Drowning in Fire

by Hanna Martine

  Earlier, at sunrise, Griffin had reached for her, sliding a hand over the bare skin on her hip. It was still astonishing to her that he could fuck her with such biting passion and then touch her with such tenderness. She hoped that he would continue to astonish her for a very, very long time.

  “Who do you want to win?” he’d asked.

  She’d just looked at him, confused. “It’s not about what I want.”

  “Ah.” His favorite word, when it came to things Chimeran. His brow furrowed. “So all that you said last night about worthiness and weakness doesn’t apply here?”

  “They both want to lead the clan. They have to prove themselves to the people. They aren’t being judged on what they don’t have, or something out of their control. They’re being measured by their actual abilities. Makes perfect sense to me.”

  He sat up, flinging aside the blanket they’d used when they finally passed out naked under the stars—because she couldn’t yet stand to be enclosed after having endured being Within. The early morning light was very kind to his body.

  “Makaha is at a distinct disadvantage against Bane,” he said.

  “Seemed to do just fine against you.” Keko poked him. “You just don’t want him to win because he kicked your ass.”

  He snorted. “Anything I might say in my defense would come off as weak to you, I’m sure. But yes, he did kick my ass.”

  Later, with Griffin standing next to her on the grass, they watched Makaha defeat Bane.

  The valley roared its approval over Makaha’s valiant fight and his ability to overcome. The clan swarmed around their new ali’i as Keko went to her brother.

  Bane stood tall and strong despite looking like he wanted to collapse to the ground in fatigue and disappointment. She wanted to hug him—a strange, non-Chimeran urge—but knew she could not. Not ever, not without hurting him. So she said, “I’m proud of you.”

  Breathing heavily, he bowed with two fists across his chest.

  Then she went to Makaha. The people parted to let her through. The ali’i’s chest pumped with the last bits of adrenaline and a powerful air of dignity she hadn’t witnessed in him in years.

  “It’s good to have you back, my friend,” she told him.

  He pushed back his long, sweat-soaked hair. The smile he gave her was huge and honest and full of a happiness she’d never witnessed in an ali’i.

  She found Griffin perched on top of a picnic table, his feet set on the bench, twirling a long yellow flower between his palms.

  “That’s who you wanted to win,” he said as she fit her body between his knees.

  “Maybe.” She glanced all around, taking in her valley. Her home.

  He set down the flower and turned serious. “I have to go back. To San Francisco.”

  She nodded, but it must have come too slowly or she must have done a crappy job of disguising her disappointment, because he quickly added, “I’m not leaving you.”

  “I know. I know you aren’t.”

  “I have to get back to my people. Gwen said things are getting testy, probably the worst they’ve ever been. I’m going to have a fight on my hands.”

  “Shit, really?”

  He nodded, lips tightly pressed together. “I owe the Ofarians an explanation for my absence. They need to know what’s happened with you and the Chimerans and the Senatus straight from me, and it needs to be sooner rather than later. And I really, really want to see Henry.”

  “Griffin, you don’t have to explain. You’re a leader.”

  “And now you are, too.” He swept a hand over her hair and her scalp tingled. “I’m coming back. In fact I’m sort of looking forward to sleeping with you on the dirt again. Unless you want to find us an actual bed while I’m away.”

  He meant it to be funny, but it struck hard in her heart, mixing with all the things she still needed to tell him. All the things she’d been straightening out in her head.

  “What is it?” he asked, because he was starting to know her so well.

  “Can I drive you to the Hilo airport?”

  “You want to be my chauffeur again? Talk about coming full circle.”

  That pulled a small smile out of her. “I’m still going to make you carry your own bag. But I want to take you someplace else first. And, yes, I’m driving.”

  Several hours later, after speeding northwest along the coastal highway straightaways and swerving daringly around the turns, she pulled the battered yellow Jeep into the gravel along the side of the road.

  Griffin gaped at the scene out the windshield, motionless. Finally they climbed out and met in front of the car’s grille. They were back in the rainy part of Hawaii, and the water droplets made hollow splooshes on the car hood and quieter splashes in the puddles at their feet.

  “What are we doing back here?” he asked.

  Keko gazed up at the B and B in which more than their goals had changed. Boards had been hammered over the window and door of their former room. The sight of it made her throat tight.

  Griffin finally noticed and gasped. “What happened? It was fine when I left.”

  “My magic. It was too much, contained in too tight a space. It must’ve combusted and started a fire. I was watching. I saw you run off, and then the fire broke out. I ran back here, put it out, but it had already done some damage.” She shook her head and finally had to look away. “I did that. I didn’t mean to, but it’s someone’s business, someone’s life. And now it’s unusable because of me. But you know the worst part about it?”

  “What?”

  “I desperately want to make it up to the people who own this place. I want to help them, pay them back for what I did, but I can’t.”

  Griffin took her arm and turned her to face him. “Sure you can.”

  “No, I mean like I can’t.” She pointed a finger back down the highway, in the direction of the valley from which they’d come. “You see how we live. How little we have. Even if I wanted to pay for damages or a whole new B and B—which I do—I can’t because I literally don’t have a cent of my own.”

