Maura agreed to spell them, so all seven divers went down together to explore the enormous lava cave the next morning.
The headset worked just fine on the surface when she tested it, but once again, as soon as they went deep, all Callie heard was faint, annoying static. She tapped Jonah on the shoulder, pointing to her ear. Her wireless communications headset wasn’t just malfunctioning again. It appeared to be completely offline. Not that she minded; she enjoyed diving in silence.
Jonah shook his head. His didn’t work, either.
With hand gestures he checked with the other divers to see if any of the communications devices worked. None did. The masks were expensive; Jonah should get a refund.
Divers used a sign language of their own for instances like this, so they could communicate just fine without the head mike. But having the mikes in their face masks made it easier and faster, and meant they didn’t have to be facing one another to communicate. If not for the dead air in her ear, Callie was exactly where she wanted to be. Calm, serene, tranquil blue water.
No pressure. No lies. No looking over her shoulder. Jonah locked up tight in his wet suit, mask covering his face. It wasn’t even a case of look but don’t touch. There wasn’t much to see. Feeling as though she’d been released from a strong force field, Callie could, ironically, finally breathe freely.
The words he’d spoken so matter-of-factly last night throbbed a persistent beat in her brain. “Can we go to bed?”
He hadn’t of course meant it in a sexual way. But her body, so sexually aware of him, so primed and on edge already, leapt at the suggestion. She was in a constant state of annoying, bewildering, heightened awareness. Primed and ready for sex.
Jonah hadn’t touched her, and yet she felt as though the last week had been one intense bout of foreplay.
She was a scholar, a scientist. Practical. Down to earth. She hated the muddy swirl of strong emotions, and had avoided them like the freaking plague as far back as she could remember.
She didn’t do lust.
She didn’t know who this sexual being was.
Sleepless the night before, body sensitized and aching, she seriously contemplated seducing Jonah. Something she’d not even considered when he’d hired her. Hence the reason for the wedding ring. Protection from any hunting male.
But this distraction had to stop. She could barely do her job because her days and nights were filled with images of herself and Jonah having hard, driving, hot sweaty sex.
Get him out of my system. Sleeping with Jonah can’t possibly be as good as my imagination.
Men rarely turned down the offer of sex. It shouldn’t be too hard. God only knew, having sex with the man might stop her thinking about it 24/7.
Callie had lain there in the darkness, knowing Jonah was merely across the hall from her cabin. Did he sleep naked as she did? God … Her skin grew feverishly hot.
She couldn’t now admit that she’d lied. That Adam had died four years ago, and as a widow she was more than free to have sex with him.
Confessing that lie would dredge up her reasons for doing so. And she couldn’t do that to Rydell, who was already putting plans in place to usurp Jonah’s finds and make them his own.
Would Jonah sleep with a married woman? Other than Adam and Rydell, most men of Callie’s acquaintance would have no compunction about having sex with another man’s wife. Would Jonah balk if she offered herself to him? It would have to be just before she left Stormchaser once and for all, and before he realized that she’d deliberately set him up so Rydell could steal everything he held dear out from under his nose. As payback. Revenge. The Jonah whom Rydell had told her about should have no problem satiating her desires despite the wedding ring. But she was beginning to doubt Rydell’s clear-cut version of Jonah.
The timing had to be just right. And God only knew, Jonah might not want her and reject her desperate offer out of hand.
But hey, what the hell was a little humiliation when she was so aroused she couldn’t catch her breath when she was near him? It had been so long since she’d felt anything—who knew when she’d feel this way again? If ever?
They swam around the hulk of Ji Li, and over and around several temple pillars, which she had already photographed every which way from Sunday. Callie ran a hand over one perfectly intact beauty as she swam by. I’ll be back.
She hadn’t wanted to tell Jonah last night, not until Miguel confirmed what she suspected: The pages they’d captured might be more profound than either of them realized when they were on Fire Island.
Miguel had promised to look at the images right away, but Callie knew he was thorough and precise, and he wouldn’t report until he was absolutely sure. So as much as she was dying to know, she had to be in the present and explore the caves with the others.
Callie had learned at an early age how to compartmentalize.
