Descending (The Rising Series)
Page 10
As she reminisced, she fingered her flipper, remembering every jagged edge, every fold, even the scar she got from playing with a young shark. She marveled at the fin that hadn’t seen the light of day in so long. She slapped it playfully against the water’s surface. Excitement mingled with apprehension as she sat in the shallow water. She’d promised herself she’d never return. She feared if she did, her mother would find her. And her life would be over.
But she wasn’t a child anymore. She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, let fear rule her life or steal her happiness. She needed to put her fear where it belonged—in her past.
Pulling herself forward, she slipped in deeper, heading out into the water. Her head dipped under the surface, and she took her first, cleansing breath of fresh sea. She relished the flavor of the sea. It had been so long. She hadn’t even known she’d miss it so much, but down here, she remembered all the good things she’d forgotten—the feel of the sea caressing her, the briny scent of the seawater, and the variety of tastes that assaulted her with flavors of all kinds.
Swimming down, she looked around. A silvery light shone off the rocky walls—it was brighter deep down. Curiosity pulled her to that glow. There was a tunnel. She swam through it, twisting and turning. The farther she went, the more she worried it would narrow too much to let her through. Then she’d have to back slowly out of it. But it went on until she was finally bathed in a sea of moonlight. She’d made it to the outside.
She looked through the glowing water, crisscrossed with moonbeams. The light danced through the water and across her skin. Stretching her fin, she swam—timid at first. She took in her surroundings. Seaweed rose around her, brushing her body as she snaked through the stalks. Several small fish darted away.
Looking up, she spotted dark shapes silhouetted against the bright, rippling surface. Sharks circled above. They seemed to catch her scent and turned toward her, coming at her from all sides.
A large female with sharp, glimmering teeth reached her first. Gretchen giggled as she playfully swept past her. Then there were more, circling her like a celebrity surrounded by adoring fans. “Well, hello,” she greeted impishly.
She continued her one-sided conversation. “What are you all doing here?” A small bull shark swam up and turned over, his belly facing up. Gretchen rubbed it until his eyes rolled over. Feeling a bit giddy, Gretchen took off, swimming in circles around and through the coral reefs. The sharks followed her like a line of follow the leader. Gretchen hadn’t swum like this in years, but it was just like a bicycle—you never forgot.
She played in wanton abandon for hours—laughing harder than she’d done in a long time. She could almost forget her troubles on the surface, but soon enough, it encroached on her dream. She gasped when she looked above. The light of the sun was touching the waves. Holy crap!
If she didn’t get back, Straton and Pallas would miss her and come looking for her. She bid her new friends goodbye and headed back through the tunnel. Breaking through the surface, she heard voices. They were coming! Should she go back? No, the voices were still faint. If she moved fast, she’d have plenty of time. She pulled up to the shore and dragged her body from the water. As her body left, she could feel the familiar tingle as her human legs returned, inch by inch.
“This is where the footsteps lead.” She could hear Straton’s voice clearly.
Gretchen found her nightgown and slipped it over her head.
“Hades! Straton, Pallas, I leave for a day and you lose her.” Kyros’s voice rumbled in anger. “If anything has happened to her, I’ll tear your head off.”
“By the gods, it’s not my fault. She tampered with the window alarm.”
“What was she doing coming here anyway?” Straton asked.
“Do you realize how dangerous this makes it for us?” Pallas asked.
What the heck does that mean? She saw their shadows in the entrance. Gretchen focused on trying to not look guilty. Then they walked in.
“Gretchen,” Kyros said. “What are you doing here?”
“I got bored.” Brilliant answer. Why couldn’t she have thought of a better one?
“Well, Gretchen, you are one lucky woman. Your killer has been caught and will not be giving you any more trouble.”
“Really?” She stumbled forward, tripping over a rock.
Kyros reached out to steady her and smiled. “Yes. So you’re a free woman. How would you like to get out and have some fun?” he asked.
Straton and Pallas frowned. She didn’t know what their problem was now. Since the criminal had been caught, there shouldn’t be anything keeping her in.
“You want to do something with me?” she asked, unsure. She didn’t trust the change in him. His personality seemed as unpredictable as the sea. Still, she was simply sick of staying indoors. “Okay, but if you start grumbling at me, I’ll slap that frown right off your face. Today, I want to have fun. Got it?”
“Fun it is then.” He smiled and offered her his arm.
An hour later, they were walking out to the car. “Look,” Kyros said. “I know I can be a bit hard to take, and I realize I’ve been a tad controlling.”
A tad? Gretchen nearly laughed at the understatement.
“To show you I can be reasonable, I’ll let you drive.”
She did laugh then. “Oh. You’ll let me drive.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, backpedaling.
“No, I’m sorry. I know what you meant. And since I’m such a wonderful, forgiving soul, I’ll let you ride up front while I drive.”
He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say more.
“Where to?” Gretchen asked as they sat in her car.
“Since you’ve had your swim, how about we find other things to do on the island?”
She couldn’t have said it better herself. “Sure.”
“There’s a place called Gib’s Hill Lighthouse. It’s supposed to have a great view of the island.”
