In Too Deep (31 page)

Piper lurched forward on hands and
knees, intending to use the short bench seat to drag herself up
onto unsteady legs.

“
Piper, listen to me—” West’s hand
closed around her ankle.

She slapped out at him with a
growl that choked her in its ferocity. His grip tightened, and
suddenly she was screaming at him.

Screaming like a banshee hyped up
on meth.

Chapter 15

He’d blown it.
But when she tried to walk away from him again? All bets were
off.

He lunged for her ankle and
suddenly it was all on—Piper shouting, punching, and
snarling.

Her elbow connected with his ribs.
Goddammit, she was strong. He winced, ducked from a fist that
would’ve cost him a front tooth had it landed. Her flailing hadn’t
caused any major damage, as much as it would’ve enraged her if
she’d any inkling of his thoughts. West didn’t want her to hurt
herself, so he pulled rank and flipped her onto her back, pinning
her with his additional weight and bulk.

“
Enough.” He snatched up her
wrists and stretched them above her head.

Piper continued to wriggle,
inciting a predictable effect on a certain part of his
anatomy.

Impeccable timing, West. As
usual.

But with her breasts mashed
against his chest and her hips bucking as she attempted to throw
him off, his cock didn’t care that an erection was not only
inappropriate but potentially dangerous.

Her hips stilled mid arch,
cradling the length of him. God, terrible timing or not, it was
good to be this close to her. Breathing in ragged pants, Piper kept
her face turned away.

West lowered his forehead, resting
it against the wet spikes of her hair. “Stop fighting for one
second and
listen
.”

Her jaw worked as she spoke
through clenched teeth. “Get. Off. Me.”

“
No.” Blood rushed in his ears,
his head pounding as he racked his brains for a way to apologize.
But everything he came up with made him sound like a selfish prick
for putting her in this situation. Of course—he was a selfish
prick.

His lips brushed her temple. She
tasted of salt and sun lotion. “I’m not ready to let you go
yet.”

She twisted her head, the motion
nudging his lips away. Hazel eyes, almost green now with bright
fury, clashed with his. “I’m a cop. I know how to hurt
you.”

“
Yeah, I figured that.”

And he’d figured that, one, he’d
earned her knee in his nuts and, two, it couldn’t hurt more than
the pain he’d caused by reminding her of Michael’s death. They were
at a stalemate. Neither could look away. The intensity built in his
chest to a living, clawing thing until he had to either kiss her or
let her go.

Her breath hissed out and she
rolled her head to the side, the harsh lines of her jaw relaxing.
Whether it was a temporary truce, or a trick to lull him into
exposing his vulnerable nuts, he didn’t know. He released her
wrists, propping his weight onto his elbows so he didn’t squash her
on the deck. She rotated her wrists and flexed her fingers,
bringing her arms back over her head and resting her palms on his
biceps, pushing against him. He didn’t budge, so her fingers stayed
there, splayed on his skin like petals. The stiff tendons in her
neck softened and she swallowed, but he didn’t for a second believe
she wasn’t still pissed.

“
You could’ve died, moron,” she
said.

“
You’ve downgraded me from asshole
to moron. That’s something.”

Her eyelids lowered, the inky
black lashes forming tiny clumps from the seawater. Nails dug into
his upper arms hard enough to leave dents. “I’ll rephrase
that—you’re an asshole and a moron.”

“
A moron for
free-diving?”

“
Clever-clogs, aren’t
you?”

“
And an asshole for scaring
you.”

She said nothing, switched to her
slightly-bored game face. Except he’d seen glimpses of the Piper
behind the game face. The Piper who managed to sneak lunch into his
office when he wasn’t looking, because he’d forgotten to get his
own. He’d seen that Piper again at the bonfire—the naked yearning
on her face as he danced with Zoe. The Piper who cried while he
played the piano and the Piper who held back tears when she
realized the community had reclaimed her.

