Chapter 15

Mysticism and otherworldly predictions had been nowhere on Isaiah’s radar when he’d hopped into the SUV with Hardy and team on a jaunt to Texas. He didn’t really believe in anything he couldn’t touch. But clearly there was something to the concept. How else could Aria have ended up in Isaiah’s arms except through some inexplicable magic?

In case the magic had something to do with the springs, he was fine hanging out here with Aria for the next few hours. Or forever. Right now, he couldn’t fathom breaking the spell they’d somehow fallen under, where the rest of the world didn’t exist. He didn’t have to pretend anymore, and here, he wasn’t broken because Aria didn’t expect anything out of him but his presence.

He could do with a good dose of living in the here and now.

Just like he could kiss Aria whenever he felt like and oh, look—she was conveniently located millimeters away because he didn’t have to let her go. So he hadn’t.

Her warm lips tasted sweet, opening under his as he explored the depths of her passion, which seemed to be limitless so far. She met him more than halfway, bold and eager, just as she did everything else.

“Aria,” he murmured again, her name leaving his mouth like a song. And why shouldn’t it? She was as beautiful as a melody and as sultry as a saxophone.

“Are you going to do that a lot?” she asked, shifting deeper into his arms, which worked for him.

“Um… I don’t know. Which part?” If whatever it was resulted in her snuggling that much closer, he’d definitely be repeating it.

“Saying my name like that.” She sighed and the rise and fall of her chest hit him in places she shouldn’t have been able to touch from the outside. “It makes me shivery.”

“In a good way, I hope.” He didn’t have the expertise of someone like Marchande, but he’d never had any complaints either. Plus, she’d chosen him. That realization alone had him riding pretty high. “If so, then I’ll do it a lot.”

She gave him one of her wistful smiles that made him want to gather up the whole world and gift it to her so she never had to want for anything again. “That would be nice. Except if you’re busy saying my name a lot and I’m busy staring at you a lot, we’re never going to get to the thing I’d really hoped to do tonight. And I had some big plans.”

“Oh?” She had his complete and utter attention as he honed in on the undercurrents that had sped up instantly. “What might that be?”

“Well, you know.” She blinked up at him through her lashes and it was every bit as alluring as when she smiled. “We’re alone. We’re really far from town. No one is looking for us.”

Her voice had dropped a few degrees but the temperature hadn’t and the images that sprang to mind as his imagination started filling in the blanks of her provocative statements didn’t help. “All of that is true. What do those circumstances put you in the mood for?”

This would not be a good time to misinterpret her meaning.

Somehow she’d moved even closer, her kiss-reddened lips begging for him to taste again, and things below the belt noticed all of the above in a big way.

“Something daring,” she said. “Something guaranteed to make tonight memorable, especially since I’ve never done it with a man before.”

“Never?” Well, duh. It only made sense that Aria didn’t have a lot of experience with men. She lived in a small town that was decidedly short on eligible males. But to toss it out there so he knew exactly where he stood—raw energy and no small amount of humility coursed through him as he considered the implications. “I’m honestly flattered that you’d choose me for your first time. Are you sure this is what you want?”

“Oh, completely sure. There’s just one small problem.” She bit her lip and it was so enticing that he nearly groaned.

“You’re killing me,” he ground out hoarsely. “No problems. Whatever it is, I’ll fix it. Just tell me.”

Lack of sheets, pillows, candles, music? He’d crawl on his hands and knees all the way to La Grange to get double of every last thing.

“I didn’t bring my bathing suit.”

“You didn’t…what?” His brain collapsed as he tried to make sense of the statement in the context of what he’d thought—assumed—they’d been talking about, which apparently wasn’t the same thing she’d been talking about. “What do you need a swimsuit for?”

“Well, I mean, I guess I don’t. I’ve never skinny dipped before either.” Aria’s cheeks pinked up, matching her hair in way he might find cute as soon as all the blood returned to his brain where it clearly needed to be. “But what is tonight about if it’s not being bold?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” he muttered and shook his head in hopes of clearing out the impure thoughts he’d been having, which wasn’t greatly helped by the replacement images of skinny dipping with Aria. “Are you saying your big plans for tonight involve swimming, possibly without clothing, neither of which you’ve ever done with a man?”

He honestly didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this point. If she hadn’t done either of those things, odds were good she had the same lack of experience with other types of things women did with men, just as he’d earlier surmised. Which meant he needed to back way off, since she probably had no idea how seductive this innocent conversation had turned.

But she just nodded as if the question had been a perfectly reasonable clarification. “The water stays cold year-round, even in August. It’s part of the magic of this area that we can’t explain. Jump in with me. You can’t come this far without going all the way.”

