Tormented (Evolution Series Book 2) (19 page)

“What?” she asked innocently. “I bet that’s what you were doing though, wasn’t it?”

“No,” I said a little too quickly. “Are you guys already there?”

“Yeah, we’ve been here for about half an hour. It’s too good a day not to be at the beach.

I glanced out the window on my way over to my cupboard. She was right. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. God, I loved the Gold Coast weather. I picked out a little black beach dress and slipped it on. “We’ll be over there soon.”

“Okay,” she said, sounding as though she didn’t believe a word of it. “I’ll see you when you’ve finished up there.”

“Goodbye, Chelsea,” I said before ending the call. I quickly grabbed my beach towel and shoved it into my beach bag before swinging it over my shoulder. “Okay, you ready?” I asked.

“Yep. Lucas is back home waiting for us.” Aiden ran his hands through his hair and sighed. “I guess we better go.”

I walked toward him, wanting so badly to pick up where we left off, but we couldn’t.

He ran his hand down my arm,
then
picked up my hand. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said, sounding just as disappointed as I felt.

I moved forward, gave him one last kiss, and transported us back to the kitchen in England.

Lucas was sitting on the bench top, holding two disposable cups of coffee in his hands.

My mouth watered at the sight of it.

“I thought you would probably want one as well,” Lucas said, offering me one of the coffees.

I quickly took the cup. “Thank you.”

Lucas jumped off the bench. “Let’s do this,” he said with a grin.

I transported all of us to the garage at Aiden’s house in Paradise Waters.

“What's this?”
Lucas asked, sounding disappointed.

“It’s a garage.” Aiden opened his car door, hopped in, and started the ignition.

I dumped my beach bag in the back seat,
then
climbed into the passenger seat. “You’re in the back, Lucas.”

“That’s not fair,” he
whinged
. “Aren’t you
gonna
give your seat up for a guest?”

Aiden sighed. “Just get in the car.”

Lucas huffed in defeat,
then
appeared, sitting down behind me. “Why do we need a car anyway?”

Aiden opened the garage door and reversed down the driveway. “Because we may have to give them a lift home, and it might look a little funny if the three of us came to the beach with no transport.”

“Point taken.” Lucas’s eyes lit up as we drove through the streets of Surfers Paradise. “Holy crap. If I knew how good this place was, I would’ve visited you sooner.” I was guessing he was talking about all the half-naked women walking down the esplanade in their bikinis.

Aiden parked in a spot right in front of the beach. We hopped out and walked down the pristine white sand dunes. There was no need to call Chelsea or Ben to find out where they were sitting because Aiden could differentiate their individual presence amongst the thousands of people on the beach. I had yet to master that skill.

I followed Aiden’s lead and soon spotted Chelsea lying on her back, soaking up the sun’s rays. There was a towel laid out beside her, but no sign of Ben. I looked out into the ocean and spotted Ben’s head bobbing up and down about fifty
metres
from the shoreline.

“Hey,
Chels
,” I said, dumping my beach bag to the right of her head.

“About time you got here,” she said, not moving from her position.

I pulled out my towel, laid it out flat, and sat down beside her.

“Hey,
Chels
,” Aiden said as both he and Lucas sat down on the sand.

“Hi.” She rolled onto her side to face us. When she spotted Lucas, she quickly sat up.

“Chelsea, this is Lucas. Lucas, this is Chelsea,” Aiden introduced. “He’s an old friend from back in England.”

“Hi,” Chelsea said, blood rushing to her cheeks.

Aiden stood up and took off his t-shirt, revealing his godly body, making me wish we hadn’t been interrupted earlier. “Come on, let’s go for a swim,” he said to Lucas.

Lucas took off his shirt, revealing a body to rival Aiden’s. Man, what was with these boys? I looked around and noticed that almost all of the females on the beach had their eyes glued to Aiden and Lucas as the two ran down the beach and into the water.

Chelsea didn’t say anything until we could just see their heads bobbing above the surface as they swam their way over to Ben. “Sweet Jesus,” was all she said, but her thoughts told me what she didn’t dare to say aloud. In short, she was imagining what it would be like to have Lucas’s body wrapped around hers. Her thoughts momentarily went to Aiden’s body and how lucky she thought I was. If I could tune out the thoughts of only one person in the world, I would block hers.

“So how’s Ben?” I asked
,
reminding her she had a boyfriend.

She slowly turned her attention from the boys to glare at me. “You know, I can still look.” I was glad to have my friend back, but I had been hoping that her having a boyfriend would’ve changed her obsession with hot guys—obviously not.

I lifted my dress over my head and threw it on top of my bag. “I know. Just try not to make it so obvious when Ben’s around.”

“I promise I will try to contain myself,” she said, holding up her hand as if to pledge. “But you have to admit, Lucas is pretty hot.”

