Extreme

by Lark O'Neal

  Chapter TWO

  On the bus to The Blue Lagoon, we settle in with bottles of water. I lean back, genuinely exhausted. The seat is comfortable and deep and I tuck my hoodie against the window as the bus starts to move. Next to me, Gabe has done the same thing, crossed his arms, pulled his buff up over his lower face, and closed his eyes.

  And I don’t know about him, but I’m asleep in seconds. The next thing I know he’s rubbing my knee gently. “Kaitlin. We’re here.”

  Blinking, fuzzy, I sit up. “It’s still dark. How long were we on the road?”

  “Only about twenty minutes. It’s going to be dark for another hour or so. Do you want to get some coffee and a pastry or something before we head to the pools?”

  “That sounds really good.”

  We troop with the other people getting off the bus down a long sidewalk bordered by walls of snow. Giant walls, over my head. As far as I can see, there is only snow and lava fields. And darkness. Why do people make so much of this place?

  “It’s nearly ten and the sun still isn’t up.” I say to Gabe, who has gestured for me to go first into the cafeteria-style cafe. I fall in line behind a family speaking a language I don’t know. A little boy peers over his father’s shoulder at me, his eyes big and bright and deep hazel.

  “It takes some getting used to.” He yanks the hat off yet again and stuffs it in his pocket, unzips his coat. It’s the first time I’ve seen him in good light. His face is no less extraordinary. It’s not perfect—the nose is aggressive and his mouth is wide—but the balance of large dark eyes to long lines of bone, cheekbone to jaw to chin, the angle of the scar, is so beautiful I can hardly look away. His mouth is lush like those old paintings, and it is the most kissable mouth I have ever seen. The idea of pressing my lips into them sends a spray of red sparks through my body.

  “Is it the scar?” he asks.

  “What?” I raise my gaze to his eyes.

  He smiles slowly and uses a finger to trace a line down the scar, and I realize that he’s teasing me, that he knows I was looking at his mouth. Which makes me do it again. “I fell out of a tree house,” he says. “Landed face-first on a rock. Broke my nose and dented my skull over my eye.”

  “How old were you?”

  “Six.”

  “Holy cow. That could have killed you.”

  He shrugs. “Not really. Kids are tough.”

  “Your mother must have had hysterics.”

  “It was my dad who fainted.”

  I laugh. “Really?”

  “He did.” He points gently and I turn around in front of the case full of sandwiches, pastries, eggs, yogurt, fruit. My belly instantly says egg, yogurt, ham sandwich. I gather them and Gabe gives me a funny look. I think he’s noticing the amount of food. “Um, I kind of have a big appetite.” I don’t really want to get into the whole snowboarding thing right this second. I mean, I told him I was a snowboarder, but I know from experience that people assume you do it recreationally.

  My pursuit is a bit more serious.

  “It’s not that,” he says, and reaches for exactly the same things I chose.

  “Weird.”

  He nods and we make our way through the drinks cases. I pick up more water and some chocolate milk. When I arrive at the cash register, he has the same things. He lifts a brow. “Don’t you want some coffee or something?”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “No kidding.” His mouth tilts sideways. “Me, either. I don’t even think it smells good, which most people seem to think it does.”

  “Really?” I can’t help grinning. “I think it smells like poo.”

  His irises shine as he looks down at me. A rustling sensation moves down the back of my neck as powerfully as if he touched me. He leans closer, his voice rumbly. “Clearly we’re soulmates.”

  I roll my eyes. “Clearly.”

  We’ve reached the register and an ice queen beauty with her hair pulled back severely from her face adds the numbers. I reach into my pocket for the kronas I picked up at JFK.

  “No,” he says, touching my arm, and shoving euros into the girl’s hand. “My treat.”

  “I don’t mind buying my food.”

  He pushes my hand away. “My treat.”

  We settle at a table that looks out to the hot springs, a vast body of steaming water. It’s dark, the water barely visible. Still no sign of the sun, but there are a lot of stars. They spray across the sky in wide, sparkly swaths, almost washing out the sky in place. “Good grief. I’ve never seen so many stars.”

