Chapter 198
Karel watched his mate dip a toe into the sea. Fear clung to her pores, but once he’d tightened his hold on her hand, she calmed.
To his pleasure, her entire foot went into the water.
“It’s warm!” she exclaimed.
He laughed at the wonder in her voice.
“It is.”
He’d heard about Earth beaches. Temperatures were usually cold, and even at the warmest beaches, the water didn’t get to the heat levels they did in Aurora.
She stepped farther out, lifting a handful of the pink water.
“It’s so clear,” she gushed. “I can see my feet.” She glanced up to meet his gaze. “How come it doesn’t look pink when I scoop only a little?”
“It only looks pink when you put a lot of it together. The amount of mineral in a large body of water makes it look pink,” he explained.
Time passed with her asking questions and him answering as best as he could. He sensed her fear the farther out they went.
“Why are you afraid of the water?” he asked gently.
Panic dashed through her eyes. She bit her lip and splayed her fingers through the now waist-high water.
“I almost drowned when I was a kid,” she admitted.
His chest tightened and his lungs burned. He’d almost lost her before he’d found her.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice low.
“My grandmother loved visiting new places. She had a lot of money from my grandfather’s life insurance, so we traveled a lot. His company was managed by a board, so all she did was collect a massive paycheck every month,” she said, curling her hand into a small scoop and lifting water to his chest.
“We went to Costa Rica and had a great time. I was like nine or ten at the time,” she said, her voice growing far with her memory. “I was zip-lining with some of her friends’ kids. They’d chosen to go over a river instead of just regular land because,” she snorted, “land was so boring.”
He curled his hands around her waist, holding her close while she spoke.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he said. The animal in him hurt from the amount of fear pouring from her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I want to.”
He nodded, bringing scoops of water to her shoulders, watching the drops slide down her chest, cling to her nipples before falling into the sea.
“My clip broke, and I fell into the river,” she said, her voice low and shaky, as if she were reliving the moment. “I went down hard with a scream.”
She gripped the sides of his arms, digging her nails into his flesh. With every word, her hands gripped tighter.
“The water wasn’t clear like this. It was dark, muddy, and I couldn’t see anything. I panicked when I couldn’t get any air. Everything was so dark.” She visibly gulped. “I tried to push my way up, but I was dragged down. Probably by my own fear.” She shook her head and cleared her throat. “My lungs burned, and I could feel my body giving in to what would kill it. I inhaled water. I don’t recall what happened after that.”
He hugged her. There was nothing else he could do to comfort her after such a harrowing tale.
“Someone got you out,” he said softly.
She nodded on his chest.
“Yes. One of the tour guides jumped in after me, but it took him a minute to find me. All that time I was under felt like an eternity, but it had been less than a minute.”
He held her in his arms, their heads turned to face the suns offering their last rays before darkness overtook, and the twin moons bathed everything in soft light.
“Come on,” he said after a while. “Let’s rinse off by the mountain not far from here and get something to eat.”
He took her along a pathway he knew to a small waterfall with a shallow heated spring. The water came through the rocks, pooling around them, then returning into the mountain.
They stood under the water, and he had to grit his teeth to keep himself from pressing her against the rocks and taking her, but he wasn’t going there. Not until she wanted him to. He knew she was still confused about him, and the last thing he wanted was to complicate it more with sex. That meant depriving himself, which pissed off his jaguar enough to need a run. Maybe once she was asleep.
“What are we eating?” she asked back at their camp.
“I choose packed meats and cheeses,” he replied, handing her a towel to dry off with. His cock ached as he stared at her wiggling while drying herself. It was going to be a long night.
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He was drifting off to sleep, but Karel’s heart felt weighed by the sadness in his mate. He was right. He could see she’d suffered throughout her life in the softness of her brown eyes. The way she wouldn’t believe he genuinely wanted her forever still worried him.
Why were Earth women so skeptical of true desire? Gerri warned him humans didn’t believe in fated mates. Women needed to feel loved before they made a commitment.
He could only hope in the coming days, Liv learned to trust her emotions when it came to him. To them. His little mate might not realize it, but he’d go to the ends of any galaxy for her. He’d fight any creature in any world to keep her safe, and give himself to her without asking anything in return. Now it was just getting her to believe in him. That was his biggest hurdle.