by Lisa Hughey
That couldn’t be it. Must be teenagers, a secret tryst perhaps. A vagrant with no other place to sleep. Maybe. Except where were they?
I searched the beach cautiously. I had taken enough self-defense classes that unless I was faced with a gun or my worst nightmare, water, I was confident I could defend myself.
But I didn’t see anyone.
As insane as it seemed, I searched the waves. The moonlight glimmered on the black water, reflecting off the ripples that were nearly blinding in their brightness against the pitch of the sky.
And there I saw him, like an ancient Hawaiian God, balanced on the board, his body bathed with moonlight, a spectacular muscular display of man and nature as the wave rolled in and the water curled over his head.
My heart pounded furiously. It pushed, boom-boom, boom-boom, against my breastbone as I watched him battle the swell of the wave. My blood pulsed so hard I could feel the strength of it in my throat. My breath caught, terrified and fascinated, until disaster struck, and he faltered.
I saw the precise moment when his balance failed, watched with horror as the surf battered and rolled his body, until the water dumped him on his head like a giant dropping my old, beloved Lunette to the earth.
“Oh no, no, no,” I whispered into the heavy night air.
I waited for him to get up.
I would watch, make sure he was safe, and then I would flee.
The tide pulled him back out into the scruff of broken shells and kelp.
And he didn’t move.
The tide rolled back in, sweeping the body closer into shore.
And he didn’t move.
“Get up, get up.” The thunderous beat of my heart echoed in my ears, thump-thump thump-thump. I couldn’t move, couldn’t hear anything else but my own terror as I waited.
The gulls swooped closer to him.
I imagined they were squawking to each other but nothing penetrated the terrified, panicked rush of my blood.
Completely still, he lay in the shallow bit of water, on his back thankfully, so he wasn’t drowning as I watched.
Not again.
I couldn’t watch someone die again.
Not this day for Goddess’s sake. The universe couldn’t be that cruel, could it?
The tide pulled his body out toward the waves. Water shush-shushed softly as it lapped at the shoreline and then rode back out to sea.
And still he didn’t move.
“Are you okay?” I shouted, hoping the noise would bring him to consciousness. Hoping he would pop up from his prone position and laugh crazily as I’d seen surfers do, and say something nuts like, “man what a rush,” and then go back out again.
But nothing.
I could see his chest rise and fall slowly, so he was breathing. But his body would shimmy on the inhale as if the cold was already seeping into his bones and muscles.
“Hey dude!” I tried again.
Just in case he was lying there catching his breath after that magnificent wipeout.
But he didn’t give any sign of consciousness.
A particularly strong wave rushed in, turned his body sideways, and pushed him further up on shore. As the next swell crested I knew that if he didn’t get up soon he would end up swept out to sea.
I was going to have to go get him.
Longingly, I looked back toward the parking lot.
The empty parking lot. There wasn’t time to go get help.
My cell was in my pocket and I pulled it out but I only had five percent of my battery left and no service. Half the time the stupid thing didn’t work out here. I was the only rescue in town. Goddess help him.
I edged closer to the shoreline and his body.
The moonlight rippled on the water making the ocean appear as if the giant black hole would swallow me up. My breath seized in my chest.
I tried to breathe in, but only tiny sips of air made it past my constricted lungs.
“Huh, huh, huh,” my breath wheezed. No, no, no. The chant pounded in my head, as my breath grew shorter and shorter, my vision went whiter and whiter.
At this rate, I would pass out and he would die. I could not let that happen.
I stopped. Shut my eyes. Put my hands together in prayer position, mouth closed, I breathed in slowly through my nose, imagining myself on a magnificent, spiritual mountaintop and ignoring the susurrous of the water against the sand.
Slowly, slowly I let the breath out, chanting softly, “You can do this, you can do this.”
I took one step for every word, controlling my breath, reassured by the fact that I had a paper bag tucked in my skirt pocket if I began to truly hyperventilate.
He lay maybe ten feet away.
A smaller wave rolled in, coming perilously close to my toes. I danced backward, even as my feet sunk further into the saturated sand.
“Wake up,” I yelled.
I concentrated on him instead of the steadily encroaching water. I had to get to him now before another large swell dragged him back out to sea.
He didn’t seem to be regaining consciousness.
I glanced up, supplicant to the moon, my namesake, the one I hadn’t been able to acknowledge in thirteen long years.
And I begged.
“Please let me do this. Please.”
With a deep breath, I watched and waited until the water was as far away as possible and then I ran, pleading the entire way. “Please, please.”
I squatted down and hooked my hands under his armpits, scooping until his shoulders were in the crook of my elbows. Then I inhaled and yanked.
He barely moved.
“Come on, you big, you big...lug.”
I yanked again.
Panicked, I looked up. The water was coming.
I watched mesmerized, terrified, while my heart pounded, my blood thickened and I wondered if this was how it would end.
Here and now.
Sucked in by the beast. Consumed by its power. Destroyed by the terror.
I refused to let my fear win.
