She looked at me for another long moment, and I braced for the fight, for the jab.
“You came in after me.”
“Of course I did.”
She closed her eyes again. “Chase…”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Thank—” But then a wave rolled over us, and she hissed as the saltwater washed over the cut on her leg. There was blood in the water, and the smell of her hit the back of my throat. Everything in me lit up at once.
The shark wanted the blood—not to harm, never her, but out of a deeper need, primal and insatiable.Find it. Hunt it. It’s mine. The man wanted her mouth and her weight and the perfect sounds I got her to make. And under both, now too loud to ignore, a voice that told me to hold on to her and never let go.No matter what, don’t let her go.
“Selena.” It came out too low, raspy. “You’re bleeding.”
“It’s a scratch.” But she’d gone still, watching me, and she’d grown up around shifters—she knew what stillness meant in one of us. “Chase, your eyes…they’re black.”
“I know.” My fingers dug into the wet sand on either side of her, but I didn’t touch her, holding myself an inch above her, every muscle locked against the pull. The half-shift tugged at my skin, refusing to finish in either direction. “Give me a second. The blood—when you’re hurt, it’s—I have to ride it out, or I’ll?—”
“Or you’ll what? Eat me?”
She wasn’t afraid. That was the problem. Her pulse still fluttered under the soft skin of her throat, but not from fear. She was humming beneath me, ripples of her magic snagging on my much keener senses. She tipped her chin up, saltwater beading along her jaw, the cut on her leg ribboning red into the shallows, and she looked at the worst, hungriest, least human part of me with her eyes wide open.
She didn’t look away.
“Am I supposed to be scared of you, Perez?” she asked with asmall smirk.
“You should be a little scared of me. Just try to remember me swimming at you underwater again.”
“We’re on my beach now.” And we were. I recognized it now, the spot where we’d first met. Her hand came up. It found my jaw, the half-rough skin that wasn’t completely human, and the magic jumped between us, the line still open. I wasn’t sure it ever closed anymore. “Don’t ride it out.”
“Selena—”
“I was drowning,” she interrupted, “and you came for me. You’ve helped me, more than I want to admit. Me, my beach, and the turtles, of course.” Her thumb moved along my jaw. “I’m right here. Let me help you.”
That was all the permission I needed.
She tasted like salt and lime, like the magic that had drawn me in from miles out to sea, and the second my mouth found hers the shark stopped fighting me because it finally had what it wanted, what it had wanted since before I’d known what it was.
Her.
“Slow,” I made myself say against her mouth. “Your leg?—”
“It’s a scratch. I told you.” She got a fistful of my wet hair and tugged. I made a very unapex-predatory sound. “Don’t you dare go careful with me now.”
But I finally heard what she meant underneath it.
Don’t underestimate me.
“I wouldn’t dare, baby.”
She pulled me down again, and I went, my mouth finding hers. The kiss had teeth in it—hers, then mine, careful even half-gone. She wrapped her hurt leg around me anyway, dragging me closer until everything quieted.
There was no noise, no static, because I was entirely focused on her.
I’d pushed the shark down, suppressed it, for years. Now, I stayed in between, and for the first time, I didn’t feel the need to choose. Her hands trailed over my shoulders, my jaw, the rough patches of skin, and she didn’t flinch from any of it.
“You’re staying like this,” she said.
