It hit him like the last piece of a puzzle snapping into place, and suddenly the entire picture changed. She was everything he never knew was missing in his life. Someone who would challenge him. Would stand up to him. Someone who was fearless and never backed down from anything he tossed her way. The kind of person who understood that sometimes life shits in your breakfast, so you just grab a protein bar and go about your day.
She was fiercely unbreakable.
She was his perfect match in every way.
She was…
Not swimming to the surface.
Ice cold panic sank its teeth into Saiden’s heart, and he dove under the water to search for Cora. In a calm lake, he would be able to see fora mile, but the churning of the waterfall obstructed his view. Stilling himself, he heightened his other senses to seek out any noise that could be his endangered mate. It was useless, though. Thunder from the falls dominated even his vampiric hearing.
He dropped to the bottom of the pool, groping for anything that wasn’t rock or silt. As a vampire, he could go without oxygen for nearly ten minutes, but the way his heart was pounding, he doubted he would last sixty seconds.
She couldn’t be dead. He thought only having a year with her was torture, but this was unbearable.
Bursting up through the surface, he screamed, “Cora!”
“Yes, Saiden?”
Her voice came from behind him, and he whipped around so fast a mortal would have snapped their own neck.
Lounging on a large rock just outside the pool, Cora gave him a feline grin. “You weren’t worried or anything, were you?”
“I… I…” He couldn’t form words. His brain lacked all ability to process the situation. He had never been so thrilled to see someone alive while simultaneously tempted to murder them.
Cora cocked her head. “It’s almost like someone vanishing without a trace is a little terrifying. Wouldn’t you say?”
He blinked at her, still dumbfounded that she had eluded him. “How?” The single word response was all he could manage.
“I swam off to the side once I hit the water and waited to see if you would dive in after me. Huntington’s has severely limited my ability to hold my breath, but dang, Saiden, you didn’t even give it thirty seconds before you started panicking. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you cared.”
She didn’t think he cared? She was joking, right?
With a predatory slowness, he swam toward the rock, drinking inthe tableau before him: Cora leaning back on her elbows, a slight arch to her lithe body, the setting sun throwing up a halo of golden light behind her glowing auburn hair. She called to him, like a siren of old, and he would gladly give himself to her charms, smiling the entire time she pulled him under.
He emerged from the pool, water droplets fleeing his skin as if they could feel the unrelenting storm inside him, and stalked over to her.
Peering down at him from her perch atop the massive stone, Cora quirked an eyebrow. “Did you have something to say, Saiden?”
She was playing with fire and thinking herself immune. Soon enough, she would learn his desire burned hotter than the most intense inferno.
“No,” he stated. He was done talking. Done holding back.
In a flash, he leapt onto the rock and pounced on her, crushing his lips to hers.
For a single terrifying heartbeat, he thought she might pull away when her body stiffened. Then she relaxed, and all her soft curves melted against his hard muscles.
Cora pressed up into him, and a tiny moan escaped, so similar to the one from the night before yet so much more arousing to be present for it. To be the cause of it.
The time for soft kisses and romance had long passed. His tongue warred for dominance against hers, and she met him on the battlefield with a passion to rival his own. She would have stolen all the breath from his lungs if he didn’t gladly surrender it. His skin tingled everywhere they touched, and it made him shiver in the best way possible. As if fate itself was confirming,Yes, this is the one for you.
“Saiden.”
She broke their kiss just long enough to let his name slip from her lips, then her hands tangled themselves in his hair, and one of her legscurled up and over his waist.
She was there with him, she wanted this too, and it was all he needed to unleash himself.
His cock swelled at the feel of her writhing in his arms, and he gripped her ass to pull her tighter against him, content to never let her go. The wet fabric of his boxers was an improvement over the thick jeans from last time, but it wasn’t enough.
