 An Excerpt from Ally Blue's Eight Arms to Hold You:
February 2006, Mississippi Coast
Austin Bell stood on the beach at the western tip of Cat Island, watching a late February storm roll in. The cold, damp wind numbed his cheeks and slipped its searching fingers through the holes in his jacket, but he didn't care. He loved it like this, when the winter winds whipped the Gulf into a frenzy and the waves loomed black and sinister in the half-light.
He'd been out there for hours, watching the sea rise and the sky darken and thinking about his life. His future, or lack thereof. Hurricane Katrina had taken the modest apartment building he'd lived in and flattened the resort where he'd worked teaching remedial SCUBA diving to tourists. Six months later, he still hadn't been able to find work that lasted more than a few days. He'd never been rich by any means, but in the past few months he'd learned the hard way what it was like to be hungry and homeless and desperate.
For a while there, he'd thought the bad days were over. The Acadian, one of the Biloxi casinos wiped out by the hurricane, was rebuilding. They had backers, big money guys from Birmingham. The place was going to be bigger and better than ever. He'd packed up his ancient pick-up truck and made the short trip from his home in Pass Christian to Biloxi, hoping to snag a construction job. A week later, he was working again, he'd rented a trailer on the outskirts of Biloxi, and life was looking up.
Then the bottom fell out. The backers got cold feet. With the money gone, the rebuilding project was off, and Austin found himself out of work once again, along with hundreds of others. He'd managed to sweet talk his landlady into letting him stay another month, but time was running out. In a few days, he'd be out on the street.
"Could sell Jess," he mused out loud to the rising wind. "Might bring a few thousand."
It wasn't enough. No amount of money could ever be enough to make him give up Jessamine. He twisted around to check the battered old runabout, which lay behind him in the lee of the little island. The choppy waters of the Mississippi Sound lapped against her sides.
He smiled. That old boat was all he had left now. Sometimes he felt like it was the only thing holding him together. Providing him with the means to experience the barrier islands on days like this one, when the sea turned savage and the raw wind was enough to knock him down. He thought he'd lose his mind if he couldn't have these little escapes.
As he turned back to contemplate the angry Gulf, Austin caught a flash of something pale out of the corner of his eye. Frowning, he squinted out over the roiling waves to his left. At first he saw nothing. Then, just as he was about to give up, it appeared again, much closer to shore. Something pallid, slender and sinuous, like a great tentacle.
"No fucking way." Shoving his hands into his jacket pockets, Austin jogged toward the bit of beach where the whatever-it-was seemed likely to wash up. "There aren't any cephalopods around here."
He was right. What he found rolling in the waves definitely was no sea creature. It was a nude man, pale as death and just as limp.
"Shit." Steeling himself against the inevitable shock of cold, Austin waded into the angry water, grabbed the unconscious man under the arms, and dragged him onto the beach.
Once they were beyond the reach of the high surf, Austin laid the young man gently on the sand and dropped down beside him, gasping for breath. The man was heavier than he looked, and dead weight besides. Blood poured at an alarming rate from a gaping wound in the man's right leg, just above the knee.
Austin didn't hesitate. He tore off his jacket, sweatshirt, and T-shirt, then rolled the T-shirt up and pressed it against the wound. He used the sweatshirt to tie the makeshift pressure dressing in place, then slipped his jacket back on. Pressing his fingers to the man's throat, Austin was relieved to feel a strong, steady pulse. The man's bare chest rose and fell evenly with his breathing.
Reassured that the mysterious person wasn't going to die on him just yet, Austin sat back and studied the young man. He was tall, long-legged and willowy, with the lean, sleek muscles of a swimmer. His skin was frighteningly pale, but a quick perusal told Austin that it must be his natural coloring. His lips had none of the unhealthy bluish tinge that would indicate hypothermia or hypoxia, nor the grayish undertone that went with massive blood loss.
That in itself was as big a mystery as what the man was doing here in the first place. It may be a subtropical region, but the surface waters of the Gulf of Mexico in February weren't exactly balmy. The usual water temperature hovered in the mid-sixties, cold enough to induce hypothermia with more than a few minutes exposure. And the wound in the man's leg had left a trail of blood on the sand.
Raising his head, Austin stared out over the waves. He couldn't see a boat anywhere, which meant either the man had been in the water a very long time indeed, or his boat had sunk. Or both. Austin figured he must've been out boating just past the barrier islands and gotten caught in the storm. Squalls rose suddenly here, and could easily catch the unwary off guard. No way could a naked, wounded man have survived for long in the cold and deadly currents of the open Gulf.
The sky overhead lit up, the lightning flash followed a second later by a deafening boom of thunder. Fat raindrops plopped onto the sand. Austin scowled. Somehow, he had to get the man he'd found into the boat and get him to the mainland. The guy needed medical attention, and fast.
"Okay, buddy, " Austin said, crouching beside the young man. "Here we go."
Austin hoisted him onto his shoulders in a fireman's carry and staggered to his feet. As he made his way toward Jess, a gray curtain of rain rolled in from the Gulf. Within seconds, Austin was drenched to the skin. He gritted his teeth against the sting of the icy rain on his bare hands.
The trip across the spit of sand separating the Gulf from the Sound had never seemed so long. Austin knew it had only taken him a few minutes, but it felt like hours before he laid his burden carefully onto the padded seat in the stern of the boat. Austin climbed on board. He pulled the sturdy plastic cover over the back part of the boat and fastened it in place. Crawling under the cover, he dug a thick blanket out of the storage compartment under the seat and tucked it around the still-unconscious man.
He took a moment to make sure that the man was still breathing and the bandage was still in place on his leg. He seemed to be as stable as Austin could make him. Austin watched him for a moment, wondering again where he'd come from, and who he was. Now that the adrenaline rush had died down a bit, Austin couldn't help noticing that the stranger in his boat was quite attractive, in an unusual way. Straight white-blond hair fell in wispy layers around his face, catching in his long dark lashes and the corners of his wide, sensual mouth. Austin had to fight off a sudden wild urge to kiss him.
"Austin," he mumbled as he crawled out from under the tarp and jumped out of the boat, "you need to get laid."
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