Whirlpool (8 page)

Finding her car in the driveway of the house was reassuring, but when he heard raised voices behind the door and couldn’t find his fricking key, he panicked. He flew around the back and up the stairs, ready to break in when he spotted Chelsea and Braden glaring at each other across the living room. Their shouted conversation confused him and he was ready to put a stop to it when everything changed. Chelsea stripped off her clothing, and involuntarily he took a step forward, drawn with a magnetic force. Shimmering blue paint covered every inch of her body and he longed to touch her, to see if a cloud of blue dust would envelop them as he buried himself in her body, burying the ache in his soul.

Then the tableau changed as Chelsea and Braden kissed and his hopes died. He knew he should turn away, leave the lovers in privacy as they wrapped around each other more and more intimately, but something held him.

He’d never thought of himself as a voyeur. His sexual escapades were tame by some standards and actual live sex shows weren’t his thing. But this, this was more than mesmerizing. Jamie slipped into the shadows, all the while his gaze fixed on the increasingly intimate performance on the opposite side of the glass. When they joined together, he swore he felt it in his own body and finally forced himself to turn away.

The journey to his car took forever, the rock-solid length of his erection making each step torturous. The drive back to the condo passed in a blur. He stumbled up the stairs, into the apartment, dropped his keys to the floor and swore, long and hard.

Damn, damn,
damn
. Ignoring the need pounding through him was impossible. He opened his slacks and released his aching cock. He stroked from root to tip, swiping his palm over the head and rubbing the moisture already leaking from his shaft. He couldn’t even make it as far as the bathroom, not with the images racing through his mind.

The full tantalizing rounds of Chelsea’s breasts—what he wouldn’t give to be able to weigh them in his hands. To suckle the tips like he’d watched Braden enjoy. Jamie tugged harder, wishing it had been him she’d enveloped with her wet heat. He let his head fall back against the wall with a
thud
, all his blood pooling in his groin. He dropped his other hand to cup his balls, tightness spreading as he increased the speed of his motions. He pictured Chelsea’s hips moving over him, her body pressed up against his. The sweet taste of her lips. Jamie angled his hips higher and thrust harder into his hand, urgent need overtaking him. His balls tightened, his total concentration on the endorphins spreading in a rush through his whole system. Release came and he groaned out her name, his seed spraying from the tip of his cock to land on the floor and his shoes in sticky strands.

When his ragged breathing faded back to normal, he glanced down in disgust.

“Ah, fuck it, teenagers have more control.”

He grabbed a cloth and cleaned up the floor, stomping to the bedroom, repulsed with himself. All his exhaustion disappeared by the time he’d washed up and redressed. He felt like he’d sucked back espresso shots, his body buzzing with adrenaline. The thought of what Chelsea and Braden were doing at that very moment started another reaction he desperately needed to bring to a halt before he ended up jerking off all night long. Jamie cranked open his laptop and began the arduous task of transferring information from his latest set of notes to the Excel spreadsheet.

Shit, even the sight of her beautifully curved handwriting made him react. He put down the notebook and paced to the French doors to stare out into the night. The ocean undulated with the rhythm of the waves. The harbor to the left glowed with an eerie haze, pale greens and blues reflecting off the water as a light mist rolled in from the sea.

The azure tones reminded him of the body paint Chelsea wore and this time his cock didn’t leap to attention. Ever since she’d walked out on the stage something had bothered him, something other than how dire his need to fuck her had become. A faint memory tickled the back of his brain.

He’d seen the blue before. The glow of St Elmo’s fire.

Jamie went back to an old reference book he’d found days ago, tucked onto Braden’s shelf, the pages yellowed with time. He traced a finger over the page, the words he’d read earlier leaping out at him.
St Elmo’s fire—watchers, saviors—legends are told by sailors of the fortune of the ships guided by their light. Sailors recovered from the storm-tossed sea speak of mermaids bestowing the kiss of life to their drowning souls.

