“You have no idea, woman. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you”
“Try me.”
She stood in front of him with one hand on her hip and a determined look in her eyes. He imagined she would give even the great Poseidon trouble. That thought made him smile.
She narrowed her eyes, pressing her lips together in a thin line. Then she pulled her hand from his and stomped around to stand with her back to him and crossed her arms but didn’t move away any further. Still, the loss of physical contact knifed through him and his strength leached away.
Her shoulders rose and fell with an exasperated breath. He reached out for her like a life line even as he felt himself start to sink into the dark waters of Thema’s curse. His throat and mouth went dry to the point of choking. When he looked at his hand, he could see it was turning gray and parchment like. The exertion of holding his own arm up was suddenly too much, a breath away from reaching salvation, it fell down to his side like a dead weight. Each time he lost contact with her the curse took him harder and faster than the time before. He was aging by the second; slipping toward death.
Just as his knees started to give, Cindy turned back around. Eyes wide with alarm, she lunged forward and grasped both of his arms, instantly, sending a surge of power through him. He knew what she was seeing in his face even as he watched his hands and arms grow strong and smooth again, his vitality returned. He grasped her elbows, meeting her startled stare. What he saw there nearly killed him all over again ─ disbelief, alarm, and worst of all, fear. It swept over her features. She took a step back. Ronan clasped both of her hands in his before she could slip away from him.
“Cara, don’t…
“No! You tell me who you are and what the hell is going on here!”
The play of emotions on her face changed from fearful to demanding with a spark of fire. Good. Anger from this woman he could handle, but her fear would be his undoing. Her eyebrows came together in the most adorable scowl. Before he could think better of it, he gave her a brief nod ─ a gentleman’s acceptance of the gloves off fight she looked ready to engage in.
This set her off again for some reason and she stamped her foot.
“Look!” She yelled, “I’m really not used to being hunted down by strange men, and just because you’ve been decent company for the day doesn’t mean I can ignore the overall weirdness of this whole situation. If you’re some crazy escaped from the loony bin or psycho killer or…or alien body snatcher looking for a host…”
She kept speaking, teetering at the edge of hysterics and she couldn’t be hysterical for what he had to say. He had to do something quick before her bellowing drew a crowd, but what? He tried to think. What did the men of this time do when a woman went apoplectic? Did women still faint anymore? Dear gods!
He’d lost her words but was conscious of her cadence picking up speed.
“… are you even listening to me?”
He focused back on her and her wild blonde curls and frantic blue eyes decided the matter. He stepped into her with determination even as she started off at a rattle again.
“Something happened back there in that lighthouse and I want an explana…”
He pulled her to him and brought his mouth down on hers, silencing her. She yelped against his lips but he swallowed the sound and took full advantage, plunging into her mouth with his tongue. Her body tightened, at first, but then she started to yield and he gentled his hold on her shoulders, pulling her into him and holding her as she softened.
***
This time, Cindy was the one getting weak. She’d jerked in surprise when Ronan’s lips had met hers, but as soon as his arms came around her she melted. He held her close with one hand at the small of her back and the other thrust into her hair. Watching his lips move all day had done nothing to prepare her for how they would feel. She’d been kissed before but never like this. Even that had been a failure but not with Ronan. This was a first, and despite everything that was wrong about it, she couldn’t have pulled away if she’d wanted to. She gave him her weight, pressing the front of her body to his. His hard chest rubbed against her breasts, the contact immediately awakening all her most feminine places. He dipped into her mouth gently and forcefully all at the same time. She couldn’t understand the contradictions but they made her ache for him the way she never had for anyone.
Her body came alive with new sensations and that empty place that no one had ever come close to before yawned open like it would draw him in, not stopping until it had been filled. Completed.
At that moment, a sharp whistle ripped through the air. They broke contact, turning at the sound. A smiling man dressed in crisp white pants and a cool cotton shirt walked down the path towards them.
“Cómo estás …” he rang out.
Ronan answered back in kind.
The man in white nodded at Cindy and smiled.
She blushed, embarrassed and tried to move but Ronan held her close to him while he eyed the stranger.
“Senorita,” the man said, nodding to her. His eyes crinkling in the sun.
Ronan cut in with some more Spanish and gestured at the lighthouse. Her ears perked up at the mention of her friend’s name. “Karina” said in that sultry accent of his sounded exotic, alluring even and a ridiculous shard of jealousy prickled in her chest.
“Ah, si, si,” the man in white said, excited now. Then he rattled off some more unintelligible conversation. Cindy started to feel like an outsider but then Ronan turned to her.
“Show him your photograph, cara.”
She cocked her head at him in question.
“He’s the groundskeeper here. He thinks he may have seen your friend.”
Quickly, she dug the photo out of her purse and handed it to the other man.
He squinted at the picture, rubbing his jaw then nodded his head in solemn remembrance.
“Ah, si,” he said finally.
