Waterborne

by Katherine Irons

Genres: Paranormal Romance

Synopsis

Katherine Irons returns to a world so close yet so far away, where beauty, desire, danger and deception await. . . A Force Of Nature Ree O'Connor is more than she seems to be. Despite her delicate appearance and her broken heart, she sees what others don't. In fact, she is an agent of a clandestine world court, about to bring down a monster when a stranger springs her trap instead. The mistake nearly costs Ree not only her prey, but her life, too--until mysterious Alexandros spirits her to an underwater world she never suspected, even with all her secret knowledge. As a prince of Atlantis, Alexandros has centuries of experience in love and battle. His magic draws from the power of the ocean itself, and he can be just as beguiling--and just as unfathomable. Could any man heal Ree enough to become more than a sometime lover? And can she trust her heart to a soldier-prince of the deep? Praise for Seaborne "An enchanting tale that's to be savored." -- Romantic Times "A page-turning tale of forbidden love and ocean magic. . .it swept me away! --Sarah Grey "A wonderful under the sea tour." --Genre Go Round Reviews

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Brava

Print pages: 353

Sample

Ranirao Atoll, Tahiti, the present ...

It was a night made for an assassin.

At three a.m., a thick layer of clouds hung low over the tropical island, swathing the thin crescent moon in ghostly shadows and wrapping the Anastasiya and her companion yacht, the Tsarina, in warm, hazy blackness. The heavy fog that rose from the surface of the ocean muffled the slap of waves against the vessels’ hulls, dimmed the rotating searchlight from the Tsarina, and distorted the vision of the four guards stationed bow and stern on the Anastasiya. The all-encompassing mist provided a perfect cover for the figure that slipped soundlessly from the water and made his way onto the deck of the Anastasiya. Gregori Varenkov’s luxury yacht showed not a single light burning, which suited the intruder perfectly. The Russian target had evaded retribution in Crete and barely escaped with his life in Rangoon. Grigori Varenkov had been judged and found guilty by a high court, from which there was no appeal. Tonight, the appointed executioner would carry out the death sentence.

Alex flattened himself against a lifeboat and assumed the color and pattern of the canvas covering as the thin beam from the Tsarina’s searchlight scanned the deck, revealing lounge chairs and a table, a marble-lined hot tub, and an equally extravagant outdoor shower area. All was as it had been when Alex last scouted the yacht, except for one notable exception.

The shower was occupied.

Alex’s gut tightened. He’d not expected anyone to be on deck but the two armed guards. Varenkov was fanatical about his routine and his security. Six nights a week, the Russian ate his evening meal in his stateroom, where he remained until twelve sharp, at which time a Zodiac arrived from the Tsarina with four guards to replace the ones on duty. Men stood six hour shifts around the clock, and walked the perimeter of the deck every two hours.

At twelve-fifteen, Varenkov showered for twenty minutes and retired, wearing only a towel around his thick waist, to his library where he conducted business by computer for three hours. At precisely three-thirty, regardless of the weather conditions, the Russian came up on deck to savor a large glass of Stolichnaya, his favorite brand of vodka. Varenkov remained for thirty minutes before returning to take phone calls from various associates around the world. This half hour on deck was when the target was most vulnerable.

Alex stared at the woman. In the six months that he’d stalked Varenkov, he never saw the Russian bring a visitor or an associate aboard the Anastasiya. And the crew and captain never came on deck after ten p.m. unless the vessel was underway or encountering bad weather.

This redhead, with her high, perfect breasts, neat waist, and long shapely legs that seemed to go on forever, shouldn’t have been here on deck in the middle of the night. She wasn’t the captain of the Anastasiya or one of the dozen or more regular crew members, and she wasn’t one of the guards. That left only the chef who’d boarded the vessel in San Diego three months ago to replace the Ukrainian torturer who’d cooked for Varenkov for the past two and a half years.

Whoever she was, she was here, naked as the day she was born, and—to borrow a distinctly American expression—throwing a wrench into Alex’s perfectly choreographed plan to assassinate Varenkov. Alex should have been angry. By Zeus’s stones, he had every right to be. But the sight of such a delightfully formed female in a complete state of innocent seduction was almost more than he could be expected to endure.

