The Mark of Cain (16 page)

“I swear. Why?”

“Because you are
really
good at it.”

She smiled, situating her mouth over his and
sticking her tongue into
his
mouth this time.

When she moved it back to his ear, he moaned, “Damn,
Hara….”

She whispered back, nibbling his ear, “What did I
say about swearing?”

“Sorry. If you don’t want me to, I’ll never swear
again.”

“Good.”

The angel in her head was now screaming, trying to
get her to stop. She didn’t want to listen to it, though.

Inac started playing with her camisole, trying to
pull it up over her head so she raised her arms to the pale coral sky, letting
him do so. Now only in her skirt and dainty white lace bra, she let him roll
her over to once again take control. He ran the back of one finger slowly down
the length of her long, bare torso as she arched her back, lifting that very
torso into the air as though doing so would lengthen the caress. That was when
everything changed. When she arched, he kissed her abdomen just above her belly
button with one hand around her waist and the other now moving up her back to
masterfully work at the clasps of her bra. It was as this was happening that
her necklace fell to her cheek, reminding her of what the angel voice had been
trying to beat into her all night. The voice that the alcohol had repressed.
She may not have had much of it, but it was much more than she was used to.

“Wait,” she said, pushing Inac’s chest up and away
from her.

“What?” he asked through his labored breaths,
looking down at her bra before moving his eyes back to her face. He was
mesmerized by the lacy material and seemed to want to see underneath it
very
badly.

“I can’t do this.” The heat of his body, the taste
of his mouth and flesh, the intoxicating scent that hovered around him, all of
them had worked a hypnotic spell over Hara. A hypnotic spell that had almost
cost her what she prized most….

“Do what?” he said, his breaths coming in fast and
shallow gasps as he continued to play with her bra.

“This,” she said, gesturing at her bra, which was
still on, but only barely. His fingers were still frozen on the clasps, just
waiting for permission, and by the looseness of her bra, she could feel that
most were undone. “Inac, I don’t want to lose my virginity tonight. I mean, I
do, but I don’t. Does that make any sense?”

He nodded before moving his other hand to her bra
and she felt him re-doing the clasps better than even she could do them, and
she was a girl and wore a bra every day! When he was done, he pulled away and
said, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let it get this carried away
in the first place.”

“Are you mad?” She couldn’t tell what was going on
inside that mind of his.

He chuckled, making her feel foolish. “Of course I’m
not mad. At least not at you,” he said before giving her an innocent kiss on
the lips.

“Then who?”

“Myself. Like I said, I shouldn’t have even taken it
this far. It’s just….”

“Just what?” She felt like he was about to open up
his walls a little.

“Just….” He shook his head. Whatever he had been
about to say—to admit—he had obviously decided against it.

Instead he stood up, a daredevil smile on his face.
Then, before she even realized what he was going to do, he jumped on a
handrail, whooped, and did a front flip off the side of the boat.

She heard a splash before she even made it to the
place where he’d jumped from.

“Inac!” she called, looking into the dark water far
below. She was glad he’d stopped and anchored the boat halfway through dinner
because she never would have known how to do that and he would have drowned as
she sailed off to who knew where.

His head popped out of the water and he wiped it
from his eyes. He was laughing, splashing water up at her, which didn’t quite
reach her with how tall the boat was.

“What are you doing?!” she called down to him. “Are
you
insane
?!”

“It comes with being an Adamson!” he yelled back,
laughing extremely hard.

“Come back to the boat! You’re gonna get eaten by a
shark!”

“There aren’t any sharks!”

“How do you know?!”

“I just do!”

“Well, no matter what, come back!”

“But it feels great! Come swim with me!”

“I don’t know how!”

“Then grab a life preserver! I won’t let you drown!
I promise!”

She believed him. But could he really protect her
from sharks?

She shook her head.

“Come on, Hara! Live a little! Besides, it’s the
best thing to cool you off after a heavy make-out session!”

She couldn’t deny that she needed to cool off. But
still….

She looked over at the life preserver attached to
the railing. It was a small white tube that she would easily be able to fit
around her. When she looked back at Inac, who was still treading water, she
made up her mind. She would do it.

She was about to tell him so when his smile
disappeared and he began looking around in the water.

“Are you okay?!” she yelled.

“Yeah…!”

But he didn’t look okay. He was acting like
something was in the water with him. Suddenly he was tugged under, fighting
something that had him.

“Inac!” she screamed, tears coming to her eyes when
he surfaced again, fighting for air before being pulled down under for a second
time. This time, he didn’t resurface.

“Inac!” she kept calling over and over again. When
he hadn’t surfaced again minutes later, she collapsed to the ground, bawling.
Inac had just been eaten by a shark and she didn’t know what to do.

“Aww. I’m touched you care so much about me,” his
voice said from behind her.

She turned around to find Inac alive and whole, a
delighted smile on his face. Apparently he thought that making her believe he’d
been eaten by sharks was hilarious.

“You,” she said with a mixture of anger and relief
as she walked the few feet over to him, lightly pounding his chest a couple of
times in anger before collapsing into his arms, still blubbering—she was too
woozy from her worry to hit him with any real force. He was soaking wet, but she
didn’t care. He was alive, and that was all that mattered just now. “You jerk,”
she said between sobs. “I hate you, you jerk. You’re such a jerk.” She knew she
was getting hysterical, but she couldn’t do anything about it.

