by Devyn Quinn
Blake’s brows shot up as he realized the implications. Very aware that he stood stark-ass naked in front of the woman he’d just deflowered, he quickly reached for his underwear and slacks. Stepping into his clothes, he zipped and buttoned with haste. It felt wiser to be covered up for this conversation.
“Now, let’s talk,” he said, seeking clarification. “This can’t be right. Are you saying you’re a virgin?”
Refusing to let a single tear fall, Gwen blinked hard. “I was last night.” She sagged into a nearby chair.
Blake shook his head. “I see.” That was definitely one thing he would never have expected to find: a twenty-seven-year-old virgin. In a society that had sex shoved in its face twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, it was a rarity. Especially for a woman of Gwen’s age.
She’d chosen him to be her first. It was then Blake knew what had happened between them was more than the satisfaction of a physical itch. Their bodies had fit together so perfectly, almost as if they’d been made for each other.
“I hope you’re not upset with me.” She closed her eyes, rubbing her face. “I should have told you.”
As she spoke, the mirror over the bureau cracked. Like a windshield struck with a pebble, a tiny hairline fracture began to form in the thick glass.
Blake’s gaze flew to the mirror. His self-protective instincts kicked into gear. He knew she could tear him to pieces with a thought. Oh, damn . . . Not good. His head turned back to Gwen.
She leaned forward, planting her head against her knees. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.” The moan issuing up from her was low and mournful.
Eyes widening, Blake watched the single crack grow larger. He could hear the glass breaking apart. The cracks multiplied, branching out in a spider’s web, snaking with unnerving speed.
The one thing Blake had noticed about Gwen was that she seemed to have a hair trigger when it came to unleashing her psi-kinetic energies.
Forcing himself to stay calm, he walked over to where Gwen sat. She was still hunched over in her self-protective shell.
Kneeling in front of her chair, he reached out and took her by the shoulders. Holding her in a gentle, yet strong grip, he forced her to sit up. It was the same hold he’d used dozens of times before. He usually used it on a four-year-old boy throwing a temper tantrum.
Grabbing on to her felt like taking hold of a hot wire fence. The blood pulsing beneath her veins thrummed with power. The tips of his fingers tingled as he held her. In a few seconds, her body heat seemed to fall to a low simmer. “It’s okay.” He forced his voice to remain steady. “It’s no big deal.”
“I feel so stupid.” Tears rising all over again, she wavered. “I tried to tell you last night. You know . . . when I said it was the first time I’d ever showed anybody my tail.”
Blake slipped his fingers under her chin, caressing the hard line of her jaw. “I have to admit I was so busy looking at you that it totally flew over my head.” That was pretty true. At the time, a semitruck could have run over him and he wouldn’t have noticed. He was too enchanted by the lady in the water.
A smile tugged at her lips. “I’ve never met a man who I thought could accept me—the real me. Even though I look human, there’s always the Mer hovering in the background, waiting to emerge. It’s hard to find someone you can share it with.”
He suddenly got a glimpse of Gwen’s inner demons. Beneath the facade of confidence and control was a woman struggling to accept herself and her place in the world. It was a burden all people carried at one time or another. Everyone had their trials as well as triumphs. Hers was heavier than most because of her complicated heritage. It would be hard to find a man who would love her—tail and all.
Emotion took over. His grip loosened around her arms and he rubbed her shoulder gently. “I’m honored you chose me to be your first.” As he said the words, he knew he meant them.
She sniffed. “Damn it, I hate to cry.” A wavering smile crossed her lips. “This wasn’t quite the way I’d imagined this would happen. I had something a little more romantic in mind and not—” She squinched up her face. “Ugh. A big mess.” Her trembling body gave him comfort. The attraction was not one-sided at all.
He raised an amused brow. “Trust me when I tell you I’m used to dealing with women’s issues.” He laughed. “I’ve got a kid, remember? This is nothing compared to diapers and food flung all over the house.”
