by Zoe Chant
He crouched, and turned to catch her as she slipped from his shoulders.
He put her down on her feet, but no power in the world could have made him let go of her then. She was human, and dressed again in the golden sundress. Her skin was warm velvet under his fingers.
When he bent to kiss her, she froze for a moment, lips just parted under his, then gave a sigh of surrender and put her arms around his neck and kissed him back.
Chapter 13
Saina couldn’t figure out how something could be so wrong and so right at the same time.
Bastian’s arms were the most wonderful place that she’d ever been. He smelled like salt and safety, and Saina wanted to stay here, kissing him, forever.
No, she realized after only a moment, she didn’t want to stay here. She wanted to drag him somewhere private and peel him out of his wet uniform, and why shouldn’t she?
He wanted her. There was no mistaking the urgency of the erection he was trying not to obviously press against her as he claimed her mouth.
And she wanted him. She wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anyone in her life, so badly that she ached with it. The pain in her shoulder was the merest tickle compared to the fire that was smoldering in her loins.
“My cottage,” she said, between kisses.
She’d never felt someone smile while they were kissing her, but Saina immediately decided this was one of her favorite things ever.
He swept her suddenly into his arms, making her squeak in protest and cling to his neck. Then he proceeded to carry her the entire way to her cottage, never pausing with his kisses.
He only almost dropped her once, during a particularly long, breathless kiss when he was climbing stairs at the same time, and Saina laughed and begged him to put her down.
“You are my treasure,” he told her, and then they were at the door of her cottage and he finally had to put her down for lack of a free hand to open it.
She let him in almost shyly, and shut the door behind him as he shucked off his shirt and dropped the first aid kit he was wearing on a table.
He was so gorgeous, she thought, feeling weak. Her mouth was swollen with his kisses, and her heart was pounding.
His chest was like a sculpture, perfect tanned skin over muscles like mountains. Saina wanted to put her hands on it, but was suddenly, unexpectedly nervous.
“My treasure,” Bastian repeated, looking adoringly at her.
Saina wanted to be that treasure he saw, she realized. She wanted it so badly.
And it was utterly wrong.
She didn’t know how or why her enchantment had taken such a hold on him, but it had to be her magic that made him look at her that way. If she slept with him now, she was no better than any of her siren sisters... and he made her want to be better than that.
She stared at him, wrestling with the fire in her belly that urged her to do what they both wanted so badly, and the little voice that told her she would regret it forever.
He was waiting, invitation and tension in every plane of his amazing body, and she was just staring at him in growing consternation.
“Saina?” he said gently, when she didn’t come to him.
“I can’t do this,” she said miserably.
He swallowed hard.
Saina opened her mouth. This was where she would sing him to sleep and make her escape. She could swim again; her shoulder barely ached at all.
Then she closed her mouth again.
That was the easy way. The siren way.
But it wasn’t the right way.
Chapter 14
Bastian watched Saina struggle, fascinated and heartbroken by the array of emotions that crossed her beautiful face: guilt, pain, resignation, frustration, fear. He wanted to close the distance between them and gather her into his arms, to assure her that whatever crisis she was facing, he was hers. But something told him that would only make things worse, so he waited, leashing his desire and protective instinct to the best of his ability.
“I’m sorry,” she said achingly. “I’m sorry you found me. I’m sorry I am who I am. I’m sorry I let you think this was something more than it was for so long. I’m just… so sorry.”
Bastian blinked. “I’m not sorry I found you,” he said at once.
“Don’t,” Saina breathed miserably. “Don’t be so perfect.”
Perfect? She thought he was perfect?
“Saina...” Something occurred to Bastian. “Have you ever been with… er, am I your first?”
Her face was a kaleidoscope of emotion.
It wasn’t an obvious guess. She was lushly curved and exuded sexuality like a cat in heat to Bastian’s senses. She had perfect flirtations that she could turn on in an instant, and she clearly knew exactly how to walk and smile for just the attention that she didn’t seem to want. The clothing she had arrived in suggested the exact opposite.
But Bastian believed her when she sighed and admitted, “Yes. You would be.”
She dropped into the chair and Bastian settled on the bed opposite from her.
“This would be much easier if I were like other sirens,” she said in frustration.
“What are other sirens like?” Bastian asked, already disliking them for not being like her.
“Oh, you know,” she said mockingly. “Seducing sailors, drowning people.”
Bastian was fairly sure she wasn’t really joking; there was too much bitterness in her voice.
“Tell me,” he told her without judgment, wishing he could touch her.
She looked back at him unflinchingly, then lowered dark lashes over her sea green eyes. “I wish I were kidding,” she said in a flat voice. “But every mermaid I’ve ever known but one was out only for themselves. We… don’t have families like you do. Siren women form a loose pod, but our loyalty to each other is usually not strong.”
“And the men?” Bastian had to ask.
“There are no male sirens,” Saina said stiffly. She swiftly added, “Children of trysts are raised in the pod if they are girls, and abandoned on land if they are boys.”
