The moonlit pool was a shard of sapphire in the dark, and he was a phantom treading water in its center, waiting for her.
Sleep was a futile pursuit. The image of that hidden study, of Alistair's ravaged face in the photograph, was burned onto the back of her eyelids. The house, with its echoing halls and judgmental portraits, felt like a living entity pressing down on her. She needed air. Real air, not the curated, scent-filtered atmosphere of her gilded prison.
She found her way to the indoor pool, a vast, echoing grotto of black marble and glass that looked out onto the wild, moon-silvered Atlantic. The air was humid, thick with the smell of chlorine and night-blooming jasmine from an open archway. The water was perfectly still, a sheet of obsidian reflecting the vaulted glass ceiling.
And he was there.
Alistair. In the center of the pool, his powerful arms moving just enough to keep him afloat. The water lapped at his shoulders, droplets clinging to the dark whorls of hair on his chest. Moonlight carved the hard planes of his back and abdomen, casting him in shades of silver and shadow. He was a creature of myth, risen from the deep to claim his due.
He didn't speak. Didn't acknowledge her. His gaze was fixed on the turbulent ocean beyond the glass, but she felt the shift in the atmosphere, the tension coiling like a serpent as she stood at the water's edge, her bare feet cold on the marble.
She should turn around. Go back to her room. Lock the door. But the memory of his touch by the pool, the raw need in his voice when he'd said I hate what you do to me, was a siren's call she was too weak to resist. This was the ghost Markus had warned her about, and she was walking straight into its embrace.
She didn't take off the simple silk chemise she'd worn to bed. She simply stepped to the edge and dove in.
The water was a shock, a cold slap that stole her breath. It swallowed the sound of her entry, the world becoming a silent, weightless cocoon. She surfaced a few feet from him, pushing her soaked hair from her face, her chemise clinging to her body like a second, transparent skin.
Now he looked at her. His eyes were black pools in the moonlight, devoid of the fury from the study, filled with something darker, more primitive. The air between them crackled, charged with all the unspoken words, all the manipulated desire, all the genuine, terrifying hunger.
He moved then, a slow, deliberate stroke that closed the distance between them. The water rippled around his body, a liquid caress. He stopped just inches from her, the heat from his body a brand even through the cool water.
"Couldn't sleep?" His voice was a low rumble, stripped of its usual cultured edge, raw from the night.
"The ghosts are loud here," she whispered, her own voice trembling.
"They have a lot to say." His hand came up, not to touch her, but to trail through the water between them, the movement sending shivers across her skin. "Especially to you."
She was tired. Tired of the games, the barbs, the carefully constructed walls. Here, in the aqueous moonlight, with the scent of his skin and the ocean filling her senses, she let her own wall crumble.
"Why did you bring me here, Alistair?" she asked, the question a bare, vulnerable thing. "To this house? To the heart of all your pain? Is showing me that room part of the plan? To make me hate myself as much as you hate me?"
He was silent for a long moment, his eyes searching her face as if looking for a truth he'd buried long ago.
"I brought you here," he said, his voice dropping to a husky whisper, "because I'm a masochist. And because I can't stay away from the fire, even when I know it will burn me."
Then his hand was on her, not on her arm or her face, but sliding around the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her wet hair. His touch was not gentle. It was possessive, desperate.
"I hate what you do to me," he breathed against her neck, his lips a searing brand on her damp skin, just before they found hers.
The kiss was not like the one in the penthouse, a battle for dominance. This was a surrender. A conflagration. It was saltwater and desperation, a collision of two broken souls crashing together in the dark. His mouth was hungry, devouring, his tongue a bold, claiming stroke that tasted of whiskey and regret. He pulled her flush against him, and she could feel the hard, thrilling evidence of his desire pressed against her stomach, even through their clothes. A moan escaped her, a sound of pure, unadulterated need, swallowed by his mouth.
He walked her backward through the water until her back met the cold, slick marble of the pool wall. His body caged hers, one hand still fisted in her hair, the other splayed low on her spine, pressing her into him. The thin silk of her chemise was nothing, a mere whisper between her heated skin and the hard, wet planes of his chest. He tore his mouth from hers, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his forehead resting against hers. His eyes were closed, his lashes dark spikes against his skin.
"Elara," he groaned, her name a prayer and a curse on his lips.
For one devastating, heart-stopping second, the world held its breath. There was no revenge, no past, no future. There was only this: the heat, the hunger, the terrifying, beautiful truth of their connection.
Then, his eyes opened.
And the ice was back.
He pushed away from her so suddenly she slipped under the water, coming up sputtering, her heart a frantic, wounded thing in her chest.
He was already at the pool's edge, hauling himself out in one fluid, powerful motion. He stood there, water sluicing from his body, his back to her, his shoulders heaving. He didn't look back. He just picked up a towel and walked away, leaving her alone in the shimmering, moon-drenched water, the ghost of his touch burning on her skin and the taste of his surrender turning to ashes in her mouth.
The silence he left behind was more deafening than the ocean's roar.