Gwen relaxed enough to laugh. “If nothing else, I guess it will be a night I’ll always remember.”
Blake cupped her hands in his. “I’ll remember it, too,” he admitted. “You’re definitely not a woman I could ever forget.”
“In a good way, I hope,” she added.
Relieved to have the crisis under control, he nodded. “Always in a good way.”
She sighed. “Guess I should take a shower.”
That remark got his attention. Anticipation kicked his heart into a faster rhythm. “Maybe I could join you,” he hinted, hoping she’d say yes. “Then we could get that meal that’s been delayed a little too long.”
I can’t believe it happened.
Mind half in a daze, Gwen made her way toward the next-door unit. Tessa and Kenneth had one apartment, Addison the other. She needed to talk to her sisters, and soon.
Gwen threw a look over her shoulder, half expecting to see an agent shadowing her as she made the brief trip between the duplexes. To her surprise, no one seemed to be watching. At least not anyone she could see. By all outward appearances the identical duplexes with their precise landscaping looked like any middle-class neighborhood early in the morning. Only the high barbed-wire fencing looming in the distance shattered the illusion.
She made her way up the stairs and into the foyer separating the apartments. Since her apartment didn’t have a morsel of food, Blake had offered to go to the commissary and grab a few supplies. Though he could have called and had the food delivered, it seemed that he needed a time-out as much as she did.
A slow smile pulled at her mouth. Heat mingled with memory, fusing into something warm and fuzzy in the center of her stomach. They’d made love in the shower, and it was even better. She knew it was crazy, the way they’d come together, but she didn’t regret it.
I’m a virgin no more, she thought, punching at the buzzer of apartment number 1.
When no one answered, Gwen hit the buzzer again. “Come on,” she murmured. “I need someone to talk to.” Neither one of her sisters was up with the sun. The last few days had been exhausting and tense for everyone concerned. She’d be surprised if anyone rose before noon.
Still . . .
She punched the buzzer a third time, holding it down. “Please get up, damn it.”
One minute passed, and then another.
The door finally cracked open. Tessa’s sleepy face appeared. “What the hell?” she groused. “It’s way too damn early to be bothering us.”
Gwen held a finger to her lips. “I need to talk to you.”
Tessa yawned. “Can’t it wait until later? I was up all night listening to Ken rant and rave about our rights.”
She shook her head. “I’ve got something important to tell you.”
Pulling her robe tighter around her body, Tessa ran a hand through her tangled hair. “Unless you’ve talked that agent of yours into letting us go home, you haven’t got anything I want to hear.”
“He’s not my agent,” Gwen started to say, then stopped herself. Well, maybe he was. Her insides were practically bursting to share the news. “I think I did something stupid.”
Tessa gave her a grouchy glare. “What?”
Biting her bottom lip, Gwen blurted, “I had sex with Whittaker last night.”
Her sister’s sleepy eyes immediately snapped open. “No way.”
Gwen nodded. “We did.”
Flinging the door wide, Tessa dragged her inside the apartment. It was decorated in the same bland neutral colors as her own. “I want to know everything,” her
sister demanded, heading toward the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. A caffeine kick was the first thing Tessa needed to get going in the morning. Finding the cupboards bare, she pounded a fist against the counter. “Why the hell isn’t there any coffee?” she complained. “Don’t they know we need food, too?”
Gwen slid onto a nearby stool facing the counter. Her muscles ached, but in a pleasant way. Aside from a little soreness, she felt pretty good. Better than good, actually. “Blake’s gone to get us some breakfast,” she said. “But that’s beside the point. What do you think?”
“About you having sex with the man who’s spying on us?” Tessa retorted. “What the hell were you thinking, Gwen?” Her older sister’s words hit like a sledgehammer to the gut.
Gwen’s bubble of giddiness slowly began to deflate as the cold hard reality of their situation set in. She winced. Talk about having one’s brain take a vacation. “I made a mistake, didn’t I?”
