Goddess of the Sea (4 page)

As if in response to her invocation, the breeze shifted and cooled. The pinyon smoke spiraled up, diaphanous and glowing with the light of aquamarines. Transfixed, CC watched it disappear into the moon-drenched sky.

The breeze continued to increase, and CC impulsively raised her hands over her head, fingers outstretched as if she could capture the moon within them. Slowly she began to sway, letting the wind move her in time to the symphony of the night. Her bare feet found their own dance as they followed the circumference of the damp circle. The wind licked her body, drawing the silk of her nightgown against the warmth of her skin.

CC looked down at her body, and felt her eyes widen in surprise. Usually she thought of herself as too petite to be considered sexy, but tonight the moonlight mingled with silk, casting a spell on her body. Through the thin fabric her breasts were clearly visible and her small, perfect nipples felt sensitive and tight as they puckered against its softness. She swung her leg forward in a graceful dance step that had lain dormant within her since grade-school ballet lessons. The nightgown molded itself to her thighs, making her feel like she had just stepped from the canvas of a voluptuous Maxfield Parrish painting. The moonlight caught the ripples and folds of silk, giving life to the pale color and turning it into frothing sea foam. She laughed aloud at her unexpected beauty and twirled on feet that had wings.

“I have magic!” she proclaimed to the night.

Shadows flitted across the balcony, and she looked up to see wisps of clouds, like half-formed thoughts, beginning to obscure the face of the attendant moon. The wind increased, and CC's dance kept time with it, mirroring the tempo of the swaying trees.

The deafening crack of thunder should have frightened her, but instead CC felt like the coming storm had originated within her body. When the blue-white shard of lightning pierced the sky, it only fueled her appetite for the night, and she whooped, adding her own voice to the tempest.

Like a ripened fruit the sky burst apart, sending a rush of whimsical rain to join in her celebration. CC spun and twirled and laughed aloud. She reveled in every instant. She noticed how her plants seemed to move their leaves with her, and how the falling rain glistened amidst them like faceted jewels. Her eyes were drawn to the mundane stretch of blacktop parking lot below her, and she was amazed at how the rain had transformed it into the glasslike surface of a mysterious, shadow-covered ocean.

CC lifted her arms and pirouetted as the rain swathed her in damp majesty. She laughed aloud and believed she clearly heard the sound of another woman's musical laughter—and for a magically suspended moment their voices merged, filling the balcony with joy and love.

Then the sky exploded with another flash of light, and the rain roped down in a torrent. CC realized that her drapes were billowing wildly within her apartment and rain was drenching her living room carpet. Still laughing, she scrambled wetly through the open patio doors and pulled them securely closed behind her.

Shivering a little in a puddle of sopped carpet she should have felt melted; instead she felt invigorated. CC held her arms away from her body and watched as drops of water, sparkling like diamonds, slid down the soaked cloth of her nightgown.

“I have never been this alive.” She was compelled to speak the words aloud. She shook her head, letting the water float around her, and ran her fingers through her short curls.

“I will let it grow,” she promised.

And she realized her hair wasn't all she was ready to change. She was going to break her own mold.

Walking lightly, she made her way back to her bathroom and pulled a thick towel from the linen shelf. On the short dresser next to her bed she lit a candle that she had bought from a quaint little boutique aptly named the Secret Garden. She breathed deeply, filling herself with the candle's delicious vanilla-rum fragrance. The sweet scent drifted around her as she flicked the thin, damp straps of the gown from her shoulders and let the fabric slither from her body. Standing in the candlelit room she began to towel-dry, rubbing her already sensitized skin with light, circular strokes. Her hair was almost dry when she slid naked between the coolness of the clean sheets. With fingertips that were on fire, she caressed herself. Closing her eyes she moaned and arched into her hand, delighted and surprised by the exquisitely electric sensations that cascaded through her body.

