Page 25 of Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

25

Claira

I cy water numbed my fingers as I ran my bikini top under the faucet. My thumbs worked idly over the stretchy material, rinsing away traces of salt water while my mind tormented me, flickering through the most painful chunks of my day.

The chilling gloom at the bottom of the harbor. The restrained strength of Barren’s grip locking around my neck. Waves of Aleena’s bleach-blond hair draping over Leander’s shoulder. Wishing I had the antidote for whatever sweet poison she’d whispered into his ear.

Just an hour ago, those were my brain’s choice torments. Wounds so fresh their pain ran too deep for words. But that was before Kai had unknowingly led me to Papa’s alcohol-ridden trash den.

The heavy stream of water stole the bikini top from between my fingers as the image of my mother’s hairpin glinted in my mind’s eye. A relic from my former life, impossible for Papa to have.

Or so I’d thought.

It had taken me months to summon the courage to throw my old belongings out. To move forward and let the salt water dispose of my past. Sure, I’d chosen the spot where Dad had found me, but the ocean was vast, and the waves were powerful. Plus, it wasn’t like Papa would have visited the place where he’d tossed out his daughter as carelessly as he now tossed down empty bottles of liquor.

At first, I thought it had to be a re-creation. Some second hairpin he’d kept hidden away for himself, because, well, it was the only reasonable explanation. That is, until I saw the ocean silks folded into a crisp, brittle square underneath it.

The same ones I’d worn the terrible night he’d abandoned me.

“Is the salt washing out okay?” Kai’s voice bounced playfully off the tiled walls and empty showers. Energetic as ever, he sounded seconds from exploding from excitement overload.

“Yeah,” I called back, angling my voice toward the short hallway connecting the left side of the aquatic center’s bathrooms to the right. Water gurgled as I fished my bikini top from the bottom of the sink. “Just a second. I’m still getting changed.”

Teaching a merman to swim like a human… How had I agreed to something so silly?

Oh, right—Kai. His lilac eyes had grown into shiny moons—so damned hopeful and expectant—making it impossible for me to say no. Hell, he actually had me believing it would be fun . The greatest idea ever!

Geez, if he ever found his way into undersea politics, the other kingdoms had better watch out.

But I’d agreed to his silly whim, so here I was. Getting ready to swim. Again.

At least I wouldn’t have to drag my tail around or worry about magic and curses messing everything up. Not that he would turn on me like a brute. If Kai’d been the one to discover my secret, he’d have been all “ whoa!” and “ dude!”

No hostility. No questions about sea witches.

Honestly, I almost wished it had been him. Then maybe my stomach wouldn’t feel so horribly knotted. The thought of what Barren might do now that he knew my secret was constantly tapping at the back of my mind. I was still surprised he’d taken me back to the warehouse, though the unsettled silence during the drive had done little to ease my fear of him suddenly changing his mind, deciding to steal me away instead.

Kai was different. A bubbly dolphin among a sea of cold-blooded sharks. We hadn’t been friends long, but it wouldn’t take anyone long to recognize his bright character as genuine. The innocence radiating from his easy smiles was this blinding thing, and once you saw it, you just knew he didn’t have whatever it was that made merfolk so damned cruel. Though after my fight with Aleena, was I any better than the rest of them?

Glancing up at my reflection in the mirror, I smoothed back my hair, examining the angles of my face.

A beautiful monster hiding behind human flesh.

What else was I capable of?

Beside me, my tank top and swim wrap were already drying, strung over the sides of the neighboring sinks. I pulled on my wet bikini with a sigh and secured it with a double-knotted bow. No more accidental flashings.

I’d kept my boobs to myself so far, and I planned on keeping it that way.

Well, unless certain things happened when I got the courage to face Leander again. Non-accidental flashings would be an entirely different story. But would Aleena have him under her spell again before I made it back to his room tonight?

Add that to the list of reasons mermaid magic was so sickening.

My hands went for the wrap, and it took pulling the long stretch of fabric around my hips for me to realize my error. “Yeah, this ain’t gonna work.” Especially not for swimming. Cold air drifted between my exposed lady bits as I unwrapped myself. “New plan.”

Flinging the wrap over the side of a sink, I dove into my shopping bag in search of the bottom half of my bikini. I hadn’t expected needing it now that I had underwear, but I was glad I hadn’t thrown it out. Way to go past-me.

