Page 32 of Bewitched By the Sea Monster
It might have been. If the cold water wasn’t biting at my skin so viciously.Orif the sky that stretched over us actually looked like the night sky—with glimmering moonlight and twinkling stars—instead of a big ball of dingy-grey fog fluff. Or maybe if we’d gotten another bottle of wine to pump some fuzzy heat into our systems…it might’ve been veryromantic.
But, at current, it was almost torture.
And that icy plunge had evaporated my soupy buzz. So all I had now was the cold, the aches from shivering, and the tingling of my skin as the water ravaged it.
A wave splashed water up to my cheek. I trembled. Jackson pulled me closer to him and gave my neck a lovingly lavished bite.
“The water’s higher than it looked earlier,” I mumbled.
“Hmmmm.” Beneath the water, his warm palm cupped my left breast, fondling it.
Another wave doused my face, more roughly this time. The water shoving at us and gyrating our bodies against each other.
Jackson groaned against the side of my neck. And it almost felt good—those sparks of pleasure as the water rocked him between my legs. But it’d feelbetterif we were out of this cold water. And in our warm, dry bed.
“Jackson.” I swallowed as he gave my breast a hard squeeze, just before the rollicking water mashed us against each other again. “I don’t like this. I-it’s getting rough and it’scold. I wanna get out.”
He turned his needy mouth to my jaw, biting. Gently, but insistent. “Alright. Itisgetting rough.”
Reluctantly, he pulled away from me and pivoted, heading back to the cliff path. I blew out a relieved exhale and clung to his hand when the water bore down on us, trying to pull us back out. “Jackson”—my fingers threaded through his when a sticky, frightened belch rolled out of my chest—“I?—”
The riotous waterhowledas it engorged itself, puffing into a towering wall.
My heart stopped.
The rotating wall hissed and lunged for us, smacking us off our feet.
My head plunged straight into the frothy surf.
Jackson’s hand was whisked away. I heard him yell, just before the water flooded my ears, and then he was gone.
I reached for him, but my hands came up empty.
No.
No, no, no, no…
I forced my eyes open, even as the salt scalded them. All I saw was rippling, consuming darkness.
Please,no.
My feet flailed, mashing against the rock bottom for one solid, glorious second—a second where I got my legs under me and pushed my head above the surface. A second where I saw the curdling haze of fog above, and felt the stone under my feet, and thought, really,reallythought that I had a chance to walk back to the cliffs.
Until the next wave thrust me back under.
I fought its hold, clawing my way back up to the surface once, twice. Each time staying up only long enough to draw a solitary lungful of air before the tide claimed me again. Pain exploded over my hips, my back, my arms as my flailing body parts pummeled into solid stone.
“JACKSON!” On my third or fourth or fifth time cresting the surface, I stayed up long enough to catch two breaths, and I used the second to scream his name—pleadedhe help me.
“Hang on, Pippi!” his answering call filled my ears just before I was hauled back under. And his voice had sounded so frighteningly far away.
By the time I got enough air to call for him again, he’d stopped answering.
I could no longer feel the rocky bottom. No matter how far the waves shoved me under, my feet never connected with stone.
My arms and legs didn’t smash into any more rocks.
And when I crested the surface again—for longer this time, enough to takefourinhales—I found myself surrounded by nothing but fog and sea.
