Stormchaser

by Cherry Adair

  She motioned Jonah to follow her around a thirty-foot outcropping of jagged lava rock shaped like a crouching dragon, its tail now part of a cobbled street.

  Together they swam with the merest flick of fins and hands through the clear deep-blue water. Drifting with the currents was just as she imagined flying would feel. Callie did a barrel roll, and when she righted Jonah was directly in front of her. His eyes sparked hot enough to turn the entire Mediterranean to steam. Taking her hand, and curving his arm around her back, tank and all, he swirled her around as if they were waltzing twenty feet above the seabed. Around them as they twirled, tiny four-inch, silver-and-pink pandoras flashed their metallic scales in a choreographed dance of their own, parting around the crazy humans and then coming together again in a flash of shimmer and light.

  For those few minutes as Jonah danced her through the blue of the water, Callie felt the happiest she’d ever felt in her life. The happiest, the freest. Oh, God—

  The most in love.

  The smile slipped. Jonah’s hand in hers tightened, and he gave her a worried look. What’s wrong? he mouthed, because the damn comm still didn’t work. Forcing a lightness to her features she wasn’t feeling, Callie smiled and mouthed back, Nothing. Excited to show you.

  With a swoop of his arm, he indicated she lead the way. The abrupt movement flipped him head over heels, and laughter went hand in hand with the sudden prickle of tears as she grabbed his arm to help him upright.

  How could this happen? Falling in love with the enemy was not part of the plan.

  Rydell’s enemy, Rydell’s plan, a small voice reminded her.

  The situation was already complicated enough without falling in love.

  No.

  No. No. No.

  Lust. She was in lust with Jonah, that was all it was. The best sex of her life. Propinquity.

  Jonah, oblivious to the rat’s nest that was her brain, and the desolate wasteland that was her heart, reached over, threading his fingers through hers. He lived to dive, loved to swim. He did not love her. It was too soon. They barely knew each other …

  They swam in tandem while Callie’s chest ached so badly she could barely breathe. Detaching her hand from his, she indicated it wasn’t practical to be tethered together when they were swimming between boulders and rough rocks.

  Jonah’s eyes glinted behind his mask. “Later.”

  No. There would be no later for them. The only way she was going to survive this was to leave. If Rydell wanted vengeance on the Cutters he’d have to deliver it himself.

  She’d just tell Rydell that she’d fallen in love with Jonah. What would he do? Take away her birthday?

  Callie couldn’t even make light of that in her head. Ry would be disappointed in her. He’d given her so much, done so much for her. He was family. He and Peri were everything to her. He’d asked one damn thing of her. And while he’d claimed it was payback for everything the Cutters had done to him and his business over the years, Callie was afraid it was something a lot darker and more serious than that.

  She’d leave tomorrow at first light. Make up some emergency at home.

  Leave Jonah and her city behind?

  She couldn’t breathe. She swam, but her chest ached, her eyes burned behind her mask, and indecision, the bane of her life, reared its ugly head.

  Disappoint Rydell.

  Lose out on the discovery of the millennium?

  Walk away from Jonah?

  He enjoyed her. But love? She didn’t think so.

  Then it was a toss-up between Ry and Atlantis.

  Rydell and Jonah.

  She was bereft and she hadn’t even walked away yet. Her heart already felt the pain of loss.

  Better now than in a week, or a month, she told herself bracingly. Better, much better to rip off the Band-Aid before it became part of her.

  One day.

  And if all she had was this one day, then it was going to be the best damn day of her life.

  * * *

  Swimming side by side, arms and legs synchronized, Jonah thought they were as compatible under the water as they were in bed. He turned his head to smile at her, but she was looking straight ahead, concentrating on navigating between the hills and valleys of lava rock, which could cut right through their suits to skin if they weren’t careful.

  She was beautiful to watch. Sleek as an otter, sexy as a mermaid. Everything about her turned him on, and turned him inside out.

