Chapter 22
CAMILLE
W e didn’t speak for the first half mile. My knuckles were white on the wheel. The glow from the dash washed his throat in soft blue. Every time he shifted, the thermal blanket crackled and my body remembered the tent like it was five minutes ago.
“Folly first,” I said. “Your phone. Your bag. Your dignity.”
“My dignity’s shot,” he said, easy. “Phone would help.”
“Good. I’m not lending you pants. My jeans would be capris on you and I’d never forgive either of us.”
He huffed a laugh. His hand found my thigh like it belonged there. Heavy. Warm. My pulse did a small, foolish thing and then settled into his palm.
“ka-MEE,” he said, testing my mood, my name, the night.
“Hmm?”
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said.
“I thought about heading back to Miami today,” I admitted. “I grew up in Charleston, but I’m only here on a limited-time contract.”
“Noted.” His thumb made a slow circle, a little higher than my nerves could ignore. “You okay?”
“No.” Honesty was easier with the road in front of me. “Lieutenant Leanne McGuire—Navy—was supposed to brief me today, but two strandings blew it up. I pushed her to tomorrow. She thinks the source isn’t theirs.”
“Good,” he said. “I’ll help you prove it. Or break whatever it is if we can’t.”
“You’re a brick through a window. You said so.”
“Or a rope. Use me.”
There was a moment where my throat tightened. The kind that could tip into crying or laughing or sex. I chose none and kept us between the lines.
The lot at Folly had gone soft with night. Wind moved the palmettos. The ocean breathed behind the dunes like a big animal finally deciding to lie down. His Jeep sat waiting, stubborn and patient.
We pulled up next to it. I killed the engine. Quiet rushed in.
“Stay,” he said gently, and jogged out into the dark in nothing but the blanket and swim jammers like a man who’d been born out of salt.
I watched him cross to the dune and vanish, then reappear, duffel on his shoulder, boots in one hand, phone held like treasure in the other. He moved fast, efficient, body rolling easy like water knew him and made room.
He climbed into my passenger seat and tossed the duffel at his feet. “Phone,” he said, victorious. “Shoes.”
“Pants?”
“In the bag.” He grinned. “Want me to put them on?”
I looked at his thighs and shook my head. “Absolutely not. Children could be present.”
He thumped the blanket back across his lap, still grinning. He smelled like ocean and rotor wash and the last inch of fear cooling off a man’s skin. It made something low in me tighten and open at the same time.
Back on the road, he tossed a t-shirt over his head. His hand went back to my thigh.
“What do you need from me tomorrow?” he asked. “Besides the obvious.”
“Obvious?”
He smiled without showing teeth. “Liaising.”
I snorted. “You can stand behind me and look like trouble while I ask for numbers. You can lift stretchers and not talk to reporters. You can not punch anyone unless I say ‘go.’”
“Copy.” He squeezed my leg. “For the record, I’m sorry I scared you this morning.”
I swallowed. “I scared myself. That’s worse.”
He didn’t push. His thumb kept its steady, mind-smoothing circle.
“At the beach, you said something to that girl,” I said, because I couldn’t not. “Did you think she was your Lily?”
He stared out the windshield, then nodded. “I won’t do that to you again.”
“Do what? Grieve?” I risked a glance. “You’re allowed to grieve.”
“I can grieve without drowning you with me.”
I didn’t have an answer to that. I let the tires hum and the night do the work of holding our words.
Charleston fell behind us. The bungalow blinked on at the tap of my thumb, porch light making the picket fence look like the good lie a girl might tell herself. I pulled in crooked because straight felt like a promise I couldn’t keep.
“Inside,” I said, already stiff with want. “We both smell like sin and salt.”
He followed me up the steps and put his hand on the small of my back like a claim. My body shivered, traitor-soft. Inside, the air was cool and smelled faintly of that same old cleaner, plus wet towels hung too long in a closed room.
“Showers first,” I said. “Then I’m yours for the night.”
He grinned. “Yes, Dr. Allard.”
I left him in the kitchen with a glass of water.
In the bathroom, I stripped fast, tossing salt-stiff shorts and tank into the hamper, boots thudding the mat.
The mirror showed a woman with sun stripes, sea-tangled hair, a bruise at her collarbone that matched his mouth, eyes too bright.
I twisted the tap and steam climbed the tile.
