She couldn’t feel him. And she certainly couldn’t see him. But he said he’d be right behind her, and Bran was nothing if not a man of his word. It gave her the confidence, the calm to keep pushing ahead.
At least for a while.
Five seconds stretched to ten. Ten seconds quickly became twenty. The water inside the tunnel was cooler than that in the moat. It softly brushed against her cheeks and hair, slipping down the collar of her T-shirt to slide across her breasts and belly like intrusive, chilly hands.
Come on. Come on…
Where was the cistern? Why hadn’t she reached it? Surely she’d gone twenty feet by now.Surely!
Her lungs burned. Her heart rate spiked, trying to push oxygen that wasn’t there through her bloodstream.
Did I take a wrong turn? Could the tunnel have forked?
She kicked and pulled, kicked and pulled, her motions becoming more desperate as oxygen deprivation set in. All her instincts yelled at her.Turn back!But she fought them off, pushing, pulling, propelling herself forward. Ever forward.
Where’s Bran? I took a wrong turn! Somehow I—
Space…
Big, beautiful, wide-open space. She was free-floating in the cistern.Finally!
She kicked toward the surface with all her might. Her fingers became claws, tearing at the water. The beat of her heart was a ferocious roar in her ears. Her lungs spasmed, desperate to suck in air.
Uh-oh. Had she gotten mixed up in all that cool, wet blackness when she exited the fissure? Was she swimming down instead of up?
Oh Lord! Oh shit! Oh—
Her mouth opened in a silent scream. Briny water rushed in, triggering her gag reflex. Spots of light flashed in front of her unblinking eyes, but they weren’t bioluminescent sea creatures. They were hallucinations conjured up by her under-oxygenated brain as her synapses misfired.
She stopped to turn around. Surely she was swimming down. She had to be. She would have reached the surface by now! But before she could switch directions, a hard arm came around her middle.
In an instant she was propelled through the water. Bran’s muscled legs kicked. His free arm stroked. He was a human torpedo dragging her along for the ride. Good thing, because she was done.
Out of juice.
Out of air.
Out of time. And then…
“Uhhhhh!” They breached the surface just as her convulsing lungs overrode her willpower and forced her to suck in bright, brilliant oxygen…along with a fair amount of liquid.
She immediately folded in half, hacking and coughing and trying to clear the spray from her lungs. The sound of her struggle echoed through the cistern, bouncing around the brick walls. Bran slammed a wide-palmed hand over her mouth.
“Shhhhh,” he hissed, his lips moving against her ear, his hot breath burning along her cheek. “Just breathe, babe.”
Uh-huh. Breathe. Right.
Problem was, she couldn’t. Not without hacking up a lung. And if she did that, the resulting sound could resonate through the cistern and out into the parade grounds, alerting their enemies to their presence.
For Pete’s sake, Maddy! Could youbeany more of a pain in the ass?
Going on instinct, she spun in Bran’s embrace, wrapping her legs around his waist and burying her nose in the crook of his neck. Her stomach contracted around the need to cough. Her lungs quaked. But she managed to execute a muted throat-clearing thing that she further muffled against Bran’s tough flesh. It wasn’t exactly a silent exercise. But neither was it sure to bring the bad guys down on their heads.
Again and again, she repeated the process. Each odd inhale and exhale felt gritty, like she’d pulled sand into her lungs instead of water. But after a few seconds, she was able to suck air through her nose without her diaphragm trying to send it hacking back out into the warm, dense atmosphere.
Her senses returned. She could hear the gentleslap-slapof the water against the sides of the brick structure. She could smell the clean, masculine scent of Bran beneath the thin layer of seawater that coated his skin. She could feel his heavy pulse beating beneath her lips, a drumbeat she could set her watch to. And even though she couldn’t see—the darkness inside the cistern was complete—she knew at some point Bran had swum them to the edge. She could sense the tall, damp walls of the water tank rising overhead. With one arm still wrapped securely around her waist, he was holding on to something that allowed them to float freely, effortlessly in the water.
For a while, she allowed herself to revel. Revel in being alive. Revel in being able to breathe. Revel in feeling momentarily safe and secure inside Bran’s embrace—she’d stuck herself to him like a whole sleeve of plastic wrap; if there was a fraction of an inch of space between their bodies, she couldn’t feel it. She closed her eyes against the darkness and simply…was.No thoughts. No fears. Just her. Just him. Just being. Just touching.
