26
“Come on, Linc,” Mia cried, sinking into the warm water of the narrow canal just outside their building, her voice echoing in the tight enclosure. “The water’s great. It’s not cold, at all.”
“Why do you have such a problem keeping your clothes on?” Lingering inside the open double doors of the building, Linc’s broad frame remained slightly shadowed from where he stood in the middle of the staircase, right where the water had stopping rising on the flooded first floor. He clenched his teeth. “Get back inside. Let’s go.”
She smiled, reveling in the warm water tickling her nipples, making them perk up even more than the tightly-wound man before her, did himself. The water lapping at the skin of her bare pussy made the grin on her face grow, feeling naughty as she continued backpedaling, the water saturating her hair and making her head feel twice as heavy. She did a little swirl, squealing the whole time, laughing when she faced him again, where he still scowled from inside building.
“It’s so beautiful out here.” She looked back and forth. Her words strained from the exertion of swimming. She noticed even the cut on her foot felt soothed by being under the surface. “Linc, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Will you please join me?”
Apprehension flashed across his face. His abs tightened, and so did his fisted hands. The muscle in his jaw that loved to rotate like a rolling pin remained hard at work. The exasperated roll of his eyes joined the party. Even as those eyes of his rolled, however, his fisted hands still managed to unclench and find their way into the tie of the towel hanging on by a prayer at the V in his hips.
He hesitated.
She held her breath, gaze riveted to the deep, chiseled V, drawing in a sharp gasp when he dropped the towel, revealing the dick she’d always known was long and thick but whose beauty she still hadn’t been prepared for. Hard, pink, incredible. Her channel clenched tight, sending warm shockwaves racing all over her body. Warming it up so much that the water suddenly felt way too hot. Like she was treading the surface of a sauna and not a flooded Venice passageway.
His dick stood to attention as he made his way down the stairs, eyes never leaving hers. Then he was submerged in the water too, looking her right in the eye as he swam languidly toward her, long hair lapping against the water.
With every stroke that brought him closer, Mia took two strokes away, letting him follow her, chase her, all the way to the end of the narrow canal and into the larger body of water it was connected to.
Into the Grand Canal of Venice.
“God, look at this!” She beamed, doing circles in the water as she paddled deeper into the ancient waterway of the abandoned Grand Canal, hardly able to believe her eyes. “Linc, have you ever seen anything more beautiful?”
“Never.”
She looked at him only to find his eyes locked to hers, half of his face submerged underwater as he paddled after her, his gaze lighting hers on fire.
“No,” she beamed, finally ceasing her dog-paddling in the middle of the quarter, treading water before splashing him. “Not me, silly! Look around.”
With what appeared to be great reluctance, he broke his eyes away from her and looked around the canal. Mia heard the exact moment his breath caught in his throat. The exact moment when he took in the sprawling, time-honored waterway that went on for over two miles. Drawing a leisurely S-shaped path throughout Venice before eventually spilling to the immense Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay of the Adriatic Sea.
She came to her toes in the water that she guessed was now almost six feet deep since it reached her upper lip. Less than an inch above her nostrils. She enjoyed the sight of him taking in the view.
“Wow,” he breathed—also standing underwater— as his gaze landed on the aged white stone of The Rialto Bridge. The oldest bridge in Venice and one of its architectural icons greeted him from a few hundred feet down the water. At twenty-four feet high, the arch of the bridge had escaped the worst of the flood. Still completely untouched by the rising waters.
Each end of the bridge was lined with rows of Venetian shops, now abandoned on the quiet canal. Each shop boasted its own unique, slightly faded color, aesthetic and design, selling jewelry, linens, and other touristy items. Unlike the Rialto Bridge, the shops hadn’t escaped Mother Nature’s wrath—their floors flooded, along with the once bone-dry sidewalks outside of them. Hundreds of colorful gondola boats went abandoned as well. Tied down to wooden beams that shot from the water’s depths and lined the channel as far as the eye could see. In the distance, the San Simone Piccolo church jutted out from the long line of beautiful buildings. Its striking turquoise copper dome making itself known against the storm cloud laden sky.
