The only way to survive his new life would be to change with him. I’d go away with him and escape boring school, my tyrant father, the cheerlords who pretended they were my friends but really weren’t. Once I started a new life with Xander, I’d reinvent myself as someone better, someone happier. Someone perfect, like him.
Today, this would happen, I told myself. Time to take the dive. If I finally accomplished the one dive that had eluded me since Xander started training me, it would be a fateful sign. Xander and I were meant to be a team. The Uni-Mil shouldn’t be allowed to break us up.
I stood atop a ten-meter-high diving platform as Xander watched me from below. I stepped to the edge of the platform and turned around, so my back faced the pool. As I placed my feet in the familiar formation, Xander called up to me. “The back two-and-a-half? Today’s your day to perfect it. I feel it, Z. You can do it.” His deep, gravelly voice made him sound years older. He had left home to live on his own when he was just sixteen years old. At nineteen, he was about to the join the elite wing of the Universal Military, which his peaceful Aquine people traditionally shun. His deep voice announced he was his own man.
I could do harder dives than this one. But this one, because it was the dive I had choked on at Olympic trials, was torturing me. I wanted to get it right again, so I could move on—in my training, in my tortured subconscious.
“Hell yeah!” I said. Generally, backward dives were my lucky dives. When my back was to the pool, I couldn’t see the spectators in the stand before liftoff. I couldn’t see my father’s face clenched with the stress of wondering not only if I would accomplish my dive, but would I excel at it? Or would I fail him yet again?
When my dad coached me, I disappointed. According to him, my technique was sloppy, I lacked the focus and discipline to be a world-class athlete, and I wasted my ability wanting to do other sports, like cheerlords—which mostly I wanted to do so I’d have an excuse not to spend my weekends training with Dad. Do you even want this, hellbeast? Dad would say. Not as much as you want it for me, I’d think. After I failed at Olympic trials, Dad gave up on me and turned my training over to his protégé, Xander, who managed the aquatics club facility in exchange for modest accommodations at the back of the club’s pool house. Xander was supportive and kind, and he seemed to genuinely want me to dive for my own sense of accomplishment, not my dad’s. Xander believed in me. The feel of Xander’s bronzed, ripped muscles holding me steady through practice dives, and his turquoise eyes and slanted cheekbones and full red lips cheering me on, helped my technique immeasurably too. Some might have called it puppy love. Inspiration, I called it.
In anticipation of the back two-and-a-half, I stood too long at the tip of the board, causing Xander to step closer to the area beneath the board and call up to me. “What’s up with the hesitation, hellbeast?” he asked. “Don’t overthink. Just do.”
I hated that nickname. Coach Dad used it to taunt, not tease me. “Don’t call me that,” I said, firming my legs for liftoff. Xander revered my dad. If it weren’t for that misplaced sense of hero worship, Xander wouldn’t have been about to leave to follow in my dad’s military footsteps. Once again, Dad had chosen my fate for me.
“Whatever you say, Z-Dev.” That nickname I liked, because Xander chose it for me. Zhara-Daredevil. “Go to it. I know you can.”
“Jingjing!” I said, invoking the name of Guo Jingjing, my favorite female Olympic diver from olden times, pre–Water Wars. Jingjing, my good luck charm.
My feet sprang from the board and I flew downward, contorting into a back double somersault and half twist before my body plunged into the water.
When I came up for air, Xander stood at the ledge of the pool. He extended a hand to help lift me up and out of the water. “You did it! Nailed it!” He raised his arms exultantly. “Beautiful dive, Z.”
Beautiful man. Instead of letting him help me up, I tugged on his arms to pull him back into the pool, back to me. Finally, I had him in the water, where I wanted him.
He swam over to me and I splashed water in his face. “Don’t start a war you can’t win,” he dared me. His long leg attempted to wrap around my calf to pin me down, but I quickly dropped to the bottom of the pool, out of his embrace, and swam away from him, fast.
I came up for air at the other end of the pool. “Come and get me, Xander.”
Instead, he got out of the pool and walked into the club, knowing I’d follow.