He handed the picture back then turned to Ronan. The two men spoke again and the groundskeeper gestured expansively, first at the lighthouse then beyond. He nodded several times as they talked and the action gave Cindy a glimmer of hope for Kay. Finally, he turned down a path that led to an area marked ‘lighthouse personnel only’ and flicked his hand at them several times to follow.
“Come, come…this way,” he said.
They watched him for half a second before turning to face each other. Cindy looked up at Ronan, questioning. He dipped his head in the direction the man had gone and nodded. She had no idea what it meant that she suddenly valued his reassurance but he had been rather helpful all day long and she was glad he was with her now.
Then, of course, there was that kiss she was still vibrating from.
Ronan’s hand squeezed hers and they moved to catch up to the groundskeeper.
“I guess you really shut me up back there, huh?” She grumped as they moved.
Who got so shaken up by a kiss?
A deep chuckle was the only response she got. He slid her a sidelong glance and leaned in close to her ear.
“You talk too much, cara.”
The words were said soft and low and nearly had her tripping over her own feet.
She started to say something back, to the affect that their conversation wasn’t over but, just then the groundskeeper started shouting from in front of a small building. Once they reached him, he went off on another long run of explanations and descriptions that Cindy didn’t understand but, judging from all the hand gesturing and voice inflections, there had to be some helpful information in there about Kay. Finally, he took a key out of his pocket and opened the door to the little hut.
It turned out to be a tool shed. They followed him to the back where he stood in front of a row of high shelves. Cindy eyed a pair of pruning shears warily but found herself being tugged forward by Ronan anyway. It would be on Captain Nice Butt’s head if this guy turned out to be some gardening serial killer. Before her mind could run with that line of thinking though, the man direc
ted their attention to the highest shelf.
Cindy couldn’t see much of anything from where she stood, but before she could interrogate Ronan, the man in white moved toward the door. He stepped outside then turned back and waved at them. The glare of the sun outside ringed his figure in the doorway, obscuring his features but Cindy could still make out his gleaming smile against his light brown skin. For precisely a nanosecond her attention focused on that one discernible feature. She wondered why she hadn’t noticed before how young he was, or how his thick Columbian style mustache was undeniably askew.
She squinted to bring him into better focus but ‘Don San Diego’ moved out into the sun completely and belted out a hearty, “Buenos dias amigos! Good luck, Seniorita,” then left them alone.
It was quiet inside the shed. They looked around but Cindy saw nothing out of the ordinary about it. There was the usual mix of tools, shovels and bags of fertilizer taking up residence. All in all, it was just your average shed.
“What did he say?” She asked.
Ronan stared at the shelf above their heads.
“He said he saw your friend here at night with a man about one week ago. Apparently, they argued a bit and spent their time outside on the grounds here. He lost track of them when a storm came up.”
“Weird,” Cindy said, “I wonder who this yahoo was that Kay was with. Did the gardener give a description?”
Ronan shrugged.
“He said he was my height but with lighter hair.”
Cindy frowned. Not much to go on there.
“And he just left us here?”
“He mentioned a prior engagement with a friend of his named Cuervo.”
“Right,” Cindy shook her head. “I don’t know which is worse, that he used that as an excuse to leave us here by ourselves or that you actually seem like you don’t know what he was talking about.”
Ronan just raised one eyebrow at her then looked back up at the wall.
“What is it?”
She followed his gaze.
“He mentioned finding some of your friend’s belongings. He said he placed them up on that shelf but I don’t see anything.”
Cindy stood on tip toe and craned her neck but the shelf was too high to see over.
“Well here, boost me up,” she motioned for him to stand behind her. That might have been what a sane person would have called a mistake since his touch sent all that crazy electricity skittering through her, but so far her day hadn’t produced much that could be considered sanity. As soon as he put his hands on her waist, the feeling sizzled through her torso and spread to the far reaches of her nerve endings so that it came as a surprise when, a half second later, she found herself airborne then held aloft at the edge of the shelf.
A low grunt brought her back to the present as she tried to tamp down the affect of Ronan’s hands on her body…just a little.
“I can’t see anything. I’m not high enough.”
Another grunt and a heroic heave placed her butt somewhere between his chest and shoulder then her thighs were pinned together in one strong arm while his other hand supported her ribcage underneath her breasts. At least the new position put an end to the grunting but the strain in his tone when he ground out, “What do you see?” was enough to affirm that she didn’t have very long up there so she made a quick search of the shelf. All she could find were a couple of dead fly carcasses and a few rocks, none of which looked all that interesting.
“There’s not much up here.” She answered back then yelped as she started to slip.
She blew at the dust on the shelf to see if there was more to the rocks but all that bright idea afforded her was a coughing attack that caused Ronan to lose his grip entirely. He staggered underneath her.
As she felt herself start to fall, she reached for the shelf in one last act of self preservation and the whole flimsy piece of particle board crumbled away from the wall. The wood and its dusty contents rained down at the same time she was yanked from the air and pulled hard against Ronan’s chest.