The first hit of hot water was almost enough to make me cry.
I had just worked shampoo through my hair when the door cracked on its hinges and his voice slid under the water. “Coming in.”
“Jacob—”
He slipped around the curtain, bare, the steam clinging to his skin. He was tentative for one breath. Then something dark and hungry moved across his face and the tentative part died.
He pressed me to the tile with the weight of his body and the water flattened his hair and ran in lines over the ridges of his shoulders. The blanket was gone. The last of the day was gone. His hands bracketed my ribs and lifted, pinning me on his thigh.
“You said showers,” he murmured. “I followed instructions.”
“I didn’t invite you,” I said, which was a lie my nipples gave away when his mouth found one.
“You’re right,” he said against my skin. “Kick me out.”
I fisted his hair and dragged his mouth back to mine. “Shut up.”
He laughed into me, then kissed me deep enough to make my knees go soft. Water hit my back hot then cooler as he shouldered me nearer the spray, his hands mapping fast like he needed to make sure I was still here, still real, still his.
His mouth went low and I hit the tile with both palms. Steam slicked the world.
He knelt. He hooked one of my knees over his shoulder and pressed his tongue to me with a reverence that nearly broke me.
Hot. Firm. No dithering. He found my clit and wrote his name there.
He ate like a starving man with patience.
“Jacob,” I said, voice gone thin. “Oh?—”
He tightened his grip and worked me until my hips couldn’t pretend not to chase him. He slid two fingers into me and curved them the way he had before, slow, then deeper, pinning my gaze with his when I tried to close my eyes.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. He watched me fall apart and didn’t flinch. I came hard, thighs shaking, water pounding my shoulder, one foot skidding on tile until he caught my heel and planted it on his chest.
“Again,” he said, and moved faster. I hit him with the heel of my hand because it was too much. He grinned up into the steam and let me breathe.
He stood in one push, crowding me back to the wall. He lifted my thigh high against his hip and slid into me on a long, perfect stroke that knocked a guttural sound out of me. He was thick and hot and his breath went ragged against my cheek.
“I’ve got you,” he said into my ear. “All the way.”
He fucked me against the tile with a rhythm that made thought a luxury.
Short, deep thrusts. Then longer, slower, holding me full until I squirmed and then doing it again.
His hand found my throat, light, thumb under my jaw, not choking, only reminding me whose breath this was. Mine. His. Ours. A circuit.
“Say it,” he rasped. “Say my name right.”
“Jacob,” I panted, then shifted, got my mouth around the soft French. “Mon Jacob.”
He swore and drove harder. The water sang on tile.
He turned me without breaking, spun me so my palms flattened to the glass.
He caught my wrists and pinned them high, his chest to my back, his cock hitting me where I came apart fastest. He bit my shoulder, not sweet.
Possessive and protective, the way he’d been at the bar when Karl thought he was a problem I couldn’t handle.
“Mine,” he said into my wet skin.
“Tonight,” I said, meeting him. “Yes.”
He pulled out and turned me again, lifted me like I weighed less than his guilt, and set me on the shower’s built-in bench, water still raining down.
He hooked my heel over his shoulder, opened me wide, and shoved back inside.
Filthy, perfect angle. I clawed at his shoulders and he took it like he liked the sting.
My body clamped around him like it had been built for this exact geometry and forgot any other.
“Come,” he ordered, thumb grinding my clit. “Camille. Now.” He said my name exactly right, and the sound of it in his mouth shoved me straight over the edge.
I broke. The orgasm ripped through me, hot and messy, and I couldn’t hold on to anything but him.
He followed, face buried in my neck, voice rough, hips stuttering as he emptied into me.
He stayed deep and breathed like a man who had finally decided to live.
My legs twitched. My heart found a new rhythm and decided to keep it.
The water ran and neither of us cared that the hot was almost gone. He finally pulled out slow and kissed my mouth like he was putting something back.
We finished the shower like humans, which felt like a victory.
He washed my hair with his big, careful hands.
I soaped the line of the dog tag chain and watched water bead on his chest hair.
He made a small sound when I ran my palm down his stomach.
It made me feel powerful and soft at once. Feminine.
We tumbled to the bed damp and clean and arranged ourselves into a knot that made sense: my cheek on his chest, his hand in my hair, our legs a tangle of heat.
