by Starla Night
He called out to the cave guardian. His words rumbled in his chest and the small creature crawled from its safe fissure, its eight, long legs curling around and dragging his leather-wrapped daggers.
“Thank you, noble guardian,” he told it.
The creature’s song changed to a happy screech, and it twirled, shifting colors to peaceful green and back to excited red spots.
Elan tied on the weapons — biceps and thighs just above the knee — and tested his blades. The sharp points were well-honed for deadly combat.
Last time, he’d defeated Zara’s parents with his bare hands. If they threatened her, he would not hesitate to escalate to blades.
The small cave guardian’s song changed to a questioning call. An unfamiliar predator had entered the area. Elan turned and scanned the ocean, simultaneously melting backward against the reef. Strange noises did fill the water. Almost like warriors talking…
Warriors talking!
Elan rotated and dove. Beneath him the currents converged into an echo point. He hung silently in the strangely calm pocket of water. Any noise he made would project outward as clearly as the sounds came in.
Ghostly words — Some signs … exile… catch them, we will execute any traitors to the covenant… — floated across the still echo point. So faint. He wanted to doubt his hearing.
But that would be folly.
They had come.
He knew they would.
Danger drew nearer. On land, Zara’s parents. Under the water, his city’s vengeful warriors.
Their voices faded away. He would have to be more careful. No allowing Zara and Zain into the ocean until he had verified a location was safe.
Elan kicked to the surface. His daggers never felt heavier — and more needed — than when he climbed out.
Zara frowned. “What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Yet.
With vigilance, he would make his answer true. He would never fail her again.
Chapter Fourteen
Elan emerged from the ocean with a look Zara knew meant danger. When she pressed him, he said it was nothing.
Okay. He took her parents’ threat seriously. That was reassuring.
“It’s my fault,” Milly said miserably during a quiet moment at dinner.
They’d returned to Vaw Vaw’s all week. She’d insisted, and Zara had thought it might be good for Zain to be surrounded by other children. Now, she wanted the company. Vaw Vaw was the only stranger she trusted with Zain, and the more witnesses, the safer everyone was from her parents.
“All my fault,” Milly continued. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“It is.”
“Don’t torture yourself like this.”
“Zara, you don’t know—”
“I do know,” she insisted, and Milly stopped, surprised. She grasped Milly’s too-cold hands. “You were still recovering from the kidnapping and brainwashing. How could you give an effective testimony?”
She frowned. “No, Zara—”
“I didn’t mean to make you face our parents all alone. I was stupid. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry!”
“I just wish, when Dad skipped bail, they would have stayed gone.”
Milly’s lips folded together.
Zara picked up her spoon and took a comforting bite of rosemary chicken stew.
Her dark time had started after she’d been forced to the surface, but Milly’s dark time had been the year Zara had been missing. Still recovering from her parents’ kidnapping and then desperate without her sister, she’d been unable to give proper evidence to the prosecutors. It was Zara’s fault for not being there for Milly, again. Their parents had then sailed off in their yacht without serving even the token amount of jail time their father had been sentenced. Their mother had been declared a completely innocent victim and not charged at all.
Not protecting her sister in her hour of need still gave her nightmares.
And now the nightmares had come to life. Her parents were back.
One of the uncles chimed in. “Your father is stupid for returning here. He will be jailed for a long time for skipping his sentence.”
“They have to catch him first,” Zara returned.
He tsked and waved his hand. “Negativity.”
“He has a lot of friends in these islands.”
“He cannot hide,” the uncle said. “We will find him.”
It was a sweet thing to say, and hugely over-confident. Zara smiled tightly and sipped her small tumbler of homemade blackberry wine.
Elan caught her eye. His medium-length blue shirt concealed the dangerous bulges at his biceps.
He had once grabbed her father by the throat and thrown him across a cavern.
The urgent panic bubbling under her skin lessened.
He leaned closer to her, filling her senses with his salt masculine scent. “You will feel better once you harness your power into a weapon.”
“It wouldn’t work above water anyway.”
“They are in a boat, yes? It is easy to go from a boat into water.”
“Shifting isn’t easy or else Zain would already be able to do it.”
“He is young.”
“That means he’s adaptable. It should be easier for him.”
A cry arose on their other side of the room. Vaw Vaw had been once again holding Zain. A spoonful of mashed stew dribbled from his mouth.
“His fins!” one of the younger children cried, pointing at Zain. “They’re gone!”
Zara jumped out of her seat and raced to him. He slobbered, startled by the attention.
Where his fins once were, now wiggled chubby, stubby baby feet.
He had shifted. Right into a normal, human baby boy.
“Now we can walk him!” the children celebrated.
“After dinner my babies. After the dinner.”
Elan murmured in Zara’s ear. “It requires practice. But all you truly need is will.”
She bunched her hands into fists.
She couldn’t defeat her parents. She couldn’t defeat his warriors. She couldn’t run away on land. She couldn’t escape into the water.
