Page 5 of Darkest Dredge

After a tense pause, Bea groaned and buried her rose red cheeks in her hands. "Why do you do that?"

I hiked a brow. "Do what, exactly?"

"Tease me. All the time."

The grin I gave her was all teeth. "I don't know what you're talking about."

It was a lie, of course. I knew it. She knew it.

"Oh, piss off, Noah. You're always looking at me like you want to eat me. And here we are—" She gestured to my torso, which was covered in a huge tattoo of a galleon. "Out in the arctic freaking ocean and you're half naked."

"See?" I winked and held the bottle up in toast before taking another swing. "Rum. Keeps you warm."

"Bet I could do a better job at keeping you warm than that bottle."

Well, I’ll be damned. Beatrice was matching my energy. That was rare. Not the first time. We'd attended college together, after all. While we'd prefer to hole up in the library and study most weekends, we'd seen our fair share of parties.

Curious to see just how brave she was feeling with the liquid courage warming her belly, I slid across the bench seat so we were sitting side by side. Her thigh pressed to mine. "Is that a proposition? After all these years, are you finally coming onto me?"

"What, have you been waiting?"

"Not waiting for you to make the first move, no," I finally admitted with a sigh.

"Waiting for what, then?"

Before giving her my answer, I lifted the bottle in a silent offer. Instead of sliding her shot glass over for a top-off, she took an enthusiastic swig from the bottle.

She could complain all she wanted. The rum was exactly what we needed on this cold night. What better way to celebrate than to spill out our feelings like we never had before?

"Work got in the way. This expedition is important, and you're the only one I've ever found who cares about it as much as me. If I chased my feelings and made you mine, I wouldn't be able to put our research first. And I know how important it is to you."

"Are you really saying that you haven't made a move because you don't want to put me before the mission?"

"I wouldn't be able to focus. What man could possibly care about fish, no matter how interesting, with a woman like you in his bed? Especially stuck all the way out here. Fuck Cthulhu—"

She gasped, her hand flying over her mouth. I continued, "It's you I'd worship. Then, I'd be an awful research partner. I'd want to do biological studies all right, but it wouldn't be concerning fish."

"Noah..."

I couldn't stop now. It was like a dam breaking; there was no stopping my confession until the flow ran its natural course. "Then you'd have to get a new partner. And who? Good luck finding a follower of Cthulhu at all, let alone someone who can navigate these waters like I can. And even if you did, I'd sacrifice them out of jealousy."

Bea sat there speechless for a moment, then slurred, "You're drunk."

"Barely. I've wanted to say all this for a while."

She chewed her lower lip. It was something she often did when mulling something over. For a moment, I imagined it was her lip between my teeth. Her soft moans slipped into my mouth.

She had trouble reading me. She'd said as much before. Couldn't help but wonder if I was doing a shit job keeping my dirty thoughts off my face tonight. Probably not, if her raging blush had anything to say about it.

"So what's changed?"

"The expedition." My eyes shifted to the mask sitting on the galley counter. I'd purposefully placed it so that it was looking away from us, so that it couldn't stare at her with those empty eye sockets.

"We can go back home now."

She nodded slowly. "Oh, right..."

I wasn't going to admit that I felt torn about going back home. When we first set sail months ago, I couldn't wait to find evidence of the sunken city so we could rub it in our colleagues' faces. Make names for ourselves in the science community. Maybe even lead a large funded expedition to the city.