For approximately ninety seconds, neither of us did anything except cough. Not polite, cover-your-mouth coughing. The violent, full-body, expelling-water-from-places-water-should-never-reach kind of coughing that leaves your throat raw and your abs cramping and your dignity somewhere at the bottom of a hundred-foot gorge.
Blair rolled onto her side and produced sounds that I associated more with dying cats than with the heiress of a multibillion-dollar gate-clearing conglomerate. The kind of wet, desperate hacking that comes from lungs that had been convinced, just moments ago, that they'd never see air again. Her fingers dug into the stone beneath her, knuckles white, body curling inward with each spasm.
