Eye of the Storm (4 page)

Debris swirled in the air, bounced off her body, caught up in the snarls of her sopping hair. When she covered her face with both hands to protect it from the onslaught, she stumbled into a downed Australian pine sapling and sprawled into the dirt.

The temptation to stay there and accept that she was doomed was strong. But she wanted desperately to survive. She dragged herself to her knees and crawled the last few yards to the top of the rise, stoically overlooking the pain of a twisted ankle, and the stinging of a thousand tiny scratches over what seemed like every exposed inch of her body.

Oh God. The wind had ripped off a large chunk of the restaurant’s thatched roof. No refuge there. Marcy’s chest tightened. Branches cracked and fell, tossed like matchsticks in the wind. She had to get inside somewhere if she were to have any chance to weather the storm. Stumbling over debris on the pathway, she made her way to the rustic cabin she’d rented a day earlier.

Once inside the quaking walls, it hit her. She was alone. Seriously alone. Caught without another human soul in the leading edge of what promised to be one hell of a storm.

As sand swirled and sturdy palm trees groaned and cracked in the fierce wind, Marcy huddled in a corner against an interior wall, trembling and watching the rain come down in what looked like horizontal sheets that pounded the windowpanes as if determined to break them down and invade her flimsy sanctuary.

Teeth chattering, she stripped off her soaked clothes and wrapped up in a cotton blanket from the bed.

When driving rain shattered the window, Marcy dived under the bed, crying out in terror. For a long time she stayed burrowed in a blanket there and prayed for deliverance from this hell. For someone, anyone to share it with her. Another window shattered, on the other side of the room that seemed to grow smaller with every crashing piece of debris that attacked. She dragged her blanket to the farthest corner from the creaking windows, closed her eyes against Nature’s onslaught, and prayed for Sam.

* * * * *

Raindrops driving into his flesh like tiny needles, Sam lashed down the
Lucky Lady
and made for the relative safety of the Flying Fisherman Marina. Once inside, he shook off the worst of the water, blinked and searched the crowd of soaked,
disheveled
wedding guests.

No Marcy. He’d have sworn he saw her leaving the grotto with the others. He assumed she’d taken the resort’s motor launch or one of the other guests’ boats. But she was nowhere to be found. Ileana stood trembling in Josh’s arms near an inside wall of the sturdy cement block building.

“Where’s Marcy?” he asked, his teeth chattering as he joined them.

Ileana’s dark eyes widened. “Didn’t she come with you?”

“No.” He’d have been the last guy on Earth she’d have willingly hitched a ride with. Sam’s gut clenched. Surely she hadn’t waited for the ferry that wouldn’t be making its twice-daily trip today. “You haven’t seen her?”

“She gave us her best wishes, then said she was going back to the grotto. I assumed she was looking for you.” She paused, her full lips curling in a nervous little smile. “That she’d wait until we’d left, then take that as an excuse to ride in with you.”

“Hardly. I’d be the last guy she’d want to hitch a ride with.” Then it struck him. Marcy was out on Cabbage Key, alone, with Hurricane
Kellen
bearing down. “I’ll go back and get her.”

Ileana reached out and clasped his hand. “My God, we should have evacuated yesterday. If I hadn’t insisted on having the wedding go on as scheduled, Marcy wouldn’t—”

“Don’t worry, I’ll get her.” Sam squeezed Ileana’s hand, hoping to reassure her.

“Don’t, Sam. Let the resort manager go. It’s his job.”

“No time. And the launch might capsize. My boat’s built for heavy seas.” Not that he’d ever taken her out before during a hurricane. But never before had he had such a compelling reason.

Hanging onto posts along the weathered pier when the wind threatened to blow him into the water, Sam made it back to the
Lucky Lady
, fired up both motors, and cast off. Five-foot waves broke against the sturdy
fiberglass
hull, soaking the deck and making the boat lurch slowly ahead.

