by Rebecca York
Still, she sensed a kind of danger she didn’t understand, danger that prompted her to say, “Promise not to touch me—unless I tell you it’s all right.”
He slid his hands against his thighs, drawing her gaze to the motion, and pulling the fabric of his jeans tighter across his crotch. When she found herself staring at his fly, she quickly looked away.
“All right,” he finally said. “I won’t reach for you.”
“Are you a man of your word?”
“Yes.”
Could she trust him? Or perhaps the better question was, could she trust herself?
When he turned and started walking down the boardwalk, she followed. He reached a pier that branched off into the water and continued down the narrower walkway until he came to a sturdy motorized craft called the Odysseus.
“It’s beautiful.”
He laughed. “Some people would call it clunky. It was a work boat—designed to take men back and forth to oil rigs.”
“But you use it for diving.”
His eyes met hers. “How did you know?”
She shrugged. “Maybe you told me.”
“Maybe.”
He pulled on the mooring rope, securing the craft against the pier. She grabbed the boat’s rail, then caught her breath. She was used to touching something small and picking up a memory—like in the dream. Now she was standing on Zach’s boat, holding the railing. And a strong image came to her. Zach and another man fighting an underwater battle. The other man trying to drown Zach by pulling at his air hose.
When she swayed on her feet, he reached to catch her.
“No!”
He pulled his hand back and they stood staring at each other, the moment so intense that she could have squished the air around them into a ball and tossed it out over the harbor.
“He tried to kill you,” she whispered.
“Who?”
She steadied herself against the railing. “The man who grabbed your air hose. When you were down there in the water.”
He tipped his head to one side, studying her. “You’re picking that up…by touching the boat?”
“Yes,” she answered, hearing the strained sound of her own voice.
“The man in the water—his name is José. We were diving two days ago and found a wreck I’d been hired to locate. Only José got spooked by something inside the boat. And tried to come up too fast. He would have gotten the bends. Decompression sickness. I grabbed him and forced him to come up slowly.”
“Pagor,” she murmured. “The god of war.”
He kept his gaze on her. “Yeah. He said he saw Pagor down there. I didn’t get close enough to the ship to see anything. I got him back here, to the hospital. And he’s repaid me by getting everyone in town spooked. Nobody will crew the Odysseus.” He laughed. “Maybe you’ll take a chance on me. Do you scuba dive?”
“Sorry. No.”
“Well, that’s not why you’re here.”
WILD Bill stood in the shadow of a building across from the dock, watching Anna talking to some guy.
He’d waited for her outside the Sugar Cane Club, and he’d followed her down the street and across to the docks. Not that he could do anything in broad daylight without the cover of the little beggars, but it would be a mistake not to keep her in sight. And now his vigilance was rewarded.
She was getting on a boat in the harbor. The boat nobody wanted to crew. Bill had heard about that. So was she a sailor? Could she help take the Odysseus out?
He had to hope they were staying in the harbor. Or if they went out, that they’d come back.
Wait—she had to come back. All her stuff was here. She hadn’t moved it from the hotel.
Even as he reassured himself, a wave of panic gripped him. If he lost her, he was in trouble.
Could he get closer? Maybe when they went inside he could creep to the side of the craft and hear what they were saying.
“WHY am I here?” Anna shot back, struggling to keep her voice steady.
“Maybe we’ll find out, if you come inside.”
He crossed the deck and opened a door at the back of the ship.
She followed him into a comfortable lounge, with built-in sofas and tables.
“Luxurious for a diving boat,” she said.
“I spend a lot of time on board. I want to be comfortable when I’m out at sea.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated a moment, then gingerly lowered herself to one of the built-in sofas.
ZACH sat next to Anna, and she moved a few inches farther away, increasing the distance between them. He wanted to reach for her, but he’d promised to look and not touch. The only way he could do it was to keep his palms flat on the sofa cushions. He felt like his brain was on fire. And his body, too. If he had to sit here like this, torturing himself, he wanted to close his eyes and just breathe in her wonderful scent. But he knew that would look damn strange, so he kept his eyes open—and focused on the bulkhead behind her.
He should ask her more questions, but speech was beyond him at the moment.
Unable to help himself, he slid his hand along the cushion, willing her to press her fingers to his.
She licked her lips the way she had last night, the flick of her tongue another small torture. He didn’t understand what was so important about touching her. Just touching. But he knew it was.
When he started speaking, his voice was low and strained. “After spending the day trying to scrape together a crew, I was really frustrated. I wanted a drink. But when I saw your picture on the poster…” His voice trailed off, and he started again. “I saw you…and I knew that I had to go in. Only I denied it. So I went down the street to one of the bars. Then I came back. But before I could walk into the Sugar Cane Club, something happened.”
She was hanging on his words, which made the next part easier to say.
