She shivered.
He kissed her neck.
She squirmed.
He licked the vulnerable skin of her throat and her eyes fluttered open to a glowing blue. Not from her dying eyes, but from the walls of the pulsing cave that tucked them into its magical glow and let them feel one another without reservation.
She slid her hands into his hair and the rope around her wrist pulled tight. Tristan moved his bound wrist so she would have more room to run her fingers through his hair.
She loved his hair. She wanted to play in it.
He brought his wet mouth back to hers and slipped his tongue between her lips. Sinking a fingernail into the back of his shirt, she ran a line down his back and he shivered. She did it again and he leaned into her.
She tucked her hands under his shirt and slid them up his stomach, feeling the rope pull tight again as her bound wrist moved farther away from his. This time he pulled back on the rope, his hand slipping under her shirt and over her bare skin. Scarlet happily let her bound wrist be pulled from under his shirt and he kissed her mouth and grazed her skin.
She wiggled against him and tried to move her hand back to his hair, but the rope wouldn’t allow it. Tristan’s hand left the skin beneath her shirt and caught Scarlet’s tied hand with his own. Interlacing his fingers with hers, he brought their hands up to the cave wall beside her head and held them against the glowing blue as his teeth softly slid down her jaw until his mouth was back on hers.
Passionate and soft, his lips pressed against her as he pressed their hands to the wall.
Scarlet wanted to stay right here, bound to Tristan, forever. Behind her were centuries of heartache, and up ahead was her death. But here, in the pulsing blue caves of the very thing that had brought such tragedy to her soul, Scarlet was completely content.
And then the wall rumbled.
Tristan froze, lifting his mouth from Scarlet’s hot lips.
Another rumble sounded and the tunnel began to shake.
He pressed her against him, pulling her from the wall and tucking her into his arms. The shaking intensified and he realized the tunnel was starting to cave in. Behind them, the tunnel ceiling began to crumble and pieces of blue fell to the ground, one after another, crashing closer to them with each new rumble.
Scarlet shimmied out of his body and he took her hand, before turning to face the rapids they’d need to cross if they hoped to outrun the avalanche coming their way.
He squeezed her hand and they ran for the river, leaping into the roaring currents—and possibly into their death—bound together.
For better or worse, they would be together.
This was living.
CHAPTER 40
“Are there dragonflies down here?” Heather asked for the third time that hour. She was standing between Gabriel and Nate as they walked along yet another glowing tunnel of Bluestone.
“Heather,” Gabriel said. “There are no dragonflies.” She’d been going in and out of lucidity all day. Sometimes she was normal, annoying Heather, who said O-M-G all the time. And other times she was crazy, annoying Heather, who talked about invisible insects.
She groaned. “I’m never doing drugs on purpose. This withdrawal crap sucks. All I do is hallucinate. And I have a killer headache. I can’t believe I’m seeing dragonflies.”
“It could be worse,” Nate said. “You could be seeing actual dragons. Dragons live in caves, you know.” He looked over his shoulder nervously.
“Dragons aren’t real.”
“You don’t know that.” He turned back around. “There could be dragons hidden on some tropical island or living in the deepest parts of the ocean—“
“Oh, I see fish!” Heather pointed at nothing on the wall.
“—or in the Alps or something. They could be anywhere because they’re mighty and they’re awesome.”
“Do you guys not see the fish?” she said.
“You’re right.” Gabriel said. “I’m sure there’s a sleeping dragon just around the corner.”
Nate scoffed. “Not likely. It’s almost nine at night. Everyone knows cave dragons sleep during the day and hunt at night.”
Gabriel took a long, deep breath.
“Do dragons eat fish?” Heather bit her nails, her eyes following an invisible something in the air.
“Depends on what kind of dragon it is,” Nate said. “I’m sure a sea dragon would eat fish, but other dragons eat just about anything. Birds, elephants, milk maidens. “There aren’t any dietary restrictions for land dragons.”
A low sound hummed through the caves and Heather sank her fingernails into Gabriel’s upper arm. ”Was that a dragon?”
“No.” Gabriel kept moving but let Heather keep her nails planted in his skin. “It’s probably just the wind howling through a cave hole.”
Nate made a relieved noise. “So, that’s what I heard last night.” He looked at Heather and smiled. “Cave holes. Not werewolves.”
Heather’s eyes widened. “Werewolves are super scary.”
“I know.” Nate’s eyes widened as well.
Dear God. It was like traveling with six year-olds.
The sound rumbled again and Gabriel frowned. That hadn’t sounded like the wind…
The ground started to shake and the floor in front of them began to split open.
“Ooh,” Heather blinked. “I’m bouncing.”
Nate looked around. “Is this an earthquake?”
Gabriel started to back up, but the floor behind them was crumbling as well, falling into black oblivion just inches away from their feet.
Heather peered down into the nothingness below and whispered, “Wow.”
Gabriel grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the ledge. He guided her forward, hurrying to cross as much of the still-remaining cave floor as possible before the rest of the ground gave way beneath them.
They were almost to where the cracks in the floor were still small enough to jump across, when another rumble shook the walls and the last bits of earth that connected the plane the stood on to the other side of the tunnel fell to pieces.
The shaking came to a quiet standstill and Gabriel surveyed their situation. Behind them was an impossibly wide canyon of blackness, so turning back wasn’t an option. And in front of them was a canyon just as wide.
They were stranded on an island of shaky cave floor.
Scarlet gasped for air as she struggled to swim above the current that had pulled at her once she’d hit the water. She was being sucked toward the center of the dark whirlpool and couldn’t swim her way out of the powerful vortex.
Tristan planted his feet in the waist-deep river water, tugging at the rope around her wrist, every muscle in his body rigid with exertion. Glancing back, Scarlet watched the tunnel they jumped from collapse in on itself, thrusting large rocks into the river. The water began to rise and thrash about with the incoming rocks.
Scarlet was pulled under the cold, dark water and the whirlpool sucked her closer. She was no match for the wild water and the current pressed down on her. The rope cut into her wrist as Tristan—wherever he was—pulled against it.
Her lungs started to burn as she paddled toward the surface. The current kept pushing her down, though, and the whirlpool whipped at her ankles.
She started to feel lightheaded when her wrist jolted a bit then, slowly, her body was pulled away from the whirlpool and to the top of the water.
She broke the surface and gulped in oxygen before Tristan dragged her further away from the spinning waters and fought against the current to hold her steady.
More rocks tumbled into the river and angry waves chopped up the water.