took another pull on his beer and stared out into the fog-shrouded sea he bowed to whenever he needed some semblance of comfort. There was no getting past the fact that he loved his people more than his own life. And he was ready to do as they wished. Whatever they wished—
Suddenly, Alex stopped short, all thoughts spent, and leaped to his feet. Brow furrowed, he cocked his head to the side and listened.
A sound. A cry—coming from the water, faint, but desperate—echoed over the beach. A sound that made his blood run cold.
Gut in his throat, Alex bolted off the deck, dropped down onto the cool sand and raced to the water’s edge. The fog was thick as butter, but the visual impasse didn’t make him cautious. He could have run that stretch of beach blindfolded, he’d combed it so many times.
There it was again. A woman’s cry. Louder now.
Without pausing to think, Alex thrashed into the surf, then dove beneath the waves. He swam like a demon toward a cry muffled by the swirl of the sea.
When he surfaced, he fought for his bearings. He looked right then left, then behind himself as his legs worked like twin engines in the water.
It took all of five seconds for him to locate the source of that cry. Red hair, wide eyes, pale complexion. A woman thrashing about in the water, the strings of her life vest caught on rock.
Her shouts for help grew hoarse, weak. She was obviously tiring. The erratic tumble of Alex’s heartbeat thumped in his ears as he swam like a sea snake straight for her. Once he reached her side, he wasted no time with words. He ripped the vest from the rock, then eased his arm around her waist and scooped her up.
But in his haste for shore, his leg caught, gripped by a colony of seaweed. The slimy mess wrapped his ankle like a hungry Octopus, dragging him down, dragging him under.
Cursing, he lost hold on the girl, for a moment lost his breath as he struggled under the whirling sea. Panic knocked him senseless as his pulse raced wildly in his chest. Floating below the surface of the green sea, he saw fleeting images of death, his death.
Then suddenly he felt a rush of water loop his legs, saw the red-haired woman down by his ankle, cutting him away from the slimy green god.
Up he sailed, practically flew to the surface of the water like a helium balloon to the blue sky. Air smashed into his lungs. Coughing and sputtering, he fought to stay above the lurching sea.
Then, just when he thought fatigue might claim him, an arm eased across his chest, hooked him like a sad fish and he felt himself move.
The waves rose and fell around him like the footfall of a giant as they inched toward shore. The woman took her time, swimming slowly, taking the waves with gentle insistence, allowing them both a chance to get their bearings.
Though Alex’s lungs ached, his breathing soon regulated and his pulse eased toward normal as he floated on the surface of the water.
By the time his feet hit wet sand, he could walk. But he didn’t stay upright for long. When he felt the comfort of dry sand, he dropped down and stretched out. He heard the woman ease down beside him.
“You better be all right, Lancelot,” she said breathlessly.
It took Alex a good thirty seconds to respond to the thoroughly American quip. “Lancelot?”
“The knight? The one who rushed in to save the damsel in distress?”
“Right,” he mumbled, rubbing a hand over his wet face. “The one who rushed in to save the damsel in distress, then got his foot caught in the seaweed.”
“Seaweed, stirrups…same difference.” The woman put a hand on his shoulder. “You’re okay, right?”
“I’ll live.” Alex forced his heavy eyelids open. “So, if I’m Lancelot that must make you…”
The words died on his lips. Framed in a halo of milky-white fog, just inches from his face, was a woman of such heavenly beauty he nearly thought he’d succumbed to the pull of the ocean depths. Eyes the color of the sea—pale green with tinges of blue—and miles of red hair, wet and in gentle waves.
His body tightened. It was her. He felt it in his bones—that same need, that same connection. How was this possible? The mermaid from four months ago, here. Washed up on his stretch of beach.
“I think that makes me an idiot,” she said with dry humor. “Actually I’d say we’re both idiots.”
“How do you figure?”
“Me getting caught on that rock.” She dragged her tongue across her lower lip thoughtfully. “You getting caught in the weeds.”
If he snaked a hand around the back of her neck, pulled her down to him, would she part her lips for him, kiss him the same hungry way he wanted so desperately to kiss her? “That doesn’t sound like idiotic behavior to me.”
“No? What does it sound like, then?”
“Divine intervention. Perhaps we’re both looking to get caught.”
The fog seemed to suffuse Alex all at once. He had no idea what had made him say such an insane thing, but it was too late to retract the statement.
The woman stared intently at him, as though she could see right through his skin. “I’m not looking to get caught, I’m looking to find freedom.”
“God knows why, but right now they seem to be one and the same.” He said the words as much to himself as to her.
Confusion swept her face. “Yes, they do. Why is that?”
She didn’t give him a chance to answer, though he really had none to offer. This mood, this moment, was unreal, surreal. She lowered herself on top of him. Her arms snaked around his neck, her needful gaze melted into his own and she kissed his mouth. Just once, one soft, small touch.
Alex cursed the delicious weight of her, the fullness of her breasts pressing against his chest, the pouty lips just inches from his own.
With the fog as her refuge, she was doing something terrible and highly erotic to him, something he’d never felt before—or wanted to feel. Her eyes, the way she looked at him…she had him bound, deep in a trance—a mysterious, sensuous trance. And he needed to get lost there.
Mouth to mouth, body to body, fog blanketing them from the world. Pure paradise.
The freedom to be caught.
His pulse slammed her rhythm in his blood. This had to be a dream. Or maybe it was a nightmare, he reasoned as pure heat came over him, dark and unstoppable. A nightmare where all the control he prided himself on was lost. Where his mind went, his reason, too.
Animal instinct took him. He shifted, had her on her back in seconds. He watched as she smiled tentatively, then lifted her chin, parted her lips. Was he insane? he wondered as her eyes drugged him, drew him in. Did he care?
The surge of need that rippled through him was completely foreign. Or maybe it had just been tucked away, waiting…
A deep, aching
