I kicked for the surface only to have Elder wrap me in his arms and haul me from the deep. Water streamed over my eyes as I hung in his arms, extremely aware of how slippery our bodies were now wet and glued to each other.
Memories of swimming beneath the moon with him made my insides clench. My eyes latched onto his mouth, desperate for a kiss.
I’d gone from normal to frenzied in two seconds flat.
My legs wrapped around his hips, partly for buoyancy, but mostly because of the pounding instinctual need to join. He groaned as his legs continued to kick, keeping us afloat. My fingers threaded through his soaking hair.
I need...
His right arm let me go, circling in the water for balance. His left arm tightened around me, his fingers digging into my waist. “Pimlico...what are you doing?”
My eyes turned heavy. My voice thick. “I-I’m...just, let me...once.”
I kissed him before he could argue.
The surge of affection made me breathless as his cool, salty lips yielded to mine.
He let me kiss him. Before...he didn’t.
In a breath, I went from kissing him to being kissed by him. Spinning me with a powerful kick, he slammed me against the submarine and pressed himself against me skin to skin.
His cock seared my core. Lightning bolts sizzled. I rubbed against him, using his body as a climbing frame.
We went from swimming to attacking all in a fraction of a moment.
I forgot how to do anything—all I knew was if I didn’t have something, I would die. I would combust. I would explode from the pressure.
With a savage bite, his teeth captured my bottom lip as he wedged a thigh between my legs. His fingers latched onto the rivets and small ladder of the submarine, somehow holding us afloat.
His kiss turned violent as his thigh rocked up, deliberately rocking against my clit. Tearing his mouth from mine, he growled in my ear. “You want to play this game, little mouse? Fine.” He reared up, wedging his cock against me as his thigh thrust harder between my legs. “Come.”
Come?
No way could I come. Not with dolphins and oceans and submarines and—
My head fell back as he yanked my wet strands, giving him access to my throat. He bit me, but it didn’t activate bad memories; instead, it made my body gush with heat and liquid, the desperation inside me reached lava levels.
My hips thrust under someone else’s command: Elder’s, some sea god, who knew? But definitely not mine because I didn’t know this person. Why was I suddenly so hungry, so reckless, so selfish to use Elder for my own gain?
I gasped as his voice turned filthy—hot and thick against my ear. “That’s it. You know I can’t fuck you, Pim. But fuck, I want to. I want to stick my cock in you so fucking bad you have no idea. Feeling your heat on my thigh...it’s taking everything I have not to spread you wide and sink inside you. Christ, I want you.”
My heart relocated into my clit, thundering with each visualization. My hips rocked faster, harder, braver.
“That’s it. Use me. Come for me. Imagine I’m fucking you. That you’re not empty, and I’m not insane, and we can do something like fuck like rabbits wherever and whenever we damn well please.” His tongue licked around my ear, pressing a kiss to my hairline. “Come, little mouse. Come. Come. Goddammit, come before I run out of self-control.”
His thigh thrust again, and I rode him.
My brain forgot about right and wrong, and dolphins and depths, and just...let go.
The bikini couldn’t stop it.
Dolphins watching us couldn’t stop it.
I came.
The rippling fantasia was different to what he’d given me in the hotel in Monte Carlo. This was a crackling hair-trigger release. Formed from intensity and released with ferocity.
Fast, wild, and crazy.
The second the last clench left me spinning, his hands landed on the submarine with a wet smack. With a grunt, he pushed himself far away from me. His eyes weren’t that of a man anymore; they were savage and primordial and reached inside me to ravage my heart and make me crave to be filled.
I was so empty, so achy, so wanting.
More...I need more.
“Don’t.” His voice was a murder weapon to my libido.
I shook my head, tears springing to my eyes for hurting him this way. For thinking only of myself while he suffered under epic self-restraint. Rubbing my mouth, fighting to stay afloat, I dropped my eyes submissively. “I’m so sorry, Elder.”
“Don’t ever apologise for showing me who you are, Pim.” He chuckled, raw and torn open. “You’re waking up. You’re finding what you want.”
“What I want is you.” My whisper barely made it across the tide.
“I know.” His voice turned grim. “And I want you. And that’s what makes this so fucking hard.”
I dared look up. “I can’t apologise for wanting you, but I can apologise for kissing you. I-I won’t do that again.”
A dolphin swam behind him, the dorsal fin coming close. He glanced at the swimming missile only for it to parry off at the last minute, leaving him to sigh and rub his face with a dripping wet hand. “This is all screwed up.”
Looking at the sky with a tormented growl, he shook his head. “I don’t want you to stop kissing me. I don’t want to stop kissing you. But back in the garage when you told me pieces of yourself...that gave me something I needed. It gave me peace even while you stress me the hell out.”
He smiled sadly, still treading water out of reaching distance. “My mind was...quiet.” He shrugged as if struggling to verbalize what was different now. “It’s noisy again. I need some distance from you. Please.” The fact he’d tacked on a plea rather than leaving it as a command unravelled me. It wasn’t a simple word. It’d been infused with every matching ache he held.
This sucked.
This hurt.
This was all my fault.
“Consider it done.” Forcing the biggest smile on my face, I made it my life mission to prove I was the master of my desires. That I could control myself around him. That I wouldn’t make this any harder.
It didn’t matter it was all a lie.
It didn’t matter we both knew something would have to break and soon.
All that mattered was spending the day together, swimming with dolphins, believing in magic, and forgetting that love could cause the worst pain of all.
Chapter Nineteen
Elder
FOUR THINGS HAPPENED that night.
First, I somehow managed to keep my dick in my pants while Pim and I finished swimming with the damn dolphins and returned the Viperfish to its garage. I had the self-control of a monk as I invited her to a quiet dinner beneath the stars as Jolfer set us back on course. We hardly said a word, but that wasn’t the point. The point was proving to myself that I could be in her presence—even sex-infused and addiction-infested—and not give in.
It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, and I enlisted every trick imaginable, but I managed to come across sane...I think.
One, two, three taps of my knife.
One, two, three scrunches of my napkin.