by Ella James
“What?” I’m stifling a smile.
“Oh, you know.” He lifts his brows. “The thing she did.”
“The thing?” I’m chuckling now, at his strangeness.
He nods once. “I know,” he says sagely. “And I see why you don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh, sod off.”
“Isn’t that a swear word for you English types?” He’s grinning, and I roll my eyes because he looks so proud of himself.
I slip my folded Atkins wrapper into a pocket on the front of my sleep shorts and force my aching legs to stand. “Being near you is wearing on my morals.” I say it lightly, but I cross myself discreetly as I walk around him.
He snorts, and for a while longer, we toil in silence, shards of rock flaking onto our shoes as we chip at the rim of the cave’s mouth.
When it becomes impossible to lift my arms, I sit on a nearby mini-boulder, rubbing at my knotted shoulders and watching him swing the hammer. Sweat coats his neck and back, and stains the waistline of his battered khaki shorts. His shoulder rolls as he reaches around to rub his back. Then he glances back at me, pirate-swarthy with his dark scruff turned into a light beard, and his high cheekbones, and those lips…
“So tell me, what do Tristan girls like yourself do for entertainment when you’ve got some down time?”
I snort. “Down time?”
He turns around to face me, wiping his forehead. “Not much of that around here?”
“Nearly never.”
“They were talking about you in the bar last night.” He runs a hand back through his sweat-wet hair, which I wish looked even a bit off-putting, and my tummy dips in response to his words.
“And?”
He shrugs. “Just saying how you work with the animals and at the clinic.”
“We all do different tasks. I’m no exception.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“You were hearing bits from Mac at the pub?” I bite my lip to hide a smirk.
He laughs. “Mac seemed all right.”
I look down at my lap, flexing my cramping fingers. “Seeming all right’s not his problem.”
“How does that work, anyway?”
“How does what work?” I look up as he takes a small step toward me. My stomach jerks downward in a sort of flipping feeling.
“How much liquor do you have here on the island?”
“And can someone drain the bar dry?” I put my hand to my damp forehead, shutting my eyes briefly. “Yes, most certainly. It’s happened before. The liquor comes on ships, of course, and only perhaps twice a year. If we run out, we’re out, and we’ve had people get too glad about the bottle.”
I hear his low chuckle. “Glad about the bottle.”
“Well, that’s what it is.” I open my eyes to find him rubbing that shoulder.
“Guess so.”
“I’ve never cared for it myself,” I tell him.
“No?”
I shake my head. My father famously drained the island dry a multitude of times—until at last they banned him from the bar. And after that, he learned to pick the locks and take what he desired. “Never wanted to be one of those sorts.”
“One of what sorts?” he says quietly.
I chew at my lip, trying to think of how to say it without mentioning my father. “I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted anything enough to lie and skirt the rules to get it. Not sure that I want to want something so desperately. Seems exhausting. A bit dangerous.”
I watch as his features seem to soften, and he nods.
“How did we get on this?” I sigh, looking at the dark gray stone that’s got us stuck here.
“I asked what you do for entertainment.”
“Most of us don’t court the bottle like Mac. For me, I knit on Saturdays with a few friends—on Saturday evenings. We celebrate occasions at the café or the Burger Joint. That’s once or twice a month. And then there’s things that come and go with seasons. Fishing and the factory—processing crab. Helping sort the mail when that comes. Every one of us wears many different caps, as I said. When I do get a bit of time,” I offer, looking at my feet again, “I like to throw a bowl or two.”
“Throw a bowl?”
I look up at him. “Clay-throwing. Pottery. Ceramic working. Throw a bowl, so…form it on the wheel. And then I fire it in the kiln and sometimes sell it.”
“Here?”
I blink. “I apparate to London to throw clay and put it at the market.”
I enjoy watching his face bend in surprise that morphs into amusement. “So we’ve got a smartass, and a wizard.”
“I’m not any sort of arse.” My lips twitch. “That’s your place.”