Alex took advantage of the permeating darkness to move closer to the woman, and then held his breath as the searchlight illuminated her alluring figure once again. Had she been a figment of his over-active imagination? Or, had his imagination lent her attributes she didn’t possess? He wasn’t disappointed. She was real enough, he concluded as beads of excitement prickled the nape of his neck and trickled down his spine. Magnificent. She stood there as motionless as a Greek statue, back arched, head tilted back, letting the warm spray darken her red-gold hair and run in rivulets over her soapy body.

Though he usually had rigid self-control when conducting a mission, Alex’s body responded. Heat welled in his loins, his pulse quickened, and his throat tightened. Human or not, she was a rare vision. And the males of his kind were not known for their disdain of sexual pleasures.

The woman’s skin was unusually fair, almost alabaster in tone, and so silken in appearance that Alex could imagine what it would feel like to stroke and caress the curves of her ripe body. But regardless of the delight he might take in admiring such lush perfection on an ordinary evening, her presence tonight might ruin the best opportunity he’d had in months to take out the Russian.

The safest thing to do would be to eliminate her before Varenkov appeared on deck for his nightly vodka. In seconds, Alex could subdue her and dump her body over the side, where the sharks would quickly dispose of it. Predators prowled beneath Varenkov’s vessels wherever they were anchored because Varenkov insisted that his employees chum the waters with bloody meat to attract them. Tonight, Alex had seen more than a dozen large tiger sharks feeding not only on the scraps from Varenkov’s galleys, but on each other.

The sharks served a well-thought-out purpose. An Israeli swat team had nearly succeeded in ending Varenkov’s career two years ago off Hong Kong. Three divers, who’d trained with America’s Navy Seals, had actually made it on deck before the Russian’s private army cut them down with a rain of armor-piercing bullets. Soon after, Alex noticed that Varenkov had added sharks to his yachts’ safety net.

It was a clever scheme and worked well against human adversaries, but Atlanteans were not human. Alex had been trained to defend himself against sharks since he was a young child. While he had a healthy respect for the big ones, and for the danger of being present during any feeding frenzy, he didn’t consider individual tiger sharks to be much of a threat to him. They could be merciless eating machines, but they were highly intelligent, and rarely took on an adult Atlantean who wasn’t sick, feeble, or wounded. And he was none of those things; he was a warrior in his prime, with a lethal instinct every bit as developed as that of a tiger shark.

This unexpected civilian presented a huge problem in the middle of his killing zone. For more than a moment, Alex hesitated as duty warred with conscience. She was so close ... only a knife’s throw away. He could be on her and do what had to be done before she could even cry out.

If only she weren’t so beautiful ...

Humans and Atlanteans were natural enemies, and if Varenkov survived, many more lives would be lost. Yet, this female was a noncombatant. He could kill Varenkov or any of his guards without hesitation, and he’d never lose sleep over his actions, but murdering an innocent woman was different. Why hadn’t she simply remained below deck where she would have been safe?

He cursed himself for his own weakness. An assassin had no room in his heart for pity, and less for allowing lust to interfere with his intent. Not to mention that he had outdistanced his team. Bleddyn and Dewi would be here before dawn. Attempting the kill without their backup went against his own code. Yet ... Varenkov had slipped through their net so many times before. Waiting for backup might mean that Alex would lose the best chance he’d had of ending the Russian’s long reign of terror.

Abruptly, a movement to the woman’s left caught Alex’s attention. As he watched, one of Varenkov’s camouflage-clad guards lunged out of the shadows and grabbed the female’s arm. She cried out and tried to pull free, but he yanked her against him, pinning her with one hand and running his other over her naked breasts and down between her legs.

Instinct won over reason. Alex dove at the struggling pair, locked an arm around the guard’s throat and dragged him toward the railing. The man fought back with all of his strength, but Alex easily overpowered him. He went over the side with only a single strangled groan. And when the searchlight again scanned across the deck, the woman had retreated to the shadows.

