Dead Calm

by Lindsay Longford

  Like the string of a bow pulled by the hunter, she tightened, shook with the strength of his touch against her womb. “Ah!” Her head fell back into his shoulder. Her body cramped, convulsed and the world disappeared.

  When she opened her eyes, she wondered if she’d lost consciousness. Her forehead rested against the wall of Catfish Charlie’s where the thrumming, booming still sang through the boards. Judah’s hand was splayed against the wall, his wrist on her cheek. He shuddered against her back where they were joined, and her body answered with a last, astonishing flutter.

  There was an odd sheltering in the cover of his body around hers, in the clasp of hers to him, a sense of rightness to the feel of him inside her.

  In that moment she understood that no matter with whom she ever made love again, Judah Finnegan had imprinted her with himself. He had claimed her with his body, claimed her by triggering the most deeply felt instincts of her femininity.

  In darkness he had taken her.

  Taken her.

  And with that act, he’d rattled her to the core. Sex up against Catfish Charlie’s back wall? Where anybody could have walked and seen them?

  Joyful sex, mutual pleasure—that she’d always understood and reveled in. But this? This aggressive desire mixed strangely with pleasure? It was basic male-to-female bonding; something in his DNA speaking to hers and recognizing her at some level beyond words, beyond her understanding.

  In taking her, and, really, there was no other word, he had revealed to her something about her own nature that she could never have imagined.

  What she accepted, though, was that he had claimed her as his mate, turned what she thought she knew about herself upside down, and changed her forever.

  He had blurred the lines between her self and that of another.

  She didn’t know how she felt about that blurring, that sense that she’d given away a part of her most private self, that Judah had penetrated not only her body but her soul.

  She knew, though, that she had been cut loose from all her moorings and set adrift on some uncharted sea not of her choosing. She’d lost control. And loved every thrilling second of it.

  Against her back, she could hear his labored breathing. Speech was impossible. After all, what was there to say? Careless words, wrong words would be dangerous. In silence and darkness something had been communicated, acknowledged between them.

  Sophie turned to face Judah. A heavy, immovable weight, he’d collapsed against her, one hand against the wall bracing them, one hand supporting her.

  She was surprised by how easy it was to free herself and face him.

  Her body still quaking in the aftermath of pleasure so intense she had no word for it, she raised her handcuffed wrists, stood on tiptoe with her back to the wall and slipped her cuffed hands over his head.

  His eyes were dark and brooding, their color gone dark with pain. “Why did you play games with the boy? How could you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered against his lips, moving until her hips and pelvis were tight against him, female to male.

  “It does.”

  “No.” She had no sense of the passing of time as she held him within the circle of her cuffed arms. Long, quiet moments while the world went still and she sorted out her confused thoughts.

  Tentatively, she lifted her leg, curling it around his waist until her body teased the tip of his. Holding her gaze, his eyes studying hers, he clasped her fanny and lifted her until she could wrap both legs tightly around him, sink onto him. That easily, he was inside her again, moving slowly, gently. He ran his hands under her skirt, warming her skin, holding her. His pupils were dark, pulling her into their depths. Watching each other, never looking away, they moved together in a languorous joining of murmurs and soft, sliding touches. A silky, luxurious pleasuring that was like the afterquake of a major temblor.

  A miracle, this ability of touch to give such pleasure, to provide this transport to another realm. A gift from God to humans caught in a world of sadness and loss and pain, this joining.

  As the delicious coiling inside her spiraled ever higher, tighter and tighter, Sophie felt her eyelids flicker. Focusing on Judah, drawing him even deeper, she saw the slash of his mouth tighten, witnessed the control he exerted to keep his eyes fixed on hers.

  And in that final paroxysm, Sophie watched over Judah’s shoulder as the Gulf moved in swells gone silver with night and mist.

  “Home?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded, adjusted his jeans, and then, not speaking, he swung her up into his arms and carried her to his car, her handcuffed wrists still circling his neck.