“Okay, sounds like a good start.” She entered it in the GPS. “Soooo,” she said as she pulled onto the road. “What happened while you were gone?”
His brows immediately pinched together. “We got him.”
“Yeah, that much I’d heard.”
“That’s all you need to know.”
Great, she was probably aiding and abetting a criminal. “The less I know, the better, huh?”
He looked relieved she understood. “Exactly.”
Oh brother.
Perhaps spending the day with Kyros was a bad idea, but she’d been known to exercise poor judgment before. She snuck a glance at him. Man, he was gorgeous. And despite his wide mood swings and ability to make her want to murder him, she liked him. She loved being with him when he was being nice. She loved debating with him when he was being unreasonable. She liked spending time with him—period. Oh, and that man sure could kiss. Yeah, she’d never been smart when it came to men.
The lighthouse came into view, towering high above the island. Kyros thought they should take a walk from Horseshoe Bay, up to the lighthouse. It looked like she should have gone with tennis shoes instead of her white, strappy sandals. How was she to know they’d be hiking up a giant hill?
By the time they reached the top, Gretchen was sucking air through her lungs. Maybe she should work out more often.
She looked over at Kyros. She could barely even see him breathing at all, much less hard. It wasn’t fair. She hadn’t seen him work out at all in the time she’d been here on the island. Narrowing her eyes, she came to the realization. He had to work out. No one had that kind of physique naturally. He just probably exercised before eight AM.
“What?” Kyros was watching her.
“Huh?”
“Why are you glaring at me?”
“Oh. No reason.”
“Do you want to rest before we head up to the top of the lighthouse?”
“No! Of course not. Why should I need to rest?”
He shrugged. “Okay, lead the way.”
“Are you okay, Gretchen?”
She answered him with the hardest glare her tired body could muster. She really needed to work out. It hadn’t been that long since she’d trained, had it? Her schooling and internship had severely cut into her workouts. As soon as she got back to Honolulu, she was going back to the gym.
“Sorry I asked.” The way he smirked as he held up his hands in surrender, made her smile. “How about we see what all this was for.” He led the way onto the balcony.
The view was spectacular. Pockets of seawater sparkled between lush little islands hugging the coast. Inside each of those pockets were hundreds of boats. Several boats had masts pointing up like little raised hands saying ‘look at me!’ The ocean horizon spread in an expansive circle around them. The water looked so far below.
“If I were to be able to dive into the ocean from this height, do you think I’d survive?”
Kyros shook his head. “Not a chance. Even falling thirty feet to the water makes you feel like you’re going to die.”
“You’ve dove from thirty feet?”
“I’ve never actually measured it. But, yeah. I’m sure it was at least that.”
“Cool.”
Kyros raised an eyebrow. “You are? We probably should have brought you a jacket.”
“What?” Gretchen shook her head. “Not cool as in cold. It’s cool as in awesome, great… you know.”
“Oh, so you’re not cool?” He stepped toward her and cracked a smile.
She swallowed as she looked at his lips. “No, I’m not.”
“I’m going to have to disagree.” His lips were inches from hers. His warm breath tickled her face.
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to kiss me again.”
His head jerked back. “You don’t want me to?”
“I do. I just don’t want to deal with the aftermath. You know… the avoidance, cold shoulder, regret…”
“I do regret kissing you,” he said, resigned.
Sometimes, Gretchen was impressed when people were brutally honest. This was not one of those times. “Well then, just don’t,” she snapped.
“I hurt you.” He sounded surprised.
Well, duh!
“I’m sorry.” He stepped closer.
Gretchen stepped back. “Me too. I’m sorry I ever let you kiss me.”
He took another step. “I’m sorry I ever stopped.”
“How can you regret kissing me, but wish you’d never stopped?” she asked as she took another step back.
He stepped forward again. “Ever since I kissed you, I can scarcely think of anything else. You haunt my thoughts every moment of the day and my dreams at night. I can’t seem to get you out of my head.”
She took another step back, and her body pressed against the railing. “Really?”
He slipped his arms around her. “Yes, really.” His mouth lowered to hers. Their lips touched, lighting a fire in her belly. She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him with a ferocity she’d only ever felt with him. She’d never wanted a man more than she wanted this one. He lifted her up on the high railing and sat her down. She had to lower her head to continue kissing him. He stepped into her, and she wrapped her legs around his chest.
Giggles in the background brought her back to the land of reality. The children’s laughter must have had the same effect on Kyros, because he immediately pulled his lips away from hers. Gretchen glanced behind him. There was a little family with three young children. The girl who looked to be about six was smiling at them, her eyes sparkling.
“Perhaps this is not the best place for this.” Kyros’s voice was rough, and his breathing heavy. Gretchen smiled. It looked like kissing her was more exhausting than a hike up a mountain. She glanced behind her back and gasped. She sat perched on a narrow railing with nothing but a hundred-foot drop at her back. If she fell from here, she’d be dead. She tightened her grip around Kyros’s neck.
He smiled and seemed to take her action as an invitation to nibble on the flesh below her ear. She was immediately distracted by the sensation of his lips moving down her neck. The hundred-foot death drop and gawking family seemed less and less important to her.
