Page 24
He stood too and stretched up his arms. “No.”
“That’s good.” She sat back down, and he sat beside her.
“If the water doesn’t rise all the way . . .” She broke off, and James heard her swallow. She was thinking of what would happen if it did.
“We could swim when the tide ebbs,” she continued, more steadily. “Swim with the tide. Or we could paddle the boat somehow.”
Pray the water doesn’t rise all the way, then attempt the impossible. Not much of plan, but he’d nothing better to contribute.
“We wait then.” He stamped his feet lightly, trying to wake up his toes, numb inside his sodden, ill-fitting, borrowed boots.
This was a cock up. Worse than the balloon. Worse than anything.
Trapped in a dank crevice of rock, the sea seeping in.
“I should have waited, before,” he said. “You told me to wait. Everyone did. Christ, Tib. I’m more than sorry.”
“You didn’t make me climb into the boat.” Her elbow dug into his ribs.
“What are you doing?”
Her elbow battered him again. He caught her arm then felt down her wet sleeve. He touched her wrist. Her skin felt like ice. She was twisting her hands together, for warmth.
“You’re freezing,” he said.
“You’re perceptive.” Her teeth chattered the words.
He bumbled about, feeling for that discarded coat. It had wadded beneath a thwart, slimy cold and bloated as a sponge. Useless.
“Here.” He returned to her and sat, tugging his shirt from his trousers. He took her wrist and guided her hand under the linen, tensing his stomach. Even so, he flinched as her cold fingers settled on his flesh.
She tried to pull back, and he matched her resistance, with slowly increasing pressure. As a child, she’d overpowered him often, and he’d had to struggle to contain his fits of rage. He could overpower her now, easily.
Part of him wanted her to surge with that same rage, to force her to submit to his will regardless. A part of him he had no business expressing.
He released her wrist as though it burned.
She went still, fingers feather-light, positioned just above his navel.
Then she gave a half-laugh. “Merlin has answered my wish.” And to his surprise, she slid her other hand under his shirt.
He hissed at the contact. “What did you wish?”
“For you to transform into a warming pan.” She fanned out her fingers, seeking skin she hadn’t yet chilled with her touch.
He laughed. “That tickles.”
“Quiet. Warming pans are silent.”
He laughed again as her icy fingers stroked up his ribs. “I’m revealing my Achilles heel. Touching me there,” he gasped as she reached the spot, “will disable me more surely than any rock you can hurl with your slingshot.”
“Attacking from a distance has its advantages.”
“You admit it was you that day.”
“I admit no such thing.” One of her hands skated down his stomach, dangerously low. The other brushed up his ribs.
“Enough,” he growled, and then God help him, she reversed directions and he giggled. Giggled! How unlikely. He was giggling, with a raging cockstand, in a pitch-black chamber of near-certain death. He was ready to beg Merlin, not for freedom, but for an eternity here, in this blasted boat, Isobel stroking his bare skin.
