Winds of Fortune

by Radclyffe

  “I love you.”

  “Mmm, I know. That’s my everything.”

  “The phone—I should check…”

  “I know.” Tory leaned across Reese for the phone. With one arm around Reese’s shoulders, she handed it to her.

  Still trembling from her orgasm, Reese checked the last number. “It’s Bri.”

  “Delegate. I’m not done with you yet.”

  Grinning, Reese called back. “Conlon.” Listening, she tensed and sat up. “I’ll be right there.”

  “What is it?” Tory asked as Reese disconnected and stood up.

  “Are you on call tonight?”

  “No, Nita. Why?”

  Reese grabbed her pants and pulled them on. “Because I might need someone to give an official time of death. Bri’s got medics working on someone right now.”

  “Do you want me to come with you?” Tory got out of bed and pulled on her robe.

  “No. Go ahead and get the baby. It might take a while to sort this out. I’ll call Nita if I need her.”

  Tory kissed Reese. “You okay?”

  “A lot better than I was an hour ago.” Reese kissed her again and hurried toward the hall. “You should go ahead and have dinner. I love you.”

  “Be careful.” Tory sank down on the side of the bed, her body still craving Reese’s touch. Despite missing her already, her heart felt lighter. Reese had cried— something she almost never did. Tory couldn’t help but feel that these tears were just what they both needed.

  *

  “So?” Deo said. “What do you think?”

  “I want to marry your aunt,” Nita said, after savoring another bite of fra diavlo. “God, this is good.”

  Deo laughed. “Told you.”

  “I definitely made the right choice.”

  “You mean dinner over wild sex with me?” Deo teased.

  Nita pretended to look thoughtful. “Well, I don’t suppose there are many women who could…cook like this.”

  “That’s cruel.” Deo reached across the table and took Nita’s hand. “Don’t I get a reward for introducing you to this culinary delight?”

  Nita regarded their joined fingers. Deo’s were rough, marred here and there by small nicks and scrapes, but her touch was amazingly gentle. Like the woman herself. She rubbed her thumb carefully over the scar on Deo’s hand, then she looked up to find Deo studying her intently. “What would you like as your reward?”

  “To hold you,” Deo said instantly. “To make love with you. No rush. Just us. As fast or slow or hard or soft as we wanted. Jesus, Nita, please, I…”

  “Shh. I don’t want you to beg.”

  “I don’t mind,” Deo said. “And I have no idea why I don’t.”

  “I don’t want that kind of power over you,” Nita said firmly. “I’ve been there. It doesn’t feel good.”

  “Why didn’t you leave her?”

  “Because she said she needed me,” Nita said bitterly. “Me and only me. Because I’d never been enough for anyone before, and she made me believe I was the only one who could make her happy.” She shook her head. “Pretty pathetic.”

  “Did she make you happy?”

  “No,” Nita said after a long moment. She took a breath, refusing to lie despite hating the truth. “But while she was inside me, owning me, telling me no one could ever take my place, I felt worthwhile.”

  “That’s powerful,” Deo murmured.

  “Yes.” Nita tried to pull her hand away, embarrassed, but Deo wouldn’t let her. “I was addicted to the way she made me feel. We’d been lovers on and off since I was twenty, but she could never admit to being a lesbian. I swore I’d stop when she got married, but she’d come to me, wild for me, and I couldn’t say no.”

  “But you finally broke it off.”

  Nita laughed bitterly. “I didn’t have much choice once everyone knew.”

  “And she never called?”

  “Oh, she called. She called for months, begging me to meet her. Just to talk. But I knew what would happen.” Nita filled her wine glass and swallowed deeply. “That’s a big reason why I took this job. A new place, far enough away so we wouldn’t bump into each other. Too far for a rendezvous.”

  “Do you still want her?”

  “No. No, I don’t.”

  “Good.”

  Nita smiled ruefully. “That’s it?”

  Deo shrugged. “She had a hold on you. It happens. Sometimes I think it’s not the hold that hurts, it’s what people do with the power that it gives them. She wasn’t worthy.”

  “You’re a very interesting woman, Deo. Why don’t you have a lover?”

