by Cherry Adair
“I’m good.” Now that I’ve made a decision. Reaching out, she ran the flat of her hand across the rough patina. “I thought it was wood, but it’s metal. Heavily corroded and rusted, but solid.” She banged several times. “I suspect this is really thick, and look at this.” She pointed. “Water marks. Indicating that the cavern fills, probably with the tide.”
Jonah’s light strafed the door. “How can it have tide when we’re a hundred feet under the surface of the ocean?”
How can the tube and cavern not be filled with water, would also be an interesting question, begging an answer. “I’m not an oceanographer. This is illogical, but clearly the tide rises, as indicated right here. And here. And here. And these marks—” Callie shone her flashlight directly on the marks she wanted Jonah to see. “Probably made by a large starfish. You can just make out, here and here, the outline of its five arms, and the marks from its tube feet. The water down there rises all the way up here.”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Jonah ran his hand over the metal, then rubbed his fingers together when his hand came back dusted orange with the rust. “First, why would anyone have gone to such elaborate lengths to seal off the tube from the surface, and from this cavern? Why come down here at all? Some sort of ritual, do you think?”
Intrigued, Callie shrugged. “I have no idea. This door could date back to medieval times, if not earlier.” A lot earlier. Like around the time of Atlantis? “Or the Iron Age.” Her heart was racing now for a different reason than sexual tension.
“Iron Age?” Leslie repeated. “Are you saying this door has been here for more than two thousand years?”
“Or longer. Three thousand years? They certainly had the skill and tools to make something of this size.”
Everyone took a moment to process that.
“There’s no point hanging around, since we have more questions than answers,” Jonah told them. “Clearly we aren’t going to get it open with an ‘Open Sesame.’ We need to document this, which means cameras and better lighting. I also want Thanos to check the malfunction in our headsets.” They decided Brody and Saul would go back to Stormchaser and grab the cameras, while the rest of them worked on salvaging more coins from Ji Li.
They returned through the tube to the deep landing. Jonah put his hand on Callie’s arm, holding her back when the others started down the stairs to get their equipment. She felt his light touch on her forearm all the way through her wet suit, her skin, muscles, and tendons all reacting in unison to one giant ache. That light touch effervesced through her vascular system like hot Champagne.
How had she ever doubted? The outcome was inevitable.
A muscle ticked in Jonah’s jaw when she jerked her arm out of his light hold. “We both know the implication if that door’s been here as long as both of us believe it has.”
“We don’t know anything until we’ve had it carbon-dated, and someone confirms the age and material. You know that. We can’t jump to conclusions, Jonah. That’s neither scientific nor wise.” She heard the splashes as the others hit the water at the base of the stairs.
The cavern seemed immeasurable, the silence throbbing, a low heavy heartbeat against her stretched-taut nerves.
“Join the dots, Doctor. Atlantis was sunk by a volcano. We’re in a lava tube. Someone carved those stairs. Someone built that door. None of that is speculation or wishful thinking. You like facts. Those are facts.”
Callie started walking toward the top of the stairs as he talked. Jonah walked beside her. Their steps perfectly synchronized. Her heart was doing the fight-or-flight calisthenics. Coward that she’d discovered she was, Callie chose flight. She wanted her tank, her BC, and her face mask, and she wanted to be swimming, without communication. She wanted to swim anywhere. Away. Just away.
She realized she was staring at his mouth and dragged her gaze back to his face. His eyes burned hot, the color at the base of a flame. She felt the insane and erratic pounding of her pulse beneath her cold fingers when she put a hand to her throat. Mouth dry, she chewed the corner of her lower lip for a second to steady her frazzled nerves.
This was stupid. Inappropriate. Wrong on every level. If Jonah realized, by word or deed, how powerfully he affected her, her wedding ring was not going to fend him off. He’d take what she offered and to hell with the consequences.
Isn’t that what you’ve already decided you want? a little voice mocked.