  Wide swaths of pale sand, curved in a sinuous river-like path between black islands of rock, showed just how clear the water was today. Light, attenuated more by water than by air, limited the distance one could see. But with nothing to stir up the seabed, the particles and organic matter stayed on the bottom, hardly disturbed as they passed. This morning he could see at least 120 feet in all directions.

  Perfection. Just like Callie.

  Callie stayed him with a hand on his arm. He smiled at her through his mask. She smiled back, then turned him around to see what she and Saul had discovered the day before. For a moment he was distracted by a shadow behind her smile. He wondered what put it there, or if it was his imagination.

  Jonah knew the bulk of city was around the biggest lava flow mountain. He’d seen it from pretty much this exact vantage point last year and almost swallowed his tongue with excitement then. His reaction seeing it again now was pretty damn close.

  Buildings and foundations, broken walls, and thick sheets of pale marble—some intact, others shattered. The cobbled street couldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was. A ten-foot-wide road, with parallel ruts from ancient wheels, worn by foot and wheeled traffic. On either side, drainage ditches could clearly be seen as the road stretched out until it disappeared into murkier blue. The heart of the underwater city.

  Callie swam beside him as they moved beneath half a stone arch, which towered twenty feet above the seabed.

  She pointed out an almost intact marble statue of a naked young man holding a spear, his cloak draped across one shoulder, then gestured a few feet away, to the head, half embedded in the lava flow. A dozen flags marked various artifacts—mostly household items—swept into piles by the fast-moving magma. He’d seen this last year when he’d first discovered the city. But he enjoyed it even more now, through Callie’s eyes.

  A half-melted statue of a wrestling boy, toppled on its side, indicated the work of art was made of a soft metal consumed by great heat. Pots, pans, and metal utensils fused into a jumbled heap. Jonah knew Callie would enjoy piecing together the lives of the people who’d used them. She injected the emotions into the artifacts.

  Her excitement was evident as she showed him what she pantomimed to be a kitchen, but was little more than a mostly submerged foundation, filled with goblets, bowls, and dozens of amphorae. Jonah imagined it had been a small restaurant or shop. Maybe selling oils or wine judging by the shape of the containers. She’d found a lot of scatted coins and small utensils there yesterday, and flagged them all.

  Jonah touched everything with his hands as well as his eyes, the same technique he’d seen Callie use to explore.

  After several hours, he indicated they needed a break. Neither wanted to stop; this was just too thrilling, too damn amazing, to stop for any length of time. But they needed to conserve the air in their tanks. He indicated they head back to the cavern, where they could catch their breath and breathe normally, instead of returning all the way to Stormchaser.

  Callie, eyes gleaming with discovery, reluctantly nodded.

  * * *

  As soon as they climbed the first few stone steps, Jonah reached above her and turned on a small powerful lantern that the guys had left there when they came down to work on the door the day before.

  They removed their face masks and unhooked their tanks. Jonah managed to stroke her breasts and belly as he slowly removed her tank. Then he removed his own, setting both against the wall from which the steps had originally been carved.

  Smiling ear-to-ear, h
e ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up on end in dark spikes. “Now will you acknowledge we’ve got Atlantis?”

  He looked adorably sexy in the golden light thrown by the lamp. Callie’s heart squeezed as she sat halfway up the stairs. Not willing to concede victory just yet, she exhaled and stretched out her cramped calf muscle. “We should just be ecstatic we have a lost city,” she told him, leaning back on her elbows.

  “Which is Atlantis.” He started peeling off his wet suit. Why, she had no idea. He’d indicated a short rest before going back to explore further. “Come on, admit it. Even if it’s just to me.”

  The lamplight made the blue of his eyes dance and twinkle. She itched to touch him, and since he moved up between her legs, she combed her fingers through his hair as he bent over her. It felt cool to the touch, silky and heavy as she let it run through her fingers. “Maybe.”

  He bent his head to brush a kiss over her closed lips, his mouth a hot contrast with the cool temperature of his hair. Callie tasted his smile as he murmured, “Definitely.”