Pushing the ancient texts off to the side, tucking the future exploration of her city into a neat pocket of her brain, she focused on what they might discover in the lava cave. The only thing she couldn’t seem to compartmentalize was Jonah. Was he friend or enemy? Competitor or lover?
The beams of their powerful dive lights led the way through the wide entrance into the tube. Small shoals comprising thousands of tiny transparent fish swam around them, flashing like bits of glass in the aura of the lights.
Charmed, Callie wanted to tell Jonah they were in a traffic jam, but of course couldn’t do it in sign language. But as she was thinking it, he turned his head, eyes smiling mischievously. He made a steering wheel motion with both hands so the beam from his light danced around the walls.
For a moment, suspended between ceiling and floor, as tiny fish swarmed around them, as the others swam ahead, there was just the two of them. Callie struggled to breathe through the burning ache in her chest. It felt so tight, so strong, that for a moment she forgot how to breathe and saw dancing particles of light in her vision.
Unrequited lust.
God. Her own stupidity made her sigh.
Why did she have to meet a man like Jonah Cutter now? Under these circumstances?
Why, damn it, was she this close to finding the discovery of a lifetime?
Everything she’d ever wanted was inches from her outstretched hand.
And she couldn’t have any of it.
Suck it up, Calista, and move on. Life is seldom fair.
Vertical, and maintaining his position, Jonah, as if sensing her sudden mood change, frowned at her through his mask. He gestured OK? Callie circled her fingers, OK, then resumed swimming after the others, leaving him to fall in beside her.
The ache in her chest didn’t go away, and she had to blink the sting from her eyes before she fogged up the inside of her mask.
Grateful she could do something meaningful for Ry, she’d sworn to do anything to help him best the Cutters, but she’d had no freaking idea when she’d made that promise that everything she held dear, everything she could love, would be ripped away from her in the process.
* * *
The lava tube cavern was a lot bigger than Jonah realized. Masks off, and depositing their tanks, fins, and buoyancy compensator units high on the stairs, the entire dive team clambered up the rough-cut, uneven steps to the thirty-foot-deep ledge high above the water.
“Quite a view.” Brody sounded awed at the eerie beauty of the auditorium-sized cave as he looked around.
Reflected ripples of the water danced on the lava rock ceiling forty or more feet overhead, stalagmites dripped dramatically over their heads, and the dark water bounced the streams of light from their flashlights across the surface.
“There’s more.” Leslie indicated a black opening large enough to drive a car through off to the right-hand side in the craggy rock of the back wall. “I only went in a couple of hundred feet the other day, but I think it goes back much farther than that.”
“Sometimes these lava tunnels remain intact for centuries.” Callie walked gingerly on the rough, uneven floor to peer over the edge. Twenty feet down. One slippery misstep and she’d plummet to the water and rocks below. Jonah’s heart did a little hop-skip of fear. He planted his feet. She wasn’t his to worry over. Not officially. She was a grown woman. Brilliant. Savvy. Married to another man.
He willed her from the edge anyway.
As if she’d heard him, she returned to the group, gathered a good ten feet from the sheer cliff down to the water. “The tube might be open and navigable all the way up to the source. Personally, while I see that humans forged those stairs for some purpose, which begs the question who and why, I’d prefer to concentrate on the city and Ji Li. Those two salvages and explorations are enough for thirty or more people, and we’re only six. I think we should concentrate our endeavors and limit our exploration to those. There aren’t enough of us to waste going spelunking or exploring.”
“I agree, to a certain extent.” Jonah addressed the group instead if looking directly at her. Callie sounded stiff, and more formal than usual. Did the cavern freak her out like it did Brody? “This is historically relevant. Those steps were carved to serve a purpose. Perhaps they had something to do with the city. We won’t know until we look to see if there’re any clues farther in. I think we should explore for a couple of hours, and see how deep the tunnel goes. Then we can get back to business. All in favor?”
The ayes had it.
They all wore water shoes inside their fins for this dive, and the flexible rubber soles made walking on the rough, porous pumice rock a breeze. Their combined flashlights’ powerful beams lit up twenty feet ahead. Rough walls, rough floor. But easily navigable.
“Notice the smell? Or lack thereof?” Leslie’s voiced echoed in the tube as she picked up the rear of the group with Brody. “Fresh air must be coming in from somewhere.”