A quick snap took the tags off, and I slipped the bottoms over my legs before heading to the exit.

“Sorry that took me so— why are you naked? ”

“What?” Kai said with a jump, swirling a quick circle like a dog searching for the end of its tail.

… Oh. Oh no. That wasn’t helping.

A perplexed look settled over his brow as he came out of his turn. “I’ve got the most important parts covered, I think? My chest, my back.” He circled again, only this time, he really craned his neck, struggling to look behind him.

Right, so he wasn’t totally naked. But what was so special about his torso that it had to be covered while little Kai got to be set free?

“I don’t care about those parts,” I threw back, vaguely gesturing where his button-down stopped covering things that needed to be covered.

Why wasn’t there a seminar or something for merfolk who came to land? Somewhere where these dudes could learn that underwear was a need and it wasn’t cool to show your bait and tackle off to everyone you met, especially when it involved swinging it around in twirly little helicopter propeller circles.

“Where are your pants?”

The lines of Kai’s throat tightened as he swallowed, his voice going quiet. “It wouldn’t bother you, seeing under my shirt?” A light flush crept up his face.

What kind of question was that? And had he even heard my question? Pants, dude! Pants!

A gulp jerked his chin, and his head shook like he was tossing away some impure thought. “N-never mind. I didn’t mean to suggest something so… inappropriate .”

Uh, what? Inappropriate? Him taking his shirt off?

It suddenly occurred to me that his eyes were flighty, landing on every inch of the pool room except the spot where I stood. “You think what I’m wearing is inappropriate, don’t you?”

He sputtered his words with a weak crack of laughter. “I mean, uh, no?”

Uh-huh. He totally thought my bikini was some obscene thing.

The pastel pink of his cheeks made his soft spikes of hair look even more like cotton candy than usual. It was strangely adorable seeing him get all flustered over something as silly as bare skin.

Dumbfounded, I threw a thumb back at the showers. “I mean, I can go put a shirt on?”

Wait. Was I really worried about my bikini being too revealing while he was literally free swinging in front of me?

“No!” His voice cracked, and with a clear of his throat, his eyes finally settled on mine. “I mean, it’s fine how you are. A-as long as you’re comfortable, of course.”

Well, I wasn’t completely comfortable—how could I be while he was looking at me like I’d presented myself in front of him wearing pasties and a G-string? But if this trident ordeal had taught me anything, it was that I hated being tossed in water covered with restrictive clothing.

“More comfortable than you’ll be trying to swim in that long-sleeved shirt,” I mumbled, and Kai sheepishly started rolling up his sleeves. “So, what, you guys have something against man-chests in the Pacific?” Did that mean the mermen all wore ocean silks there? I tried imagining Leander’s golden torso wrapped in tight bands and gulped. Damn, okay . Wouldn’t be a bad look.

“Well, of course we like to keep ourselves covered and presentable,” Kai answered stiffly. He took a step toward the pool.

But not the bottom half, right? I snickered to myself. It had embarrassed him to see me without pants after my fight with Aleena, but he was okay with showing me his ass? Made no freaking sense.

Kai stuck a toe in the water, and a shiver wiggled up the column of his spine. “Dude, it’s cold!”

“You’ll get used to it after you jump in,” I said simply, joining him at the side of the pool. Seven feet at the deep end—not bad. “But first, we should probably—” Too late. He’d already jumped, his body flopping forward with a hard clap of water. Damn . “—go over a few swim tips.”

I hadn’t even told him the most important rule of swimming like a human: not choking yourself and burning your lungs by trying to breathe in the chlorinated pool water.

I gathered a giant breath and jumped in after him. The water hit like an icy whip crack, and I shook the chill off as I hit the bottom of the pool.

A swell of cloth from Kai’s damned button-down rippled beside me, and I wasted no time seizing him by the collar. One hard kick off the tiles, and we both shot up. As soon as our heads popped over the surface, his lips spewed water with the force of a sprinkler.

“Sorry, sorry,” I got out after gasping for new air. Using my legs as propellers, I steered toward the shallow end. Geez —I’d always thought I was a decent swimmer with legs, but keeping two bodies afloat was work. “Forgot to remind you about the breathing thing.”

“It tastes—” Kai started to sputter, and a cough interrupted him, forcing a geyser of water from his mouth. “— so bad .”

