Page 28

All I can see are bubbles and scales, and all I feel is the air leaving my lungs and terror.

A flash of purple skin tugs the camouflaged male away from me. He uncoils and lashes out at Aura. But my Amphiran doesn’t relent. He’s firm, forceful, and gets control of the other male.

But I’m so turned around I can’t tell which way is up or down until a hand pulls me up.

The nice pink-banded woman tugs me against her and looks me over as I splutter and suck in air.

“Are you okay?” Eira asks.

I nod. “Thanks.”

She gives Cora a dirty look. “I might be a pink, but I don’t understand her grudge. She should have warned all of you. But I guess entitled bitches are used to their daddies cleaning up their messes with money.”

Aura surfaces with the male in a chokehold and growls with a ferocity that makes me tense. “She doesn’t want you. You need to stay away from her!”

“She looks like she has scales,” he rasps. “My Siren wants her!”

“Tough shit, you glittery gremlin. Go coil up around your own little eel and suck yourself .” Aura pushes them apart.

The scaled male looks at me.

“Don’t even think about it.” Aura places himself between us in two strides. “I held back this time. Next time, I won’t.”

The woman next to me shoulder-bumps me. “Ooh, you got a good one. It’s nice to be protected, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, especially when I can’t really swim.”

Eira’s look of surprise reminds me I should practice more. “You can’t?”

“Sort of. I did when I was a kid, but my thruster manufacturing job had me handling a lot of tech. Electricity and water…” I lift my hands, mimicking a scale.

“Ah. That makes sense.”

“You get a good one?” I ask her.

She nods and points to the complex. “Work called. So he had to get out.”

Aura makes his way to me, collects me against him, and kisses me. I don’t need words to know he was worried. I feel it in the desperate way he holds me.

“Did he hurt you?” I ask.

“Naw, he’s delightful. I miss a good fight now and then.” Aura grins.

“Aura…”

“He’s about as threatening to me as a wet sock. Uncomfortable and annoying because of how clingy he is to you.”

“Thanks for freeing me for a second time. I don’t think he realizes how much he scares me.”

Aura hoists me up by my hips and sets me on a ledge in the pool as my friend eases herself into another corner. “Then I’ll make sure he never touches you again.”

He leans close to me and whispers in my ear. “And we’ll get her back, too. Nobody fucks with you, babe, and gets away with it. Not on my watch.”

Babe… I rest my forehead to his, disbelieving I’ve found such a catch. You can’t be real.

He whips a hand into the water and lifts up a squirming tentacle. Aura looks down and then sideways, tracing the tentacle to its owner.

A redhead crests the pool’s surface with two huge gray eyes and a grimace like Aura’s hurting him.

“Really, squid-boy?”

The male lifts two hands with tentacles for fingers, then two more, and blinks. “I juuust wanted to knooow her textuuure. It’s uuunique.”

I wrap my legs around Aura’s waist. “Sorry, I’m taken.”

Aura rasps a deep breath, lets the squid-man go, braces the back of my neck, and kisses me with force.

I bask in the electric tingle and heat of his tongue against mine, the way he caresses me like I’m made of glass, and how he manages to make me feel like the only woman in the universe.

When we’re finally left alone in the hot water, Aura breaks the kiss. “Not yet, you’re not. Not officially. I have been trying to cover you with my scent, but I see that is not enough.”

I have to agree. And I’ve had time to think. If I want my life to change for certain, I’m going to have to go all in. “Maybe we should do something about that.”

Aura’s muscles bulge. “Really?”

I kiss his firm lips. “Yeah.”

He collects me, hikes out of the water, and carries me to our table. “You don’t have to ask me twice. This whole place smells like sex. I can barely think.”

He sets me down, wraps me in my towel, and then flash-dries himself with a blink of light.

At the other end of the pool, Cora leans against the railing, chatting it up with a tall Jorbiun. Aura glances over his shoulder, sees her, then leans back into the railing and bumps it with his shoulder.

“Ow! Fucker!” Cora shakes a hand and then curls around it.

Aura collects me in his arms again and starts for the complex.

“Prince Aurelius.” A staff member says in warning.

He shrugs as we pass the gate and, with a cutesy voice, replies coyly, “Oopsies!”

I cover my mouth with a hand as I hold back hysterical laughter. “You’re almost as bad as her.”

“Except, I don’t start it.” Aura nips at my neck. “But I am going to start something with you.”

He kisses me all the way to the main doors barely stopping for a breath to ask me, “Your room or mine?”

