23. Jamison
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
JAMISON
Ihit the water before I finished screaming her name. For one vicious second there was only green-dark water and the violent punch of impact through my shoulders. My jacket dragged heavy around me. The waterfall thundered above.
Then I saw her, sinking too fast.
My heart stopped in my chest.
No.
I kicked down hard, every part of me turning savage. The burn in my lungs meant nothing. Sienna was beneath me, eyes closed, limbs loose for one awful second that almost broke something permanent inside my skull.
I reached her and grabbed whatever I could.
Her waist.
The slick fabric of her bikini top slipped under my fingers, and I jerked her toward me with too much force. The fabric tore against my hand. I hooked an arm around her ribs and kicked up.
The surface seemed miles away.
My lungs started to burn. Her body was limp against mine. Too still. My mind went white around a single command.
Up.
Up.
Fucking up.
We broke through the surface.
I dragged in a breath so harsh it tore my throat. Sienna choked beside me, coughing weakly, and the sound went straight through my chest.
Coughing meant I had not watched her fall to her death because I said her name.
“Baby,” I rasped, hauling her higher against me. “That’s it. Cough for me. Come on. There you are.”
Her hands scrambled at my shirt, panicked. The torn remains of her bikini top floated half-off her, one strap snapped, the fabric useless.
I pulled her into me instantly, shielding her with my body from the entire fucking world.
My arm locked around her back.
“Easy,” I said, voice rough. “I’ve got you.”
She coughed again, harder this time.
“Good girl,” I breathed before I could stop myself. “Good. Breathe, Sienna. Breathe for me.”
Her fingers dug into my shoulders. She was shaking, hair plastered to her face. I kicked us toward the nearest flat rock, one arm around her, the other cutting through the pool.
The waterfall roared behind us.
The sun flashed off wet stone.
The whole world had the audacity to keep existing after nearly taking her from me.
I shoved one hand onto the rock and lifted.
My clothes clung heavy, trying to drag us back down. Sienna whimpered when I moved her.
“I know,” I muttered. “I know, baby. One second.”
I got myself halfway onto the shelf first, then dragged her up with me, keeping her pressed to my chest.
She was coughing less now, but trembling violently. Her knees slipped on the wet rock, and I pulled her straight over me. She ended up straddling me, shaking in my lap, both arms caught between us.
Too fucking precious for the way my hands had handled her before.
I tore my jacket off one shoulder and wrapped it around her back, dragging the soaked fabric over her as much as I could.
It was uselessly wet, but it covered her.
Her breath came too fast.
Tiny, sharp pulls.
Panic.
I had caused enough of it in other people to recognize the shape. The short breaths. The wild eyes. The body trying to leave itself because staying inside felt unsafe.
“Sienna.” I caught the back of her neck.
Her pulse beat frantic beneath my palm.
The contact hit me strangely.
My hand at her nape.
Her body in my lap.
Her trembling knees bracketing my hips.
The old part of me knew this position too well.
How much control lived in one hand at the back of a neck. Knew how easily breath followed pressure, bodies settled when command replaced fear.
Dom instincts rose hard, dark muscle memory beneath my skin.
Make her feel held until her body believed it.
My fingers spread gently at the base of her skull.
“Look at me,” I said.
She tried.
“I—” Her voice broke into another cough.
“I know.” I pulled her closer, cheek brushing her wet hair. “Don’t talk yet. Breathe.”
Her hands clutched at my shirt.
I lowered my voice, letting it go rough and steady. “In through your nose.”
Her breath hitched again. I tightened my hand slightly at her neck. Firm enough to cut through the panic.
“Sienna. In.”
She dragged in a broken breath.
“Good girl. Hold.”
Her shoulders trembled.
“Out.”
She exhaled against my throat, shaking so hard my arms locked around her.
“In.”
She obeyed, barely.
“Out.”
Her breath stuttered, but it came.
“Again,” I said. “That’s it. Just like that.”
She followed me for three breaths.
Then five.
The whole time, I held the back of her neck. My other hand stayed flat against her spine beneath the soaked jacket, keeping her upright. I had watched blood leave bodies and felt nothing but impatience if the mess complicated logistics.
But watching Sienna fall—
No.
Fear was too small a word.
She blinked at me, still breathing too fast, but present now. Her hand moved weakly, touching my chest as if she needed to check whether I was real.
“Jamison?”
I closed my eyes for half a second.
God.
Her voice.
“I’m here.”
“What happened?”
“You fell.”
Her brows pulled together, dazed. “I fell? Oh, I thought…” She swallowed, then winced. “I thought something happened.”
She had looked at me and thought disaster.
“Nothing happened. Emmie is fine. Marcel is fine. Harrison is fine. Everyone is fine.”
