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DAWN HAD BEGUN TO PAINT THE SKY PINK AND ORANGE BY the time Ethan sensed her. He sat halfway down a grassy knoll, watching the waves shimmer across the sand as he listened to her approaching steps.
She smelled like no one he’d ever met. Fresh and airy, like warm summer rains and crisp spring winds. It was an alluring, almost erotic combination.
She stopped several feet away on his left. The stiffening breeze tugged at her hair, throwing the dark strands across her face. Her hands were thrust deep into her pockets, but even from where he sat he could see the trembling. Tiredness, or a continuing reaction to what they’d walked into?
“I have to swim.”
She was nuts. “That’s the Pacific out there, not a sheltered cove.”
“I know. And it’s perfect.” Her gaze met his, as remote as her voice. “Given your current state, I suggest you wait in the car.”
She didn’t wait for a reply, just continued toward the water. When she reached the sand she began stripping. Soon there was nothing left but flesh.
She was creamy and luscious and absolutely perfect, and he went hard just watching her. If he were any sort of gentleman, he’d go back to the car as she’d suggested, but he’d long ago given up any such pretensions. Besides, he seriously doubted whether any man could walk away right now.
She dove underwater, then rose a heartbeat later and rolled onto her back. Her breasts were generous white mounds with dark thrusting peaks that he suddenly ached to taste. He shifted and wished his jeans weren’t so damn tight. The goddamn zipper was killing him.
It was lucky the moon had fled. At least he had control enough to simply sit there. And while he suspected she wouldn’t rebuke his advances right now, he wasn’t about to hit on a woman who’d been through what she’d just endured.
He watched until it became apparent she was getting ready to come out, then got up and walked stiffly to the car. His erection hadn’t gone down any by the time she reappeared. Though she was fully dressed, moisture made the T-shirt almost see-through, and her sweatpants clung like a second skin.
Thank God for long shirts. “Back to the motel?”
She nodded, her teeth chattering and skin almost blue. He took off his coat and draped it across her shoulders, then settled her into the passenger’s seat. After climbing into the driver’s side, he started the engine and turned the heater up full blast. The car’s interior quickly became a furnace. The chattering eased and her skin became a more normal color. But the T-shirt took longer to dry, and he wasn’t at all sorry about that.
“Mind telling me what that was about?”
She sighed. “I’m an empath with a difference.”
He glanced at her, but she still had her eyes closed. “What sort of difference?”
“Instead of sensing the emotions of the living, I soak up the feelings of the dead.”
“That’s not possible.”
She snorted softly. “I wish.”
“But …” He frowned. They’d known what he was from the moment he walked up to the motel door, and that was something no one could have told them. Everything else, maybe, but not that. “How?”
“I’m not really sure myself. But it seems the more emotional or violent the death, the more those feelings permeate a room.”
“So when you walked into that room—”
“I felt everything that little boy had when he died.”
No wonder she’d been so cold. She’d shared head space with violence and death. “How the hell do you keep sane?”
A smile touched her still pale lips. “I was under the impression you thought I wasn’t.”
“Well, swimming in the ocean until you’re blue is pretty damn crazy.”
“I had to wash myself clean,” she said softly. “I could smell them. On me. In me.”
A sentiment he could certainly understand. He’d done the same thing himself once or twice over the years—though admittedly, he’d chosen a hot shower rather than an icy ocean. “So what happens now?”
“Now we need to get some breakfast and take it back to the motel. You know a bakery open at this hour?”
“I’m a cop. We know the opening time of every bakery, deli, and fast-food chain in the whole damn city.”