He could use help. Not able to work the marine radio and hold the boat on course in the heavy waves—no Coast Guard ship could make its way through the narrow, shallow corridor anyhow—he pulled out his cell phone. He barely managed to dial 911 before the boat rode a wave then slammed down, wrenching the phone from his hand and slamming it into the deck.

Shit, he wouldn’t be calling anyone now. The phone popped apart on impact, its pieces scattering across the deck and bouncing crazily every time the boat rode a wave, then careened back into the murky water.

The noon sky was black with clouds, backlit by a struggling sun and lightning bolts that cast an eerie orange on the eastern horizon. Thunder clapped, its noise deafening. Sam clutched the wheel, his knuckles white as he struggled to hold the boat on course for Cabbage Key.

Stubborn,
willful
Marcy. Leave it to her to ignore Nature’s warnings, get herself marooned on a barrier key while a hurricane raged around her. When he got his hands on her, he’d shake her until her teeth rattled. Spank her until she begged for mercy. Then he’d drag her foolish ass back to the mainland and wash his hands of her for good.

Who the fuck was he kidding? If he found her in one piece, he’d wrap her in the love that had never died. He’d humble himself if he had to, do whatever it took to make her listen. He’d bare his soul. Hell, he’d sell it to the devil if that meant he could have her back.

A wave crashed over the bow, making him struggle to hold the boat in the channel that led into the cove where he’d docked the night before. A fierce tailwind practically sent him airborne into the calmer waters of the cove, propelling him toward the shore.

Working frantically once he reached the dock, Sam tied the boat down, trying to gauge how much higher the tides would go and leaving slack that might keep the
Lucky Lady
from snapping the lines—but which might also, probably would, cause her to break up when the storm surge tossed her into the main pier or up on land. He wouldn’t be leaving Cabbage Key anytime soon, in any case, not with the way the winds were building and the storm tide rising.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but finding Marcy, protecting her as he’d vowed to do so long ago. Keeping her from harm. Wading along the half-submerged pier, Sam made it to shore and spied Marcy’s silly high-heeled sandals mired along the pathway to the restaurant. Bending to avoid flying branches and debris, he fought a wind that seemed intent on lifting his two-hundred-pound body and propelling it like an insignificant twig.

The roar of the wind shut everything out. A fork bounced off his temple, and a square of plywood screamed past him like a lethal boomerang. He plunged forward as if he were in a raging river. In a manner of speaking, he was. A river of air boiling and surging around him like
whitewater
rapids. Tearing away everything in its path.

Where the restaurant had been, an empty concrete slab bore testimony to the violence of the storm. Cutlery and shards of broken dinnerware blew around on each fierce gust of wind, potentially lethal darts if they found a human dartboard.

Sam’s breath caught in his throat. Where to look next? A couple of guest cabins remained mostly intact, the ones that lay along the pathway toward the raging Gulf. Lowering his head to protect his eyes from flying missiles, he made his way to the first one. All right, it seemed, but for a hunk missing off the roof and shattered window glass. A carved wooden plaque with the number seven hung drunkenly from the door that flapped open and shut in the rain and wind.

The porch floor creaked under Sam’s feet, as if protesting his weight as too much an insult in light of the onslaught it had already endured. “Marcy?”

Nothing. He caught the door, pulled mightily against the wind. Inside clothes blew about, silent testimony to the storm’s power. The clothes didn’t look like Marcy’s. And Marcy wasn’t inside. Sam stepped back outside, pushing the door shut as though that might hold back the storm and protect belongings left by guests in their haste to run for safety.

Thunder clapped, and lightning crackled. A palm tree near the beach snapped and crashed to the ground as Sam made his way along the decimated path. “Marcy!” he yelled as he approached another cabin. Pray God she had the sense to get inside and stay there. That she hadn’t fallen victim to flying silverware or dishes, and wasn’t lying somewhere among the storm’s inanimate victims, hurt or dead.

No. She couldn’t be dead. He’d feel it if she were, just as he’d sensed the moment when his mom had slipped away from them…as he’d known before his partner had told him that Marcy had lost the baby he hadn’t been able to convince himself was his. He stumbled, righted himself, hurried to the only other remaining shelter on Cabbage Key.

