Night Forbidden

by Joss Ware

  Her heart was still pounding when she staggered from the water, the waves lapping over her breasts and arms as she found footing and walked up toward shore, feeling the change in her body as one lung took over the process of breathing from the other one. She realized she’d lost her tank top during the chase, but no one would be around to see her—

  Oh, Nemo’s busted sword, what were the chances?

  Fence was standing on the shore near Bruiser, watching her emerge from the water.

  Of course. It would be him. Were the Fates conspiring? Or was it just bad luck? Crap.

  Ana paused in the water and eased back a bit so the waves splashed up against her torso. It wasn’t the fact that she was in her underwear that stopped her—she didn’t have that sort of modesty, not after the things she and Darian had done. It was her crystals she was desperate to hide. They were bare beneath the band of her bra, and Fence couldn’t help but notice them. Now what?

  She realized she was trembling; not from the sudden breeze or change in temperature, but from the eel’s assault on her body. Now that she was on foot, upright, the remnants of those electrical charges seemed to skitter even more powerfully through her. Something ached on her torso, and she looked down to see mottled red and purple marks along her right arm and waist, rising from beneath the water. Based on the pain, she guessed it went all the way along her leg as well.

  A sudden thought struck her: What if the eel had shocked the left side, where her crystals were. Would that have disabled their energy?

  “Yo!” shouted Fence. He’d walked toward the water. “You okay?”

  Considering the last words he’d said to her were Don’t touch me and Get away, Ana found that rather . . . mundane.

  Despite her battered body, her brain was still sharp. “I dropped something,” she said, and went back under the water. Scooping up a bit of mud, she wiped it over her left side as she came back up, hopefully obscuring her crystals from notice until she could find a shirt.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked as she walked out, quickly, keeping her left arm curved in front of her ribs.

  She noticed that his big dark feet were bare, sunken into the wet sand as if he’d curled his toes into it. And then her attention traveled up along solid ankles and muscular calves, past his shorts and a T-shirt that stretched to far boundaries over his shoulders. She had to swallow hard and take a deep breath. As Yvonne would say, he was sweltering.

  Don’t get sucked in.

  But it would be so easy, she argued back with herself. And he’s—

  He’d have your clothes off in two seconds flat . . . then you’d be in the deep sea.

  “You’re shivering,” Fence said, “and you’re filthy. And—what’s that?” He was, fortunately, looking at the burns on her skin rather than the mud-covered crystals.

  Again Ana thought quickly. “I’m freezing,” she said, hugging herself and making her teeth chatter audibly—which wasn’t difficult, as she was frighteningly trembly and weak.

  “Here,” he said, as she’d hoped he would, and yanked off his shirt. “What’s that on your side?” he asked again.

  The T-shirt was warm and soft, and it smelled fresh and piney and like man, and Ana pulled it on gratefully. “Oh that? I scraped myself on a rock.”

  “Didn’t look like a scrape to me,” he said. “Let me take a look. I know first aid. You might get infected.”

  “I’m fine,” she replied, then turned it back onto him. “What are you doing here?”

  “Your father—uh, I didn’t realize he was your father . . . George. I’m here to pick some of his medicine and take it back to Envy. Anyway, he told me you’d probably be here. He offered me something to eat, then realized you weren’t there to—uh—make it. He seemed surprised that you weren’t.” He gave her a sidewise grin that made her stomach go soft. “So he said I should go fetch you.”

  “Sounds like my dad,” she said with exasperated affection. But she couldn’t really complain—Dad was a terrible cook. She limped over to Bruiser with even less grace than usual. Her legs, dammit, were still weak.

  “You shouldn’t be swimming alone,” Fence said, coming up behind her as she picked up her shorts and tried to put them on without falling onto her face.

  “Yeah?” she said innocently, turning to look at him over her shoulder once the shorts were up in place.

  “Yeah. Anything could happen—you could get lost or injured or even attacked by a shark.”

