Chapter 4

Her mind was a bonfire of broken images and raw sensation. The drug had burned away reason, leaving only instinct.

She couldn't see his face clearly. He was just a shape, a presence, a source of warmth and strength in the cold, terrifying water. He was the anchor. He was safety.

She pressed closer, her feverish cheek finding the cool, wet skin of his neck. It felt good. Solid. Her arms tightened their grip, molding her body to his, trying to absorb his heat, his stability.

And then, from the depths of her shattered consciousness, a name surfaced. A name tied to a desperate, twisted need for comfort, for the fantasy of what should have been.

"Kason..."

The name left her lips as a soft, breathless sigh.

It was like throwing a switch.

The warmth in his body vanished, replaced by something arctic. The arm around her waist, which had been a firm brace, became a vise. The pressure was sudden, painful. It felt like his fingers were digging into her bones.

His eyes, which had been dark with a complex mix of concern and desire, were now just... black. Empty voids of fury.

"Who did you just say?" he bit out, the words low and serrated, as if dragged over broken glass.

Eleanora was lost in her hallucination. She was being held, rescued. This was how it was supposed to feel. She didn't register the danger, only the drug-induced mirage of tenderness.

She murmured the name again, "Kason," and, tilting her head up, she tried to find his mouth with hers.

That was the final transgression.

It was the one thing he could not, would not, tolerate.

A sound that was half laugh, half snarl, ripped from his throat. It was the sound of something primal and possessive being violated.

He shoved her away.

There was no warning. One moment she was clinging to him, the next she was airborne, her body a weightless, helpless arc in the dim light.

She hit the water hard.

The cold was a brutal slap, a punishment. It rushed into her mouth, her nose, shocking her system. The violent coughing that followed was agonizing, but it was a pinprick of reality in the fog.

The chill was a predator, sinking its teeth into her skin, a stark contrast to the fire still burning in her veins.

Horace stood a few feet away, the water swirling around his waist. His chest rose and fell in harsh, ragged breaths. He didn't move to help her. He just watched, his face a mask of cold fury, like a god judging a sinner.

She clawed at the water, her nails finding nothing. The combination of extreme heat and cold was a unique form of torture. A low, wounded whimper escaped her lips, the sound of an animal in a trap. Tears, hot and useless, streamed down her face, mixing with the pool water.

She managed to get her head above the surface, gasping for air, wiping the water from her eyes.

The dim, blue underwater lights of the pool cast an eerie glow. Her vision, for the first time in an hour, started to clear. The fuzzy silhouette sharpened into hard lines and cruel angles.

Her blood ran cold.

That wasn't Kason.

That wasn't the face of the man who had betrayed her. It was the face of the man who had warned her. The face from the newspaper clippings. The face that had stared down at her in the elevator with such unnerving intensity.

It was Horace.

The recognition was an electric shock. It jolted through her spine, overriding the drug. Fear, pure and undiluted, took over.

She turned, scrambling, swimming desperately for the edge of the pool. For escape.

He moved.

With long, powerful strides, he cut through the water, the ripples of his advance reaching her first. He was a shark, and she was bleeding. He blocked her path to the steps, a solid wall of muscle and menace.

Her fingers were inches from the tiled edge when his hand closed around her ankle.

It was a manacle of flesh and bone.

He yanked.

She was dragged backward, away from safety, back into the deep, back to him.