“Yeah, well, that would be the chlorine.” And the stale urine, if those baby swim lessons the aquatic center advertised on its bulletin board had met bi-weekly like the flyer said. Not to mention parasites, considering how long the pool had sat abandoned. But he was used to sucking down nasty-ass salt water, so what harm could a few new microbes do?

My toes skirted over the pool’s bottom, and I braced Kai up beside me by the shoulders. A string of coughs had him vomiting water like a fancy courtyard fountain, and I clapped a hand over his back to help coax the rest out.

“You can’t put your head under water without holding in a big breath first,” I advised, fixing a collar flap stuck to the side of his cheek. “Plugging your nose helps, too.”

I pinched my nose, but he was too busy hacking up his delicate mortal lungs to follow my demonstration. “Or maybe don’t put your head under at all.”

Steady gulps signaled the end of his coughing fit, and when he turned to me, his eyes glistened with tears. Damn— I was a horrible instructor already. A couple of powerful kicks got me going, and I led us over to the side of the pool.

“We having fun yet?” I teased with a light nudge, hoping he’d crack a smile.

“Oh, you know it,” he chuckled, though his voice was shaky, like he was trying to keep more water from retching up. I whacked between his shoulder blades when we reached the edge, and another stream came right out.

“Oof, sorry, Kai. Better out than in.”

He pulled up on the tiles and gave me a sort of nod with his chin that also looked like he might be working up a hairball. “Thanks. Just, uh, g-gimme a minute.”

Poor thing. “No hurry. Just let me know when you’re ready.”

Leaving him at the side of the pool, I paddled a few zigzags while recalling the steps Gram had taken when she taught me to swim. If only I had my laptop, it would be too easy to search up the best way to instruct children.

“Okay,” he said with a relaxed breath. “I think I’m good.”

Wading back over, I hummed as I took hold of the wall beside him. “This might be a good place to start, actually. Here, grab on to the side with both hands, okay? Then you’ll kick your legs back like you’re trying to float on your stomach.” I showed the move with a rapid push off the tile, and my back end floated right to the top. From there, an easy paddle kept my legs hovering near the surface. “And there you have it. Remember, head up. Chin above the waterline, or you’ll start choking again.”

He studied the movement of my legs until a spark of determination lit in his eyes. Spreading his arms like he was searching for the perfect width to grip, his long fingers pressed into the tile. “Let’s do this! So, I just… kick?”

His feet pushed off the bottom of the pool and popped up, his legs locking into stiff lengths of driftwood behind him.

To his credit, he floated for a second, caught in the weightless struggle between buoyancy and gravity. And then gravity won.

His ankles started sinking, and rather than alternating kicks like I’d shown him, he went with hip movements instead. He swung them from side to side in a rapid motion, like he was a sea snake trying to skim over the water’s surface.

Only, he wasn’t a sea snake, and human legs weren’t supposed to bend that way. Gravity pulled him further, and when his chin slipped under the water with a bubbling gasp, I pushed off the side of the pool to help.

“Chin up, chin up!” I gave his junk a wide berth as I slipped my arms under his legs and stomach. Balancing him on my forearms, I pulled him level with the surface. “What’s that weird thing you’re doing with your hips? You’re supposed to alternate kicking your feet. Weren’t you watching?”

“Instincts kicked in,” he wheezed, bubbling out the words with half a mouthful of water. I shifted my arms underneath him, and he clawed for the side of the pool like he wasn’t sure if I could keep his face above water.

“Your instincts?” What kind of instinct was this? Did he know how ridiculous he looked with his stiff legs and ankles pulled together like he was trying to mimic the movement of a shark’s tail or something? Even now, his hips were shimmying back and forth in a weird sort of pelvic dance.

A grunt of frustration sent his hips doubling their efforts, and I burst into laughter. “No offense, but your instincts could use some work. Why are you moving like that? You’re not a damn shark, Kai!”

A vagrant laugh cut through his throat. “Never been to the Pacific, have you?” he managed through heavy breaths, his face straining with concentration.

I cocked a brow. What did that have to do with anything? Of course I’d never been to the Pacific.

“Maybe we should try where it isn’t so deep?” I offered, nodding toward the shallow end. “You’re never going to learn if I keep holding you up.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he relented, and his legs finally relaxed. When my arms retreated, he started walking his hands along the tiles.

