Chapter 6 Everett
Everett
Ariel stands at my office window like she’s just discovered glass.
Twenty-six floors up, Fable Forest sprawls in tidy blocks and treetops, with Screaming Woods a dark, rippling bruise on the horizon.
Down in the street, a bus exhales, a barista laughs, a gull heckles someone’s lunch.
Up here, Ariel presses her palm to the pane as if she can feel the city’s pulse through it.
Light switches fascinate her. Elevators make her grin. My name on the door earned a whispered “oh” like I’d shown her a constellation. Wonder looks good on her. It also confuses the hell out of me. And sets every part of me on fire.
I did not sleep last night so much as shipwreck through a series of very erotic dreams. I woke hard as fuck and aching, her taste still ghosting my tongue.
I close my eyes, letting the memory of those dreams wash over me…
Ariel, stepping into the shower with me, hair dark and slick down her spine, palms flattening against my chest as if she’s learning my heartbeat by braille.
The water beads on her nipples. I track each drop with my mouth, and she arches, fingers locking in my hair, guiding me lower.
My name is a purr in her throat, and my knees nearly buckle.
I lift her, and she wraps around me, the slick heat of her pussy teasing my cock.
We’re clumsy and laughing until the laughter breaks on a moan as I slide inside her.
She kisses me like oxygen as I press in, slowly at first, then deeper when she gasps “yes” against my mouth.
Her sheath is tight and hot and devastating, and she clutches my shoulders as if she can anchor both of us to the earth while we rock.
Every time I pull back, she follows, greedy, grateful, mine.
Then we’re tangled in sheets that smell like rain.
She’s on her belly, sleepy and smiling, and I kiss a path down the line of her spine.
She learns what makes me stutter, what makes me swear, what pulls the roughest sounds from my throat.
She opens for me with a sigh, and I push in slowly and stay there, breathing with her, kissing the back of her neck while my hand laces with hers.
No rush. Just the long, drugged sweetness of it, her body fluttering around me, my control fraying, both of us shaking when we finally let go. ..
A door slamming down the corridor shatters the fantasies swirling in my mind. I force myself to think about spreadsheets as I discreetly adjust my throbbing cock.
“Ariel, can I ask you something?” I ask once my body is under control again, crossing the office to close the door and cutting the noise to a hush.
Her blue eyes meet mine. “Of course, Everett. Anything.”
“Did you grow up in a small town? Like a really small town?” I search for a word that isn’t patronizing. “Remote. Isolated.” A monastery carved into a glacier? On Mars? A religious cult?
“Yes.” She tastes the word like she chose it with care. “Isolated. And, um, remote. I came here recently because I wanted to see more of the world. Found the lake when I was hiking and fell in love with the area.”
Which is an answer that sounds like it has a hundred unspoken words sewn into the seams. My good sense files a report labeled She’s hiding something; proceed with caution. My traitor heart tosses the report in the lake and says She’s mine: proceed with flowers and hot kisses.
She hesitates, then lifts her chin as if she’s choosing to trust me.
“I was… studying,” she says. “Back home, I was on a freshwater ecology track. Like, uh, a marine biology degree but focused on lakes and inlets and watershed health. I took a year out before finishing because I didn’t want to sit in a classroom learning about ecosystems when I could actually be in one.
” A tiny shrug. “Field experience is better than lectures.”
That punches directly into my chest.
Ariel turns back to the window; fingertips pressed to the glass like she can feel the weight of all that water below the city.
“Most people only look at it from above. I like being in it. Watching currents. Seeing what settles at the bottom. Who’s dumping what where.
Who’s hurting it without meaning to.” She glances back at me with a small, nervous smile.
“I’m good at patterns. What shouldn’t be there.
Changes. I can tell you if something in the water feels wrong before most people can measure it. ”
I blink. “You… can feel it?”
Her brow creases. “That sounds weird, I know. I just mean I’ve spent a lot of time diving and swimming and tracking things.
I know what clear water tastes like. I know what a stressed bloom looks like.
I can tell when something unnatural’s leaked in, even if it’s faint.
” She swallows. “It’s just… the lake talks, if you listen. Most people don’t listen.”
She flushes like she thinks she said too much.
I should probably be worried that I’ve just invited a possibly feral, definitely gorgeous, maybe-genius water witch into my insanely proprietary R&D lab.
Instead, I’m thinking: hire her.
“And you’re going back to finish that degree after your year out?” I ask, which is me trying to sound practical instead of insanely turned on by the fact that she has a brain and a purpose.
“Um, that was the plan,” she says, and her smile wobbles. “But plans change. I might stay if… if there’s a reason to.”
If there’s a reason to.
My pulse does something reckless.
“So, um, is this the equipment you were using the night of the storm?” Aril asks, drifting toward the pile of gear someone (Ricky) dumped against the wall. She moves cautiously but elegantly, as if each step is a new experience. Like her body is learning gravity.
“Yeah.” I join her, grateful for the pivot.