Jonah’s brain was currently filled with the warm coconut scent of Callie. Whether real or imagined, it was a powerful aphrodisiac. They were in the lead, and she was a few steps behind him. In this confined space he was ultra-aware of every breath she took, and he found his own breathing rhythm matched hers after a few minutes.
“Vented somewhere for sure.” His head didn’t touch the ceiling, but still, he kept wanting to duck. Stretching out his arms, he found his fingers just missed touching the walls on each side. Six feet wide give or take. What he hadn’t figured on was Callie walking into him when he stopped to measure.
They came wet-suit-to-wet-suit. Not exactly full-body contact, but the touch of Callie’s body down his back was electrifying. “Sorry,” she murmured, stepping back as he resumed walking.
“No hay problema.” Which was bullshit. It was a problem if the accidental brush of her body caused his heart to race and his mouth to go dry. “Now, isn’t this interesting.” Jonah put up his hand to indicate he was stopping this time. “Just a guess, but I’m thinking this is human-made, too.”
Their lights illuminated a massive, rusted metal door blocking their path.
“What the—” Callie’s mind boggled at the unexpected sight.
A door? It was so out of context she stared at it for several minutes trying to compute what she was seeing. Approximately eight feet high and six wide, the door was huge. No markings, no ornamentation, no handles of any kind. Just an incongruous, riveted, rusty monolith obstructing the way.
The seams fit tightly into the surrounding rock, so snug, she doubted a piece of paper would fit between rock and door.
Her flashlight beam joined Jonah’s as she pointed it directly in the middle. “Amazing craftsmanship.”
“Open it,” Saul ordered.
“How? I don’t see a handle, do you?” Leslie murmured.
Brody shouldered his way closer, jostling for position with Vaughn. “Need some muscle?”
Callie shared a look with Leslie as the guys tried to wrench and shove open the door, using their combined body weight. “Are you going to kick it next?” she asked drily.
“We need a crowbar,” Brody suggested. “Or a nice big stick of dynamite.”
Callie shook her head. “Always good inside the tightly confined space of a lava tube.” She took her opportunity to squeeze between Vaughn and Brody to get a closer look. Of course Jonah was standing right there, so she had to be right beside him. Not on purpose, but it felt right.
Together they shone their flashlights in unspoken unison from left to right along the seam where door met rock.
Across the top, down the right-hand side, across the bottom, up the left side.
A large family of barnacles decorated an upper corner, and a piece of dried-out vegetation clung to the bottom edge.
Jonah’s eyes were stunningly blue, even in the iffy light from their various flashlights. It was always a shock seeing that piercing azure gaze focused on her. “What do you make of it, Doctor?”
I make of it that I could fall into your eyes, and never come out. Her attraction to him was getting worse, not better. She’d prayed propinquity, and her own common sense, would kick in. But that wasn’t the case. And thinking about case reminded her of Rydell Case. The man who’d put the wheel in motion. If she did what she’d promised Ry she’d do, Jonah would never forgive her. If she did what she wanted to do, Rydell would—no he’d never hate her, but he’d be disappointed. And that would almost be worse. She worshipped her brother-in-law. Loved him as if they were blood. She owed him. She’d promised.
Callie rubbed a fist across her sternum where the pain of the unattainable, and the urgent need for Jonah, collided until the ache was almost unbearable.
“Pressure in here getting to you?” He took a half step toward her, hand raised as if he was about to touch her arm. He dropped his hand. “We can head back if there’s a problem.”
Leave it to Jonah to notice her discomfort.
Damn it. His voice turned her on. Callie couldn’t think of a worse or more inappropriate time, and she didn’t want to feel like this about him. She wanted to feel nothing for this man with his piercing blue eyes and six o’clock shadow. The only thing she was grateful for was that he was covered from neck to ankle with black neoprene. Skintight, muscle-defining, bulge-outlining black neoprene.
She conjured up the memory of being in the hospital after being jettisoned through the windshield when she was a kid. Remembered the fear and pain that even the medication-induced numbness couldn’t quite mask. The memory was powerful and visceral, and her stupid hormones backed off to a low simmer.
“Callie?”
She was going to have to have sex with him. Soon. She couldn’t go on like this, she really couldn’t.