Damn it all, where had he seen that glow before? Jamie walked out on the balcony to stare at the ocean again. It wasn’t a picture he was trying to remember, he was sure of it. The water crashed against the shore and another memory intruded.

The rush of waves, the taste of salt on the air…

It teased him. Like the faintest of memories, hidden in the recesses of his mind. There’d been surf. The blue shimmer and waves, the heat of the night and…music. Jamie twirled and raced back to the computer in search of pictures from one of his earliest assignments. He flipped through the shots, one after another, until he hit a snapshot from New Year’s Eve. Party hats and tipsy faces smiled back at the camera. He tapped his fingers on the screenshot, over the shoulder of the people. This was a part of what he needed.

Black rocks on the beach. Black on white…

He remembered attending the start of the party, but not the end.

Jamie poured himself a drink and took it out on the balcony, descending the stairs to the beach. The wind picked up, cool on his skin as he sank into one of the lawn chairs clustered together under the condo’s umbrella stands.

The wind had been warm…

He tossed back the fiery liquid, letting it roll down his throat and burn away part of his restraint. He closed his eyes and leaned back. Breathed in the sea smells, the salt and the moisture. The organic scents of seaweed and flotsam.

The sweet fragrance of a woman’s body…

They’d completed their project. Palma de Mallorca—he’d been taunted good-naturedly by his friends back home that his first excursion as an archaeology student was to a location that was a resort destination for many. Even his stuffy parents had somewhat approved. Oh, they would have been horrified at the tiny
pensione
rooms he and the other students were housed in like the serfs they were. Grunt labor at a dig was not glamorous. Digs were not attractive. Dirty, painstakingly boring maybe, never life-threateningly exciting like an out-of-control Indiana Jones movie. But the excitement came for him in other ways. Digging deep into the past and recovering missing information. Experiencing new cultures.

The strong espresso served in delicate porcelain cups…

New Year’s Eve and it was time to party. Their month-long session of fieldwork was over. In a day they’d fly home and return to digging for clues in books instead of diving beneath the waves or brushing away millennia of grime and dust from ancient sites.

The brush of soft female skin under his fingers…

“Happy New Year!”

Jamie raised his glass again, the cries of happiness around him contrasting with the bitterness in his belly. He wasn’t ready to leave. The new find was too fresh, too unexplored to abandon without knowing what other treasures it held.

He stayed at the party long enough to see his fellow students slip away with willing partners. Jamie was drawn in another direction. He fought it for all of a minute before giving in and returning to his room to grab flippers, mask, snorkel and his headlamp.

Swimming alone was stupid. Insanely stupid. He turned off the part of his brain that screamed at him as he strode toward the water. He wasn’t really going to dive, just like he’d never dream of actually touching anything in the dive area without following proper protocol.

He had to see it once more. There would be no time in the morning before the rush to the airport, and if he did manage to wrangle a trip back in the summer, the site would look totally different.

Maneuvering past the security gate was simple with the key he’d found when he’d packed his bag. Actually, he’d found three of them, all copies he’d misplaced during the month at the site. He rounded the corner and headed to the farthest edge where the rocks cut down to the sparkling white sand, the jagged black boulders shining in the moonlight. The security fences stopped at the rock face, continuing on the far side of the next bay.

The warmth of the water wrapped around his skin like a caress, crawling up his shin and stroking his thighs. This was a part of what he loved so much about his work. The chance to be in the water, to work with his hands as well as his brain. His family had never understood his fascination with manual labor. Jamie smiled as he adjusted the mask and cleared the snorkel, focusing the headlamp to its highest beam. Then with a soft glide, he was away. He kicked his flippers with a slow controlled motion, his hands sculling before his face to hold his upper body at the surface. He didn’t want to dive. He wouldn’t disturb the site. A coin passed under him, the edge of green moss peeled back to reveal a flash of silver. A hunk of wood, the rotting edge of a chest. It was incredible this wreck had avoided being ravished and stripped clean before now with its proximity to the village.