“Can all sirens sing like you?” Bastian asked, putting an unconscious hand to his throat as he remembered the compulsion of her song on the beach and the way she had defused the unexpected tension in the restaurant the night before.
She stiffened. “No, not all of us,” she said, and her voice was full of grief and regret. “Most of us can sing a simple seduction, but not all of us have more complicated talents.”
Bastian didn’t press her and Saina gathered herself and went on.
“My grandmother was a singer like me. She used to tell me that the magic we could do came from our hearts, that sirens were meant for greater things. And when she was lost… I realized that she was the only reason our pod had stayed together as long as it had. Without Our Voice, we were lost. My sisters all left, free to pursue their own baser desires.”
“Your Voice?” There was a significance to the title that Bastian couldn’t define.
“It is the title for our matron, our leader if you like. I went after her, made a deal for her freedom, but it went badly.”
Bastian had wondered how she ended up with a bullet hole, adrift in the middle of the ocean, and this started to explain it. He made a sudden connection. “Keylor. That’s how you know Keylor.”
“He swore he would free Our Voice if I did a job for him. A simple job, for someone with my gifts. And I got what he was after, too. But it sank with the dinghy. I’ll never get it now, and I don’t know another way to satisfy his demands.”
Bastian could feel the fire of rage rising inside his chest. “He blackmailed you. He kidnapped your grandmother and blackmailed you for her release.”
“He took her as a matter of debt,” Saina elucidated. “I don’t know the details, but he considered himself wronged and took her to satisfy his honor.”
“He wouldn’t harm her,” Bastian assured her, knowing it was a pitiful assurance.
“Of course not,” S
aina agreed. “I know a little about dragon honor.” She said it with disgust. “It’s no wonder you all make such amazing lawyers.”
“I would make a terrible lawyer,” Bastian confessed.
Saina smiled at him, a crooked, genuine smile. “That’s why I like you so much.”
Bastian felt like his chest expanded seven times when she said it. “I want to show you something,” he said impulsively, standing up.
Chapter 15
Saina knew where they would go before Bastian led her to the staff house. A paper taped to the front door read “Bachelor Barn.” This was crossed out and beneath it, in different handwriting: “Crew Quarters.” This was crossed out with a side-note: “No Star Trek references!”
The common room was empty, sunlight streaming in through the open curtains. The decor was decidedly dated and 80s style, but everything was clean and tidy, and the couch looked comfortable.
Bastian’s room was at the end of a short hallway on the top floor; Saina guessed that this had originally been the master bedroom from the floor plan. Rather than a standard bedroom lock, it had a sturdy hasp with a keyed padlock on it.
Bastian unlocked it, then hesitated, one hand on the doorknob. “I don’t want this to be a surprise,” he said awkwardly. “I’m not sure how to explain it.”
“I’ve known a few dragons,” Saina said. “I know about their hoards.”
Bastian looked more uncomfortable, if possible. “It’s not a normal hoard,” he said, and he looked so anxious that Saina wanted to give him a hug. She squelched the uncharacteristic impulse.
He probably had a puny hoard, by dragon standards. Saina braced herself for a few sparse jewelry boxes and a couple of brass goblets. Maybe the walls would be tapestries that weren’t embroidered in gold.
She started to hum out of habit, wanting to ease Bastian’s tension, and made herself bite her cheek to stop. She was done singing her way out of awkward places of her own making.
Bastian took a deep breath, and opened the door.
Saina sucked her own breath in, and stepped into his dazzling nest.
There were no tapestries on the walls at all, only fine fishing net bleached white, covering every wall and each inch of the ceiling. It was even over the windows, and sunlight glowed through the treasure that hung on it, turning the room into a rainbow.
There were a few golden necklaces and rings laid out on the dressers - the sorts of things that Saina had seen in other dragon hoards. But most of it was treasure from the ocean: sea glass, shells, shards of mother-of-pearl, pieces of brilliant coral. A tall brass vase stood in one corner, pitted and crusted with barnacles. An entire anchor filled another corner, more treasure displayed on it. There were sea stars and sand dollars, and old gold and copper coins, polished clean.
It had all been selected for beauty, not value, and the effect was utterly magical. Each piece had been placed as carefully as it had been collected; the room was completely in harmony with itself. It made a song rise up in Saina’s throat that she had to stuff back with determination. She felt as if she had just come home.
Saina walked into the room in a daze. The floor was a fluffy, thick white carpet; her toes felt worshipped just wriggling in it. She couldn’t help but wonder how awful it would be to vacuum sand out of it, and she hoped her feet were clean.
The bed was a monster of comfort, with about a hundred throw pillows in sea themes, and a glittery comforter that Saina recognized from a Bedding and Bathing catalog. It had been advertised for little girls’ rooms; she hadn’t even realized it was offered in a King size.
Bastian was watching her anxiously.
“Do you… like it?” he asked, as if he were being forced to and was dreading her answer.
Saina laughed, and couldn’t keep her magic entirely out of the sound. “I love it,” she admitted, trying to rein in the effect.
It was no good, Bastian was looking at her with that dazzled look she knew too well, worshipful and adoring.
