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Blackness filtered in only a split second before my body was thrust upward at a dizzying speed. The stinging water racing over my skin, while I bulleted like a torpedo through an aqueous wall.
I gasped on a jolt and breathed in the ice-cold air that inflamed my lungs. A coughing spasm clinched my chest in a crushing blow against my ribs. I frantically inhaled, desperate for oxygen, and opened my eyes to the pale white moon and stars overhead.
Muscles weak and flaccid, weighed by a numbing cold that felt like boulders dangling from my fingertips, I settled into a calm and let the heavy liquid blanket pull me down.
Deeper.
A strong arm banded around me, an unflinching grip keeping my head above water. I turned just enough to see the glint of silvery tattoos wrapped across my naked chest.
Panic jolted through me, and I flapped my arms to get away, letting out a weakened gasp of fear. Twisting, I caught a glimpse of his eye. The unusual pale blue, without a hint of red. And at his forehead, no horns.
Only Jericho. My Jericho.
Had I hallucinated the demon I’d seen?
Wearing a confused expression, he pulled me into him, and it was only when I was tucked safely against his warm body that I noticed we were bobbing in a pitch-black sea. While he wore the sweats I’d given him, I had nothing. No bra, no panties, and no idea why I hadn’t thought of that small detail before, but I was grateful not to have the added weight of clothes.
“We m-m-made it?” The words rasped from my rigid jaw, chased by the steam of my exasperated breath. My muscles felt on the cusp of a constant shiver.
“You were perfect,” he said before kissing me. “So fucking perfect.”
Smiling at that I wrapped my arms tightly around him, frantic for the heat that radiated off his wet skin. “How are y-y-y-you so w-w-w-warm?” Needing every part of me in contact with him, I hooked my legs around his body and climbed him like a damn tree in search of warmth.
“Demon blood.” He guided my head back and stared down at me. “How was it?”
“I’m not s-s-s-stupid enough to think an orgasm cured my f-f-f-fear, but it sure as hell made for an intense distraction.”
“I have my methods.” A wickedly handsome smile curved his lips, while his free hand roamed over my skin, leaving a wake of heat that settled down into my bones, and I shivered in his grasp.
Looking around showed the cliff behind us, and Blackwater Cathedral looming overhead like a dark and ominous watcher. As the heat from his body slowly leached into mine, I melted against him, taking a moment to breathe deep. “So, now we just have to swim to the cliff.”
“Cake.”
“Easy for you to say. You at least have pants on. And didn’t almost die of some kinky erotic asphyxiation.”
Hoisting me around his body so I straddled his back, he took the first stroke toward the cliff, when something sharp brushed the back of my calf. On a gasp, I twitched against him, turning in time to catch the moon’s light glistening over iridescent scales along a sharp black curve that disappeared beneath the surface.
“Jericho! There’s something–”
A tight grip of my ankle yanked me off Jericho’s back. I sucked in a breath, just before I slipped into an ice-cold casket of water. Thrusting my hands up above me, I reached out for the surface as it shot out of my grasp.
The alarm inside of me took over, and I clawed for it. For my life and the life inside of me, because goddamn it, I wasn’t going down like that. Not after having survived the bathtub.
Except, my fight was futile against whatever held me, clinging to my leg in a burning grip. I only knew whatever it might be, it was enormous—that much I could make out from the terrifying curve of its fin which reminded me of a dragon’s spine.
No.
No!
The moment I resigned myself to breathe in the water, rather than face whatever it might’ve had in mind for me, a sharp release sent me floating upward again. An arm hooked beneath me, which I prayed belonged to Jericho, but his body yanked free of mine, and I climbed the numbing water to the surface.
Once breached, I twisted around, searching for him across a placid blackness. “Jericho!” I cried out, biting back tears. “Jericho!”
Peering down into the water was no use, as I couldn’t even see my own legs below me. “Jericho!”
My wheezing was the only sound in the deafening silence. A creeping chill crawled up my spine, my body growing heavy in the cold. I’d never make it to the shoreline. Not with my limbs frozen.
An impossibly bright flash of light from below was the only warning, before the water around me shifted and jostled my form. A blast of heat shot through my body, melting away the cold like a block of ice held over an open flame. With a guarded breath, I waited.