  She could have sworn he gave a little shudder as he looked out over the infinite expanse of sea. “Well maybe next time you’ll come with me,” she told him, partly because she was wondering about his reaction to saving Tanya.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t like to get my hair wet,” he said, smoothing his hand over a very bald head. “Oh, wait . . . heh,” he added with a deep laugh. But the chuckle sounded strained and forced.

  Ana looked at him again and saw a flash of something else behind the humor in his face. Then it was gone. And then she realized she was looking up into his face—unusual for her in light of her six-foot height. Fence was at least three or four inches taller than her. But despite his size and confidence, there was that something uncertain lurking in his dark eyes, and because it seemed like such an anomaly in a big and flamboyant guy like him, her curiosity was aroused.

  “I can teach you to swim,” she said, putting on her shoes. She had to take her time, for her muscles were still weak and trembly. She’d never been stung by an eel before. How long would this last? And how the heck was she going to hide it from her dad?

  “Oh, I can swim,” he replied flatly. “I told you,” he continued with an odd smile, “I don’t like getting my hair wet.” Then his eyes, which were almond-shaped and framed with ultra long, curly lashes, narrowed. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you trying to change the subject.”

  “What subject?” she asked. “You were lecturing me about swimming alone.”

  He huffed in annoyance, but she saw a glint of humor in his eyes. “Yes, but before that I was demanding that you let me take a look at whatever happened to your skin there.”

  “Yes, demanding is the word. I’m glad you recognized that,” she replied, lining Bruiser up next to the tall rock she always used to mount him. It had little natural indents she used for steps.

  “Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em,” he said, and she felt him watching her carefully as she arranged the reins so she could climb up onto the boulder.

  The hair on the back of her neck prickled. If he suggested that she needed help, she was going to cream him. Of course, if he did that, it would give her a reason not to find him attractive. Which she kind of needed about now.

  “And that isn’t a damned scrape from a rock. Why are you trying to be so heroic? I’ve seen enough people—including my best friend Lenny—die from something that starts off being nothing, but then turns septic or into something that ends up killing them.”

  “Maybe,” she said, using a sapling tree branch to help herself up onto the rock, all the while feeling him watch her. She was certain his body was tense and ready to jump to her aid if she slipped on her unreliable leg. So she took extra care. “Or maybe you’re just trying to get under my shirt. Your shirt,” she corrected herself, facing him on top of the rock. Now she was taller than he was, and he had to look up at her. And, dang, he was even better looking from this angle. She suppressed a little shiver of attraction. “I know how guys like you work.”

  Oh, did she. Darian notwithstanding. Greg Luck had been trying to get her undressed for six months now, and he was only the most persistent. But Ana was adept at keeping them all at arm’s length—out of necessity as well as disinterest.

  A smile lurked in Fence’s eyes now and twitched his full lips. “Well, since it’s my shirt, if that’s what I wanted, I—you know, ‘a guy like me’—just wouldn’t have given it to you. You looked pretty damn good coming out of the water like that.” He frowned and looked around. “Where’s your shir
t, anyway?”

  “Thank you,” she said, not about to tell him she’d lost her tank top in a skirmish with an eel, and turned to launch herself onto Bruiser. Unlike most people, because of her leg, she didn’t mount on the left side. But this time, when she fit her right foot into the stirrup and lifted her other leg up and over, her weakened muscles didn’t cooperate and her knee buckled.

  She tipped backward, and the next thing she knew, she was tumbling off Bruiser . . . and, of course, into Fence’s arms.

  “You were just waiting for that to happen, weren’t you,” she said, testy and a little out of breath. Mortification heated her cheeks as she worked her foot out of the stirrup, where it had twisted and caught.

  “Not at all,” he said seriously, then added, “but I’m a little suspicious you might’ve planned it that way. Otherwise, how else were you going to get into my arms? Not that you even had to ask, or anything . . . after all, you already got me to take my shirt off.”