He grins broadly. “Touché.”
“Merely honest.”
“Hey—” He holds his hands up. “That was one night. One…crummy night.”
“Bravo, Sailor.”
“You stick around, you’ll see that night’s not representative of Declan Carnegie.”
“Perhaps not, but I believe I’ve only met the Carnegie.” When I feel my mouth trend upward at the corners, it feels as if someone’s yanked the floor from under my feet. I tuck my mouth back down and try to frown, although I believe it comes out smirk-ish.
“There’s that name again.” He shakes his head as he walks backward toward the stream. “Not sure I know the Carnegie. I’m just Declan. Nice guy.” He holds up the middle three of his fingers, as if he’s making a pledge of sorts.
I scoff. “That’s what you say.”
He nods. “I do.”
Then he’s turned around, and I’m left looking at his back as he moves to the stream, where he kneels down and splashes his face.
My heart pitter-patters, as if something inside’s cracked and now is leaking.
Declan
“Siren…stop.”
She looks over her shoulder, wide-eyed, like I’ve just caught her doing something naughty.
I wipe my forehead, where my hair is dripping into my eyes. “You can’t even lift your arm up straight.”
“I can.” She holds her chipping stone up, and my own shoulder aches with sympathetic pain.
“Go lie down. And in a few hours,” I lie, “we can swap shifts.”
She turns away from me, and then back toward me, lips pursed and her eyebrows drawn down. “Promise?” She looks sulky.
“That we’ll switch shifts?” I nod. “We both need to get some rest so we can keep at this until we get it.”
She exhales and nods once. Her hair’s falling into her eyes, and her face sags with exhaustion.
“I’ll wake you in five hours. Or six if that works better.”
“Absolutely not. Three and a half at most.” She gives me a pointed look I’ve come to recognize. I put one toe out of line, and those slightly scrunched eyebrows go full-on pissed off and her pert mouth pulls into a disapproving frown.
“Yes ma’am.” I salute her. “Three and a half it is.”
“And then it’s your turn. I’m enforcing that,” she says as she stalks past me.
“Do it.”
I sift through the rubble quietly as she goes to sleep. When I’m sure she’s out, I walk around what remains of the rock pile and sit on one of the larger stones with my back to her. I take a few deep breaths until the anxious hum that’s buzzing through me eases just a little. Then I rub my head and eyes and knead the inside of my wrist—a pressure point that’s supposed to help you keep from puking.
Fuck.
I run my hands back through my hair a few more times before I stand up, grab the hammer, and go at the cave’s mouth like my life depends on it. Over the course of a few hours, I bring another three or four inches of stone crumbling down before my hands are shaking too bad to keep going and I’m seeing bursts of light behind my eyes.
Fuck this.
I wedge my palms against the boulder, bend my knees, and shove as hard as I can. I push until I feel my heartbeat in my eyebrows and I’m groaning at t
he pain from my shoulder. When Finley stirs, I drop into a crouch. I hold my head and feel my eyes sting.
Jesus.
I just need to lay down for a second. I walk to the sleeping bags, feeling my knees shake. They’ve been hurting kind of bad for the last few hours. The joints in my arms, too. I stop beside Finley, looking down at her as lantern light plays on her face.
When I ducked behind the slab of rock that hung over the cave’s mouth, I didn’t realize that there was a fucking cave. I just had to put us behind something, somewhere out of the rocks’ way. About the time I realized we were fucked—I had wrapped myself around Finley and was getting smacked to shit by big rocks—one of my legs went into the hole. I tried to get my balance, and instead we fell through. While I was checking Finley over—she still wasn’t moving, and I was scared she’d gotten hurt bad in the fall—rocks came pouring in. A few seconds later, it was a done deal.
I blow out a long, quiet breath. When I’m in my bag beside hers, I shut my eyes and let my chest pump, let my jaw clench, let my fingers knead my shoulder till my nails break the skin. I press my lips shut so I don’t groan.