“When your knees can touch the bottom without your head going under, start practicing some leg movements,” I said, letting him go without me. “It’s kinda like walking, but a little extra force. Like you’re trying to kick someone’s ass.”

He let out a snort before lifting his knees in exaggerated movements under the water.

“Yep, you got it. Looking great.” He wasn’t looking great at all. His knee jerks were erratic and uncoordinated, but at least I wouldn’t have to worry about him drowning in three feet of water. I threw my face to the ceiling and floated on my back.

My ears sank low enough to muffle the chaotic sound of his limbs thrashing through the water, and I let out a relaxed sigh. Attempting to clear my mind, I focused on the whooshing sound of the pool filter as I fought back another replay of my day.

Nope, not again . It was relaxation time, and I planned to do just that while I had the chance. Soon I’d have a new day of horrors to look forward to, and I needed to be ready.

It would be Leander’s turn with me, right? The thought sent odd prickles racing down my neck and spine. Would he use his day with me to go searching for his father’s trident, finally?

“Oh, wow, ” Kai blurted, his voice clear enough to hear from underwater. In fact, everything felt eerily calm, except for the steady hum of the pool filter. Had he exhausted himself already?

I flipped off my back to the sight of Kai clinging to the side of the pool. As easily distracted as ever, he hadn’t even made it over to the shallow side. Go figure.

“What’s up?” I called, wading in his direction.

His head whipped back, revealing a smile of pure delight slapped over his face. Uh-oh.

“Come here, come here, come here,” he beckoned, bobbing excitedly in the water on his feet. “You gotta feel this!”

Feel this? Feel what?

Thoughts of slimy patches of algae came to mind, and I suppressed a gag. The filter had been running all this time, but I held no illusions that the pool was actually clean.

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass,” I huffed back, drifting away. The water was shallow enough to walk across, and Kai took it upon himself to do just that. Wet hands clapped around my shoulders with a splash.

“Oh, come on! Wait,” he said, gesturing to the side of the pool. “You gotta come over! It’s the craziest thing.”

What could he possibly be so excited about? Ugh, damn his watery moon-eyes.

I relented with a heavy sigh, and he pumped a fist in the air in triumph. “Trust me, you’ll love it! I mean, I thought swimming like a human would be fun and all, but human pools are seriously the coolest .”

“Uh-huh,” I said stiffly, letting him lead me back to the side of the pool. So much for relaxation time.

When we got to the side, he hovered behind me, moving my shoulders like he was deliberately lining me up with a specific set of tiles. What the heck was he even trying to do?

“Right about there,” he said finally, and his knees pressed against the backs of my thighs like he was trying to get both of us closer to the wall. His feet tweaked our position, a few little nudges to the left, then the right. “You feel that?”

“What do you—?” A shudder rippled through me as I felt it. And freaking damn, did I feel it.

A relentless outpouring of water rushed between my legs, and holy shit , did he really bring me over here to show me how good the water pump felt against his—

“Feel it now?” he groaned, his weight lightly shifting against my back. Arms caged around me as he pressed his palms into the tile in front of us, a slight hum riding on his next breath.

Shit, shit, shit. He was obviously feeling it, too.

“Kai, I really don’t think—” Something hard pulsed against the back of my thigh, and my words wilted in my throat.

An abrupt crash of glass rattled through the building, and both of us jumped against the jet of water.

“Fuck,” a voice growled as more glass crunched and shattered, and my heart quickened. I knew that fuck anywhere.

A string of curses reverberated through the pool hall as Leander emerged through the doorway, his face a pretty golden mess.

“Oh, hey, man!” Kai called casually, his breath a tickle on my wet shoulders. He leaned in to chuckle. “I’m pretty sure we left the key in the lock, didn’t we?”

The arms pitched on either side of me relaxed, like Kai wasn’t the least bit worried about how damning our position must have looked. “Would have waited if I knew you wanted to go swimming! You told him about this place, Claira?”

Nervous laughter threatened to slide up my throat, my mind halfway lost, muddled by an unwelcome haze. I didn’t dare open my mouth for fear of what noise might slip out while the water surged over my thighs. It was working its way between my legs, the powerful stream reaching my most sensitive places.

How the heck did I get myself into this mess ? Literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.