Tessa leaned across the counter, tapping her temple with her index finger. “In case you haven’t figured it out yet, we’re being held here for more than our own safety. The government wants to know all about Mers, and they’ve not only got us locked up, they’ve got their beady little eyes trained right on us. Don’t you think it’s kind of funny they’d put an agent right next door to you? Sounds like he got more than an eyeful of you last night.”
Elation fizzling, Gwen laced her hands together. She suddenly felt stupid, an absolute fool. “I guess you’re right. What better way to get to know a mermaid than to sleep with one?”
Her sister propped a hand on her chin. She drummed impatient fingers against the countertop. “So did you tell him all our Mer secrets, like we’re cranky bitches without our coffee in the morning?”
Gwen shook her head. “I, uh, actually gave him something a little more personal than that,” she confessed.
Tessa pinned her under an assessing stare. “Oh?”
Gwen felt her throat tighten with embarrassment. Her heart raced along with her pulse. It was always less painful when the bandage was pulled off fast. She decided to plunge right in and confess. A thousand words tangled inside her, so she spit them all out in a rush. “Last night was the first time I’ve ever made love to a man.”
Tessa stared, speechless. “That’s not possible,” she finally spluttered. “You’ve been with men before. I’ve seen you give the eye to every hot hunk in a tight pair of jeans. And you and Caden were practically living together.”
Gwen blinked, suddenly wishing this were a dream and not real life. “I like men,” she admitted. “But I’ve never been with one. I mean, yeah, Caden and I fooled around a little, but I always put him off.” Feeling her throat thicken, she paused to swallow. “I never could bring myself to, you know, take off all of my clothes.”
Her sister held out her arm, showing a bit of the design etched into her skin. “Because of your scale pattern?”
She nodded. “That, and I never could get around to telling him I’m a mermaid. There never seemed to be a right time to roll out the tail.”
Tessa looked at her oddly. “Maybe because you’ve never wanted to admit you’re a Mer.”
A sinking sensation rolled through Gwen’s gut. As hard as she’d tried to fit into the human world, it was like pounding a square peg into a round hole. In trying to deny her Mer side, she’d practically stifled her life. Instead of living, she was existing, a prisoner in a cage of her own design.
And she hated it.
In a way it was a relief that people knew. She didn’t have to hide it or pretend anymore. She could be herself.
“No,” she said. “I’m not as brave as you and Addison are about it. I’ve always thought I could get through life without having to tell anyone.”
Tessa’s knowing gaze met hers. Her expression softened. “But, Gwen, that would mean being alone your entire life. As much as we sometimes think we don’t, Mers need human males. They are our mates, the father of our children. Without them, we have no future.”
A shiver ripped through her hard enough to make her body quiver. “I know,” she said, desperately trying to make her brain function. “I always meant to tell him, but I never could make myself say the words. I was so afraid he’d look at me like I was a—”
“Freak,” Tessa finished for her. “We’re all afraid of that moment when we have to open ourselves up to other people. Do you think it was easy for me to tell Jake? Or Kenneth?”
Gwen couldn’t help cracking a smile. The way Tessa told it, Kenneth had caught her quite by surprise when she was wearing her tail. “As I recall, you weren’t exactly thrilled when Kenneth came back to the island looking for you. Hadn’t you just about decided you’d had enough of human men?”
Tessa smiled. “Yeah, I was just about finished with men when Ken came along.”
Gwen stared at her older sister. “Then you have to understand why I held off so long,” she said simply. “I was afraid no one would accept me.”
Careful to keep her expression neutral, Tessa asked, “So you made love with Agent Whittaker because he knows you’re a Mer?”
Gwen felt sweet agony roll inside her as memories of the previous night began to reemerge in her mind. Instead of responding to Whittaker as an agent with a job to do, she was drawn to him because she found him attractive. There were no barriers between them, no more reasons to lie because he already knew what she was. She didn’t have to explain her scale pattern or wait with bated breath as he absorbed the details of her origins. He’d simply treated her as a woman he found attractive.
