Waterborn (The Emerald Series Book 1)

by Kimberly James

  “Ask me.” I stared at her perfectly shaped mouth, waiting for it to form the words.

  “Kiss me, Noah.”

  I had thought about this so many times and I wanted to get it right. I wanted to claim her, delve in and taste deep, but I didn’t want to scare her. I was afraid I wanted so much more than she did, and I was strung so tight right now. I held back, applying soft, warm pressure that stole my breath, kicked my heart into overdrive and made my head spin. All that and I had barely even touched her.

  Her mouth quirked and her hands cupped my jaw. “That was really sweet, Noah. Now kiss me.”

  Beyond restraint, a gentle meeting of mouths was out of the question. Every feeling I had centered in that one place where our lips touched, hers pliant under mine. Our tongues caressed and sensation exploded in a wave of heat that scorched through me. She moaned and I caught the sound on my tongue. I pulled her against me, crushing her chest to mine. Warm, wet, salty, and sweet—I had never craved the taste of anything so much as her mouth. Her arms circled around my neck and her legs circled my hips. My palms created the perfect seat for her perfect ass.

  Somehow I managed to pull my mouth from hers. Her hands clutched my shoulders and her body locked with mine. I had to look at her to make sure she was with me. Our eyes clashed in a mutual acknowledgment of want. No point in denying it, not with the proof of it pressed between us. She knew I wanted her, had to know how much I wanted her.

  “Wow,” she said on a trickle of laughter.

  “What?” I wasn’t ready to laugh yet. Laughing would require moving and if I moved, I might explode.

  “You,” she whispered, teasing my lips with her tongue and nibbling on my bottom lip. “Just you.”

  And then it started all over again. This was why I had waited. Halfway didn’t exist with Caris. I was so all in, and to have her wrapped around me, the taste of her in my mouth, I was crazy all right. Crazy about her. She must have felt me trembling, or maybe it was her, because she lifted her mouth and stared down into my face. I clutched tighter, holding on for as long as she would let me.

  “Noah,” she breathed my name. A question, a plea, a curse—it sounded like all three. I knew exactly what she meant. It was either stop or move forward, but staying like this, so close to what I wanted, was pure torture.

  “I’m fine.” My forehead fell against hers, chest heaving as water lapped around us, and I slammed on the proverbial brakes.

  “I’m not.” She laughed again and I felt her stomach muscles contract. I settled her closer, not realizing it was possible, but it was, and it ached so good.

  “Is this okay?” she asked, breathless as if she sensed I was on the verge of losing complete control. “Can we stay like this? Please.”

  It was the “please” that gutted me. I would do anything for this girl. Even stay in this impossible position with me pressed intimately between her legs and nothing between us but my Velcro fly and a lace thong.

  Then I laughed too, because the energy had to go somewhere. She had been right about our kiss. It had changed everything.

  “You just feel so good,” she said as we stared at one another, touching with eyes and bodies, everywhere but mouths. She shifted on my hands, rocking her hips into mine.

  “You can’t do that.” I held her still, fingers kneading because I just couldn’t not move.

  “It’s too soon, isn’t it?” Her eyes were full of question and too much trust. “As much as we want to.”

  The short answer was no, at least not for me, but the fact that she was asking meant it was for her.

  “Yes.” Reluctantly I released her and let her float away on the current, holding on with just the link of our fingers. I couldn’t ever let her go completely, not now.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” I drew her in and placed a passing kiss on her mouth, then let her float away again.

  “I can’t do that, Noah. Not every time I might be a little freaked out.”

  “Yes, you can.” What was I saying? A few weeks ago I had wanted nothing more than to get her out of my head, and here I was inviting her in, practically begging.

  “I won’t, then. You can’t want that.” This time she pulled me to her, and not the light touch of lips. She dove in for a taste, the heat of her tongue firing my blood. I was already addicted to the feel of her mouth, the sweetness of it.

  “I didn’t know you had learned to control it like that,” I said as she kicked away from me. Water splashed up in my face and I dove for her, catching her from behind.

  “Noah!”

  I made a chair of my body, pulling her onto my lap, back to chest, her butt and thighs molding to the tops of my legs.

  “What?” I nuzzled her neck, blowing a warm steady breath behind her ear.

  “Mmm.” She melted against me. “Look.” Her legs floated to the surface, bright pink toes peeking over the water like budding flowers. She’d been so distracting that I hadn’t even noticed her unstuckness. I knew well the force that held her down. If she could float, she was getting closer to being able to swim.

  “That’s a good sign, right?”

  “I would say so.”

  I followed her out of the water and was mesmerized as she put her dress back on. She looked over at me, puzzled. No wonder, with me standing there like a statue, staring bug eyed and drooling.

  “What?” She smoothed out the hem of her dress with her fingers. It clung to her damp skin.

  “You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen.” I felt a little cheesy saying it, but it was the absolute truth.

  A smile brightened her face. “You’re not so bad yourself.” She threw my shirt at me. I didn’t bother putting it on. I took her hand and we walked back to Betty.