  In the car, he unsnapped the cuffs and flung them into the back of his car. During the short ride to her house, Judah touched her constantly, his palm smoothing her bare thigh, edging up to the juncture of thigh and belly, lingering.

  And entranced by his silky length, she touched him, too, her hands inside his jeans as busy as his. A slow fever pulsed through her blood, heavy and insistent, powerful. She was mindless, caught in the exquisite pleasure of touching and being touched.

  At some point before leaving the beach, she must have picked up her purse because now he took the keys from it and opened her front door with an impatient twist of the key. She’d scarcely shut the door behind them when he crowded her against it and pulled her to him in the familiar darkness of her house.

  She slid away and pulled him toward her bedroom. “Come with me.”

  “Wait.” He unbuttoned the rest of her blouse, slipped it from her shoulders, trailing the light fabric against her breasts and ribs. With a pinch of his fingers, he unfastened her skirt, letting it fall in a shadowy pink heap.

  Unexpectedly shy, she hesitated, crossing her arms around her waist. The shadowy recesses of her house were no protection for the surprising vulnerability she was experiencing.

  Not moving, Judah stared at her for a long time. “You have no idea how beautiful you are, do you?” He unfolded her arms and slicked his palms over her hips, up her rib cage. “Aw, Sophie, you almost make me believe in…something.” Stooping, he covered her trembling nipple with his mouth and lifted her into his arms. Following her murmured directions, he stumbled blindly toward her bedroom. Her head bumped the doorjamb of the hall. His elbow knocked over a vase on a low table. The vase shattered as it smacked the floor. Glass crackled under his shoes. “I’m going to wreck your home, Sophie.”

  “Too late. You already have.”

  “What?” Startled, he careered off her hall bookcase. Paperbacks and hardbacks thudded to the floor. “What?”

  “In there.”

  He stepped across the threshold into her bedroom. “Where’s your bed?”

  A laugh escaped. “No inclination to go find a sandy, public spot? The mall, perhaps?”

  “Not this time.” Placing her across her bed, he followed her down into her uplifted arms. “Your skin gleams, Sophie, even in the dark. How can that be possible? It’s like you have a candle inside you, glowing through your skin.” He circled her ankle with his thumb and forefinger.

  His palm rested on her arch and the bottom of her foot, shooting tingles straight to her belly. To her forever-empty womb.

  Sliding his hand over her calf, he limned the muscles, praised their shape with his touch. “Such strength. Like silk-covered steel. Beautiful.” He spread her arms wide to the edge of her narrow bed and ran his open hands over her, butterfly touches that tickled and spritzed along her skin. “You leave me breathless, you know.”

  “It’s complicated, isn’t it, Judah? Between us?”

  “No kidding.” His laugh was shaky as his lips tickled the inner skin of her thigh and moved up. “Complicated doesn’t even begin to cover it.” Slipping his thumb along the crease between her thigh and belly, he added reluctantly, “You know, I never intended what happened at Charlie’s.”

  “Then why?”

  “I saw you with that boy. You were like a campfire, glowing, sp
arking up into a black night. I’d never imagined you so lighthearted, I reckon.”

  “You didn’t want me to enjoy myself?”

  “No. Yes.” He shook his head again in frustration. “Seeing you dancing with that kid shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have been important. But it was.”

  “I won’t apologize.”

  “I don’t want you to.” Elbows on the bed, he stared down at her, broodingly. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “But you—”

  “I didn’t like seeing you in that twerp’s arms.”

  “Don’t call Cutter a twerp. And he wasn’t that young.”

  He buried his face in the crook of her shoulder and neck, nipped. “Don’t defend him.”

  “I told you Cutter doesn’t matter.”

  “Lousy name. He should sue his mama and daddy. But he matters, Sophie. Because he made me—”

  “Jealous?”

  “Maybe. I’ve never been jealous before.”

  “Never? But you were married. Weren’t you ever jealous then?”