Which seemed to be a fitting metaphor for the evening—why not roll with it? “What, we just jump from here into the water?”

“Sure. Nothing like going all in. We’re talking major commitment here because you can’t back out once you’re in the air.”

Also a metaphor? The undercurrents weren’t merely of the sensual variety, though plenty of those were still in the mix. She might have framed this evening as something to be savored with no expectations over what might happen tomorrow, but he was extremely aware that women of Aria’s caliber didn’t mess around with a man and kiss them goodbye in the morning, totally okay with nothing but fond memories for their time together.

Nor did he want her to be okay with that. He wasn’t okay with that. No matter what happened, Aria wasn’t going to be easy to walk away from in the first place, and adding intimacy to their relationship would make it nearly impossible.

That reality should scare him more than it actually did.

But still. His will was only so strong and swimming with a naked woman who had no clue how alluring he found her would break him, no doubt. “I’ll jump. But let’s keep our clothes on.”

“Oh, that would be a shame.” Disappointment crowded into her expression and she shifted, creating a space between them that he didn’t like. “Are you sure we can’t do the skinny-dipping part? Ember has lots of times and she always made it sound so great.”

Isaiah bit his tongue before blurting out what had been on the tip of it, which was something along the lines of, the same Ember who has a seven-year-old son? But surely Aria was aware that Ember had likely gotten pregnant as an indirect result of her swimming preferences—or a direct result. That was not a fate Isaiah was prepared to contemplate right now, not when they had so much else seething below the surface of what should have been a simple kiss and so was not.

“Sweetheart, I would love to get naked with you, but not today,” he told her firmly and the blinding smile that earned him nearly knocked him from his already precarious perch on the rock.

“I changed my mind. I like it when you call me sweetheart more than Aria. Especially when you say things like that.” She hummed happily, pushing her chest against his with far too much heat, and he’d had about enough of tempting fate.

“What things?” he growled instead of pushing her away. Apparently, he hadn’t quite had enough of making her happy simply by speaking what was on his mind, though. “That I want to see you naked? Pure truth. You’re beautiful and kissing you lights me up inside. I’d love to spend a very long time finding out how much better that could get if we took it to the next level. But we’re not there yet. As much as I’d like to hurry that along, we’re going to take it slow.”

Slow. Everything had come down to that. He didn’t bother to pretend Serenity had gotten it wrong when obviously she’d gotten every single word of his prediction right. Just in telling Aria that they were taking it slow meant he was on a downward slide toward fulfilling that prediction to the letter.

Slow down to find love.

He might already be there. That put a lick of panic in his stomach. But even that wasn’t enough to get him to step back from her.

And there was no way to avoid wondering if this was also the romantic retreat his prediction had called out. Since he hadn’t run screaming from the springs yet, perhaps he could open his heart to that part too. Just here. Just for now. There was no harm in believing in magic for one night, was there?

Tomorrow he could get back to the reality of his life where redemption wasn’t a thing.

“Okay,” she agreed, her eyes a little bit too shiny for a woman who had just been told she wasn’t going to have her world rocked. “Slow is good. But I have to ask how slow. You know, given that you’re leaving tomorrow.”

Yeah, that didn’t sound so great at this point. Soon, he’d have to pick up stakes. But it didn’t have to be tomorrow. “I’m suddenly not in such a hurry.”

She blinked. “Because of me?”

He had to laugh. “What do you think is happening here? That I was going to take advantage of all your sexy talk about being daring and then still jet off in the morning?”

The way she winced told him she had thought that. Wow. A little of the Aria miasma he’d fallen into wore off as he contemplated the quicksand he’d just stepped in. That jumpstarted his brain enough for him to realize that she might have been more aware of how flirtatious her earlier comments had been than he’d given her credit for.

“Isaiah.” She frowned and the vibe between them went colder than he’d have thought possible given all of the heat that had been burning him up a moment ago. “I would never hold you here. No matter what. Even if we…you know. I want to be with you for whatever length of time I can get. I’m totally prepared for you to leave tomorrow. I don’t want you to feel forced to stay.”

This marked the absolute first—and hopefully last—time in his life that a woman had told him she was fine with scraps of his attention and then given him permission to treat her like garbage after sharing something intimate and amazing. “That’s not anywhere on my radar. I’ve been dreaming of being with you like this for far too long to rush it.”

Which pretty much sealed his fate. If he planned on taking her up on the offer that was very clearly being communicated via her melting blue eyes, he had to stick around and do this right. Or leave before it went that far. Indecision—the bane of his existence. How did he get enough information to make the right decision in this case? It was impossible.

“That might be the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard,” she murmured, which just about broke his heart. And solidified that he’d be making even more concessions, at least until he figured out to navigate this unexpected detour. Aria was worth it.