His chest squeezed as his heart
turned a slow summersault. He used the back of his fingers to
stroke the smooth skin of her jaw. “I’m sorry I scared you,
baby.”

Piper’s lower lip quivered and he
grappled with the need to kiss the tremor away.

“
It took me right back there. Back
to that morning.”

West’s gut hollowed, then filled
with cold, hard stones. Piper’s dad treated him like a second son,
but he would’ve given West a solid ass-kicking for putting his girl
through a nightmare—again. “I wish I’d been there for you—wish I’d
been there
instead
of you.”

How many times after seeing Piper
that day, wrapped in a blanket on Old Smitty’s boat, fighting to
escape the men who’d half carried her onto the wharf, had he
thought that? He’d never forget her soul-wrenching cries, begging
to return to the inlet to keep searching for her father.

But it wasn’t until over a year
later when he’d accompanied the Harland family to the formal
coronial inquest that he heard the details of his mentor’s death.
Piper delivered her verbal evidence in a wooden tone, never
acknowledging his presence at the back of the courtroom. Not that
he blamed her for hating him, because he’d hated himself for
allowing the sight of her, so damn lovely even in her starched cop
uniform, to affect him.

“
But you weren’t there and because
of the way things ended—” she paused, pressing her lips together,
“—I couldn’t ask my best friend to come out that morning, since my
brother wasn’t around.”

West shut his eyes and her words
stabbed at him, tiny needles piercing his heart.

“
I stayed home the night before. I
didn’t go out with Ben and the guys—” he said.

She went rigid beneath him, her
whole body stiffening to ironing-board straight. Looked like it was
news to her.

“—
but I understand why you didn’t
call me, because I didn’t deserve to be your best friend.” He
opened his eyes to find she’d closed hers.

Her chin dipped a fraction in
acknowledgement, before she turned her head to the side
again.

“
Get off me,” she whispered.
“Please.”

West eased up and rolled aside.
Piper scuttled backward and used the bench to haul herself to her
feet.

“
I’m sorry,” he said.

She stumbled to the door and the
look she sent back over her shoulder hollowed him out. He’d failed
as her lover, but what killed him was failing as her
friend.

***

“
Oh-god-oh-god-yeahlikethat-oh.”

Piper lay like a tomb effigy on
her bed and pretended the couple in the next cabin weren’t going at
it like proverbial bunny rabbits. Make that a tomb effigy with a
pillow clamped over her face.

She heaved out another
long-suffering sigh. God, they really were two enthusiastic love
birds. But somehow she and West got through the rest of the day
without snarling at each other in front of them.

Now everyone had retired to their
cabins and the night settled to stillness. Still except for the
slosh of waves against the hull, the odd rasping call from
nocturnal kiwi digging for sandhoppers on Kahurangi Bay beach, and
the sexual Olympics next door.

She’d insisted on West taking the
double stateroom earlier, rather than have him curled like a prawn
on the single bunk. Super illustration of the cost of being a soft
touch, because on other side of The Mollymawk West drifted into
blissful slumber while her lullaby—
Oh-God-oh-God-oh-God
—made
her want to puncture her ear drums. Or take a cold shower. Or a
swim.

Piper sat up and swung her legs
over the edge of the bunk. Swim it would be. Maybe the shock of
cold water would clear her mushy brain. Ever since West blacked out
on his dive she’d vacillated between the urge to kill him and bang
his brains out—because she was so
fucking grateful
he didn’t
die.

And the shock of West not being
with Ben and the guys the morning her father drowned? She always
assumed he’d been out partying—since his heart wasn’t broken into
teeny-tiny pieces. He’d flipped her assumptions on their head with
that little grenade of information. Not that it changed
anything.

Piper stripped out of her pajamas
and pulled on a swimsuit. So—quick swim, a run along the beach, and
back to the boat for chamomile tea. By that stage the honeymooners
should be sexually satisfied and fast asleep.

