Miami Midnight by Maggie; Davis

realized with a fresh burst of terror. He seemed to be staring at the front of her shirt where she’d loosened a few buttons, his gaze traveling downward with an intensity that conveyed other, even more ominous messages.
    “I want you out of here,” she said, her voice quavering. “Whatever you have to say to me you can—you can—” What could he do? “You can call me at work!”
    He didn’t move.
    “Look, Miss Collier,” he said finally, “I have to talk to you now. It can’t wait until tomorrow. I’m sorry if this puts you off, my coming in this way, but I can’t help the damned storm.”
    She leaned back against the couch to put as much space as possible between them. “I can’t talk to you, didn’t you just hear me? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, bursting in here like this from a—” Her voice rose to a shriek in spite of herself. “—a boat ! You must be crazy!”
    “God, this is impossible,” he muttered. “I’m scaring the hell out of you and getting no place, what you saw this afternoon was a matter of—uh, doing some friends a favor. And not, obviously, what you thought it was.”
    Gaby was no longer listening. Inching away, the couch at her back, she saw him move to her. “Stay away from me,” she cried. “Don’t touch me!”
    “I’m not doing anything to you. Damn, is it because I’m a latino ?” He was suddenly angry. “Is that what makes you so afraid?”
    At that moment another blue-white explosion struck in one of the trees just outside the house. It was like a bomb detonating; the very walls shook. Gaby shrieked. Once started she couldn’t seem to stop. She gave in to pressures that had been accumulating for weeks.
    “Wait!” he shouted. “It’s just lightning. It’ll be all right!”
    Still screaming, Gaby lunged at him. In some remote part of her mind she was amazed that she, Gabrielle Collier, even threatened as she was, would attack anyone. But she sprang at James Santo Marin and heard him grunt as her fists pounded his face and chest. “Jupiter!” she screamed. “Police! Help!”
    “Christ!” He tried to catch her hands, but it was dark. His wrist knocked her under the chin.
    She reeled backward, seeing stars. She tried to save herself by grabbing him, but she still toppled over. He fell with her. In the next instant she found herself pressed down into the musty-smelling sofa cushions, one hand clutching a muscular bicep, her other hand trapped between their bodies.
    For a long moment there was no sound except the storm as they lay stunned, trying to get their breath.
    “I didn’t mean to hit you.” His low voice was right in her ear. “Are you all right?”
    She bucked under him. She wanted to break free, but his body, sprawled over hers, held her down. And, she discovered, her hand was mashed against the lower part of his body, fingers outlining an unmistakable shape under wet cloth.
    She felt James Santo Marin go very still.
    The rain’s hard, tropical drumming pounded the roof, mingling with the sound of drips falling from the sala ’s ceiling into the pots and pans. James Santo Marin lifted his head and looked down at her, his face filled with wary discovery.
    Gaby felt as though her heart were about to jump out of her chest. They were lying on the old couch in the most intimate of positions, James Santo Marin on top of her, her breasts crushed against his chest, his arm under her, partly embracing her. “Let me up,” she choked.
    Shadowed black eyes, inches from hers, gazed down at her with a rather abstracted expression. “Are you hurt?”
    “You hit me,” she cried. “Get off of me!”
    “I didn’t hit you.” His lower body shifted almost imperceptibly against her hand. “I never hit women.”
    Gaby felt dizzy. She had the sudden, surreal sense of being plunged through a dimension of time that had telescoped. They were strangers, lying like this, and yet it was impossible to ignore the intimate reality of that lean,