  “Keko . . .” He ran a hand below his jaw and glanced out toward the ocean. “I can—”

  “No, Griffin. Don’t even say it. I’m not taking your money. I’m not letting you step in and do this for me. I just can’t. And it has nothing to do with being Queen or whatever. You understand that, right?”

  He did, because she saw it in the warmth of his eyes and the easy bob of his head. “Okay, so what are you thinking? Why did you really bring me here?”

  She took a deep breath, felt the reassuring fire within. “To tell you that I want to come with you. To San Francisco.”

  His eyes brightened, widened. “Yes. Yes. Absolutely come with me.”

  She pressed a hand to the wet shirt on his chest. “Not solely to be with you. Like you, I have to be here for my people, so my going to the mainland can’t be forever.”

  “I get that, sure. So what do you want to do?”

  “I’m thinking”—she licked her lips and tasted the delicious water of her island, the stuff that would always, always remind her of Griffin and their days spent slugging through it—“that I want to ask for the Ofarians’ help.”

  He opened his mouth, made some sort of odd sound, then finally got out, “What do you mean?”

  “I am Chimeran Queen. I assumed and accepted the name only if I knew I could bring change for the better. You know how my people have been living. It is poverty. In this day and age, it is nothing more, and the clans on the other islands are the same way, maybe even worse off. Why does it have to be like that? I’m not saying we have to be rich and live in oceanfront condos on the Kohala Coast, but we have no prospects and no skills applicable to the real world. Ofarians do.”

  He drew a sharp breath in realization, but she went on.

  “I’ve been thinking abo
ut this ever since Aya brought me back from Within. How I was the first Secondary other than their own kind to see that realm. How Cat and now you have been the only Ofarians to visit the Chimeran valley. How no one knows anything about the Airs, or Sean and Michael, those spirit elementals who were with me in Colorado. How is this good? How can we possibly help each other if we’re peering at each other through teeny tiny holes?”

  “Wow.” He sank onto the bumper of the Jeep. “I guess I never thought of it like that. I was too set with the whole Primary/Secondary thing, trying to figure out ways for us to fit in better to their world.”

  “But that’s the thing. You already have such a leg up on that. Ofarians know so much and Chimerans know nothing except what we’ve been looking at for centuries. Education and technology and the ways of business—I want your people to teach my people all of that. I don’t even know how to turn on a damn computer. No Chimeran does. You can help us.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “We can. Absolutely we can.”

  “And that could just be the beginning. We could start to organize diplomatic tours between all the races, learn as much about each other as possible—”

  He snaked his arms around her waist and pulled her into him. “We?”

  His hair was wet and shiny and silky between her fingers. “We. You and me. Start a whole new thing. ‘Fuck the Senatus,’ if I can steal your words. You said yourself you’re going to have a fight on your hands when you get back. Let me stand next to you when you face them. Let me help you tell them all that you’ve done. Let me help you present something new and wonderful, this collaboration, that they could help birth. Give them ownership, you know?”

  “Fuck the Senatus,” he whispered. “Oh God, Keko.”

  And then she was crushed in his embrace. Water, water everywhere.

  “You can help us, too,” he said into her skin.

  She peeled herself away and raised an eyebrow at him. “We can?”

  “Henry would just about kill to learn some of the fighting maneuvers I saw your warriors do out on the field the other day. So would most Ofarian kids.”

  “Bring in the newer generations,” she said. “I like it.”

  His expression turned grim. “I should warn you, not everyone will. It’s been the story of my life for the past five years.”

  Didn’t he get it yet? “Battles are virtuous only when there’s a prize worth fighting for.”

  He framed her face in his hands. “This is just a thought so feel free to shoot it down, but we have this doctor, Kelsey Evans. She’s brilliant and eager and has done so much for us. What would you say to her and her staff coming to take a look at your people who contracted the wasting disease?”

  Hope and love soared within her, making her nearly buoyant. “You think she could find a cause?”

  Griffin shrugged. “Don’t know, but it’s worth a shot, don’t you think? I know she’d be up to the task and her husband, David, would jump at the chance for a free trip to Hawaii.”

  He kissed her neck, the lick of him mixing with the moisture from the sky, and she shivered even with the Source thundering through her body. Then her mouth found his, and the kiss drowned her in a flood that no longer scared her.

  “And guess what?” she said against his lips. “You’re not kapu anymore. That’s my first declaration as Queen.” She struck a fist on his chest. “There. Done.”

  He sighed, but it came out like a shudder. She thought he might kiss her again, but instead his liquid brown eyes stared into hers as he said, “I am never going to be able to hold you tight enough. I will never get tired of the feel of you. I will never take you for granted. And I will fight for you until the end of my days.”

  “Good.” She drew back, planted fists on her hips in an echo of her trademark defiant stance, and smiled mischievously. “Because it’s going to be one wonderful war.”

