Page 7 of The Merman’s Betrothal (Outcast Hearts #2)

T he kiss was fucking fire .

Rory didn’t have time to register what was happening.

One moment he was skulking on the edge of Graham’s circle, occasionally remembering to smirk at one of his work buddy’s off-colour jokes or at least bury his head in his pint—and the next moment a total stranger was leaning into his face with puckered lips and Rory’s mind went blank before he even knew that contact had been made.

But fucking hell, was contact made. Were kisses meant to be like this?

It was so… juicy. Like biting into the sweetest, plumpest fruit he’d ever tasted and getting instantly drunk on it.

His head was spinning. Were his feet still touching the floor?

It felt like being in the ocean, swept up by an enormous wave dragging him against this body and these lips.

It was the mushrooming silence that broke Rory’s daze. He flinched instinctively away from the kiss, all at once missing the fervour of it.

Rory first perceived the number of eyeballs focused on him: Graham and his crew were gawking. Sara was covering her mouth with her hand, possibly smothering a laugh. Then, with slowly dawning horror, Rory took in the sight of the man he’d been kissing.

The man he’d been kissing .

The man with the oddly dyed silver hair (strikingly beautiful, Rory didn’t dare to think) and the rudely prying eyes (definitely not like they could see right into Rory’s soul) and the obnoxious muscles (oh fuck, they were good muscles, though) and garish tattoos over one side of his neck leading into his half-open shirt ( hot tattoos, really fucking hot).

The man Rory had been kissing like he was the last source of water in a desert. The man who had just given Rory the fastest hard-on of his life. The man who was going to ruin his entire fucking night.

Oblivious to the attention on them, the man he’d been kissing looked straight at Rory and said, with a weird inflection on his words as though they held some hidden meaning, ‘Well met, friend. May I accompany you home?’

‘Fuck no,’ Rory gasped, shoving him away.

The man he’d been kissing seemed stunned. ‘No?’

‘Get away from me, you stupid cunt.’ Rory shoved him again, throwing his weight behind it.

The man he’d been kissing (god, oh god, he needed a better name) was harder to move than Rory anticipated.

Those muscles weren’t just for show. Rory took a big step back, just to be certain he’d put distance between them.

‘Don’t you know me?’ the man he’d been kissing asked.

The attention of Graham and his mates was excruciating. They tracked the stranger then swung to Rory.

‘Fuck off, mate,’ Rory announced loudly. ‘Of course I don’t know you. I thought you were a girl.’

Which was a ridiculous claim to make, because aside from the long hair there was nothing remotely feminine about the man he’d been kissing .

The fucker radiated the kind of alpha-male aura that Rory despised: he seemed to be looking down on The Loch-Up’s entire clientele like he was above everyone in it.

Rory gulped a large swig of his pint and turned back to Graham’s circle, glaring at any of them to say something—anything.

‘Thought the cunt was a girl,’ he repeated. Sara winced at his use of the C-word and Rory’s self-consciousness went into overdrive. That was his dad’s voice coming through. The curse had been tossed so casually at Rory over the years, sometimes it slipped out when he felt backed into a corner.

The rest of the circle exchanged glances, but luckily the desire for shitty banter won out over genuine scrutiny.

Graham clapped him on the back. ‘Ah, you fuckin’ dafty. Don’t go stealin’ the men from under me.’

‘Yeah, Graham’s meant to be the only cocksucker round here!’ chimed in his mates, tasteful as ever.

‘Fella’s blind. Get yer eyes checked.’

‘Nah, get him some water. Man can’t handle his drink!’

A round of guffaws smoothed Rory’s nerves a little. He could handle being the butt of a joke for a while. It was just a mistake. Anyone could make a mistake.

No one cares, he told himself, wondering why he was struggling to shake it off. Was it because his mind was already conjuring the slurs that would pour out of Ol’ Doaty’s mouth if he ever got wind of this? Rory pushed down a sickly rising tide of anxiety. No one cares.

He made a show of spilling his drink to seem drunker than he was.

‘Hooo, get a load of ’im!’ one of them hollered. ‘He’ll be snogging my granny next!’

‘If she’s as good as your mum, I’ll have a go,’ Rory slurred back, to raucous laughter.

The group descended into jeers at one another and an escalating slew of ‘your mum’ jokes that Rory felt was the perfect opportunity to duck out.

He caught Graham’s eye and pointed at his empty glass before heading in the direction of the bar.

Rory found himself weaving more than he felt he ought to as he struggled to move through the crowd.

Perhaps he really was drunker than he thought.

It had been a while since he’d last had a proper drink.

Maybe it wasn’t impossible that tonight’s three pints had simply hit him like a freight train, and maybe that was the reason he’d gotten blindsided by the man he’d been kissing .

Everyone experienced weird boners once in while, right? Right?

Rory’s thoughts were swimming by the time he reached the bar. Like his brain was going all gooey and something in his insides was churning like the aftermath of a really bad curry.

Before Rory could catch Ava’s eye behind the bar, the worst happened. The man he’d been kissing slid into the space next to him.

‘I do not understand why you pushed me away,’ said the attractive son of a bitch.

Rory’s body went into meltdown. He was suffering the weirdest fizzing sensation, as though an electric current was passing between him and the man he’d been kissing .

Rory couldn’t tell if he was turned on or going to throw up, but whatever it was sent his head spinning and his whole being off-kilter.

It was as if the guy’s physical presence was the cause.

‘Go away,’ he tried to say, but it came out as an unintelligible string of syllables. Rory groaned and leaned on the bar for support—but missed and slipped down it instead.

