Okay.”

  “What?” He could hardly believe she was capitulating.

  “Okay,” she repeated more forcefully. “Okay. Let’s get out of here now.”

  Determined not to give her a chance to change her mind, he headed for the cockpit.

  Luis decided that life was a living hell. He hadn’t called El Desconocido in a week, not since he had learned that Emilio was sailing toward Key West. He might be able to carry off his duplicity with Emilio safely stashed in Venezuela, but not with Emilio right on the spot. So he had made no more phone calls, and had written off his dreams of a better life . . . for the moment at least.

  And he had decided to be grateful that Emilio hadn’t insisted he join him on his yacht. Luis hated boats. The mere thought of being on one made him violently seasick.

  But now he wished he were on the yacht, because his pager was flashing El Desconocido’s phone number at him. Apparently this mess wasn’t going to be as easy to walk away from as he had hoped.

  He considered not returning the call. Then he considered all the possibilities that could arise since the man seemed to have an idea who Luis was . . . and none of those possibilities was pleasant. What was it American mobsters said? Fish food with cement shoes?

  That possibility seemed very real to Luis as he stared at his pager. Nor did he feel very confident that if he headed back home right this very instant that he would be any safer.

  Finally, aching from tension and sweating profusely, he took the pager and went to find a pay phone. He was caught in the middle, he realized unhappily. Emilio sensed something was going on, even if he hadn’t found out exactly what Luis was up to. And the Unknown One . . . he knew too much indeed.

  Luis found himself wishing he had never gotten his bright idea.

  Standing in the humid night air at the outdoor pay phone, Luis dialed the number. When the whispery voice answered, he felt his spine turn to ice.

  “I have no information,” he told the man, his voice quavering.

  “You lie.”

  He lied. And the man knew it. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to make very, very sure that Emilio Zaragosa doesn’t get the mask of the Storm Mother.”

  Luis’s breath locked in his throat. The mask? This man and Emilio both wanted the mask? Oh, this was bad indeed. For Luis. “I can’t . . . I’m not out there . . . How am I supposed to prevent this?”

  “Find a way.”

  “But . . . Look, what’s so important about this mask anyway? There are huge amounts of gold on that . . . ”

  “I don’t want the gold. I want the mask.”

  “But why?” Luis very nearly wailed the question as he faced the likelihood he would be dead before long. “Why?”

  “Because it b
elongs to me. To my people. I want it back.”

  Then the Unknown One hung up the phone with a sharp click, leaving Luis standing in the dead of a Key West night with sweat dripping down his face, his hands shaking, and his knees feeling like rubber.

  It belonged to him? To his people? Suddenly Luis knew he was dealing with something far worse than a criminal. He was dealing with a fanatic.

  Ay Madre de Dios, what was he going to do?

  Chapter 19

  “I hate getting wet,” Dugan said. Even more, he hated going into dark water in the middle of the night. He stared down at the inky blackness from the stern of his boat, and cursed quietly.

  When he had turned over the engine and hit the throttle, the Mandolin had leapt forward as she always did . . . then she had slowed down and drifted while the engines strained. It didn’t take Einstein’s IQ to know there was something wrong.

  “Are you sure the propeller’s fouled?” Veronica asked.

  He nodded grimly. Not that it really mattered. They didn’t have a rudder either. They weren’t going anywhere.

  He straightened and looked at her so she could see his mouth. “I’ve got to check it out. But I think we’ve been sabotaged.”

  Her lips formed the word sabotage soundlessly, and her eyes grew wider. “Tam?” she asked.

  He didn’t know. It might have been, because Tam had taken the first watch, plenty of time to mess things up. “Go wake him up, will you?”

  Veronica nodded and headed for the hatch, but before she had moved two steps, Tam came up the ladder. “What’s going on?” he asked. “We pulling out?”

  “Not fucking likely,” Dugan said. “The propeller’s fouled.” And Tam couldn’t have faked that look of astonishment in a million years, he decided.

  “How?” Tam asked. “There’s nothing in the water to get tangled up on.”

  “Well, the rudder’s gone, too.”

  “Jesus Christ.” Tam sat with a thud. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Me neither. I’m going to check it out.” Get wet. In dark water. Christ Almighty.

  On the off chance that he could fix the problem, he stripped to his shorts and donned his breathing apparatus. The air through his regulator tasted stale, but he was used to that. Grabbing the underwater light, he stepped off and felt the cool, dark water close over him. He felt the air bubbles trapped against his skin letting go. It was the sensation he hated most, as if something were crawling all over him.