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I wasn’t going to let her go, but I certainly was going to scare her. We continued trudging deeper. Finally, the backs of her legs, which hung in my arms, hit the water. We were waist deep.
Again, she yelped, wrapping herself around me like I was keeping her alive. “It’s so cold!”
“I want to go under.” I was unable to hold in my smile as she trembled, her arms tugging my neck and her knees curling up as tight as they could.
“No!”
“Fine, then I’ll put you down for a minute and go under myself.”
“No!” She scrambled higher on my torso, wrapping herself around my chest. “Do not put me down!” I could feel her heart racing as her skin pricked with goosebumps. “It’s so dark, Jo. Something’s under there. I can feel it. Oh, I’d just kill you if we get eaten.”
Her nervous eyes inspected every inch of the ocean around us as I spun slowly, splitting us through the cold liquid.
“For a piece of wood, you’re not very seaworthy.”
“Jojo, that’s not funny,” she muttered. Her voice was officially choppy.
I pressed my nose to her temple. “Come under with me just once and I’ll take you out.”
She grabbed my neck tighter, wedging her forehead under my ear. “Make it fast.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in. For only a moment, I bent my legs and submerged us in the freezing water, making it fast as she requested, though gentle. I bent my head back as we rose to push my hair behind me with the rush. The gulp of air she inhaled upon returning to the surface was more of a shaky gasp as she used one hand to push wet strands of hair from her face.
I snickered and walked us back toward the edge of the shore. When the water reached just to my knees, I kneeled in the sand, bringing her down with me.
“Jo! What are you doing? I don’t want to sit here. The ground is soft. Something will crawl through and pinch me!”
I sat back on my heels and placed her in my lap, allowing her to lie back and look over the horizon. No part of her touched the terrifying sand, and her body remained half above the surface, floating in my hold. My arms held beneath her knees, allowing her to sit in me like she was sitting in a basket. My entire world in my embrace.
“Don’t you trust me?” I asked with a smile, looking down at her over her shoulder. “You’ve been stuck in Madrid for years. Don’t you want to enjoy the ocean now?”
I would’ve released her if she was uncomfortable. Of course, I would have. But her body relaxed into mine as it shivered, her backside nestling into my front. I think she might’ve even…liked it.
“Y-yes.”
She stared at the horizon, her uneven breathing still jerking through her. The entirety of her being stood on edge, wet bumps covering her from head to toe. It was an effort not to dwell on the two beneath the thin fabric of her green bikini top. I wanted to lick every inch of her chilled skin until my taste buds were destroyed by the salt.
Thank god my bottom half was frozen.
???
Kai
Until now, allowing someone inside my cramped, desolate intimacy sounded like absolute torture. Hands on me made my insides harden. I barely had my head on straight enough to feel even a spark of anything down there. But I wanted to find it again. And sitting here with Jonah, my naked skin sensitive and powerless, gazing at the enormously beautiful world stretched in front of me, something started to bubble deep in my lower abdomen.
I sat half-submerged in freezing water with his arms wrapped around me. My eyes fixated on the contrast between the blue sky and the navy ocean, the sun glinting in the corner of my vision. The cold eased into me, turning every single atom into a ball of sensitivity. I could hardly begin to comprehend the size and power of the vast expanse I gazed at.
Jonah maintained me in one arm as a hand lifted to touch the top of my bicep. It was an effort not to dig my hips back as he stroked the entire length of my skin before reaching across my stomach and pulling me into him. The detail was breathtaking, and the bubbling feeling inside of me grew.
“I feel so small,” I said with a shudder.
“And that’s where I come in,” he whispered, pressing a small kiss to my wet hair.
We sat for a silent moment as I mulled over what he meant by that.
“You seem like the most independent person on the outside,” I said. “Mostly alone, always working, always thinking…”
“Yet I’m not.” His chest vibrated behind me as he spoke, and I found myself leaning into it, skin to skin. “And you seem like the most dependent person, complying to avoid solitude. Yet you’re not.”