  “You should see what it’s like away from all the cities, on some of the volcanoes. It’s crazy. Northern lights wash them out, but you know, not such a bad thing.” As he talks, he’s shrugging out of his heavy coat.

  He is not too skinny. At all. A thermal Henley clings to broad shoulders and chest and lean belly, showing off the fact he’s in really good condition.

  He’s devouring his sandwich and I haven’t even taken off my coat. Get it together, Bouvier, I think. It’s probably the Vicodin they gave me for my injuries making me a goof. With my usual briskness, I yank my hat off and shrug out of my coat, and I pay the price. The wrist wakes up and bleats. My shoulder roars. For a second, I just hold my arm close to my waist, letting it calm down. In a minute it does.

  “Bad fall, was it?” he asks.

  “I’ve had worse.” It would have been my choice to eat the sandwich first, too, but I’m not going to be exactly the same. Instead, I choose the egg and the milk. “Working on some new moves.” I shrug. “It happens.”

  His grin tilts on one side. “Not to me.”

  “You ride? Ski?”

  “Surf. Grew up in Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii.” I lean in. “That must have been pretty cool. That’s where you got the volcano bug, huh?”

  “Definitely. My dad was really into them, so we spent a lot of time exploring.”

  “Is your dad a scientist, too?”

  “No, he's a science teacher. He just loves volcanoes and turned me on to them.”

  I think about the baking soda and vinegar papier-mâché volcanoes from elementary school. “Well, who doesn’t love a volcano?”

  “I know, right?”

  Wiping my fingers on a napkin, I rip open the sandwich. “I bet he totally loves it that this is your job.”

  “Oh, yeah. But I love it, too. I mean, what could be a cooler job?”

  I lift a shoulder. “Well, riding doesn’t suck.”

  He gives me a quizzical look. “Snowboarding is your job?”

  “Yep.” The sandwich is ham, which is not my favorite, but I don’t care. It’s food. “Not that my mother approves.”

  He looks a little less enchanted with me.

  “What’s wrong, Mr. Geophysicist? Not serious enough for you?”

  For a long minute, he takes my measure. “I can tell you’re smart. It just doesn’t seem like the choice of a smart person.”

  “Oh, ho! A snob, huh?” A prick of disappointment pierces the little balloon of happiness I’ve been feeling. I’m tempted to lower my eyes, look at my sandwich, but I force myself to hold his gaze.

  “Maybe I am,” he says. “I guess I didn’t realize it until now. Maybe I just don’t know very much about it.”

  “Maybe not.” I sigh and put the sandwich down, hearing the echo of the fight I had with my mother. “But I’m not really in the mood to explain it to a muggle.” I stand up. “Thanks for talking me into coming here, but I’m just going to get my massage now and be frivolous.”

  “Hey, hey,” he says, standing with me. “I’m sorry. Clearly, I hit a nerve.”

  I sigh. “Yeah, and I’m tired of defending my choices.” Not giving him another opening, I head for the door. Maybe I’m being a bitch, but I’m still stinging from my mother’s ultimatum and I’m not about to put up with more crap from some random dude I just met.

  Too bad. Guys always seem to be jerks in some way or another, but this one seemed really in
teresting. I glance over my shoulder, and he’s watching me, face serious. For one tiny split second, I let myself take another sweet glimpse of that mouth, then resolutely turn away.

  Chapter THREE

  The bathing suit I rent is a modest one piece. It covers most of my bruises, but the massage therapist sees them, and in the musical Iceland accent, she asks what I’ve done.

  “Snowboarding fall,” I say, sighing when she begins with my legs. I close my eyes as she works the tension out my body, gently spreads an unguent smelling sharply of arnica over the bruises. The hip still aches when she’s done, but all the secondary aches are gone.

