Excerpt from "'Demon Ahoy! "
With a twist of her fingers, she summoned a gust of wind into the boat’s drooping sails and gripped the mast as the craft sped across the waves toward the speck. As she neared, a shimmering curtain parted to reveal the small island, not more than a mile or so across, with a profusion of trees in the middle and a line of bowed palm trees along the sweep of beach.
In the middle of the white-hot sand stood a dark figure, waiting.
Kal’s heart hammered in triumphant glee at the desperate anticipation she was determined to ignore. She let the boat sail twenty feet from the shore before she commanded the wind to die from her sails.
“Ahoy!” Kal called, putting on her sunglasses. “How about some help?”
Even from this distance she could make out every detail of Sark’s expression, from his thick strong brows to the firm mouth. He hadn’t changed, but then, demons didn’t. Only his hair had grown long and tumbled in a dark mass over his broad shoulders. He wore a pair of cut-off shorts that clung to his muscular thighs and highlighted every muscle of the amazing six-pack rising from the dark curls nestled at the low-slung waistband. Oh no, he hadn’t changed at all.
His night-dark eyes watched her warily as the boat bobbed on the water. A slow smile spread over his face as he drawled, “You always were a tease, Kal.” Then he crooked his finger in a ‘come here’ gesture and the boat jumped, cutting a swath across the waves toward him.
Kal clung to the mast as the boat slid into the sandy beach and came to rest, tilting, half in and half out of the water at Sark’s feet. He offered his hand to help her out. Ignoring it, she jumped in a graceful arc over the side of the boat and landed delicately at his side. The look she gave him was deliberately challenging.
Sark raised an eyebrow. “I see. You’re still mad.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?” She looked down the long length of sandy beach. “I just wanted to make sure you were really here.” She glanced back at him. “Alone.”
Sark’s lips quirked. “All alone, baby.”
“Don’t you baby me,” she said coldly. “You and I are over. Were over,” she corrected, “the minute you stepped out the door.”
He had the audacity to look amused. “Don’t tell me. You’ve just dropped in for tea and crumpets.”
Kal considered throwing sand in his face, but the gesture seemed inadequately juvenile compared to the potent anger coursing through her veins. She’d like to stomp on him, kick him hard in the balls, divert a lightning bolt right through his devilish heart -- if he even had one. She seriously doubted he did.
Instead, she bit her lip and turned away, afraid she’d make a bigger fool of herself than she already had by coming to find him. “So why don’t you show me where you’ve been hiding out for the last five hundred years?”
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Copyright ©2007 Cassandra Kane
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