Leoti Read Free

her heart raced with a burning need to find the source. She rose from the blanket. Her back sore and legs cramped, she stretched and tried to remain quiet. Maybe she should return to her cabin and bolt the windows and doors? The thought was dismissed. Though the melody was faint and foreign it was sweetly benign. Like a sparrow’s call to her young it pulled her through the thicket to the west side of the lake.
    Moving branches from her face she emerged just before the clearing, and what she saw before her stopped her heart. A man, beautifully proportioned, was out in the calm waters, nude. In this weather! With the sun all but gone it had to be close to fifty degrees. He was only partially submerged. Josie could see all the way to the rise of his muscular buttocks. She took a step forward and stopped.
    A soft humming came from him.
    Was he for real? She looked around for the joke. Even with the waning light of the sky she could see the glistening pearls of water sparkle over his broad shoulders. His blue-black mane was slicked flat to his head and smoothed to a neat V down the line of his spine. His bare arms were both ringed with tribal tattoos.
    The chants gave way to a song like she’d never heard and she wondered if it was him or the forest that was singing it. There was such enchantment to the scene she again questioned if she was dreaming. Then he went forward and swam out into the water. His glide was strong and full of virility. She stepped forward herself, wanting to stop him, to let him know she was there. He submerged under the black waves and disappeared.
    Josie stood mesmerized waiting for him to surface. He soon drifted further out floating on his back, his arms going out above him in a backstroke. It was him. The guy from the store. Where did he come from? Josie slipped back into the forest, guilty over the intrusion on this stranger’s private moment, and flustered over what seeing him in his element did to her already confused heart. She’d never seen a man and felt such a visceral connection with him. Not after she found her Carlton. Walking back through the forest she looked twice over her shoulder toward the now hidden part of the lake, questioning all she’d witnessed. Disturbed. She respected the privacy of others, and somehow she felt as if she had violated something spiritual, something sacred. Quickly Josie gathered up the blanket, basket, and water bottle and left. The image of him permanently burned into her mind.
     
    After a hot shower and a warm cup of tea, Josie got under the covers. She turned on the light to scribble her thoughts. However her mind wandered and the image of the man by the lake pushed to the front of her thoughts. Josie should go to the typewriter and begin to trace her thoughts into something meaningful but she wasn’t interested in leaving the warmth of her blankets.
    What her mother and sister didn’t know was that she loved romance. Books, movies, songs, anything romantic and she was all in. She’d even written a few steamy stories herself. She could never abandon the seriousness of her life to become a romance author, but the best-selling non-fiction novel that was so acclaimed had her wishing she could. Josie smiled. Her pen scribbled away.
     
    He had the body of a god, but it was his angelic voice that drew her to him. She boldly stepped out of the cover of the trees as the stranger dove into dark glistening waters. The lake parted then swallowed his grace. She watched him from the clearing, longing, wanting the peace and serenity the atmosphere seem charged with. But she held back. He swam the lake and returned to the shore. Halfway in she knew he’d seen her. Still she did nothing to conceal her presence. In fact she stepped forward. The stranger stood in waist deep water and walked out of its rippling current. His body was slowly revealed to her.
    He looked tough. His powerful well-muscled body moved with easy grace. The water had slicked his dark hair to