The fan hummed. The porch swing creaked outside like it had opinions.
The room smelled like soap and sex and my lemon cleaner trying to keep up.
He stroked my back slow, down and up, a simple repetitive kindness. It undid the last of my armor.
“I hate that it hurts them,” I said, voice already breaking.
“It’s a stupid sentence. It’s true. I hate that it hurts them and I can’t stop it.
I hate that I can keep one alive and more wash up because something in the water doesn’t care that I didn’t sleep and I counted breaths and told little kids not to cry. ”
He went very still under me, the kind of still a man learns when he knows his weight counts. He didn’t talk. He let the silence get big enough for me to put words into it without feeling like they’d drown.
“I know the game,” I said. Tears slipped into the hollow above his collarbone and I let them.
“We don’t get to win. We get to hold the line.
We get to say not today to the ocean and mean it for as long as our hands don’t slip.
I tell rookies that and they nod and they get brave and I get brave with them and then a mother blinks at me from the swash and I hear myself apologizing to a species that owes me nothing and I?—”
I swallowed and it hurt. “I’m so tired of apologizing.”
He exhaled and it felt like a vow. “Then stop apologizing,” he said quietly. “Let me be the one who kicks the door. Let me be the noise so you can be the hands. I’ll stand where you point. I’ll carry what you can’t. I’ll put my body between you and whatever tries to make you smaller.”
I laughed, wet and wrecked. “Says the guy who stepped between me and Karl like I was already yours.”
“I was protecting you,” he said, unapologetic.
“I liked it,” I admitted, heat curling low. “Maybe too much.”
“Good,” he murmured. “I’ll keep doing it. Because you are already mine.”
“I know.” That was the part that made it dangerous. “Tomorrow the Navy brings me paper. After that we make the right people bleed.”
He kissed my hair. “Good. I know a lot about making the right people bleed.”
I turned my face into his chest and let myself cry a little more. Not the hysterical kind. The clean kind. Tears ran into his skin and he didn’t flinch. He just kept stroking my back, slow, steady, like he was matching my breath on purpose.
When it was done, or at least done for now, I wiped my eyes on his shoulder and sniffed like a child. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said, the gentlest I’d ever heard him. “You can put that word on the shelf with your semicolons.”
I barked a laugh. It startled both of us. “Who told you I hate semicolons?”
“You,” he said. “Every time you talk.”
I smacked his chest and he caught my hand and put it to his mouth and bit my knuckles, soft. A small, stupid joy moved through me.
“I’ll help,” he said again, more serious.
“Even if you change your mind about me. Even if you decide this was a bad idea. I’ll help because the water owes you better than it’s given.
And because when you stand in a circle of strangers and make a whale keep breathing, it makes me want to be a better animal. ”
“Don’t get poetic,” I warned, but my voice was warm.
“Too late,” he said.
We lay there listening to the fan and the night insects and my own breath finally behaving. I thought about the little Kogia in the pen and the big bottlenose in the surf and the tiny daydream I’d had this morning about coffee on this porch with this man I barely know. It scared me. It steadied me.
“How long are you even in Charleston?” I asked, staring at the ceiling like it might have answers.
His thumb drew slow circles on my hip. “Don’t know. I was supposed to be in and out. Liaise, keep the peace, disappear.” A beat. “Today changed some math. I’m rethinking a lot.”
“Don’t do that for me,” I said, because I needed to hear myself say it.
“Not for you,” he said. “For me. But I want you in the equation.”
The tiny daydream I’d been trying to starve stretched and yawned. “Then give me your last name.”
He huffed a quiet laugh. “Persistent.”
“Occupational hazard. I like labels on the right jars.”
“It isn’t a big thing,” he said. “I was going to tell you. Now I kind of like watching you try to solve me.”
“You enjoy the suspense,” I said.
“A little,” he admitted, mouth tipping. “Only because I know you’ll make me pay for it.”
“Tomorrow then?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” he agreed, and kissed the corner of my mouth like he meant it.
He pulled the sheet over us and tucked it at my hip. His hand slid back to the base of my skull, steady and warm. The fan hummed. The swing creaked once on the porch and fell quiet. I let my eyes close.
Tomorrow at 1400 I’d face the Navy. Tonight I let a good weight anchor me. Outside, the ocean kept its secrets. Inside, I finally let myself rest.