“I’m good.” Now that I’ve made a decision. Reaching out, she ran the flat of her hand across the rough patina. “I thought it was wood, but it’s metal. Heavily corroded and rusted, but solid.” She banged several times. “I suspect this is really thick, and look at this.” She pointed. “Water marks. Indicating that the cavern fills, probably with the tide.”
Jonah’s light strafed the door. “How can it have tide when we’re a hundred feet under the surface of the ocean?”
How can the tube and cavern not be filled with water, would also be an interesting question, begging an answer. “I’m not an oceanographer. This is illogical, but clearly the tide rises, as indicated right here. And here. And here. And these marks—” Callie shone her flashlight directly on the marks she wanted Jonah to see. “Probably made by a large starfish. You can just make out, here and here, the outline of its five arms, and the marks from its tube feet. The water down there rises all the way up here.”
“This doesn’t make sense.” Jonah ran his hand over the metal, then rubbed his fingers together when his hand came back dusted orange with the rust. “First, why would anyone have gone to such elaborate lengths to seal off the tube from the surface, and from this cavern? Why come down here at all? Some sort of ritual, do you think?”
Intrigued, Callie shrugged. “I have no idea. This door could date back to medieval times, if not earlier.” A lot earlier. Like around the time of Atlantis? “Or the Iron Age.” Her heart was racing now for a different reason than sexual tension.
“Iron Age?” Leslie repeated. “Are you saying this door has been here for more than two thousand years?”
“Or longer. Three thousand years? They certainly had the skill and tools to make something of this size.”
Everyone took a moment to process that.
“There’s no point hanging around, since we have more questions than answers,” Jonah told them. “Clearly we aren’t going to get it open with an ‘Open Sesame.’ We need to document this, which means cameras and better lighting. I also want Thanos to check the malfunction in our headsets.” They decided Brody and Saul would go back to Stormchaser and grab the cameras, while the rest of them worked on salvaging more coins from Ji Li.
They returned through the tube to the deep landing. Jonah put his hand on Callie’s arm, holding her back when the others started down the stairs to get their equipment. She felt his light touch on her forearm all the way through her wet suit, her skin, muscles, and tendons all reacting in unison to one giant ache. That light touch effervesced through her vascular system like hot Champagne.
How had she ever doubted? The outcome was inevitable.
A muscle ticked in Jonah’s jaw when she jerked her arm out of his light hold. “We both know the implication if that door’s been here as long as both of us believe it has.”
“We don’t know anything until we’ve had it carbon-dated, and someone confirms the age and material. You know that. We can’t jump to conclusions, Jonah. That’s neither scientific nor wise.” She heard the splashes as the others hit the water at the base of the stairs.
The cavern seemed immeasurable, the silence throbbing, a low heavy heartbeat against her stretched-taut nerves.
“Join the dots, Doctor. Atlantis was sunk by a volcano. We’re in a lava tube. Someone carved those stairs. Someone built that door. None of that is speculation or wishful thinking. You like facts. Those are facts.”
Callie started walking toward the top of the stairs as he talked. Jonah walked beside her. Their steps perfectly synchronized. Her heart was doing the fight-or-flight calisthenics. Coward that she’d discovered she was, Callie chose flight. She wanted her tank, her BC, and her face mask, and she wanted to be swimming, without communication. She wanted to swim anywhere. Away. Just away.
She realized she was staring at his mouth and dragged her gaze back to his face. His eyes burned hot, the color at the base of a flame. She felt the insane and erratic pounding of her pulse beneath her cold fingers when she put a hand to her throat. Mouth dry, she chewed the corner of her lower lip for a second to steady her frazzled nerves.
This was stupid. Inappropriate. Wrong on every level. If Jonah realized, by word or deed, how powerfully he affected her, her wedding ring was not going to fend him off. He’d take what she offered and to hell with the consequences.
Isn’t that what you’ve already decided you want? a little voice mocked.
The hunger she felt for him made her body yearn and ache, and she had to do a course correction as she swayed toward him. She kept her gaze steady with a great deal of effort, and said calmly, “N-none of that proves our city is Atlantis.”
Clearly distracted by the importance of what he was saying, his gaze remained fixed to her mouth, which in turn made her lips tingle and her heart beat too hard.