The hunger she felt for him made her body yearn and ache, and she had to do a course correction as she swayed toward him. She kept her gaze steady with a great deal of effort, and said calmly, “N-none of that proves our city is Atlantis.”
Clearly distracted by the importance of what he was saying, his gaze remained fixed to her mouth, which in turn made her lips tingle and her heart beat too hard.
“None of this proves our city isn’t Atlantis.” His husky voice rasped along her nerve endings. “Too much of a coincidence that this is here, and pretty much right outside this cavern is a giant city underwater. Would you at least give me the possibility that we’ve found Atlantis?”
She dragged in a deep breath and held it, her gaze dropping to his mouth. Were they still talking about Atlantis? “I’ll give you a definite maybe.”
“Dios, you’re stubborn wom—Damn it, Callie, don’t fucking look at me like that.”
Her focus jerked from his mouth to his eyes. Her heartbeat stuttered at the intensity of his gaze. “I wasn’t—”
“To hell with it!” Yanking her against the hard plane of his chest and belly, his steely arm circled her waist. Taking her chin in his hand, he tilted up her face and kissed her.
Hard.
The moment his mouth crushed hers and his tongue passed the barrier of lips and teeth with ease, Callie was lost.
He set a match to her banked and primed fire and it roared out of control. Not a tentative kiss, not a getting-to-know-you kiss. This was carnal, erotic, and incendiary. There was an inevitability to it that made her sink into it and forget the consequences.
She wanted to rip their wet suits off right where they stood, or at the very least crawl inside his with him. She craved the feel of his skin against her skin. Wanted to feel, with no barrier, the heat they were generating. She was done waiting. Done pretending that this wasn’t exactly what she wanted. God help her, exactly what she needed.
Shuddering, she sighed into his mouth as his tongue danced around hers, teasing and enticing. Callie’s fingers tightened in his cool, silky hair; her other hand gripped his back, holding him against her. Pressing him against her aching breasts, and the liquid need in her center.
She wasn’t aware of moving, but his muscles flexed and rippled under her touch. Her entire body, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, jangled with surging adrenaline as his arms tightened around her tight as steel bands.
Held in check by his wet suit, the ridged length of his penis nevertheless pressed against the juncture of her thighs. Her short nails dug into the small of his back, then went on an exploratory dance over the tight globes of his butt. She’d never hated neoprene more.
His fingers gripped her hips in a vise-like hold, as if he needed to hold her still. The friction just torqued the pulsing throb at every point of contact to an even more unbearable pitch.
Wrenching his mouth from hers, Jonah whispered a hoarse curse, then dropped his forehead to hers. His breath sawed ragged and uneven and his body—or was it hers?—trembled.
As if an invisible force was ripping him away from her, and he couldn’t let go, his fingers tightened on her hip bones with bruising force. After too short a time, he released, stepping back. He wiped the back of his hand across his damp mouth and closed his eyes as if in pain.
“That shouldn’t have happened, I know.” His thick voice was pitched low as he opened his eyes to meet hers. “I’ve never wanted a woma—You’re married! I have fucking well got to get the hell out of your gravitational pull. It won’t happen again.”
&n
bsp; Dear God, she knew exactly how he felt because she felt the same wrong-in-more-ways-than-she-could-count way. She’d made a decision based on nothing more than this.
“Jonah, I have t—”
She reached out, but he jerked his arm out of reach as if he couldn’t bear to touch her. “Have mercy. Not now, Callie.”
Turning away, tension in every line of his body, Jonah took the uneven stairs at a dangerous jog. He picked up his tank without looking back. “Forget this happened. Tomorrow will be business as usual,” he gritted, slinging the strap of his tank over one broad shoulder. “Suit up.”
* * *
A Greek tragedy of epic proportions.
Dr. Calista West filled him with so much ridiculous, impossible, forbidden need that Jonah was going fucking insane thinking of anything else.
Lust and insanity, Krazy Glued together, tied him in Gordian knots.
“You, Jonah Santiago Cutter, are a fucking dick.” He shut his eyes. “A stupid, inconsiderate dick.”