As soon as the water hit his body, I used the motion of the tide as it rolled in to pull him further inland.
As the water rushed back out, I held on with a death grip, my fingers cramped against the bare skin of his shoulders. The sea sucked at his feet, trying to take him from me.
I waited, unable to close my eyes, gaze locked on the water rolling back in. As soon as it hit I had to pull him backwards again.
A large wave broke near the shore. And I knew this was the chance I needed. I couldn’t think about the water rushing toward me, I had to concentrate on the physics, using the force of the water to pull him backwards, and not think about the black death coming for us, hovering, greedily waiting to suck us both out to sea.
The wave rushed toward me and lifted his body up. I scrambled backward, with great crab-like steps, his body heavy against mine, his head lolled against my breast.
That last little push before the wave retreated toppled me over and I fell into the cold wet sand. The damp soaked through my skirt and the bottom of my sweater. I held onto him, my arms curled around his muscled shoulders, my heels dug into the saturated sand as the tide tried to take us both back out into the abyss.
My blood thundered in my ears.
I panted with the effort. He was heavy.
His body lay limply between my thighs, his muscled legs stretched out along the sand, kelp wrapped around one ankle, arms flopped to the outside of my thighs, effectively trapping me on the ground.
Shivering, I watched another wave roll toward us, praying this one wouldn’t breach our spot. My arms ached with the strain of holding him up and keeping him from being pulled out to sea. To death. To...peace. I didn’t know if I had anything left.
The water sluiced onto the shore creeping inexorably closer.
I clenched him tightly, barely registering the slick feel of his cold skin, the sleek bulk of his muscles.
In the end, the wave didn’t even reach his toes.
&
nbsp; We were safe.
For a single moment I rested my cheek against the top of his head. His wet corkscrew curls were damp against my skin, soaking through my sweater and bra, chilling me with salty water.
His body shook with the force of his involuntary shivers.
I had to get him awake and warm. Somehow.
There was no way I would ever be able to get him up to my car on my own.
“Wake up, please,” I whispered. “Please, please.”
Warm tears rolled down my face as reaction set in. Tremors of relief shimmied through me. I had braved the monster and survived.
His dead weight held me against the sand and I couldn’t move. I flopped back on the towel, slid my legs out straight, arms out at my sides, palms up and his head dropped into the concave hollow of my stomach. I stared up at the moonlight, the bright silver rays mocking me as I tried to find some measure of calm.
What now?
I needed to check for injuries. A thousand thoughts flitted through my mind but only one took root, the interesting, amazing weight of him on top of me. Sort of.
The inferno of heat from his torso burned through my clothes warming my thighs, making me feel things I hadn’t felt...ever.
Suddenly, he exploded into motion, flipping over, straddling me, and pinning my arms to the ground, his face fierce, his body battle tense and primed for violence.
“What the hell?”
Three
Zeke didn’t remember getting here.
He stared down at the woman beneath him. Didn’t remember her.
His body met hers at the juncture of her thighs. His groin in exact alignment with hers as she stared up at him wide-eyed.
The slant of the moonlight and the position of his body cast her face in shadow, defining her features in shades and angles, like a scene from the old black and white movies he used to watch with his Grandpop.
Her breath was coming in short, soft pants and drew his gaze from the shadowed planes of her face to her chest. Her sweater was damp, her nipples beaded in the chill night air clearly visible.
Her hair was the color of midnight, woven together in a loose braid as thick as his wrist and resting on the curve of one very fine breast.
Totally inappropriate of him to notice, and dwell on.
They had this From Here To Eternity thing going on that was fuzzing his brain and making it difficult to concentrate.
The moonlight bathed her face in a silvery light, her gray eyes shone with some undefined emotion. The crisp scent of cucumber and the ocean rose from her body. She was like his own personal siren, drawing him to her and pulling him from the clutches of the sea.
Yeah, he’d figured out that one. His last memory was of tumbling into the cauldron of the surf.
As he absorbed the impression of her body beneath his and the soft shush of the surf behind them, he wished he was better with women. Wished that the men in his family weren’t cursed. Wished that he knew what romantic words to whisper in her ear so they could stay here all night alone in the darkness, moonlight shining down on them and the ocean surrounding them, just man, woman, and nature.
He traced the delicate features of her face with his gaze, her deep shadowed eyes, her slightly upturned nose, and the sheer perfection of her mouth.
Oh, what he could do with her mouth, to her mouth.
His cock had risen with the nature of his thoughts. But unfortunately he had more pressing problems, not to mention he was probably scaring the crap out of her.
His head pounded like a son of a bitch. The last time he felt this badly he’d woken up from being drugged and had lost about five hours of his life. Then lost everything.
Suspicion kicked in. What the fuck?
Then his brain revved back into gear. “Hanlon’s razor,” he murmured under his breath. Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Namely his.
No one knew he was going to be here, on this beach, surfing in the dark. Not even him until about thirty minutes ago.
He thought he noticed an instant of surprise before her perfectly arched brows crinkled into her forehead. The surf rolled and broke behind him. He could hear the water approaching when she exploded into action.
