Free A Coral Kiss by Jayne Ann Krentz

about to load the program when he spotted a pile of printed manuscript pages lying on one corner of the desk. Dropping the program disk back into the storage box, Jed hefted the stack of paper.
    It was labeled Private Demons. Amy must have decided to print out what she had done so far. Jed picked up the manuscript and the brandy and ambled back to the rumpled couch. He sat down, flipped on the end table light and quickly scanned through the pages, starting from the back. He wanted to read Amy's most recent work.
    The story seemed to be a straightforward sword and sorcery tale about a very normal young lady from California named Wanda Madison, who found herself transported against her will to another world to fight mysterious creatures of an even more mysterious dark power. The new world was an aquatic environment, and somehow in the transition process Wanda was endowed with the ability to live underwater.
    Somebody, however, had made a serious mistake in recruiting Wanda for the dangerous task of demon fighting. Wanda spent a lot of time trying to explain the error, but it was too late. The problem was that the demons she was supposed to battle came from the darkest part of the sea. They represented a power that thrived in the deep, and any attempt to master them meant swimming into the black depths of the sunken caves where the creatures lived.
    As it happened, poor Wanda had a lifelong fear of the dark. She also had claustrophobia.
    It was a major disaster. Unfortunately, for Wanda and the aquatic people who had kidnapped her, there weren't going to be any second chances. She was their one and only hope for survival.
    She forced herself to swim steadily on through the murk, half blinded by the silt that had been kicked up in the creature's death throes. She was certain that at any moment her lungs would suddenly revert to normal, human lungs and she would no longer be able to breathe water. Telling herself that the drowning sensation was purely her imagination, she struggled forward into the cavern.

    The oppressive, watery darkness was a distilled version of all the childhood fears she had ever known.
    Every instinct warned her there would be no escape. She would be trapped forever. Still, she kicked out awkwardly with her strange, webbed feet, struggling to maneuver the dead weight of her burden. She couldn't look at what she was dragging into the darkest, watery corridor. To do so would surely drive her over the edge of sanity. But she could sense its leg gliding limply alongside hers as the thick current caught it, could feel the occasional brush of the dead hand as it floated through the water beside her.
    The eyes. If she looked at the eyes it would be all over. The sightless, staring eyes would be full of accusation and a curse that would follow her for as long as she lived. She must not look at the eyes.
    In that moment Wanda would have sold her soul for a glimpse of clean light, fresh air and freedom. The trouble was, she wasn't at all certain she would have a soul to sell after she completed her grisly task.
    Thoughtfully Jed set aside the last page, took a long swallow of the brandy and asked himself if describing such a scene was really enough to give a woman nightmares. Surely someone accustomed to such writing wouldn't have found the description unnerving. He wondered if Amy herself was afraid of the dark. There was so little he knew about her.
    He did know what it was like to be afraid of the dark, he thought bleakly. He also knew what it was like to have it as an ally. During the past eight years he had learned to make it a friend, not a foe. At times his survival had depended on it.
    He finished the brandy and slowly got to his feet. He switched off the light and headed back toward the bedroom. Amy was curled into an inviting lump under the quilt, still sound asleep. Her hair was a dark fan on the white pillow.
    Feeling gratified, as though he had a right to take credit for her being asleep, Jed slid into