  “I…” Deo broke off, her face flushing as her cousin stopped at the table.

  “Sorry,” Lucia said brightly. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. Can I take your plates and bring you some dessert or a little port?”

  Deo looked at Nita.

  “Dinner was wonderful,” Nita said, her eyes on Deo. “But I think I’ll pass on the port tonight.”

  Deo grinned. When her cousin had collected the dishes and moved away, she asked, “Does that mean we’re not going to close this place?”

  “Actually, I thought we might spend the rest of the…” Nita broke off as her cell phone rang. “Sorry. I’m on call. Just a second.”

  Nita found her phone in her purse. “Hello? Yes. I’m sorry, where? All right, yes. About ten minutes.” She put the phone away. “I’m so sorry. I have to go.”

  “Where?”

  “The sheriff needs me down at the Coast Guard station.”

  “I’ll walk you down.”

  “No, I don’t think you should. I’ll be fine.”

  “Why not?”

  “Really, Deo. That’s not necessary.” Nita could tell Deo was going to insist and lying to her was out of the question. “There’s a body on the beach—probably a drowning. You don’t need to see that.”

  Deo leaned across the table. “I don’t need you to protect me from anything.”

  “Maybe not. But I want to.”

  “You’re a very surprising woman yourself, Dr. Burgoyne,” Deo murmured. “Will you call me later?”

  “Are you going home? The night’s still young,” Nita said, trying to sound lighthearted. She loathed the thought of Deo ending the evening in bed with another woman.

  “Believe me, no one else will do.” Deo stood as Nita rose and kissed her. “And that’s not a line, or a power trip. It’s just the truth.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Reese angled the umbrella into the wind and tried to shield Nita as she knelt over the still form on the ground. The wind had picked up noticeably in the last few hours, and whitecaps roiled the normally sheltered water of the harbor. Headlights from several emergency vehicles, including her cruiser, crisscrossed over the small group huddled around the body. Beyond, the night was starless.

  “Time of death 9:53 p.m.,” Nita said without looking up. “I’m going to take blood right now for a tox screen. Can someone get me a syringe and some ice?”

  “Coming up, Doc,” one of the EMTs said. “We pulled some earlier when we started the IV.”

  “Good, I’ll make a note for them to run both of them in Hyannis when they do the post. Some substances degenerate quickly with time.” Nita ignored the water dripping into her eyes and off her jaw onto the pale, still face below her. Someone’s son, possibly someone’s brother. She thought of Deo as she accepted the syringe from the medic, palpated the thick sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck, and slid the needle into the jugular vein. She tried not to imagine Deo looking down at her brother’s lifeless face. “Any idea what happened?”

  “Bri and Allie are still looking for witnesses,” Reese said. “The first anyone noticed him was when he washed ashore. Think he could’ve come off a boat somewhere further out to sea?”

  “I hate to speculate without doing a thorough exam,” Nita said, straightening, “but from what I can see of his face and hands, he’s not torn up at all. That suggests he ha
sn’t been banging around in the water for very long.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought too.”

  Nita dropped her gloves into a large red plastic biohazard bag and accepted the clipboard with the incident report from the EMT. After dashing off her findings, she handed it back. “Do you need me for anything else here, Sheriff?”

  “No. The rest of it will have to wait until they get him to Hyannis. Thanks for coming out.”

  “No problem. I’m sorry it turned out the way it did.”

  “Me too.” Reese guided Nita up the muddy slope with a hand on her elbow. “You need a ride home?”

  “That would be great. Thanks.” Nita sluiced water from her face with both hands. Her clothes were soaked, and her silk blouse clung to her in cold sheets.

  “I’ll have Bri drive you.” Reese lifted up the yellow crime scene tape which Bri and Allie had hastily erected around the scene when they answered the call. “I’ve got a jacket in the car. You must be freezing.”

  “I’ll take you up on tha—” Nita fell silent as Deo materialized from the small crowd of onlookers that had gathered outside the tape while she had been working. “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought you might need a ride,” Deo said. “This weather is getting worse by the second.”

  “According to all reports,” Reese said, “we’re looking at a lot worse in the next five days. Big storm coming up the coast.”

