Dark Waters (2013)

by Anderson, Toni

  She was petite, but not fragile. Strong as iron and pure as the silver she was named after. Having casual sex didn’t fit with his image of her, but what the hell did he know? Maybe this was what they both needed. Although deep down he knew this was anything but casual on his part.

  She must have felt his reluctance. She unwrapped her legs and slid down him, causing a thousand nerve endings to spring to stunned attention. Then she unflicked the button on his shorts, drew them down. Oxygen disappeared and he swayed as she took him in her hands.

  He fell to his knees because he was toast. There was nothing damaged about this woman. Frustrated, he kicked off his shorts, and when she crawled over him, he pulled her up his body so she straddled him. She rocked against him and his eyes crossed. It was too dark to really see but she felt like raw silk as she rose over him. She stroked him and he just wanted to kiss her all over. A blast of cold hard reality hit home. “I don’t have a condom,” he gritted out.

  “I do.” She scrambled over to her pile of clothes until she found her shorts and pulled one out of her pocket.

  “When did you buy those?” he asked.

  “In the store. Earlier.”

  She’d thought about this.

  She’d planned it.

  Sex. With him. His mouth went dry. Blood punched.

  Hell.

  Sweat ran down his temples. He grabbed her hips and held her still for long enough to bite out, “I’m clean.” He needed her to know. “I haven’t been with anyone in over a year.”

  She rocked against him, and he rolled her on her back, then hesitated, worried he might have hurt her. She lay on top of their clothes and he could just make out her body in the moonlight.

  “You’re so beautiful.” He touched his fingers to the tips of her breasts and she arched off the ground. He followed with his lips, drifted over the hollow of her collarbone, the swell of her breast, back to the sensitive curve of her neck. He touched the sweep of her hip and then the secret depths between her thighs. He eased one finger inside her and slid it very gently backward and forward over sensitive flesh. Every time he touched her, he wanted it to go on forever because she reacted with such startling force. She bucked and writhed beneath his hands, making whimpering sounds and thrusting her hips in gentle demand. He slipped another finger inside her and eased her wider. She felt incredible. Then he couldn’t resist anymore. He wanted more. He inched down her body and spread her thighs, felt her stiffen.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, an uncertain edge entering her voice.

  “Do you trust me?”

  She laughed softly. “You think we’d be having this conversation if I didn’t?”

  “I know we wouldn’t.” He was frustrated he couldn’t see her, but Christ. “I want to taste you. Can I taste you?” He didn’t wait for her answer. He put his mouth on her and kissed her, drenched in her flavor and her heat. There were no complaints, no resistance. Her body went lax, her hips rising off the sand and he held her steady against his mouth and feasted.

  She tasted like spice and sin and sweet, sweet heaven. Her tightly bunched nipples called to him and he stroked them, flicked them, rolled them until she was panting.

  She was incredible, like quicksilver in his hands. But she was so tiny, he was terrified he was going to hurt her, or crush her, especially after everything she’d told him. Then she draped her legs over his shoulders and her heels dug into his back as she threw back her head with a silent scream as she came. And he realized she wasn’t delicate or fragile, she was strong and supple and resilient.

  Unbroken.

  She pulled away from him almost immediately and sat up, looking shocked, breathing hard. He tried to quiet the fervor in his blood. Figured they were done, and he could deal with his raging hard-on in the cold lake. Then she pushed him onto his back and once more straddled his thighs.

  “You don’t have to do this.” He deserved an A for effort. Maybe Olympic gold. “I’ll give you as many orgasms as you want.”

  Her hand wrapped around him and he couldn’t stop the instinctive thrust of his hips.

  “I just want to return the favor.”

  “It isn’t a contest,” he gritted out. “I’m not keeping count of how many times you come.”

  “Brent.” She sounded frustrated and a little bit pissed. He liked it. He liked the way she was acting all bossy and in control in a situation that should have unnerved her. Come to think of it, she’d never exactly been shy and retiring in his company. He didn’t scare her. How the hell could a woman who’d suffered the way she had not be terrified of him?

  “I’ve never felt like this before,” she said. “I have never burned from the inside out or wanted a man as desperately as I want you. This is all new to me and I feel fabulous.”

  She did feel fabulous, and he knew all about burning from the inside out. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he confessed.

  “You won’t.”

  She stroked him until he was so hard and throbbing he thought he might pass out. Her touch might be inexperienced but, hell, he was easy. He could barely think past the idea of getting inside her. He felt like an animal, all desperate and feral, denying himself a basic need. For what?

  “If you don’t want to come inside me, we can find other ways,” she said. “I won’t force you, but I’d like to share this with you. I want you.”

  He met her gaze in the moonlight. Saw the raw need and ragged lust. She was naked and begging him to have sex with her. Obviously he’d lost his frigging mind. He ran his hands up her back, scraped his fingers down the lean muscles. “Fuck. I want you. I just shouldn’t have you.”

  She fumbled with the foil package and then slid the condom over him, her expression a tight frown of concentration. Every muscle in his body shook. Then she positioned the tip of him exactly where he wanted to be, he gave up pretending this wasn’t going to happen as she slid slowly over his length.