As velvet sleep swept her away, CC was sure she heard a woman's laughter, the same magical laughter she had heard while she danced in the rain on her balcony. CC's lips curved into a smile, and she slept.

And while she slept, CC dreamed that a man's voice called to her in deep, seductive tones. Her dreaming body responded to that call and strained forward, but she felt unusually sluggish. In her dream she opened her eyes. She was surrounded by a veil of liquid blue. I'm underwater, her sleeping mind acknowledged.

Come to me, my love
.

The rich voice sounded within her mind, and CC's pulse jumped.

Yes!
She tried to yell her answer, but in her dream she was mute.

A light shimmered over her head and she peered up, squinting into the brightness. Just above the surface of the water a shape appeared. CC floated up, and the shape took on form and became a man. He was dark and exotic. His hair fell around his wide, bronzed shoulders in a black wave and his eyes laughed down at her. Through the ripples of the crystal waves she could see his easy smile as his outstretched hand beckoned to her.

She tried to reach up and take his hand, but her arm felt leaden. It would not obey her desire to respond.

The man's handsome face saddened. He looked lost and the voice inside her head was filled with longing.

CHAPTER THREE

A DIFFERENT kind of light played crimson shadows across her closed eyelids. What an odd dream, CC thought as she stretched luxuriously. The smooth feel of fresh sheets against her naked body mixed with the poignant, unfulfilled seduction of the dream. She still felt super-sensitized and her naked body tingled.

Naked?

She never slept in the nude. Why the heck was she naked? She flung her eyes open and cringed at the brightness of her bedroom, then quickly closed them again. It couldn't be later than 0730. Could it? Hadn't she set her alarm? Was she late for work? Her heart pounded.

Memories of the night came flooding back—the two bottles of champagne, the movie, the sudden brainstorm that led to the idea that led to the ritual. Here she cringed and tried to burrow down into her sheets, but her memory was relentless.

“You'd think I'd had enough champagne that I would have blacked it all out,” she groaned.

She peeked over the side of the bed. The vanilla-rum candle had burned out. Well, at least she could be thankful she hadn't set her apartment on fire. She glanced down. Her nightgown made a rumpled, pale spot on her cream-colored carpet.

She shook her head and sighed. Two bottles of champagne—what had she been thinking?

“I forgot,” she muttered. “The process of rational thought stops after bottle number one.”

No wonder she'd had the weird dream; she'd been in a drunken stupor.

She glanced back at the nightstand and squinted at her bedside alarm clock, which read 11:42 A.M. CC's eyes widened. Panic banished the dream, and she sat bolt upright.

“It's almost noon!” She yelped, scrambling to her closet to frantically pull out a fresh uniform before she remembered that she didn't have to report for duty that day. She was flying out tomorrow, which meant that today would be dedicated to packing and tying up the loose ends being gone for three months created.

She took a shaky breath and ran her hand through her hair. Actually, the only reason she had to go on base at all that day was to stop by the orderly room and pick up her new set of dog tags. (She was still chagrined that she'd lost her old set during the move from Colorado.) Besides that, she just needed to buy some last minute toiletries for the trip, come back to the apartment and move her plants from the balcony to her living room so that her neighbor, Mrs. Runyan, could water them and finish her packing. And, of course, she had to remember to drop her key off with Mrs. Runyan before she left for the airport the next morning.

CC took a deep breath. What was wrong with her? She was usually so organized and logical about a deployment. She had planned to get up early that morning and finish her business on base, and then get her plants taken care of and her packing completed early so that she could spend the rest of the day relaxing. The trip to Saudi would be long and exhausting, and CC definitely was not looking forward to it—and that's not even considering how much she hated flying.

She shook her head. Instead she'd chosen to send herself off with an enormous hangover. CC marched into the bathroom and flipped on the shower. As the warm, soothing mist began to rise, she started searching through the cabinet for some aspirin for her tremendous headache. But before she found it, she stopped herself.