They were backing her into a corner. Her only choice was to turn, keep the wall at her back, and fight.
“We’ll go to the ocean,” she said through gritted teeth.
He looked surprised. Then, he darkened. “No.”
Huh? But he’d been trying to get her in the water since the beginning.
She argued with him on the way out to the car that night, while Zain slumped over his shoulders, asleep. “You wanted me in the water. I’m agreeing to go.”
He tapped her chest with one finger. “Your mouth says yes but your heart says no.”
She rubbed the spot viciously. Just because he could literally see into her heart via her “soul light” made her feel exposed and angry. “I know that! But this might be the only way to get over my issues.”
“Or it will not.” He eased into the back seat as usual. “We will begin on the land.”
“It doesn’t work on land.”
“You can make fins anywhere.”
“The power doesn’t work. That’s the whole point of making fins. Who cares if I have fins? The point is to make them so I can get superpowers, and those only show up under water.”
“Your heart does not know this.”
“Yes, it does.”
He eyed her as if to say, Really? You’re lying to me about a light only I can see? But he didn’t say so.
She wanted to slam the door on him, hard, but out of reverence for Zain, she closed it gently.
Inside, she hissed, “You can see my soul light or whatever, but that doesn’t mean you can see the future. I haven’t been in the water for a year. Maybe when I get in, it’s like you say, and I’ll suddenly have a reawakening.”
His voice rumbled, low and quiet. “You already said it is impossible.”
&n
bsp; “That was then!”
The drive home was stiff, and they whispered their arguments while Milly cleared her throat about a hundred times in the driver’s seat. She dropped them off at the house. Elan went into the house to put Zain down.
She called Zara to the window. “I’m going back to the university.”
“Sorry.” Zara felt a headache coming on. She rubbed her forehead. “We’ll tone it down.”
“Oh, no. It’s not that.” Milly smiled awkwardly. Their argument certainly was driving her out of the house. “You want to talk and I want to retrieve a document on mermaids from my saved folder. It might be helpful. The computer lab is still open.”
“Okay, but we’re not going to argue anymore.”
“Take your time.”
“Don’t stay out too late.” There was a small but real possibility that the target her parents were returning to exploit wasn’t the mermen.
Milly had always been their favorite.
Zara’s hackles rose. “When I find out who’s helping them this time, they’re all going down. My parents, their friends. Everyone.”
Her sister swallowed, nodded, and wheeled off. Her taillights glowed red against the fallen darkness.
Zara returned to the house with a heavy heart.
Elan was waiting.
He’d put Zain down in the bathroom and lingered in the living room again, a dark and knowing look in his eye. With his shirt off, his glorious pecs revealed to the night, wicked blades affixed to them with tight weave. He drew her into his arms and cupped her head.
Heat sizzled through her.
She rested her hands on his forearm to keep from curling them around his waist and rubbing her feminine center against his ramrod-hard cock. “I thought we were discussing how to capture my power on land.”
“We are.” He tilted her jaw and lowered his mouth to hers. “This is how.”
Chapter Fifteen
She murmured her protest as Elan captured her mouth in his. “My parents…”
“Are not here now.” He burned with promise, teasing her lips with his. “And when they come, we will fight them.”
“I have never faced them directly and won.”
“You will.”
Her lashes fluttered. She clearly wanted to believe Elan, but doubts still tinged her voice. “They’ve never really been caught. And they’re so normal in front of other people. Only to me and Milly do they show their true colors.”
“Then you have the advantage because you are forewarned.”
Her expression cleared. She had never thought it a blessing she and Milly had been targeted, but Elan was right. Better to know an enemy than be blind-sided by a friend.
“Knowing didn’t help me in the past.”
“Now, you know about your true power. It will spill forth once your soul light reaches its maximum brightness. And I have watched you carefully this week, Zara. Your soul light glows when you fight Border and Immigration, hold Zain close to your heart, watch over the children at Vaw Vaw’s house, and…” He slid his hand up her smooth skin to her elbow. “When you give in to passion.”
“I am not a passionate person.”
“You are very passionate,” he corrected, and brushed feather-soft kisses across her worry-wrinkled forehead. “Passionate about justice. Passionate about your family.”
Her soul light strengthened with every word.
He tugged her into her bedroom, sat on her bed, and drew her on top of him. “Passionate with your husband.”
She rested one knee on the bed beside his waist. The other wedged between his bent knees. “I’ve been hiding. When you came with Zain, I wanted to run away. I’m not really brave.”
He cursed his earlier words. “I spoke unfairly. You were injured, Zara. Ignoring your pain dishonored your experience and I apologize.”
Her light shone even brighter.
She cupped his jaw, sweet passion darkening her brown eyes. “You were hurt, too. Worse than I was.”
“Warriors are taught how to recover from a lost battle.” He removed his knives from his thighs and folded them beneath the bed. Resting his hands on her waist, he savored her softness, and then pulled her down. “Time heals all scars.”