Her body sagged at that. I held her tighter before she could slip.
“You scared the fucking life out of me,” I said.
Her eyes lifted again, confused by the words. Like she didn’t understand I had one to scare out.
A small scrape marked one shoulder where stone must have caught her. Another red line crossed the side of her thigh. Nothing life-threatening.
“I’m okay,” she whispered.
“You don’t get to decide that after falling off a cliff.”
“It wasn’t a cliff.”
“It was high enough to ruin my day.”
Her mouth moved faintly.
My hand tightened at the back of her neck before I could stop it.
I forced my voice lower. Softer, though the word felt foreign in my mouth. “You do not apologize for falling. I scared you.”
I slid my hand from her neck to the side of her face, thumb brushing water from her cheek. I looked at her mouth for half a second too long and nearly lost the thread of sanity.
No.
Not now.
She had just almost drowned because my existence made her panic. Try being human for once, Crow.
I shifted carefully, easing her weight lower against my thighs so she wasn’t holding herself up. Her knees tightened automatically around me, and the sensation tore a rough breath from my chest.
Bad.
Very bad.
My body had not gotten the memo that this was a crisis. I ignored it with the kind of discipline that should have qualified me for a religious award.
“Easy,” I said. “Let me hold you.”
“I’m wet.”
“So am I.”
“Your clothes—”
“Sienna.”
She stopped.
I bent until my forehead almost touched hers. “I do not care about the clothes.”
She looked down then, awareness slowly coming back into her expression. Her hand moved to the torn bikini top beneath my jacket.
“I ripped it getting you up.”
Colour rushed into her cheeks despite the shock.
I pulled the jacket tighter around her shoulders, shielding her from the open air. “Nobody can see.”
Her fingers clutched the lapels.
“I didn’t mean—”
“Stop not apologizing.”
Her mouth closed
I needed one minute where her fear did not say sorry in a pretty voice and slice me open with it.
She breathed in again, this one shaky but deeper.
I watched her chest move beneath the jacket because breathing had become the only thing in the world worth tracking.
“You’re okay,” I said, as much to myself as to her. “You hit the water clean. No head strike that I saw. You were under too long, but you coughed it out. I’m still having a doctor check you.”
Her eyes sharpened faintly. “No doctor.”
“Yes doctor.”
“Jamison—”
“No.”
Her brows drew together, a little stubbornness. “I don’t need one.”
Her lips parted.
Then, impossibly, she gave the tiniest laugh. Like I was ridiculous. I stared at her like an idiot. She seemed to realize she had laughed and looked down quickly.
No.
Absolutely not.
I caught her chin gently and lifted her face back to mine.
“Don’t hide that.” I loosened my fingers immediately, but she didn’t pull away this time.
Progress.
My thumb brushed the edge of her jaw, careful over wet skin. “I thought I lost you.”
Her face softened with confusion again.
“Jamison,” she whispered.
I leaned in before I could stop myself and kissed her cheek. Harder than I meant to. My lips pressed to her, and I breathed her in with the kind of relief that made a man understand why people prayed.
“Fuck,” I muttered against her. “Fuck, baby. You scared you.”
I kissed her cheek again, softer this time, and brushed her wet hair back from her face, my hand still too careful for a man like me.
My heart kicked hard. I looked at her fingers suspended between us.
“Go on,” I said, voice rough.
Her eyes flicked to mine.
“It’s okay.”
Her cold fingertips touched my jaw. The old instinct would have been to control the contact. Catch her wrist. Decide what it meant before it could mean too much.
Her fingers slid along the line of my jaw.
Her brow pinched. “Your hand is bleeding.”
I looked down. One of the rocks had cut my palm when I hauled us up. Blood thinned in the water running over, my knuckles.
“I don’t like it.” Sienna’s attention locked on it. I turned my hand away immediately. Such a simple sentence. I swallowed against something rough in my throat.
Then she shivered, hard. That snapped me back into function.
“Right. Up.”
Her expression panicked. “I can walk.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Jamison—”
“I am carrying you.”
“I’m almost naked.”
“I noticed.”
Her cheeks flushed.
I leaned in slightly, hand returning to the back of her neck. “No one sees you. Understand?”
The same something moved through me and made my voice roughen. The position, my hand, her body straddling mine, her wide eyes fixed on me—it dragged every buried instinct I had straight to the surface.
Protect.
Command.
Soothe.
Own the space so she could stop fighting it.
“You stay against me,” I said. “Jacket closed. Face in my neck if you need. I’ll get you to the cottage.”
She swallowed. “Everyone will see.”
“No, they won’t.”
“How do you know?”
“Because anyone who looks too long will lose the privilege.”