  She shook her head, still not willing to say aloud what she believed in her heart. There were still dozens of ways to prove or disprove if this was the Real Deal. The reflection off the rippling water below danced across the bronze of his skin and sparkled the droplets of water on his shoulders as he finished peeling off the wet suit, then tossed it casually aside. “You have on too many clothes.”

  “Oh, I so don’t think so, Cutter.” She put a hand over his as he started tugging down her zipper.

  He shut off that thought by kissing her until she was breathless, her mind a swirl of lovely colors. The delicious taste of him, dark and salty and hungry, spiked her own need to fever pitch. Cold air hit her warm skin as he pulled the zipper all the way down and reached beneath the neoprene to cup her breast in his hand. “Arms out, please.”

  “You’re doing such a sterling job of undressing me, do it yourself.” She leaned to allow him better access.

  “Be practical. I need both hands.”

  “All right.” Callie peeled out of the tight neoprene, and Jonah helped by pulling it all the way off, leaving her in just her thin, racer-back swimsuit, which was no barrier to Cutter at all. Supporting himself on his arms, he bracketed her body with his, so she felt the heat of his body and the hard, pulsing bar of his erection at the juncture of her thighs. She couldn’t help but arch against the delicious heat of it.

  Using his forearm to lift her off the step, he stuffed the neoprene into the small of her back, cushioning her from the rocks, then came down between her legs, his weight balanced on his arms so he circled her with his body. He bent his head to brush her lips with his.

  His eyes darkened, the black of his pupils huge and circled with a thin rim of navy blue. “I can’t get enough of you, Dr. West. I’m in a permanent state of arousal, and all I can think about is making love until neither of us can move.”

  “I can’t move right now,” she murmured drily as his lips moved with maddening slowness down the cords of her throat. The stairs were barely four feet wide. There was the wall to her left, the drop-off to the water below on her right, and her body encased by the cage of Jonah’s body. She’d never felt safer.

  Callie couldn’t think of anywhere she’d rather be, and then she couldn’t think at all as he kissed her.

  She loved the way he seemed to be unchecked, that he didn’t hold back or try to temper his passion. She felt it, too, and gave him back everything she had.

  Loving the cool, smooth feel of his lips on hers, she explored the hot taste of him as he stroked her tongue with his. While he kissed her, Jonah slid first one strap of her utilitarian black swimsuit, then the other, down her arms until the cool air bathed her breasts and her nipples arched into tight peaks.

  “You know anyone can swim in here at any moment, right?” she murmured against his mouth.

  “Not likely, everyone’s busy, and even if someone was so rude as to interrupt—I’m lying on top of you, they won’t see anything.”

  Ever practical, Callie shifted. He was heavy and barely moved. “We’re sitting under a lantern.”

  Reaching up over her head, he plunged them into pitch darkness. Without the sense of sight, her other senses of touch and hearing amped up even more to compensate. The hot brush of his breath against her skin was a caress. She shivered with the quick jolt of her body, and her breath came out in a rush as his hot mouth closed unerringly over her nipple.

  Blood swimming, heart thumping erratically, she tightened her grip in the strands of Jonah’s hair to anchor herself. Her senses went haywire in the darkness as he made love to her with his teeth and tongue while the throbbing silence of the cavern closed around them like a lover’s embrace, and the gentle lapping of water against rock was in counterpoint to the heated surge of her blood.

  He closed his lips over her nipple, sucking the hard peak into the warm cavern of his mouth through the stretchy silk of her swimsuit. Drew the cloth back and forth, slowly rasping it across her nipples and bringing them to stiff erection as he tormented her other hardened nipple with callused fingers. Her breasts throbbed, her back arched involuntarily.

  Callused fingers skimmed down her side, gliding the top of her suit over her breasts. As his hot mouth closed over a distended tip, she tried to help by wiggling out of her swimsuit while tugging it down to give him better access to her breast.

