Fire and Ice: A New Adult Erotic Romance Read Online Free PDF Page B

endless.
    I join the line of those waiting for their polar bear swim. I slip off my dyed satin pumps. I hang the little velvet jacket on a post. A man behind me helps with the zipper on my skirt.
    “Thanks,” I say, the frigid air stealing my breath.
    “My pleasure.”
    I step from my skirt, roll the stockings down my legs, and in nothing but silk bikinis and velvet bodice, wait my turn.
    “It’s cold,” the man at the end of the dock tells me.
    I give him a look that I hope conveys how unnecessary his warning is.
    “It’s a shock. But you’re in and out right away, and we’ve got guys standing by.”
    I nod.
    “Ready?” he says.
    I am. My toes leave the dock. I jump out as far as I can. I am reckless and wild. The moment before my head plunges beneath the water, Athena’s shriek slices the air.
    “She can’t swim!”
     
    * * *
     
    But I can. In the months after I left Caleb, I took lessons. There’s a special humiliation to this. Three-year-olds look cute paddling around in flotation devices. Adults do not. I stuck with it, as did two of my classmates, a widower in his seventies and a housewife nearing fifty. Like me, they both used the water to escape.
    “You won’t win any gold medals,” our instructor told us after our last lesson. “But you can save yourself.”
    I burst through the water, chunks of ice battering my cheeks, scraping my arms. My lungs scream for air. I gulp a breath. Before I sink again, hands, steady and sure, clasp my wrists. I feel as light as a snowflake. In moments, I’m on the dock, then cradled against someone’s chest.
    I brace to push away, but then see who holds me.
    It’s George.
    “Oh, sweetheart,” he’s saying, his words a whisper, a murmur, a plea. “What did he do to you? What did he do?”
    My teeth chatter so hard, I can’t answer him. Someone tosses a blanket over my bare legs, but it’s still not enough.
    “Oh, my God, oh my, God, Peri, Peri, Peri.” Athena sobs and clutches at both me and George, pulling us too close. We’re soaked and we’ll ruin her dress. “What were you thinking?”
    Talking is beyond anything I can do at the moment. I send a pleading look at George, willing him to interpret my thoughts and weave a story that will get my sister back to her wedding.
    “She told me she was going to do this,” he says, “earlier in the evening.”
    “But she can’t even swim.”
    George shifts me in his arms, deftly disengaging us from Athena. “Oh, I think she can. I think she can swim just fine.”
    David arrives. His eyes go huge, but some tacit agreement passes between him and George, some sort of secret best friend guy thing. A moment later, he’s tugging Athena into his arms, leading her back to the wedding reception, getting her to laugh.
    As George carries me up the balcony steps, I cast my glance around, a frantic heartbeat rising in my throat.
    “Shh,” George says. “He’s gone.”
    I relax into his embrace.
    Caleb never was very good at dealing.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Eight
     
     
    IN MY SUITE, George undresses me, although there is little left to peel off of my body. Still, he does, with careful fingers. I stand, naked and shivering on the bath mat while water flows into the tub.
    His tuxedo jacket is crumpled on the floor, ruined, I’m certain, thanks to icy lake water.
    “Hang on, sweetheart,” he says. “Let’s get you warm again.”
    I want to tell him no amount of steam can melt the ice, but my teeth chatter too hard.
    George pushes up his sleeves, but by the time he helps me into the bathtub, the dress shirt is soaked. I sink beneath the surface, my hair floating above me. Unlike my plunge into the lake, this is a slow caress of water. Warmth returns to my toes, my fingertips, my nose. I emerge to find George’s worried face mere inches away.
    His eyes lock with mine.
    “I’m here,” I say, a little breathless from my time beneath the water and the intensity of his stare.
    “Yes,” he says. “You