Page 67 of Drown Like Heaven
Not for real. Not right here. Not like this.
Please, Mason. Let me fucking breathe.
At the last second, he pushed me above the surface.
Chapter 18
Dakota
The second I broke the surface, I was pulling in huge breaths of air, gasping and choking on liquid while I struggled to keep my head tilted back and above water. My hair was sticking to my face and my skin was buzzing.
Why the fuck would you do that?I wanted to scream at him. But I didn’t.
Ididn’t.
Because I didn’t want him to know how badly he’d just scared me. And I was even more terrified he’d be able to tell in my voice that some twisted part of me hadlikedit.
Mason was still holding onto me so I dug my nails into his arms, scraping him hard until he let me go. He was saying something but I couldn’t hear it over the rush of blood in my ears or the waves lapping at my face while I swam back towards the shore, tugging my bikini back into place so I was covered. The water was cold without him, but I pushed forward.
My toes finally touched the sand and I stood up, wading through the waves, staggering up onto the beach, Mason close behind me.
His hand landed on my shoulder and I whirled to face him, my hands balled into angry fists.
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I screamed. “Getoffof me! I mean it! Yousaidyou wouldn’t do that!”
He took his hand from my skin, but didn’t step back, still close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from him.
“What do you feel?” Mason asked, his tone low and dark and dripping with something that spoke to the very core of me.
Everything.
You make me feel every good thing and every bad thing and I don’t know how that’s possible.
“I don’t feel anything,” I answered, biting my tongue so I wouldn’t cry. If I could focus on the pain of my teeth cutting into my flesh, I might be able to block off the pain of everything else.
“No? Nothing?”
“Nothing,” I gritted out. “Nothing at all.”
“I don’t like it when you lie to me.” His voice was rough, but he didn’t sound unhappy. If anything, he sounded excited. Excited that he could tell I was faking it, that I was trying to portray indifference while standing in a hurricane.
“I’m not lying—”
He lunged towards me and a strangled scream burst from my throat.No.My muscles tightened and I flinched away from him, my heartbeat skyrocketing as my eyes squeezed shut.
But he didn’t touch me. Didn’t lay a hand on me.
He wasn’t like that. He wasworse.
Because I felt his breath at my ear after a second, ghosting over my cold skin.
“Liar,” he whispered, a bite in his tone. A shiver slid down my spine. “That, right there, isfear.”
My eyes blinked open slowly, tears glassing over my irises and threatening to tip over my eyelashes. He was terrible, outlined by the tumultuous ocean and the cloudy sky, looming over me. The inhuman perfection of his face was as sharp as a knife twisting in my gut. Cutting me, carving me up.
I guess we’re both liars.
Yes, Iwasafraid of him. He made every hair on my body stand on end, made my stomach coil into knots, made my heart pound so hard in my ears I couldn’t hear anything else.