  Jonah pushed her hand aside. “Uh-uh. I want to unwrap you.” He slid her suit down to her hips. As he kissed his way from between her breasts, the hot wetness of his tongue danced across her nipple, making everything inside her contract almost painfully. Cupping her breast, he twirled his tongue against the taut peak, then grazed his teeth on the tight bud. She lifted against his mouth, offering herself.

  He groaned as her back arched, his fingers cupping the cool globe to bring her breast to his mouth. Molding the other breast, he brushed his thumb over the hard, aching peak until Callie’s breath snagged in her throat. His mouth cruised down between her breasts, nipping and licking, hot and damp, and leaving a path of icy fire all the way from the base of her throat to her belly. The rasp of his unshaven jaw turned her on even more. Every nerve ending, every atom of her body was so tuned in to Jonah that she was now unaware of anything but the feel of his hands and mouth on her supersensitized body.

  Soft lips, sandpapery beard.

  She’d lost her mind.

  Breath fast and hot, Callie’s fingers slipped from his hair to his shoulders as he kept moving down. His muscles shifted beneath his skin as he kissed her belly. She still wore her suit, but it was a thin G-string around her hips. Jonah made fast work of tugging the rolled-up fabric down her legs, then shifting his upper body just enough to pull her swimsuit off completely.

  “Don’t throw it!” she lifted up on her elbows to warn him. “I can only imagine what people would think when I got out of my wet suit on board and was bare-butt naked. I so don’t think so.” Taking the wadded-up nylon from him, she stuck it under her head as a pillow. It would probably be more practical to put it under her tailbone, which was in direct contact with the step.

  “I’d enjoy it.”

  “You’re an exhibitionist. You like being naked.”

  “True. I like you being naked even more.”

  “Yes, well, we can’t—” she started, but got distracted as he extended the tip of his tongue to outline her belly button, making her butt arch off the step and her nails dig into his shoulders.

  His callused fingers felt as rough as a cat’s tongue against her sensitized skin as he glided his hand into the exposed V. “Soft. You smell so good. Woman and ocean, and sex.”

  Feeling full and juicy, and impossibly aroused, she tightened her fingers in his hair. The muscles in her legs and butt clenched and released as his slightest touch made her unravel.

  Feeling the heavy ache in her lower body ratchet up, tighter and tighter, made it impossible to catch her breath. A flurry of pleasure shook he
r.

  “You were saying?”

  “The stairs aren’t wide enough—we’ll fall off into the water.” A ten-foot drop.

  His teeth grazed her inner thigh, making her shiver. “We can swim.”

  She laughed. “Crazy man. This isn’t the time or—”

  Jonah face’s was a mask of tension and desire. “You are so beautiful.” His breath scalded her inner thigh.

  Her cheeks flushed hot. He wasn’t looking at her face, and she wasn’t used to a man staring so intently at her private parts.

  Smiling, he cupped her mound, teasing the swollen seam with his finger. Already wet, and he’d barely touched her. Callie moaned, tangling her fingers in his hair.

  Jonah slid two flingers inside, and her butt levitated off the hard step as he stroked and circled, explored and teased.

  She made a harsh sound as his hot, open mouth closed over her, tonguing and teasing, until her head thrashed on the hard pillow of the step. Her knees opened wider to accommodate his broad shoulders as his tongue did amazing things to her clit.

  Sound amplified. The slosh of the water at the base of the stairs, the lapping of his tongue delving inside her, seemed shockingly loud. She felt his heartbeat, her heartbeat, right where his mouth teased and tormented her.

  Flushed and feverish, her head dropped back as she pushed herself against his mouth. His growl of pleasure reverberated through her. Panting, ratcheting higher and higher, she felt defenseless and at the same time all-powerful.

  The tight coil of her braid was the only part of her protected from the stone. The rock was icy cold all the way down her back and legs, his wet suit no longer protecting the small of her back. Callie didn’t give a damn if she walked away with one giant bruise from head to toe. This, right now, was worth it.

  The aching tension tightened unbearably … she cried out as pleasure shuddered through her in pulsing waves as she convulsed around his mouth, and rode the sharp, shuddering wave of ecstasy.

  * * *