“The only way I can describe it is to tell you that I wasn’t standing on the sidewalk anymore. I wasn’t in Palmiro. I was somewhere else. Somewhere that wasn’t real. A fantasy scene. And you were there. We kissed, and it was more intense than reality. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
“But then you went out in front of the audience—like nothing had happened.”
She swallowed. “I had to block it out, so I could do my job.”
He breathed out a sigh. “Thank God. Then I’m not the only one who’s crazy.”
“You think that’s what it was—crazy?”
“I don’t have any other frame of reference.”
She shrugged, and he was sure she could have said more.
All his focus had been on getting her into the boat, on making sure she didn’t run away the way she had last night. But now that she was here, another question burned in his throat—a question he didn’t want to ask. But he knew it was important. So he pressed her.
“In that other reality, did you think we were alone?”
He saw a shiver go through her. “No,” she whispered.
“Another man was there. At least, he was watching us. And he didn’t like me taking over his…property.”
She frowned. “Don’t say that.”
“I’m sorry.” He had said it, and it gave him no pleasure. “We have to be…truthful.”
She answered with a small nod.
“Who was it?” he demanded.
“I don’t know! I didn’t want to think about it.” She dragged in a breath and let it out. “The man who’s been following me?”
“Following you? Who?”
“I don’t know!” she said again. “That’s why I came to the island. To get away from him. But I think he followed me here.” She gave him a pleading look. “There was nobody I could talk about it with—until now.”
“We’ll deal with it.”
“Okay,” she answered.
When she looked relieved, he felt a guilty. Could they deal with it? He didn’t know. But he desperately wanted to make her safe.
“Has anything like that happened to you before? I mean like the fantasy.”
She shook her head. “No!”
“Did you see the other guy?”
“No.” She looked away, then brought her gaze back to his. “Is this getting us anywhere?”
When she moved to stand, panic surged inside him.
“Don’t go.”
“Why not?”
“We’re getting off on the wrong track. We should be focusing on…us.”
She nodded, her expression turning from fear to hope. “Okay, let’s try this. The ocean’s…big. Out in the water—when you’re looking for shipwrecks—do you…know where to look?”
“Sometimes.”
“And you can’t explain why?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you have…psychic talents. Maybe that’s what drew us to each other. Somehow we sparked a reaction off each other.”
“Why?”
“Maybe we can figure it out.”
He swallowed hard, unable to speak. He felt like he was standing on a high-diving platform, and he was going to fly off into space if something didn’t anchor him to the ground.
“Someone dragged us into the fantasy. But the dream…came from us,” she whispered.
The way she said it sent relief flooding through him. “The dream—when you were picking up my things from the tray? Reading incidents from my life?”
“Yes,” she breathed. “You had that dream last night?”
“Yeah. Tell me something you learned,” he asked in a barely audible voice.
She swallowed. “Did you buy a pack of cigarettes when you were twelve and try to smoke one?”
“Jesus.” She had said it in the dream. Now it was part of their reality. “You know all that about my life?”
He felt her deliberately reaching into his mind for another memory—one that he didn’t recall from the night before. And she was far more practiced at the skill than he.
His face heated when he felt her pull up and examine the time that he’d thrown a sparkler at a Fourth of July party and accidentally hit Steve Gilbert in the chest and burned him.
“You didn’t do it on purpose,” she murmured.
“I hurt him.”
“And he paid you back by leaving you stranded at the movies the next time you went to town together.”
“Yeah.”
When he looked down at her hand—so close to his—he saw she was watching him with an intensity that made the breath go solid in his lungs.
Then, between one heartbeat and the next, her hand darted out and she laid her palm over the top of his hand.
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
ZACH FELT A jolt, like he’d grabbed a live wire. It sent heat through his hand, up his arm and into his chest, making it suddenly hard to drag air into his lungs.
Anna gasped, and he knew she was feeling something similar. But not because of the sound she’d made.
He knew. Knew that the contact had affected her in the same way it had affected him.
In her act, she picked up objects and pulled memories from the mind of the owner. He was doing something like that right now.
His mind connected to hers on a level that he had never dared imagine.
“Anna Ridgeway. You’re Anna Ridgeway.”
“Yes.”
“You got in trouble in school,” he whispered.
School. That spanned twelve years from kindergarten through high school. But they were both focused on the same incident.
The time in seventh grade when she’d been stupid enough to tell the teacher that Clarence Myers had cheated on his history test.
As far as Mr. Ellis was concerned, there was no way for her to know about the cheating incident, since Clarence sat on the other side of the room. So she’d been under suspicion, too.
Mr. Ellis had sent them both to detention. Which hadn’t improved relations with Clarence.
“After that, you kept your mouth shut,” Zach said. It was difficult to talk because of the arousal buzzing below the surface of the conversation. Every one of his senses was alive and tuned to Anna.
