Undertow Read Online Free

time they’d shared the last bite of cheesecake and found the bottom of the bottle of Chardonnay, Marissa wanted nothing more than to curl up next to Jim’s heart and stay there forever.
    Instead, she settled on wrapping herself in his strong arms and yielding to his mouth on hers.
     
      
    It was two in the morning, and she was caught in the hellish dream again. Same scene as every night: the enormous log, pinning her in the sand while the surf tugged insistently until it finally pulled her out to sea. She watched her body thrash around in the frigid water; knowing it would drown. Then she was back inside her skin again, surrounded in blackness. The crushing pain overwhelmed her.
    This was the part of the dream where she usually woke up, desperate to escape and gasping for air. But tonight, when she jerked in her sleep, Jim was lying beside her. He wrapped his body tightly around hers and held her close. Reassured, she sunk back into the dream.
     
    Yielding to the inevitable, her muscles froze like concrete in the cold water. She didn’t want to die, not here, alone in the black ocean. An intense pressure seized her, collapsing her chest and forcing the salt water from her lungs in a sudden rush. Something silken and firm brushed her lips, pried her mouth open. Warmth spread through her body as the pain receded. A wrap of some sort enfolded her. Waves of peace and exhaustion swept through her. In that strange way dreams have of shifting randomly from one scene to another, a face appeared. An iridescent shimmer as the sunlight filtered through the dark water and reflected off his skin, so translucent she could see the veins below, faintly blue. Marissa reached out with longing, mesmerized, but he vanished.
     
    She cried out at the sudden abandonment and woke. With Jim’s thick legs pressed against hers, Marissa stared into the dark room. The vision from her dream was so vivid, and she realized beyond doubt that she had never desired anyone as much as she did that exquisite creature.
    The unexpected desire brought with it a sudden insight: that awful night at Crescent Beach, she didn’t just black out on the sand, emotionally and physically exhausted, or suffer a concussion and elaborate hallucination. Her dream wasn’t some nightmare her mind created as a metaphor for the drama in her life, the loss of Drake and her life as she knew it. It wasn’t a dream at all.
    Yes, she had fallen asleep on the beach. But when the tide came in, she was trapped by the log and dragged out into the ocean. She nearly drowned , she was certain now.But she was rescued, impossibly, by a creature who should not exist. A man, one able to endure frigid water and strong currents.
    A man who lived in the sea. With Bethany.

 
     
    Five
     
    J im was easy. Or, to be truthful, being with Jim was easy. Comfortable. He never tried to impress her with his intellect or wit, unlike Drake, who got off on making Marissa feel inferior and immature. Jim didn’t screw with her mind, either. He was a face-value kind of guy. When they hung out, it was chill. Peaceful, even.
    But beyond that? Sure, she liked Jim, enjoyed his company. He always had a ready quip to make her laugh. They shared tastes in music and politics. And the chemistry definitely worked.  Still, did she love him? Absent was the heat, that burning obsession over every imagined slight or feared rejection. With Drake, she’d agonized when he was away, craved him even. At first sight, Marissa had known Drake belonged with her.
    That no longer mattered. Her relationship with Drake was game over, true love or not. Plus Jim was sweet and sexy and actually made her feel good about herself.
    Even if she wasn’t certain about her feelings for her new boyfriend, their friends all assumed she was madly in love with him. Erin teased her about being so hyper and giddy, and said Marissa acted like she was on another planet sometimes. True, she spent all her free time with Jim, and she hadn’t