I shifted uncomfortably, pulling my chest up on the tiles to escape the onslaught of water. It wasn’t until the apex of my legs made it over the cascade that I could finally think.

Yeah, Leander was not here to swim. He looked furious. Like if he had a pirate pistol in his hand, he would have aimed it right between Kai’s eyes. His face was awash with crimson, with the bridge of his nose swollen in an even nastier shade of red. Damn, Kai must have popped him good earlier.

His wild gaze landed on me, then slid back to Kai.

“You,” Leander growled, a cold anger sharpening his irises into icy pikes. His shoulders broadened as he stalked over, the awkward gait from smashing his way into the building making him look even more feral. “The fuck are you doing to her?”

The smooth insides of Kai’s arms brushed my elbows. His body seemed to melt around me, his breath turning ragged. “I—I don’t…” he began, but his words lagged, like his tongue had grown heavy in his mouth. Something was off. The timbre of his voice was too throaty, too heated. Like maybe a fog had settled over his mind.

Shit.

The weight of his chest slumped forward, and I nearly crawled out of the pool from the sudden contact. But it only drove him closer to the torrent’s source. Heavy breaths beat on my back, and his forehead fell forward, nestling into my wet hair. Oh no. He was definitely feeling it.

A low sound rippled through his chest, sliding into my ear. And damn . It was the hottest sound I’d ever heard.

A shiver raced through me as the deep vibrations shot right between my legs, the place where the water had left so wanting. His arms flexed, closing in around me, and I nearly harmonized his groan with one of my own.

How the hell had a noise like that come from Kai?

Every muscle pressed against me tightened, his whole body going rigid. Was he really gonna—

He gasped out suddenly, and his forehead sank. Blunt tooth tips raked over the line of my shoulder. Just a touch, light and wicked. Nothing like the bubbly Kai I knew at all. As they grazed, the hot slash of his tongue flicked over where his bottom teeth connected with my skin, sending a thrill racing up my neck.

With each increasingly uneven breath pouring from Kai’s throat, an inferno beat against my shoulder, driving me mad with a need for something I shouldn’t have even wanted at all. Another deep groan, and when his muscles pulled tighter than a line of fishing wire, his jaw tensed, closing around my flesh, using my shoulder to brace himself for what was to come next.

We cried out in unison, his a low moan and mine a shrill gasp of surprise, as his teeth sank into me. My eyes jumped to Leander above us, his shocked expression a mirror of my own.

Kai’d bit me . He freaking bit me.

He was still biting me!

I didn’t hate it. That wicked realization sent me reeling, and I jerked, knocking my shoulder out of his jaw before his muscles had even stopped straining from his untimely release in the pool. “You—you bit me?”

I turned to gawk at him, the urge to see the polished teeth that had just awakened every nerve running across my neck and shoulder too pressing to ignore. But powerful arms plucked me straight from the pool before I could.

“ Whoa . I don’t know what that was,” Kai gasped, falling away from the wall like he couldn’t bear another second in the unrelenting stream. “ But I kinda want to do it again. ”

“The fuck, man?” Leander barked. He set me on the tiles beside him, the pool water still dripping down my legs. “You bit her!”

Kai scratched the back of his neck, clearly winded. “Yeah, uh, sorry about that.” His lips stretched into a genuine Kai smile, and I gasped. Two rows of pearly teeth gleamed at me, slightly more angled at their tips than a typical human set. Why hadn’t I noticed before? “I can get a bit mouthy sometimes.”

He had so many teeth. Had his smile always been this wide?

“Fucking spike-tails,” Leander grumbled. One quick glance over to me, and my bikini had his eyes doubling back. All his princely bravado melted away as he processed my attire, then Kai’s.

The sharpness in his eyes seemed to thaw all at once, replaced with a deep hurt. Uncertainty crept between his brows, and when his lips slowly parted, I knew his next words would break my heart. “You… with him ?”

“No, of course not!” I said frantically, and words started spilling from my mouth. “I was just trying to teach him how to swim, I swear. Barren brought me back early, and then I saw you, and Aleena was there, and I didn’t know if I should have gone up to you or left you alone. She was all over you, and I guess I panicked. And then Kai was there, trying to cheer me up like he does. He asked me to teach him to swim, and we got in the pool and—”

“Yeah, okay, but why’s his dick out?” Leander cut in a bit too forcefully, and he whipped back to Kai like he realized he’d misplaced his anger. “You touch her with your dick again, and I’ll spear it off and punch it down your fucking throat.”