Gathering her frazzled nerves, she nodded. “Even though it probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do, I let him seduce me. Or maybe I seduced him. It just happened.”
“Did he know you were a virgin?”
Self-conscious, Gwen felt her scalp prickle with embarrassment. “No. Not until afterward.”
Tessa gave her sister a look. “Addison and I always assumed you were doing just fine. You always seemed to have a handle on things.”
Gwen shook her head. How do you tell someone, the people you love, that you’re falling apart inside? “I didn’t want to be a burden. You already had a lot on your hands. Breaking up with Jake, trying to hang on to the island . . . for a while there it seemed like everything was on the verge of falling apart.”
Tessa’s expression softened. “Your problems aren’t a burden, Gwen. We’re sisters. Sticking together and supporting each other is what we do. I know you’ve spent your whole life wanting to fit in. In a way I think we all do. But it shouldn’t come at the cost of our identities as Mer. What are we supposed to do? Shore up and die because we don’t belong in this world?”
Propping her chin on her hand, Gwen sighed. “I wish I could fully accept being a Mer.”
Tessa lifted a hand, stifling a yawn. “This is the only life you’ve got, kiddo. Might as well make the best of it.” She broke into a mischievous smile. “So was it good?”
Gwen felt heat rise to her cheeks. The question brought a reluctant grin. “It was great.” She cleared her throat. “All three times.”
Tessa’s brows rose. “Wow.” She fanned herself with a hand. “That man’s got staying power.”
“A lot of it,” Gwen added drily.
They didn’t have a chance to exchange more of the dirty details.
Kenneth ambled into the living room. Dressed in a pair of pajama bottoms and a plain white T-shirt, he stretched and yawned as he made his way through unfamiliar territory. “Who’s got staying power?” he asked with a sleepy grin.
“There’s no coffee,” Tessa announced. “And we weren’t talking about you.”
Kenneth made a face. “What the hell are we supposed to do about that?” he demanded.
“Agent Whittaker’s gone to fetch breakfast,” Gwen offered helpfully. “He’s bringing coffee and something to eat.” It felt odd referring to the man she’d just slept with in such a formal manner.
“Serves the fucker right to be errand boy,”
Kenneth griped. “After all the damn trouble he’s caused us, he should be shining my damn shoes, too.”
Tessa shot her husband a warning look. “Settle down, Ken. You’re talking about Gwen’s new boyfriend.”
Kenneth looked from woman to woman. “Get out,” he started to say.
Pulse pounding like a jackhammer, Gwen felt hot blood rush to her cheeks. Now that the fantasy had faded with the night, she was faced with some cold hard realities.
With a groan she let her head drop into her hands. “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said, peeking up between her fingers. “I just slept with him. Uh, last night.”
Kenneth’s brows soared. He stared at her, his expression incredulous. “What? Why would you do that?” Suspicion crept across his features. “He didn’t take advantage of you, did he?”
Gwen let her hands drop. Right now she felt like a two-year-old who’d been caught stealing cookies before supper. “No, I think it was the other way around,” she admitted, giving a little wince. “I kind of showed him my tail, and things went from there.”
The ringing doorbell interrupted further conversation.
Grateful for the interruption, Gwen slid off the barstool. “That should be food,” she announced, and hurried toward the door. Her hand trembled, fingers fumbling with the knob.
Blake Whittaker’s big frame filled the threshold. He carried two plastic sacks that looked overstuffed with goodies. “Delivery,” he announced. “Hope this is the right place.”
The sight of him caught her short. Heart leaping to her throat, her breath stalled in her lungs as she remembered how he’d looked undressed, his magnificent chest covered with a dark thatch of matted hair. The ripple of muscles beneath his taut flesh. She’d seen a lot of men in her life, had admired them. But Blake Whittaker had the power to take her breath away. He was all male. As much as she might have wanted to, she couldn’t deny the attraction. It was as strong as ever.
She silently gave herself a swift mental kick. What have I gotten myself into?