Alex’s element of surprise was lost. The only sensible action would be for him to follow the would-be-rapist over the gunnel before he was seen by the woman or illuminated in the searchlight. But, by now the tiger sharks would be making the area beneath the boat a bloody mess, and he didn’t need to compound a series of errors with a bigger one. Instead, he cast an illusion, assuming the likeness of Varenkov, complete with an oversized bath towel—which would have been a brilliant disguise if the real Varenkov hadn’t chosen that moment to come through the hatchway.

For a heartbeat, the Russian froze and stared, his eyes bulging with shock. And then the towel dropped, and Varenkov raised his right hand, revealing a Makarov PMM semi-automatic pistol. Dropping to a kneeling position, Varenkov sprayed the deck with a hail of nine-millimeter bullets. Shouts came from the Tsarina, followed by the pounding of boots as the reinforcements came from the bow at a dead run.

A bullet tore into Alex’s thigh, and a second one plowed a furrow along his neck. He dashed into the shadows and changed his appearance from a balding Russian gangster to a buff oriental soldier-of-fortune, complete with an automatic rifle and full gear. When the next rotating beam lit up the deck, Varenkov stopped shooting at him and turned his firepower on the woman. The bullet hit her midsection, knocking her backward, and Varenkov followed with a killing shot to her heart.

Alex had counted nine shots. The regulation Makarov PMM fired eight shots, but special models were often refitted for ten or twelve, meaning that Varenkov had either one or three bullets left. Alex decided he didn’t like the odds. It was time to leave.

His mistake was to cast one final glance at the dying female. She lay stretched on the deck, eyes open, hand outstretched in a plea for mercy. Blood seeped from under her body and ran in rivulets into the hot tub, turning the salt water an ominous scarlet.

“Mother of Ares!” Alex swore. He couldn’t leave her. He scooped up the woman in his arms and leaped over the side as the Russian emptied the chamber of his pistol in their direction.

Out of fire and into the caldron! Now, men were shooting at him from the deck of the Tsarina as well. Hungry sharks and armor-piercing bullets. Perfect. Alex hated guns. The use of guns proved just how depraved humans were—they weren’t content to destroy each other with natural means; they had to resort to all sorts of flesh-destroying inventions.

A ten-foot tiger shark came at him, and Alex used a burst of imagination to conceal both himself and the female with the illusion of a thirty-eight-foot squid. As an additional incentive for the shark to turn its attentions elsewhere, Alex included a good measure of ink and one spiked tentacle. The tiger shark backed water, rolled his eyes until the whites showed, and turned his attack on two of his comrades who were fighting over a tattered fragment of what had been the unlucky guard’s right leg.

Alex couldn’t hold the disguise for more than a few seconds. Sharks weren’t nearly as easy to fool as humans. He used the respite to dive deep and put distance between him and the two yachts. Two sharks followed, and he had to dispatch one and wound the other before it broke off the encounter.

Watercraft erupted from the Tsarina overhead. Any moment, Alexander expected Varenkov’s private army to begin strafing the water and dropping depth charges that would shred him, the human female, and the sharks indiscriminately. Dismissing the finned predators as the lesser of evils, Alex swam for his life. He would have made an easy target if the sharks pursued him, but when the first explosions sent shocks through the water, the sea wolves scattered as well.

By the time Alex reached the underwater cave at the edge of the atoll, the woman had been deprived of air for a lethal amount of time. Noble try, he told himself. She’s gone, drowned, shot to death, or both. She was human, after all. Not his worry, not his fault.

Except it was his fault. He’d screwed up. If he’d abandoned the mission when he’d first caught sight of the female, she’d be alive. He’d been too cocksure, impatient, and certain that he could improvise and still take out Varenkov. He should have waited for Bleddyn and Dewi. He could just picture himself attempting to explain how things had gone so wrong so quickly.

Poseidon and the high court would have none of it. Alex’s mission. His responsibility. He was supposed to be a professional. How many kills? He’d lost count of the enemies he’d eliminated in the past several hundred years. All clean hits with no loose ends. And now this ...