My father was away for the weekend, leading boot-camp exercises at the Base, the kind of military training Xander would soon be imprisoned by. “You’re not worried about leaving your sixteen-year-old daughter alone with Xander for the weekend?” I had challenged Dad.
But Dad, who had lived in Aquine territory when he was a young man, just laughed. “Aquines don’t mate until they’re ready to commit for life. Xander is nowhere near ready for that sentence with you. Your virtue is safe.”
Few things gave me more satisfaction than proving my father wrong.
I followed Xander inside the empty aquatics club, where he stopped at the entrance to the FantaSphere room. “You’re sure?” I asked Xander, who never broke club rules. I pointed to the sign next to the door, placed there after too many amorous couples had unauthorized adventures: FANTASPHERE ACCESS DURING CLUB HOURS ONLY. POLICY STRICTLY ENFORCED.
Xander’s turquoise eyes, normally so serious-looking, glinted with an uncharacteristic note of naughtiness. “It’s my last weekend here. What are they going to do, fire me from the job I’m already leaving?”
This rule-breaking, it was so unlike him, so un-Aquine. It was so…encouraging.
Xander pressed his index finger against the access scanner, and the door opened. We stepped inside the bare room. “Close your eyes,” he said. I closed my eyes and heard the beeps of his program code being entered into the console.
Immediately, I knew something had changed, even though I couldn’t see it. I could feel it. My lungs took in a huge inhale of the sweetest air imaginable. The oxygen felt startlingly, wonderfully rich, with a faint taste of honeysuckle. Reluctantly, I exhaled, and was surprised when letting go of the air made my body feel even better, as if eased not only of stress, but relieved of every heartbreak I’ve known in my life so far. My damp, cold skin was suddenly warm and dry, soothed. My feet sank lightly into soft, massaging sand. I heard the comforting lap of water.
“Now open your eyes,” Xander said.
I opened my eyes to a vision of violets: a violet-hued lagoon lapping onto sand specked with violet crystals, with a ray of sun streaming violet light into the center of a waterfall not far from the shore where we stood. Lush green trees surrounded the lagoon, heightening the intensity of the violets.
“Is it—?” I started to say.
“Demesne. FantaSphere version. I programmed it for you. So we could share one last perfect swim together before I go away.” Xander always looked humble—but for the first time, I sensed shyness coming from him. “Do you like it?” he asked hopefully.
Jingjing! My lucky charm worked!
I wished the cheerlords were right there with me—watching, envying. Not one of them believed Xander and I were a real couple. It’s like the pool was Xander’s and my bubble—only there, when we were alone together, would he play with me. But if Xander and I did the deed, then he’d be mine forever, and everyone would know the Aquine chose me. No one would doubt me once I became Mrs. Alexander Blackburn. I couldn’t pass the Olympic diving trials by age sixteen, but I could accomplish marrying an Aquine! Take that, Zhara doubters.
“Amazing,” I murmured. I wanted to cry as much as I wanted to maul him.
“Race you to the waterfall.”
We ran into the water and dove down into its warmth. The water! The temperature was just right: not too hot to encourage laziness, not too cold to discourage play—the sweetest dip into warm. The smoothness of it was like swimming in the softest cashmere. Xander raced, but I deliberately swam a slower pace to observe him swimmin
g a butterfly stroke across the length of the lagoon, awed by the bulk of his biceps, and by how his long, lean torso powered his tall body so that it didn’t just swim across the water, but hurtled through it.
I reached the waterfall several seconds after him. He pulled me to him. Smooth, violet-hued water splashed our heads and shoulders as I wrapped my legs around his back and pressed my chest into his. Could he feel how hard my heart was thumping with excitement, and terror? Neither of us had gone all the way before. The thought of doing what I wanted to do with him filled me with equal parts excitement and fear. What if I did it wrong?
I whispered into his ear, “I don’t think we’ll be the first couple to do it in this FantaSphere.” I moved my mouth from his ear to his cheek, en route to his lips for a kiss, but he pulled back.