He cleared his throat. “It’s our tradition to gift our mate with the most valuable treasure from our hoard,” he said formally.
Saina stared. His mate? She’d only tried to make him feel well-disposed to her, to be her ally in a strange place. Instead, he’d fallen harder for her than anyone she’d ever enspelled.
Bastian was holding a necklace made of massive gold links and rubies that didn’t match with the rest of the hoard at all. “This was my coming of age gift,” he said. “It is worth more than anything else here.”
“Oh, oh, no,” Saina said.
He blinked, looking at the necklace. “I know it’s not very… elegant, but these are very rare rubies and it’s all solid gold.”
“No, no, no,” Saina repeated, trying to retreat to the door and nearly tangling herself in the fishing net beside it instead. Sea glass chimed reproachfully at her.
Bastian looked crushed, and stared at the necklace in distaste. “You’re right, it’s not good enough. I’ll get something else, find something… it’s all wrong.” He looked around at his room in shame and disgust.
Saina couldn’t bear the way her chest felt. She had caused that terrible look on his face. She was the reason he was embarrassed of his beautiful hoard. She had cracked the confidence of a man as good as he was gorgeous.
She reached out to him automatically and put a hand on his arm. The touch was electric. “I love the hoard,” she said. “It’s the most gorgeous hoard I’ve ever seen. But you can’t give it to me, not any of it. Not to me.”
“There is no one else in the world for me,” Bastian assured her, putting the necklace aside.
Saina felt saltwater in her eyes unexpectedly.
She’d heard plenty of professions of devotion before, been at the receiving end of adoring acts of compelled generosity, but this was the first time she had gone so far as to make someone love her before, let alone think she was their mate.
Worse, this was the first time she wanted it to be real.
While she struggled to regain her composure, Bastian gathered her up in her arms and kissed her.
Chapter 16
Bastian couldn’t disbelieve Saina when she said she loved his hoard. There was no falsifying the admiration in her eyes, no way that her words could have been lies.
She didn’t want it, which confused both Bastian and his dragon, but perhaps they’d only chosen the wrong piece; his treasure sense was haywire and he doubted his own understanding of value.
But she wanted him.
He knew it in the way she kissed him, and the way she looked at him when she thought he didn’t notice.
It wasn’t her practiced smiles or her careful eyelashes, it was the other look - the puzzled, tender look she had when she thought he wasn’t looking. The crooked smile when something truly amused her. The way she hummed happily to herself when she liked something.
That was the Saina he kissed.
And to his heartbreak, she still pulled away. “I… I can’t do this,” she said.
“We can take it as slow as you want,” he assured her, letting her retreat.
“Oh, Bastian, you deserve so much better than this.”
There were tears in her green eyes.
“I’m not your mate, Bastian. Sirens don’t have mates. It’s just my magic, you only think you feel this way, and when I leave, you…” she gave a little sob. “You’ll look back at these few days and it will feel like a dream, because that’s all it is. It’s just a happy little fantasy that I never should have indulged in. I’m so sorry. There isn’t anything here, between us. It’s not… real. It never was.”
She turned and fled through the door, and Bastian let her go, too baffled to stop her.
After a moment, he left his lackluster hoard, locking the door behind him.
He walked to the pool deck in a daze, and stared at the “Lifeguard Off Duty” sign for a long, confused moment. He almost took it down, then reconsidered, and realized what he had to do.
Tex calle
d down to him from the bar deck above, but Bastian ignored the bartender and stalked to the beach, not pausing at the little beach bar or the lifeguard tower. He walked straight into the water, shifted, and swam out the same way that he’d gone the day before.
It took several hours of swimming to reach the spot he’d found Saina. There were no features above the waves once the island was out of sight, but beneath the water, he could follow the landmarks of the ocean floor, and if he concentrated very carefully, he could feel a faint tingle of his treasure sense, leading him back to her sunken luggage.
While he swam, he tried to sort out his confused feelings. Saina was his mate. She was his everything. It didn’t matter what she said, he knew to the core of his heart that she was his, meant for him in every way.
He loved the charm she could easily turn on, and the vulnerable confusion she so rarely let him see. He loved the way she moved, and the way she swam.
He missed the way she let him breathe underwater and surfaced to suck in a breath of air. The ocean looked like a different place today, smooth and sparkling cheerfully. It wanted to play, today.
He dived again. The ocean floor was hundreds of meters down here; his chest protested the pressure and his tail ached with the effort. It was dark, too, but between his luminous eyes and the faint tug of the treasure sense, he knew he could find his target.
Confidence swelled in him again, tingling through his limbs as he approached the treasure.
She was wrong, he thought, with increasing resolution. He wasn’t under her spell. He was too strong and powerful a dragon to be caught in any web of enchantment.
He was too magnificent to be snared by magic, he thought as his treasure sense flared and began to burn with more intensity than it had except for the time he had found Saina.
He was stronger than any siren, his will was harder.
There must be some other reason she was refusing his hoard, but it was of no consequence. He was a dragon, and she was his mate. He would make her the prize of his nest; she would be his finest treasure. There would be no more running from him.