  Lord, have mercy.

  He gripped her waist and she squirmed, getting used to his size, internal muscles spasming around him. She rocked her hips and went deeper. Then she added a twist to the movement and he felt that spine-tingling, ball-squeezing, mind-blasting animalistic need, building and building inside him. He didn’t dare touch her because there was no control left for anything except wanting it not to end—never to end.

  “Am I doing it right?” she asked hesitantly.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” He gritted his teeth and stared at the stars, spotted the Milky Way as lust spiked through every vein, popped each nerve. Then she started rising up and sliding down and he thought he was going to black out. He couldn’t stand it anymore and gripped her hips and drove deeper, deeper, harder. Grinding against her, wanting to get more inside her so she could swallow him whole. Then she cried out in those small gasps that curled around him and squeezed so tight he couldn’t breathe. He let himself go, the hard release catapulting him to the moon as a nuclear explosion of white-hot ecstasy burned his mind, obliterating every thought in his head except this. Except her.

  She collapsed on top of him, skin slick with a mix of sweat and sand and sex. Their hearts pounded each other as the breeze cooled their overheated bodies.

  Holy motherfucking hell.

  She moved just slightly against him. Twitched her hips and he found himself growing hard again. He smoothed the hair off her cheek. What the hell had he done? He clenched his jaw.

  “We’re going to need another condom,” he said. He was going to burn for this anyway, so he might as well go up in flames.

  She leaned over and found her shorts, searched through the pockets once more. He lay there, admiring the view. She pulled out two condoms and dropped them on his chest with a flash of a grin in the darkness. He protected them both and pulled her back over him.

  He didn’t know what this was between them. But maybe he shouldn’t worry. Sex was a great stress reducer. She rocked against him and his vision went blurry. Christ. His hands sought hers in the darkness an
d he rolled them so she was on her back, with him planted deep within her. He paused, knowing this was how she’d been raped—on her back in the sand. “Is this OK?”

  She nodded. There were no shadows of pain or anguish in her eyes. Just liquid lust and bright feverish want. And maybe this wasn’t about him. Maybe this was all about Anna, and he could certainly live with fixing one broken part of her life. Her knees drew up, giving him a better angle, and then he slipped his hands beneath her, raising her up as he thrust hard, harder and couldn’t stop. Sand was everywhere, adding another fine layer of friction. There was nothing gentle this time. No holding back as her body demanded more, fingers biting, ankles digging into his ass. This was therapy. A way of getting off and getting some sleep. It was raw sex on a deserted beach and they both needed it.

  He drove her to another orgasm and followed her over the razor’s edge, resting his forehead in the curve of her shoulder as he shattered. Then he carried her into the water and they did it again.

  CHAPTER 14

  Anna had just spent the most incredible night of her life, making love with a man who’d not only been gentle and giving, but—once he’d gotten over thinking she might break if he pushed too hard—also ruthless and demanding. They’d stumbled back to bed in the early hours of the morning and finally fallen asleep. They’d woken up to warm sunshine and the soft scent of canvas and made love one more time before reality intruded.

  She ached in unusual places and each twinge brought a wave of awareness, a reminder of what they’d shared and done to one another. She felt free. Liberated. Not only had she buried a lot of old pain, she’d figured out she could have a fantastic sex life too, a fact that had remained hidden from her all these years. She didn’t need to be repressed or in control. She just needed the right guy.

  Could Brent Carver be that guy?

  The idea seemed crazy, and yet…she didn’t have time to ponder. They couldn’t stay here, playing make-believe forever. The rising sun had brought with it an escalating need to act.

  “I’m going to the restroom,” Anna told Brent as he finished packing up the tent.

  He grunted without turning. He hadn’t said much this morning. Anna didn’t know if he was tired or just having second thoughts about being seduced. He wasn’t a man who liked to get close to anyone, and she’d battered down his walls last night. From the look on his face, she’d have to batter them down again next time.

  She needed to get through to him that he was a decent human being who deserved good things in his life. Good people. Assuming they ever got themselves out of this mess.

  She walked along the paved road to the nearby washrooms. In her stiff new jeans and baggy T-shirt, she couldn’t have felt less feminine or attractive, not that she cared right now. But it was a long way from the pretty skirts and sandals she usually wore and emphasized how dramatically her world had changed. She was wanted by the police for questioning, and traveling under a false identity. Clothes no longer mattered. Respectability and image no longer mattered. All that mattered was finding whatever it was her father had sent her, keeping Brent out of jail, and not dying. She’d discovered last night that she really, really wasn’t ready to die.

  She’d tried to keep some sort of guard on her emotions, but there was a huge difference between telling yourself not to get emotionally involved, and not doing it. Especially when you were both naked. After what they’d been through over the last few days, it was hard not to feel something. And after the way he’d made love to her last night and burned away her demons, she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t already halfway in love with him. But maybe that was just gratitude and postcoital glow.

  She used the restroom and washed her hands, letting the water flow coolly over her wrists.

