Wrong love 2

Chapter Nine: Deep Water

The pool was heated.

She hadn't known that until he told her — hadn't known the house had a pool at all until he'd opened the back door that evening and the steam rising off the water in the cold night air had answered the question before she could ask it.

She'd stood in the doorway looking at it.

Dark water. The kind that looked black at night, that reflected the winter sky and the few stars that had made it through the cloud cover, that had a quality of stillness to it that felt deliberate — like something that had been waiting to be used and was quietly pleased that the wait was over.

"You have a heated pool," she said.

"I do," he said.

"You've had this house for two years."

"Yes."

"And you never used it."

He looked at the pool.

Then at her.

"I was waiting for something worth using it for," he said simply.

She had looked at him for a moment.

Then gone to find her swimsuit.

The water was exactly the temperature that made the cold air above it irrelevant.

She felt it the moment she went in — stepping down from the edge, the warmth closing around her legs and then her waist, the contrast of heated water and winter air on her shoulders producing something that was almost indecent in how good it felt.

She pushed off the wall.

Floated on her back for a moment.

Looked up at the winter sky — grey and vast and indifferent, the kind of sky that had no interest in the things happening beneath it — and felt the bond warm and present in her chest and the water warm around her body and thought —

This. Just this.

She heard him enter the water.

Felt the displacement — the specific quality of something large and certain moving through water with the unhurried confidence of something that had been moving through the world for a thousand years and had never once been in a hurry about any of it.

She righted herself.

He was crossing toward her.

Slow. Deliberate.

Those silver eyes on her in the dark water in the steam-soft night air — and there it was, that look, the one that always preceded something, the one that had no subtlety in it and no interest in pretending it did.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," he said.

He kept moving toward her.

She kept not moving away.

The water between them closed.

He reached her at the center of the pool.

His hands found her waist underwater — warm hands, wolf-warm, the specific heat of him that had always run higher than anything around it — and he pulled her in slowly. Not rushed. Never rushed with her. Like he had all night and had already decided to use every second of it.

She went.

Her hands came to his chest — felt the bond mark under her fingers, felt his heartbeat, felt the water between them that wasn't really between them anymore.

He looked at her.

Just looked. The way he looked at her sometimes in rooms with no audience — like she was simultaneously the most ordinary and most extraordinary thing he'd encountered in a thousand years of both.

"You're staring," she said softly.

"You're worth staring at," he said.

"Jace."

"Elara."

"That was almost a compliment."

"It was entirely a compliment," he said. "I don't do almost."

The corner of her mouth pulled up.

His hands spread across her lower back — deliberate, unhurried, the kind of touch that wasn't leading anywhere yet and knew it and was entirely unbothered by that — and drew her closer until the water between them was nothing, until she was against him and the bond was doing what the bond always did when there was no distance left for it to cross.

Pulling.

Not outward.

Deeper.

"Jace," she said. Quieter this time.

"Mm."

"What are you doing."

"Nothing yet," he said. His voice had dropped — that register, the one that lived below his usual cadence and only came out in moments like this, low and certain and completely aware of its own effect. "Just holding you."

"You're doing more than holding me."

"I'm thinking about doing more than holding you," he said. "There's a difference."

She looked up at him.

At the silver eyes in the dark — darker now, the arrogance and the composure giving way to something that didn't bother with either of those things, that had been waiting all evening with the patience of something that knew exactly where this was going and had decided to enjoy every step of getting there.

"What are you thinking about," she said.

His hands moved.

One staying at her lower back — pressing, pulling her flush against him — the other sliding slowly up her spine with a deliberateness that made every vertebra aware of it in sequence.

"You," he said simply. "Specifically you. In this pool. Right now."

The bond surged.

She felt it tear through her chest and land somewhere lower and the water suddenly felt warmer than it had thirty seconds ago and she was very aware of exactly how little distance existed between them.

"And?" she said.

The hand at her spine reached the back of her neck.

His fingers curled there — gentle and absolute simultaneously, tilting her head back, those silver eyes dropping to her mouth with the focused intent of someone who has made a decision and is implementing it.

"And," he said quietly, "I'm done thinking."

He kissed her.

Not soft this time.

Not the gentle version, not the tender version, not the version that started slow and built gradually. This was something else — the kiss of someone who had been patient all evening and had finished being patient, deep and immediate and carrying in it the full weight of a thousand years of wanting this specific person.

The bond erupted.

The water moved around them as she gripped his shoulders — pulled herself up, legs finding his waist underwater, the pool making her weightless in a way that pressed every point of contact between them closer than gravity usually allowed.

He made a sound against her mouth.

Low. Satisfied. The specific sound of something getting exactly what it wanted.

"There," he said against her lips.

"Jace—"

"Right there," he said. His hands gripping her waist underwater, holding her exactly where she was, where the water made her weightless and the bond made her breathless and the distance between them had completely ceased to exist. "Don't move."

"I wasn't planning to," she said.

She felt him smile.

Then felt the smile dissolve into something more serious as his mouth found her jaw, her neck, the curve of her shoulder above the waterline — and the night air on her wet skin and his mouth against it produced something that she felt from the surface of her skin all the way down to wherever the bond lived in her chest.

