Night Diver: A Novel (19 page)

Eyes closed, she felt each touch as a smooth whip of warmth, a promise of the pure fire to come.

Dragons were very good with fire.

By the time he finished with her legs, they were trembling. He ran his palms from her ankles to her hips, flexed his long fingers, and then stood in a coordinated rush. Bunched sheet in one hand, sunscreen and pants in the other, he ran the knuckles of his right hand up the long, shallow crease of her spine.

“Ready for the sun,” he said, his voice a sensuous rasp.

Kate was ready for a lot more than that, but she had just enough sense not to say it. “This will be my first time in the ocean since . . .”

“Your parents died?”

“Yes.” Her voice was so faint that it was barely a whisper.

“I’ll keep you safe.”

She gave him a look from shadowed turquoise eyes. “I should have done this years ago. In some ways, I gave up as much as the sea took.”

He shifted everything to his left hand and laced the fingers of his right hand through hers. “Let’s take it back.”

She led him out the door and down to a patch of dazzling white sand that was shaded by palm fronds shimmering in the uncertain wind. He shook out the sheet, put his pants and the sunscreen in one corner, and waited. She took a deep breath, let it out very slowly, and concentrated on how good he made her feel now rather than on the old fears of the past. Kicking off her sandals, she headed toward the water.

The sand was hot enough to make Kate hurry to the edge of the sea. The water itself was so warm she barely felt its first touch.

“I expect to hear my feet sizzle,” Holden said from just behind her.

“The water will be cold farther out, where it turns to cobalt and drops steeply away from the volcano.”

“Born of fire, yet surrounded by the sea,” he said. “I’ve always been caught by the collision of opposites and by the delicate balance they achieve. Such an intricate, slow-motion dance.”

“I never thought of it that way . . . but yes, it’s a balance, a dance, and it changes every moment.”

“Rather like us,” he said, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “Ocean and land simply live on a vastly different time scale than the two-legged mayflies known as humans.”

Smiling, Kate curled her toes, enjoying the fine texture of the sand with every step. The shallow water was so clean it was virtually invisible and the air was the temperature of her skin. She felt suspended between sky and sea.

And the water was above her waist.

She waited to feel fear. She was still waiting when a swirl of tiny fish flashed around her ankles, like colorful confetti tossed in a wind. The tiny brush and nibble of their mouths tickled her toes and she laughed.

Motionless, Holden watched her, seeing what she must have been like before tragedy shadowed her turquoise eyes. He wanted nothing more than to lean into her and drink her laughter like golden wine.

As though she sensed his thoughts, she turned and held out her hand.

“You’ll keep me from floating away when it gets deep,” she said, closing her fingers around his.

“Whatever you want, Kate.”

She saw that he meant every word and felt more fear dissolve away, fear she hadn’t even known she had.

“I’ve always blamed the sea,” she said after a few minutes. “Hated it.”

“It’s easier than blaming your parents for diving when they bloody well should have stayed on board,” he said calmly.

Her fingers clenched. “How did you know?”

“It was rather well documented that they were diving at night with a tropical storm barreling down on them.”

After a long time Kate’s fingers unclenched. “Yes, hating the sea was easier than hating them for being so foolish, so
selfish,
choosing the gleam of gold over their own daughter.” And then she made a broken sound. “And I’m selfish for wanting to be more important to them than anything else, including the wreck they had been looking for longer than I’d been alive.”

“The
Moon Rose,
” Holden said.

“Yes.”

She walked deeper, bringing him with her. Clumps of coral grew like shadows from the bottom, reaching toward the light. But not too far. Just enough to let the organisms living in some corals transform sunlight to food. Other corals combed the water with fragile, restless fingers, millions upon millions of tiny hands begging for crumbs of life.

“I wish I had my mask and fins and snorkel,” she said softly.

He was close enough to hear. “Are they aboard the dive ship?”

“Yes, for all the good it would do. I haven’t touched them in years. They’re probably rotted by now.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“First chance I had, I checked the dive locker. It’s a quick way to size up a dive operation. If the gear isn’t cared for, it’s a bad operation. Period.”

“Larry might suck at bookwork, but he’s always had a magic touch with diving gear.”

“He’s thorough, too. I found a locker with ‘Kitty’ on it. The gear inside was as well kept as anything on the ship.”

She stumbled, but Holden and the water held her upright.

“Grandpa,” she said, tears standing in her eyes. “He always hoped I would come back.”

Holden half smiled. “Your grandfather is a man of great stubbornness.”

She made a sound that could have been a laugh or a sob. “And very thrifty, yet when my parents died, he took my father’s rebreather and threw it overboard.”

“That explains why I didn’t find but one in the dive lockers. I thought it was because this site is relatively shallow.”

“No. Grandpa won’t have them aboard. Blames them for my parents’ deaths.”

“Why? All dive equipment has its own hazards.”
And the biggest of them is the diver.

“That’s what Larry told Grandpa,” she said. “It’s the only time I remember them having an in-your-face shouting match. In the end, Larry kept his rebreather. Says he loves the silence and maneuverability.”

Holden thought of the many times he’d used a rebreather at night in places where a trail of bubbles was an invitation to get strafed by enemies on the surface. The fact that a rebreather allowed extended dives with much less time in decompression was a bonus.

A fish shot by, pursuing other fish. Unlike the rounded, colorful reef grazers, the bigger fish was streamlined, ghostly silver blue, and wicked fast.

