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Chapter Fourteen
Ven
I feel an intense wave of longing as Ryder steps away from me. Then I blink in confusion. Rain stopped?
He lifts his hand out from under the overhang of rock as if to prove his point. “I told you it would pass quickly.”
My head—and something much lower—have whiplash from his sudden change. What the hell? But then my thoughts begin to clear, and I realize I’d been making out with a demon. A cocky asshole demon who I don’t even like all that much.
Well, two can play at this game, if that’s what we’re going to do. “Oh, good. We need to get back on the road. Now we can see if your hitchhiking skills are as good as you claim.” I tousle my hair again and straighten my dress.
Ryder turns and points to a small motorboat cruising parallel to shore. He walks toward the water and waves at the boat driver. “Looks like our ride has already arrived.”
“What makes you think…” I begin, but then let it drop. Of course the boat is turning and angling toward the shore.
Ryder shoots me a grin over his shoulder.
Five minutes later he’s convinced the owner, a middle-aged man with a paunch and a mustache, to let us borrow the boat for a bit, and we’re coasting along the shoreline. I feel guilty—we obviously have no way of returning this man’s boat to him.
When I protest, Ryder shrugs. “James Bond does this all the time. And does he feel guilty? No. Besides, he’ll likely report it to the police later today, and have it back in no time.”
“Are you really comparing yourself to James Bond?” My brows nearly touch my hairline. God, he’s conceited.
Another shrug. “If the shoe fits.”
I have to say he does look a bit like a Bond type as he steers the boat over the waves in his suave outfit and sunglasses. He’s irritatingly handsome. But so obviously not my type. Why did I kiss this pompous jerk? What is wrong with me?
It takes another couple of hours to arrive in the area of Naranjo Beach. “We’re getting close,” Ryder calls over the hum of the engine and the slap of the boat hitting the waves. He slows until we’re just coasting, and we begin to survey the shoreline.
“Dante could have been more specific,” I grumble after ten minutes.
“I have a feeling we’ll know it when we see it,” Ryder says confidently.
I sigh and focus on the landscape we’re passing. There are stretches of sand dotted with outcroppings of rock, like the one we’d sheltered in. As we zoom around a particularly lengthy stretch of rocky cliffs, I suddenly feel of flare of magic to the right. Ryder whips his head in the same direction.
“Bingo,” he says.
There’s a narrow inlet leading into the rocks, and as we pass, I catch a glimpse of what may be a cove further in. Ryder keeps driving past, just in case anyone is watching I assume, and after about five minutes when we reach another sandy area, he drives the boat into the shallows and cuts the engine. We hop out into the waves and slosh our way up to the shore, pulling the boat in behind us.
“Secret inlet? Mega magic? That has to be it,” Ryder says.
“For once, we agree,” I respond.
“Just this once?” He asks in a teasing tone. Then he points to the north, down the shoreline, to a huge rock jutting out of the water far in the distance. “That’s Roca Bruja.”
“Witch’s Rock?” I translate. “Why is it called that?”
He shrugs. “There are all sorts of tales. Some say a witch died there after a shipwreck. Others say a witch was banished there and haunts the place. In some stories, it’s three witches.”
“Interesting,” I say, casting another look at the thing.
It seems Ryder is just going to ignore what happened earlier. Act like we didn’t make out. Make out, only to have him abruptly depart and blame the goddamn weather. Which obviously wasn’t the reason. And now he’s acting like a nature guide, pointing out landmarks? He’s driving me nuts—one second hot and heavy, the next completely detached. Maybe it’s simply that he doesn’t know how to act around a woman when he’s not banging her.
But I’m not about to let him know I’m put out. I won’t give him the satisfaction. I flash my own smile. “Let’s go check out the cove, shall we?”
We begin to trek down the beach toward the hidden cove. The sand glitters in the late afternoon sun, silvery-gold bits in the dark gray sand. Palm trees spring up in clusters here and there, and an abandoned rusty car sits off in the distance. Otherwise, there’s no sign of life. Human life, that is. Lizards sun themselves on logs amongst the trees, and Macaws and little white-faced monkeys play in the trees overhead.
We reach the rocky area after a few minutes of hiking. I can feel a pulse of magic again. Ryder and I exchange a glance, then we creep forward, climbing over small boulders and making our way through bushes that grow stubbornly in the cracks in the rocks.
