by Molly E. Lee
“Fuck, you feel incredible,” I whispered, dying to reach for her but keeping my hands in check. I’d given her full control tonight and damn it was the best decision I’d made all fucking day.
She moaned, lightly popping up and down before slamming on top of me over and over. “Touch me,” she demanded, and my hands were instantly on her. She hissed as I took one of her nipples between my fingers and let my other hand stroke her clit. “Yes,” she said, breathless, as she increased her pace. “God, Easton.”
I raised off my back, glad when she didn’t protest. Now, face to face with her, I cupped her cheek in my hand. “Remember that thing about being quiet?”
“Right,” she whispered and bit down on my shoulder.
The pain sent a ripple of pleasure throughout my body, and I felt her tighten around me.
“Now?” I asked, needing to be sure it was what she wanted.
She dug her nails into my back, bucking on top of me in way of an answer. Grabbing hold of her hips, I leaned back just enough so I was in the perfect position for her clit to hit me with every connection. Her head flew backward as she arched, but I held on to her as she flew apart above me. I followed her seconds after, unable to contain the pleasure soaring through my body as she clenched around me.
I pulled her upright, and she laid her head over my shoulder as she tried to catch her breath. I ran my hands up and down her spine, holding her as close to me as possible.
God, this woman. My wife. The love of my life. She knew me and what I needed better than I knew myself. And with what she’d just done to me, I felt like I could do absolutely anything. Including lay claim the City of Gold and keep my crew whole.
“SO, TECHNICALLY I don’t need a cameraman,” I said, looking over the underwater GoPro that would attach just above my goggles after I geared up.
“Technically no,” Easton said. “This camera is almost identical to the one I had you wear yesterday on the hike. The difference is it can function underwater at depths up to two hundred feet. But that doesn’t mean I’ll allow you to go down there alone.” He motioned toward the water that hugged the bank where we’d camped last night.
I rubbed my palms over my face, and despite the early morning, they came back slicked with sweat. The urge to argue was on the tip of my tongue, but I quashed it. I used to work alone. Or as alone as I could. Agreeing to be on this team meant I needed to at least try to play nice with others. And it wasn’t that I didn’t like most of the dudes, even Easton was growing on me—as long as I didn’t think about how much Sadie had drooled over his show when we watched it back home. It was the lack of experience that made me hesitant about allowing anyone to dive with me.
“Okay, look,” I finally said, smoothing my hair back and securing it with a tie. “You know how this whole expedition, from that”—I pointed to the insanely huge structure that looked straight out of an ancient movie sticking up from the water—“to the jungle”—I pointed to it before crossing my arms over my chest—“is your domain?”
Easton nodded.
“The water is mine. It doesn’t matter what kind. That is where I’m an expert. I don’t know shit about the dangers of the jungle. Hell, I didn’t even know the name of that spider I killed yesterday, but I know that.” I motioned to the water. “And I also know you want me to enter the building if the opportunity presents itself. Easy for me, impossible for a novice diver. There are too many variables. Visibility could be bad, disorientation with directional pull, sift falls, you name it. So, if I go interior, I go in alone.”
“You forgot flesh-eating piranha and anacondas,” Wade chimed in from behind me. He was already reaching for the spare scuba suit, oxygen tank, and goggles Easton had carted back to camp with me after our trek to the helicopter yesterday. The hike had burned a whole day, but we were up and running with all the equipment we needed, and could now focus solely on whatever Easton wanted us to explore. “Right?” Wade glanced at Easton.
Easton sighed. “It’s a possibility. The flesh-eating piranha are less likely. Not because they couldn’t be in there but because they don’t set out to attack humans. They’d have to be starving, or you’d have to piss off an entire group of them before they’d used their razor-sharp teeth to strip you clean to the bone.”
“Comforting,” I snapped.
