She pops her head back into the kitchen.

“Want to go skinny-dipping?”

Yes.

“No,” I tell her firmly. “I don’t swim.”

“So you said,” she nods, then struts through the kitchen naked, opens the back door, and makes her way across the lawn in the broad daylight to the private beach behind the house.

I shake my head, unable to prevent the smile from spreading across my face.

The girl is something, that’s for sure.

I limp to the window and watch her.

She’s unconcerned that someone will see her.  She simply doesn’t care as she puts on her show for me.

And it’s for me.  I know that.

Nora isn’t the kind of girl to strut outside nude in the daylight for any other reason than a means to her end.  For whatever reason, she’s made it her goal to get me this summer.

I don’t know why.

But suddenly, it feels good.

It feels f**king good to be pursued like this, after being the one who was on the giving end of unrequited affection for so long.

She wants me.

Through the glass, Nora’s eyes meet mine and holds my gaze.  She swims on her belly for a while, her eyes just above the surface of the water, never looking away from my own.

She splashes and kicks at me, flipping onto her back.

Her tits bob above the water, her ni**les pointed to the sun.

My dick twitches again.

And then when she’s finally done showing off for me, she emerges from the water, dripping wet and bathed in sunlight.

She’s sexy as hell.

And she knows it.

She strides back across the lawn, watching me every step of the way.  She climbs the back steps, crosses the kitchen, and pauses in front of me, dripping on my feet.

“I’m cold,” she murmurs into my ear, leaning up on her tiptoes.  She is.  Her cold skin grazes against me, bleeding through my shirt, as her tits press into my chest. Her ni**les are hard enough to cut glass and my hands ache to slide along her skin, over her hips, down to where I’d grip her ass and…

I grit my teeth.

“Then you should get dressed,” I tell her calmly, bending to pick up the towel she’d discarded earlier and handing it to her.  I make no move to touch her, regardless of how much my traitorous fingers want to slip in between her legs and…

I grit my teeth again.

She sees my jaw flex and grins victoriously.

She knows that she won the game she was playing… that she made me want her.

I don’t bother telling her that I wanted her already.

Instead, I just meet her gaze and hold it, until she steps back and walks away.

This time, instead of staring at her bare ass, I focus on the black words tattooed on her shoulder blade. I saw them earlier, but I was too distracted to read them, even though they make me curious.

Nora isn’t the type of girl I would’ve figured for a tattoo.

She’s refined, buttoned-up, classy.

But even still, she has black words tattooed on her shoulder blade, with a small elegant anchor.  Fluctuat nec mergitur.

It’s Latin.  What does it mean?

I pull my phone out of my pocket and punch the words into a search engine.

A result is immediately returned.

She is tossed by the waves, but she does not sink.

It has meaning.  It’s symbolic.  The ink is stark black and the tattoo looks new.

It’s a reminder to her… to stay strong.  To be resolute.  To never sink no matter what.  

My eyes narrow as I remember the text on her phone.

I want your word.  And I want you to keep it.

I know where you are.

Something happened to her.  Something she doesn’t want to talk about, something that she’s scared of, something that involves this William person.

I’ve seen the fear in her eyes a couple of different times, but she always covers it up.

I’ve seen that kind of fear before, in the eyes of women in Afghanistan.  In the eyes of women who had been beaten and abused and raped.

My stomach clenches at the memory, but also for Nora.

Someone has hurt her.

But that someone won’t do it again, not while she’s here on my watch.

Of that, I am certain.

Resolutely, I make my way back out to the living room and drop into the chair by the windows.  I wait while Nora gets dressed, and ponder our situation the whole time.

We’re like two prize fighters, circling around a ring, each waiting for the other one to pounce.

We’ve both got secrets that we don’t want the other to know.

It’s kind of ironic.

Nora finally emerges, clad in a t-shirt with no bra and short shorts.  Her ni**les poke through the thin material and the corners of her mouth twitch.

She knows exactly what she’s wearing.

I smile at her.

“How was your swim?”

She smiles back.

Thrust and parry.

“It was refreshing.  How was watching?”

I hold her gaze and smile again.

“It was refreshing.”

Her grin widens.

“I forgot to get breakfast stuff for tomorrow. What would you like?”

You.

“Eggs,” I suggest.

She nods.  “Wise choice. I think I can manage eggs.”

She grabs her purse.

I lift an eye-brow and glance at her chest again, at the way her bare tits strain against the t-shirt and her ni**les poke against the fabric.

“Don’t you want to put on a bra?”

I somehow manage to keep my voice level.

She grins angelically and leans down to whisper in my ear, her tits pressed against my shoulder.

“No.  I want you thinking about my ni**les while I’m gone.  They taste like honey.”

Jesus.

With that, she saunters away.

I swallow hard.

Cold fish. Cold fish. Cold fish.

Cold.

Fucking.

Dead.

Fish.

Somehow, I doubt that even the thoughts of cold dead fish are going to help me this summer.

Chapter Seven

Brand

There’s nothing to do out here but stew in the idea that I’m trapped in Angel Bay.  There’s barely a cell signal, I can’t get around and I can’t drive yet.

Perfect.

Oh, and add to that that the girl who is sharing my cottage wants to have strings-free sex with me and for some reason, I turned her down.

What the f**k is wrong with me?  I’m just going to blame it on the pain pills. They’ve addled my brain.

With a groan, I push myself out of the chair I’m in and hobble toward the door, my crutches scraping on the floor.