“None of this proves our city isn’t Atlantis.” His husky voice rasped along her nerve endings. “Too much of a coincidence that this is here, and pretty much right outside this cavern is a giant city underwater. Would you at least give me the possibility that we’ve found Atlantis?”
She dragged in a deep breath and held it, her gaze dropping to his mouth. Were they still talking about Atlantis? “I’ll give you a definite maybe.”
“Dios, you’re stubborn wom—Damn it, Callie, don’t fucking look at me like that.”
Her focus jerked from his mouth to his eyes. Her heartbeat stuttered at the intensity of his gaze. “I wasn’t—”
“To hell with it!” Yanking her against the hard plane of his chest and belly, his steely arm circled her waist. Taking her chin in his hand, he tilted up her face and kissed her.
Hard.
The moment his mouth crushed hers and his tongue passed the barrier of lips and teeth with ease, Callie was lost.
He set a match to her banked and primed fire and it roared out of control. Not a tentative kiss, not a getting-to-know-you kiss. This was carnal, erotic, and incendiary. There was an inevitability to it that made her sink into it and forget the consequences.
She wanted to rip their wet suits off right where they stood, or at the very least crawl inside his with him. She craved the feel of his skin against her skin. Wanted to feel, with no barrier, the heat they were generating. She was done waiting. Done pretending that this wasn’t exactly what she wanted. God help her, exactly what she needed.
Shuddering, she sighed into his mouth as his tongue danced around hers, teasing and enticing. Callie’s fingers tightened in his cool, silky hair; her other hand gripped his back, holding him against her. Pressing him against her aching breasts, and the liquid need in her center.
She wasn’t aware of moving, but his muscles flexed and rippled under her touch. Her entire body, from the top of her head to the soles of her feet, jangled with surging adrenaline as his arms tightened around her tight as steel bands.
Held in check by his wet suit, the ridged length of his penis nevertheless pressed against the juncture of her thighs. Her short nails dug into the small of his back, then went on an exploratory dance over the tight globes of his butt. She’d never hated neoprene more.
His fingers gripped her hips in a vise-like hold, as if he needed to hold her still. The friction just torqued the pulsing throb at every point of contact to an even more unbearable pitch.
Wrenching his mouth from hers, Jonah whispered a hoarse curse, then dropped his forehead to hers. His breath sawed ragged and uneven and his body—or was it hers?—trembled.
As if an invisible force was ripping him away from her, and he couldn’t let go, his fingers tightened on her hip bones with bruising force. After too short a time, he released, stepping back. He wiped the back of his hand across his damp mouth and closed his eyes as if in pain.
“That shouldn’t have happened, I know.” His thick voice was pitched low as he opened his eyes to meet hers. “I’ve never wanted a woma—You’re married! I have fucking well got to get the hell out of your gravitational pull. It won’t happen again.”
Dear God, she knew exactly how he felt because she felt the same wrong-in-more-ways-than-she-could-count way. She’d made a decision based on nothing more than this.
“Jonah, I have t—”
She reached out, but he jerked his arm out of reach as if he couldn’t bear to touch her. “Have mercy. Not now, Callie.”
Turning away, tension in every line of his body, Jonah took the uneven stairs at a dangerous jog. He picked up his tank without looking back. “Forget this happened. Tomorrow will be business as usual,” he gritted, slinging the strap of his tank over one broad shoulder. “Suit up.”
* * *
A Greek tragedy of epic proportions.
Dr. Calista West filled him with so much ridiculous, impossible, forbidden need that Jonah was going fucking insane thinking of anything else.
Lust and insanity, Krazy Glued together, tied him in Gordian knots.
“You, Jonah Santiago Cutter, are a fucking dick.” He shut his eyes. “A stupid, inconsiderate dick.”
He’d given in to one taste. One small taste to compensate for the avalanche of pent-up horniness that had nowhere to go. One fucking taste.
He’d decided against it. Ignored the clamoring of every hormone in him. Ignored it, until those big blue-green eyes dropped to his mouth.
Then all goddamn bets were off.
His dick had done the thinking. Had made a convoluted interpretation that she wanted him as badly as he wanted her.
The smell of her coconut-scented skin fused with his synapses. A low-down subversive trick that clouded his judgment and made him stupid.