Water still sprinkled down from those gray clouds, albeit so softly, Mia could barely feel it. The drizzle showered onto the water and bounced pleasantly off the surface, the droplets dotting their skin. She swam toward Linc, who was still taking it all in. Nearly six inches taller than her, the water ended just below his chin, even though he was clearly standing on the beds of his feet. Not forced to bounce on her toes like her.
Apparently sensing her bopping struggle, he returned his attention to her and swam closer.
She screamed when he splashed her, her head disappearing under the water before she re-emerged for revenge, splashing him back with all her might, drawing a laugh from his lips. She took hold of his shoulders and used their strength to push herself up and out of the water, panting heavily after swimming non-stop for several minutes, and then stacked her hands on top of his head, dunking him under the surface.
He was too fast, however, and the strength of his arms was around her waist just before he went under, taking her below the surface with him. They kicked and thrashed under the water, both of them fighting to keep the other under the water before Mia couldn’t take it anymore and came back up for air.
A gasping breath left her lips and filled the quiet canal as she surfaced. “I can’t breathe!”
He came up for air as well, with a glorious smile on his face, the deep base of his laughter drowning out her frantic breaths.
“I can’t breathe,” she said, less urgently this time, her arms slapping against the water a little more violently than before. Like a child who hadn’t yet learned how to swim properly.
Still chuckling, Linc swam closer. “Come here.”
She gasped when he grabbed her waist again, but this time to pull her closer, not to take her under. She searched his eyes, saying a silent prayer of thanks to the God’s raining down on them above for letting her know the feel of his skin against hers once again. Of his naked body—his hard, muscled stomach—pressing against hers when he pulled her in. His solid pecs as her bare breasts and hard nipples smashed into them. His insistent fingers warming her thighs as he wrapped each of them around his waist. Of his erection between her legs once again, making her skin prickle pleasantly.
“You tried to drown me,” she accused, her words still fractured by her out of control breathing as she locked her arms around his shoulders, giving him all of her weight under the water, which was already making them both feel lighter. “You tried to drown me.”
“Yeah, well, you put a nail in my neck, so…”
“You kidnapped me.”
“You broke a lamp over my head.”
“You tied me up.”
He squeezed her waist, tickling her sides under the water and drawing a squeal from her. “You put a knife to my chest.”
“You made me step on broken glass!” She giggled, wiggling under the water, her natural reflexes making her jolt in anticipation of his next squeeze.
“You led me on,” he countered, drawing a stunned silence from her.
She gaped at him. “I didn’t lead you on. Yesterday was…”
She didn’t finish.
For the first time since she’d met him, he seemed frustrated at her silence. Holding her eyes with an unwavering intensity that begged her to finish that sentence.
She was still too hesitant to speak her heart’s deepest desire. Worried it would ruin that amazing moment. Taint their once in a lifetime swim with the darkness of the truth.
The truth.
That they would soon be saying goodbye. That they would have no choice but to. Because Emma’s life depended on it.
“Doesn’t it feel good?” she asked, willing those thoughts away, tightening her hold around his neck, their faces inches apart. “Just letting go? Even for only a little while?”
“Yeah.” He brushed the tip of his nose against hers. “It kind reminds me of home. Back in Shadow Rock. California’s not as old or historical, obviously, but… the water. The tight spaces. The beauty mixed in with the grit. Feels like home.”
She swallowed thickly, sinking her fingers into his hair, loving that she was allowed to do that again. “Shadow Rock is on the water?”
“An island, yeah. People loved to call it ‘sleepy’, but that place was far from sleepy.”
“Are your friends and family still there?”
“A few. One of them moved out here, though, to London. Few years back.”
“Is it the same friend who’s been helping you out with throwaway cars and safe-houses in outrageously expensive cities?”
He cocked his head back.
Mia pressed. “Like I said before. You can’t be buying them on your own.”
“What’s got you so convinced I’m broke?”
“Your clothing. Your dialect. Your attitude.”
“Don’t hold back, please.” He smiled when she burst into laughter. “Don’t worry about my feelings, a’ight? Go in. Go all the way in. I can take it.”
“I’m simply making an honest observation. The same ones I’m sure you’ve made about me.” When he didn’t take her bait, she pressed on, never in her life feeling safer or more secure than she did at that moment, propped up in his hard, sinewy arms. “What do you think about me?”
He searched her eyes. “When I first saw you at that party… In the flesh… My damn heart stopped beating.”