“Sample bottles for pollution testing. Bottom-scraper for trash. We drop more than we realize, and it all ends up in the lake. And”—I pick up the prototype clipped to its harness—“the new locator. Think EPIRB, but with real-time vitals to our servers.” I grimace. “It didn’t work.”
She turns the device in her hands, fingers deft on the casing. “This wire isn’t connected to this little board,” she says matter-of-factly, pointing to the cellular antenna that—oh. That would do it.
I tip my head back and groan. “That would, in fact, prevent it from talking to anything. I’ll have the team fix it.” I hesitate, then take the leap. “It was you, right? In the water? Pulling me back to the boat?” My eyes narrow. “And the kiss?”
Her smile is small and devastating. “You didn’t dream it.”
“Good,” I say too fast. “Because I’m about to kiss you again. Without the concussion this time.”
Her blush intensifies. “I-I’d like that.”
I step closer, slow enough to be stopped, close enough to feel the cool air stirring off her skin. I cup her jaw, thumb grazing the soft heat of her cheek. She smells like clean linen and the ocean.
Before I can consider the ramifications, I lower my mouth to hers.
It’s a mistake. I know it immediately. Not because it feels wrong, but because it feels so fucking right.
Her lips are as warm, soft, and plump as I remember.
I plan to pull back after that initial taste, but she makes a little mewling moan that sounds like desperation and twines her arms around my neck like vines climbing a stone wall.
Only I’m not a stone wall. I’m flesh and bone and want.
With a groan, I circle one arm around her waist, pulling her closer as I lick the seam of her mouth, enticing her to open for me. She tastes like salt and sweetness and the electricity in the air before a storm. The kiss tilts and deepens. Heat spills between us like sunlight through water.
I’m no saint, but it’s been a long fucking time since I’ve been intimate with a woman. Between work commitments and honoring the ruse between Kara and me, I’ve relied on my right hand to take care of any sexual needs.
But this woman, this mysterious, intoxicating woman, sets my body and soul on fire in a way I’ve never experienced before. And no kiss has ever felt like this. Like… more.
Innocence marks her response as she greets my eager tongue with a tentative lick of hers.
I’m pretty fucking sure it’s not because she’s wary of me but because this is her first kiss.
The thought sends a primal surge of emotion through my chest and a bolt of lust to my groin.
Christ, why has no one kissed her before?
Why has no one claimed this glorious mouth and tasted its honeyed depths?
I inhale her fragrance, something elemental heated with passion, absorbing her soft curves against my hardness and memorizing every dip and swell as they press against my chest, my stomach, my cock.
Pulling back a little, stroking a finger over her hot cheek. “There’s more, isn’t there? You looked… wrecked at the hospital. Scared. Did someone hurt you? Is that why you left?”
Her gaze flicks past my shoulder to the window, like the right words are moving out there in the air. “Not in the way you think,” she says softly.
I ease back enough to read her face. “Then why?”
Her throat works on a swallow. “I just… didn’t belong anymore.
” She says it carefully, like stepping barefoot over glass.
“Where I was, there were rules about what your life is supposed to be. Who you talk to. What you’re allowed to learn.
I wanted to study the water for real, not just sit in a room and repeat what someone else said about it.
” Her fingers twist together, then still when I cover them with mine.
“I wanted to see how people actually live with the world instead of pretending they’re separate from it. And that wasn’t… welcome.”
I feel that like a hit to the ribs. “So they pushed you out.”
Her mouth tips, sad and defiant at once. “Sometimes, the place you love decides you’re not part of it anymore. Sometimes you’re the problem for wanting more.”
I let that sit between us. There are shadows behind it, too many edges, but she’s watching me with that wary, luminous look, and I know if I press she’ll vanish behind her walls.
“Hey,” I murmur, cupping her cheek, letting my thumb skim the soft curve just under her eye, “whatever you left, you’re safe now.”
Her lips part on a shaky breath. “You don’t even know who I am.”
“Maybe not,” I tell her, leaning in until our noses brush, “but I know how I feel when you look at me. And that’s a start.”
For a long moment, neither of us moves. The hum of the city and the thrum of our heartbeats fold into the quiet between us.
Then she leans forward, rests her head against my chest, and whispers, “I don’t know if I’m meant to stay.”
“Then stay for now,” I say, my hand finding the small of her back, warm through her blouse. “We’ll figure the rest out later.”
Her breath catches. Relief floods her azure eyes, and I know I’ve touched something fragile. Whatever she’s running from isn’t over. But for the first time, she doesn’t look like she’s about to bolt for the door.
I force myself to release her and retreat behind my desk before I offer to name a boat after her.
“So, you’ve spent a lot of time in the water?” I ask, my voice gruff.
“Yes… diving,” she says carefully, eyes on the floor. “Near the far coves. The trash isn’t awful unless it’s collecting deep. But there’s an odd algae bloom in a remote area. You might want to check it.”
“Show me.” I’m up again, ushering her toward the lab. If she has data—or even good instincts—I want it in front of my team.