Page 27 of The Merman’s Betrothal (Outcast Hearts #2)

R ory rose even earlier than usual the next morning.

He started by spending time in front of his bathroom mirror. Tidying up, he told himself. Shaving away the neck stubble and neatening his scruff of beard. But he was also, surreptitiously, checking for gills.

Rory avoided the thought as soon as it crossed his mind and continued to steadfastly not think it even as he carefully prodded his throat.

Surely there’d have been some evidence in his family’s history if somehow, somewhere way back down the line, someone had gotten intimate with a denizen of the deep? It wasn’t the kind of story a family would forget, right?

Fionn’s tale about humans and mermen living together had been swimming around his brain for days.

Picts. Of course Rory knew about the Picts.

Anyone with an ounce of Scottish pride who could draw their family tree past a few hundred years in the Highlands liked to say they were descended from the Picts.

Anyone including Hamish Douglas. Scottish through and through, he’d always said. An Ullapool boy until the day he’d die.

As for Nancy Douglas, Rory’s mother…

Rory knew a little about her history. Her family came from Lancashire, as English as Hamish was Scottish.

Nancy was a nurse and had met Hamish while on a long holiday exploring the Scottish Highlands.

They became penfriend sweethearts, and eventually he asked her to marry him. She moved to Ullapool and settled down.

Then Rory came along, and five years later she died.

Rory’s memories of her consisted of little more than soft hugs and a calm voice reading him a bedtime story about ducks. He wondered what she would think of him now, entertaining the idea of something as absurd as merman heritage.

All this passed behind Rory’s eyes with only the faintest glimmer of acknowledgement from his expression in the mirror.

The fact he was even half-thinking such non-thoughts was proof, in a way, that Rory wanted to see this soul bond business through.

Because maybe it really was fate. A chance at something new, offering him a hand up and out of the future he’d resigned himself to.

Or more like yanking him—dragging him forcefully out of the fugue state he’d built through all his non-choices.

Today Rory was making a choice. And he was terrified of where it might lead him.

He left the house quietly, slipping down Ullapool’s backstreets in grey dawn twilight. Rory didn’t want anyone to spot where he was going, or to interrupt him for that matter. He knew he’d lose his nerve if given the chance.

There was a secluded cove outside of town, a sort of sheltered beach with a few sea caves extending into the cliffs. Too rocky and slimy with seaweed to make for an attractive seaside spot, so it was rarely visited by people.

Rory had grown up swimming in the waters of this cove when he wasn’t diving into the harbour with Graham.

The water was bloody cold even in summer.

He mildly dreaded setting foot in it at 6 AM when the sun hadn’t even had chance to graze it yet, but some part of him felt the water was necessary.

As though it would help open the connection he was seeking.

It’s not a feckin’ phone line, he told himself while grumpily taking his boots and socks off. He left them on a rock and waded ankle deep into the surf.

The soul bond swirled in his chest, not totally unlike a poorly digested curry fighting to come back up.

Rory found it to be an uneasy feeling as he tried to reach within himself to meet this constant tugging.

He closed his eyes, letting the bond pull at him in time with the waves washing over his feet.

He was glad of his oilskin keeping the wind out. It was a bitter morning and the chill threatened to break his concentration. The water was strangely warm, however. Not the walking-on-glass-shards freezing cold that he’d been prepared for.

The warmth crept up his legs from his feet. Rory’s skin began to itch again.

‘Fucking concentrate,’ he berated himself.

He wasn’t sure what he needed to do, exactly. How to bring Fionn… here. Or even what he was going to say to him, if the merman showed up. But Rory knew he was deciding to do something . He hadn’t figured out exactly what it was, but he was doing it.

He stared out over the loch in the direction of the Minch. The sun was rising behind him, casting his shadow over the gentle waves.

What if he just dived in and swam? All the way to the dark horizon.

Rory tingled all over with goosebumps. The question of ‘Where to?’ didn’t even factor into it. The destination didn’t matter as much as the fact he’d simply be leaving Ullapool behind.

‘You do not look distressed,’ observed a self-important voice from the waves, ‘yet you seem to call me here with an urgency that would suggest otherwise.’

Rory located Fionn amid the surf. The merman stood about ten yards away, waist-deep in the water.

He was a cerulean giant gleaming in the sun’s early rays.

Half his hair had fallen forward over one shoulder, plastered against his collarbone.

Rory imagined sweeping the silver strands aside to stroke the tattoos they covered.

