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“You pushed me under the water,” Ellie cut in, her words razor-edged.

“Huh?” Adam returned, obviously thrown. “Wait—you’re upset aboutthat? What’d you want me to do? Let you backstroke while they were shooting at us?”

“That isnotwhat I meant,” Ellie snapped in return as she drove a finger into the flat, solid surface of his chest.

The fabric of his shirt clung to him like a jellyfish.

“I told you not to pull that rigidly masculine, protect-the-weaker-sex nonsense—” she began.

“Rigidly…?” Adam cut in awkwardly.

“—with me less thanfive minutesbefore we fell in here, and what do you do? Shove me down and put your big, self-importantlymalebody—”

“Rigidly masculine,” Adam muttered as though confirming it to himself. “Sure. Why not?”

“—between me and the bullets as though somehowyourperson is expendable whereas mine has to be cherished and coddled like a… a prize Pomeranian!”

“You’re nothing like a Pomeranian,” Adam countered.

“Oh? Then what precious, oh-so-vulnerable creature that is completely incapable of taking care of itselfdoI resemble?” Ellie demanded with a hiss.

“How about a wolverine?” he offered.

“Arrgghhh!” Ellie growled. Her hands clenching into fists as she glared at him. “You are the most arrogant, impossible… just…drattedhuman being I have ever had the misfortune to encounter, and I… I…”

Her anger shuddered, threatening to break—and then collapsed into something far more unsettling.

“Iam the reason we are both going to die in this godforsaken hole in the ground while those terrible men ravage this city, completely destroying the historical record in the process,” she spilled out, “whileyoushould still be sitting on your porch at the Rio Nuevo drinking spirits and smoking cigars. Instead, you are going to starve here with me when you might have lived a perfectly happy, contented existence had you never had the misfortune to come blasting into my washroom… Though of course, that was entirely your own decision and not one that I will in any way countenance, implying as it does that any female who happens to emit the slightest… the slightest shriek…”

The words slipped away from her. The panicked rush that had pushed them from her lips spent itself like the ripples of a pond. The echo of her voice sank into the still, careful silence of the cenote until only the soft lapping of the water against the walls remained.

“Done now?” Adam asked carefully.

“I…” Ellie began. She swallowed thickly as her heart worked to return to its natural rhythm. “Yes.”

“Good,” Adam replied shortly. “Because I need your help with something.”

“Of course,” she said automatically as numbness settled in where that furious, panic-driven outrage had been a moment before.

“Great,” Adam replied and pulled his shirt off.

Ellie’s pulse started kicking wildly again. The cenote was still dark, but during her tirade, her eyes had further adjusted to the gloom. There was still a shade of twilight to the sky overhead, and it offered just enough light to keep their prison from falling into total darkness.

She had seen Adam without a shirt before, of course—it was obvious that he would have preferred not to wear one at all if he could’ve gotten away with it—but never from quite this…close.

He was not shaped like any of the men Ellie had known in London—the scholars at her university or the universally insipid suitors Florence kept ruthlessly setting in Ellie’s path. There was so muchmoreof Adam. All of it was very terribly solid and cut in the most infuriatingly intriguing contours. There were other contours, she knew, on the parts of his torso currently concealed by the water. Ellie had taken note of them against her judgment during those better-lit occasions when he had decided to strip himself down like a wrestler.

“Ah, don’t you think you might require…” Ellie began awkwardly. “That is, itisrather chilly down here…”

“Hold it out straight,” Adam ordered as he pushed the shirt at her.

Ellie yanked the sodden fabric taut between her hands.

Adam stabbed it, neatly slicing his machete through the cotton.

He shoved the knife back into its sheath beneath the water and took the shirt, tearing it the rest of the way with an easy yank.

“Mind wrapping this up?” he asked and turned his left shoulder toward her.