  Turn the page for a preview of Hanna Martine’s next

  HIGHLAND GAMES NOVEL

  Coming from Berkley Sensation in December 2014

  I need a hot guy in a kilt.

  Shea Montgomery was standing in the middle of a sea of whiskey bottles when her best friend Willa’s text buzzed through. Smiling, Shea thumbed back: Funny, exactly what I’m looking at right now.

  Through the folded-back flaps of the white tent dedicated to the Amber Lounge’s whiskey tasting station, Shea could see the group of two-hundred-plus-pound kilted men milling about the sprawling athletic field. The first throw of the day’s Scottish Highland Games would go off in about two hours.

  Bring one back to the city for me, texted Willa.

  Shea peered hard at the field. Lots of kilts. None hot. Sorry.

  Take a pic. Let me decide.

  Shea laughed, shaking her head. I’m working. And it’s 8 am.

  You are dead to me.

  Shea tucked her phone into the back pocket of her black pants and went back to inventory. She was fingering the necks of the bottles she’d curated for the day’s tasting, mentally matching them up with what she’d shipped out to the Hamptons from her cellar in SoHo’s Amber Lounge.

  If she were able, she actually would march out to the field and snap a stealth pic of the hugely muscled men in kilts for Willa, but Shea would have no such free time today. Truth be told, there was very little Shea wouldn’t do for Willa, considering Willa had been the only friend to stand by her when she’d cut loose her former life and taken that giant leap of faith into freedom.

  The beautiful white tent rippled and flapped around Shea on this gorgeous, crisp, early May morning. High circular tables draped with white linen and tied with blue bows peppered the center, with squatter tables and cushioned chairs set outside under a canopy. An honest-to-god velvet rope corralled the whiskey drinkers in this private space, setting them apart from the general masses who would gather in a few hours when the gates opened to the NYC Scottish Highland Games.

  It was a perfect day for it—for the sun and the laughter, for watching powerful kilted athletes compete by throwing ridiculously heavy implements like the hammer and caber around the grass. For lying back on your elbows and surrounding yourself with the heartbreaking, beautiful bagpipe and drum sounds telling history through song.

  It was a perfect day for Shea to remember the moments when she actually began to live.

  Even if this particular games had its nose in the air as opposed to right down in the peat and heather where it should be, the tip of the hat to her Scottish ancestry warmed her heart.

  Fifteen minutes before ten, Shea and Dean, the middle-aged bartender she’d coerced into working with her all day after closing the Amber at midnight the night before, skillfully pulled out short-stemmed tasting glasses and made artistic towers along the back table. The bottles of Scotch whiskey she’d already set out caught the yellow morning light as it shot into the tent, making flickering shapes on the fabric ceiling.

  Dean tossed his empty cardboard box out of sight behind the tent and ran his fingers across the labels of the portwood and the twenty-seven-year blend and the eighteen-year-old single malt from the only distillery to still use their iconic peat towers in their distillation process.

  He whistled in a high arc. “Nice choices. Not exactly starting at the bottom, are you?”

  Shea got rid of her empty box, too. “Yeah, well, you have to pay a hundred dollars extra to come in here to taste. It was made very clear to me that I had to make it special.”

  Dean’s eyes bugged. “A hundred bucks? No shit?”

  Hands on hips, she surveyed her “special” setup and glanced with chagrin out at the blue velvet rope. She sighed. “No shit.”

  Her phone chimed again, which reminded her to shut off the text sound before the work day started.

  Still in bed. Willa again. Dying for a kilted man to bring me Gatorade and ibuprofen.

  An unwitting lau
gh bubbled out of Shea’s mouth. Still working.

  Still hungover.

  A figure appeared at the still-roped-off tent entrance, fuzzy and indistinct in Shea’s peripheral vision. Funny and horrible how Shea recognized the shape and stance and just general oily presence of the man she deliberately hadn’t seen in five years. She looked up, her eyes confirming what the shiver down her spine had foretold.

  Oh fuckity fuck, she typed to Willa.

  She swears while working!

  It’s Nathan. He’s here. FUSCKK.

  Quickly, she shoved the phone into her back pocket like she was in high school, not thirty-two years old, and had just run into the guy she’d once been obsessed with who’d dumped her out of the blue.

  Maybe she’d once been obsessed with Nathan, but it hadn’t been he who’d done the dumping.

  Stepping over the velvet rope—because such rules had never applied to him, oh no—he took his sweet time crossing the empty tent. Dean must have sensed the impending awkwardness and made himself scarce. Shea came around from behind the bar. No need to hide from Nathan anymore.

  “Hi, Shea.” His smile was brilliantly, falsely white.

  “Hello.” She would be civil, cordial. Though she was standing in her place of work, where it was easy to become who she needed to be, her ex-husband’s unexpected presence threw everything all out of whack and she hated it. “You look”—orange—“tan.”

  He seemed so pleased she noticed. Gross.

  “Greece,” he replied. “Remember that yacht off the coast of Santorini?”

  Yes, she did remember. And no, she didn’t want to. She crossed her arms. “What are you doing here?”