He was there. The gridwork for the squares marked with metal frames instead of wood stakes like at an above-water dig. One square was clean down to the rocky bottom, the one next to it halfway cleared, and in it the open edge of a wooden box extended into his vision. Jamie adjusted his headlamp, the sound of his breathing loud in his own ears through the snorkel, air rushing through the thin tube as his excited gaze swept the area for one last glimpse.

It was gone.

He kicked in a circle to change his perspective. It had to be there. He’d found it just before they’d stopped for the day.

The necklace was gone.

He took a deep breath and dove, anchoring himself on the metal framework to shine his light deeper, closer. Seeing if the ocean current had moved the disk toward shore with the pressure of the tides.

Still nothing. His breath control was good, but not so good that he could stay down forever. After another few seconds of frantically tapping with his fingers along the edge of the wooden frame of the box, he let his death grasp loose and rose to the surface, sucking in clear night air. What the hell was going on? He was in the right spot, he was sure of it. A sliver of beach showed in the next bay, inaccessible except from the water, ragged cliffs towering over it. Jamie swam slowly toward the sand and away from the site, wondering what could have happened. He knew he’d seen the medallion. He’d showed it to a number of the team, and yet it was gone? He paced backward, letting the elongated fronts of the flippers drag behind him in the sand until he was far enough up the rolling waves brushed his toes.

The warm wind off the water dried his skin, the high salt content leaving a soft dusting of white behind as he sat on the sand to decide what could have happened. The head of the team must have already placed the necklace into the main collection. No student would have taken it and the tide couldn’t have dislodged it that quickly. He lay back and closed his eyes, trying to remember the details so he could draw the pendant when he returned to his room.

He must have fallen asleep, because when he opened his eyes the moon had shifted location. It now hovered over the western cliffs, a trail of silver light leading out into the sea. He smiled at the sight. This was why he didn’t want to be in an office his whole day, looking out windows at concrete and steel.

A fin broke the surface and Jamie jolted upright. Dolphins, playing in the moonlight. Two leapt simultaneously and crossed in mid-arc and he clapped with delight. He’d heard there was a pod in the area, but with all the time he’d spent in the water over the past month he’d never seen them. He stood to get a better view and swore.

A woman walked toward him from the far end of the narrow sand ledge that was inaccessible from anywhere but the water. He peeled off his flippers and walked toward her, wondering if she were hurt.

Moonshine backlit her and he was barely ten paces away before he noticed she was completely naked. Was she injured? Lost? He held up a hand.

“¿
Está usted bien
?” he asked. She looked like she was fine, but why was she wandering the beach in the nude?

“
Sí
.”

Jamie wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. A puff of breeze blew by carrying the most fabulous fragrance—spicy and rich, mouthwatering—and he stood immobile as he tried to place the scent.

Dusky brown skin with her long auburn hair draped over one shoulder. Full rounded breasts, dark nipples with large areolas and peaked tips. Her limbs were strong and smooth, waist tapering in, hips flaring out. At the juncture of her thighs tight curls covered her mound and he dragged his gaze away.

“
Ven conmigo.
”

The woman held out a hand as she commanded him to come with her. He took a few more steps and placed his hand in hers, her gaze enveloping him like a net.

His legs moved willingly as she led him back down the beach to where the green grass met the white expanse of sand. She tugged him to the soft surface with her and he went eagerly. When she wrapped her arms around him, he let his hands explore and touch, caressing her curves, stroking the valleys. She spoke softly to him in Spanish, praising him as he kissed his way down her body, crying out as he licked and suckled her breasts. A shimmer of blue rose from her skin and he watched in amazement as the light of fireflies hung suspended in the air around them. Part of him wanted to analyze what he saw, but most of him was fixated on how heavy his balls felt. How hard his cock had grown as he touched his mysterious woman. The air grew warmer and Jamie gave himself over to the urgent desires floating through him as he made love to the vision. They moved together and he shouted as he came, her legs wrapped around his torso as he drove into her from above. He buried his cock deep in her warmth and his release sucked energy from his limbs. She tugged until they lay side by side, gasping for air.