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I’m here, I want to tell her,right here.You’re safe with me. You never have to worry that I’ll stifle you or change a single thing about you. You never have to be anyone with me other than exactly the woman you are.

None of it is anything I can tell her, not now, not when all of this is still so new and she truly has no reason to believe it or trust me. So I tuck it away, keep it for later, and hold her hand tightly all the way back to my home.

Pulling into the garage, I grab her bag from the backseat and let us both inside. The house is quiet, dark, and when she tenses a little beside me, I hurry to reassure her.

“I called Travis while you were packing. He double-checked the security systems and had his team do a sweep of the property. We’re safe here.”

Nora nods at my assurance over the safety of the house, but doesn’t look quite convinced, and I don’t blame her. Safety is never an absolute, and considering everything she must be thinking and feeling, her wariness is more than justified.

Standing in the kitchen, the lights over the island are too bright and the hum of the refrigerator sounds like a jet engine. The silence grates against my ears in quiet, damning confirmation of a single fact.

I don’t know how to help her.

Other than being here, other than pulling the strings I can to get this investigated and have Sorenson dealt with, I don’t know how to help. Though my soul has known her since the moment I first saw her, that doesn’t mean I know everything about her yet, and right now I have no idea if she needs more space, or less, if she wants me to say something or do something or just leave her alone to process.

With nothing else to do but trust the instinct that’s still tugging gently at the center of my chest, I walk around the island until I’m just a few inches away from her. Slowly, so she has time to stop me or move away if she doesn’t want me near, I reach out and pull her to me.

Nora, to my surprise, melts into my embrace, letting out a long, shaky breath.

“What do you need, little siren? What would make you feel better?”

It’s probably an idiotic question to ask. What she needs is Sorenson locked up in a jail cell somewhere.

“A shower, I think, would be a good start,” she says.

I nod and take her by the hand, grabbing her bag in the other and leading her from the kitchen toward the bedroom. When we reach her door, I’m ready to kiss her on the forehead and leave her to it, give her some space to process, but I never get the chance.

Just as I’m reaching for the handle to open it for her, Nora’s hands land on my shoulders and she pushes me up against the opposite wall. Her mouth follows a second later—hot, hungry, and eager. I respond without thinking, without caution or restraint, completely taken over by the need that floods through me as soon as I have her in my arms.

Nora’s moan tastes like surrender and temptation and a thousand things I’ve waited lifetimes for. Body warm and pliant and willing under my hands, I’m struck with the desperate need to keep her, hold her close, take her somewhere and shift so I can show her just what it means to be a kraken’s treasure.

I drop my mouth to her neck, taste the sweet salt of her skin. When her hands tighten in my hair, though, tugging to an edge of delicious pain, it snaps a bit of rationality back into me.

“Nora.” I’m torn between caution and mindless want, even as I still have my teeth pressed against her throat. “Nora. We can’t.”

“We can.”

Gods above. I know better than to entertain this.

If one of us is going to keep a level head right now, it should be me. I need to remember all the reasons this is a bad idea. I’d be the lowest of bottom-feeders if I pressed her for intimacy while she’s still processing her own emotions.

When I pull back and look down into her eyes, though, it’s not grief or fear or uncertainty shining back at me.

No, it’s a determination and a steely resolve that nearly knocks me to my knees.

18

Nora

“We can.”

Elias’s tortured hesitance is clear on his face.

He wants this. Iknowhe wants this. He’s done a terrible job of hiding it today, and with every glance of those stormy eyes and every time he’s touched me, I can feel it there.

What I don’t know is whether he wants to try to protect me more than he wants to give into it.

“Nora,” he says again, and I can almost hear his defenses crumbling. “We…”