“Anacondas though . . .” Easton rubbed the back of his neck, staring out at the water like he was afraid it would reach out and jerk him under. “That is more likely. Unfortunately. They tend to be drawn to bodies of water that are off the main river. Like this one. But they usually stick to shallower water.”
“Like what we’re sleeping right next to?” Dash asked as he set up a huge laptop and some other type of weather equipment I’d never know the name of.
“Mhhmm,” Easton mumbled. “So those knives I gave each of you? Keep them on you at all times. And that’s why we always have to work in pairs or more. There should never be any solo missions here. I don’t care what we’re used to. You need a partner in case shit goes down.”
“Fuck,” I said, sighing. “And I thought sharks and jellyfish were a problem.” I did everything I could to not picture a giant snake crushing my bones underwater, but I wasn’t really successful. “Why aren’t you suiting up?” I asked Easton, wondering why he was letting Wade slip into a scuba suit identical to mine. “You’re the leader of this mission. Figured you’d want to be down there with me, exploring what’s intact.”
The longing in his eyes said that was exactly what he’d like to do. “I would. Trust me. But Wade has more diving experience than me.”
I cocked an eyebrow, glancing at Wade.
“What?” He shrugged. “I did two weeks of dive training for a director who was making a movie about shark attacks. It was no Jaws, but no Sharknado, either.”
“See?” Easton clapped his hand on my shoulder. “That tops my absolute zero experience.” He glanced behind him at Dash. “And we need him topside to keep an eye on the sky.”
Made sense. Finishing slipping on my gear, I planted a serious gaze on Wade. “You’ll have to do as I say down there.”
“I won’t fuck around,” he said. “You think I want to drown? I can’t really think of a worse death than that.” A shudder ran through him.
“What about slowly being eaten by that spider on steroids, yesterday?” I joked.
An even bigger shudder shook out his limbs and he fake gagged. “Thanks for that image, Aquaman. Are we doing this or what?”
I situated the tank on my back to ground myself. “Yeah.” Dropping my goggles over my face, I allowed myself to get used to the new addition of the GoPro on my head.
Stepping my flipper-covered feet into the water, I heard Easton’s voice inside the speaker within my mask. “Can you hear me?” he asked.
I gave him a thumbs up, as did Wade, who took up the space on my right side. “Let’s dive,” I said, walking as far as I could before the water covered my head.
The second I was submerged I took a slow, deep breath. My limbs relaxed and flexed at the same time, the pressure from the water surrounding my body comforting as a warm blanket. Since this fucking adventure had started, I’d been forced to fly three times and hoof it through a thick jungle with the odds of death around every tree branch. I knew there was just as much a chance there were things waiting down here to kill me as well, but at least here in the water I felt like I stood a chance. This is where I thrived.
“Wade?” I could feel his movements behind me but wanted to check the tone of his voice for signs of panic.
“Aquaman,” he chided back, clearly picking up on my damn near motherly tone.
“Just checking.” I weaved through the water to propel myself farther down. He sounded solid, which was good because there was no room for panicking down here.
Surprisingly, visibility wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Despite the water looking murky and dark from above, it was actually a clear and almost golden tone beneath. It easily al
lowed me to see two feet ahead of wherever I looked, and flicking on my flashlight gave me at least another half foot on top of that. I turned toward where I knew the structure poked out on the surface, naturally drawn to that area in hopes there would be something intact below as well.
I kept my eyes trained for aquatic life, noting the bottom was too far to see. There was no telling what dangers lurked on the floor of this body of water, and while I could see a variety of fish, including some eye-catching Oscars with glimmering red circles on their fins, swimming frantically around, I hadn’t spotted anything deadly. Yet.
My thoughts drifted to Nemo, Sadie’s partner when I’d first met her. He was a great diver, but he’d had a fear of sharks that nearly got us all killed on a dive in the Bahamas. The kid was good, so I’m sure he would be able to hack it in these waters, too, but I wondered if he’d freak over an anaconda as he had the trio of sharks that liked to hang around Sadie’s old site. We’d kept in touch with him, and he was currently working on the Florida coast, but if I’d had to bring another diver—besides Sadie—on this trip, then it would’ve been him.
