Folding her arms along her waist, she dipped her toes into the water. “It’s beautiful out here.”
Yeah, it was beautiful out here. And it was hot. My gaze dipped to her bent knee and then slid back up, getting hung up on certain areas. My throat tightened. Other parts of me tightened.
Shit.
I dunked myself and when I came back up, it hadn’t helped, because now she was wet. She must’ve gone under while I had. We were only a few feet away, and I was in deeper water, hunched down to where the water lapped at my mouth.
“What?” she asked.
“Why don’t you come here?” My heart was pounding in my chest. If she were smart, she wouldn’t get anywhere close to me at this moment. Actually, if I were smart, I wouldn’t have called her over.
Kat was smarter than me.
She twisted around and dipped under the water, swimming toward the rocks. When she pulled herself out of the water, climbing onto the rock, I swallowed a groan. I wanted to—
“You look disappointed,” she said.
God, I was disappointed, and I really didn’t know what to make out of that. I pushed it aside.
“Well…what do we have here?”
Her legs dangled off the rock, her feet slipping into the water. “What are you talking about now?”
“Nothing.” I waded closer to the rock.
“You said something.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“You’re strange.”
“You’re not what I expected,” I admitted, voice low.
She gave a little shake of her head. “What does that mean?”
I grabbed for her foot, but she moved her leg out of reach. No fun.
“I’m not good enough to be your sister’s friend?” she asked.
“You don’t have anything in common with her.”
“How would you know?” She shifted back as I reached for her other foot.
“I know.”
“We have a lot in common. And I like her. She’s nice and she’s fun.” She scooted back this time, completely out of arm’s reach. “And you should stop being such a dick and chasing off her friends.”
Her words slipped over me, and I laughed outright. “You’re not really like them.”
“Like who?”
Like any person I’d ever met. Truth was, human and Luxen females treated me the same. Only Ash and Dee mouthed off at me, but we’d grown up together. It was different for them, but others? They pretty much wanted one thing from me. Most of the time I was okay with that, but if I so much as glared in their direction, they scattered like bugs. Not really attractive when you thought about it. But not Kat. She may not have a clue what I was, but she was not scared of me, she wasn’t wowed, and as twisted as it was, that turned me on.
That did make her dangerous.
I pushed away from the rock, making ripples in the water, and then I slipped under. I swam to the other side of the rock and I stayed under, hoping the icy water would cool down the very inappropriate arousal thing I had going on.
Dammit, I didn’t even like the chick, I thought, trying to convince myself.
Yeah, she was amusing. Yeah, even entertaining. And yeah, I wanted to trace her curves with my hands and my mouth. Possibly even my tongue—okay, definitely with my tongue—but she irritated the hell out of me.
And she didn’t even like me. She liked looking at me, because who didn’t, but the distaste went both ways.
I had no idea how much time passed underwater until I was about 92 percent confident I wouldn’t do something, and I broke the surface.
“Daemon!”
The sheer panic blanketing the sound of my name caught me off guard. I burst onto the rock, crouching as I scanned the lake, expecting an Arum to be nearby. Those assholes wouldn’t blink an eye when it came down to taking out an innocent human.
All I saw was Kat, on her knees, in her damn bikini.
Whelp, there went all the work that cold water had done for me.
She was frozen for a second and then scrambled over the rock, clutching my shoulders. Blood had drained from her face and she was exceptionally pale. “Are you okay? What happened?” Then she let go of my shoulders, hauled back, and smacked my arm. Hard. “Don’t you ever do that again!”
“Whoa there.” I threw my hands up. “What is your problem?”
“You were under the water for so long. I thought you drowned! Why would you do that? Why would you scare me like that?” She jumped to her feet, chest heaving. “You were under the water forever.”
Oh shit. I’d been under there longer than I’d thought. My body didn’t function like hers, and I’d forgotten that. Luxen didn’t need to breathe air, but humans weren’t supposed to figure that out, dumbass. “I wasn’t down there that long. I was swimming.”
Her hands were shaking. “No, Daemon, you were down there a long time. It was at least ten minutes! I looked for you, called for you. I…I thought you were dead.”
I climbed to my feet slowly, cursing myself every which way from Sunday. “It couldn’t have been ten minutes. That’s not possible. No one can hold their breath that long.”