He forced the door open, then fought the wind to close it. Thank God. There she was, shivering against the bathroom wall. Her pale hair lay plastered to her skull, and her skin looked pasty beneath the golden tan she maintained with such pride. She stared, her pupils dilated, eyes unfocused at first, then registering recognition. For a moment she just stared. Then she dropped the blanket and held out her arms to him. “Sam. You came. I prayed you would.”

Desire punched him in the gut, banished his initial relief and made him gasp for breath. He took one step forward, then another, until he lifted her to her feet and dragged her naked, trembling body against him. For a long time he held her. Shivered with her while the wind
pummeled
their shelter, reminding him of the danger. Not only that which threatened them, but that which promised to consume him if he gave his raging emotions free rein. If he took her, claimed her now the way he’d been too young and green to take her at first. The way he’d quickly learned she wanted to be taken, possessed.

“T-take off your clothes, Sam.” Marcy tugged his shirt from his pants, her teeth chattering all the time.

“What?” Though his cock twitched with anticipation, he hesitated. Then he realized he was sopping wet, chilling her as well as himself as they stood there in a tiny cabin that shuddered in the wind. Cold air burst through shattered windowpanes, bringing goose bumps up on his skin as she exposed it. “Here, let me.”

Sam loosened his belt and dropped it with his rain-soaked pants and boxers to his feet. Toeing off sodden deck shoes, he stepped out of the puddle as she tossed his shirt onto it. “Come here, I’ll warm you.”

The loopy pile of the towel she rubbed over him brought circulation back. She’d often dried him off like this when they were kids at the beach, after they’d swum back from a
favorite
haunt. Closing his eyes, he visualized her on the sandbar they’d claimed as their own. They’d loved making sandcastles and exploring crystalline tide pools full of sand dollars and teeming with fascinating sea life.
Then
he wouldn’t have hesitated. He’d have lowered her to the bed in his parents’ condo on Tierra Verde and fucked her the way he had every chance he got since that first time under the school bleachers, after a pre-game pep rally.

But too much had gone down between them. Too many harsh words had been said. Sam stood there shivering as the storm raged outside the little cabin, trying to think of her as just another woman with a problem—just another woman who’d asked him for his help.

It didn’t work. This was Marcy, and the only help she’d ever needed from him, he’d failed to give. A tree crashed down outside, the clattering noise sending her into his arms, the towel apparently forgotten. “Take care of me, Sam,” she whispered, clutching his shoulders as she pressed her breasts hard against his chest. Belly to belly, thigh to thigh, her softness to his rougher, harder planes. The way it should be, male protecting female, giving her safety and strength.

His balls tightened, and his cock swelled against her silky
mons
. Years fell away, resentment forgotten as the thunder roared and the wind sluiced noisily among the trees and vines outside. As the walls of the cabin shook with the strength of
Kellen
, Sam trembled in unison with Marcy. It was as though the thin veneer of civilized
behavior
shattered like the windowpanes, leaving only male and female and unquenched need.

Animal lust. The compulsion to sink his cock into her hot wet cunt and pump her until his semen flooded her womb. To feel her heat and see her face flush when she came. To hear her scream his name, smell the scent of sex flowing between them. To suck her clit and her breasts and taste her honey on his tongue just one more time.

Out of control, Sam lifted Marcy, bracing her back against the quaking wall. “Put your legs around my waist,” he ordered, his tone urgent, terse to his own ears as he flexed his hips and mated their bodies.

No one else had ever made her feel so full, so taken. The storm that raged outside was nothing compared with the one that erupted in her heart when Sam thrust home. Naked flesh to naked flesh, sensation she’d denied herself for five long years of lovers wearing condoms for her protection and their own. His thick cock head stretched her, sliding sensuously within her well-lubricated pussy, nudging her womb. Long, impossibly hard yet smooth as velvet, his cock claimed her, driving her harder into the rough, wooden wall with every
pistoning
of his narrow hips.