Page 179 of Once an Angel
They burst onto the beach and her senses exploded in drunken abandon. The warmth of the setting sun branded her skin; the wind dragged soothing fingers through her hair. Moaning with delight, she tilted her face back and closed her eyes.
When she opened them, Justin's face was very close to hers. She could see each stubbled hair along his jawline and was seized with a strange urge to rub her cheek across it and see if it felt as prickly as it looked. Her face flushed with more than the heat of the sun.
"You may put me down," she said primly.
Mischief glinted in his golden eyes. "Oh, no. You wanted a bath, and it's a bath you'll be having."
Before she could even squeal, he strode through the damp sand into the waves. She buried her face in
the haven of his chest, clinging as he waded deeper into the swirling surf. Cool water licked her thighs. Penfeld's coat ballooned around her hips. She pressed it down with frantic fingers.
"There now, isn't that pleasant?"
"No." Her teeth chattered against his chest. "It's bloody cold."
"I'm afraid there's only one cure for that."
He dropped her.
Emily thrashed wildly. Salty water rushed into her mouth. Good Lord, the lunatic was trying to kill her! She should have suspected as much. He must have recognized her from the photograph. Her toes churned up a mass of sand and she realized the water was only a few feet deep. She also realized the muffled sound above her was not the pounding of the surf, but the infuriating rumble of a man's laughter.
Her fingers dug into Justin's thigh, and she shot from the waves, climbing him like a tree monkey. She shook water from her stinging eyes. "You ill-mannered, wretched—" She sputtered to a halt, trying to remember some of the viler names Barney had called her on the journey from England.
"Would you like to sit on my shoulders?" he suggested dryly. "The view is much better."
Justin knew a brief moment of panic when it looked as if she might take him up on his offer. The prospect of being cradled between her shapely thighs for such a benign purpose was too torturous to contemplate.
He caught her hips to stop her panicked ascent. "I was only trying to help."
Emily opened her mouth to argue, but realized the water now swirled around her hips in currents of delicious warmth. Even worse, most of the warmth seemed to be centered at the juncture of her thighs, where the faded V of Justin's dungarees was pressed with alarming intimacy. By flinging her legs around him, she had put herself in a more precarious position than she dared to admit. She'd lost track of Penfeld's coat during her writhing, and most of it was trapped around her waist. She stilled, terrified
Justin would discover only a fragile weave of calico bound her nakedness from his own.
He already knew. He betrayed himself by the downward flicker of his gaze, the faintest shift of his hips, the barely perceptible wince of his chiseled mouth. A buoyant wave rocked against his back, and her
body cradled his with an artless skill as primal as the sea itself. She had never been more aware of a man's strength or a woman's vulnerability. Heat stung her cheeks.
Justin gazed down at her, already beginning to regret his brief lapse into kindness. He should have let Penfeld bring her to the beach. His own peace of mind was too hard won to surrender without a fight. Half wishing he were a more ruthless sort of man, he rested his hands against her ribs, his thumbs a ticklish inch from her breasts.
Emily's heart rocked into a shuddering slam as Justin's palms rode to her hips, easing the coat down to cover her. He slipped an arm around her shoulders and turned her away from him, cradling her back against his chest.
"Relax, Emily," he commanded in that husky lilt of his.
He guided them past the place where the waves crested and broke. Emily poked her toe toward the
sea floor but met only a chill current of deeper water. Damp hairs clung to the bronze skin of Justin's forearm. How easy it would be for him to push her under, she thought. To hold her head beneath the water with exquisite gentleness until her struggles ceased.
She shivered, and Justin wrapped his other arm around her. "Don't be afraid. I won't let you go."
The shiver that rocked her at those words was so deep, he never felt it. It filled her with both a terrible fear and an insatiable longing that sharpened her loneliness to an unbearable edge. Her eyes stung. She blinked, swearing it was only the salt.
His breath warmed her ear. "Close your eyes, Em, and let the water take you."
She couldn't fight the sensation that she was being saken by something far more potent than the water. She fct her eyes drift shut, surrendering to its seductive pull. Her head fell back against his shoulder.
Her feet drifted up antil her lower body was floating, rocked in the rhythmic cradle of the sea. The
sunset faded to a warm spatter of gold against her eyelids. The water caressed her with liquid fingers, deliciously cool against the heat of his chest.
