Tristan accepted the change with a nod. He caught Austin’s hand and led him to shore.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Tristan squatted, thick thighs radiating heat even as sheeting rain poured cold over them. His bare feet sank into wet, soft sand. “Try stretching your spine,” he suggested. “I do that when I first shift. Actually, I do that when I go into the ocean. Try compressing your spine.”
Tristan had pulled him far enough up the beach that the waves weren’t hitting him, but he now sat awkwardly on his dorsal fin, and the way it bent was incredibly uncomfortable. “I’mtrying,” Austin said. But he was too distracted by bodily discomforts to focus on compressing his spine. And then distracted by—“Why are you hard?” His unspoken complaint was,Why are you so big?
“You’re very beautiful.” Admiring eyes combed Austin’s body. He lightly flicked one of the pectoral fins on Austin’s side, removing a few specks of sand from its edge.
“I’m beached!”
“That does not alter your—”
Austin cut him off with a warning growl.
“Can I carry you to the estate? You might have an easier time focusing indoors.”
Austin tried once more to compress his spine, but his concentration lapsed immediately. That bent fin was so annoying! He turned doubtfully to Tristan. “Canyou carry me like this? I’m heavier.”
Tristan smiled. He guided Austin’s arm around his shoulders and scooped him up easily. “I’m used to pulling myweight through the water. I could walk all day with you in my arms.”
Austin grunted.
“What’s wrong?”
“You’re being glib.”
“Happy, my dear,” Tristan corrected. “An emotion you seem set on mislabelling.”
Happy. “You’re the one who shows it in strange ways.”
Without missing a step Tristan pecked Austin’s cheek once, twice, three times. Trapped in his arms, Austin could do little to dodge. He growled and felt the rumble of Tristan’s answering chuckle. The man was smiling again. “Why are you so happy?” Austin demanded.
“I spent the night with you, and I will be spending the night with you again.”
“Will you!”
Tristan grinned. “You are being nice to me.”
“Nice!”
“I have received no less than three kisses from you in the last hour. And I canfeelyou. I could feel you even when I was in the other world fetching your caretaker. We are court now.”
Austin’s brow creased. “What do you mean ‘feel’ me?”
Connor. The name jumped to the forefront of Austin’s mind. He must have stiffened because Tristan stopped walking and carefully studied his face.
Tristan chose his words carefully. “It is not a bad thing. It simply means—”
“I can’t feel Connor.”
He focused hard, casting his mind out toward the ocean, in the direction of the Tear—where unfailingly he felt Connor’s presence when he was in Ireland—but there was nothing. “I’ve felt him for two years. Being too far from him makes my skin crawl; I can’t stand it. It’s like being in constant sensory overload. Or it was. It’sgone.”
Tristan’s expression was hard to read in the dark.
“Connor’s my ex.”
“I know who he is.”
