Night Swimming

by Laura Moore

  He cupped her breasts and gave a ragged groan of pleasure at the feel of their generous softness, then watched Lily’s face as his hands caressed her. Her lips, swollen from his kisses, were parted as she breathed in short, shallow gasps. Languorously, her eyes opened, meeting his, and Sean knew he’d never beheld such a beautiful sight as Lily in his arms.

  Their gazes locked. Her arms reached upward, bracketing his head. Her fingers tangled in his damp hair, and she tugged, a wordless command. For a moment he resisted, wanting to memorize the piercing, haunting beauty of Lily’s face gone soft and dreamy with desire. For him. He swept his thumbs arclike over the tight buds of her nipples, watching her face flush with passion.

  “Do you know,” he said huskily. “Sometimes I think I’ve been waiting all my life to touch you, to feel you like this.”

  Lily couldn’t reply, could only moan as Sean’s fingers stroked her in achingly tender ministration. Her moan became a ragged cry born deep inside her as his fingers closed over her breasts, caressing her boldly with a master’s touch. Lightning heat flashed through her, making her tremble all over. Her back arched, taut like a bow, offering herself to him. From her lips tumbled soft, frantic whimpers.

  The sound drove him wild. He captured her lower lip, biting down, absorbing her shudders. His hands traveled down, past her heaving rib cage, lower still, until they encircled the soft swell of her buttocks. He pulled her to him, letting her feel the rigid length of his erection through his wet clothing, holding her there.

  With a tortured cry, her lips pressed against the flushed column of his throat. And then it was his turn to feel the sharp bite of teeth.

  Raw need roared through him.

  He squeezed her bottom, his mouth hot against her ear as he whispered, “Wrap your legs around me, Lily.”

  Her head jerked, eyes meeting his, and Sean saw in them the same wild, reckless need. She was so close to the edge. “Do it, Lily. Open for me,” he urged. His hands closed, kneading persuasively. “Let me see you fly.”

  Helpless to resist the erotic lure of Sean’s heated words, desperate to have what only he could give her, Lily obeyed.

  Sean’s smile was her first reward. Then, holding her in a fiercely tender grip, he flexed his hips and thrust against her open cleft in a bold caress.

  Lily’s head fell back with her broken keen filling the air.

  “Holy shit!” Hal came running flat out, Lily’s cry still reverberating. He skidded to a halt on the slippery deck, his panicked rescue unfortunately bringing him quite near to where Sean and Lily were fused together. For a moment he stared, his mouth agape. As comprehension dawned, embarrassment colored his face a flaming pink blush.

  Instinctively, Sean shoved Lily behind him, shielding her with his body. He could feel her tremble against him. Were her tremors the aftermath of blazing passion, or were they from horrified mortification? he wondered. He wished he could see her face.

  “Sorry we gave you a scare, Hal. I, uh, fell into the water. Then somehow, Lily and I got caught up in a water fight to the death. Guess I forgot how ticklish she is.” He coughed. It was a pathetic story, but the best he could do right now.

  At his words, Hal looked up from his seemingly rapt examination of the deck’s tiles. Although his face was still as pink as Evelyn Roemer’s dyed hair, his lips parted in a smile of relief. “Oh, yeah,” he nodded, more than willing to play along. “Everyone needs a good tickle now and again.” He cleared his throat loudly and said, “Sorry to break up the fun, but you two have probably had enough water sports for one night.” Hal’s gaze moved past Sean. “You okay there, Lily?”

  Behind Sean, Lily froze. What to say? That she’d been nanoseconds away from a soul-shattering orgasm when Hal came barreling poolside.

  Bereft of Sean’s intoxicating kisses to drug her senseless, Lily hardly recognized herself. Had she gone mad? Probably. She wondered whether she would ever recover from what was undoubtedly the most intensely erotic experience of her life.

  Oh, God! Of all the people to have interrupted her and Sean in the pool! Hal Storey was as close to a father as Lily would ever have. He’d always supported her, believed in her. . . .

  “Lily?”