Already the damage done by the bullets to his flesh was healing. The sea had marvelous healing powers—if you were an Atlantean. Humans were much frailer creatures. Their bodies tended to break easily, and they had only elementary regeneration powers. Their life spans were minute, barely a hundred years, and they died of diseases that Atlanteans had conquered eons ago. The kindest thing he could do would be to let the woman’s body drift away on the tide, to give her to the sea. Her body was only a physical shell, and it was not as if her spirit would be lost for eternity. Even humans were reborn in new bodies.

But he kept remembering how vulnerable she’d been—first to the guard who’d tried to assault her and then to Varenkov, who had ruthlessly turned on her. She’d been unarmed and helpless, and the Russian had shot her down without hesitation.

Still, it had been Varenkov who’d killed her, not him. His responsibility was to his own people and finishing the job he’d been given. Let her go and forget she ever existed, Alex told himself. Make at least one logical decision today.

Instead, cursing himself for being all kinds of a fool, he bent over her and covered her mouth with his. He summoned the blue force and breathed healing energy into the woman’s lungs. Live!, he commanded her silently. Live!

Nothing. Her head hung back, her red-gold hair streamed out behind her in the rushing surf, and her limbs and torso dangled limply in his arms. Her blue eyes were lifeless, as flat as glass, without a spark of illumination.

“Damn you!” he cursed. “Obstinate woman.” He cradled her against his chest, pressed his lips to the hollow of her throat, and willed her to fight. The effort was tremendously draining. He could feel his own strength ebbing.

Stubbornly, he refused to surrender her. He forced himself to swim deeper into the cave, threading through narrow passageways until, at last, he surfaced on a starlit strip of sand. They were deep beneath the landmass. The light here came from the shells of a giant clam, the urrou, that had become extinct in his grandfather’s time. Long ago, the warlike inhabitants of this part of the world, distant relations of the Atlanteans, had used the shells as sources of light.

Arching cave walls and ceiling rimmed the narrow beach, but the sand was soft and dry. Alex carried the woman out of the water and laid her on the warm shoal. Was it his imagination, or had her color improved? He pressed his fingertips against her lips, but he could feel no breath of life. With a sigh, he gathered her in his arms once more and again breathed into her mouth.

She stirred and gave a weak moan.

Alex ground his teeth together. “I’ll be sorry I did this. I’m sorry already.” The sound of running water caught his attention, and he glanced toward the source. A spring bubbled from one wall of the cavern. Humans need fresh water, he reminded himself. When they’d left the sea, salt water had become poisonous to them. How crazy was that?

He put the woman down again, carried a broken conch shell to the spring, and filled it with fresh water. Returning to her side, he cradled her head and began to drip the liquid between her lips, one drop at a time.

She choked, and he had to pound her on the back to keep her from drowning a second time. Her color was no longer fish-belly white; it was more of a rotting oyster yellow. The fingers on her left hand fluttered. It was a slender hand, almost delicate. Her nails were delicately shaped and freshly adorned in a soft peach coloring.

Something shifted in the pit of his stomach, and a warm protective feeling washed through his veins. He wished he knew her name. If he couldn’t save her, would she haunt his dreams, this frail human beauty?

She wasn’t Atlantean, but he found her very alluring, or she would have been if Varenkov hadn’t extinguished her life force. What would it be like to have those hands stroke my face? he wondered. Or to have those sweet lips seek mine in an act of passion?

“Who are you?” he asked. “Why did you have to come above deck tonight? Why didn’t you just stay in your galley where you belonged?”

She coughed again and a gush of seawater spilled from her mouth.

There was nothing to do but try again. He concentrated all his will on reviving her, on finding the spark of life that he imagined still clung to her fading body and fanning it to a flame. He did it, knowing the consequences it would have, knowing full well what price there would be to pay for such a transgression ...

Because regardless of who pulled the trigger, she was an innocent and his mistake had caused her death. The truth was, he wasn’t nearly as heartless as he tried to pretend. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try to right the wrong that he’d done.

She would hate him for it, but he would do what he had to.... As he always had.