He licked his lips and said, ‘Hi.’

Fionn squinted at him. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’

‘Only you seem unusually courteous, today.’

Rory bristled. ‘You didn’t need to come here, you daft prick.’

‘Aha.’ Fionn visibly relaxed. ‘And why have you called me away from my duties to meet you here?’

Away from his duties. Rory longed to roll his eyes but refrained. ‘Were you doing something important?’

He expected a pompous retort along the lines of Everything a prince does is important . But to his surprise Fionn took a beat to consider before replying.

‘In the grand scheme of things, I suppose not. Some formal nonsense that I’m glad to be excused from for a while. Even if I am uncertain whether I’m fully welcome in the presence of said excuse.’

Rory stared back at Fionn and ran that last sentence over in his head several times. Why did the man have to speak in condescending riddles?

‘You last told me to fuck off,’ Fionn said helpfully. ‘Shouted it, in fact, into my face.’

‘Yeah…’ Rory’s toes curled into the sand at the memory. So much to unpack here. He knew he ought to get some words out before this whole thing became too overwhelming: this weird tryst in the ocean that might or might not end up with him sucking some mer-cock today.

As soon as he thought it he froze, words stalling in his throat.

Fionn crossed his arms impatiently. ‘Did you bring me here just to taunt me? Was my previous humiliation not enough for you? Perhaps you wish to use and discard me again?’

Once Fionn started, it seemed he couldn’t stop. His tone was hard and haughty, but the words came fast and unfettered like they’d been bottled up and were finally spilling forth.

‘I am not a thing to be used, Rory Douglas. I may know my place and I will respect our bond but I am a whole person with a whole heart of my own. I am not a doll to be pulled out for special occasions and then flung aside when not required. I put my all into everything and I deserve something back. Something like respect. Something as basic as the smallest recognition that I have wants and desires too, that I make sacrifices too, that I…’

Fionn caught himself, flushing a deeper shade of blue across his cheeks and throat.

Rory’s mouth was dry; his tongue felt like heavy sandpaper.

The idea that he might’ve hurt the blue monst— the blue merman hadn’t even occurred to him.

He hadn’t considered it was even possible to hurt the aquatic bastard, truth be told.

What with his spear and his battle tattoos, how could an inconsequence like Rory have scratched him at all?

He shuffled his feet in the water, hands dug deep in his pockets.

‘Dunno what to say to that,’ Rory said gruffly. He kicked away a drifting knot of seaweed, and in doing so noticed how still the water had become. Like it was reflecting the tension between Fionn’s body and his.

The silence extended, awkward and heavy. Rory realised the ball was still in his court. He cleared his throat, failed to come out with anything, and then cleared it again.

‘You sound ill,’ Fionn remarked. Not hostile, but not warm either.

‘I’m shit at this,’ Rory replied grudgingly. ‘Talking about… stuff.’

‘Stuff?’

‘Feelings and… stuff.’

Fionn blinked rapidly, probably confused, which Rory considered a reasonable reaction. He ploughed on, anyway.

‘So the thing we did the other day, right? In the bath. I literally asked for it, I know, right. But my head wasn’t on straight and it wasn’t like I’d planned on…

It wasn’t like I meant to get mine without giving you yours, right?

But the thing is… I haven’t actually… I’ve never…

’ Rory sucked in a deep breath and expelled it all at once.

‘I’ve never touched another guy’s dick let alone sucked it or took it up the arse or, fuck, even looked at one funny, you know? ’

If he’d had any doubts about Fionn’s confusion before, it was now utterly plain on the merman’s face as he apparently tried to comprehend this revelation.

Eventually, Fionn replied, ‘Nor have I.’

They stared at each other over the still water. Rory could hear his own brain clicking as it changed gear.

‘You what?’ he said.

‘I’ve never touched another. Apart from you.’ The haughtiness was gone from Fionn’s voice, replaced by a kind of innocent perplexity that made Rory want to give him a reassuring pat on the head as though he were a bewildered puppy.

‘Not anyone? ’

‘None.’

‘Men or women?’

Fionn stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. ‘Am I saying this correctly? I have never had sexual relations with anyone apart from you, Rory Douglas.’

‘That was your first fucking time? ’

‘Yes, you understand. My first time fucking.’ Fionn stopped halfway through an emphatic nod. ‘Actually, I don’t know if it counts as fucking seeing as you didn’t receive my—’