Pushing The Limits

She sighed.

“Here we are,” Hemi said, reaching back and holding out his hand to her. “It’s a little tricky to navigate in the dark.”

She put her hand in his. She’d learned a long time ago to take assistance in new terrain. Though she’d been out here with Ace a few days ago, she still didn’t know the land as well as she’d like. But she would. Terrain was her area of expertise. A lot of the training she’d be doing with the astronaut candidates would be in temperature-controlled rooms, but she also had a few excursions planned for them. Surprises that she’d tailor to meet the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. They needed to be able to react to any situation.

The lake was big enough to supply water for the ranch and the neighboring city of Cole’s Hill, and a rough path along the edge joined the main ranch buildings and the Cronus facility. A motion sensor lamp flicked on as they stepped onto the wooden dock that pushed out into the water.

“Here we go,” he said, drawing her toward two Adirondack chairs positioned side by side on the dock. She stood there with the breeze on her face and the sound of the water in her ears. She could see the moon’s reflection in the ripples as they sat. He smelled of a crisp, expensive aftershave and something masculine, a musk that she was sure was all his own. Something she’d remember long after this job was over and he was gone.

Her father had taught her to classify everything. Touch, scent, sight. She used all of those things to survive.

“The first time I came out here... I was surprised at how noisy it was. I expected it to be quiet—and it is quieter than the city, but not silent.”

She smiled over at him. “City boy?”

“Born and bred. I’m at home in the water because I grew up in California, and there isn’t a mountain trail I can’t climb, but this...this feels foreign. The cows, the insects. Everything is different here.”

“I know what you mean. Most of my childhood was spent on my parents’ research yacht or on the island that we called home. I’m good at identifying poisonous insects and avoiding spiky plants that are lethal, but this is different.”

He stretched his arm out behind her on the back of her Adirondack chair. He wasn’t quite touching her shoulder but she felt his body heat on this cool September evening.

“What scares you, Jessie?”

It was an oddly probing question from someone she’d just met, but considering that she needed to know his fears, she was tempted to answer. Her job for the Cronus missions was to find weaknesses and exploit them to see how far the candidates could be pushed until they broke. And making this about her job made it easier for her. It had been a long ten months since Alexi’s death and she wanted to pretend she’d healed, but she hadn’t. She knew it by the way she was simultaneously drawn to Hemi and driven to hide from him.

“A situation that I can’t control,” she said. “I know that control is an illusion but I have techniques for dealing with most of them. Still, there are a few things that elude me.”

“Like what?”

“People.”

“People?”

“Yes, you can’t rely on them,” she said. “No one really knows how they will react until they are forced into challenging circumstances. I’ve been in more extreme places than most and there are still times when I’m not sure what someone will do next.”

“Like what?” he asked again.

“Like this,” she said, tired of resisting herself and needing to see exactly what Hemi was after. She leaned over and kissed him.

His lips were firm and his breath minty fresh. She felt the dart of his tongue rub over her lips before it pulled back. She tilted her head, deepening the kiss as excitement flowed through her. It had been a long time since she’d experienced this. She felt alive.

She’d been running from him since he’d come up to her at the party. Because he’d immediately made her feel again.

It wasn’t deep—hell, how could it be? They’d just met. But it was something and she wasn’t ready for it. She had to find a moment to breathe.

Breaking the kiss, she took off her shoes before standing up. She looked at him. He watched her silently with those big, dark eyes of his. They were immeasurably deep, like the sea over the Mariana Trench. And that was okay. He wasn’t anything to her but a man.

She pulled off her Cronus sweatshirt and pants, leaving her standing in her underwear and bra, before she turned and dove into the lake. The water surrounded her and she found the peace she was never going to find on the land.

3 (#u9e2e8315-e547-5b64-844c-8125b054a931)

HEMI WATCHED THE moonlight reflecting first off the lake, then off the woman who was swimming in it. She’d been breathtaking in just her underwear. She was complex, and nothing had helped him understand her better. He had pushed a little too hard because that was his personality. He lived right at the edge, always testing the boundaries to get where he needed to go, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

He stripped down to his boxers and jumped into the water after her. It was cold at first, making goose bumps spread over his body. The water was refreshingly brisk, but his body adjusted to it as he swam. Jessie stayed just out of reach, diving under the surface and swimming, finally surfacing and treading water a few feet from him. He trod water next to her for a moment and then shifted to float on his back.

It reminded him of his space walks. How he’d floated there, outside the International Space Station, looking for something in the inky darkness of the cosmos that he couldn’t find. Still hadn’t found.

He stared up at the constellations, naming them all in his head, identifying the stars and acknowledging to himself that he still didn’t know what it was he reached for. Why he was never close to finding it.

“What’s your fear, Hemi? What is it that makes you keep going, after your near miss?” she asked.

He shrugged. He didn’t mind asking for her darkest secrets but sharing his own was something else. How could he put into words the emptiness that had been inside him for so long? That would make him seem weak, and he was Thor, mighty, unvanquished, or at least that was how his astronaut brothers and sisters saw him.

“Hemi?” she asked again, her voice hypnotic. As he had always imagined the call of the sirens that led sailors astray.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I keep going up into space and trying to beat records. I train and look for new missions that challenge me and force me to do things others haven’t achieved but there is still—” He turned his head and looked over at her. She continued to tread water next to him.

Her long blond hair looked dark plastered against her skull. Some tendrils clung to her bare shoulders, one looping over the strap of her bra. The thin flesh-colored fabric was transparent now that it was wet and he noticed that her nipples were hard. He was trying to be cool and not focus on the fact that she was nearly naked and less than an arm’s length away from him.

He struggled to continue their conversation rather than swim closer to pull her into his arms. He wanted to feel their limbs entwined and the warmth of her body against his.

“What?” she asked.

“Something empty inside,” he said at last. Damn, he’d meant to keep that to himself, but there it was. The ugly truth he hid from the world—and sometimes from himself. “I don’t know what it will take to fill it.”

He’d probably have been smarter not to admit this to an instructor who would be evaluating him.

“That’s what makes you dare,” she said at last, flipping her body to float on her back next to him, her arms spread wide at her sides. “I have the same emptiness inside of me.”

“You do?” he asked, his voice deeper and huskier. Somehow, her admission turned him on even more than he already was. She was blunt at times and that honesty of hers was a powerful aphrodisiac. Her hair floated around her head and he couldn’t help glancing again at nipples, which were still visible though the cotton of her bra, and looking even harder.

He reached for her, water droplets cascading off his skin, but at the last second he let his arm drop. She was talking to him. Sharing with him as a friend. He couldn’t turn this sexual.

But his raging hard-on was making it difficult for him to pay attention to anything other than how she looked.

Maybe she was a siren.

That would explain the spell she had cast over him.

“Everyone does. Most try to ignore it with routines and by filling their lives with stuff, but some people can’t ignore it.”

“Like whatever made you sad earlier?”

She went still, her hands no longer sculling the water.

“Yes. Like that.”

“What was it?”