“Why don’t we go somewhere more private?” she whispered.
His breath hitched. “Now that would be a bad idea. If we do that I can’t…” His voice trailed off as he straightened up, his eyes widening.
He narrowed his eyes and said, “You know exactly what would happen.”
She smiled at his apparent naivety. “Not exactly, but I have a pretty good idea.”
He roughly lifted her off the railing, dropped her to her feet, and stepped back. “You’ve done it before? With other men?”
Gretchen could hear a tiny gasp. “Of course I have,” she whispered. Her eyes caught the frightened look of the girl. Her father snatched the child up and led his children back through the door. She could hear him mutter something about a public place.
“Way to go. You just scared away that family,” she said.
“Good. We need to talk alone.”
“No, our conversation is over.” Gretchen tried to push her way past him, but he pinned his arms on either side of her.
“Do you not know how that cheapens you?” he asked. “To be…”
Gretchen could feel the heat rise in her cheeks at his words. She couldn’t believe he was talking to her like this. Like she was a… a…
“Why would you give away that which is most precious to a woman?” he asked.
She jabbed her finger at her own chest. “Me! I’m what’s most precious. Not… that. Me!”
He looked her up and down. “This is you, Gretchen. Your body, it’s you. You give away a piece of yourself every time you let other men have you without a commitment, without marriage, and everything that entails. Your body is not a gift you give someone on a whim, or when you feel an urge, or even if you care about him. It’s a treasure that should be earned, that should be fought for. It’s not something anyone should get easily.”
“Well, you don’t want to fight for me. You’re attracted to me, sure, but you don’t care about me. Not in the way you described. You don’t even like me. So what do you want?”
He looked like she struck him. Well, she was just being honest. “That’s not true,” he said. “I care about you. If I didn’t, I’d take what you offered. And I certainly wouldn’t be lecturing you about morality.”
“So if you didn’t care about me, you’d take what I offered? Now that sounds like a double standard to me. Wouldn’t that be giving a part of yourself away?”
He looked shocked at her reasoning. “It’s not the same.”
“Oh really? Why not?”
He stood, the wheels turning in his head so loudly, she could almost hear them grinding. “Well, that’s not important now,” he said. “What’s important is I do care about you, Gretchen. I do. On every level. You’re funny, intelligent, and beautiful. You are definitely worth fighting for, worth waiting for.”
Her heart warmed at his words. “You are such a confusing man.”
“I’ve been told that before.”
Gretchen straightened herself up. “We seem to have difficulty getting through a conversation without arguing. I’m sorry. How about I take you home?”
“No way. I promised you a day of fun, and I’m determined to give it to you.”
Gretchen gave a small smile and shrugged. “Okay, where to next?”
Kyros’s muscles tensed when he heard a low growl. He turned to the passenger side of the car. Gretchen’s head lolled back, her mouth slightly open. Another growl rumbled. The sound vibrated from her throat. She was asleep. He smiled at the sight. This human didn’t sleep like a goddess, more like a humpback whale with a sinus condition.
His heart rate picked up wit
h approaching headlights on the highway. He hadn’t had much experience driving, and it made him anxious every time he had to pass other cars traveling at such a high speed. If Gretchen hadn’t been falling asleep on her feet, he would have insisted she drive.
Gretchen gave a loud snort, her head turned toward him, and her eyes remained closed as she mumbled, “…such a jerk.” He looked over at her and smiled. She was so refreshingly different from any other woman he’d met. And she was such a pretty thing. Why had he been so determined to stay away from her? And why did he decide to break down his self-made barrier and let her in? A sudden, sharp pain pierced his skull. Hades, what a headache. As fast as it came, it left just as quickly.
He passed by the exit that would have taken them back to the house. Instead, he drove on to the east side of the island. Regardless of the fact he’d never traveled this way, he knew exactly where he was going. Winding its way around the island, the road hugged the shore. He drove on, turning off onto a small road lined with trees. The darkness deepened with the towering foliage. He had only one thing on his mind—the destination.
As he came around a bend, the trees thinned and he slowed. Turning off, he drove onto a dirt road that was actually little more than a path. The car rocked up and over bumps on the road.
“What’s going on? Kyros, where are we?” Gretchen said, having obviously been jostled awake.
“I’ve got someplace special to take you,” he said smoothly, the words playing from his lips like lines from a script.
“It’d better be special. You’re going to ruin this car’s alignment driving over this. Is this even a road?”
The moon peeked out over the trees. Kyros pulled up next to several big boulders and turned off the car.
Gretchen chuckled. “This is… something.”
They both stepped out of the car. Kyros strode to the left of the boulders. “Come on, Gretchen. It’s just over this way.”
“Another hike?”
Kyros turned back. She had her hand propped on her hip as she smiled.
“It’s over this way,” he answered.
“Yeah, so you said.” Gretchen frowned.
Kyros stepped toward her and pressed his lips gently against hers. Gretchen melted into him. Desire and fear jolted through his body. Again, pain plunged like a knife into his skull. And again, the pain was gone.