A/N: Thank you to Princessklutz04 for the beta!
Cold Water
She walked away from Grissom, walked away from the towels spread out on the sand and towards the ocean. A man with a dark tan walked ahead of her and she followed his ruler- straight trail to the water. Remembered the day she had found a piece of amber in the sand and how her father had told her it wasn't amber.
"Take it and get it checked but it's a waste of time."
She had known, with the same uncanny clarity with which she had known that something really bad was about to happen, that the light stone cradled in the palm of her hand was indeed amber.
She had been right in both cases. Something really bad had happened and she had worn the piece of amber on a string around her neck as a lady from Social Services had escorted her to the funeral. In your face dad…
The stranger in front of her dove into the water and her toes curled into the wet, cold sand she was standing on. She could feel Grissom's eyes on her back, right between the shoulder blades she had drawn together because an icy wave had lapped at her legs as she walked straight into the water. It forced the air out of her lungs, was cold as death and hell and a grave dug into the sand on a rainy day.
The pull of the ocean was strong, nipping at her legs as she swam out. The waves tried to coax her back to the land, lifted her, crashed behind her like a warning but the undercurrent was so very, very tempting.
Slowly, deliberately, she swam out towards the white ships on the horizon, swam until she almost reached the sandbank before she turned, with a pang of regret, towards the beach.
Grissom was watching her with the intensity of a father watching a child. She'd been lost to him once; he wasn't going to let her get lost again.
The waves carried her back to the shore, her eyes trained on the long, shiny grass growing on the dunes, then on Grissom, smiling.
She walked up to him languidly, concentrated on the feel of the seashells digging almost painfully into the soles of her feet. Wet and towering she stood over him, watched as he opened his mouth as if he was going to speak, then closed it, uncertainty glimmering in his eyes.
With a movement too quick to catch against the glaring light of the sun, she reached behind her, untied the elastic from her hair and shook her head, showering him in tiny drops of salty water.
He shielded his eyes and in a flurry of sand and limbs had her pinned beneath him on the towel. Wet and gorgeous, eyes red, she was breathing hard and he could feel the rise and fall of her chest against his own.
Slowly he leaned down, nipped at her collarbone and the salt on her skin. So good. His tongue swept along the bone and for a moment, a tiny fleeting moment before Sara sighed, almost moaned, he forgot that there were people around.
He looked into her eyes, then at her lips and the curiosity of what the salt on her lips might taste like became too strong. He had to try, had to taste and revel in the deliciousness. Delicious and strange and wonderful. She tasted reckless, like something removed from any and all bonds. Like the air around her, salty and deliciously wild.
The fact that they weren't alone, that he knew they would be attracting attention if he continued kissing her like that, he rolled off of her, took her hand and held it.
The water on her skin dried to a salty crust, marbled her arms and legs. A breeze coming off the ocean made her shiver, made her lips quiver slightly and she slowly closed her eyes.