“Man, Hara, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to freak you
out,” he said as he rubbed her back, which was still almost bare because she
hadn’t put her shirt back on. She just hadn’t thought about it when she was
trying to deal with the death of the man she was falling in love with.

She knew it was inappropriate to have him holding
her when she was only in her bra and skirt, but she couldn’t let go of him. She
had once vowed never to let a man see her at this stage of undress before she
was married, but she’d already broken that today. Besides, there was nothing
sexual in their embrace just now. How could it be when one person was crying so
hard they had the hiccups? She was probably wiping snot all over him, too….

She pulled back a few minutes later to look him in
the eye.

“Don’t you
ever
pull anything like that on me
again!”

“I won’t. I swear,” he said, rubbing her tears away
with his thumbs before lightly kissing her once.

She nodded before laying her cheek back on his
chest. At least he was being sweet—he was stroking her hair—to make her feel better
after his stupid joke. Her hiccups were almost gone, only happening once or
twice a minute now.

Once she had completely calmed down, Inac pulled
away.

“So what do you say we teach you how to swim?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Why not?”

“It’s dark now.” Sometime during her sniveling, the
sun had finished its descent.

“I have flood lights.” Then, flashing that grin of
his, he said, “Come on. Where’s your sense of adventure?”

“I don’t have much of one. I’m the kind of girl who
plays it safe.”

“No. You’re the kind of girl who
used
to play
it safe. But today you’re Hara, Wild Woman. You rode on a bullet bike, you went
for a ride on a yacht, you drank wine for fun,
and
you made-out with a
dashing young man,” he finished with a crooked grin.

She smiled. He was right; she wasn’t her usual self
today. And she
liked
it.

“Okay. You got me on that.”

“And how does it feel?”

Her smile widened. “It feels great. It’s like
everything’s finally in color.”

He laughed at her before pulling her close and
saying into her ear in the tone of a rascal, “Then how about living a little
more? Come swim with me. I’ll hold you so you won’t drown. We don’t even have
to go far from the diving platform. I’ll submerge it so you can sit on it.”

“The what?”

“The diving platform. Well, it doubles as a tender
lift, but it’s submersible. Basically, it’s a metal platform that isn’t
underwater when we’re sailing but we can put down into the water to either lift
a small boat or raft, or for scuba divers to use. Also, you can keep Wave
Runners on it. It makes them and boats or rafts easy to launch.”

“Oh.” It sounded like a safe enough plan. Plus,
she’d have an excuse not to let go of him. “One problem…I don’t own a bathing
suit.”

“Just wear your bra and the shorts. Or, you can wear
my T-shirt if you want?” he said, gesturing at his dry shirt on the wooden
platforms of the deck where he’d thrown it during their make-out session.

“But then you won’t have anything dry to wear.” His
jeans were dripping all over the pristine wooden deck.

He shrugged. “That’s okay. Come on. Please?” He
asked so much like a little boy that she only had to think for a moment before
she slipped her shoes and skirt off, leaving her in the shorts and her bra. It
might be white and lacy, but at least it wasn’t see through…thank goodness.

With her head held high, she said, “Okay. Let’s do
it.”

They went down to the diving platform, which Inac
lowered into the water. Attached to the boat on both sides of it were steps
with handholds—they must really be ladders. After turning on the floodlights,
Inac ran to where the ladders were and flipped frontwards and slightly sideways
so that he would miss the diving platform when he hit the water.

After he broke the surface, he swam over to the edge
of the platform where she had barely sat down with only her feet and calves
underwater, her bottom wet as well as she dangled her legs in the dark ocean.
Because she was nervous, she was going to take her time by slowly entering the
water.

“Come on, Hara. Just lower yourself into my arms.”

He was resting his fingers on the platform but his
arms were straight, giving her plenty of room. She slowly lowered herself,
wrapping her long, gangly arms around his neck as though he was her own
personal life preserver.

She almost shrieked as the cool water rose to her
neck, surprised at the shock of cold that felt oh so good as it washed the hot
day off of her.

Inac pushed off, causing her to let out a little
scream as she clung to him for dear life.

“Here, just kick with your legs. I’ve got you,” he
said from below her as she almost pushed him under in her rush of fear.

But he
did
have her. No matter how far they
moved away from the boat, she was as safe in his arms as she would have been on
her couch at home.

Once she had calmed down, he began teaching her how
to swim.

“I did it!” she called when he had her swim the
short distance from him to the boat about twenty minutes later.

“Yes you did. Now let’s see if you can make it back
to me.”

After about another hour, she felt like she had been
swimming her entire life. The almost-full moon was so bright that Inac had
turned all the lights off, the effect turning the twinkling ocean into a place
where magical things could occur. Everything was beautiful and peaceful; just
like Inac’s arms.

When she told him that, Inac just chuckled before
silkening his mouth upon hers. Soon, they were making out in the water, Hara
wrapped up completely in Inac while he supported them both with one hand on the
platform behind her and one on her back as their bodies rose and fell in tandem
with the bobbing ocean. She could do this all night if it wasn’t for the fact
that they were both pretty pruney. In addition, she was shivering, more from
the cool water than from his touch.

Lucky for her, the evening didn’t end its magic
there because, ever the gentleman, when they exited the water, Inac grabbed a
towel and put it around her before pulling her into his arms to kiss and hold
her, warming her up with his body heat. After some time, he led her back up to
the deck to sit on the couch while he got the boat moving again.