She bit her bottom lip.
“I thought you were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”
“But you thought I was a monster.”
“You thought I was too.”
“It’s crazy.” Her eyes fell to his lips. “How wrong you can be about a person.”
He moved leisurely through the water with her in his arms, taking her up on the tantalizing offer of giving all of his stress to the God’s above. Even if only for a little while.
“How many safe houses do you have set up?” she asked.
“Few more.”
“I doubt you’ll top Venice.”
“Hopefully we won’t have to find out. ”
“The little show we put on should seal the deal. If he thinks you’re hurting me, he’ll agree to the trade much faster.”
He clenched his teeth, but in the next instant, his jaw softened. “Do you want me to call you Ashley?”
Her heart hit her feet, and then she shook her head.
“No?” he frowned.
“I was born Ashley Kolinsky. I remember being Ashley Kolinsky. But I’m Mia Ali now. I’ve been Mia Ali for almost fifteen years. Being called Ashley would only… it would only send me spiraling back to a place I don’t want to remember. To the memories that still make me sick to my stomach. I’d rather not have the reminders. It’s easier to hold the clouds at bay when I’m living as Mia Ali. As anyone other than Ashley Kolinsky, really.”
“What makes the memories so terrible?”
“The bad memories are hard to stomach, but interestingly enough, it’s the good ones that hurt ten times more.” She smiled shyly. “Does that even make sense?”
He blinked slowly. “Completely.”
She let her eyes flutter when he brushed the tips of their noses once more and then angled his so it was beside hers. She held her breath, waiting for the soft feel of his lips once more. A softness she’d been convinced she’d lost.
But he pulled away.
She sighed.
“How did you get your scars?” His nostrils flared as if he was already playing out in his head all the ways he wanted to kill the person who’d put them on her.
She sank her fingers into his hair, feeling every bone in her body start to tremble.
He must’ve felt her shaking too because he reached up, the water splashing down from his arms as he did, caressed his splayed fingers up her back, and massaged her shoulders from behind.
“The one on my neck…” She pushed her hair away from her neck, displaying the jagged scar just below her ear where dozens of circular lesions arranged in the shape of two stacked cones darkened her skin. “Is from Malik’s python…” She rolled her eyes. “Princess.”
He spoke through ground teeth. “A goddamn snake?”
“She’s huge. Over twenty feet. Three hundred pounds. Big enough to swallow an antelope whole. He likes to punish his enemies by feeding them to her.” She dropped her hair, re-covering the scar. “But me… he only lets her bite me. Then he sedates her before she has the chance to strangle me to death. I suppose I’m supposed to be grateful that he doesn’t let her suffocate me like he does all the others. I’m always supposed to have it in the back of my mind, though. That if I make one false move—if I push him one step too far—he’ll let her finish me off the next time. I can’t lie—it’s an effective strategy. The thought of being eaten alive would be enough to keep most people in line, I’m sure.” She felt his breathing quicken under the water. “The scar on my thigh… the one that’s impossible to miss? I earned that one after he killed Al, the guard I told you about?”
Frowning, Linc nodded.
“My making a new friend wasn’t severe enough to earn the punishment of being eaten alive, but it did earn me the sharpest razor blade in his medicine cabinet.”
He winced.
Her voice lowered, going to a distant place. “Slashing me. Over and over. All the way up my hip because, apparently, that’s where he’d caught Al touching me ‘inappropriately’ in the garden.” She swallowed heavily. “He wasn’t touching me inappropriately. He was moving me out of the way because he saw a bee flying by, and he knew how much I feared bees. He put his hand on my hip because he was moving too quickly to realize where it was. He was trying to help me. Not just with the bee. He was trying to help me be free. And it cost him his life.”
Linc moved his kneading fingers from her shoulders and down her arms. “What’s freedom to you? And not just getting plastic surgery and running scared for the rest of your life. Because that sure as hell a’int freedom. When you thought about what you would do if you and Al had succeeded? When you thought about freedom, what did you really see?”
Her eyes rose to the gray sky, a smile touching her previously trembling lips as the sprinkling rain tickled her skin. “The last thing I remember… before I was taken…?” She sighed. “I was standing on the beach back home in Florida. My boyfriend—my very first boyfriend—was lying in the sand over my shoulder, just watching me. The sky was gray, just like this one. It melted into the horizon so you couldn’t see where the water ended and the sky began.” Her eyes went to a faraway place, her smile petering softly. “I can still remember the sand getting trapped between my toes. And the waves—how the bubbles tickled my skin.”
