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“I can’t ask you to do that.”

“And I’m not taking direction either,” he says. “You are the choice I’m making. Besides, what good is being a pirate when I’ve already got the treasure?” He gives me a crooked grin.

“I’m serious,” I tell him.

“So am I,” he says, running his thumb over my lips. “We will make it work somehow.”

But I don’t see how we can. He’s one of the Brethren, he can’t live a life under the water with me, even if drowning is impossible. More than that, I don’t want him to give up his ship or his family. What I want is to have my legs back, to go up to theNightwindand keep the life I had. I never realized how much I liked being part of his crew, part of his life, until it was taken from me.

I gaze at him, sorrow wracking through me. I understand all that he’s been saying, but this still feels like goodbye. I’m not ready to say goodbye.

He reaches out and gently trails his fingers over the smooth scales at the side of my tail. “My brand,” he says quietly. “It’s gone.”

I glance down. He’s right. There’s no trace of the jolly roger with his initials inside. That mark had become one of my favorite parts of my body.

“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him. “It’s still there, even if you can’t see it. You’ve branded my heart, Ramsay.”

You’ve claimed me for life.

“Kiss me,” I whisper. “Lay with me. I want to feel you from the inside.”

His eyes widen and he looks down at my new body, his hand going up to my waist while the other cups my jaw. He kisses me deeply, a kiss that seems to take a hold of my heart and squeeze it, making my fins twitch.

He pulls apart, confusion in his eyes. “I’ll admit, my luv, that I am not a hundred percent certain how this course of action could, well, happen.”

I’m relieved that he doesn’t, to be honest. That would mean he’s lain with a Syren before. Yet I’m not entirely sure either, given that as a Syren I had never bedded anyone. But I am still familiar with this body, even though it’s an adult one now, and I know what part of me aches for him, where I need him in deep.

“I’ll show you,” I whisper, feeling both nervous and emboldened. I’m finally the one showing something to him for the first time instead of the other way around.

I lie back on the sand staring up at the surface that looks a million miles away. I’m aware that Edonia’s dead body is nearby, that the fish are already making quick work of her as she’s tethered by the sword. I know that elsewhere there is sorrow on theNightwindwith the death of Sam, and there’s sorrow in my heart too for her. I know that Nerissa has been dragged by the Kraken into the deep and I might never see her again.

But for all that is happening elsewhere, my mind and heart are here with him. My body is especially here with him.

If he’ll have me like this, in my complete Syren form, I think with trepidation.

There’s a chance he won’t want me at all. That he’ll think I’m too strange and different in this form.

But from the heated look in his gaze, the way he’s swimming over me, pinning my wrists over my head with one hand, undoing the flap on his breeches with the other, I know my worries might be unfounded.

“You’re beautiful, Maren,” he says to me, leaning in to give me a deep, fin-curling kiss. I look down to see him bring his thick hard cock out, his obvious desire for me on display, and I soften with relief.

Then he glances down, hesitating. From the way the iridescent scales of my tail all come together, you wouldn’t really know where my womanhood is. It’s fairly invisible at first glance.

So I reach down and his gaze is glued to my hand as it slides over my torso and down over the start of my tail until I’m a quarter of the way down, at more or less the same place where my legs would come together.

Slowly I slide my finger along the scales, parting them, the sensation already slippery and then my finger dips down inside to where I’m hot and slick.

I gasp, the sensation so incredibly new to me, like I’m being touched this way for the very first time, and my back arches on the ocean floor. I let out a moan, the bubbles rising to the surface above, and I’m lost to my own touch already.

“Lord help me,” Ramsay says, his voice raw with lust.

At that he pushes his cock inside me, sliding in past my fingers and I’m so impossibly tight, even more so than on land, that I let out a holler that fills the sea. His cock doesn’t seem like it’ll fit, but then I’m so slick and he’s thrusting in to the hilt, my back is being fused to the sand.

“Oh gods,” I cry.

I try to move my hands to grip him, wanting to feel those tight muscles of his arms, of his shoulders, of his back, hold on to this man that I would do anything for. But he has my wrists pinned and he’s fucking me so hard and deep that my brain is rattled, foggy, and I’m swept away by sensations that are both familiar and foreign. I’ve never had a man like this, never had Ramsay like this, and it’s like sleeping with him for the first time. Every slide of his cock, every touch of his fingers on my breast, of his lips on my neck, and I feel like I’m some land being discovered.

I feel conquered.