The battle to save the woman was not easily won. Hours became days, and three times she sank into that abyss that could only be death. But each interlude became shorter, and gradually Alex felt the life force begin to course through her body. And as she grew stronger, he grew weaker, until finally, he had to risk leaving her alone to return to the depths off the atoll and let the clean seawater heal his own body and soul.

She still could be lost, perhaps more so than if he’d allowed nature to take its course. Now, she could never return to an entirely human existence, but neither was she Atlantean. Her suffering at the loss of what she had been might be worse than death. And if she slipped away, where would her spirit go? Would she be trapped forever in a void, caught between one world and another?

Again, he wrestled with his own conscience, wondering why he’d been tempted to break his own code for an alien ... wondering if he’d lost his edge. Had his failure to kill Varenkov been bad luck and an error in judgment, or had he burned out? Hunting down and eliminating enemies of Atlantis was all he’d been trained to do. If he no longer possessed that ability, would he be relegated to some bureaucratic office job reserved for royal losers or would he end up in charge of iceberg security beyond the boundaries of civilization?

When he surfaced near the spot where the yachts had been anchored, Varenkov was gone. In one direction, Alex could clearly make out the beach and swaying palm trees of the atoll. But, if he turned his back to the land, the open sea stretched as far as the eye could see.

Alex had expected no less. Undoubtedly, the Russian had given the orders to sail within minutes after the last shot was fired, and had left the area by helicopter. By now he could be leagues away, anchored off a thousand nameless islands or on route to another ocean.

All Alex’s careful plans had come to nothing, and he would have to return home and explain why he’d failed. Again. He’d also have to explain the woman and why he’d felt compelled to break laws that had stood for thousands of years, putting not only himself but the kingdom in danger.

He returned to the cave, afraid but also half-hoping that he would find the woman dead. She wasn’t, but her wounds had begun to seep blood again and her vital signs were weaker. If he’d been anywhere in the Atlantic, he could have defied the authorities and carried her to the temple where trained healers might have saved her. But here, Lemorians commanded the oceans, and relations between Atlanteans and Lemorians were dicey at best. More so since he and his twin brother Orion had surprised a raiding party and held Prince Kaleo for ransom, before sending him home in disgrace.

Lemorian healers were not as skilled as their Atlantean counterparts, but they possessed more knowledge than he did. For better or worse, he couldn’t wait for Bleddyn and Dewi to find him. He had to take the human to Lemoria or admit that he’d taken on a task he hadn’t had the ability to complete. And considering what Lemorians thought of humans, there was a good chance that neither he nor the human female would survive the encounter.

When she was eleven years old and well into her training, Ree had accompanied one of her master instructors and two other students to the American History Museum in Washington, D.C., where they had watched a black and white movie starring Charlie Chaplin. The film had been jerky, the images marred with inky imperfections, and the only sound had been a jarring and tinny rendition of a player-piano.

The images flashing across the screen of her fog-enveloped mind reminded Ree of that experience, except that the accompanying music wasn’t that of a piano, but the rhythmic crash of surf. And, she could not only see it, but she could feel the sensations against her skin, smell the salt water, and taste the sweet-acrid flavor of blood in her mouth.

The pictures clicked one after another, each photo remaining only for a fraction of a second before being replaced by another. Flash! The glistening spray of water falling from the showerhead onto her naked body. Flash! A wide beam of light spilling across the deck of the Anastasiya. Flash! A figure watching her from the shadows—an apparition so alarming as to raise the fine hair on the nape of her neck. Flash! A burst of gunfire. Flash! Blue water, ivory teeth looming over her, and then blackness sucking her down into a bottomless vortex.

Flash! A blue man with beautiful green eyes. Flash! The shower. Slow motion ... each drop of warm liquid caressing her skin. The water was everywhere, flowing over the deck, drowning the Anastasiya, buoying her up, lifting her in powerful arms, washing through her.

After a long time, the photos dimmed to black, the images replaced with the presence of someone ... of something strong and benevolent hovering around her. Normally, Ree would have had no trouble identifying her surroundings, but she seemed encased in warm sand or perhaps trapped in a glass chrysalis like some jungle moth in a fantasy novel. She could feel him, and it was definitely a him, but beyond that, she was clueless.