He was not his father. Fuck it. He was the opposite of his father.
He had to make this right.
How exactly did one apologize for ravaging a married woman? Because while to an outside viewer that kiss was just a kiss, Jonah knew it was a damn sight more. His intentions hadn’t been in the least bit honorable right then.
What should he say? Sorry, Callie, I was a madman because you lit my fuse the moment I first laid eyes on you, and it finally burned all the way down to the TNT, so an explosion was inevitable?
He’d held on to her so tightly, he must’ve left fingerprint bruises on her hips. Kissed her so hard, so ravenously, her lips had been bee-stung and reddened when he’d managed to unglue himself from her. He thumped his head against the headboard again.
Impossible for her to miss his hard-on, even through two layers of neoprene.
He’d wanted to strip them both naked and fuck her brains out right there on the ledge, on the rough lava rock.
He’d imagined that her lips had clung for an extra heartbeat before he broke contact, and regained his brain, even if it was reptilian at that point.
He’d needed a break from the unbearable tension of wanting her. Jonah squeezed his eyes shut. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. He’d chosen poorly.
But, admit it, it had been worth whatever punishment she was going to mete out tomorrow. Worth it for those few minutes when nothing else had mattered but the feel and taste of her mouth, and the lash of her eager tongue dueling with his.
Stretched out on his wide bed, sweat-dampened, Egyptian cotton sheets rumpled by all the too-wired-to-sleep tossing and turning, he needed to kick his own ass. Intermittent moonlight streamed pure white light over the foot of the bed, making dragons and water nymphs out of the random pattern on the carpet.
He stared blindly up at the ceiling. Sleep? Shit. Probably never again. Was Callie sleeping? He glanced at his watch. Two a.m. Yeah. Probably. He was going to have to figure this out so he could talk to her first thing in the morning.
Her mouth had been hot and wet, slick and eager. What other parts of her might also be that way? Jesus. He couldn’t afford to wonder about it.
A Pavlovian response to the wildness in his kiss, he was sure. Callie wasn’t the type of woman to cheat on her husband.
He admired her for it.
He hated her for it.
He hated himself even more for acting on something he was old, and wise enough, to keep under wraps. He’d behaved like a randy schoolboy. And with about the same amount of finesse.
I. Am. Not. My. Father.
He was confused as hell and didn’t know what the fuck to do with all the pent-up lust and frustration surging through his body like a fucking riptide.
He was sucked in, and sucked under, and didn’t know what the hell to do about it.
He gave his hard head another clarifying thump on the burl wood behind him. “Unacceptable.” Yeah. Got that. “What the fuck will I do if she’s pissed enough to walk? What the hell will I do if she doesn’t?” He scrubbed his palm over his stubbly chin.
That kiss. Had he ever kissed a woman quite like that? Not just no, but hell no. The melding of their lips had rocked him to the core, short-circuited his synapses, and made him uncomfortably rock-hard. All that. Just from a kiss.
Christ, and he’d pretty much taken everything he could, with not a single thought to the consequences.
He was a dick and an asshole.
His phone rang. His heart leapt into his throat. Callie.
Lunging off the bed, he raced to the chair where he’d thrown his shorts when he’d come down after dinner. A dinner Callie had not attended. Probably packing to return to her loving husband. Fuckshitdamn.
Scrambling, all thumbs, he managed to fumble his phone out of his pocket, her name on his lips.
“Jonah? Maura. I have a Dr. Miguel Ebert on the line for Callie.”
And his captain presumed a married woman was in his cabin at two a.m.? Fuck. That just compounded the situation.
“I imagine she’s sleeping the sleep of the pure and innocent in her own cabin,” he told her, not feeling friendly or diplomatic. He scratched his chest as he sat on the foot of the moonlit, messed-up bed. That was his current situation, a bright spotlight on the messed-up idiocy of his poor choice and lack of self-control. Way to go, Cutter.
“He says it’s urgent, and she’s not answering. Want to take it, or should I tell him to call back tomorrow?”
At least it wasn’t the perfect Adam calling to make sure Jonah was taking good care of his wife. Shoot me now.
Jonah fell back on the bed, repressing a groan. “I’ll talk to him, patch him through.” What the fuck else did he have to do at two in the morning?