He’d given in to one taste. One small taste to compensate for the avalanche of pent-up horniness that had nowhere to go. One fucking taste.
He’d decided against it. Ignored the clamoring of every hormone in him. Ignored it, until those big blue-green eyes dropped to his mouth.
Then all goddamn bets were off.
His dick had done the thinking. Had made a convoluted interpretation that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
The smell of her coconut-scented skin fused with his synapses. A low-down subversive trick that clouded his judgment and made him stupid.
He was not his father. Fuck it. He was the opposite of his father.
He had to make this right.
How exactly did one apologize for ravaging a married woman? Because while to an outside viewer that kiss was just a kiss, Jonah knew it was a damn sight more. His intentions hadn’t been in the least bit honorable right then.
What should he say? Sorry, Callie, I was a madman because you lit my fuse the moment I first laid eyes on you, and it finally burned all the way down to the TNT, so an explosion was inevitable?
He’d held on to her so tightly, he must’ve left fingerprint bruises on her hips. Kissed her so hard, so ravenously, her lips had been bee-stung and reddened when he’d managed to unglue himself from her. He thumped his head against the headboard again.
Impossible for her to miss his hard-on, even through two layers of neoprene.
He’d wanted to strip them both naked and fuck her brains out right there on the ledge, on the rough lava rock.
He’d imagined that her lips had clung for an extra heartbeat before he broke contact, and regained his brain, even if it was reptilian at that point.
He’d needed a break from the unbearable tension of wanting her. Jonah squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He’d chosen poorly.
But, admit it, it had been worth whatever punishment she was going to mete out tomorrow. Worth it for those few minutes when nothing else had mattered but the feel and taste of her mouth, and the lash of her eager tongue dueling with his.
Stretched out on his wide bed, sweat-dampened, Egyptian cotton sheets rumpled by all the too-wired-to-sleep tossing and turning, he needed to kick his own ass. Intermittent moonlight streamed pure white light over the foot of the bed, making dragons and water nymphs out of the random pattern on the carpet.
He stared blindly up at the ceiling. Sleep? Shit. Probably never again. Was Callie sleeping? He glanced at his watch. Two a.m. Yeah. Probably. He was going to have to figure this out so he could talk to her first thing in the morning.
Her mouth had been hot and wet, slick and eager. What other parts of her might also be that way? Jesus. He couldn’t afford to wonder about it.
A Pavlovian response to the wildness in his kiss, he was sure. Callie wasn’t the type of woman to cheat on her husband.
He admired her for it.
He hated her for it.
He hated himself even more for acting on something he was old, and wise enough, to keep under wraps. He’d behaved like a randy schoolboy. And with about the same amount of finesse.
I. Am. Not. My. Father.
He was confused as hell and didn’t know what the fuck to do with all the pent-up lust and frustration surging through his body like a fucking riptide.
He was sucked in, and sucked under, and didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
He gave his hard head another clarifying thump on the burl wood behind him. “Unacceptable.” Yeah. Got that. “What the fuck will I do if she’s pissed enough to walk? What the hell will I do if she doesn’t?” He scrubbed his palm over his stubbly chin.
That kiss. Had he ever kissed a woman quite like that? Not just no, but hell no. The melding of their lips had rocked him to the core, short-circuited his synapses, and made him uncomfortably rock-hard. All that. Just from a kiss.
Christ, and he’d pretty much taken everything he could, with not a single thought to the consequences.
He was a dick and an asshole.
His phone rang. His heart leapt into his throat. Callie.
Lunging off the bed, he raced to the chair where he’d thrown his shorts when he’d come down after dinner. A dinner Callie had not attended. Probably packing to return to her loving husband. Fuckshitdamn.
Scrambling, all thumbs, he managed to fumble his phone out of his pocket, her name on his lips.
“Jonah? Maura. I have a Dr. Miguel Ebert on the line for Callie.”
And his captain presumed a married woman was in his cabin at two a.m.? Fuck. That just compounded the situation.
