Goddess of the Sea (Goddess Summoning #1)(7)

As velvet sleep swept her away, CC was sure she heard a woman's laughter, the same magical laughter she had heard while she danced in the rain on her balcony. CC's lips curved into a smile, and she slept.

And while she slept, CC dreamed that a man's voice called to her in deep, seductive tones. Her dreaming body responded to that call and strained forward, but she felt unusually sluggish. In her dream she opened her eyes. She was surrounded by a veil of liquid blue. I'm underwater, her sleeping mind acknowledged.

Come to me, my love.

The rich voice sounded within her mind, and CC's pulse jumped.

Yes! She tried to yell her answer, but in her dream she was mute.

A light shimmered over her head and she peered up, squinting into the brightness. Just above the surface of the water a shape appeared. CC floated up, and the shape took on form and became a man. He was dark and exotic. His hair fell around his wide, bronzed shoulders in a black wave and his eyes laughed down at her. Through the ripples of the crystal waves she could see his easy smile as his outstretched hand beckoned to her.

She tried to reach up and take his hand, but her arm felt leaden. It would not obey her desire to respond.

The man's handsome face saddened. He looked lost and the voice inside her head was filled with longing.

Please come to me…

Chapter 3

A different kind of light played crimson shadows across her closed eyelids. What an odd dream, CC thought as she stretched luxuriously. The smooth feel of fresh sheets against her naked body mixed with the poignant, unfulfilled seduction of the dream. She still felt super-sensitized and her naked body tingled.

Naked?

She never slept in the nude. Why the heck was she naked? She flung her eyes open and cringed at the brightness of her bedroom, then quickly closed them again. It couldn't be later than 0730. Could it? Hadn't she set her alarm? Was she late for work? Her heart pounded.

Memories of the night came flooding back—the two bottles of champagne, the movie, the sudden brainstorm that led to the idea that led to the ritual. Here she cringed and tried to burrow down into her sheets, but her memory was relentless.

"You'd think I'd had enough champagne that I would have blacked it all out," she groaned.

She peeked over the side of the bed. The vanilla-rum candle had burned out. Well, at least she could be thankful she hadn't set her apartment on fire. She glanced down. Her nightgown made a rumpled, pale spot on her cream-colored carpet.

She shook her head and sighed. Two bottles of champagne—what had she been thinking?

"I forgot," she muttered. "The process of rational thought stops after bottle number one."

No wonder she'd had the weird dream; she'd been in a drunken stupor.

She glanced back at the nightstand and squinted at her bedside alarm clock, which read 11:42 a.m. CC's eyes widened. Panic banished the dream, and she sat bolt upright.

"It's almost noon!" She yelped, scrambling to her closet to frantically pull out a fresh uniform before she remembered that she didn't have to report for duty that day. She was flying out tomorrow, which meant that today would be dedicated to packing and tying up the loose ends being gone for three months created.

She took a shaky breath and ran her hand through her hair. Actually, the only reason she had to go on base at all that day was to stop by the orderly room and pick up her new set of dog tags. (She was still chagrined that she'd lost her old set during the move from Colorado.) Beside that, she just needed to buy some last minute toiletries for the trip, come back to the apartment and move her plants from the balcony to her living room so that her neighbor, Mrs. Runyan, could water them and finish her packing. And, of course, she had to remember to drop her key off with Mrs. Runyan before she left for the airport the next morning.

CC took a deep breath. What was wrong with her? She was usually so organized and logical about a deployment. She had planned to get up early that morning and finish her business on base, and then get her plants taken care of and her packing completed early so that she could spend the rest of the day relaxing. The trip to Saudi would be long and exhausting, and CC definitely was not looking forward to it—and that's not even considering how much she hated flying.

She shook her head. Instead she'd chosen to send herself off with an enormous hangover. CC marched into the bathroom and flipped on the shower. As the warm, soothing mist began to rise, she started searching through the cabinet for some aspirin for her tremendous headache. But before she found it, she stopped herself.

Headache? No, now that her heart wasn't yammering a mile a minute, and she wasn't afraid she'd been AWOL for half a day, she realized her head didn't actually hurt. At all. Actually, she felt fine. She closed the cabinet door and studied herself in the mirror.

Instead of the sallow, hollow-eyed look of a morning-after hangover, CC's chestnut-colored eyes were clear and bright. Her gaze traveled down her naked body. Her skin was healthy and vibrant; she glowed with a lovely pinkish flush. It was almost like she had spent the night being pampered in an exclusive spa, instead of drinking two bottles of champagne, eating a ton of KFC and getting caught in a thunderstorm while she danced in the moonlight.

"Maybe…" she whispered to her reflection.

A thrill of delight traveled the length of her nakedness as she remembered the moonlight and the electric passion it had fueled within her body. She could almost feel the night against her skin again.