Kai was slowly spinning on his heels in the water, looking utterly exhausted. “Dude, what ? Calm down, man. We were just checking out this human pool.” He stretched his arms and let out an enormous yawn. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure humans don’t even have dicks.”

Uh, what?

“Fucking idiot,” Leander ground out, taking a step. “That’s your dick, man. Right there.” He pointed, and Kai looked down at his abdomen.

He took a second to inspect himself, his chin turning in thought. “Like dick, singular ? As in only one dick?”

“Uh, yeah. Why would you need more than one?” I broke in, realizing too late that I was also inspecting his junk. Though water obscured it, I still recalled how it’d felt pressed against my inner thigh.

Kai continued like he hadn’t even heard my question, his hands patting down his belly, his ass, over his thighs, between his legs. “Well, I looked all over for them when I first transformed, but I couldn’t find my claspers anywhere.”

“Your what?” I said flatly. The heck was a clasper? If this was some sort of act, he deserved an award. He looked legitimately clueless.

“You know… My claspers,” he continued, his throat clearing like he was embarrassed to even mention them. I was about to look over to Leander for help when Kai did a little scissoring motion with his hands over his crotch. That was an image I wouldn’t be able to shake any time soon. “My claspers. My, uh, my dicks.”

Leander took another step, his foot teetering on the edge of the pool like he might just dive in and wring Kai’s neck. “Humans don’t have claspers, you fucker. But they do have dicks, and you’re looking right at yours.”

“Huh?” Kai pinged back, still clueless. He leaned forward, both his hands cupping his junk now. “Well, this is what I use to take a tinkle, but there are these soft, squashy things down here in this pouch thingy.” He shimmied his shoulders with a grunt as he tugged on them. “But they definitely couldn’t hold on to anyone. Their structural integrity is just not—”

“ Spike-tailed idiot. Try the limp shrimp you’ve got hanging above them,” Leander grumbled. He raked a hand through his hair as he shook his head. “Most merfolk just have one, you know. And ours aren’t covered in fucking barbs.”

“One?” Kai’s head shot back up, his eyebrows raising in surprise. “But how do you hold your mate in place while you—” His voice dropped to a whisper, his cheeks flaming. “Uh, you know…”

I turned my attention to Leander with interest. “Well, Lee?”

I squeaked as a rough hold seized my hips, Leander jerking my ass flush against the tops of his legs. His chin dipped, his voice a low growl in my ear. “Like this.”

Kai watched us, head slowly nodding in contemplation, like he was working out the viability of the hip hold. “Yeah, I don’t think that would work, dude. Not with our tails, at least,” he said finally, his shoulders raising in a shrug. “I don’t know how you fan-tails do it.”

“What’s with all this spike-tail, fan-tail talk?” I asked, trying to turn to Leander. The fingers holding on to my hips held me firmer, and I rolled my eyes. “Ex-mermaid here, remember? Someone’s gonna have to clue me in.”

Leander’s throat cleared, his chest puffing behind me. “ We’re fan-tails. Our forms are the likeness of the mighty Poseidon himself.”

Cue more eye rolling.

“Then there are spike-tails,” Leander continued in a slightly mocking tone. “Modeled after the ocean’s most murderous, unintelligent—”

“Sharks,” Kai cut in. His bright grin flashed at me, clearly unphased by Leander’s gibe. “Our tails look a lot like a shark’s.” His head turned back down in wonder. “So, this is my one dick?” he whispered. He poked at it a couple of times, but it remained spent and lifeless. It was still bigger than a freaking shrimp, though. Especially when a pulse of water got it going. Freaking Leander and his insults.

“So that means I just—” All the color drained from Kai’s face, like he’d finally realized what he’d done in the pool. “ Dude .”

“Yeah, dicks are great,” Leander monotoned. “You can thank me for the anatomy lesson by keeping it to your fucking self.” His grip around me loosened as he went to lead me away. “Come on, Claira. Let’s head back.”

“Is that why you came here? To drag me back?” I asked, not really appreciating his authoritative tone. I knew it pissed him off coming here to find Kai basically humping my back, but he was acting like he didn’t just have another woman latched on to him as well. Even if it had been all a trick of mermaid magic, this had been a misunderstanding, too.