  His eyebrow lifted. “No.” Nibbling at the cord of her neck and down, he said, “Maybe that was the problem. One of them, anyway. Hell, who knows? I messed up with Sallie.” He jerked his head up. “Redheaded Sallie with the brown eyes.” He paused, his focus somewhere else. “I’m glad I remembered what color her eyes are.”

  Sophie thought Sallie might be a perfectly acceptable name, but at the moment she hated the sound of it. “I don’t know how to handle what’s happening, Judah.”

  His fingers lingered intimately, sending sparkles of fire to her core. “I don’t either.”

  “Two rudderless ships?” All of them—she, Angel, Judah—all adrift with no safe port. She twisted restlessly, her body and her emotions chaotic. “Neither of us knowing how the voyage will end? So why are we doing this?” She linked her fingers with his, touched him, urged him up over her.

  “Damned if I know. I do know I feel clean and clear when I’m inside you. Inside you, Sophie, is where everything makes sense, where I feel that anything is possible.” He paused. “I wanted to hate you.” He shook his head and the whisk of his hair across her breasts made her gasp. “I still do.”

  “I know.”

  “I need to hate you.” He hovered above her, frowning.

  “But I can’t.”

  “I understand,” she whispered forlornly. “It’s—”

  “Complicated,” he finished for her. “Like you said.” He entered her slowly on a long-drawn-out sigh of movement. “Aw, Doctor Sugar, none of this makes sense. I made up my mind I was going to stay as far away from you as I could. I meant to.” He groaned as she lifted her hips. “Like a man with an addiction, I can’t leave you alone. I thought it was nothing but hot sex, that I could walk away afterwards. And yet here I am. What am I going to do about you?”

  “You’re doing all right at the moment.” She smiled up at him and brought his face back to hers.

  “Yeah, well, this part I understand. I’m good at this part,” he said ruefully and then groaned as she sidled closer, letting her nipples brush over him.

  “Guys always brag.” Even as her body moved with him, she grinned. “You’re not bad.”

  “Thank you. But this—” he drove forward, a small smile on his face, too “—is the simple part.”

  “Ah!” she gasped. “Not always.”

  “For me it is. But you unman me, Sophie.”

  “Doesn’t feel like that from where I am.” She reached down and enclosed him in her palm, warmed him as he was warming her. “Stay for a while, Judah.” She leaned forward, sliding her bent knees past his hips. “We’ll see what happens next.”

  “You know what’s going to happen next, Sophie. You know what I want. That part’s as clear as Weekiwachee Springs.”

  She sighed and let the tide of sensation wash over her, gave herself utterly to its intoxication. “Afterwards. We’ll sort things out then.”

  The room seemed to tremble around her with the sounds of skin sliding along skin, of hushed breaths, sharp cries. Her bedding rustled to the floor as Judah kicked free of it. Abruptly, he rolled over and pulled her on top of him. The painted iron headboard wobbled and slapped the Chinese-red wall, leaving white streaks.

  She didn’t care. Head thrown back, she entered a world of sensation so overwhelming that nothing mattered. What they were doing together, creating together, went beyond the blurring she’d been worried about earlier. In this world of touch, one and one didn’t add up to two. Here, one and one made one.

  They slept, woke, touched again as moonlight moved across her ceiling, striping her walls with pale lines. He moved his hand down the line of her scar, lingering on each stitch mark, learning its shape and texture. “I’m sorry, Sophie. I wish—”

  “Me, too.” Her throat closed.

  “Don’t cry.”

  “I’m not.”

  But he took the tears seeping from her eyes with his tongue, bathed her scar with them in a slow, lingering kiss.

  “What happened, Sophie?”

  “Nothing,” she said and tasted her own salty tears. “Nothing.”

  “Something.” His mouth moved over the skin of her belly, and her womb fluttered as his lips passed.

  “I was pregnant.”

  “And?” His lips moved back to the corners of her eyes and she tried to turn her head away from his searching gaze. “Tell me.”

  “Why?” She went still within his hold. “Why do you want to know the details, Judah?”

  “I don’t know. I just do, that’s all.”

