Radclyffe - Wild Shores

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Austin woke to the sound of the shower running. The bed beside her was empty, and when she ran her hand over the faint indentation where Gem had lain beside her, the sheets were cool. They’d finally fallen asleep only to awaken a few hours later, turn to one another, and slide into another kiss, another caress, another searching exploration. They’d made love a second time in the dark hours of the night and slept again. But now the heat had dissipated and the empty bed signaled the night was over and a new day had arrived. Their detour from reality had ended. She found her watch on the small bedside table. She couldn’t remember having removed it. Seven thirty. Plenty of time to get herself together and out to the airport to meet Tatum’s helicopter.

The bathroom door opened, and she rolled onto her side to face the adjoining room. Gem came out, a towel wrapped around her torso, her expression turning to surprise and what looked like chagrin when she saw Austin watching.

“Hi,” Gem said.

“Morning.”

Gem lifted a hand, waved it toward the room. “I was trying not to wake you, but I couldn’t face climbing into my clothes without being clean. I felt like I’d spent a week in the same shirt and pants.”

“No problem. You didn’t wake me.”

“Oh, okay. Good.”

Gem busied herself with the duffel on the floor. A zipper slid, and Austin imagined her taking out clean clothes. She didn’t have to imagine what she looked like underneath that towel. She had a very precise memory of Gem’s full breasts and narrow waist and curvaceous hips and thighs. Gem’s body was tight and toned, that of a woman who used her muscles for work, not the slim, almost formless physiques of the gym goddesses Austin most often found herself sharing a bed with. But for all Gem’s strength, she was sensuous and quintessentially female as well. And thinking about that right now was only going to lead her down a road she couldn’t afford to take. She swallowed against the dryness in her throat.

“Morning-afters aren’t really my specialty,” Austin said, “so I’ll apologize beforehand for being a bit of a clod.”

Gem straightened, clean clothes in one hand and the other holding the towel to her body. Her gaze slid down over Austin’s chest for a second and back to her face. Austin hitched the sheet a little higher.

“I’m not expecting anything in the way of…morning-after conversation,” Gem said with a quirky little smile. “Last night was last night, right?”

“I think that’s what we agreed on,” Austin said, but that wasn’t what she was thinking. She was thinking she didn’t want last night to be the last night, the only night, even though she had no way—and no right—to suggest differently.

“So I’m not going to say what you’ve probably heard so many times you probably don’t believe it any longer,” Gem said conversationally as she stepped into panties and jeans and somehow managed to get them on while still keeping the towel covering her chest and not showing anything else.

“What do you think that would be?” Austin said, wondering if Gem had any idea she almost never had a conversation worth mentioning, let alone remembering, with women in the morning.

“That I don’t usually do that sort of thing.” Gem frowned. “Actually, I never do that kind of thing.”

“It wouldn’t matter to me if you had.” Austin never really gave any thought to what a woman’s past might be when they were only spending a night together, why should she? They owed her no explanations. But this was Gem, and everything she needed to know had already been said. “I know that last night was different.”

“Do you?” Gem said quietly.

Austin sat up, letting the sheet fall. Nudity wasn’t anything that bothered her and false modesty was ridiculous at this point. “I do. For me too.”

Gem took off the wet towel and draped it over the bedpost. She was nude from the waist up, her chest slightly flushed from the heat of the shower still, her breasts uplifted and rose tipped. Austin wanted to groan but suppressed it. The time for that kind of connection had passed.

“Then we understand each other.” Gem slipped into a yellow button-down cotton shirt and closed it with steady fingers. She bent, shoved clothing into her duffel, and stood with the bag in hand. “I need to get out to the sanctuary. The storm has probably wreaked havoc with some of the nesting areas. I imagine you want to get settled and get to work too.”

Austin slid from the bed, pulled on jeans from the pile of discards on the floor, and shrugged into her shirt. She left it unbuttoned. Work. Yes, she had a lot of that to do. “Be careful out there. It sounds like the roads got pretty rough last night.”

Gem nodded. “I will. I…I hope your stay is productive.”

Austin ran a hand through her hair. “Thanks.”

Gem turned, opened the door, and paused. She looked back. “I won’t say good-bye, just in case.”

“All right,” Austin murmured. “Not good-bye, then.”

Chapter Eleven

The fog had lifted, leaving behind a cold, damp glaze on the railings, stair treads, and surfaces of parked cars. Scattered dryer-sheet wisps of clouds streaked the steel-gray sky. Gem turned up the collar of the denim jacket she’d pulled from her luggage, tossed her duffel into the backseat of her car, and headed down the nearly empty one-way main street. A few locals scurried along walking dogs, and others, bundled up in rain slickers and hunched against the wind, congregated in front of the coffee shop and diner, two of the only places with lights showing. Gem pulled over in front of the coffee shop and put on her emergency flashers. She hurried into the too-warm room, ordered a black eye from the harried teen behind the counter, and grabbed a muffin of nondescript ingredients to eat as she drove. All the things she would do on any ordinary morning, except this was no ordinary morning. She wasn’t fanciful enough to believe that a single night could change her life, but something had definitely changed inside her. Everything she valued was still the same—her job, her friends, her family, the satisfaction she found in small, day-to-day things like coffee and muffins—but those things no longer encapsulated her world. Something new had been added, and the solace she had once taken in the sameness of her life had vanished.

Gem sat in the car, sipping coffee and breaking pieces off her muffin, reluctant to drive away and leave the night behind.

Austin had somehow awakened her desire for the unknown. She hadn’t been eager to explore anything beyond the familiar since those last days with Paul and Christie. Those long-ago days had been different from the last twenty-four hours, so very different. She hadn’t sought or welcomed the experiences Paul insisted she’d enjoy, even though she’d vaguely acknowledged a desire for something she hadn’t been able to name then—a desire to save her marriage because she thought she should, the need to meet Paul’s needs, and beneath it all, the simmering unrest that only seemed to ease when she was with Christie. Easy to recognize in hindsight, nearly impossible to sort out from her fragmented emotions at the time. Now she knew that what had driven her to sleep with both of them had really been her desire for Christie, or at least, for a woman.

A tap on her window made her jump. A fresh-faced woman with short, wind-blown sandy hair in a navy flak jacket with an American flag emblem on one sleeve and a Rock Hill Police patch on the other smiled in at her. Gem rolled down the window.

“Morning, I—”

“You okay, ma’am?” The officer couldn’t be more than twenty or any cuter if she tried. She had dimples on her dimples. “You’ve been sitting here with the flashers on and the engine running for about ten minutes.”