Headache? No, now that her heart wasn't yammering a mile a minute, and she wasn't afraid she'd been AWOL for half a day, she realized her head didn't actually hurt. At all. Actually, she felt fine. She closed the cabinet door and studied herself in the mirror.

Instead of the sallow, hollow-eyed look of a morning-after hangover, CC's chestnut-colored eyes were clear and bright. Her gaze traveled down her naked body. Her skin was healthy and vibrant; she glowed with a lovely pinkish flush. It was almost like she had spent the night being pampered in an exclusive spa instead of drinking two bottles of champagne, eating a ton of KFC and getting caught in a thunderstorm while she danced in the moonlight.

“Maybe . . .” she whispered to her reflection.

A thrill of delight traveled the length of her nakedness as she remembered the moonlight and the electric passion it had fueled within her body. She could almost feel the night against her skin again.

The warm mist from the shower crept around her in thick, lazy waves.

“Like the pinyon smoke,” she gasped, and her heart leapt. “Remember,” she told her reflection. “You promised to break your mold.”

Tentatively, she raised her arms, trying to mimic her movements of the previous night and turned slowly in a sleepy pirouette. The fog swirled around her, licking her naked skin with a liquid warmth that reminded her of her sensuous, bittersweet dream. Thinking about the handsome stranger her sleeping mind had conjured, CC continued to spin, catching quick glimpses of herself in the mist-veiled mirror. Her petite body looked lithe and mysterious, as if she had trapped some of the moonlit magic within herself.

“You believed last night; believe today, too.” As she spoke something deep within her seemed to move, like smooth water over river pebbles.

“Magic . . .” CC whispered.

Maybe the night and the dream had been signs of things to come—things that would change—in her life. Maybe she just had to be open to change and answer when it called.

“Magic . . .” CC repeated.

She danced and laughed her way into the shower, loving the warm fingers of water that rippled down her body.

She didn't stop smiling the entire time she dressed and applied just a touch of makeup. The feeling wouldn't go away. It was like someone had taken a key and opened up something inside her, and now that it was open, it refused to be locked away again.

She stepped into her favorite pair of button-up 501 jeans. After listening to the decidedly cooler weather forecast, she pulled on her thick gray sweatshirt with AIR FORCE written in block lettering across her chest. Her feet felt light as she grabbed a V8 Splash from the fridge and hurried out of her apartment.

The stairs that spiraled gracefully from her top-floor apartment were still damp from last night's storm, which made CC's smile widen. Everything looked preternaturally clear and beautiful. Her car was parked almost directly below her balcony, and as she unlocked it, she glanced up. Her lips rounded in a wordless
O
of delight. The light of the midday sun formed a halo over the rich green foliage that still sparkled with beads of rain, making her balcony appear more like something submerged in an ocean than something on land.

Magic is happening
. The thought sprang unbidden into her mind, and instead of questioning it, CC took a deep breath and let the enticing idea settle.

The gate guard at Tinker's North Entrance was checking military IDs, and when her turn came, CC rolled down her window and beamed a cheery “Good morning!” to the serious-looking young airman.

The granite set of his face softened, and he returned her grin with an endearingly lopsided smile. “It's afternoon, ma'am,” he corrected gently.

“Oops!” She grinned. “Well, everything's so bright and clear that it still seems like morning.”

“Hadn't thought about it till now, but I guess you're right. It is real pretty today.” He looked honestly surprised at the discovery. “You have a good day, ma'am.” He waved her through the gate, but his eyes stayed fixed on her car and the lopsided smile was still painted on his face long after she'd disappeared.

The Communications Squadron's orderly room was located in the Personnel Building. It was a typical military structure, large and square and made of nondescript red brick. CC was pleased to see that a front row parking space was open. Usually the parking lot was ridiculously crowded, and she had to park far away down the street. The lawn surrounding the building and the hedges that bordered the entrance were meticulously manicured. The sense of obsessive neatness carried through to the interior of the building as well.