“Holy shit.” Wade’s voice filled my head at the same moment I set eyes on what merited his outburst.
“This place is even bigger than we thought,” I said, clicking the push-to-talk button on my shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Easton’s voice was a combination of excitement and skepticism.
“He means that this is an iceberg,” Wade answered as I pushed closer to the giant stone structure.
It was wider than I could see clearly, but the shadows and distortions in the color of the water were enough to tell me this thing went on for at least a good hundred feet. Some portions were crumbling, chunks of the rock having sloughed off under the constant pressure and motion of the water, but much of it was pristine. The carvings were just as detailed as they were topside, and the closer I got, the clearer it became. “I’m not an expert here,” I said, speaking more to Easton than Wade. “But it looks like Wade and I have wandered right up to the main entrance of this thing.” I let the talk button go and took my time scanning the area in front of me.
A wide opening in the center of the stone offered the darkness of a cave. The implication of an entrance beckoned me inside, but I resisted the urge to rush it. The areas flanking the cave-like opening looked as they had above—a zigzag of stairs that were massive with balconies sectioning them off in equal patterns. I imagined the richest dudes lived at the top level, though why they’d want to climb all those stairs to get there was beyond me.
“Are you certain?” Easton asked.
I huffed. Fuck, I wished the GoPro was capable of live feed so he’d stop asking me to repeat myself every time I said something. Not that Dash’s hot-spot Wi-Fi would ever work down here. I doubted it would really work well for him topside, either, but the studio had dropped some serious dough to ensure that it would. Dash couldn’t really do his job if it didn’t. Not entirely, anyway.
A group of fish flitted in front of my mask, the silver scales reflecting in the beam of my flashlight, which penetrated three feet into the darkness before me. “I’m certain,” I finally answered Easton. “My torch can’t even show me the depth of it. So I’m guessing it’s one long hallway into the center of this building.”
“It’s likely you’re at the hub, then. The gathering point for this community.” Easton’s voice trembled slightly he was so pumped. “What else do you see?”
“Stairs leading up to the entryway,” I said, glancing downward and around as I pushed my flippers back and forth slowly to keep me steady. “Some chunks of stone are scattered over the stairs at different areas. Carvings on those, too. Looks like they came loose from the balcony-like structure just above us.” I pointed my flashlight upward, noting the crumbled sections I’d seen earlier. “There are also two large statue-type carvings flanking either side of the stairs leading up to the opening.” Swimming slightly over one, I circled it to get a better idea of what it had once been. “They’re worn down, but it looks more like a symbol than an animal. A large circular top, with a half circle covering it, and beneath it looks like a rectangular box with legs.”
Wade chuckled, making sure to hit his push-to-talk button so I could hear it. “Could you be worse at describing something?”
I shrugged, swimming back to where he floated by the stairs. “What? I don’t have a fucking archeology degree.” I waved my hand toward the huge building before us. “If this was a ship, I’d be better able to tell you what the hell it was. How would you say it?”
“Ancient Incan architecture at its finest,” Wade said, making sure his tone matched what Easton’s normally sounded like when he was describing something to us. I flipped him off.
“You haven’t got a clue, either, douchebag. Get off my ass.”
“You told me to stay on your ass or else I would di—”
“You’re doing great, Connell,” Easton cut off our ripping on each other. “I’m getting an idea of what you’re seeing, and the cameras are doing their job. Do you think you can swim the length? Give us an idea how wide it is underneath?”
I snapped my eyes to the left, where the thing went on until I couldn’t see a damn thing anymore. “Width yes. Depth?” Looking down, I could barely see anything but darkness that grew even darker beneath my flippers. “Not somewhere I’d want to take a partner.” I glanced at Wade, shrugging. “It’s deep. I’m guessing well over two hundred feet. And we didn’t bring the proper gas mixture for me to be down there for long enough periods of time to make a difference.”