She settled on his knee. The feel of so much softness on his thigh sent a hot pulse of awareness to his cock. She tugged his shirt up. The sleeves caught on his dagger pommels, so he removed the daggers on his biceps as well, wrapping the blades securely and resting them with the others behind his feet.
She stroked his abdomen.
He tightened, flexing in sharp relief.
She palmed muscles lit by the hall light filtering into the bedroom and traced his aquamarine tattoos. Splaying her palm across his heart, she looked up. “Even the scars inside?”
“Those scars are permanent.”
Lost honor could never be recaptured. His mistakes could never be atoned. Warriors sacrificed everything — home, love, life — to avoid dishonor.
Zara in his arms was worth any dishonor. Her presence calmed him.
As though she knew the turn of his thoughts, her expression turned fierce. “You didn’t do anything really wrong.”
He had done many things really wrong. “It does not matter.”
“It does matter.”
“I would do it all again to bring me to you.” He slid his hands up her shirt, squeezing her shoulder blades to press her breasts against him. “Everything.”
Her eyes closed. She tilted her mouth to accept him.
He took her mouth with his. She tasted like the dinner’s spicy chicken soup and water and femininity. His Zara. Her soul light flared. She rested her hands on his shoulders, scooting closer to the hardening manhood thrusting from his crotch.
He kissed down her jaw to her slender neck. She’d once worried about her looks. She wasn’t slender in comparison to other females, but he thought her neck was slender, graceful like the curve of a crescent moon. He teased it with gentle teeth.
She moaned and tilted her head to give him better access.
Her bare skin tasted salty and sweet. He tongued down the delicate column to where it met her collar. Tugging off her fluffy peasant shirt and silk bra revealed plump handfuls of creamy breasts. He feasted on her dark aureoles.
She dug her fingers into his back, pulling him closer.
His cock pulsed with heat.
He had wanted her for so long. Wanted her, craved her. Strong and beautiful, like this. Together, they would be healed.
She pushed him back.
A rejection? He stopped, holding her steady.
But no.
She smiled at him with sinful flash of white teeth and kissed his mouth, her tongue tangling with his, her fingers twining in his hair. She was hotter than a furnace and enjoyed commanding his passion. His cock throbbed.
He squeezed her derriere through the shorts, needing her powerful like this. Taking the lead, wanting him as much as he wanted her.
The first time she had kissed him and taken control, he had been surprised. Trainers focused on generalities — that a warrior must honor and respect his bride, bring his bride to pleasure, and his duties to her in the heart chamber must be performed as honorably as any duties in war.
But knowing her desire, her love, burned as hot as his own had deeply reassured him on a level he could never have imagined. Not only did he find her endlessly fascinating and hunger for her, but she also felt intense, uncontrollable cravings for him.
On the land, once more, her commanding kiss was deeply reassuring.
She drizzled hot nips down his jaw and across his chest, teasing his nipples with her tongue, and kissing lower, tasting the rippling muscles of his chest. He leaned back on his elbows, giving her what they both craved. She teased the band of his shorts. He groaned and thrust, his hard cock scraping the inner fabric of the damp denim.
With a pleased smile, she unzipped and opened his shorts, revealing his cock. Cool breeze wafted across his sensitive skin an
d heat pulsed in him. He sucked in a breath. A white pearl of his desire emerged on the tip.
Her gaze flicked to him for a moment, just enough to connect and show she knew exactly what she was doing. She stuck her fingers in her mouth and curled the wet fingertips around his cock. Pleasure vibrated in his core. Her wet, hot touch felt so good. He thrust into her slick grip, pleasure building with each thrust.
Another glance — testing him for recognition of their familiar position — and she took him in her mouth and swirled her tongue over his cock.
His whole body tightened. Pleasure peaked. He groaned and gripped her hair as his cock threatened to unload in her mouth. “Zara.”
She smiled around his cock, knowing exactly what she was doing to him and liking it. Her soul light flared, intensely bright. She had no doubts, no fears. She was herself, doing what she wanted, sharing her desires with him. They were partners. Friends. Lovers.
Husband and wife.
He needed to give this soul-tingling pleasure to her too.
He curled his abdomen over her, grabbed her waist, and lifted. She squeaked. He rotated her in the air, lay back, and settled her on top of him on the bed, now facing away from him toward the door. Tugging off her shorts and panties and tossing them off the bed, he revealed her beautiful coral folds.
She rested her weight on her knees, pushing into the bed deeply on either side of his shoulders, and lifted up. Resting her forehead against his thigh, she looked between their naked bodies to catch his eyes.
He lifted his brows in a silent question. Why had she stopped?
Her lips curved even though she was upside down to him. “I’m impressed you could do that. I’m not exactly light.”
“You are not heavy.”
She snorted. “Please.”
“It is truth.” He placed soft, worshipful kisses on her trembling thighs. Above the water, he felt enveloped by her weight. The pressure of her body equaled the depth of her trust. “This is better.”
She looked surprised, then thoughtful, as though remembering something. And then she dismissed her thought with another snort. “You just don’t remember.”