Chapter 10 #2
Around them, lobsters in tanks clicked their elastic-bound claws.
Chips of abalone clinked against wind chimes.
There were bait fish and goldfish on sale, and packets of nitrifying bacteria and fluorescent bulbs were available from an aquarium accessories kiosk.
Hawkers yelled about their discounted prices for the day’s remaining haul of salmon, shrimp, sardines, and more.
Having missed the market’s morning prime time, a few harried restaurateurs shoved past the browsing tourists.
Trays of filets sailed overhead. The air was heavy and ripe. Gulls screamed.
Head down against the noise, Isabel was fastidious in choosing a sampler of delicacies to tempt their two-spot.
She sniffed through the reek of iodine and fish guts, selecting a replacement protein skimmer and some rock to build an aquascape, then a few shrimp from one stall, a crab from another, plus a bundle of sardines.
Octopuses could be finicky eaters. Who knew what the sneaky creature’s tastes were?
Or what the institute had offered her at feeding time.
Wes could have eaten for two weeks on the cost of Isabel’s choices. Despite her caginess in the Grocery Outlet, she didn’t look at prices here.
“What about Buttercup?” he asked while she debated buying a dozen oozing sea snails.
She stepped sideways to evade a tourist’s bulging canvas bag. She winced when a gull swept low above them and an oyster seller answered with a shout and flapping hands. “Didn’t you already. . . But yes, that—that’s fine. Buttercup is fine.”
“For me, I like the Dread Pirate Roberts. Wes can be a start.”
He was acutely aware that she hadn’t called him by his name yet.
“What if we name our guest, too? Then we can talk about her in public without advertising the fact that we’re keeping,” he dropped his voice, “an illegal octopus next to our television.”
It was a good suggestion, wasn’t it?
But Isabel didn’t respond. She just paid for her snails and started across the thoroughfare toward a stall selling mussels by the pound, her head still lowered against the ebb and flow of the seething, gawking crowd, her sarong whisking her calves. Now she was frowning.
Damn.
“Do Not Touch,” read a sign taped to a tray of glistening cod.
He didn’t touch the fish. Shadowing Isabel over to the bivalves, he didn’t touch her either, not even to steer her around an oil slick.
Sharp elbows, sharper chin: her signals were as clear as any wild creature’s defense mechanisms. Prickly as an urchin, solitary as an oyster.
He kept half a step behind her. But when a vendor pushing a cart heaped with mackerel lost control of his wheels in that oily puddle of guts and scales, when the load gained sudden and careening speed as it barreled toward Isabel’s careful inspection of crack-shelled mollusks in ice—well, if Wes’s brain had good intentions, his body had other ideas.
Shit!
He reached for her instinctively.
With a single stride, he interposed himself between her and the wheelbarrow. One hand extended to redirect the cart’s trajectory into a nearby trash can. His other arm wrapped around Isabel. He spun her away from the tumbling fish, turning her into his chest.
“Ah!”
She jerked. That sharp, stiff chin collided with his collarbone, followed by the wet slap of a bag of shrimp into his stomach.
He grunted. “Sorry, there’s a—”
Behind him, the trash can toppled. The fisherman cursed. So did the mussels vendor and a scandalized family of tourists in ruined sandals. Seagulls dove, shrieking. When Isabel’s startled gaze flicked past his shoulder to the noise, she blinked. And shivered.
“Oh. . . T-thank you.”
“Sure.” He winced, massaging his ribs. “But, uh—how about we get out of here, before any pelicans join the mix?”
Her look skyward must have revealed the gular pouches descending; she didn’t protest when he extracted their octopus’s feed and gear bags from her white-knuckled grip, then guided them past the mess, farther up the pier.
He shielded her with his own elbows and shoulders until they’d exited the worst of the crowd and the smell, until the breeze cleared their noses and whipped her hair against his cheek. Then he stepped back.
Isabel reached for the railing. Her chipped nails dug into its splintered timber. She drew a short, harsh breath. “I’m sorry, I. . .”
“. . . don’t like crowds?” He leaned beside her.
“No.”
He waited, swinging the shrimp bag in one hand, his other palm on his ribs.
“I. . .” She ran her tongue over her wind-roughened lower lip.
“You. . . you should know this. For the interview. I don’t like crowds, or—or loud noises.
Both at once are worse. They mean I’m in a situation where people are likely to touch me when I’m not expecting it. When I haven’t prepared myself.”
