Page 32 of Lair

“Submersible,” he corrects, mouth crooking. “But yes.”

The tender boat slows and Adrian, now on the foredeck at the bow, hops onto the submersible’s swim platform, undogs the hatch wheel at the top of the glass bubble and hinges it open, all while in an impeccably tailored suit. It’s somehow the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.

Then he holds out a hand.

“Me?” I snort.

“You.” He smiles, an enigmatic flicker of his lips. “You only live once.”

I can’t say no to that smile—but now I have to impress him. I slip off my flats, hand them to Jason, and jump onto the submersible beside Adrian, ignoring the offered hand. He smirks; mission accomplished. “After you,” he says.

It’s quite the trick to lower myself through the hatch in my short dress without flashing everyone, but I manage it. Just. Trying to calm my breathing, I take stock of my new surroundings. The cockpit is an acrylic sphere of glass bristling with consoles. I’m in one of two leather seats, and before I know it Adrian has lowered himself through the hatch into the other one. He screws the hatch tight and turns to me. His face is mere feet away and I am overwhelmed by his presence, the closeness of his body. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod, not trusting myself to speak, and he picks up a walkie-talkie. “Ready when you are, Mr. Young.”

“Roger that,” Jason’s voice crackles back.

He hops onto the submersible—it’s bobbing and rolling around on the sea’s surface like a toy top—and begins to shrug off the harness on the submersible that’s attached to the crane.

And there, crouched close by the glass sphere, he turns his head to look in at us.

No. Not us. Me.

He watches me with a strangely conflicted reluctance, and I feel a cold wash of foreboding shoot through me.

Then the harness is lifted away and Jason hops back onto the tender boat, radio to lips.

“You’re ready to dive, Mr. Voper.”

“Thank you, Mr. Young.” Adrian eyes me. “Ready?”

Another breathless nod. He must see I’m crawling with nerves, because he speaks very steadily as he reaches down to turn a knob. “You’re going to hear some air release. And there’s going to be some pressure in your ears.”

There’s a hissing—the venting of the ballast—and the whole craft suddenly tips forward in a sickening lurch and I claw at Adrian’s arm, feeling as if I’m about to fall out through the glass sphere. “Oh-my-fucking-God.”

“It’s okay,” he says calmly. “It’ll roll back in a minute.”

That minute does not come nearly fast enough. Plumes of bubbles cloud out of the vents around us, and the water bobbing around the glass sphere we’re in sloshes up and swallows us and the choppiness of the surface is replaced with a sudden calm. We’re under.

“Holy shit,” I breathe, craning my head up. The Lair’s lights dance above us, raying down into the depths. My 360-degree view from our bubble shows a cool blue twilight quickly fading to black. We’re falling, imperceptibly but definitively descending toward the ocean floor, two beams of light blasting out from the submersible into the void. Even the thought of all that crushing weight on top of us cannot suppress the awe that is spreading through me. Far off, I see the shapes of dolphins flitting through the wavery murk.

“What is this?” I shiver.

But he does not answer me. He only smiles, and takes hold of the fighter jet-style joystick between us. The submersible glides about, and suddenly its twin beams of light travel over a coral reef, an astonishing explosion of color that takes the breath out of me. Fish and moray eels dart in and out of fantastic growths, hot vents blur and ripple water. But this glimpse of a luminous undersea kingdom is soon, in turn, gone. We drop lower, the water shading bluer and bluer, then black. The Lair’s lights above us are long gone. We are a speck in the void, the only thing seen the twin beams before us, motes of detritus drifting through them.

And it hits me: I am trapped alone at the bottom of the sea with Adrian Voper.

His proximity is like a drug. We’re so close we’re sharing the same breath, this space so cramped our knees are touching. I make a mental note to add knees to my list of erogenous zones.

When Adrian turns to me, his pale face is very serious. “Do you trust me?”

I moisten my lips. It trembles out of me: “Yes.”

He smiles, a seam of white teeth that makes me feel giddily, inexpressibly flattered.

Then he flicks a switch and we’re plunged into pitch black.

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