Going Down (Divemasters #1)
Page 1
Going Down
Divemasters, Book 1
Jayne Rylon
Happy Endings Publishing
Contents
Copyright
About The Book
Additional Information
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Meet The Divemasters
Naughty News
What Was Your Favorite Part?
Jayne’s Shop
Listen Up!
Get In Touch
About The Author
Also by Jayne Rylon
Copyright © 2016 by Jayne Rylon
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means—including email, file-sharing groups, and peer-to-peer programs—without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
If you have purchased a copy of this ebook, thank you. I greatly appreciate knowing you would never illegally share your copy of this book. This is the polite way of me saying don’t be a thieving asshole, please and thank you!
If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Refer to the don’t-be-a-theiving-asshole section above for clarification. :)
Edited By Mackenzie Walton
Cover Art By Jayne Rylon
ISBN: 978-1-941785-11-9
Divemasters, Book 1
Three SCUBA instructors, who happen to be sexual dominants, are about to take the ultimate plunge. If you’re extraordinarily lucky, you’ll be invited to join them on The Divemaster, where work and pleasure go hand in hand. Welcome aboard!
Archer Banks relishes his carefree lifestyle. Together with friends and fellow divemasters Miguel Torrez and Tosin Ellis, he travels the world, SCUBA diving by day, entertaining lonely female tourists by night. Until his father dies, instantly transforming Archer from a beach bum to a billionaire by shackling him with an enormous, undesired inheritance.
With the help of his family’s longtime butler, Archer is determined to turn his new golden handcuffs into a golden opportunity. He prays Miguel and Tosin will come along for the ride when he repurposes his family’s mega-yacht into a vessel well-suited for both work and hardcore play.
Never in his worst nightmares does he expect their maiden voyage to be such rough sailing. Not only is Archer’s old crush, Waverly Adams, among their passengers, but the men have also stumbled upon a vast sunken treasure—one worth killing for.
Waverly surprises Archer with an alluring naughtiness he never got the chance to experience in their younger days. Busy accepting the challenge she issues his dominant side in The Divemaster’s onboard club every night, he might be distracted and short on sleep. But could he also be blind to more dangerous facets of her personality?
When the divemasters can no longer deny there’s foul play at hand, will Archer be going down with the ship, cursed by his family’s fortune, or will Waverly turn out to be the woman of his most wicked dreams?
Additional Information
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A complete list of Jayne’s books can be found at www.jaynerylon.com/books
Dedication
For Mr. Rylon, who has sacrificed by traveling to each gorgeous setting in the Divemasters books even though he’s afraid of flying, then explored them along with me to be sure my research was as thorough as possible. I know that was a tough job for you ;)
You’re the best SCUBA buddy a girl could ask for (except for that time you were sure my dive computer had gotten stolen when it was actually in your BCD pocket for the whole week of diving). I hope you enjoy the character I made you in this series…not that you read my books! But just in case, someday, you peek inside this one.
One
Archer Banks’s ringing cell trampled the tropical night symphony composed of lulling waves, chirping bugs, and rustling palms. He would have fumbled around on the nightstand to silence the racket if an armful of bronzed, slender woman hadn’t stopped him. After rolling the beach bunny off his chest, he settled her gently on the edge of his double bed. Refusing to be distracted by her wild, sun-bleached mane, or the way the moonlight streaming in the window highlighted her damn-near-perfect ass, he forced his dick’s attention from the adorable snuffle she surrendered as she burrowed into his lumpy pillow.
Archer turned his back on all that natural beauty. He rebelled against everything in his soul by lunging instead for one of the only remnants of offensive technology he allowed to intrude in his life. He didn’t have a choice, really, since the hunk of plastic threatened the integrity of his eardrums by refusing to shut the fuck up.
Only one contact in the entire world had been programmed with the specific God-awful racket that now blared from his phone. The man who was instructed to interrupt Archer’s solitude only in a life-or-death emergency.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Phone in hand, halfway unlocked, he launched himself from the freshly laundered sheets, which smelled of sunshine and ocean spray. He growled to the caller, “Don’t expect me to rush to that bastard’s side for some kind of deathbed confessional.”
Archer figured he maybe should have said hello first. His bitterness had rushed out like pus from a festering wound before he could manage anything else. Odd, since he would have sworn these old injuries were scarred over by now.
“No need. He’s gone.” The familiar voice on the other end of the line, thousands of miles away, made Archer more homesick than the news of his own loss. “It was fast. Painless. Though probably traumatizing for the young ladies your father was attempting to have sex with when the stroke hit.”