Though at least here, catching her breath, she hadn’t retreated out of his reach.
Not that he meant to grab her again.
“Is all touch bad? Even when you’re expecting it?”
“All. . . I—think. . . yes, usually? But sometimes I. . .” She stopped. A slight tinge of pink returned to her cheekbones. Maybe from the breeze? Then she shook her head. “No, it’s not always bad.”
He dropped his massaging hand. He should have dropped his questions, too. “Not when it’s an octopus?”
“Not when it’s an octopus.”
That answer should have been the end of it. It should have been enough to bank the simmer in his sore stomach. Are you surprised that she doesn’t want you to touch her? Except that after a few more slow breaths, Isabel sneaked a glance at him through her hair.
Just like that, another traitorous flash of heat hit his gut.
One look from a wild creature meant awareness.
Two looks signified curiosity.
If there was a third?
What would have happened if he’d kissed her over the reef tank today?
If he’d lingered with his fingers tracing her pulse and her jaw, before moving closer, exchanging hands for lips, tracing his mouth over hers instead?
If he’d tasted and explored her while the octopus likewise explored their intertwined hands, learning the warmth and wetness of their human skin?
Would his kiss have been a bad touch? Would she have shied away?
Or. . .
No.
He fumbled for his Nikon. Wes busied his fingers and his brain by popping off the lens cap.
He hoisted the camera strap over his head and offered the equipment to Isabel, with the lens turned toward their faces.
“We never got around to taking pictures during our dive. Um, since we’re supposed to be on a date right now, what if we took our first photo here?
It’s not the golden hour yet, but we have bokeh off the water and there’s good moisture in the air for a natural color saturation. The conditions are decent.”
“I. . .”
“I’ve got my hands full with these feed bags. Can you control the angle and the flash? I’ll show you how, if you want.”
“I’d have the camera?” She didn’t take the Nikon. Her flush persisted, though, and she didn’t outright refuse. Or leap off the wharf.
He took the win.
“Is having your picture taken like being touched? Bearable if you’re prepared? If you can control it?”
One of Isabel’s shoulders twitched. “I managed it at UCSF Medical Center. When I was. . . motivated. So—maybe?” But her fingers knotted, grinding against a phantom diamond.
She was thinking about Chase.
He knew it.
Screw that man.
Screw making her anxious.
Screw all of that.
Screw everything except her blush and her hidden looks over the aquarium, the sweep of her tongue over her lips. Screw everything except her radiant, silent joy with the octopus.
He slung the Nikon away again over his shoulder. “What if we try first without the camera?”
“Try what?”
This.
“Will you let me kiss you, Isabel?”
“. . . oh.”
Now would she refuse? He could live with that.
Probably?
But he didn’t have to. Because with another skittish glance at his mouth, she nodded.
Thank God.
“All right?”
For the interviewer.
He set down their market bags and stepped forward—just as she moved from the railing toward him.
Their feet collided. He reached out to steady her with an arm around her waist, and met ribs and elbows.
When he tilted up Isabel’s face, her jaw was sharp again in his palm.
Her hands hesitated over his shoulders and the salt crystals dotting his rash guard.
“Uh—”
“Sorry—”
Before he could make things worse, he stifled his awkwardness against her lips.
Lightly, though: hardly breathing while his mouth ghosted over the chapped coolness of hers.
Her tang and sweetness were tantalizing.
But barely tasted. Not when her hands were still hovering, her elbows still braced, her own breath still shallow.
He kissed her as gently as he knew how, breathing with her, moving with aching slowness and restraint, and maybe this would have to be enough—it would be enough, and he’d be grateful—until:
Splat.
Isabel’s half-lidded eyes flashed when a plume of gull guano soaked the railing beside them. Mute and startled amusement parted her lips. She didn’t pull back from him. And when Wes couldn’t help his own laughter?
The contours of their smiles deepened the kiss.
Though her lips remained cool, her mouth was warm.
Open, soft and pliant, but with a hint of her teeth grazing his skin—and a bolt of desire as wide as the horizon struck through him, hot and sudden and true.
Fuck. He answered her with a sweep of his tongue, a groan of satisfaction and yearning building in his chest, urging her closer, thoughtless with his own wanting.
“A-ah—” She came to him with a clench of her fingers at his nape. A rasp scratched her throat.
His body reacted with imperative impulse to that noise.