  “I’m fine, Hal. Just a bit achy.” She cringed, sure Hal would guess that the parts of her that ached and throbbed had nothing to do with swimming. The memory of Sean’s hands was imprinted on her body. And still her flesh cried for more. Drawing a deep, steadying breath, she abandoned the sheltering screen of Sean’s body, waded over to the edge of the pool, and climbed out. She could feel both Sean’s and Hal’s eyes boring into her. Quickly, she went to her bag, yanked out her towel, and whipped it around her body, hiding behind a protective cocoon of thick cotton.

  “Why don’t you go take a shower,” Hal suggested. “It, uh, might make you feel better. Just don’t stay too long, ’kay? I’ve got to lock up the building soon.”

  She managed a strained, “Sure, Hal,” before gathering up her belongings and fleeing to the locker room.

  She didn’t look at me even once, Sean thought, feeling an icy chill of disappointment, far colder than the pool water. Abruptly aware that he was still standing in the pool, fully dressed, looking like an idiot, he hauled himself out.

  Hal’s obvious concern had transmuted into narrow-eyed disapproval. Sean pretended not to notice. He was too preoccupied to deal with Hal right now, too busy trying to figure out what might be going on in Lily’s head.

  Damn it, why couldn’t things ever be simple between Lily and him?

  With a grimace, he emptied his dripping pockets, dumping his wallet and ruined cell phone onto the deck. He grabbed his sodden towel and made a halfhearted attempt to blot his dripping clothes. Thank God his drenched clothing hid the evidence of his arousal. Fierce need still clawed, its talons deep. If Sean hadn’t been damned sure Hal would hurl himself in a flying tackle if he tried it, he would have marched right into the ladies’ locker room and dragged Lily back where she belonged: into his arms. Arms that ached from the loss of her.

  Monitoring Sean’s success with the towel, Hal gave a grunt of disgust. “Come on. I have an extra towel you can use in the office. No way can you drive home like that—you’ll ruin the car’s interior. ’Sides, we need to talk,” Hal added heavily. Turning on his heel, he headed back toward his office.

  Sean followed with a decided lack of enthusiasm. They entered Hal’s cramped cubicle of an office and Hal shut the door behind him. It closed with an ominous bang.

  He took a towel hanging from the hook on the door and tossed it at Sean, who grabbed it one-handed.

  “Thanks,” he said, as he bent to pat his khakis dry.

  “I hope you know what the hell you’re doing.” The warning tone in Hal’s voice had Sean pausing to glance up at his friend. He straightened, towel forgotten.

  “Hey, I didn’t plan what you saw back there, Hal. It just happened.”

  “What’d she do? Pull you into the pool?” Whatever he saw in Sean’s expression had Hal’s face shifting into a lop-sided grin. “Thought so. Serves you right, McDermott. You were being a total SOB. You knew it, so did she. Christ, you would never pull that kind of stunt with Dave.” He gave a snort of disgust. “I was watching the two of you the entire workout. Don’t think I didn’t see when you finally took pity on her. Any slower, and you’d have been doing a dog paddle. Real shitty of you, McDermott.”

  I know, Sean admitted silently. “Right. If she ever agrees to swim with me again, I’ll let her swim her arms off. She got her revenge anyway.”

  “Good for her.”

  Sean’s gaze narrowed. Sometimes Hal was a pain in the ass. “Gee, thanks, Coach.”

  Unfazed by Sean’s sarcasm, Hal continued. “You know, I always suspected something would happen between you and Lily. Intense rivalry can’t come without intense passion; I figured the attraction was there, just waiting for the right moment.” He paused to glare at Sean, then said, “But I would have hoped you’d hav
e a hell of a lot more smarts than to try to seduce a beautiful woman in my pool! Anybody could have walked in on you!” His voice was at a near shout.

  Sean winced inwardly. “I don’t think that’s anyone’s business, Hal. Not even yours,” he added defensively. A colossal mistake.

  Hal’s temper exploded. “What do you mean, not my business? Okay, McDermott, we’ll skip over the political repercussions for you as mayor if someone other than me caught you and Lily. I guess the phrase conflict of interest doesn’t ring a bell. To tell you the truth, I don’t give a rat’s ass about politics. I’ll go straight to what I do care about: you breaking Lily’s heart.”