“Jesus.” Archer stumbled across the room. He slipped out the sliding glass door that led to a half-rotten deck barely big enough for a pair of plastic chairs, then down the three steps to the beach. Naked, he sank onto his knees in the sand. He glanced over his shoulder toward the woman whose name wasn’t nearly as memorable as the way she’d sucked him off before getting him hard again, then riding him with thighs powerful enough to cling to a breaching humpback.
Brittany! That was it. He was almost sure.
Was he turning into everything he’d spent his entire adult life trying to distance himself from? Had his father remembered the names associated with the assassin pussies that had finally managed to take the bastard out?
Archer’s stomach churned at the thought. Acid seared his esophagus. Just like it had before he’d left that world he’d never belonged in. He hadn’t looked back since. Not even for a glimpse of the girl he’d abandoned, who wouldn’t welcome his attention after what had happened.
This was definitely going to be the second worst night of Archer’s life.
“Sir?”
He shook his head when the question
came softly—kindly, even—from his family’s butler, who’d been more like a true relative than any Archer shared filthy blue blood with. It was the reason he’d borrowed the guy’s name when he’d fled and remade himself. “Come on, Banks. You changed my shitty diapers plenty of times. Don’t you think formality is uncalled for? I’ve never been that person. Much to my father’s disappointment—”
“Archer.” A soft chuckle warmed Banks’s tone this time. “That might have been true once. But not always. Over time, I think he might have envied your escape. Admired it, though he was too proud to admit such things. Or maybe he respected you too much to go against your wishes and contact you to let you know.”
“I highly doubt that.” Archer swallowed hard against the feelings he’d thought he’d buried deeper than a pirate’s treasure. He might be a thirty-one-year-old man, but some small part of him would always regret that he hadn’t been able to be the son his father wanted.
“Well, this is for certain. He didn’t truly disown you. You were never cut out of his will. In fact, despite your wishes, he left you everything.”
“Shit! Everything?”
“His entire holdings. All of it, down to the last cent.” Banks delivered the most devastating news of the night.
Everything Archer had never wanted had finally caught up with him. Golden chains ensnared his wrists and ankles, keeping him from imagining he could ever move freely again. He’d seen firsthand what it took to run an empire.
As quickly as a barracuda snaps up its unsuspecting dinner, Archer had gone from beach bum to billionaire.
Fuck him, life as he knew it—and loved it—was over.
He scrubbed his hands through his hair and caught sight of the woman he’d left in his bed dressing hurriedly by the light of the wall-mounted gooseneck lamp before blowing him a kiss and heading for the door.
At least he’d gone out with one hell of a bang.
Literally.
“It’s not exactly a death sentence, sir.”
“Banks,” he growled.
“I mean…Archie.”
The shock of hearing that long-lost nickname, right now, had Archer blinking fiercely. Somehow he didn’t think there was enough salt in the air to blame his reaction on that. “It feels like it. I’m proud of who I am these days. I don’t want the money. I don’t want to be like him. I can’t afford to lose myself.”
He scrunched his eyes closed. It was as if he were a recovering alcoholic who’d been offered an entire chain of distilleries. Archer knew unimaginable wealth could corrupt him. It hadn’t been easy to sacrifice everything once, but he’d quit superfluous material possessions cold turkey and had never been happier than he was here, with next to nothing.
Good friends, a job he loved, willing women, and time to enjoy life. Those things were priceless.
“So we’ll give it away. Form an umbrella foundation that supports any number of charities, funds, and projects for worthwhile causes. A lot of problems can be solved with seven billion dollars, give or take.” Banks’s solution seemed genius. Simple yet complicated at the same time.
“Perfect. Will you help me? And by help me, I mean run it. Make the day-to-day decisions. I don’t need to know the details. Use your judgment.”
“Of course. If that’s still what you want, after you’ve really thought about it some,” Banks promised. “I am the estate’s executor. It will take some time to settle things. Let me see to the legalities, and you start dreaming about who you’d like to help. This fortune could change the world.”
“I…uh… Okay, thanks.” Archer couldn’t believe this was happening. “Name it after yourself. Call it the Banks Foundation.”
He had to make sure his father’s name wasn’t included. No glory for that fucker.
“I suppose that’s naming it after us, isn’t it?” Banks sounded pleased with that. At least he didn’t mind that Archer had appropriated his name in his attempt to go incognito.
“Make sure you pay yourself, too. A shit-ton. Ten times whatever you think is an outrageous salary. You deserve a hazard bonus for the decades you’ve put up with my family’s shit. God knows I couldn’t do it. As if that wasn’t obvious when I bailed.”
“I will.” Banks laughed, then said warmly, “For the record, I’m proud of you, too. Dream big, Archie.”
