Page 63 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

I willed the sensation away. Physical attraction could pull me to any person and, ordinarily, I would satisfy the urge to get it over with, but he was not someone I could consider ordering to crawl to me.

He was worth too much.

“Something you want?” Zion scratched his chest, and lines of pink appeared where his nails had irritated his skin, right underneath two linear, crisscrossing scars below his right peck.

“Go swim. I will wait for her.”

“Shout if you need anything.” After giving me a once-over, he raced back to the sea. He dived into a rising wave and vanished underwater, the water smoothing out with not a trace of him, like his existence had not seen the light of day to begin with.

A silhouette blocked out the sun. “What are you looking at?” Dressed in a pair of dark blue cotton shorts and a sky-blue cropped t-shirt, Kali tracked my gaze to the sea and its jaws.

“You.” I smirked, the pressure on my ribs easing as Zion resurfaced. “Let’s go.”

She paused at the shoreline and wiped her palms on her shorts. Carefully, like the water was going to bite her, she put her foot on the damp sand, and a wave submerged her toes in white foam.

“Ah!” She jumped on one leg and instantly lowered her foot onto her footprint. “It’s warm. I believed it would be cold. It alwayslookedcold in the photographs.”

“If you come here during winter, it’s freezing.” With a hand on the small of her back, I encouraged her to move forward.

“Have you? I mean, swam during winter?” she asked as water engulfed us up to our thighs.

“Yes.” I nodded toward Zion diving straight into another wave before it crashed fifteen feet away from us. “His sister loved the sea, so his and mine parents would bring us here every few weeks. He would drag me into the water to jump over the waves until our parents shouted at us to get out so we would not get sick.”

“Loved? She doesn’t anymore?”

“She died twelve years ago.” Alongside endless others.

“How?” Her question was barely audible over the water playing nature’s game of which wave was the mightiest.

“You will have to ask him yourself,” I said, my voice carrying a note of the past.

“Do you have any sib?—”

A large wave crashed into us, and she clung to me to keep her balance. The sea gradually leveled out around us as she coughed out water from her lungs, not releasing her iron grip on me.

I rubbed her upper back. “Are you okay?”

“Ye—” She coughed out more seawater. “Yes. It’s just stronger than I assumed.”

“We need to go farther where the waves do not break yet.” I pushed us through toward the shallow strip of lighter-colored water about twenty feet from us. A refreshing breeze tousled my hair, lifting the strands glued to my nape and drying off the sweat.

With not a single complaint, she held on to me, hiding in my chest from the impact of stray waves. I chuckled to myself. She was comfortable with violence, but a little bit of water freaked her out enough to forget I had stolen her for myself.

The moment we were far away from the shore, where the seabed was shallow and the water reached only her mid-thighs, she let go of me and waded a couple of feet away, her eyebrows drawing back together. “What do we do now?”

She saidwe.

“Why are you laughing?”

Paying no heed to her question, I said, “Now you come into my arms, and I’ll teach you how to swim.”

“You cantellme how to swim. You don’t have to hold me. I’m not a child.”

“Your choice.” I turned around to walk away. “I will see you on the shore.”

“Wait!” She wobbled in the water, arms extended to the sides in hopes of keeping her balance in the unfamiliar environment as she scrutinized the endless water and huffed, “Fine.” Trudging closer to me, she eyed up the sea like it was going to eat her. “Do what you must. Just don’t leave me here.”

She might not have realized it yet, but leaving her was not an option I would consider. She was mine. And you took care of what was yours.