“Something else that needs to be fixed, immediately,” he said with a scowl. “You deserve romance and to have someone pay a lot of attention to you. Bring you flowers and give you presents for no reason.”

Her expression was nothing short of dazed. “I would like that.”

He would like to be the man who did those things for her. If he had to postpone taking off to give them to her, that wasn’t so bad.

The bad part was how his greedy, contact-starved soul had latched on to hope that the rest of the prediction was going to come true. That Aria was every bit the healing power he’d been searching for and hadn’t found yet because he’d resisted slowing down long enough to let it happen.

“You know what else I would like?” she asked him sweetly.

“If we could just go swimming and forget all of this heavy stuff?” he suggested, only half joking. If he’d known he’d have his head spun around this many times in the course of an hour, he’d have packed better.

She hesitated long enough that it became apparent she’d rather have kept hashing out the parameters of this fledgling relationship that had somehow sprung up in a matter of minutes. He started to tell her that was fine, hash away, when she nodded. “That was first on my list, after all. Well, no. Getting to that kiss was the whole list. But after that…definitely taking the plunge.”

“I’m all in.”

And he meant that in as many ways as she wanted to take it. How he’d honor that promise remained to be seen, but his will wasn’t strong enough to deny what was happening between them. And neither did he intend to miss a minute of being with a woman who’d orchestrated this entire outing because she’d hoped he’d finally kiss her. Since he’d ached for that too, they were both winners.

After they ditched their shoes, he took her hand and led her to the edge of the rock where the crystal blue water quietly waited for them to jump. It was clear enough to see straight to the bottom and deep enough to take a body from ten feet up.

They leaped in tandem, hitting the water with a giant splash. The cold engulfed him, refreshing, shocking. He held his breath as it closed over his head and then kicked to the surface, easily compensating for his sodden clothes that weighed a lot less than the scuba gear he’d spent more than his share of time wearing while under water. Her fingers slipped from his as they broke above the water line at the same time.

“That was awesome,” he told her.

She treaded water next to him, rivulets streaming from her hair. Wet, she was even more devastating than she’d been up on the rock, post-kiss. Why she didn’t have a thousand men beating down her door, he’d never know. He just thanked his lucky stars that all those idiots had cleared the way for him.

“That’s why I suggested it,” she said, her smile becoming infectious enough to tease one out of him. “You only get one first time. I figured we should make it count.”

Oh, every bit of this had counted.

She kicked away with a splash and he followed her. They explored the basin together, laughing, kissing, touching—though the wet clothes provided both the much-needed barrier he’d intended them to be, as well as an incentive for him to figure out how to extend the magic past tonight. Which was the worst sort of selfish. Better to just enjoy the spell of the springs and forget about it tomorrow.

Eventually the sun went down and the water grew too cold to stay in it. Reluctantly, Isaiah rolled to the shore and dragged Aria into his arms to warm up her shivering body. They hadn’t eaten since lunch but he couldn’t find the energy to care about anything other than her.

“This was everything you promised it to be,” he murmured into her hair. “I don’t want it to end.”

“Then don’t end it,” she suggested softly, her tone contradicting the sudden stiffness of her body. “I get that you’re not a roots kind of guy. It’s part of what I find breathlessly attractive about you. You make me think about how big and wide the world is. I want to see it. What if—”

His heart went into a free fall as she ground to a halt, right when she’d opened up a conversation that had completely piqued his interest. What if was his favorite phrase all at once.

“Don’t stop now, sweetheart.” He tightened his arms around her for fortification. This wasn’t easy to navigate for him either, but she gave him courage. Maybe he could do the same for her. “Be bold. You talk all you want about how attractive you find me.”

She laughed, as he’d intended, but more importantly, she relaxed against him, her body losing all of its sudden tension. “I like a lot of things about you. But what I was going to say is that you make me feel bold. As if I can do things I never thought I could. Like leave Superstition Springs.”

The whisper of a suggestion floated through him as he internalized what she’d left unsaid. “You mean with me.”

“Maybe you don’t want that,” she gushed out in a rush, as if he’d been about to protest the idea. “I didn’t intend to bring it up so soon. I mean, just think about it. I’m not asking for anything to be set in stone—”

“Aria.” He laid his lips on her temple. “I’m thinking about it.”

He wasn’t. Not really. Even if she was serious, which he highly doubted, he couldn’t be responsible for tearing her away from her home, the only place she’d ever known. And for what? A broken man who was good at shirking commitment and bad at doing the only job he’d ever loved? No. She’d gotten all caught up in the magic, as had he, but that didn’t change reality. Come tomorrow, the best he could hope for was a precious, minor extension to the bliss he’d gotten lucky enough to experience for this brief flash in time.