  “What?!” Sean exclaimed.

  “Yeah, I know. You’re gonna tell me that what I interrupted a few minutes ago was just a casual romp in the pool. That’s a load of crap, McDermott. You know as well as I that Lily’s never been casual about anything in her life. Especially not you. ’Sides, what I witnessed back there was not casual. Shit, I’m surprised the water wasn’t boiling with the heat you two were making.”

  “Christ, Hal.” Sean spread his hands, his palms up. “Things kind of exploded between us. But Lily’s not a girl anymore—”

  “If you’re stupid enough to believe that, then you don’t understand dick about Lily—no matter how hard you were trying back in my pool!”

  Sean opened his mouth, but Hal was in full rant. “I’ve known Lily since she was a lonely, awkward kid. Of all people, you, Sean, should remember what she was like, how it was for her.”

  “She ended up fine—”

  “Yeah, she did. Because of her brains and her heart, she’s accomplished everything she’s dreamed of. But accomplished as she is, with all that beauty, she’s as lonely, as vulnerable as she was at thirteen. She needs a home, McDermott. She needs to know she belongs. That there’s a place for her to care about above sea level.”

  “Hal—”

  “I’m warning you, Sean. I’ll have your ass if you go and hurt Lily and make her run away. Now, get out of here before I get really pissed.”

  Hal was wrong, and his protective impulse was way overblown. Thoroughly misguided, too, Sean thought, as he slammed the office door behind him. It was he— not Lily—who was in need of protection. Sean had an awful feeling he’d lost his heart back there in the pool, and that when Lily discovered she had it, she’d toss it away.

  The apartment was in shadows when Lily entered. She left the lights off and walked in darkness to the large picture windows. The rain had stopped and yet the glass panes blurred, dissolving into nothing. She blinked back the tears that brimmed, refusing to let them fall. She would lock up her tears, along with her heartache.

  Stifling a moan of despair, she bit her lower lip, a lip still swollen from Sean’s tender assault. What had she done? she asked herself wretchedly. She knew the answer: She had let Sean touch her. She’d never dreamed how devastating the result would be.

  She’d never felt lonelier or more confused in her life.

  The reef study would be finished soon. So far, the coral appeared uniformly healthy. If the remaining transects proved to be in equally good condition, her job would consist of simply tying up loose ends. Once she received Lesnesky’s report, she’d compare her data with his and then present the results of the study as a whole to the reef committee.

  And it would be over. She would be free to do what only days ago she’d been anticipating eagerly: purchase a ticket for the next flight to the Bahamas.

  The thought of leaving had the tears sliding down her cheeks.

  She swallowed painfully and dashed them with the back of her hand.

  When she left, she wouldn’t see Sean again. Hundreds of miles away, exploring the magic of the oceans’ reefs, she would eventually forget him.

  But Lily’s aching heart told her differently, knew that she could travel to the ends of the earth, to the deepest depths of the sea, and still she’d yearn for Sean. She’d stayed away from Coral Beach for ten years. It would take far longer than that before she could forget how Sean had made her feel tonight. Perhaps a lifetime.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Pete Ferrucci climbed out of his Mercedes. It was early, the sun only just above the horizon, its golden shafts of light piercing the banks of low-lying clouds.

  No one was moving near where the Tangiers was moored, which suited him fine. He wanted his business concluded and his man in place before Banyon and the others arrived.

  Ferrucci gave the windswept, gray-green ocean a cursory glance before turning his back to it and to the glory of the rising sun breaking through clouds.

  He far preferred the view of the marina.

  The marina was what McDermott and his crowd liked to call picturesque . Picturesque meant quaint, charming, colorful. . . . Yeah, yeah, Ferrucci thought scornfully. He had a different definition for picturesque: rinky-dink and dead. But once this reef study was over, the marina would be shiny, big, and new. Moreover, it would be hopping, twenty-four–seven.

  Ferrucci looked out over the marina and in its place envisioned the full-scale model of the developer’s blue-print brought to life.

