Undercover Mistress

desperation:

“Cold…c-cold…”

“I know…” she whispered against his back, tightening her arms around him, her hands unthinkingly stroking. “Shh…it’s okay…it’s okay…”

“C-cold.” He turned suddenly, reaching for her.

She gave a gasp as his arms came around her, folding her against his naked body in a shockingly intimate embrace. Her face was trapped now in the hollowed curve of neck and jaw, held there by the weight of a bony masculine chin, her lips pressed against a tickling thread of pulse. “Doc!” she squeaked in panic. “Doc- help!”

The loud snores coming from the direction of the armchair continued unabated.

Oh, God. What now? She squeezed her eyes shut and held herself still, holding even her breath. Okay…okay. Don’t panic. He’s unconscious. Delirious. This is okay. You’re fine.

Willing herself to the discipline of slow, deep breaths, she felt calm gradually overtake her. And with the quieting of her own mind and body, became aware that the man was shaking again. Not the terrible, racking shudders of hypothermia, but something gentler, and oddly rhythmic. She held herself utterly still, listening…and came to a stunning but inescapable realization: the man was crying.

Incredible, but yes, it was true. Though still less than fully conscious, the man in her arms was silently weeping.

The feeling that came over Celia then was unlike anything she’d ever known, an emotion she could neither name nor describe. It awoke from somewhere deep inside her, rippled through her chest and shivered over every inch of her skin. She felt almost frighteningly fierce and primitive and powerful…and at the same time incredibly soft and gentle and nurturing.

“So…cold,” the man whispered.

“I know…” Celia answered, her throat husky with the new emotions, “I know…but it’s okay…you’re safe…I’ve got you.”

In that moment, in some strange way, she felt he belonged to her.

When the first slithery something brushed his skin, he felt it like the sting of a whip. Fresh adrenaline slammed into his exhausted body. His mind shrieked, Shark! Every muscle, nerve and sinew braced for the jolt of teeth tearing into his flesh.

Instead, there it was again-that light, slithery touch, almost like a caress. Like cold, clammy fingers drawn flirtatiously along his torso…his arms…his legs. Sick with horror, it was several long seconds before the truth penetrated his tired brain: Not sharks. Nor any kind of fish, in fact.

It was seaweed.

It came to him that he must have drifted into one of the vast beds of giant kelp that lie off the coast of Southern California. But what did that mean for his chances of survival? He knew next to nothing about kelp, his entire experience limited to the rubbery tangles he’d seen washed up on the beaches, smelling of brine and dead sea creatures. Good thing or bad thing?

In the end, he supposed, it probably didn’t matter much, one way or the other. He was so cold…so weak…and still so far from the lights. So far…

Keep moving…stay awake…stay alive…

Something bumped him. Definitely something big, this time. Something heavy. Definitely not seaweed.

He struck at it weakly, still fighting for life, out of raw instinct, to his last living breath. Take that, shark!

But whatever it was didn’t seem at all impressed by his futile gesture of defiance. It didn’t bother to move away from him. It didn’t move in for the kill, either. It merely dipped sluggishly into the flattened slick between waving fronds of kelp, then surfaced and nudged him again. And again. As if, he thought, it was trying to get his attention.

Vaguely annoyed-Either finish me or get the hell out of my way, damn you!-Roy pushed at the object again. Again it dipped and bobbed, in what seemed to him almost like a friendly invitation. And on the very edges of consciousness, his reason flashed the word: driftwood.

Instinctively, without even knowing why, with the last remnants of his strength and will, he grasped the floating log and hitched himself onto its gnarled length. Clinging to it, he gave in once more to the darkness and the cold.

It wasn’t as bad as he’d thought it would be, dying. Rather a relief, in fact, after the cold and the pain and the constant, unrelenting struggle to keep swimming…keep moving…stay alive.

He couldn’t very well be expected to keep moving, keep swimming, could he, when he couldn’t feel his arms and legs. Couldn’t feel much of anything, in fact. He seemed to recall knowing this was because his body was concentrating its remaining resources, bringing everything into its core to keep the vital organs alive. Soon, even those would quit functioning. Heart or brain…which would be the last to go? His heart, probably. He could already feel his brain shutting down-at least, he assumed that was what was happening, since he was having such weird fantasies-pictures and sounds and sensations that made no sense to him. Voices-strangers’ voices. One in particular, a woman’s, crooning to him as if he were a child. A little baby. He found it unexpectedly comforting.

He dreamed a face to go with the voice-an angel’s, naturally. This angel, though, had a body like a Playboy centerfold, which was definitely something they hadn’t told him about in Sunday School. The angel snuggled her voluptuous body next to his, warming him. Soothing him with her voice…warming him with her body.

Yeah, he thought, this dying business isn’t so bad…

Resurrection, though, was hell.

Protesting, he came rocketing up out of black oblivion and into a blinding, thundering artillery barrage of pain. Pain was everywhere. It pounded behind his eyeballs and stabbed the muscles of his arms and legs like a thousand tiny, vicious knives. It seared through his chest and yawned cold and empty in the pit of his belly. His skin burned. His molars ached. He hurt so badly he retched, which was not only humiliating, it made everything hurt more than ever. The urge to throw up was incredibly strong, and it was only because he couldn’t stand any more of that pain that he managed to fight it back down.

At first, he thought he wanted to go back to the nice darkness and stay there, even if the darkness was death. Then he thought maybe he had died, that those Sunday School teachers years ago had been right about where he was destined to end up.

The notion scared him enough so he dared to open his eyes, and that was when he figured out he was most likely alive after all. At least, he was unless the hereafter looked a lot like somebody’s den, and God or the devil was a chubby guy wearing a purple silk bathrobe, sound asleep in a big ugly armchair and snoring like a buzz saw with his mouth wide open.

Reassured, Roy gave in to the lead weights attached to his eyelids and let them sink down…down.

A moment later they fluttered up again. His heart beat a wild tattoo against his ribs. What the hell? Am I delirious? Dying after all?

Breathing slowly and deeply, he took stock. Nope. Not delirious. There was a woman in bed with him. He could feel the humid warmth of her breath on his skin, the dove-soft tickle of her hair. Her arm lay draped like a strap across his torso, and one of her legs had overlapped and slipped intimately between his. With the utmost care, he turned his head. A deliciously feminine scent drifted to his nostrils. Ignoring the shooting pains rocketing through his skull, he tensed his face and neck muscles and aimed his eyes downward. A vision of tumbled blond met his gaze-winter grass touched with sunshine.

He thought, My God, it’s my angel. I didn’t dream her. She’s real.

The body snuggled against him tensed, suddenly. The cloud of blond hair parted, and he found himself gazing into a single wide-awake eye-an eye of the clearest, most vivid blue he’d ever seen. The eye, surrounded by thick, sooty lashes, stared back at him-for about two seconds. Then, with a flurry of movement that reminded him of an uncoiling spring, the arm, the leg, the eye, and all the various body parts that went with them, separated themselves from him and retracted into a blanket-wrapped bundle. The bundle was topped by a face befitting an