  “I was pregnant. Stupid. I should have known better. I was on birth control. I didn’t mention it to the dentist when I went to have my wisdom tooth removed. Now, that’s one of the automatic questions a doctor asks, of course. But not then. I thought I was protected. I wasn’t. Nineteen and pregnant. A walking cliché. And things went wrong.” Needing the privacy of her own thoughts, she tried once more to turn away, but Judah lowered himself until she could see nothing except his lean, intense face. “I thought I’d dealt with it.”

  He took the corner of the pillowcase and tried to stem the slow seepage of tears. “But you haven’t.”

  “Guess not.”

  He dabbed at her eyes again. “Hell, Sophie, this pillowcase isn’t worth a damn.”

  “I don’t know why I’m crying.” Rubbing the backs of her hands over her eyes, she gave a helpless sniff. “So dumb. I’m not a crier, and I’ve bawled more in the last few days than I have in years.” Tears were burning her cheeks and she couldn’t stop them.

  “What happened?”

  “A double ectopic pregnancy, that’s what. Surgery to save my life. No more fallopian tubes. So, no more babies. For years I thought I didn’t care. I don’t believe in dwelling on the sad stuff, the stuff you can’t change. I told you earlier. I had a full life, one I loved. Do love.”

  “But you care.” His thumbs rested at the corners of her eyes.

  For a long time she couldn’t answer. Didn’t want to answer. Didn’t want to give him that final, most secret part of her soul. But he continued to hold her gaze, patiently, totally focused on her and whatever she would say.

  “I care.”

  She waited for him to give her the usual facile answers. Her friends had. Surrogacy, in vitro. Modern medicine could create miracles. But not for her. Those weren’t choices for her.

  Instead of speaking, though, he gathered her closer, wrapping her tightly within his body. Then, her body still enclosing his, still joined with him in a miracle as old as creation, he made love with her until she fell asleep.

  Sometime before dawn, she awoke briefly to find him spooned around her, his chest moving slowly in sleep. It was in that quiet, still moment that the rightness of her impulse filled her. During the hours since she’d left the hospital and been with Judah, her heart had sorted things out. She could see her path clearly, all the separate bricks of it. All she had to do was take one step
forward, and her life would change forever. Easing away from Judah, she crept out of bed and took the portable phone into the bathroom.

  “Jeannette?” Sophie stared at the walls. “I have a huge favor to ask. You’re my friend. But you’re also head of Children and Family Services. I’m sorry to wake you at this hour, but I need your help. You’re the only one who can. If you will—please?” Wrapping her finger into the towel lying on the tub, she continued. “You know I’m licensed to be a foster parent, right? And that I’ve briefly fostered some of the babies before? Here’s the situation. There’s a baby we admitted Friday night to the hospital. Her mother was murdered. She has no family. Ordinarily, she’d go straight into the system, but I want her. I want to foster her now and start the adoption process. I know, I know. But it can be done. You know how messed up the system is right now, Jeannette. Everybody’s overworked and underpaid. Remember the case of the little girl recently who completely vanished? No trace of her in anybody’s records? If this baby goes into the system, it will be a drawn-out legal mess. I want to get the paperwork moving as fast as we can.” She took a deep breath. “Because I want to adopt her. Help me?”

  She made one more phone call after hanging up with Jeannette.

  Setting the phone gently on the table, Sophie edged back into bed. Judah hadn’t moved. She walked her fingers up his arm, delighting in the strength of his muscles, the shape of his bones, and brought his arm around her waist, needing the touch of him, the connection to him even in her sleep.

  When she awoke again, Judah was dressed and standing at the foot of her bed, frowning.

  “Do you know how seldom you smile, Judah?”

  “I’m not a smiley kind of guy.”

  “No kidding.” She gathered her white sheets close to her. “You have me at a disadvantage here, you know.”

  “That would be a change.” His frown deepened as she scooched back up against the headboard. He cupped her foot where it dangled over the side of the bed. “I have to go.”

  “So go. I’m not keeping you.”