“Slow down, Z. I wanted to take you somewhere special for our last night together, but you know it can’t end like that.”
“Why?” I shoved water at him, a resentful splash, not a playful one. I so didn’t get it. Weren’t nineteen-year-old guys supposed to be, like, the horniest demographic in all the male species? Did he have any idea how many guys would kill to have what I was so totally ready to give him?
I swam to a deck abutting the rock beneath the waterfall and climbed up onto it. I sat down, my legs hanging into the water, waiting for him to pull me back to him. Xander swam to the side of the deck’s edge, holding on to it but not getting out of the water to join me. “It kills me, this waiting for you. But I’m an Aquine. Just because I live away from my people doesn’t mean I’m so far evolved from their values. Can you understand that?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“No.”
He swam away again, stopping beneath the waterfall, where he treaded water, his gaze searing me from across the divide.
I was bored with playing fair.
I took off my bikini top and threw it into the water.
His turquoise eyes flared as they rested on my exposed breasts for a second. Then he swam to retrieve my bikini top and brought it to the deck ledge. He tried to hand it back to me, averting his eyes from my chest. Instead of taking the bikini top Xander extended to me, I removed my bikini bottom, flinging it so it landed on his head.
I’m freaking naked right in front of you. If that doesn’t work, I’ve run out of tricks.
“Don’t do this, hellbeast,” Xander said, not sounding at all convinced of his words.
“Don’t call me that,” I hissed. I slipped down into the warm, sweet water. It was fake Demesne, but the surge in my heart was real. Now was Xander’s and my time to make it happen. He had created a perfect paradise, just for me. Of course he meant for us to mate in it.
Xander dove underneath the water to swim back toward the lagoon’s shore. He knew I couldn’t catch him. Or could I? When I wanted something, my heat was unconquerable.
I caught up with him and dove beneath his legs, reaching for his ankle in a grab that was more stroke than attack. He stopped his sprint to go back above the surface for air, but I didn’t follow him up. I stayed beneath the water and circled him like a mermaid. Or a shark.
We’d done this water dance so many times. This time, it had to culminate in something more than stolen, secretive kisses that led nowhere. I swam back toward the waterfall, coming up for air at the side of the deck. If Xander wanted it, he had to come take it.
He wanted it. He raced beneath the water, coming up for air so close to me that I could see his heart pounding, so close he was almost pinning me against the deck. His turquoise eyes darkened, like a jungle animal about to pounce on its prey. Emboldened, I extended my legs out, wrapping them around his back to pull him to me, chest-to-chest, groin-to-groin. He didn’t just let me; in response, he grabbed me tight to him, his chest pressing into mine. Finally. This was on!
But. “We can’t let this happen,” Xander said, sounding not at all convinced.
Wrong wrong wrong. It was already happening. I placed a kiss on his neck. “Don’t you want me?”
“It’s always been you. It never wasn’t going to be you. But now isn’t the right time. Please, Z. Don’t torture me.”
Me torture him? He had created this situation. He had brought me to Demesne, the one place in the world I longed to experience.
Maybe it was the first tear of frustration, or the second tear of sincere need that burst from my eyelids down my cheek, but his lips found my face, to kiss away my tears. Instinctively, my face moved so that we were mouth to mouth. Our lips touched, and yet didn’t move. It was a kiss but not a kiss. This time, I needed him to make that move.
And he did. Suddenly, his lips went from merely touching my own to pressing against them. His fingertips traced the sides of my waist, exploring. But then he pulled away, disentangling himself from my body and lifting his own up out of the water and onto the deck, offering me the visual evidence: he really wanted me. So why would he not have me?
He turned away so I couldn’t see him. “We have to go,” he said.
I lifted myself out of the water and stood on the deck. I would not accept defeat.
From behind him, I wrapped my arms around his chest, pressing my breasts into his back and my cheek into his shoulder. “I love you,” I said.
My joy in him was as simple as that. It’s what would make me win this game.
