of his eye, he saw her palm lift toward him. Before she could touch him, he fanned his hand across her face, stroked the skin at the corner of her eyes and drew her eyelids closed.
He hated her for the way she made him feel. Hated her for the sympathy in her eyes. Hated her most of all for the understanding glimmering there, an understanding so close to pity he couldn’t bear it. She had no right to see straight down to whatever passed for a soul in the darkness of his heart.
And yet he wanted her. Wanted her. Hated her. And despised himself. A sickness of body and mind he didn’t want to escape.
In that moment when the wind ceased, when all he heard was the pounding of his blood in his head, he learned a truth.
Despite logic, despite loyalty, despite everything, he was going to have Sophie Brennan.
He didn’t want to think about how he was going to live with that choice. Not with her soft and yielding beneath him.
With a quick, fierce movement, he pulled open the fastener of her pants. Her hands were right there on top of his, urging the skintight material down. Caught in the immediacy, he gritted his teeth and struggled with his jeans. Their hands bumped, tangled. She pushed his bumbling fingers aside. He pushed right back, hands and fingers melding in a dance of their own.
“Wait.” She lifted her pelvis and shoved the fabric past her belly.
“No.” Cool, damp, that skin suddenly under his palm. He dipped his mouth to her navel and blew softly against her.
Her belly fluttered beneath his mouth. “Ah,” she said, a tight, sharp sound of surprise.
He flattened his hand against her and pressed, his fingers stroking, testing her inner heat. “Here?”
“Oh, yes. There is good. There is perfect. There…ah.” One of her hands tightened in his hair, the other slid between them, seeking him as he continued pressing and stroking.
“Oh, yes,” and she surged upward, riding the rhythm of his touch as she’d melded with the storm waves. Urgency swamped finesse and he was clumsy, pushing and probing, the blind eye of need driving him into her. Awkward in his haste, no grace in the hurrying, no skill in his movements.
A sixteen-year-old would have had more control.
But she was in the moment with him, just as urgent, just as needy. The impatient sounds of her breathing merged with his, spoke to him in the silence.
He felt the wet denim of his jeans snick open, felt her warm hand, exploring, moving against his belly. Not shy, not delicate, her hands were those of a woman used to touching and examining, accustomed to the feel of the human body. Knowing. Confident. Incredibly seductive, that confidence. Behind his eyes a red haze burned. Then she freed him into the small curl of her hand and he bucked, thrust against her.
Need. Ugly.
Hunger roared through him, primal, finally blanking the monkey chatter in his brain. “Now,” he ground out through teeth clenched against the pleasure racing through him. “Now.”
He lifted her hips higher, positioned her, but she was ahead of him, already moving into him, her body welcoming and warm.
“Don’t—” She shifted, her body opening and taking him deeper, toward the limits of his shaky control.
“You want me to stop?” The muscles in his arms trembled. But he stopped. He would have sworn he couldn’t have. But he did. Head lowered, teeth clenched against a suddenly dry mouth, his whole body shuddering, he said again, “Stop? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. Not that. Heaven help me, not that.” Her laugh was rueful, a coil of tension deep inside her that vibrated unbearably through him. Rising upward, she framed his face with her hands. “Don’t stop. That’s what I was trying to say.” Her head dipped into his shoulder, and she felt her breath against his skin as she murmured, “Don’t be careful with me. I don’t want politeness.”
“Believe me, manners are the last thing on my mind.” His thighs quivered with the effort needed to stay unmoving.
“What…do you want?” He heard himself and was stunned. He couldn’t say her name. Drowning in her, he couldn’t say her name. Didn’t want to. “Tell me.”
“The storm wave. Wildness. The deep blue sea. Can you give me that? I need—” She nipped at his skin, the scrape of her teeth a tiny command that slammed him over the edge.
Nothing but sensation in this moment, nothing but the blessed relief of skin against skin, touch and taste. Her body milking his, his palms sliding over the hot skin of her thigh, his touch sending shudders through her, through him.
Sex.
Simple. Something clear in his life for a change. Sex.
He surrendered to it, to her, letting the reins of control whip through his hands, letting himself sink into the whirlpool of sensation that was this woman.
And he didn’t care in that moment of release as his body pumped into hers in pure sensation, didn’t give a damn as he collapsed against her, that he couldn’t look in her eyes.
That he wouldn’t let himself say her name.
His cheek resting on the damp hair at her temple, he breathed in the light scent of her sweat, the salty air of the Gulf.
Overhead he sensed the movement of clouds, heard the angry squawk of seagulls.
For the first time in months, everything in his body and brain had stopped. He felt like a shell shimmering on the sand, abandoned by the tide.
Empty, washed clean.
And he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, to slide into that darkness and stay there, unmoving.
The wind came off the Gulf and raised goose bumps everywhere Judah wasn’t. Sophie shivered, but she didn’t move. She couldn’t. She needed a minute to think. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d just taken, dived headlong into the moment with no thought of consequences. She’d come off the waves with her anger and confusion not eased by the wild surf, and there was Judah. Frowning, hostile, but he was there, draped in seaweed and sending off waves of energy that bounced against her own unsettled emotions, his energy smashing against her own. Wind against current, the ninth wave of surfing, the big wave, the one surfers waited for.
Unthinking, not caring why he’d shown up, not wanting to think about the reasons for his anger, she’d simply reached out and clambered aboard the wave of their energy, ridden it to the end. It had been worth it, too, every second of that intensity.
Stupid?
Sure. Of course it was. No protection. All the questions about their relationship. The torturous mix of emotions. And in the aftermath, this loneliness and emptiness. But for those few minutes… She turned her head slightly and stared at the sand. Did she regret what she’d done?
Yes. No. Maybe.
She groaned.
At the sound, Judah shifted against her, moved away. Minus the blanket of his body, she was cold. Her teeth clicked together. Wrapping her arms around herself,