“Get off me.” She panted, and dug her heels into the sand, trying to buck him off.
“Yeah, sorry. I won’t hurt you.” He let go of her wrists.
“It’s coming.”
Zeke twisted around looking for the threat, needing no confirmation that her terror was real. “What’s coming?”
“The...the...the....”
Her feet scrabbled against the sand.
He looked around again and didn’t see any threat. But her motion underneath him had re-awakened his body. Hell-o. A wave broke and headed toward them.
“Wa-ter.”
He realized then she was not just wet but soaked and trapped beneath him. Great...he’d been living out his teen fantasies while the girl froze to death. That’s why the men in his family were cursed.
“Yeah.” He tried to get up but she wiggled and squirmed so much that every time he attempted to shift off her, she bucked him in a different direction.
“Get off. It’s coming.”
“Hold still, dammit.”
The water curled against their toes and she shrieked.
“Jesus.” Zeke rose to his knees as she scrabbled out from under him. “Are you nuts?”
She rolled backwards, kneeing him in the balls and then she jumped to her feet.
“Who’s the one who went surfing at night, genius?” she sneered.
She had a point.
Zeke rubbed at the bump on the back of his head. While he might agree in theory, he didn’t take kindly to being yelled at.
“Look....” He glanced up at her from his spot on his knees.
The moon picked that moment to shift higher in the pitch black sky, shining down upon her face, bathing her features in starlight, shimmering off the radiance of her skin. Something about her looked familiar.
Shit.
Of all the beaches in all the towns, why’d she have to walk onto this one? Yeah, he was stealing from Casablanca.
No one in this Nowheresville, California town should look familiar to him. Except her.
The boondoggle. The fool’s errand to keep him busy. The sole reason he was here.
Terrific. He’d been rescued by his surveillance subject.
Four
The guy rubbed his hands over his face. I tried, really tried, not to notice that his biceps bulged and flexed with each movement of his hands.
What the heck was wrong with me?
I never noticed stuff like that. Maybe it was all the years alone with my mother, maybe it was the sheer absence of men in my life, but physical features weren’t something I usually fixated on. Muscles, testosterone didn’t even register on my personal Richter scale. Yet here I was ogling this guy.
This stranger.
I had a natural wariness of people, thanks to my stepfather, thanks to hiding for the last thirteen years. An innate sense of caution that was difficult to overcome. For years, every stranger held potential danger. Trust was a difficult commodity to come by.
Weirdly enough, I didn’t feel threatened at all.
Maybe because I’d saved him.
And maybe I was completely delusional. Because it seemed as if when he’d knelt at my feet, his head tilted while he stared at me, there’d been a spark of recognition.
A trigger, a random thought, an “oh, there you are.”
Then the spark flew away on a gust of wind, and he looked at me with total disgust.
Which was not a response I was accustomed to either.
People tended to look on me with amusement, with a sort of veiled sense of superiority. They thought because my life revolved around moon cycles and essential oils that I was somehow less intelligent.
I let them think that because it enhanced the illusion my mother and I had suc
ceeded in creating. So different from the real me that even if the monster somehow heard of me, he would dismiss the information as irrelevant.
Claire had been a math prodigy, had already been recruited by Caltech as a seven-year-old.
Sunshine Smith concocted herbal potions and aromatherapy remedies for tourists.
The odds of anyone connecting the two very different people were astronomical. Sunshine had a new birthday and even though every year my mother made a big show of celebrating on the new day, in my heart, I always had my own bittersweet private celebration to mark another year’s passing and to remember my grandparents. To never forget them. To never forget him.
And to remind myself that I would never be a victim again.
We’d run from my stepfather, but it hadn’t ended there. He’d found us, time and again. But finally after three different states, and three different identities, we’d discovered how to disappear. And for the last nine years our cover had held.
Our life had certain restrictions, but at least we were alive. Mama was safe. And I...I was, surviving.
I was always restless around the anniversary of my grandparents’ murder and our desperate flight, but this year my discontent, my melancholy was worse than ever.
I was pretty sure I knew what was wrong. I was young. I wanted to be out exploring the world, not cloistered in this little town far away from any action. I’d had a taste by dropping in at the local community college and auditing a few classes at Cal Poly. I couldn’t outright enroll there on the off chance that he was checking college admissions.
But an audited class in physics or mathematics or biology here and there was fine. I’d almost blown it when I’d challenged a professor on the newer fifth law of thermodynamics.
“Are you okay?” He stumbled to his feet awkwardly, took one hesitant step forward before grimacing. Bet his balls ached. It was small of me, but seeing his expression of total disgust when he looked at me had hurt.
“F-f-fine.” My teeth clattered as the cold set in. My gaze shifted to the waves behind him and he finally got that something about the water disturbed me.
“Thanks for...rescuing me.” His expression had morphed to one of uncertainty.
My shoulders shook with the force of my shivers, rocking me as I edged back, away from the black water. I needed to bolt.