They jolted to the ground, their bodies pushed together in a whoosh of breath. Cindy’s cheek landed right above Ronan’s heart, its strong steady beat pulsed under her ear. She lost herself to the rhythm while the pain of impact ebbed away and stayed there, probably too long. Her legs straddled his hips and the core parts of their bodies pressed together in a perfect fit that felt dangerously good.
Something deep inside her started to unfurl, opening as if it recognized a long lost piece of itself. She wrapped her arms around him and clenched his hips with her thighs because she had to. When his arms came around her, that dark empty cavern that had forever been her nemesis faded away. The power of this newfound lust or need ─ whichever one it was ─ startled her. She pushed up, shaking the hair out of her eyes. With her hands against his chest, Cindy tipped her chin down catching a look in his eyes that bordered somewhere between astonishment and desire.
Quick, she cleared her throat and scrambled to stand up.
Searching for a distraction while she caught her breath, she looked at the pile of rubble that had fallen. Ronan’s quick reflexes had pulled them out of harm’s way but now her eyes caught sight of the little rocks on the floor. Something about them grabbed her attention.
She stooped down for a closer look.
“Shells,” she murmured, picking one up. It was small and scallop shaped. Why would Kay have saved these? They were just ordinary seashells.
Just as she thought that, a gust of wind rushed into the shed. It had clouded up outside and now rain threatened even though the day had been clear and sunny just moments before.
“Cara,” Ronan said over her, “the shell, drop it!”
She jerked back around, looking into the palm of her hand. The tiny white shell glowed from inside and grew warm on her skin. Warm went to hot in an instant, before she could fling the thing away, it was burning. She jerked and it fell, landing open side up.
From inside, the glow grew and started to spill out of the shell while another gust of wind shook the walls of the shed. This time, the icy air brought freezing rain in with it. Cindy turned into Ronan. He started to pull her toward the door just as another gust blasted them and a bright flash burst forth from the back of the gardener’s shack. They turned to look. Cindy saw a watery whirlwind of a vision start to take shape before her eyes.
“A water veil.” Ronan said. Then he clamped down on Cindy’s hand, pulling her to the door.
She would have willingly gone with him but the vision held her transfixed as it began to take on the form of a woman. A long fall of hair swept to the side of the vision’s face and as the figure turned, it was clearly her friend.
“Kay!”
Chapter Fifteen
Aster Realm
“Find the goddess of healing and bring her to me!” Poseidon roared in the scene that was playing out before Panacea. “If she has the amulet, I will have it from her.”
Pan was sifting through the mists and had stopped to check in on the great sea god.
“We only think she has it, my liege. The serpent told us she’d interceded in the matter of the Olympian and his human and that the messenger we sent to earth to make the trade has failed.”
“I told you the human couldn’t be trusted not to bumble the task. I don’t know why you’ve allowed him and his men to remain on your sacred isle all these years, my lord,” Thema’s minion, Nia, sneered.
“It’s no matter,” Thema shrugged, “he’ll soon expire on earth if he hasn’t already.”
Her nostrils flared, a dead give-a-way that she wasn’t expressing herself truthfully where this human they spoke of was concerned.
“Silence both of you!” Poseidon thundered. “Don’t assume I’ve forgotten your misdeeds where my islands are concerned,” he said to Thema. “Never think that your actions are your own to decide nymph. You answer to me!”
His emerald eyes shimmered with the heat of his anger. Movement in the iris of the eyes was purel
y a trait of the gods and Poseidon’s were a veritable storm right now.
“If the human you sent hasn’t died yet, you will retrieve him and take him back to the island,” he commanded Nia.
“Yes, my liege.” She bowed before him then vanished.
“As for you Thema,” he said with no acknowledgement of her royal title, “search the waters and all my islands. We must find the goddess and wrest the amulet from her. The enchantments of the stone will aid me in strengthening our defenses. This underworld invasion has gone too far.”
He shook his great head.
“There are still those gods who are in denial that the demons could come into power and others who sleep in Lethe’s realm of oblivion.”
Panacea nodded in agreement though no one could see her. A number of the greater gods were lying in this state of self-induced coma Poseidon spoke of. It was the way the gods recharged themselves. They would enter the goddess of forgetfulness’s realm to be wiped free of all the memories they’d amassed over eternity. Slowly, all their recollections of the deeds that had made them great would be restored to them. It was how they cleared away the cobwebs of omniscience and prevented insanity. Too many of them had been entering the sleep out of boredom lately though and the wicked were taking advantage of their absence.
Poseidon didn’t sleep though and he’d finally caught on to the fact that his tide portals were being breached by creatures that the divinities had created long ago then forgotten about.
“As you command, my liege,” the Nereid queen bowed then left in a shower of sea spray.
But Panacea had seen the flash of anger that had flared in Thema’s eyes before she’d left. She cleared away the scene with a wave of her hand.
“Poor befuddled Poseidon,” Pan sighed, “he thinks his raging will get him his way. Even if I had the amulet in my possession, it would do him no good. The god will never be able to use it on his own.”
There was no time to think more on the subject though. She had to stay on Thema’s trail and find out what the nymph was up to.
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