  “Can you do anything like what my brother does? The fog, the rain? I mean, that was him, wasn’t it?”

  “Sol does fog. And no, I can’t. Those are inherited traits.” Yeah, I could do all this manly stuff like talk to crabs and dolphins.

  She stopped and pulled me around to face her. “My father does rain.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “He came to see me.” The haunted look in her eyes broke my heart, and that she’d had to face him alone when I wanted nothing more than to stand between her and the whole world.

  “How did it go?” It was an effort to keep my voice calm.

  “Horrible.” She shivered and I ran my hands up and down her bare arms. “Not as bad as I imagined it might be.”

  I leaned over and placed a kiss to the top of her head. “The feeling’s mutual you know. I think you’re amazing too.”

  She tucked her hand back in mine and we started walking again.

  “So on the beach earlier, with Sol, the rain. That wasn’t him?”

  “No, Caris. It was you.”

  Twenty-Three

  Caris

  Two days later, I woke to a bright blue sky and the sun blasting through my open door as though heralding the news I was just as happy to forget. Rolling over, I stared at the picture of my mother. Hard not to think about her today, considering it was my birthday. Hard not to think about my dad either. Birthdays had always been a big deal between us.

  My fifteenth had been my most memorable. I’d been grounded at the time. Logan Stevens, the rat, had dumped me via text only to hookup with Katie Thompson that very night. A very public hookup under the bleachers during a football game. I might have dumped my cheesy nachos on her head. And after she’d yelled, “Maybe if you didn’t look like a boy, a real one would want to date you!” Well, my Coke had followed, and really, I had done her a service, the jalapeño juice and all. Katie more than filled out a C-cup and had long wavy hair. We were pretty much polar opposites and I hated her for it, because it seemed that’s what Logan Stevens preferred.

  I’d been grounded for a month, but by the next week my dad had surprised me with concert tickets to see Tegan and Sara. I could honestly say it had been the best birthday ever. I sang so loud I had nearly bu
sted a lung and had talked to the girls after the show. They’d signed my vinyl copy of my favorite album The Con.

  How had he done it all those years? Acting all excited for a day that had to be a grim reminder of all he’d lost, the big bad secret. Didn’t seem like a whole lot to celebrate now that I knew the circumstances of my birth.

  Eighteen. My first day of official adulthood and it was going to totally suck.

  I tiptoed downstairs, feeling like a coward in my own house, not relaxing until I heard my dad’s muffled voice coming from behind his closed office door.

  The coffee was still warm and I poured a cup, stopping short when I turned around and saw what was on the counter. My dad had left me a cupcake, chocolate with chocolate frosting, monstrous in size with colored sprinkles on top. The same breakfast I’d eaten on my birthday for as long as I could remember. He’d left a note, handwritten in his illegible scrawl.

  Happy Birthday, Caris.

  He’d even drawn a smiley face. He always drew a smiley face. A reminder of all the good things between us, the small things that added up to a good life together. Better than a good life, a happy life. I took a bite. Icing smeared over my lip. I swallowed through the lump in my throat then ate the whole entire thing, as if following through with this ritual could change the fact that my father had given me more than his eyes. He’d given me some inane ability to produce rain from nothing. He’d given me a brother.

  All it did was make me feel queasy.

  I walked down the hall, intent on at least offering a thank you. I almost made it too. My hand lifted to knock on his door before I stopped, my fingers curling in on themselves. A voice nagged in my head, a cruel voice that wanted me to believe he wouldn’t love me anymore if he knew how much like my father I really was, a man he so despised. So I dropped my hand and slinked away. If I had that tail Noah insisted I wouldn’t grow, it would be tucked between my legs in shame. I found a pen in the kitchen and wrote “thanks” on the note and left it on the empty plate.

  Back up in my room, I hurried through my rudimentary routine of making myself presentable. Dressed in the most modest bathing suit I could find, I pulled my hair back into a ponytail and headed out to the beach.

  I stood for a few minutes watching the waves roll in. I had wanted to do this so many times in the last forty-eight hours. Walk out here and sing to Noah for no other reason than to beg him to kiss me again.

  Noah. God, that mouth. I had known kissing him would be like that. Forget fireworks. It had been like rockets shooting to the moon, to the stars. If he had pressed even a little bit it would have been so much more than kisses.

  So why wasn’t I happy? Why wasn’t I walking on a cloud this morning?

  I held my ground as a seagull landed a foot away. I eyed him, making sure he wouldn’t come any closer then lifted my face to the wind and did the one thing I said I wasn’t going to do.

  I sang my Song and waited.

  * * *

  “Took you long enough,” I said when Noah finally emerged from the surf in all his god-like glory. My voice sounded more snarky than I had intended. He reached for me, but I shied away.

  His lips, his eyes, his body. I kind of wanted to fall down and worship him with my own, but instead I was filled with a sense of self-loathing. I hated this. Hated that he was here because he had no choice, mainly because it seemed I had so few of my own.

  “I got here as soon as I could,” he said, understandably wary. The last time we were together we’d been all over each other.