  Ana snorted a laugh that was more humor than she wanted to admit. Her heart was slamming in her chest, surely hard enough to be felt all the way from behind her ribs through her skin into his really warm, really solid and broad and chiseled bare chest. It was like stone . . . but smooth and warm and alive. She swallowed away the quivering in her belly . . . and lower. “Okay, well—”

  “Before I put you down, though,” he said, somehow holding her against him with one arm and using his free hand to push a strand of hair from her cheek, “I’m thinking I’m gonna have to kiss you.”

  “Really?” she managed to say, horrified at how breathless she sounded. Her lame foot dangled freely, but somehow her right leg had curved a bit around him. For stability, she told herself—even though he was holding her around the waist, against him, and from the feel of it, she wasn’t going anywhere. She was practically straddling the man’s hip. Oh my God.

  “Really,” he said, then waited for a fraction of a second . . . as if to give her a chance to decline . . . before moving his face toward hers. His other hand went around her, between her shoulder blades.

  Because of the way he was holding her, she didn’t have to worry about him easily feeling her crystals. Their faces were right there, and so, therefore, were their mouths. His full lips were tender and soft, and she felt her own ease in response as they fit together. Sweet and gentle. Pleasure sizzled through her as he shifted, parting his lips and nibbling on hers as if he had all the time in the world to explore her texture and the way they meshed.

  The sensuality of his full, soft mouth, the quick, sleek swipe of tongue between her lips, had her closing her eyes and stifling a sigh of pleasure. Ana was no stranger to kissing handsome men, but it had been a while, and this was an exceptional kiss. She rested her hands on top of those immense shoulders, feeling the fluid shift of muscle there as he eased her feet back to the ground.

  Their kiss broke gently then, as she steadied herself on her feet, his arms still comfortably around her. His eyes were dark with heat and pleasure, and his lips were even more full, glistening a bit from tasting hers.

  “Well,” he said. His voice, which was always very deep, seemed even deeper now. “You’ve gotten me to take off my shirt, and now you’ve got my knees fixing to give way. I don’t know if that’s what you had in mind, but it worked.”

  “I didn’t have anything of the sort in mind,” she said, and deftly extricated herself from his arms. Her own freaking knees were weak, and the eel burns on her torso ached from his grip. But she hadn’t noticed that discomfort until now. She’d been distracted by the kiss.

  “How about if I help you this time,” he said as she prepared to mount up on Bruiser again.

  “No, I don’t—” but her words were cut off in a whoosh as he lifted her as if she were as light as Tanya, and plopped her right onto the saddle.

  “It’s not because of your leg, Ana,” he said. His dark, velvety eyes were serious, but there was the underlying warmth of levity in his voice. “It’s because I know your knees are shaking just as much as mine are.”

  “You don’t know that,” she said primly, gathering up the reins. But a smile twitched at the corners of her mouth. He was obnoxious, yet she couldn’t resist his charm. It was okay to banter, wasn’t it?

  Just so long as he didn’t get his hands up her shirt.

  “Baby, I know women. And I can tell—that kiss pretty much knocked you off your feet.”

  Her appreciation of his charm evaporated and she drew in an outraged breath to tell him off, but he continued with a smooth sidewise wink and a long, slow drawl, “But that’s okay. I’m not gonna make it any worse for you, sugar. At least, not right now. A gal can only take so much of Fence at a time when she ain’t used to him.”

  Chapter 4

  Ana was a prickly one, all right, with her long, sleek, golden body and sun-streaked hair. Prickly and crazy sexy: a great combination. Keep him on his toes while he was trying to get her on her back.

  Fence wasn’t ashamed to admit—at least to himself—that his knees were still shaky. He’d been the one making the moves, but she was the one whose kiss had thrown him so hard for a loop that he started talking about himself in third person, and with a hint of his grandma’s southern.