  “Bad for fishing,” Deo said, glancing out toward the harbor before moving closer to Nita. “My truck’s just up the street.”

  Nita turned to Reese. “Thanks, Sheriff, but your officer doesn’t need to taxi me anywhere. Deo can take me home.”

  “All right. Thanks again.” Reese touched her cap and headed back down to the scene.

  “How long have you been here?” Nita asked, aware of people watching her as she made her way up the beach.

  “A few minutes.” Deo slipped her arm around Nita’s waist. “By the time I got to my truck it was really coming down, and I knew you were walking. Do you mind?”

  “I wish you hadn’t seen this. Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “No bad memories?”

  Deo hesitated. “I don’t remember all that much.” She opened the Defender for Nita and held the door as she climbed in, then went around and got behind the wheel. “I remember people shouting and I remember being cold. So cold that I thought I’d never get warm.”

  Nita slid as close as she could and put her hand on Deo’s thigh. “You’re cold now, too. And soaked.”

  “I’m used to it.” Deo started the truck and pulled out onto Commercial Street. “The lights were in my eyes, red and blue and white flashes, and I couldn’t see anyone clearly, just shapes. It almost seemed as if I might be dreaming. I hoped I was. One of those bad dreams that feels so real while you’re having it, and then you wake up and you’re so happy it was just a dream.” She took a shaky breath. “But I didn’t wake up. Gabe was gone and everything changed.”

  “I’m sorry. So sorry,” Nita murmured, stroking Deo’s hand where she clenched the steering wheel.

  “Thanks,” Deo said roughly, grasping Nita’s hand and threading her fingers through Nita’s. “My condo is right around the corner. It might be July, but I think a fire would be nice right about now.” She glanced at Nita. “After a hot shower.”

  Nita’s stomach quivered and she forgot about being cautious. The specter of death, so final, so brutal, still hovered around her. She was cold and sad and Deo offered her heat and a moment’s forgetting. It was enough.

  “Yes.” She leaned across the space between them and kissed Deo’s neck. “That sounds perfect.”

  *

  “First things first,” Deo said, closing the door to her condo. She pointed across the living room, which was furnished with a tan sofa, matching chair, and a low glass table in front of a slate stone fireplace. “The bedroom is up those stairs—first door on the right. You can take your clothes off in there.”

  Nita raised an eyebrow.

  “Your wet clothes.” Deo pulled her own dripping polo shirt from her jeans. “I’ll bring you something dry. You can shower in my bathroom up there. I’ll use the one down here.”

  “If you take that shirt off now,” Nita warned, “neither one of us is getting a shower.”

  Deo hesitated, her shirt pulled high enough to expose her stomach and the curve of her breasts. “That sounds like a dare.”

  “No,” Nita murmured, smoothing her palm over Deo’s stomach. “That’s a promise. God, I love your body.”

  Deo shivered as Nita continued to caress her. “Nita. I’m wound up like a top.”

  “Really.” Nita wrapped her arms around Deo’s neck and kissed her. They were both soaked, but the heat of Deo’s mouth and the promise of her touch warmed her all the way through. When Deo ran both hands down her back and then cupped her ass, she felt herself surge dangerously toward the boiling point. She didn’t want it to be that way, fast and furious and desperate. Not tonight. Not for this one night. Tonight she needed it to be different. Despite all her instincts crying out to sate her desire, and quickly, she drew back. “I’m going to get out of these clothes.”

  Breathing hard, Deo nodded wordlessly.

  “Maybe you can start the fire after you shower.” Nita kissed Deo lightly.

  “Fire’s already started,” Deo muttered.

  Laughing, Nita headed for the bedroom. When she found it, she closed the door, half wishing that Deo had followed and grateful that she hadn’t. Her hands were shaking as she unbuttoned her blouse. They were going to have sex. She knew that. She knew that Deo knew it. It wouldn’t be the first time she had kept an appointment for sex. She had gone places to have sex before, so many times she’d lost count. Roadside motels. Borrowed apartments. Abandoned on-call rooms. Assignations for pleasure that left her feeling empty and alone.