“Yours is probably nicer. But mine is closer.”

Aura growls with lust and practically runs to my room. I swipe my wrist, and the door opens. In two seconds, he’s launched us across the room and at the bed. I cringe in anticipation of it breaking, but it bounces with surprising resiliency.

“It’s fine. They can handle us,” he says.

“How do you know?”

Aura grins as my door shuts. “I heard you jump onto yours last night. So, of course, I had to try it.”

“You’ve seriously never jumped on a bed before?” I’m shocked.

“Didn’t have a mattress when I was little.” Aura nibbles my ear. “Royals didn’t allow such behavior. So, no.”

His kisses travel lower, igniting my skin with every glowing lovezap. The electricity is gentle and tracks along my bodyweb until it fades from perception.

Aura eases his massive body over mine, lowers his nose to my neck, and bites free the strings of my damp bikini top with his teeth. His hands roam my back even as I lie beneath him, and he trails nibbles down my chest.

“You are…” Aura grunts in lust. “Cai’aklictia, amamora.”

I want to ask him what it means, but his tongue wraps around a breast, then glides it’s wet, electric softness over my nipple, stealing my breath. My ribs tense. Skin prickles. And my delicate flesh drips with growing need.

He withdraws his arms, shimmies lower on the bed, and removes my bikini bottom with two tugs of his teeth. Aura spreads my legs with warm, rough hands and kisses my belly.

“What are you…”

The velvety soft heat that glides up my pussy and over my clit can’t be what I think it is. His affection is galvanic, his breath a strange new sensation I struggle to process. He licks me with slow curiosity as I grasp for my sanity. I have never felt so good in all my life.

Aura’s rumbling voice is palpable as he speaks between licks. “I want—to give you—a taste—of what it will be like—to mate with me.”

He’s quickly reducing me to a quivering mess of scorching need to feel his heat soothe the deepest corners of my body. But I get hung up on one tiny little detail. “Is every part of you electric?”

He laughs once like he’s certain he’s found the one weakness he can finally exploit. “What do you think?”

“Yes?”

He hums a deep note of satisfaction. “Call this a trial run.”

I’m about to ask what he means when he slides his voltaic tongue inside me, penetrating me slowly and sending clenching shivers up into my core, until I can barely breathe.

Aura mumbles something I can’t understand, and I don’t have time to try. His hands steady my hips, and he suckles my clit then searches deeper into my body.

A glorious, hot euphoria consumes me, rising like a building tsunami, one that, when it hits, every muscle tenses. I clench hard around Aura’s tongue.

He pants heavily and releases a moan.

The quivers consume me until I am dizzy with erotic pleasure. And finally, I feel safe, wanted, cherished.

Aura swirls his tongue around inside me until my climax fades, and I am melted into the bed. Then he eases back and kisses the inside of my thigh. “Mind if I borrow your towel?”

I rest a hand on my forehead, sweating and in disbelief. What just happened? “Uh, sure.”

He steals it, wraps it around his waist, then extends a hand to me. “Join me?”

My legs are weak when he hauls me upright.

“You okay?” He smirks like he knows I’m not.

Aura helps me stagger to the shower, gets the water running, and then turns away. “Give me a second.”

I ease into the hot water as he closes the door. But as he turns around, I hook a finger in the handle and open it just a crack. His muscled back is to me as he drops his swim trunks—what’s left of them. They fall like papery ash from the firm mounds of his backside.

And suddenly I don’t care if it prickles or I turn to dust. I want him if it’s the last thing I get to experience in this life.

Death by electric cock sounds like something out of a corny spoof movie. But as Aura turns around, I’m staring the real possibility in the face.

A sly grin paints his face. Aura hangs an arm from the shower door. “Like what you see?”

“Get your hot purple ass in here.”

Aura chuckles and joins me in the shower. “Did you like…”

I waste no time taking his steely cock in my hand and mapping its length with my fingers.

Aura closes his eyes and braces himself on the wall. His boyish charm fades, and I can tell he needs release—desperately. “Jovie, I don’t know if I can contain myself.”

“Good.”

He catches a handful of water and washes his face as if searching for a distraction.

“What are you worried about?” I kiss his proud chest and look up at him.

“Hurting you.”

“Then I’ll go slow.” I wink up at him, lean over, and take his tip into my mouth.

Aura gasps in lustful surprise and stiffens in my grasp. His cock sparks against my tongue in distinct places as I slide down over his length.

“Jovie… Don’t hurt yourself just to pleasure me.”