“Not to drag you back, no. I came because Barren showed up,” Leander said, and I couldn’t stop from shuddering at Barren’s name. They’d spoken already? Did that mean—?

“He was looking for Kai. He’s got that pet of his, Lavaburn, in the car. She kept chirping at me. These weird throat clicks that kind of made me uncomfortable. Anyway, they’re waiting outside to take him back with them.”

“Laverne,” I corrected, and Leander shrugged like her name hadn’t mattered to him one bit. Poor Laverne. She sure wasn’t making much progress in the love department.

“Did you bring actual clothes with you?” Leander asked suddenly, his eyes scanning around the pool.

“Of course I did,” I huffed, breaking out of his hold. “I just wore this to go swimming. Think you can keep your hands to yourself long enough for me to go change?”

“You didn’t wear this when you went swimming with me,” he said with a mock frown. Unamused by the teasing, my lips fell into a hard line.

“Okay, okay,” Leander relented, holding up his palms. “I’ll keep my hands to myself, so go get changed. I’ll let Barren know I found you both.”

Satisfied, I nodded. “Meet you out there.”

When Leander turned, I glanced back at the pool. Kai was still in the water, staring straight down at his junk, mesmerized. When he looked back up, a blush crested over his nose.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” he started, but I stopped his apology with a shake of my head.

“It’s fine. I kind of had a feeling you, uh, didn’t know what was happening.” I toed back over to the pool, my hand trailing absently to the side of my neck and shoulder. The nerves where he’d bit me still tingled underneath my fingertips.

Kai’s eyes went wide, and I dropped my hand.

“And sorry I bit you,” he intoned. I could see his tongue moving underneath his lips, slowly running over his teeth. Like maybe he could still feel the press of my flesh on them, too. “There’s a lot I can do with my mouth.”

I felt my brows raise, my jaw drifting open in surprise.

“Whoa —what? No! I — I mean,” he choked out. “My mouth does a lot. On its own. It does a lot on its own. You know, like moving around, not meaning to. Like right now.”

“No need to apologize.” I laughed, and his lips widened into a sheepish smile. “Things are different on land. It’s hard to get used to life up here, I know. Thank you for trying to cheer me up, though.”

“Any time,” he said, drifting closer. “I had a lot of fun learning. You’re a brilliant teacher.”

The pitch of his voice shifted, doubling, then tripling into a beautiful harmony. Syllables danced through the air as if carried in the wake of a speedboat, unseen, except for the uncanny buzz I recognized as magic.

By the time the chorus faded, my mouth had gone completely dry. “I guess Leander was wrong,” I whispered, nearly breathless.

“What? Did he say I wouldn’t know how to show you a fun time?” Kai asked, one side of his mouth pulling into a cunning grin.

“Ha, not quite. He told me mermen can’t use glamour, but I swear you just did.” His eyebrows started to crease, and I shook my head to squash another misunderstanding before it began. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to do it, but your voice just did this weird trying-to-draw-me-to-it magical thing.”

Kai’s face went totally blank, his jaw slightly unhinging.

“You guys getting dressed or what?” Leander called, and I turned to see his head poking through the doorway, his pointer finger gingerly kneading his swollen nose.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said with a sigh. “You need some help getting out of the water, Kai?”

“I, um… No,” he stuttered as I eyed the fitting rooms.

“All right, well, guess I’ll see you in a bit. I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’ll walk back.” I wasn’t ready to face Barren. Not yet. “I’m sure Laverne will be happy having you all to herself anyway.”

Why the heck did Kai seem so spacey all of a sudden? “Hello? Kai?”

Wait. Was he waiting for me to leave so he could, uh, play with the water jet again?

“Never mind. I’ll just—” I sidestepped in the bathroom’s direction. “—go get changed.”

An image of Kai pressed against the side of the pool, back arched and tongue running over each point in his wide rows of teeth came to mind. My pulse surged, sending a hot flush all the way down my neck. I bolted for the bathrooms, leaving Kai to explore his wonderful new uni-dick alone.

So, Kai had a shark tail—so much for him being a bubbly dolphin. Did his true form actually have two dicks? I knew little about shark reproduction, but why the heck would they need barbs?

Call me curious, but I couldn’t help but start to imagine—

Groaning, I shook the thought away as I slipped into the bathroom. Better not .

Some things were better left a mystery.