Perfect Gravity (Wanted and Wired #2)(68)

“So,” she said. “The plan.”

Kellen frowned at the black ocean. “I hope you ain’t thinking about goin’ down there. It’s a toxic soup hell.”

“A toxic soup hell full of answers, though,” she said.

“Maybe.” He shrugged. “We do have wet dresses. Bought some swanky ones off Dead Fester, after word came we were headed down to the coast.”

“Suits. Wet suits. We are completely undressed.” She covertly peered at him out of the corner of her eye, to see if he got her joke.

He did, even though it wasn’t a great joke. His low chuckle rumbled into the night like a physical thing, linking them together.

“Still, diving right in with no preparation is a shit plan,” he said, “undressed and sexy as hell or not. We don’t even know who ‘the intruder’ is.”

She pursed her lips and glared, but his compliment stroked her insides. “Oh, don’t we just?”

“Could be Vallejo,” he said. “Could be some other TPA technocrat shithead. Could be Elvis Presley back from the dead. We just don’t know what’s out there.”

“I called out Vallejo’s sins in public. The drones up in the sky right now came from Texas. His guilt could only be clearer if he sent me an I-did-it message.”

“So we’re just going to swim out to his dungeon like lemmings?”

“For a self-professed animal lover, that was terribly unfair to lemmings.” She shook her head. “You asked for a relay. What do your dolphins say about that sub?”

He closed his eyes, tipped his head back, and crossed his arms over his chest. The face of capitulation. Maybe? Or he might have just been listening to the com stuck in his ear.

“They’ve reconnoitered some and transmitted a bunch of data to Yoink and then on to me. They’re saying there’s only one living creature on that sub. It’s a disaster-porn tourist sub, big and quiet but unarmed.” He opened his eyes and shot her a look. “But I still ain’t gonna let you go down there bare-assed and vulnerable.”

“I don’t need your permission,” she reminded him, but she kept her tone gentler than it might have been a month ago. A week ago. “Don’t you want to end this?”

He had the strangest expression on his face when he said, “All’s I want is to make you safe, forevermore.”

Because that’s what knights in shining armor do. That’s why they trot around rescuing princesses. That’s why the princesses love them so damn much.

Something clogged her throat, but she swallowed past it. “Good. You keep those dolphins on the line to Yoink and whatever other badass altered beasties you have swimming around, and let’s dive.”

He peered straight at her in the light of the headlamps for a while. Unspeaking. Unquestioning. Then he leaned down and kissed the top of her head, where her hairpiece usually hooked on. His kiss was soft, reverent, like she was holy to him and not broken.

“That’s my girl,” he said and turned to the car.

By the time Kellen returned from the trunk with a double armload of diving equipment—wet suits and pony tanks and jacket-style buoyancy compensators and a gajillion other things—Angela had almost convinced her body that it was okay. She was okay. He was okay. They were going to be okay.

She looked out at the water surface, the slightly darker shadow of a submarine sail poking up through the slate black. The old nightmares tried their bad mojo on her—the water is disease, don’t drink it, if you breathe, you die, blah and blah. She blew out a breath, banishing the old fears.

“All right,” she said, pushing authority into her voice. “I’m going to swim out to a submarine, force this intruder to take me to Damon Vallejo, and then capture, incapacitate, or kill that motherfucker. I’m going to end this trying-to-kill-me nonsense, on my terms. Right now.”

“Damn, that’s hot.” He set a stack of clothing on the hood by her hip.

“What?”

“You in charge.” He half grinned but then shook his head and looked away, as if he wasn’t prepared to fess up to the compliment or any implications it might have. As if he didn’t particularly like the fact he found her attractive when she was in full scary-ass orders-giving mode. Or did he dislike the fact he found her attractive at all?

But he called me hot. And kissed my head. And dug my fuck poem. Her mind snagged on that and wouldn’t let go.

Until, oh wait no, that was hot. That. Right there. In front of her fervid gaze, with zero embarrassment, Kellen had started taking off his clothes. Pretty much every sane thought fled her mind in an instant. Danger? What danger? No amount of brain training, personal injury, winter night, or mortal risk could have prepared her for the sight of Kellen Hockley ice-cold and naked in the flood of headlamps.

He was gorgeous and lickable, and sweet cosmos, what did you even call those, those ligamenty doodads that arced from a man’s hip to his pelvis? Because those things. She wanted to put her fingers in the grooves and trace them straight to paydirt. Followed closely by her tongue.

He calmly indicated the pile of equipment on the car hood a half second before he pushed jeans down over slim hips. “You gonna suit up or what?”

She bit her bottom lip. Released it. Reminded herself where she was and what she was about to do. And then she said the worst possible thing for a girl to say when she was trying to think about anything other than sex. “Don’t we need lube?”