Two
Only slightly after the ass crack of dawn, Archer blocked the past several sleepless hours from his mind. He verified the headcount of their boatload of guests for the morning’s two-tank SCUBA dive. Then he began double-checking the equipment. Sticking to routine ensured he never missed anything vital. After all, it was his job to guarantee no one interrupted the fun-and-sun portion of their vacation by dying on his watch.
As he worked, he surreptitiously observed each of the three buddy pairs he’d be going down with. How they set up their gear was a decent indication of how they would dive. At least, he’d found that to be true in the past.
One couple, a husband and wife team, had stacked their gear neatly so that the first thing they’d need was on top and the last at the bottom. They spoke quietly as they worked seamlessly, assisting each other with their wet suits before unhurriedly progressing through their own personal buddy checklists. As he watched, they verified today’s plans against their dive computers to ensure they wouldn’t exceed their no-decompression limits given the nitrogen load they’d taken on in their shore dives the day before.
Of course, Archer had already done the same thing before they’d left the shop. Still, he was glad they were independent divers and didn’t rely on his word for it.
They’d be fine.
Two brothers made up the second pair. They’d come to the dive shop yesterday afternoon asking plenty of questions about the boat, the tour size, the dive location, the depth of the sites they’d be visiting, typical currents in the area, notable marine life to look out for, and recent weather patterns. They had shared their religiously completed logbooks, which detailed over a hundred dives each, with the shop manager, too.
Archer wasn’t worried about them either.
The third set of guests… He shook his head. There were a couple like them in every bunch.
True, the diving here in Bonaire—a fairly dinky desert island off the coast of Venezuela in the Southern Caribbean, next door to Aruba and Curaçao—was some of the easiest and most beautiful in the world. It made it a great spot for newbies to put some experience under their weight-belts. He didn’t have any problem teaching the tadpoles good habits or helping them gain confidence in their emerging skills.
Unfortunately, this duo had enough experience to know better than some of the shit they were pulling already. They bickered, sniping at each other for losing this thing or that thing—extraneous, flashy doodads they probably didn’t know how to use anyway. Their jumbled gear spilled across the modest thirty-six-foot boat’s deck, causing Archer’s fellow divemaster, Tosin, to have to dodge it as he helped his own half-dozen divers on the other side of the vessel. The problem children had already dunked their boots in the camera-and-regulator-only rinse tank before anyone could stop them.
Archer could also tell by the bulges of lead stuffing the pockets of their buoyancy control devices relative to their average builds that they were about to go overboard with far too much weight. Some was necessary to keep divers down. That much could be dangerous. He mentally prepared himself to grab for them if they overcompensated for their inevitable negative buoyancy at depth by puffing up their BCD’s with an entire blimp’s worth of air, which would expand on the ascent, rocketing them toward the surface as if they were helium balloons slipping free from a toddler’s grasp.
Spending the day filling out incident reports and loading Mr. and Mrs. Yelly McYellington into a hyperbaric chamber after their lungs popped or they gave themselves the bends would not improve his pissy mood.
He kept trying to pretend today was exactly like the past 4,380 other days—give or take some—he’d done pretty much the sa
me thing as this. Pencil lead snapped when he pressed too hard against his ratty clipboard mid check-off.
“Rough night?” Miguel winked as he took his place at the boat’s helm and curled his fingers around the wheel. Though he was the third divemaster onboard this morning, it was his turn to drive. He’d stay on the surface, assist any divers who aborted early for mechanical, health, or safety concerns, and make sure nobody surfside bothered their stuff.
Things could be worse, Archer acknowledged. At least he’d get to dive today.
He grunted. “You have no idea.”
Nor would they any time soon. Discussing serious personal matters in front of their clients was a no-no. Besides, he had to find the right time to come clean to his best friends about his sordid past.
They pushed off the dock and headed through the muted peach-and-rose post-dawn for Klein Bonaire, an exceptionally dinky uninhabited blob of land less than a mile offshore from the main island. Protected by the curvature of Bonaire, it held plenty of opportunities for excursions. Most of the guests went shore diving on their own when unguided. The guys preferred to take them somewhere they couldn’t reach in the rusty white mini pick-up trucks that came standard with their condo rentals.
“She did look like a wild catch, you lucky bastard,” Tosin joked from where he meticulously verified everyone’s equipment set-up. Another set of eyes. He had their backs. Just like Archer and Miguel would have his. Focused, he thankfully didn’t read too much into Archer’s lack of a response. He turned on tanks, checked air pressure gauges, and helped a few people with rental gear clip their neon-yellow secondary regulators to the proper place for easy access in case anything went haywire with their primary.
Considering the three of them also serviced the equipment at the shop they currently worked for, Archer didn’t think that was likely. Never hurt to have a spare, though. Especially when you were more than a breath’s worth of a swim from the surface and counted on it to deliver your air supply.