Page 36 of Ruining His Smirk

Her body rolled in the air with a grace that made no sense for something so immense. She fell.

The impact struck the ocean like another explosion. A wall of white spray burst upward. Hands seized the front of my jacket, and Braddock hauled me upright. I had no time to think. My hands caught his arms. Braddock pushed me behind him as water hammered down around us, drumming over my hood and shoulders and scattering across the Zodiac. The boat pitched hard beneath my boots.

Everybody was yelling and laughing. Across the water came distant shouts from the second Zodiac, thin with distance but unmistakable.

Braddock’s face was inches from mine. He turned his head and looked me in the eyes.

Water cascaded down his hair and dripped from his lashes. He was soaked from head to toe. He had taken the brunt of that splash, sheltering me behind him in an instinctive move, and my heart was having a really hard time remembering why I hated this man.

“Did you see that?” he shouted.

I was laughing. I hadn’t even realized it until I heard myself. “Holy shit!”

“She breached right beside us!”

His green eyes were wide and incandescent, his whole face transformed by something pure and unguarded. He was grinning like a boy who had just watched the gates of heaven split open. My eyes must have mirrored his joy because that wassomething a man got to witness once in his lifetime. An animal so majestic, so fucking powerful, displaying that kind of sheer strength? Hell, I felt reborn.

Then he kissed me. One moment we were laughing into each other’s faces, and the next his mouth was on mine.

It was a quick, hard press of cold lips. My whole body jolted. And I kissed back before I could process it. It was impossible not to. It was like my mouth was made to kiss his.

I’d never experienced a kiss like it.

Then he pulled back. We stared at each other. He seemed as shocked as me.

Keith’s shout broke our strange connection. “She’s up! Three o’clock.”

Lady surfaced a short distance away, no longer exploding from the sea but gliding through it. Her back rose in a long black curve, slick and shining. A breath burst from the blowhole at the top of her head with a deep rushing sound, sending a pale column of mist into the air.

Braddock still had one hand locked around my forearm. I still had mine around his.

Neither of us let go.

Lady moved parallel to the Zodiac. Only a portion of her body showed above the water, yet even that seemed endless. Her back traveled past us like the rounded hull of a ship. The sea gathered and rolled away from her sides. She seemed to be circling us.

I understood in that moment why Braddock had brought me. I would never have understood what that size meant through computer screens or even from the deck of a ship.

From the Zodiac, we existed in the same plane. She was right beside us. And even though I was a modern man, I felt in my bones a deep, primal respect for a creature whose species had survived millions of years. She was so gigantic that there wasnothing on land like her. Only the oceans held the last remaining spaces on our planet vast enough for her size.

Lady dove beneath the surface, and I could see her dark shape pass right below us.

Holy shit.

She surfaced again on the other side of our boat. I was no marine biologist, but I had the distinct feeling that she was being playful. We had a dog when I was growing up, horses, chickens, and a bunch of barn cats. I loved animals. I understood animals, and this beautiful humpback was having a fun time with us.

Something smaller broke the surface near Lady. It vanished almost immediately.

Then it appeared again—dark, quick, moving close alongside her.

I squinted. “Is that a dolphin?” I mumbled under my breath.

Braddock had lifted his binoculars and was tracking her. I watched him and Lady in turn, waiting for some explanation.

Then he lowered the binoculars slowly and turned to Keith. He seemed different. His face emptied of expression, but there was something powerful going on inside him. The men stared at each other in wordless communication. Jealousy flared bright and hot in my chest at their bond.

Jesus. What was wrong with me? I needed to go dunk myself in the cold water to get my head on straight.

“No.” The word came out barely above a whisper. Braddock turned his head to look at me. “Not a dolphin.”