Page 49 of Breathe Like Hell

Memories of that fateful day flooded my mind. A cold beach, a dark ocean, rough hands on my body under the waves. Glass on the shore and blood dripping off my heel. Regret and terror and lust and hatred overtaking my brain.

I swallowed hard.

“Promise you won’t?” Promise you will?

“Promise.”

His eyes were locked on mine, dark and thrilling. It felt like the first day I’d seen him, when he was a complete stranger to me, when I’d had no idea all the things he was about to do to me, all the ways he was going to fuck up my life. He’d taken the tiny bit of safety I held in both hands and ripped it to shreds, tossed me into the deep end of my darkest fantasies, pried open my ribs and branded his ownership on my heart.

And now, months later, I was still here. Still willingly caught in his web.

There was a certain numbness to that thought.

I felt as if I fully acknowledged it, the spell would be broken. Because I’d already gone over the edge, already stepped off the cliff, and I wasn’t sure what that meant now. We’d never spoken about it again—or about him holding a gun to my head. And we hadn’t done anything similar since. Everything was unfinished, holding motionless in mid air, waiting for a small disturbance to shatter the illusion. A drop of water to break the glassy surface.

Getting in the pool with him would be that spark.

I wasn’t sure if I was mentally ready to step back into this endless darkness with him, but when had he ever given me a choice? I’d never been mentally ready for anything he’d ever done to me.

“Fine,” I agreed and stood up, then grabbed my bikini from my bag and started undressing. Mason watched me silently, his heated gaze dragging all over my figure. I could barely get the strings tied, my hands were shaking so bad. My mouth was dry.

Yeah, I needed to touch that edge again.

The boundary of my own life.

Needed to be reminded of just how strong that feeling was.

Maybe this was what we needed. It could fix us, put us back in the place we’d been before the cliff and the gun. Where everything was terrifying in the exhilarating way instead of the exhausting way.

I finished dressing myself and Mason did the same, then we left his apartment with towels and nothing else. We stepped outside, the night sky arcing high above us, the cold air stealing my breath.

He tugged me along behind him, my flimsy flip flops slapping on the concrete as I tried to keep myself from stumbling. Goosebumps raced over all my bare skin, and my teeth started to chatter.

“It’s fucking cold,” I whispered.

“You won’t be cold for long.” Mason pulled me around the corner of the building to a gate, then unlocked it with the fob on his keys and pushed it open, the metal gliding smoothly.

We stepped into the pool area together, Mason’s hand grasping mine tighter and my eyes darting around to take in the scene. There were a few low lights in the water, but it was still mostly dark. Dark enough to see all the stars sprayed across the black sky, silver and twinkling.

A chilly gust of wind swirled around Mason and me as we walked past empty loungers and closed umbrellas. I hugged my bundled-up towel tighter to my chest.

We stopped at the edge of the pool and I set my towel down, then stepped out of my flip flops, looking expectantly up at Mason. There was some steam curling off the surface of the pool, illuminated by the lights in the water.

“Ready?” he asked.

But he didn’t give me a chance to answer before he picked me up and threw me in the pool.

A short squeal burst out of me the second before I hit the water, then it was swallowed by the rush of bubbles in my ears, my skin stinging from the impact. Hands found my waist almost immediately, and I was being pulled up out of the warm water, pulled against Mason’s hard body.

“You’re so fucking sexy,” he growled as he kissed me.

I instinctively wrapped my arms and legs around his body and he lowered us in the water, pleasant warmth surrounding me.

“What’s the longest you’ve ever held your breath?” I asked between wet kisses, clinging to him. His cock was getting hard, pressed to my center, nothing but the thin fabric of our swimsuits separating us.

“A long time.” He ducked his head to lick my neck, sucking my skin into his mouth.

“I know. You’ve said that. I wanted to know if you have a number of minutes—surely you’ve tracked it before.” I tilted my head back towards the sky as I canted my hips to grind on him a bit.