Storm Surge Read Online Free Page A

offering wasn’t intimacy; it was release. And that was something he
could use right now.
    “Sure,” he
said.
    Later, they
lay together in the tangle of sheets, in the middle of the biggest bed Max had
ever seen, with the sweat cooling and drying on their bodies. A picture window
across the room looked out over the sound towards the mainland.
    “Wow,” she
said. She rolled towards Max and he took her in his arms. She gave a little
purr of contentment and snuggled against his chest. “That was good,” she
murmured. “Very, very good.” She nibbled at his nipple
playfully until he squirmed. That made her chuckle, deep in her throat. She ran
a long nailed hand down his side. Suddenly, she frowned as her fingers ran over
his lower back. “What’s that?”
    “Nothing.”
    “No,
really. Let me
see.” She pulled away slightly and tried to turn him on his stomach. Max sighed
and let her. He rested his head on his forearms and stared at the headboard,
like a man undergoing a painless but tedious medical exam.
    “Oh, my god,”
she breathed when she saw the puckered scar on his back. There was another to
match it one on his lower stomach. Entry and exit. “What happened to you?”
    “I got shot,”
Max said, his voice expressionless.
    “Wow,” she
said again. She ran her fingertips over the scars. Her eyes were bright and
eager, like they’d been earlier. “Were you in the army?”
    “I was a
soldier.” It was sort of true.
    She leaned on
an elbow and arched a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him. “So are we going to
play Twenty Questions about this?”
    Max sighed. “I
got careless.”
    “What
happened?”
    “I don’t want
to talk about it.”
    She sat up,
her face clouding over. She hadn’t pulled the sheet up, and her small, firm
breasts were inches away. But Max wasn’t in the mood anymore. She glanced at
the clock and drew her breath in with a quick hiss.
    “You need to
leave,” she said.
    Yeah , Max thought. I do . He slid
out of the bed and pulled his jeans on. She snuggled up behind him and put her
arm around his waist as he pulled his shirt over his head. She nuzzled briefly
at the scar on his back. He drew away and pulled the shirt down over it. She
didn’t seem to notice his discomfort. “We should do this again,” she said,
“When I get back.”
    “Yeah,” Max
said. “If there’s anything left to get back to.” He bent down and grabbed his
work boot.
    “Oh, come on,”
she said. “How bad can it be? They wouldn’t let people build on the island if
it was that dangerous.”
    “Right,” Max
said. He wasn’t going to argue. If there was one thing he’d learned in his
short time on the Carolina coast, it was that they’d let a developer build a
house on a sandbar if there was enough money to throw around. He laced up his
other boot and stood up. He felt like he should say something, but he was
strangely tongue-tied. “When are you leaving?” he said finally.
    “We’re already
packed,” she said. “Brian just wanted to get a last round in of shooting at his
stupid clay pigeons before we left.”
    Max thought
about the row of expensive shotguns in the glass case downstairs. The sight of
the guns had given him pause. But Kathy-with-a-K hadn’t given him much time to
think about it. She was going to have her fun while Brian had his. A slogan Max
had seen once, back when he was Mercer, popped into his head. It had been
plastered to the wall behind his favorite bar, back in Chicago. NO MATTER HOW
BEAUTIFUL SHE IS, the sticker had said, SOMEWHERE THERE’S A GUY WHO’S TIRED OF
FUCKING HER.
    “Well,” he
said, still feeling awkward, “have a safe trip.”
    “Yeah,” she
said, “You too.”
    The house was
dark as he went downstairs, all the windows sealed tight against the threat
heading toward Pass Island, just over the dip of the horizon.
    Outside, he
got in the truck and pulled away. As he did, he saw the golf cart coming
towards him. The truck Max drove belonged to the Pass