  Sylvia was almost always there first, and she would often take Nita the instant Nita walked in—a second’s frantic coupling against the door and then Sylvia would be inside her or on her knees, claiming her with her mouth. Nita was usually already so aroused just from anticipating Sylvia’s onslaught, hungering for the connection during the days and weeks when they had no contact—not even a phone call—that she would rarely be able to hold back for more than a minute or two. She would come screaming, all the while wondering why she felt no satisfaction. Once was never enough for either of them, and for half an hour or forty-five minutes Sylvia drove her relentlessly through one orgasm after another until Nita was too weak to move. All the while, Sylvia insisted that Nita was hers, that Nita was everything she needed, everything she wanted—her heart and her soul. And Nita let herself believe.

  Sighing, Nita slipped into the shower and prayed that the heat would penetrate to the cold place deep inside. She didn’t want to think of Sylvia, not tonight, not ever. When she stepped out, she found a thick white robe folded on the vanity and wondered when Deo had placed it there. She wondered, too, if Deo had looked at her through the steam-streaked glass doors and ached for her the way she ached. She finger-combed her hair and pulled on the robe, tying it loosely at the waist.

  Halfway down the stairs, Nita felt the heat. Inside a fire blazed while outside the storm raged, wind driving the rain with such force it sounded as if stones pelted against the skylights and glass doors. Deo lounged in the chair in front of the fireplace, two glasses of wine on the table beside her. Her short black robe came to mid-thigh and dipped into the valley between her legs. Trying to pretend she wasn’t going out of her mind waiting for Deo to touch her, Nita strolled to the chair, leaned down, and kissed Deo.

  “Thanks for the robe. And the fire.”

  Deo tilted her head back and held out her hand. “You’re welcome.” She tugged Nita around to sit on her lap and nuzzled her neck. “I love it when your hair is down.”

  “I can’t do anything else when it’s wet like this, but I like the way it feels.” Nita c
aressed Deo’s neck and traced the curve of Deo’s breast underneath the material that slanted between her breasts. “I like the way you feel too.”

  Nita lowered her head to kiss her just as Deo tilted her face up, and they came together with a hungry clash of mouths and tongues. Deo’s hands were on her shoulders, then her waist, then inside her robe stroking her belly and her hip. Feasting on Deo’s mouth, answering her teasing tongue with strokes of her own, Nita was very quickly almost as far gone as she had been that night outside the bar when she hadn’t been able to stop herself from coming in Deo’s arms. Another few minutes of Deo’s tongue thrusting inside her mouth or the barest brush of Deo’s finger between her thighs, and she was going to climax.

  “It’s too soon,” Nita gasped. “God, too soon.”

  “You need to tell me now,” Deo murmured, parting Nita’s robe a few inches and kissing the center of her chest, “if you don’t want to make love.” She groaned as Nita’s fingertips glided over her nipple. “And you might need to get off my lap, too.”

  “I understand. I’m sorry.” Nita gripped the wide arms of the chair and pushed herself off Deo’s lap. Watching Deo’s expression falter, she quickly knelt between Deo’s legs and pushed the robe open with both hands. Leaning to kiss the inside of Deo’s thigh, she murmured, “Maybe I’ll be safer down here.”

  “I don’t think so.” Deo caressed Nita’s face, her fingers shaking. “I’m really in trouble.”

  “No you’re not.” Gently, Nita spread her fingers along the taut muscles that framed the vee of Deo’s sex and kissed her. She tasted sweet and rich and Nita licked delicately along the furled folds to the prominent ridge in their center. When she found a spot that made Deo twitch and moan, she played with it, pressing with the very tip of her tongue. Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth and around.

  “Please,” Deo whispered, her legs twisting as her muscles clenched tighter and tighter. “Please stop. I can’t take you doing that any more. I’ll come right in your mouth.”

  Nita gripped Deo’s thighs firmly to stop her from pulling away. Deo was hard, throbbing, hot, and Nita needed more. She sucked, sliding Deo’s clitoris in and out between her lips, and Deo groaned, a broken, hopeless, unbelievably beautiful sound. Reaching up, Nita caressed her tense belly and said with her mouth against Deo’s clit, “I can’t believe how hard you are. Stop fighting it. I want you to come.”