Other sounds filtered into her sealed coffin: the trickle of water, a woman’s moans, and a man’s deep voice. She couldn’t understand his words ... couldn’t identify the language although she spoke seven fluently. She thought she remembered pain, but she was in none now. Drifting on the waves ...

Thirst clawed at her throat, swelling her tongue, heating her skin. Drops of molten gold seared her nerve endings and sent waves of pain shimmering through her tortured flesh. Thoughts of water tortured her. Glasses of ice water dripping beads of condensation ... bottled spring water ... bubbling fountains. She willed her eyes to open, strained until sweat broke out on her body. For an instant, she saw scattered stars, and then the shadowy fog closed in again. With it came the terrible thirst and a deep and grinding agony, a pain that threatened to rip her apart. She fled from it, retreating deep inside ... sliding back and back.

Huge soft flakes thudded against the car windows, muffling the sound of the tires against the dirt lane. A man’s gloved hands on the steering wheel and Nick’s warm laughter as he turned into a hidden drive hemmed in by Canadian hemlocks ... She was laughing with him as the Volvo’s wheels slipped on the icy incline and the car slid sideways.

“I guess we’re stuck here,” he said.

“I guess we are,” she’d answered.

Nick ... Nick ... She reached out for him, needing his arms around her, knowing that the cabin waited for them with its blazing fireplace, stocked refrigerator, and soft feather bed. They’d struggled against this for so long, and now she knew what was inevitable. She could imagine the feel of his lean body against her own, and her throat and face flushed hot with desire.

“Oh, Nick. ”

But even as she said his name, his image faded, and the snow was gone, replaced by a sandy beach and a black night sky studded with glowing stars. Salt tears clouded her eyes and she felt the pain radiate out from the place where her heart should have been. Nick ...

The pain tore at her, ripped and chewed with savage ferocity. Ree opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. Her skin was on fire ... her tongue swollen and dry. If she believed in hell, she could have believed that she’d died and ended up there. But she didn’t ... she’d given up believing in anything when she was six years old.

Flash! The pictures were back, jerking across a tattered gray screen. A ship’s galley. Flash! Nick’s head on the pillow next to hers. Flash! A cavalcade of black limousines and the cloying scent of lilies.

“No!”

Nick’s arms were around her, lifting her, carrying her. His mouth covered hers in a searing kiss of passion as a wall of water engulfed them. She wasn’t afraid. The water felt good on her hot skin; it soothed the raw ache that gnawed at her stomach and sent shards of glass through her head. She felt the water on her parched lips, tasted the salt, and inhaled the cool moisture deep into her lungs.

The blackness came and went, came and went. In between, she thought she saw impossible scenes around her ... walls of ancient cities, fallen columns, and a road of giant blocks of stone that stretched out to the curve of the earth. Swaying forests of green kelp rose around them. Red and yellow, blue, and purple fish darted and floated between the leafy fronds of foliage. Massive creatures slid past amid the haunting songs of ghostly leviathans.

She had so many questions she wanted to ask Nick. Why was his hair so light and how had his beautiful brown eyes turned to green? How had he found her on the deck of the Anastasiya and why was she so thirsty? But, try as she might, no sounds would pass her lips.

She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and feel his mouth on hers, but she found it impossible to break free from her crystalline prison. And this time, when the dark tide threatened to sweep over her, she didn’t fight it. Nick was here, and he would take care of her. If Nick had found her, everything would be all right.

She opened her eyes to see a wall of molten lava erupting from the forest around them. Heat flashed against her skin, and she clamped her eyes shut against the glare. But not before she’d seen the impossible, seen the tattooed men with their flashing spears and heard their hideous war cries.

“Don’t be afraid,” Nick said, and this time, it seemed that she heard his voice in her head. “I won’t let them hurt you.”

Why would they hurt me? she wondered. They aren’t real. Any minute the piano will begin to play and the Little Tramp will throw his hat and knock them all down. They will fall like dominoes. Flash. Flash. Flash.

“How dare you show your face here?” ’Enakai demanded. She rose from her massive jade throne and glared down at him from the height of the marble dais.

Alex ignored the theatrics and held out th. . .