Page 49 of A Girl and HER Prince
Groaning, she turned to Venice. “I am so sorry!”
“Don’t worry. Who would’ve thought a barracuda would mistake you for a fish? A beautiful one, sure, but…” His gaze running over her made her shiver for a different reason. “I always thought you looked more like an angel, honestly.”
She laughed shakily. Trust him to joke at a time like this… trustherto relax when he did. She caught the shell of the strange trireme warship ahead of them with her beam of light. “Is that what I think it is?”
He whistled next to her, pulling out of the water. Dripping loudly, he moved up the bank to get a closer look at the rotting hull.
She could scarcely believe the mossy-green wood was mostly intact, though it seemed held together by seaweed and barnacles. “How old is that?”
“If you can believe Achilles, more than two millennia. This cavern must’ve formed over it through the years… maybe it caved in at the sides?” Shining his flashlight over the vast walls of the dark cave, he nodded. “Here’s the rock slide. Incredible!”
She shivered at being in the presence of such incredible history. Wading through the mostly black water, she felt a strange foreboding. Their friends should’ve been here to greet them when they came. Wasn’t that their line they’d followed to reach the ship? “Do you think Achilles and Deedee already left?”
Splashing back to her, Venice grasped her hand. “Not a chance. If they’d gotten here first, they’d be swinging off the masts already.”
Livvy didn’t doubt it. “Then who left the line behind?”
He directed the blaring beam of light from where they’d first entered the cave to where the line showed them the way out on the opposite end. “Achilles said that these caverns led out to a lagoon, but…” He shook his head. “I don’t know who could’ve run the line, but we’ll need to do more diving to get out of here.” Squeezing her hand, he helped her up to a flat granite ledge so they could sit on the rocks and catch their breath.
Livvy’s tank weighed down her back. She hadn’t realized how tired she was from the dive. The thought of swimming through these caverns to find their way out felt even more exhausting.
“Our best bet is to radio Bris and get the group to pick us up on the other side of this.” Venice pulled out a yellow walkie-talkie. It was a different model than she’d seen. He cranked the handle on its side, winding it round and round. “Once we find our way out of here, I don’t want to have to trek barefoot across the island so they can reach us.” After a few more tries, the radio came to life in a burst of static.
That wasn’t a good sign! Venice flipped through the channels with pretty much the same results. There had to be a lot of rock between them and the surface. Her heart picked up speed. Getting out of here was about to get more difficult, wasn’t it?
Venice stubbornly pressed down the side button. “Can anyone read me out there?” he called. “Anyone?”
Only the static monsters.
“Maybe if we wait here a little longer,” Livvy said, “they might find us.”
Venice set the radio on the rocks next to her knee, his forehead creased. “I wonder what that storm is doing?”
Livvy shivered… and then kept shivering. This cave was freezing, and the last thing she wanted was to be stuck down here during one of those vicious August hurricanes she’d heard so much about.
More and more, she regretted listening to Deedee—leaving behind the wet suit, coming on this dive, even buying the story that she could defeat Venice’s charm in the first place.
Fat chance of that—he was being a perfect gentleman, well, one who touched her every chance he got. His arms found her. “Livvy,” he whispered into her ear. “You’re shaking so hard.”
“I kn-know! I’m ju-just so cold!”
He tucked her against his warm chest, making soothing noises and kissing the top of her head. She didn’t try to fight him,couldn’t, not after their scare from earlier. His thumb circled against the back of her neck, turning her limp like a ragdoll.
This was definitely heating her up in all the right ways. For all his arrogance, the guy knew what he was doing, and his familiar touch was actually a comfort in the face of this danger. Over his shoulder, she watched the odd shadows against the walls of the cave caused by his flashlight. This hollowed-out space looked too big, too dark, too creepy. Anything could be hiding in this vault under the sea.
She squeezed her eyes shut, concentrating on the feel of his hands only.
After a moment of this peaceful truce, she felt his breath tickle against her ear in a growl. She stiffened before he reached behind her shoulders to tug at her tank.
She jerked to attention. “What are you doing?”
“We’re switching out,” he said. “We’re going to have to go back through these tunnels, but they’re too narrow for you to use my alternate air source. My tank’s doing better than yours. It’s at sixty percent.”
Of course, it was. Someone knew how to conserve their air. Livvy had been gulping hers down like a whiskey-loving sailor. “You sure you’ll have enough?”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah.” He was having trouble running the tubes through her vest, and so he set his light on the rock next to her. “Hold that.”
She picked up the light and immediately felt her hand go limp when she saw a dark form advancing on them from the side.