I just need to get some sleep. I scoot a little closer to her, close enough so I can smell that nice, flowery smell.
My heart’s beating fast. I can do my meditative breathing till it isn’t. I know how to do this shit. At some point I think I nod off. It’s hard to tell for sure because I almost never sleep since starting the tapers, but I think this time it actually happens. Next time I check the watch that’s lying between Finley and me on the cave’s floor, it’s almost an hour later, and almost two hours past the time I promised I’d wake her.
I get up quietly and move around in front of her. She’s tossed her way out of the top half of the sleeping bag, and her T-shirt is jacked up over her breasts, giving me a view of her belly. For a long second, I can’t tear my eyes away from it. Unlike most bellies I’ve seen these past few years, Finley’s is soft and slightly rounded, protruding just a little bit over the top of her pajama shorts. I find myself smirking down at it. Nonconforming—that’s what it is.
Fuck toned and tan, Finley’s stomach is whiter than the moon, and it looks soft like women’s thighs and asses can be when they’re nice and thick. I have the strange impulse to run the back of my hand over it, see how soft she really is for someone so damn prickly.
I look up and down the sleeping bag a time or two, and then back at that belly and her full breasts, hidden by the rumpled tee shirt, before I reach out and touch her shoulder.
“Siren?” I whisper it a time or two, smirking as I watch her face twitch and her balled-up hand lift up to rub her cheek. She cracks her brown eyes open, then gives me her signature glare.
“Good morning, darlin’.”
She scowls, but it lacks its full force. She blinks around the burrow, seeming confused.
“You want to sleep some more?”
She yawns, balling her small self up. Her hand brushes her belly as she does, and she yanks the hemline of her shirt, as if she knows how hard I perved on her when she was sleeping. I give her a wink. Finley rolls her eyes and pushes up on her elbows.
She groans. “The ground. So…hard.”
I nod.
“I hate it here.” She shakes her head, and her long hair falls over her shoulders, covering her breasts until she uses something wrapped around her wrist to fasten it back.
I pass her a protein bar—one of only six left. “Fuel up. And wake me in an hour.”
She gives me another troubled frown, but nods.
“Not a morning person?” I smile.
“It’s not morning.”
“Fair enough.”
Shortly after I stretch out, she gets up without a glance my way. I watch discreetly as she works, going at it hard and feeling probably the same way I do—like every second we’re in here makes it less likely we’ll ever get out.
For a second, I consider getting up, but it’s a minor miracle I slept before. If I can get a little more, I know I can get us out of here.
Twelve
Finley
I realize while he dozes: there’s something amiss with the Carnegie. I notice him stirring as I slam the hammer into the wall. I feel badly for interrupting his rest, and my arms ache so terribly that swinging the hammer brings tears to my eyes. So it seems sensible to take a break at the stream.
I don’t like the dark rear of the cave, but I adore the running water. It may take them a bit to find us, but as long as we’ve got water, we can stay alive for quite some time. I run my fingers through it, and that’s when I hear the sound. I spin around and find him upright, holding his head and breathing in such loud huffs, I hear it over the burbling stream.
“Declan?”
The name bursts from my lips unbidden, but it doesn’t seem to reach him. I watch as he stretches out on his back, his hips twisting as one thick arm covers his face. From my angle back off to his right side, I can see his chest pump with his heavy breaths.
“Declan?” It feels strange on my tongue: such a knightly, masculine name…and somehow also delicate—almost pretty.
When he doesn’t respond, I realize he must be dreaming.
A low moan reaches my ears, and my belly tightens. I stand slowly as he writhes and starts to pant. His hands fist in his dark hair, tugging, and a gentle crest of empathy swells in my chest. I walk quickly over to him, dropping down to my knees on the ground beside him.
“Declan. Hi there,” I whisper. “It’s Finley.”
After a heartbeat’s hesitation, I reach for his shoulder. At that moment, he bolts upright. For an instant, he looks aghast—all wide eyes and open mouth. Then his eyes fix on my face, and he appears to steady. “Siren?”