"Jace," she breathed.

"I've got you," he said against her neck. "I've always got you."

Her head fell back.

The winter sky above her — vast and dark and entirely unaware —

His hands everywhere.

The water warm around them both.

The bond between them pulling deeper, deeper, deeper—

He moved them to the edge of the pool without breaking contact.

Smooth and unhurried — her back meeting the pool wall, his hands either side of her on the edge, the water between them non-existent — and he pulled back just far enough to look at her.

She was breathing harder than water warranted.

So was he.

Silver eyes on hers — dark and present and carrying in them the specific quality of Jace Ryder when he had stopped performing anything at all and was simply, completely himself.

Undone.

By her. Always by her.

"You are," he said quietly, water running down his jaw, steam rising around them both, the winter night pressing close, "the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in a thousand years."

She looked at him.

"Jace—"

"I mean it," he said. "Every word. I have seen everything the world has produced in a thousand years and nothing—" His hand came up wet from the water to push a strand of her blue-black pixie cut back from her face. "Nothing has ever looked like you do right now."

The bond ached with it.

She felt what he meant through the connection — felt that it wasn't flattery, wasn't performance, was simply the honest output of a thousand year old wolf standing in a heated pool on a winter night looking at his vampire and finding that a thousand years of vocabulary wasn't sufficient.

"Come here," she said softly.

He came.

What the pool held after that belonged to neither of them exclusively.

It belonged to the bond — to the oath they'd sworn in blood that had been building toward this since before either of them understood what it was building toward. The water made everything slow and deep and unavoidable, every movement deliberate, every point of contact amplified by the warmth and the weightlessness until the line between sensation and feeling ceased to exist entirely.

He whispered things against her skin that she was going to carry for the rest of her existence.

She said his name the way she only ever said it in moments like this — stripped of everything, just the two syllables, just Jace, just the word that meant all of it.

He answered her every time.

The bond ran between them like a current in the water — constant and consuming and building with every breath toward something that neither of them was trying to slow down and neither of them could have slowed down if they'd tried.

"Look at me," he said quietly.

She looked at him.

Silver eyes. Dark water. Steam. The winter sky above them both.

His hands on her.

Her hands on him.

The bond at its absolute zenith — burning so bright she thought if you'd been standing at the garden wall looking in you might have seen it, might have thought one of the pool lights had come on, might have seen the warm gold glow of two people completely dissolved into each other.

"Elara," he said.

Just her name.

The whole world in it.

"I know," she whispered.

"Stay with me," he said.

"Always," she said.

And the pool held them both —

Deep and warm and entirely theirs —

While the winter night kept its silence around them like it understood.

After, they floated.

Side by side on their backs in the center of the pool — looking up at the winter sky, shoulders touching, the bond humming quiet and satisfied between them like something that had been given exactly what it needed and was resting in the aftermath of it.

The steam rose around them.

The stars came and went behind the clouds.

Neither of them spoke for a long time.

His hand found hers underwater.

She laced her fingers through his.

The ring — she'd left it inside, on the nightstand, unwilling to risk it in the water — was not on her finger but she felt it anyway. The permanence of it. The fact of it.

"Jace," she said eventually. Soft into the night.

"Yeah?"

"You are," she said quietly, "the most stubborn thing I have encountered in my life."

"You get it from both sides," he said. "Mason's words. Not mine."

She almost smiled.

"Mason is very wise."

"Don't tell him that either."

She looked back at the sky.

Floated.

Felt his hand in hers and the bond warm between them and the water warm around them and the cut above his eyebrow bleeding gently into a heated pool because a vampire was close and he had looked at that fact and chosen close every single time.

"I'm going to figure it out," she said quietly.

"Figure what out."

"The healing thing," she said. "There has to be a way. A workaround. Something that means you don't have to—"

"Elara."

"I'm serious—"

"I know you're serious," he said. "You're always serious." He turned his head to look at her. Silver eyes soft in the dark. "And when you figure it out I'll listen to every word. But tonight—" He squeezed her hand. "Tonight I'm in a heated pool with my fiancée and the sky is doing something almost interesting and I am exactly where I want to be."

She looked at him.

"Fiancée," she said softly.

"Mm."

"You say that like it's already ordinary."

"It is ordinary," he said. "Ordinary is the point. I want a thousand years of ordinary with you, Elara. Pools and kitchens and Mason bringing too many boxes." A beat. "That's what I want."

She looked at the sky.

Felt his thumb tracing slow circles across her knuckles underwater.

Felt the bond — steady and warm and permanent, permanent in the way the gold ring on the nightstand was permanent, in the way the cut above his eyebrow was permanent testimony to what he chose over and over without being asked.

"Okay," she said softly.

"Okay?"

"Ordinary," she said. "A thousand years of it."

She felt him smile.

Not saw.

Felt. Through the bond. That warm quiet satisfaction.

"Good," he said.

The pool held them.

The winter sky moved above them.

And somewhere three miles away Orion stood at a window.

And somewhere across the city Malachar's court was moving.

And somewhere Sydney Pearce was sitting with the weight of what she'd started.

And none of it — not one piece of it — touched the inside of this pool on this night.

Not yet.