Without even thinking about what he was doing, he pulled her into his arms, crushing her breasts against his chest, entranced by the intimate contact.
At the same time, he pulled another memory from her mind and drew in a quick breath.
“Your parents…left you with a bunch of debts.”
“Yes,” she answered.
“But you figured out how to pay them off, then support yourself.”
She nodded.
He stroked his hands up and down her back.
The dream last night had been startling. This was more immediate. The flow of information back and forth made him feel like his brain was on fire, and at the same time it fueled a sensation of power that astonished him.
In the dream, she had dipped into his past. Now he was picking up facts from her.
But coherent exchange was overwhelmed by lust. Or maybe need was a more polite word.
He might have laughed at his attempt at political correctness, when now that he had Anna in his arms, he knew he would die if he didn’t have her.
Or maybe he would die if he did.
She raised her head, staring at him, the mixture of intense heat and fear on her face making his throat tighten.
“We can’t,” she whispered.
“We have to,” he answered.
“I don’t…”
“Make love with a guy you just met?”
“Yes.”
“But you know me better than anyone else in the world knows me. And now I can make it go the other way.”
He dug for her memories, like a prospector digging for precious metals. The time she’d stepped into a nest of ground hornets and gotten terribly stung. The birthday cake she’d baked for her mom when she was only ten. And then her disastrous first sexual encounter with Sammy Lowen.
“Oh, Lord, don’t bring that up now.”
“It will be a lot different with us. Because each of us knows exactly what the other wants.”
He wasn’t sure why he knew that was true. But he knew he had to prove it. Tenderly, he cupped her breast, finding her nipple through the thin fabric of her blouse, loving the feel of the hard bud against his fingertips.
His breath caught. He sensed her reaction, but it was more than that. He knew how it felt for her, the heated sensation shooting downward through her body, striking at her core, creating an explosion of sexual desire.
That’s how it is for a woman.
The thought darted into his mind. And he knew she had picked it up when she answered, Yes.
He didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that the physical contact, the arousal, opened the gate between his mind and hers in a way he had never imagined. A way that should be impossible. Yet here they were—both so open and vulnerable that his heart squeezed.
Because he wanted her to trust him, he bared himself to her. And when she found the memory of the time he first rode a bucking bronco—and landed on his ass—she smiled inside his mind.
“Come here.” He wrapped his arms around her and leaned back on the sofa, bringing her down on top of him, loving the way the length of her body fit against his—starting with the wonderful pressure of her breasts against his chest and moving downward to the way her hips cradled his erection.
She moved against his cock, and he gasped, so hard now that he felt like he might explode.
That’s how it is for a man. Focused there.
God yes.
Claiming more of her had suddenly become the only goal he could imagine. As he stroked one hand down her body, pressing her closer, he tangled his other hand in her hair, bringing her mouth to his.
He rubbed his lips against hers, marveling at their softness as he urged her to open for him. She made a small sound as she deepened the contact, and he drank in the sweet taste of her.
He had been obsessed with her since the moment he
had seen the poster. Then some unseen force had transported the two of them to that high, windswept plain. It felt like that had been months ago—and he had been waiting to make love to her all this time.
Now they were alone. Not in a fantasy. Or in a dream. They were in a land they had created together, a land filled with riches beyond his imagining. And yet at the same time, he knew they were in the lounge of his boat. Docked in Palmiro.
And they were lying on a narrow sofa. Not the place where he wanted to make love to her for the first time.
He shifted their positions, helping her up, his hand locked with hers. She didn’t ask where they were going as they staggered on unsteady legs down the companionway to the stateroom he used when he slept on board. Where the bed was wider and more comfortable.
She didn’t question him when he fumbled with the buttons of her blouse and threw the garment on the floor, then pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it after her blouse.
As he reached around her, she leaned into him, pushing down the elastic waistband of her loose-fitting white slacks while he unhooked her bra.
The tight fabric of his jeans had turned into a form of torture. And while he was thinking about that, she opened the snap at the waistband, then lowered his zipper.
Thanks.
He pushed the jeans down, along with his shorts, his cock springing free as he kicked the clothing away.
Once again, she started to tell him they were going too fast.
I know. It’s fast for me, too. He gave her a questioning look. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s been building for years.
She raised her head, staring at him. How?
This morning, the dream wouldn’t let me go. So I went out on the water, because that’s where my mind works best. And I think I realized something about us. He swallowed hard. This is almost too weird to say. But did you have an imaginary friend when you were a kid? A boy who lived out West?
Her breath caught. Yes.
I did too. A girl named Annie.
She stared at him, trying to take it in.
We knew each other? How?
I don’t know! But maybe we’re finally meeting in person.
Oh Lord. Could that be true? Or are you just saying that to get me to cooperate?