Page 89 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

It didn’t encase her like a second skin, like the thick neoprene. Itheldher.

“It’s—” she tried again, pausing in the peeling to stand and look at him. The torso of his wetsuit was around his hips now, the sleeves dangling and dripping water onto the asphalt of the parking lot. Water sluiced down his abdomen, across the muscled planes, following the rest of it. Water always finds water, she remembered her father saying.

Her own wetsuit was around her ankle, one leg removed. She wore a bikini underneath it. High-waisted bottoms and a top that was more sports bra-like than anything. Her nipples were hard against the wet material, though whether from the cold or the intensity of his gaze, she really couldn’t say.

“It’s like slipping in and out of your favorite sweater,” she said. “I put it on, and it just becomes a part of me, because even when I’m not wearing it, it’s a part of me. The cells, the spirit. It’s all the same. I put it on, and I just… become. And I take it off, and I become something else.”

He stepped closer, close enough to touch, though neither of them did. “I’d love to see you like that. I’d love to see you… be yourself like that. That version of yourself.”

She smiled. It was a soft smile, and she felt the tears gathering in her eyes, reaching for the seawater that still clung to her eyelashes. Water finding water.

“I would like that,” she said.

“Really?”

“Verra much,” she said, trying to imitate his burr.

Once upon a time, she’d spoken like that. With trilled r’s and words that began in the soft palate, in her throat. But not for a long time. She’d left behind that voice when she’d left behind that life. Still, it felt familiar on her tongue.

He growled, took that final step closer, so close that she had to look up.

“Are you mocking me, lass?”

“Never.”

“Are you teasing me, then?”

“Och, Callum,” she said, the voice slipping back into her throat, the trills and rolls and burr. “Like Mr. Darcy, Callum MacLeod isnae to be teased.”

“And yet Lizzy teased him anyway,” he said, leaning down, his lips a mere breath from hers.

“Aye,” she said, her voice more a breath than speech. “She did.”

“And Mr. Darcy liked it.”

She swallowed. If he was still mortal, his breath would be fanning against her lips. “He did,” she said. “He liked it verra much.”

There was a moment, more a hiccup in time, really, when he said, “And so do I,” just before his mouth found hers in the darkness, his lips slipping over hers with the force of a hurricane.

He spun them, pressing her back against the cold side of his SUV. What a delicious contrast, Jory vaguely thought, through the haze of all the other feelings. Her body was made of heat, but she was sandwiched between the cold metal of the door and the cool marble of Callum’s body. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” Callum asked, pulling back enough to speak.

“No.”

“Tell the truth.”

“I’m not cold,” she whispered against his lips. “I’m happy.”

He bit her lip. Not hard enough to draw blood. She bit his harder. He groaned into her mouth. “Why are ye so happy, Jory?”

She smiled. “Because it’s the third date.”

Callum went very still, as if frozen by one of those ray guns from the science fiction movies. He didn’t move a muscle. Not a twitch. Not a spasm. Not a flex. He was completely still, like the tigers in the tall grass that she’d seen once. Invisible unless you knew where to look.

But she knew where to look.

She licked a stripe up his throat, sucking at the place where his pulse would have fluttered, once upon a time. She bit gently with her teeth and sucked on the spot, wondering if this would mark him the same way it would have marked her.