As Kate turned to watch the racing ghost, she realized that she was up to her breasts in water. It was cooler now that she was out of the extreme shallows where sunlight heated water to the temperature of blood. If she took a few more steps, she would be swimming.

So she did.

She didn’t know what she had expected, but it wasn’t the sudden exhilaration that shot through her as the water accepted her with forgotten ease. A sleek, delicious feeling of freedom swept over her. She turned onto her back and laughed like a child rocked in loving arms.

“I’ve missed this,” she said, seeing Holden’s wide smile. “I didn’t even know. How could I not know?”

“The sea is what you make of it. Like life. The child in you made the sea evil. The adult always knew better.”

He could have kept wading. Instead, he turned onto his side, kicking alongside her with a lazy strength that radiated his ease in the water.

“I can’t believe you had trouble getting back into the water after you were injured,” she said, watching him.

Wanting him.

“Believe it,” he said. “I came close to vomiting.”

“Were you in scuba gear?”

“That’s what kept me swallowing hard,” he said wryly.

Her laughter rose above the lagoon like another kind of sunlight.

Holden paused in midkick, realizing he had never known the kind of peace he felt watching her languid glide through the water.

She was born for this,
he thought,
not for business suits and spreadsheets and fear.

Watching her, he could almost forgive her brother for making such a cock-up of the dive that he’d been forced to call his baby sister to save the family business, which was sinking like a ship with open seacocks. Not that Holden’s people had helped; the contract was shameful on the face of it.

That’s why I’d make a lousy businessman,
he thought, keeping pace with Kate.
Taking advantage of desperate people so that I can advance and enrich myself . . . I’d rather deal with live mines.

And he had.

Kicking easily, he shifted to a breaststroke, then to a backstroke.

“Does this hurt your thigh?” Kate asked.

“Not at all. It’s far more congenial than the heavily chlorinated pool I used for my physio.”

She made a face. She hated pools and chlorine, but that kind of swimming was better than nothing.

“I know I asked you before,” she said, “but do you miss diving?”

“I dive, love. It’s part of my work. What about you?”

For a time there was only the cry of birds and the rush of the sea foaming over a reef of rocks and coral farther out.

“I miss it,” she said finally, “but I’m not ready to dive. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I don’t know. There’s nothing down there I can’t live without.”

Holden didn’t try to coax or wheedle or shame her into diving. He just followed her through the protected water, occasionally diving down when something on the bottom caught his interest, mostly staying close enough to touch her. Sometimes he swam beneath her, stroking her with his body, teasing both of them, sharing his sensual pleasure in being with her in the water.

Kate’s breath shortened the third time he caressed her chest to chest, body to body. He was aroused again and so was she. She went beneath the surface and returned the gliding caress, lingering against him until she ran out of breath.

“Can you stand on the bottom?” she asked, breathless from more than swimming underwater.

“If you’re tired, I can just tow you in.”

“Not that. I wanted to kiss you without worrying about drowning.”

His eyes changed, focusing on her lips with crystal intensity. “Come closer. I’ll keep you above water.”

Even as she reached for him, he drew her in. His skin was smooth except for the hair that slicked over his chest. As he stood, his muscles flexed and bunched beneath bronze skin. Drops of water clung like a net of diamonds that shifted with every breath he took.

Then his arms closed around her and all she knew was the heat and textures of his kiss. He was spice and fire, salt and sweet, rough and slick and alive, so alive. She wanted to consume him, to crawl inside his skin and know him, flesh and blood and heat.

The soft whimpers she made were whips of fire on his hungry body. He took what she offered and demanded more, then more again, until there was nothing between them but need and more need, primal fire consuming them.

Vaguely Kate sensed motion, water sliding away.

“Put those beautiful legs around me,” Holden said roughly against her mouth.

Large, strong hands wrapped around her buttocks, lifting her. A single, heart-stopping rub over the length of his cock told them both just how good it would be. She locked her ankles around his waist and her arms around his neck, kissing his shoulder and neck as though afraid that something would tear them apart.

He dipped his head, ran his teeth over the curve of her neck, and bit her with exquisite care. She cried out, a husky female sound of approval, and he sucked hard, making her buck against him, clawing to be closer than skin.

Lifting his head, he saw the flushed circle that still held red dents from his teeth. “Your skin marks so easily, I’ll have to take more care.”

Her answer was a bite over his heart that was just short of fierce, then the gentle scrape of teeth over his nipple. She licked him slowly, circling, before she caught the dark nubbin of his nipple and sucked hard. His muscles locked and he shuddered.

“Enough, love,” he said almost roughly. “I have to get us to shore.”

“Why?”

“Condom.”

“Oh.”

Her eyes opened slowly, a smoldering kind of turquoise. She sighed and lifted her lips, snuggled against his biceps.

“I want to taste you,” she said, licking his taut skin. “Everywhere. I’ve never wanted that before. Never
needed
.”

Holden was sure his heart stopped. Then it kicked and began pumping like he was racing a wildfire. Except he wasn’t running away. He was running toward the flaming center so he could burn within it.

Within her.

The sea clung to them as though reluctant to release them to the shore.

Kate licked drops of salt water from every bit of Holden’s skin she could reach. She loved the heat, the taste, the supple feel of his skin on his neck and the rougher skin of his jaw shadowed by the beard lying just beneath.

Everything spun and she felt the sheet touch her back from nape to hips and then her legs as she unlocked her ankles. Moments later her bikini was a pile of emerald by his khaki pants. His swim shorts appeared next to them.