He tightened his hold on her.
She met his eyes once more, somehow still smiling, though not as strongly as before. “I used to beg Malik to take me to the beach, any beach so that I could feel the bubbles on my skin. The sand between my toes. I just wanted to feel free again. Even if it was only for a moment. Even if it was my terrorizer who made it happen.” She shrugged. “But he never let me. Nearly fifteen years later, and I’ve never been to another beach.”
“That’s freedom to you? Sand between your toes? That’s it?” Linc grinned.
“And the waves. The waves too. The bubbles against my skin.” She sighed, eyes falling serenely closed. “God, the bubbles. They were the last thing I felt before…”
“Before what?”
Her eyes flew open. “Before someone came up behind me and put a bag over my head. Before the whole world went black.”
“Who put a bag over your head? Your boyfriend?”
“I don’t know. All I know is that he never made another sound behind me. And after everything went dark, I never saw him again. Maybe he’s the one who took me. Maybe he set it up so someone else could. Maybe he knew all along, from the moment we met, that I would be taken. Maybe he was taken too… I don’t know. Part of me is kind of glad that I don’t know. At least then I can still believe…”
“That he didn’t betray you.”
She ran her trembling fingers along the edge of his jaw, eyes filling with tears. “Yeah.”
His own eyes softened as they searched hers. “From one prison to another, huh?”
“No.” She frowned with a sharp shake of her head. “You’re a good man, Linc. A really good man.”
“Such a good man that I kidnapped you. Tied you up. Terrorized you just like he did.”
“You’re not a bad man for doing whatever you had to do to get your daughter back. You’d only be a bad man if you didn’t. You’d only be a bad man if you’d given up on Emma the way my parents gave up on me.” Her voice trembled at the tail end of her sentence and the first tear jetted down her cheek.
He wiped it away with a heaving breath, along with all the others that spilled from her eyes, keeping his hand on her cheek long after he’d cleaned them all. She could see in his eyes that he wanted to remind her that she’d been lied to. That he would bet his last dollar, her parents hadn’t given up on her. That they were still looking for her, every day, the same way he’d been looking for Lisa. For Emma. Instead of berating her, however, he cupped the back of her head and pulled her in until their foreheads brushed.
Mia’s heart pounded a mile a minute. As his skin grew flushed, she knew his heart was pounding too. The strength of his dick growing hard between her legs once more proved it even further, and her stomach tightened when the warmth of his breath soothed her lips. Every bone in her body trembled, tightened, ached for his kiss. The kiss that, earlier that morning, she believed she’d never know the joy of experiencing again.
The rise and fall of their chests came together, faster every second, making the bed of his thumb shake as he brought it up between the sliver of air that remained between their mouths, brushing her bottom lip. Her eyes fell closed at his gentle touch, such a contrast to the ferocious, brute savage she’d once believed him to be. Her nostrils flared as she took in his clean scent, wanting nothing more than his lips on hers and the hardness still insistent against her thigh buried deep inside her throbbing channel. He dropped his hand from her lips, leaned in, then hesitated, stopping just short of their lips touching. Mia’s eyes flew open just as his own fluttered closed. She dug her fingers into the silky, wet strands of his hair. Clawing. Yearning. Begging.
“Don’t bite,” he whispered.
She could only manage a rapid shake of her head, unable to speak through the lump in her throat, in a silent promise that she wouldn’t. When he closed the space and their lips finally brushed, the gray clouds parted, revealing the first wisps of sunlight that had always been beaming but hadn’t yet been ready to show its glimmering face.
They moaned into the embrace, tilting their heads, wrapping their arms around each other as they spread their lips wide, deepening the kiss. A heat quivered through Mia when their tongues found each other and swept hungrily. Her pulse hammered in her ears, muffling the drum of the sprinkling rain as it slowed. As the kiss grew in fervency, his mouth taking hers like a man possessed, the rain stopped completely, leaving nothing but the frantic sound of their lips rising into the air, filling the quiet Venice quarter with the music of their desperate embrace.