Theo dropped his laptop and sank into a low-slung chair, ass-first, like gravity had suddenly tripled. He exhaled in a way that made the air leaving his lungs sound sexually cathartic.
“Everything here is geothermal,” he muttered, “including the surprise.”
“Surprise?”
He removed his glasses, smiled, and pointed over his shoulder. “Go on. Check the back.”
We wandered back there together, like zombies, moving through the warm, strange house that was suddenly all ours. Following plumes of steam, down a set of stone stairs, we finally found it.
And it was absolutely glorious.
“Holy shit,” I murmured. “Please tell me that’s real.”
“Oh, it’s real,” Theo called up from behind us. “Natural feed. Filtered and temperature controlled.”
The geothermal pool was recessed into the floor. Through the rising steam I could see that it extended even further, straight through the lava rock wall and into a backlit grotto that glowed with a deep, soothing blue.
“Alright, fine,” Ripley declared. “I take back what I said when we landed.”
A new serenity stole over my tired body. I surrendered to it, laughing in a way that would’ve seemed maniacal not that long ago.
But it was the thing I could no longer sense, that made me happiest of all.
Dread.
The tension hanging over us as a group was finally gone. Maybe not completely, but it had definitely loosened its iron-like grip on us.
Colson wasn’t checking the roads every two minutes.Ripley wasn’t constantly focused on the door.
Everything had finally, at long last, slowed down. And for the first time since hearing that my mother’s name was in Donovan’s files, I didn’t feel like the ground was dropping out from under me.
Fuck.
Yes.
The boys shifted ever closer to me, as we stared down into the swirling, steaming waters. Colson’s arm brushed my shoulder. Ripley’s hand found the small of my back, without even thinking. Their touch was casual now, even natural. But still more electric than ever before.
I let out a long, gratified sigh. Donovan Prescott had never felt more far away.
“Okay, I guess I was wrong,” I heard Theo chuckle. “Maybe you stilldoneed those bikinis.”
Eagerly, I pulled off my boots and socks, and stepped into the pool. The volcanic water swirling around my ankles felt fantastically, orgasmically good.
“You weren’t wrong,” I sighed headily. “Not even a little bit.”
I stepped back again, and slowly began pulling my clothes off. Shirt, bra, everything else — piece by piece, I let it all drop theatrically to the smooth stone floor.
“I don’t need a bikini here at all,” I said, plunging in.
