Page 11 of Uncharted Desires
She started to swim away, but a strong, warm hand wrapped around her ankle.
“Where are you going?” Weston asked, his voice hoarse.
“Something is floating over there.” She pointed to the object, then lifted her ankle above the water and peeled his fingers off her. “I’m going to see what it is.”
Not to be deterred, he grabbed at her waist instead, and her heart did a flip inside her chest. What a traitorous organ. It wasn’t supposed to do that when he touched her. With his well-built arms, he pulled her in tightly. His strength had grown, and his body transformed into an impenetrable fortress.
He’d always been long and lean. God knew as hard as she’d tried not to notice him, he was impossible to miss. The way his long fingers expertly worked his guitar, the way he threw his head back when his shaggy hair would fall in his face, how his tattoos stretched across his back whenever he’d take his shirt off.
He had always been a powerful force on stage. Now he was all tall muscle and sinew, with toned shoulders, defined arms, and abs for days. To Kat, West had become more intimidating than ever. There was water all around her, and yet somehow her mouth had gone dry.
“You can’t just swim off. Who knows what that is—we’re in the middle of the ocean, it might be some evil deadly fish,” West said.
“Doubtful.” She tried not to roll her eyes. “For someone who does what they want all the time, you’re quite cautious.”
Weston released her and gave her an indecipherable look, so she swam away to put some distance between them. “I don’t make rash decisions. I have always calculated all the options and angles. It looks like I do what I want when I want, with no care in the world, but that’s not me. The media portrays me one way, and I’ve never changed the image.”
Well, that’s a lot to unpack..
Almost everything she had ever thought of him wasn’t even true, or so he said.
She gave him a dubious glance. “You thought through every last one of those models and actresses you dated?”
He flashed her a lascivious grin. “Of course.” Then he swam toward her with heat in his eyes. When he reached her, his finger glided up her arm with maddeningly slow precision, his voice feathery in her ear. “I can promise you, every single one of those women will tell you our relationship was worth their time.”
His finger blazed a trail of fire across her skin as it roamed across her shoulder and came to rest at the place where her neck and collarbone met. Kat quivered beneath his touch, utterly entranced by the scorching feel of his skin on her body. She could feel the power he had over her—how just one finger on her body could turn her into a pool of desire.
She caught his gaze. His eyes glowed with amusement, as though he was trying to keep from laughing at some joke only he knew. She quickly lashed out and playfully splashed him in the face. “Stop trying to hypnotize me!” she said.
“What?” he asked, laughing as he wiped the water out of his eyes.
“That’s how you do it? You lure all those women in through hypnosis. I knew it!” She pursed her lips, pretending to be deep in thought. “Well, that and writing incredibly sappy love songs that have women falling at your feet,” she teased.
Weston laughed this time and splashed water toward her, but she ducked away just in time.
“Whatever you want to believe,” he said, before Kat turned to swim away, making her way to the object, which had moved closer to them.
The waves, thankfully, were not rough, but still impeded her progress. The water dunked her under twice, but finally, she reached out and touched something smooth, and definitely not an evil man-eating fish.
“Darn, it’s just plastic.”
She swam back, disappointed it had been nothing useful, just some random junk thrown into the ocean—a sad reality of how tragically humans treated the planet.
“What a shame,” West said, as he wrapped his arms around the buoy, sighing.
She felt instant warmth move through her at the sound. If her body would stop reacting to every little noise he made, that would be great. She certainly wasn’t having any effect on him. That trick he had done with his finger was just because he could. She was the nearest female in his vicinity right now, and it was imperative she remember that or she was going to be in a world of hurt.
On the first tour they had ever gone on together, after a night of partying, Kat and West had ended up alone together in a dark hallway at the House of Blues. She couldn’t remember how it had happened, but what she did remember was the awkwardness after. She was not his type, and he had made that abundantly clear years ago.
Exhausted, they lapsed into silence. Kat listened to the water as it lapped against her skin. She had always been one to find the music in the world, or at least she used to. It wasn’t just through instruments, but in the sounds that were all around her in nature. The spirit had many ways of talking to people, but most never listened.
With every wave that crashed against them, Kat thought of her Indigenous roots, and was filled with apprehension. Though nature had always been a great source of comfort for her, it seemed almost ironic that she now found herself lost in its waters. Lost in the eerie quiet, waiting for something to speak to her, a message that never came. She wasn’t quite that in tune with Mother Earth lately, and being lost in the middle of the ocean terrified her while any other Native would probably have been perfectly ready for the challenge.
The waves occasionally doused them as the sun beat down. Time passed by slowly as Kat hummed to the surrounding sounds, her body sagging in the water, her arms losing strength as she held on. The ocean winds, the lapping water, the birds flying overhead all lulled her into a false sense of peace.
Wait . . . birds overhead?
She shook Weston. “Weston, wake up!”