  I couldn’t meet his eyes. Not while I was being so unreasonable. Not when the last time I had seen him it had been so perfect. Now I just felt unsure of myself when all I wanted to do was plaster my face to his and hear him tell me I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. But that’s not why he was here. He was here because I needed something and I was going to use him to get it.

  “Sorry I’m such an imposition.” And now that I had started it, I couldn’t stop with the bitchiness, but it was as if he could see right through me and knew it was a cover-up for something else.

  “Caris, what’s wrong?”

  His voice gentled over me, and I closed my eyes because he was being so sweet and he was so beautiful and gracious it hurt to look at him. He made me feel petty in comparison when I felt so strapped down by anger and resentment.

  “It’s my birthday,” I said, choking back a sob that I didn’t even know I was holding back.

  He took a step toward me and put his hands on my face, the touch so gentle I thought I might crack completely open. His eyes roved over my face and when they finally settled on mine, his lips broke into the most devastating smile I had ever seen. And it was all for me.

  “Well, happy birthday.”

  “Is it?” My lip quivered under his thumb.

  I knew he could hear me. My Song echoed in my own ears, but more importantly, I knew he understood it, and for once I was thankful for my Song, that I didn’t have to voice my feelings out loud. Ugly feelings that I didn’t know how to get rid of even though I wanted to. He already knew them, and still he looked at me like he had meant it when he’d told me I was amazing.

  “I happen to be very happy you were born,” he said.

  “I’m sorry.” I let out a shaky breath. “I don’t know how to do this. Be a siren or whatever.”

  “I would say you’re doing all right. I’m here, aren’t I?” His lips touched mine, and just like the first time, I was so totally lost in him. “Now,” he said. “Let’s start over. You rang?”

  I hesitated. He’d had to fight to get us in this place and I was about to ruin it. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t want to cooperate.

  “I need you to take me somewhere. Specifically, to see someone.”

  “Who?” His brows descended. They were a shade darker than his hair and the same shade as his eyelashes that looked like butterfly wings. I found something new to admire about him every day, like suddenly discovering a new favorite song on an album you’d listened to a dozen times.

  “Sol.”

  He dropped his hands. “Why would I do that? Especially after the other night. And why would you even want to?”

  “Because he’s caught me off guard twice now and I don’t like it. It makes me feel vulnerable and I feel like now that he knows who I am, we should talk about it. Obviously I can’t simply avoid him.”

  “Yes, you can. It’s what I do.” He had backed up from me, replacing that once adoring expression with one of deprecation.

  “Well,” I said, sensing I had lost my edge, “I’m telling you to take me to see him. I don’t know how to find him.”

  “It doesn’t work like that, Caris.” He put a little extra punch into saying my name. “I may have to come when you sing, but after that it’s all free will.” He tapped the side of his head with his pointy finger. “I don’t want to take you to see your brother.”

  Clearly bullying wasn’t going to work, so I took another approach. I closed the distance between us, close enough to feel the heat simmering off his body. I took his hand, lacing my fingers through his.

  “Okay, then forget the whole siren thing. I’m your friend, Noah, and I’m asking you to help me as a friend. It would mean a lot to me. I don’t want to have to worry about running into him anymore. I’m tired of being his victim.”

  It was kind of like watching wax melt as his shoulders slowly slumped and every muscle in his body seemed to relax in a wave of surrender. Even his eyes lost their bluster, dissolving into green pools of total capitulation.

  Putty. Absolute putty.

  “This isn’t fair,” he said.

  Yeah, I felt bad about it too.

  “Please, Noah. I need to do this, and I’d rather have you with me.”

  He let out one long sigh and caught me with both hands, wrapping them tight around my arms.

  “Fine.” He kissed me, lips stiff with protest. Then it was my turn to be putty. “But I don’t guarantee I won’t punch him in the f
ace again.”

  * * *

  Noah was all business, exhibiting none of the playfulness we’d shared last time he’d taken me into the Deep. I got the impression he was sulking a bit. And while I appreciated the solid hotness gliding underneath me, I was distracted by my own worrying thoughts. Taking the upper hand had seemed like a good plan, but now that I had put that plan into action, I was having doubts. Sol didn’t strike me as the type of person who appreciated surprises. On the other hand, from what I knew of him, it felt like something he would do—show up unannounced, brandishing a knife, making demands.

  I could see the hull of the boat slightly sunken under the surface of the Gulf. Noah turned his head up to me and nodded. I held on and waited for the explosion.

  I gasped when we rocketed into the open air, Noah’s hand a steadying force when we landed on the deck of the boat. It rocked gently under our feet as water splashed over the sleek wood.

  I hadn’t been on many boats. Well, one other to be exact. And while I didn’t know much about them, this one seemed especially nice. Thirty maybe forty feet in length, it was shiny and new, and smelled like pure luxury. It also looked empty.

  “Do you think he’s here?” I dripped across the deck, nosing up to the glass windows that encased the cabin, a cavernous hole thanks to the dark tint.

  “We’re about to find out.” Noah pounded on the glass making the boat shiver in the process.