Dream Lake (Friday Harbor #3)(23)

Zoë looked at him without seeing him, her eyes desperate and tear-blurred. “My ch-chest—”

He understood immediately. “You’re not having a heart attack. You’ll be fine. We just need to slow your breathing down.” She continued to stare at him, wetness leaking from her eyes, mingling with the pearly mist of sweat on her cheeks. The sight caused something to twist painfully inside his chest. “You’re safe,” he heard himself saying. “I won’t let anything happen to you. Easy …” His hand came to the side of her face. Her cheek was cool and plush, like the sepals of a white orchid. Carefully he touched her nose, pressing one nostril shut, holding it like that. “Keep your mouth closed. Breathe through one side of your nose.”

With the intake of air restricted, Zoë’s breath began to regulate. But it wasn’t easy. She gasped and hiccupped, and kept fighting to breathe as if she were trying to insufflate corn syrup through a straw. All Alex could do was hold her patiently, and let her body work it out. “Good girl,” he murmured, as he felt her begin to relax. “Just like that.” A few more constricted breaths. To his relief, she stopped struggling. He let his hand cradle her face, while his thumb wiped at the stippling of tears on her cheek. “Take long breaths from deep down.”

Looking exhausted, Zoë dropped her head to his shoulder, the pale golden curls tickling his jaw. Alex went very still. “Sorry,” he heard her whisper in between broken gasps. “Sorry.”

Not as sorry as he was. Because the feel of her had sent a shock of pleasure through him, so pure and searing that it was almost pain. He had known somehow that it would be like this. He found himself gripping her closer, until her body molded to his as if her bones had gone liquid. A few remaining tremors went across her back, and he chased them slowly with his hands. He felt his senses opening to take her in, the incredible lush delicacy of her. She smelled like crushed flowers, a dry and innocent scent, and he wanted to open her shirt and breathe it directly from her skin. He wanted to press his lips against the wild pulse in her throat and stroke it with his tongue.

Heat uncurled and rose through the stillness. The urge to touch her intimately, slide his hands through her hair and inside her clothes, nearly drove him crazy. But it was enough just to stand here with her, disoriented from the desire that flowed all through him.

Through heavy-lidded eyes, he saw a movement nearby. It was the ghost, only a few yards away, regarding him with lifted brows.

Alex shot him an incinerating glare.

“I think I’ll check out the other rooms,” the ghost said tactfully, and vanished.

Zoë clung to Alex, who was the one solid thing in the world, the still center of the merry-go-round. Dancing at the edge of her awareness was the mortified knowledge that, after this, she would never be able to face him again. She had made a fool of herself. He would have nothing but contempt for her. Except … he was so gentle … so concerned. His hand moved over her back in slow circles. It had been a long time since a man had held her—she had forgotten how good it felt. The surprise was that Alex Nolan was capable of such quiet, fluent tenderness. She would have expected anything from him except this.

“Better?” he asked after a while.

She nodded against his shoulder. “I … I’ve always hated spiders. They’re like … hairy wads of death on eight legs.”

“Usually they only bite humans to defend themselves.”

“I don’t care. I’m still scared of them.”

Amusement rustled in his chest. “Most people are.”

Zoë lifted her head to look up at him with wide eyes. “Including you?”

“No.” He caressed the edge of her jaw with the backs of his fingers. His face was austere, but his eyes were warm. “In my line of work, you see enough of them that you get used to it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Zoë said vehemently. Remembering the one in the kitchen, she felt her pulse skyrocket. “That one was huge. And the way it dropped out of the cabinet and started hopping toward me—”

“It’s dead,” Alex interrupted, his hand returning to her back, resuming the calming stroking. “Relax, or you’ll start hyperventilating again.”

“Was it a black widow?”

“No, just a wolf spider.”

She shuddered.

“They’re not lethal,” he said.

“There must be more. The house is probably full of them.”

“I’ll take care of it.” He sounded so assured and matter-of-fact that she couldn’t help but believe him. His face was so close that she could see the shadow of whisker-grain heralding a dark five o’clock shadow. “The only way spiders can get in,” Alex continued, “is through cracks and places that aren’t sealed. So I’m going to install door sweeps and weather stripping, caulk around all the windows and doors, and put wire mesh over every vent. Trust me, this is going to be the most pestproof house on the island.”

“Thank you.”

A moment later, it occurred to Zoë that she was still glued to him as tightly as a barnacle on a harbor piling. And her heart was still in overdrive. Standing as close as they were, it was impossible not to notice that he was becoming aroused, the pressure of his body hard and delicious. She couldn’t seem to move, only leaned against him in a dry-mouthed paralysis of pleasure.