“That’s all right,” Easton said. “Once we have provided substantial proof that this is the lost city, I know Robert will clear even more funding to get a larger crew out here. And more supplies. This expedition is about finding evidence, and I’m sure we can do that with what’s available for us to work with.”
“Copy that.” I reached into the pouch clipped to my weight belt and pulled out the neon-yellow retrieval line, unfolding one end and handing it to Wade. “Stuntman will remain at the stairs and I’ll head east. I’ve got a hundred feet of retrieval line, and when it runs out, I’ll mark it and have him follow it to meet me. We’ll proceed until we’ve reached the end.”
“Or die trying,” Wade joked.
I pointed to the stairs. “Don’t even think about venturing inside. You remain stationary, understood?”
His eyes widened behind his mask. “Like I’d be caught dead trying to be some dumb combo of you and Indiana up there.” He motioned toward the surface. “I may be an adrenaline junkie, but I’m not an idiot.”
“Never said you were.” I didn’t break his gaze. “But do you have a death wish?” I held my breath as I watched the crack in his eyes. I used to wish for death after my brother died, so I didn’t judge him if he thought about the dark side more than normal, but I had to be sure it wouldn’t be on my watch. Down here, beneath the water that welcomed me home no matter what country provided it, he was my responsibility. Nemo or Sadie wouldn’t need the lecture or direction. They’d naturally be able to know what to do and not do. Wade? He was too new to me to be able to tell.
“Not today,” he finally answered, blinking away the all too serious look that had flashed behind his eyes before it returned to his normal, aloof attitude.
“Good.” I nodded, swimming backward. “If something happens, you see something that looks predatory, tell me immediately.”
“Sure thing, Mom.” He saluted me and I spun around, propelling myself faster as I swam the edge of the structure, the line slipping easily through my fingers.
Every so often there would be another section of stairs, statues, and fallen stone. Then there would be massive circular tunnel-like structures that jutted out so much I’d have to swim above them to continue. Some plant life had attempted to merge with the stone, some fat, greenish-looking vines that weren’t unlike the ones I’d had to duck under a thousand times yesterday on the trek here, but mainly the
stone structure remained untouched. Fish darted in and around the areas, more fallen or broken bits littered the bottoms of additional stairs, too, but overall this thing was more intact than any of us expected. Me especially.
A quick tug jolted my body, and I stopped my progression. “I’m at a hundred feet,” I said.
“Does it continue?” Easton asked.
“Oh yeah,” I said, gaping in front of me. The shadows indicated I was nowhere near the end. “Wade, follow the line until you reach me. Don’t deviate.”
“Aye, aye, Aquaman.”
Shaking my head, I checked my watch, making sure we had enough air time for this. Luckily, since we weren’t but forty feet deep, the tanks we used had plenty to give us another good hour of dive time. I made a mental note to head back to camp with at least twenty minutes to spare.
After what felt like ten extra minutes than was necessary, Wade swam to my side. “Admire the scenery on your way here?” I asked.
Wade nodded. “Stopped to chat up a sweet little Incan hottie.”
I snorted.
“Can’t all be Aquaman,” he said as I gathered the rest of the slack in the line.
“Don’t you wish,” I said. “Same rules apply. Stay here.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Wade said, waving me off.
I spun around again, this time pushing myself harder through the water. The structure was more of the same, and while it was gorgeous and something that looked completely out of time, I wanted to cover more ground. There’d be time to appreciate it later. For now, we needed to get a better idea of the scope of this thing. Or at least, Easton did. But knowing the specs would help me prep a larger dive team if we ended up doing a second expedition.
The idea filtered anticipation through my hard-pumping blood. I already knew who I’d ask to come, if Easton’s boss gave us enough funds. Sadie, of course. Nemo, for sure. And quite possibly Ryan, my old partner from my time in the Bahamas, if he wasn’t on a gig.