  “The water will make this better, too,” she says, touching my hips with an open palm. Her hand is very hot, which happens with the best massage therapists—they heal with energy no matter who sneers at the idea. I can feel that heat sinking through my skin and the meat and the muscles, all the way into the bone that took such a hard hit. “This will take time to heal fully,” she says, that hand so hot it is nearly burning me. “You must not rush it.”

  Yeah right, I think, and I must make some derisive sound because she leans around to look at my face. “It is important.”

  “Okay,” I say with more feeling, though I really don’t know how long I can actually rest. I might be able to skip the event in Austria, but the X Games are coming up and I have to show up for an event at Whistler next month, and—

  Her hand moves in a healing, hot circle on my hip, my side. I wonder if I should call my coach and let him know I’m taking a time out. Just this once.

  When the massage is over, the therapist directs me toward the pools. I swim from the massage area directly into the open waters. The sun is sullenly edging above the horizon—finally!—turning the sky and the clouds and the snow and the water a thousand shades of pink and purple. Steam billows up in thick clouds and they take on the pastel shades, too, creating shifting views of the black rocks covered with snow, the people with mud on their faces, everything draped and obscured and misted with that purply pink steam.

  It’s beautiful. Otherworldly.

  The water is quite hot, and there is sand underfoot, which I somehow didn’t expect, but of course these are natural springs, not man-made, so who needs concrete? I squat down and scoop up a handful and let it trail through my fingers back into the water.

  “Hey,” Gabe says beside me. “Peace offering.” He’s carrying two paper cups.

  “What is it?”

  “Carrot juice.” He grins. “It’s really pretty tasty.”

  It’s hard not to stare. The water is only to his hips, and of course his torso is naked, and his skin is golden brown, quite tan, which is weird for the middle of the winter until I remember he said he grew up in Hawaii. Maybe that’s where he’s been, over the holidays or something. His shoulders are broad and strong, his arms ropy with the kind of muscle you get from ordinary hard work, and his belly is lean. Black hair runs in a line down the middle of it. I want to touch that hair, follow it downward. The thought gives me a little pulse between my legs.

  Whoa. I look at his face. What is it about this guy?

  Raising an eyebrow in an attempt to hang on to my aloofness, I take one of the cups. “Only because I’m thirsty, Muggle.”

  He laughs. “I’m sorry, okay? You can school me.”

  I shake my head, but the juice is cooling and delicious. “Lost your chance, buddy.”

  “Did I?” His tone is definitely flirty.

  I glare up at him.

  “C’mon,” he says. “Let’s walk. There are some vents over here.”

  “Have you come here a lot?”

  “A few times. I’ve been studying with Professor Fjornir Carl for the past couple of years.”

  “Is he famous, your professor?”

  “In some circles.” He pushes his hair off his forehead and I glimpse the black hair beneath his arms. The sight sends a weird shiver through my body, and I feel a wicked-hot tingle in my belly. I force myself to raise my eyes to his face. “It was a big deal to land a fellowship with him.”

  “Cool.” Eyeing his arms again, I ask directly, “Why are you so tan? Did you go home for Christmas?”

  “Kind of. My dad had to have some surgery at the end of November, so I’ve been home for awhile, helping out my mom.”

  “Is he okay?”

  He shrugs and a bleak expression touches his mouth for a second. “We’ll see.”

  “Sounds serious. I’m sorry.”

  He looks away and when he speaks again, his voice is not steady. “No offense, but I can’t really talk about it.”

  “No worries.” I touch his back, following along beside him. The ground below us slopes away, and I’m suddenly in water up to my neck. I have to hold the empty cup out of the water, and Gabe takes it, swims over to the trash and swims back. “We’re almost there,” he says, taking my hand. We swim into a sparsely occupied area of the gigantic pool, and suddenly the water is very, very hot. Almost too hot.

  Almost.

  “Oh my God,” I say, and let my arms float away from me. My feet are still on the ground, the water up to my neck, and for the first time in days, my hip is not hurting. “This is fantastic.”

  “Right?”