“You had a nightmare,” I say gently.
He’s up quickly, stalking toward the stream, where he drops to his knees and splashes his face. I watch as he kneels there, heavy breaths still pumping through his muscled back and shoulders.
Watching panic pass through his strong body kindles my own. For a frantic, airless breath, I’m clinging to the underside of a boat’s seat, shivering in water that reaches my neck; the blood pounding between my ears is louder than the howling wind.
When he stands, I whirl away, realizing a beat too late that I’m standing by the sleeping bags with no apparent purpose save for watching him. My pulse gallops as I hear him moving toward me. In my periphery, I see him reaching for the pack. The crinkle of a wrapper lets me know he’s grabbed a bar. I hear the crack and plastic thump of his hands opening a water bottle. Then he’s moving toward the rubble pile without a glance my way.
Something heavy settles near the base of my throat. For a too-long moment as my eyes cling to his shoulders, I can’t swallow. I decide to follow his lead, sitting on my bag with a bar, of which I take only a small bite.
The next time I look up, I don’t see him. He steps out a moment later from behind the remnants of the rubble pile, his head back as he drinks from his bottle.
He seems more composed now. I know when he looks at me. He’s very still for that one moment, making it feel like a greeting despite the lack of smile or wave. After that, he bends down for the hammer, his big body flickering in lantern light as he resumes his work.
When he seems lost in his own rhythm, I slide in behind him with my chipping stone. I can feel the heat of him, smell the musk of male sweat as his powerful movements bend the air around us.
“Not much done while you were dozing,” I say as I swing the stone. “But a small bit.”
“Good.”
His voice is strange, and when our gazes tangle a bit later, I realize his eyes are strange as well. His are like no male’s I’ve ever seen—fierce and expressive—but when they touch mine this time, they seem different. Troubled, I think.
“Declan?”
He pauses at his name, and when he turns to me, I see his silly, faux-stunned face. I can’t help laughing. “Don’t get too excited. I was bound to slip up som
etime.”
He smiles, though—a brilliant smile that makes me feel like I just swallowed sunlight.
I twist my face up and beckon him with my hand. “Come here. Closer.”
He gives me a curious frown, but he moves nearer—near enough so I can smell his minty breath. I pull my flashlight from my pocket. When I shine it in his face, he flinches. I wait for his pupils to shrink, and when they don’t, I zero in on one. He mutters something.
“Hush that foul mouth.”
He chuckles softly as I watch his pupil shrink under the light—but just a wee bit. The other one behaves the same, shrinking only a smidgen in the light, as if something has happened to cause it to be dilated. I shut my own eyes for a moment, and he makes a soft sound.
“That bad, huh?”
I shake my head. “I feel badly that I let you sleep. I should have realized, with your head…” I gesture to my own forehead. “I think you’ve got a bit of a concussion.”
His fingers play over the bandage. “Nah.”
“I think so. I—”
“Listen, Siren, I’ve had a concussion. This is too much whiskey, no shut-eye, and being stuck inside a hole in the ground.”
I chew my lip. “But your pupils—”
“Here.” He holds his hand out, and I set the flashlight in his hand. He leans in so near that I hold my breath, and he shines light in both my eyes, making a low sound in his throat as he does.
“How small would you say they should get?” he asks.
“Very, if there’s bright light. Near to pinprick.”
“Well here we go. We’re both concussed.” He moves the light, and I shut my eyes to regain my equilibrium. “Yours didn’t do that either. Probably because we’re in a place with no natural light.”
He steps slightly back, and I put my hands on my hips. “Can I trust your word, Carnegie?”
He lifts one of his brows. “Calling me a liar, Siren?”
I laugh. It slips out, and then, in my exhaustion, I forget what he asked, so there’s this moment where I just stand there before I remember and shake my head. “Well, no. I’m just trying to do my due diligence.”