  Their plan was to cross the border and meet up with Brent’s future sister-in-law at Emerson. It was only a few hours to the border, but Brent was worried the border was going to be watched, so they were going to wait until it started to get dark again, during which time Anna would go insane. Hopefully Holly would be there to meet them and no one would get hurt or arrested. A huge icy claw slid inside her. She couldn’t bear the thought of being responsible for getting Brent sent back to prison. She wouldn’t let that happen, and between her and Finn and Holly’s RCMP connections, they’d fight to keep him safe.

  Was this love?

  How did you even know? How did you put faith in that sort of nebulous emotion?

  Walking back from the restrooms, she passed the office and noticed the computer they had for customer use was free. She bit her lip. They were leaving anyway. What harm could it do to send her mom a quick e-mail telling her not to worry? She didn’t even know if she’d received the first message about Dad.

  She walked inside and sat down. Should she?

  No one was around as she opened up her webmail. Seven messages marked URGENT caught her attention. All from Ed. She opened one up. All it said was “call me” with Ed’s cell phone number. Her heart tripped in her chest. She and Ed weren’t close, but they got on OK. Why was he e-mailing her and not her mom? She spotted a pay phone. Dug ten dollars out of her purse and got change from the guy behind the desk. She dialed her mother’s cell first, but it was turned off. So she tried Ed. He answered on the third ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Ed, it’s me, Anna.”

  “Thank God, Anna. I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  From the desperation in his voice, she wondered if the cops were using him to track her down. If that monster who’d killed Peter had escaped, then they might consider Anna a suspect…

  “Your mother is sick.” His voice shook in obvious distress and he sobbed. Ed wasn’t that great an actor and her mother was the center of his universe.

  “I thought you were on a cruise?”

  “She took ill in Anchorage and we flew back to the island. You have to come now. They said she might not make it more than a few hours.” He broke down, completely undone.

  Her mother was sick, dying. Oh, God. Coming on top of her father’s death a week ago, she felt like her world had shattered.

  “Which hospital?”

  Ed gave her the name of the hospital where she’d been admitted all those years ago, and told her to call him when she got into Victoria. She hung up the phone, and something made her look up. There was Brent, watching her. His eyes were hooded, cold even. None of the lover and all of the ex-con.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Change of plan,” she told him as they walked back to their cozy little campsite. It was packed up now. All trace of their stay here folded and stored in the back of the jeep. Except she’d never pack away the memories. They meant more to her than all the money in the world. Her hands shook and she tried to steady them by putting them on her hips. “I spoke to Ed. Mom’s seriously ill. She’s been taken to the hospital.” Her voice broke as she climbed into the jeep. “I need to fly back to Victoria straightaway—”

  “Holly can’t meet us until later today.”

  She swallowed the ball of fear and anger that lodged in her throat. “There has to be another way. Ed said she might only have a few hours.” Reality hit her hard in the chest. She wanted to cling to him, but from his expression, that wouldn’t be a good idea. “She might die.”

  “It’s not safe.” He sat poised to turn the key in the ignition and she wanted to yell at him to hurry.

  “What about paying someone to take us in a small private aircraft like we did last time?”

  He closed his eyes and seemed to be trying to rein in his temper.

  “I’ll pay you back—”

  “I don’t want your damned money!” he yelled. He ran his hands over his face. “I don’t know anyone here. I have no connections. Crossing the border with Holly is the safest way to get you into protective custody.” And make sure I don’t end up in jail hung silently in the air.

  He started the car and they started driving. North. Toward the border.

 
The image of Peter dead on her kitchen floor whirled inside her mind, along with that of the man with the cobra-cold eyes who’d looked at her like she was naked and his to do with as he pleased. Her insides turned to ice. But what if her mom died while she was hiding from these people? What if she never saw her again, never had the chance to say she was sorry for being such a crappy daughter? Because, with a clarity she hadn’t known before, she realized she’d had a big role in how far they’d grown apart. Her mother had tried to reach out to her over the years and she’d pushed her away for fear of getting hurt. And that distance had also been a weapon that she had wielded with cold precision to keep people away.

  It had to stop.

  She had to make it stop. “You have other connections. There must be other ways of fighting these guys. People like them who can find them before they kill us…”

  He froze, and then shook his head. “Those are not the sort of people I want to deal with.” He swallowed. “All they need is one asshole who’s trigger-happy and we’re looking at conspiracy to murder charges. I won’t prove everyone right about me being a cold-blooded killer.” The tightness of his features made his mouth look harsh. “I’d die for you, Anna. But I won’t kill for you. Not unless there’s no other choice.”

  Inside she was quaking. She couldn’t believe she’d even considered it, much less asked Brent. Shame filled her. What did that make her? A liar and a monster. A hypocrite and the worst sort of human being on the planet. But she was running out of options and these people had no moral compass about fighting fair. Keeping Brent safe and staying alive were important, but if her mom died before she had the chance to see her, she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.

  “It’s just a few hours more until Holly can meet us—”

  Her stepfather’s words came back to her. “I can’t wait that long. Drop me off at the nearest airport and I’ll go on my own. They won’t expect it.” She was doing this one way or another. And at least this way would get him out of her orbit and keep him safe.