Free Tempest Rising by Tracy Deebs

surfing with us the last couple of days and his skills are as crazy as yours.”
    His friend laughed, a low, warm chuckle that had my blood running hot and a bowling ball weighing down my stomach. My joy at being in the water drained away as quickly as it had come and suddenly, I wanted to be anyplace but where I was.
    But since the ground opening and swallowing me whole wasn’t really a viable option, I braced myself and slowly turned to face the newcomer—already convinced of what I would see.
    Sure enough, standing next to Mark with a grin as wide as the Pacific was a tall, bronzed, well-muscled guy with dark hair and wild, wicked eyes. The same guy who’d been haunting my dreams—and my nightmares—for the last four days.
    “Tempest, this is Kona. Kona, my girl, Tempest.”
    “It’s good to meet you,” Kona said, tongue totally in cheek. “Mark has told me a lot about you.”
    He reached for my hand and as our fingers touched, I felt a jolt deep inside myself—as if the two halves of my world had just violently, irrevocably collided.

Chapter 6
    I wanted to snatch my hand back.
    Wanted to go on holding his hand forever.
    Wanted … so much that I wasn’t sure where to start or how to ask for what it was that I needed.
    “Yeah. It’s good to meet you too.”
    His thumb rubbed across the back of my hand, causing shivers to run up and down my spine like little windswept feathers. I braced for the pain I always felt when someone touched me these days, but there was none. Only a pleasure so intense that I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
    “So, are you ready to go again?” Mark asked, his eyes darting between us like we were players at a tennis match. I could see them darkening with suspicion, and I pulled at my hand, trying to get Kona to let it go before Mark turned all macho he-man on me.
    Kona’s fingers slowly released mine, but not without a final squeeze that had my breath catching in my throat. How can this be happening? I wondered crazily. More importantly, why was it happening? And why now, when I already had more than enough changes to focus on?
    “Are you?” Kona’s voice was a little raspier than it had been, his eyes just a little darker—as if the contact between us had affected him as well.
    “Am I what?”
    “Are you ready?”
    The words hung in the air between us—trapped—and it was like he could see inside of me. Like he knew so much more than I did about … everything.
    “Ummm—” Did I mention that I’m not the most articulate person at the best of times, and under pressure, my words dry up as completely as the desert during a sandstorm?
    “Of course she’s ready.” Mark wrapped an arm around my shoulder, bringing me against his body, and for one irrational second I felt like a bone being pulled in different directions by two slavering, growling dogs. Except both of these guys still had smiles on their faces. “Right, Tempest?”
    “Yeah, of course.” I gave him the answer he wanted, but it was just another discernible lie. I wasn’t ready to go into the ocean again, not with Kona watching every move I made. But Mark couldn’t see inside my head and as he pulled me toward the water, pain ricocheted down my arms.
    Again, I wondered at the differing sensations. Pain from Mark, the guy I was pretty sure I loved and who I felt secure around. Pleasure from Kona, the guy I didn’t know how to respond to and who I certainly didn’t trust.
    Mark propelled me down the beach until the surf danced around my ankles and licked at me like a hundred tongues of fire. Something was coming, it seemed to tell me as it burned where it normally soothed. Something big, and I couldn’t hide from it anymore.
    As if I had ever been able to.
    We started paddling out, and within seconds Mark was ahead of me, his whipcord-lean body stretched out over his board like an offering to the surf gods. Normally I would be right there with him, pushing into the water—desperate for the next big