  There, he thought, from that copse of trees on down. That’s where the new section of the marina would be built. The parcel of land had enough coastline that they’d be able to carve out roughly double the existing marina’s space. All they needed to do was to chop down the trees and start dredging, scooping out chunks of shoreline to the south. Then, to make sure the newly carved coast didn’t wash away, they’d buttress the shore with steel-reinforced concrete pillars. Ferrucci had seen the kind they used before. They were huge, shaped like massive drums, not that he or his partners gave a shit what the blocks looked like—after all, they’d be underwater.

  South of the new marina, Ferrucci planned to put up two fifteen-story condos, with the ground floors reserved for retail space, making it like a minigalleria. The people who bought the condos would be demanding a higher class of retail and services than what was currently offered in two-bit shacks like the Rusted Keel, Norma Jean’s, or the stores selling marine supplies. Nuts, bolts, stays, and life vests . . . piddly shit-merchandise with a profit margin that was fucking laughable. Those mom-and-pop businesses would be closing shop for good, once the more upscale boutiques and cafés opened.

  And Ferrucci would rake in a mountain of money. Yeah, the place was going to look fabulous. He could picture it so easily, a whole new community where before there’d only been boring, empty space. His eyes swept over the wooded area and his lip curled in disdain. Hell, even the trees were boring. Puny. Gnarly. Boring.

  His cell phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out. “Yeah? Good, it’s you. So, what else is new? Traffic’s always a bitch. I’m at the marina. Get here fast.”

  A few minutes later a nondescript, late-model sedan pulled into the parking lot. He didn’t recognize the car, but he could guess who it was. A man got out and looked around.

  He was right. Ferrucci withdrew his hand from his trench coat pocket and waved. Spotting him, the man began walking his way. Ferrucci noted he hadn’t changed much. He still carried himself with his bony shoulders rounded in a permanent slouch. He’d grown his hair longer, though, wearing it pulled back with a rubber band, à la Steven Seagal.

  The only thing Ferrucci really cared about, though, was the man’s eyes, and they looked as sharp and cunning as ever. They shook hands. Ferrucci took out a white envelope from inside his sports coat and handed it to him. “A thousand, as we agreed. You’ll get a five hundred dollar bonus for every picture I buy. Here’s the address where she’s staying. I own the building, so if you need to, follow her right in. I’ve alerted the security guards. No one’ll stop you. She also spends time at her grandmother’s place. The name and address is in there as well.”

  “Grandmother?” Thin eyebrows shot up in disbelief.

  Ferrucci shrugged. So what if grandmothers’ homes weren’t the usual territory. “Her and McDermott’s families are close
. I don’t want you to miss an opportunity. When they get here, I’ll go down and spend some time talking to her so you can identify her—not that she’s easy to miss. She’s tall, blond, and built. And pale as vanilla ice cream.”

  “Whooee!” the man exclaimed with a hungry smacking sound. “I got a real sweet tooth.” He shoved the envelope Ferrucci had passed him inside his leather bomber jacket without bothering to count the money inside. “And the target, he’s the mayor of this burg?”

  “Yes.” Ferrucci handed him a newspaper photo of Sean, taken at a committee meeting months ago. “But you’re better off tailing the woman, Banyon. She’s the honey pot. He’ll dip his digit soon. Keep on the job until you’ve got something I can use. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  It better not. Ferrucci wanted to get something on McDermott soon. His partners had been livid when McDermott canceled their lunch meeting yesterday. Ferrucci himself had exploded in rage when he discovered why McDermott had blown off the meeting—so he could go and look good in front of a bunch of high school kids.

  What was even more infuriating to Ferrucci was that McDermott and Banyon had made the local headlines again, this time with their cutesy, do-gooder plan to offer a community-wide scuba diving program.

  His associates were going to hit the roof once they saw the morning papers. If people started going out to the reef, becoming nature freaks, some grass-roots nut would kick up a fuss and protest the development project. Which was yet another reason why he definitely wanted Banyon and McDermott in the news—but with a very different kind of story attached to their names. One that would really make waves.