The strong arms of the man he’d been kissing caught him. They tried to place him back on his feet, but Rory couldn’t hold his balance and fell right against the guy’s chest.

The man he’d been kissing patted Rory’s hair and gently tilted his head back to meet his eyes again. ‘Do you hear me, friend? Are you all right?’

Rory’s mouth gaped open and closed, but the fizzing current drowned out any hope he had of answering.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ This was a new voice, tinged with worry. ‘He looks ill, Your Highness.’

‘We’ll take him to the palace,’ the man he’d been kissing declared. He held Rory steady and looked into his unfocused eyes. ‘Do not fear. I shall take you to a healer.’

What? No you bloody won’t, Rory tried to reply. But his tongue was thick in his mouth and his limbs weren’t obeying him either. Inexplicably, his entire body began to itch.

‘Here, take his other arm.’ Together, the man he’d been kissing and his friend looped Rory’s arms round their shoulders and proceeded to half-carry, half-drag him out of the club.

I’m being kidnapped, Rory’s mind hazily registered.

His legs could only wobble forward, helpless to do anything other than follow their own momentum.

For a split-second Rory’s muddled brain thought Simon might save him, but The Loch-Up’s stalwart bouncer was busy with a cigarette and not particularly interested in any inebriated soul who was leaving the club.

Rory endeavoured to break free of his captors’ grip, but he only succeeded in careening into the shoulder of the man he’d been kissing .

‘This way, friend,’ the man he’d been kissing said gently, hoisting him upright again.

Rory blearily forced his mouth and tongue to work together. ‘Did yuh… spike muh drink?’

‘Did you catch that, Neacel?’

‘No, Your Highness. Something about a drink?’

Rory definitely felt like he’d been drugged. ‘Where’s yuh… takin’… me?’ he slurred pathetically. The thumping in his chest drowned out the sound of his own voice.

‘Home,’ the man he’d been kissing replied firmly.

That sounds good, Rory’s dazed brain agreed. Except, he wanted to tell them, my home’s in the other direction.

They seemed to be steering him towards the harbour.

‘Are you sure, Your Highness? Someone might see us,’ said the shorter of the pair.

‘We should get him into the water as fast as possible. He’s clearly unwell and I can’t allow him to suffer a minute more.’

Rory’s feet lifted off the ground. The man he’d been kissing picked him up like a baby in order to navigate the steps down to the jetty. Rory’s body fizzed louder at the close contact; he worried he might even be vibrating in the man’s arms.

He was put down again, left to sit on the wooden boards while the two strangers removed their clothes.

Removed their clothes?

What the fuck was happening?

Perhaps it was the effect of the cold air sobering him up, or a sudden awareness of the whole situation that allowed hard, logical panic to pierce through Rory’s haze. Just as the man he’d been kissing tugged off his kilt, Rory made a desperate scramble for the stairs.

His legs buckled immediately and he slipped on the wet boards. The dark shape of the man he’d been kissing loomed over him, blocking out the moonlight. Rory squawked a horrified yelp. He scrambled backwards on his arse and promptly fell off the side of the jetty.

If Rory had been sober, he’d have remembered to prepare for the way the freezing water would force the air from his lungs. He was used to swimming in the ocean. Was a strong swimmer, even—but not when all his neurons were still misfiring and his muscles weren’t answering their calls.

He sank like a damn stone, limbs locked by shock.

Now I’m going to drown, Rory thought dimly. I’ve done nothing with my life and now it’s going to end underwater with no one around to notice except two fucking weirdos who were probably going to kill me anyway.

The clarity of this thought pulled Rory back into a space of lucidity. He willed his legs to kick and his arms to thrash for the surface. He broke into air heaving deep lungfuls of precious oxygen, unable to hear anything over the drumming sound of his blood rushing in his ears.

Rory managed to find the edge of the jetty and clung onto it. He didn’t have the strength to lift himself out yet, but at least he was breathing.

A pair of hands gently grasped his shoulders from behind.

‘You are going the wrong way,’ said the man he’d been kissing . The silver-haired prick was submerged to his neck, effortlessly treading water like the bitter temperature was nothing. While naked. ‘We’ll carry you again if you are unable to swim.’

He then tried to tug Rory away from the jetty. Not daring to risk his grip, Rory lashed out with his legs instead, aiming to kick the guy in his nads. ‘You’re fuckin’ crazy,’ Rory gasped.

The man he’d been kissing’s friend popped his head out of the water, as though he’d just been chilling down there for a whole minute. He looked around furtively. ‘We should hurry, Your Highness. We’re too exposed here.’

The man he’d been kissing simply nodded and hooked an arm round Rory’s collarbone. Then he dove backwards, wrenching Rory away from the jetty with terrifying ease.

Rory flipped upside-down, now pinned to the chest of the man he’d been kissing and being towed down, down under the waves.

Survival instinct took over and his body fought back. Rory blindly kicked and punched at anything he could reach, all his dizziness and confusion narrowed onto the single pinpoint thought that if he didn’t escape the clutches of this bastard that he would die .

The grip around his chest tightened. A hand tried and failed to calm his flailing limbs.

A jumble of strange musical sounds filled Rory’s ears, almost like two alarmed voices singing to one another.

He couldn’t get free. Water spilled into his lungs and he convulsed, choking, suffocating.

He couldn’t tell if it was his heart or his lungs that felt like they were going to burst, but certainly the space inside his rib cage was suffering a ricochet of explosions.

Before he blacked out, Rory wondered if anyone would miss him. Ol’ Doaty’s voice echoed in the dark behind his eyelids. Or was it his father’s voice?

Yer a useless prick, Rory. You ain’t done nothin’ the world will miss you for.