I placed my hand on his heart, to feel its beat, hoping it would surrender to me. My other hand moved directly to where it would count. (I was cheating to win, I realized, but I couldn’t help myself.) I’d never touched one before. It was so firm. Intimidating. Gorgeous and grotesque at the same time. What was I supposed to do with that?
My hand lightly touched him, like my hand knew what it was doing despite my inexperience, stroking slowly, promising more, if Xander would allow it to just happen. I felt his breathing grow heavier, sultry.
When I knew I had him just where I wanted him—breathing so hard, waiting for release, needing me to finish what I’d flagrantly started—I stopped.
I lay down on the deck. In such a state of heat now, Xander didn’t bother with tender words. Xander pressed himself down on top of my very ready body.
“You know you own me, Z,” Xander whispered into my ear.
And then he was mine.
Victory.
After.
Awake.
So much beautiful.
My legs entwined his as my head rested on his chest and my index finger softly ran along his strong shoulder.
I did It. We did It. Incredible. Scary, intense, quick, a minor pain followed by a major release of soul-soaring, crazy-beautiful power.
I understood why it was such a big deal. I wanted more. Lots more.
I placed a kiss on his chest, but he rolled to his side, away from me. His strong back heaved slightly, and I sensed him holding back a sob. I thought, My big, beautiful man is…crying?
Was this an Aquine mating ritual? They’re so superhumanly sensitive that they cry after sex? What a man.
He rolled over again to face me, and I saw that his turquoise eyes were, indeed, wet with tears. “I’m so sorry, Zhara,” he said.
“For what?” I whispered, tracing his damp cheekbone with my index finger. “It only hurt for a second. It won’t the next time.”
“I meant, I understand why Aquines don’t mate until it’s for life. I feel so close to you now. Leaving for the Uni-Mil now feels unbearable.”
This was going even better than I had imagined. I didn’t have to talk him into anything. It was Xander who couldn’t bear to be apart any longer, now that we’d experienced such epic, profound closeness.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to let me go. I’ll go with you to the training camp.”
“You hate the Uni-Mil,” Xander said.
“Not if you’re in it. And now that we’ve gone this far, I go where you go. Isn’t that how it works?”
Abruptly, Xander sat up to look down at me. “Why would you think that?”
A sudde
n worry panged my heart. I thought this was obvious. “Because you’re an Aquine. Once you mate, you mate for life.”
“Ideally,” said Xander. “Not always in reality.”
WHAT? “I don’t understand.”
His face turned downcast. “I’m so sorry, Z. I gave in when I knew better. I’ve betrayed my Aquine values. I’ve gone against everything I was taught and that I believe in. I’ve ruined everything for us.”
I hoped my voice didn’t convey the desperation I felt. “Ruined? Not ruined! Created! Now that we’ve mated, we can create a new life for ourselves. Right, Xander?”
His voice so low I could barely hear him, Xander said, “No. Not now.”
I was so dumbstruck I had no response. Surely I had heard him wrong.
I hadn’t. He said, “Right now, my military career has to be my only focus. When I’m finished training, after you’re finished with school, then maybe we can think about a life together. Neither of us is ready now for that big a commitment. You know that, right, Z?”
But…but…“I’m ready!” I proclaimed.
“No. You’re not. We’re both only starting to figure out who we are as individuals. We’re not ready to pledge ourselves to each other for life.” He took my hand in his, as if to comfort me. “When I leave, I leave alone. That doesn’t mean I’m not committed to you. We’ll see each other when I’m on leave.”
He tried to place a kiss on my hand, but I snatched it away. I placed both hands over my ears for a moment, rocking my body up and down in confusion. I couldn’t hear myself think. I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I wanted to die. “I don’t understand,” I finally sputtered. I stood up, hurriedly putting my bathing suit on, as if doing so could undo what we had just done. Idiot, Zhara. Idiot! “Aren’t you, like, obligated to stay with the one you’ve mated with?”
“Are you saying we should be together now because we’re obligated? That’s love to you?”
I realized he had never said “I love you” in return.
Did I even know this guy? He was suddenly not at all the person I thought he was.