I looked at him as he jumped on top of Aiden, trying to push him under the water. “Yeah, he is pretty hot,” I admitted. But then, so were all of the next gens. It was in their DNA.

“Hey,” she said, inching closer to me. “I wanted to ask you something.”

“Yeah?” I asked skeptically. Even though I knew what she wanted to talk to me about, I had to try to react the way that I would have before my abilities developed.

“Well, you and Aiden have been together for…” She paused while trying to work out how long exactly we had been together, but quickly gave up. “Well, you’ve been together for ages, and I was wondering if your relationship has changed at all.”

What she really wanted to find out was if “the spark” that we had when we first got together was still as strong. “Of course, our relationship’s changed. The new love excitement doesn’t last forever, but it’s definitely still there where it counts.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointed. She picked up a handful of sand and let it funnel out from her closed fist onto the edge of her towel.

“You’re still happy with Ben, right?” I asked, trying to get her train of thought on that topic so I could understand why she was asking.

She shook her head. “Yeah, of course.” Yeah, she still liked him, but she was really missing the new relationship feeling and wondered if it was just that she was getting used to him or that she was over him.

I put my arm around her shoulders. “Hey, if you ever need to talk, you know I’m here for you, right?”

Chelsea brushed the sand off her towel. “Yeah, of course,” she said, wiping the sand off her hands. “Wanna go for a swim?”

“Sounds good.”

We both stood up and headed for the ocean. As we walked, I got the full understanding of what Aiden had meant when he said that I got my fair share of attention from the male population. I could hear way too many thoughts than I cared for, thoughts on either my ass or my boobs and the occasional compliments on my eyes or my face. Basically, I was a walking pin-up girl. All of the attention made me almost turn back and cover myself up, but I wasn’t going to let the minds of some perverted males stop me from living my life.

Chelsea and I dove in and swam out to the boys. The water felt cool, but I was guessing it had more to do with the heat of the sun warming our bodies than the actual temperature of the water. We stayed out there for about half an hour, treading water as we dove under the waves, then body surfed our way back in.

“I’m starving. Who wants to get something to eat?” Lucas asked when we were all near the shore.

“I could do with something,” Ben said.

“Me too.” Chelsea wrung out her hair. “You coming, Jade?”

“Nah,” I said, looking at Aiden. “I want to stay out here for a bit more.” I sat in the shallow water with my legs stretched out in front of me. I leaned back on my elbows and said silently to Aiden,
“How about you come down here and join me?”

A small smile flickered in Aiden’s eyes. “Yeah, I’m going to stay out here for a bit longer, too.”

“Suit yourselves,” Chelsea said. The three of them walked back up the beach to their towels.

Aiden held out his hand. “Come on. I got a better idea.”

A small smile crept onto my lips as I put my hand in his. “Such as?”

He pulled me to my feet. “Well, I was thinking that I know of a little beach somewhere where there isn’t another soul around for miles.” Aiden pulled down his mind barriers, and I knew exactly what he had planned.

My heart fluttered in my chest as I ran my fingers down his stomach. When I had hold of his shorts, I pulled him close to me. “Let’s go.”

He cupped my head in his hands and kissed me, pulling away too quickly for my liking. He turned around and raced into the water. I let out a small laugh as I chased after him. When we were about thirty
metres
out to sea, Aiden ducked
under the water and didn’t resurface. I could no longer feel his presence, so I knew that he had already transported to his “private beach.” I took a deep breath, dove under the water, and followed him.

***

About twenty minutes later, we reappeared under the water of Surfers’ Paradise. Immediately, I could feel the fear and adrenalin rushing through the minds of almost everyone at the beach. We came up for air and discovered that the Search and Rescue Team were out on their boards and jet skis.

“They’re searching for us, aren’t they?”

Aiden looked up at the helicopter hovering about thirty
metres
above our heads. “Shit.”

A lifeguard on a jet ski pulled up beside us, his arm stretched out, but he drew it back to his side when he
realised
we weren’t in trouble. “You two are okay?” he asked with a surprised tone.

“Ah, yeah, we’re fine,”
Aiden
said at the same time that I said, “We’re okay.”

Another guy on a jet ski pulled up on the other side of us. “Come on. We need to bring you both to shore.”

I looked into Aiden’s eyes. “
You better get us out of this one.”

He seemed to find the whole situation amusing. The corners of his lips curled up.
“We’ll be fine.”

I let out the breath I’d been holding and swam over to the lifeguard to the left of me. He held out his hand and helped me onto the back of the
jet ski
behind him.

Aiden was already on the back of the other
jet ski
. When I looked over at him, he was still trying to hold a serious facial expression while cracking up on the inside. I didn’t find it nearly half as amusing as he did.