Piper crept into the galley and
eased through the door onto the deck. A crescent moon hung
suspended overhead, surrounded by the diamond-pierced velvet of the
night sky. No big city lights to fade the stars into oblivion, no
rumble of traffic to dilute the peace of waves meeting the sand.
Just a gentle breeze scented with brine and the shifting of the
hull under her bare feet.

She sucked in a deep breath,
stilled when her night vision kicked in. A dark silhouette tucked
into a corner drank from a bottle.

“
Couldn’t sleep?” West
said.

The huskiness of his voice licked
sudden warmth under the small, but modest, barrier of her swimsuit.
“Looks that way.”

A low chuckle in the darkness.
“Honeymooners?”

“
Yep.”

Easier than confessing the
honeymooners were but a fraction of the reason for her
restlessness. Add to the mix a dollop of sexual frustration, stir
in a combination of guilt and anger, season it with her rapidly
diminishing days on the island, and you had a big bowl of
Piper-on-the-edge. “I’m going to take a swim.”

West placed the bottle on the
table beside him and stood, the glimmer of moonlight illuminating
the smooth, kissable skin across his chest and shoulders, the pair
of board shorts that hung low on his hips. “Think it’ll
help?”

Help her stop thinking about him?
Unlikely.

“
Better than a sleeping pill.”
Piper hustled to the end of the deck and climbed onto the
ladder.

“
Need a buddy, Pipe?”

“
No.”

Her toes dipped into the water,
and goosebumps rippled up her legs. Freezing freakin’ water—all the
better to snuff out the dangerous heat swirling through her
limbs.

“
It’s dangerous to swim
alone.”

“
I’ll risk it,” she said, and
dived into the water.

Swimming toward the line of foamy
white breakers, Piper let the cold shock her into concentrating on
nothing more than the rhythm of her strokes. Wading onto the beach,
she shivered as the air knifed into her. She glanced back at The
Mollymawk and long arms lazily slicing through the
water.

Damn the man.

Yeah, like he wouldn’t follow. If
she hadn’t wanted West’s company, she would’ve high-tailed it back
to her cabin the instant she’d seen him in the shadows.

Didn’t mean she’d make it easy for
him.

Piper ran for the cluster of rocks
exposed by the low tide. Once around them, the next bay opened up
to a long stretch of beach out of sight of The
Mollymawk.

She had a good head start, but
even still, his footsteps behind her came surprisingly quick. West,
like his brother Del, had always been fast on his feet, beating the
other island boys in a footrace as kids.

Slowing as she reached the rocks,
Piper risked a glance over her shoulder. Sixty feet away jogged a
tall, lean silhouette. Not in any hurry, West’s arms pumped with no
visible effort. He intended to wear her down like a cat waiting for
a mouse to keel over from terrified exhaustion.

Hah.

Piper put on a burst of speed,
streaking past the last of the rocks, flying over the beach,
splashing through the tiny waves and suddenly laughing, laughing
like a loon, at how incredible it felt to run down a deserted beach
at midnight.

“
I can do this all night, West.
You won’t wear me out,” she yelled.

“
Not trying to,” his mild voice
came right behind her.

“
Shit!” She lost her rhythm and
stumbled to a fast march. “Don’t you ever get tired of scaring the
hell out of me?”

“
Can’t help my panther-like
reflexes.” West loped alongside her. “And I like the view from back
there.”

She bet her freezing ass he
did.
Piper slid a hand down to her butt to check the thin nylon
hadn’t ridden up too high. So far, so good.

Her fast march slowed to a brisk
walk, and then a stroll. He wasn’t going to be shaken off by her
power-walking. She crossed her arms over her breasts in case West’s
panther-like reflexes extended to superior night vision. Her night
vision uncovered cords of muscle contracting in his upper arms as
he moved, a bare, wet physique, which gleamed almost white in the
monochromatic landscape, and board shorts clinging to the long line
of his thighs. And Lord, he smelled good. Salty, a little sweaty,
and with a boatload of male pheromones on top of that. Good enough
that she pinched her lower lip with her teeth to stop from leaning
over and taking a bite.