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Rex doesn’t speak. He only holds me against him, murmuringshhhin my ears like he’s soothing a spookedchild.

“Focus on me. Look at the beauty around you. You don’t get this in New York.”

My mind spinning, I do as I’m told, cataloging the smoky rasp of his voice, the way he enunciates his words like a nighttime deejay would on the radio.

His caresses turn gentle and between his voice and his touch, something strange happens.

I’m able to breathe. I’m still afraid, my heart still threatening to stop at any moment, but I feel…safe.

It’s disconcerting, like I’ve been pulled back from free falling into the abyss and am now hovering at the edge of panic. It’s a monumental improvement.

Because he makes me feel safe.

I focus on the dim light glinting off the windswept walls carved by erosion. How the rocks glow golden under the singular sunbeam, but cool to a grayish-blue in the shadows, moss clinging to the honeycomb surfaces.

It’s breathtaking.

Eventually, the rest of my senses flicker alive, and I notice what I missed before.

The hint of sandalwood drifting to my nose.

The broad, sculpted muscles plastered against my back.

His light breaths ghosting the sensitive spot under my ear.

I freeze, my nerves flickering on one by one, a backup generator kicking on after a blackout.

My body heats, and I notice thenow.

In particular, the moment he realizes the intimate position we’re in—our bodies meshed together, limbs intertwined, in a space no bigger than a coat closet.

My pulse riots again, this time not from fear, but from something twisted and heady.

I try spinning away, but he clamps me tighter against him.

Forbidden. Danger. Stay away.

Rex clearly senses my incoming panic, and he wordlessly takes my hand and motions toward the exit. He swims out to the larger cave, and I follow suit.

As soon as I break the surface of the water, my heart rate slows because I’m in a bigger space.

Rex pulls me flush against his body.

He presses his soft lips to my ear, the gentle graze sending sparks down my neck, straight to my breasts straining against my swimsuit, which does nothing to hide my hard nipples begging for his attention.

“What are you doing here, little Olive?” His words press into my skin. “Do you know how worried everyone was when they saw your float empty?”

No one came to find me, though. Only he did.

His fingers relax around my waist, but he doesn’t let go. Instead, he slides them down to the sensitive gap where my thigh meets my suit before tracing the thin material inches away from my pussy. I’m thrown back to what he said that day on the sun deck—all the dirty, degrading words describing what he’d do to me if I let him.

And I want to let him do it all. Kiss me. Fuck me. Unravel me at the seams.

Bad decisions, Olivia.

And I want to make them.

I bite back a moan and claw at the rational side of my mind. Body chemistry, arousal, biological reactions of a man and a woman in a small, enclosed space.