  Waves of steam waver and shift, showing the black rocks surrounding the pool, then hiding them; revealing people across the way, then drawing a curtain around us, a curtain made of pale pink light. It makes Gabe’s skin look darker, casts beads of dew through his curls. I look away, up to the sky. “It looks like the gloaming,” I say, and then feel self-conscious about the word and rush on, “My mother always raves about it. She likes to spend that time of day in her garden.”

  “The blue hour,” he says.

  “Yes! That’s what she calls it.”

  He waves his arms, moving the hottest water toward me and away. “What kind of garden does she have?”

  “Flowers. Beautiful flowers. She has the greenest thumb of all time.” The water stings my feet and I draw them up, treading water a little. “It’s getting a tiny bit too hot here.”

  “Hold on to my arm.”

  He stretches it out, and I grab hold just above his elbow. Beneath my fingers his biceps moves under his skin. He walks through the deepest water, pulling me behind. When he stops, just beyond the too-hot, my body sways toward his and our skin brushes, my thigh against his, my side against his ribs. In my attempt to move away, I swirl the wrong way and our bodies come into full contact, belly to belly. I’m holding his shoulder. His hand, very lightly, touches the small of my back.

  My skin ignites, throat to ankles, breasts and back, thighs rippling. His nostrils flare, which makes me think he must be feeling it, too—or maybe he’s just horny, as guys seem to always be—and he sways against me.

  I look up into his dark, dark eyes and he seems as strange and new and exotic as this place. We just hang there like that, barely touching. I have to resist the urge to put my legs around his waist. Below the water, his hand moves up my back and down again, as if he’s gauging the shape.

  “Wow,” he says softly, eyes locked in mine.

  I don’t even know what to say, but I have absolutely no desire to move away. I pull my hand down the front of his chest. His nipple passes under my palm, and it’s erect, a fact that makes me catch my breath a little.

  He swallows and catches my hand in his, shifting away slightly. “Is it just me, or is there something happening here?”

  “It’s not just you,” I whisper.

  “Whew,” he says, and moves back and I let him, realizing that we can’t just go at it right here. If his nipples are erect, likely something else is, too. I might not have had many lovers, but one of them was a very good teacher.

  Wading toward the shallower water, I keep walking until the frigid air swirls around my torso, cooling my hot skin. I breathe the cold air into my lungs, too, hoping it will freeze the strange arousal I’m feeling.

  But even standing there, I feel his gaze on m
e, and I want to swim back and press my body into his again, lift my face and kiss him, open mouthed. It makes my cheeks flush even deeper.

  Weird. Shift focus, Bouvier, I say to myself. I prop my hands on my hips, surprised to find my shoulder doesn’t hurt that much. The water is helping. The clouds of steam shift and thin, revealing the harsh landscape. “It looks like another planet,” I say. “Not like earth at all.”

  “This is raw Mother Earth, right here.” He’s leaning against the edge of the pool, submerged. “The volcanoes and the geothermal waters and the rocks. It’s her life blood.”

  “Why aren’t there any trees?”

  “They say that there were at one time. There’s a big push to get more trees planted.”

  The electric dazzle has mellowed, so I wade over to where he’s sitting and hold on to the wall. “So you live here now?”

  “Yeah. While I finish my thesis.”

  “Isn’t it kind of…harsh?”

  “The winter is long, but it has its beauties. And the summers are amazing.”

  A gust of superheated water moves over my legs. “Now it’s too hot in this spot!”

  “Me, too. Let’s get some mud.”

  “Mud?”

  “It’s the kind they use in spas—good for your skin.”

  We wander over to a big concrete trough where a pair of couples are scooping out mud. They’re speaking a language I don’t recognize. Turkish, maybe. There’s something eastern European about them, the men with their furry arms and chests and thick hair, the women with curves and make-up.

  When it’s our turn, Gabe says, “Turn around, I’ll put some on your back.”

  I let him, realizing even as I do it that I want the chance to do the same for him. His hands are matter of fact at first, but then he spreads more mud down my arms, back to the top of my neck. My hair is piled on my head and slathered with conditioner, something the massage therapist did before I came out.