  Lordy, the last time he’d done that it had been with a Victoria’s Secret model who’d wanted to go on one of On Tap’s wilderness tours until she found out there might be snakes. Losing that gig had been the biggest disappointment of his career, and he and Lenny had moaned about it for a week.

  But, hot damn, Ana’d looked fine walking out of the ocean like the chicks from those James Bond movies. Less like Halle Berry—though she was his personal favorite—and more like the other one, who also wore a knife around her waist. Ursula Andress. No, Ursula Undress.

  He chuckled aloud at that one, even though the joke was older than he was. Good thing Ana was on horseback, and just ahead of him on the way back to her house, or she probably would have wanted to know what was so funny.

  If he could come up with an excuse to stay in Glenway for another day or two, see what other sort of heat he could stir up with the sun goddess, he might just hang around a bit longer.

  But he couldn’t take the risk. He needed to get back to Envy—just in case something went down. And aside from that, George had grown some penicillin that had to be delivered to Elliott before it rotted or went bad or something—which Fence wasn’t quite clear on, because wasn’t it mold anyway? And hadn’t it grown from something old and rotted in the first place?

  Although he loved math, chemistry was not his strong suit—except between a man and a woman, then he did just fine—so Fence figured he’d eat whatever Ana was going to cook for him and George . . . then he’d have to be on his way before night fell. At least on the trip back he’d have the memory of her sweet body with all those mad, hot curves sliding all along him to the ground.

  And now he knew where to find her. How long did penicillin last, anyway? Surely Elliott would need more at some time in the near future.

  By now Ana was climbing off her horse outside the little cottage she and her father shared, and Fence was walking up the low incline to the house. On the back of the weathered gray building was the laboratory, which once had been a semi-truck trailer. He’d seen the inside, and it was pretty amazing for a post-Apocalyptic world.

  The house itself was one room, with a kitchen and living room taking up the lower level, along with a bathroom and, he presumed, two bedrooms on the upper level. His impression of the living space was of cluttered comfort, while the attached laboratory was pristine and neat. Nearly cold in its organization, with a great number of lights running on wind and solar power, the lab was nearly as large as the house.

  Something else interesting, and a bit disturbing, he’d noticed while visiting with George—if you could call being the person carrying on a conversation with a guy whose nose was in a petri dish or his eyes clamped to a microscope the whole time “visiting.” In one of the dishes there
was some of that sparkly gray stuff they’d found on the shore in Envy, that first night he’d seen Ana.

  The question was: Had George and/or Ana found their own sample of the stuff from somewhere else . . . or had Ana stolen some of it for her scientist father? And if it was the former, where had they found it? And had George figured out what it was? Or did they already know?

  Now, watching Ana lead the horse into a third structure, which seemed to be a barn or stable, Fence saw no reason to hurry into the house when he could be admiring her tall, golden figure. Especially now that she’d changed into a different shirt—a close-fitting one—while in the stable, and was now carrying his T-shirt. Much more interesting than an absentminded, mildly socially confused professor-type guy.

  She had to be at least six feet tall, which still put her four inches shorter than him, but not small enough that he’d feel like a damned gorgon next to her. Certainly not flimsy either—she had some good definition to her arms, and other than her messed-up leg, the rest of her was firm and toned. She looked like a girl who could hold her own anywhere from the wilderness to the kitchen to the bedroom.

  “Coming?” Ana asked now, limping over to where he waited for her, near a patch of daisies and a tangle of wild grapes.

  “Right behind you,” he said, trying not to leer. Ogling wasn’t good manners, his mama always said. But Ana did have a fine ass, and it was good manners to let the woman go first.

  She gave him a withering glance, as if she knew exactly why he’d offered to follow, and he felt his eyes tighten at the corners as he smiled, meeting her gaze without shame. The woman should be flattered she had his attention magneted to her like that, he thought.

  Then Anna went inside, and at her scream, his smile evaporated.