“I imagine she’s sleeping the sleep of the pure and innocent in her own cabin,” he told her, not feeling friendly or diplomatic. He scratched his chest as he sat on the foot of the moonlit, messed-up bed. That was his current situation, a bright spotlight on the messed-up idiocy of his poor choice and lack of self-control. Way to go, Cutter.
“He says it’s urgent, and she’s not answering. Want to take it, or should I tell him to call back tomorrow?”
At least it wasn’t the perfect Adam calling to make sure Jonah was taking good care of his wife. Shoot me now.
Jonah fell back on the bed, repressing a groan. “I’ll talk to him, patch him through.” What the fuck else did he have to do at two in the morning?
Eleven
Two in the morning and Callie sat wide awake, and dry-eyed, the ache in her chest unrelenting. Feet tucked under her butt, she rested her chin on her knees and squeezed shut her eyes. The tray Tina had sent down hours ago sat untouched on the desk by the door.
Callie had come—at a brisk walk, if not a full-out cowardly run—belowdecks after the kiss in the cavern. No excuse, just said “See you tomorrow” and fled to the safety of her cabin. Now she could add coward to indecisive and aroused.
“Who the hell am I?” she asked the room. Callie let out a frustrated groan, because the answer was embarrassingly clear. “A horny, indecisive chicken, that’s who. Snap the hell out of this, Calista. You don’t like it? Fix it.”
She’d been giving herself the same damn pep talk for nine freaking hours as she tried to formulate a workable plan.
She liked plans. And lists. And goals checked off.
Methodical was good. Rational was good. Not taking a giant misstep was not only good, but also smart.
But the situation with Jonah wasn’t as easy as writing down the pros and cons. Although God only knew, she’d done that a dozen times, too.
Having sex with him would have consequences far beyond momentary pleasure, she knew. Far-reaching repercussions that, when the heat and excitement cooled, could very well destroy what she’d built of her life.
Was a roll in the hay worth the aftermath?
After that incendiary kiss, she’d started to tell him the truth—“Partial truth,” she corrected. “And he didn’t cut you off, you chickened out.” Lying to herself wasn’t one of her faults. Brutal honesty might hurt, but it shone a spotlight on all her
failings, making them impossible to ignore. More faults than she’d realized she possessed, apparently. That sucked. She’d thought she was all things pretty damn fabulous, until now.
Child of alcoholics and bucking the stereotypes, a self-made woman. She had close friends, and colleagues who respected her.
“You didn’t try hard enough because, despite your earlier decision to seduce him, you’re still conflicted.” Still afraid. Still talking to herself like a frightened child.
Rydell had always assured her that her caution was wise. That not thinking things through, acting impulsively, could do her reputation harm. His sister, her best friend, bitched about her indecision and kept telling Callie to go for it. By the time she realized she’d made a mistake, if that was the case, she could make a U-turn and do a directional correction.
Callie chewed her lip. She wasn’t a woman who jumped into dangerous situations blindly. She didn’t take risks. Life was hard enough as it was without asking for trouble. But this couldn’t go on. Not without her internally combusting.
Clearly he’d be receptive. She should be happy. She could take what she wanted.
Why did it feel as though she were several different people and each of them wanted something different? She hadn’t always been quite this indecisive. She’d known how and when to get her parents into rehab, how to drive the car when her feet barely touched the pedals, to go get bandages when her mother beat the crap out of her father in one of their drunken battles.
She’d known to go to Peri and Rydell’s mom when the war zone of flying fists and bottles prevented her from sleeping at her own house next door.
She’d received her high school diploma on determination and focus, and her degrees the same way.
She wasn’t wishy-washy. She wasn’t a pushover. She made sound, intelligent decisions every damn day of the week. And damn it, she refused to be afraid. Had always refused to be afraid. And those situations had been a lot more dire and dangerous than an obsession for a man she shouldn’t want.
Maybe that was the problem.
This was something she wanted. A personal decision that only affected herself. And Jonah.