3

      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?”

      “My climbing partner and fiancé, Alexi. He wanted things...that even he was afraid to admit.”

      “Like you? Are you afraid to admit what you want?” Hemi asked. Again, so much easier to turn the spotlight on her.

      “Like me,” she admitted. “Which is why I’m here trying to teach you and the other candidates all I know about surviving in hostile environments. Maybe that is what I need to finally feel some peace.”

      “I hope it works for you,” he said.

      “You do?” she asked.

      “Yes. I like you, Jessie. I want you to be happy.”

      “You barely know me.”

      “I know, right? But there it is. When you left the party I was like...well, a typical guy and I thought screw it. If Jessie doesn’t want me then I don’t want her.”

      She drifted, putting a few feet between them, then cupped her hand on the surface. He had a second to recognize what she was doing before she pushed her hand through the water and a huge splash hit him in the face.

      “Screw you, too, Thor,” she said, but there was a hint of laughter in her voice.

      When he brushed the droplets from his face and looked around for her, she was gone.

      The water was still except for the ripples caused by the breeze, and he floated on his back to give his legs a rest. He waited. No matter how at home she felt in the water, sooner or later she’d have to come up for air.

      She did—behind him. He heard her surface a second before she once again arched a powerful spray of water at him.

      He rolled over and used his water polo experience to do an American crawl toward her. Keeping his head above the surface, he saw the shock in her eyes as he approached. God, he wanted her.

      He’d known it earlier.

      Hell, he hadn’t followed her out of the party and to the gym and then taken her to the lake to cement a friendship. The desire that rocked through him was hot and hard. It made everything else fade away.

      He stopped just as their bodies met, put his arm around her waist and used his legs to keep them above the water. Her arms snaked around his neck and her nearly naked breasts pressed against his chest.

      His heart beat so loudly he was sure she could hear it, and his blood flowed heavily in his veins.

      Her nipples were hard, poking into his chest. He tightened his grip, holding her to him as he looked into her eyes. They weren’t lost or lonely right now, and if he had one goal it was to make her forget whatever her pain was.

      “You got me, Hemi,” she said, rubbing her fingers over his light stubble and then higher, tracing the birthmark around his eye.

      She made him proud of the mark, though there were times growing up when he’d wished he didn’t have it.

      “Do I?” he asked. “I think I might be able to hold you for this moment, but I’m far from catching you, Jess.”

      “Jess? I don’t believe I gave you permission to call me that,” she said.

      “Lady,