The next one could have teeth.
Because she was mine.
And I kept what was mine.
Elliot saw it. Whatever my face was doing, he saw it, and he hesitated.
I didn’t.
I came in low?—
And then a hundred and thirty pounds of furious witch slammed into my side and knocked me flat on my ass.
“BOYS. ENOUGH.”
Selena landed on me with her full weight and a forearm across my collarbone, pinning me to the sand. Her eyes blazed and her magic sparked, the fire that always had me weak in the knees. Behind her, Elliot had gone still, because nobody in their right mind moved when Selena Torres looked like that.
Luckily, I wasn’t in my right mind.
The shark settled, satisfied with her weight on me, as my hands instinctively wrapped around her waist. All the blood that had only been powering my shark brain immediately found a better place to go.
“Elliot, I’m fine.” She glared down at me. “Chase, you’re an asshole. Both of you need to stop comparing your di?—”
Elliot coughed and pulled Violet away.
“Don’t think there’s much comparison, Torres.” I rolled my hips into hers, just a little, and she shivered before she got ahold of herself, tiny sparks of magic pooling against my skin beneath her glowing fingers.
“Oh no, absolutely not.” Selena climbed off me, and I pouted, my swollen lip protesting. She rolled her eyes but extended a hand to help me up.
Elliot shouted back at me, but before I could respond, she grabbed my shoulder and spun me away.
“Move, Ariel. Before that sea witch comes to collect.”
I glanced over my shoulder at her.
“I’ll just tell her I’m a one-witch man.”
She kept a hand locked on my shoulder and steered me up the beach, away from Elliot’s parting shots, until the bass swallowed them. My ribs ached, my lip throbbed, and I was grinning like an idiot the whole way, because she hadn’t let go of me. Like I was hers too.
Selena finally stopped near the waterline, dropped her hand, and rounded on me.
“What were you thinking?” she demanded.
“I was thinking that loud-mouthed pinniped was trying to get between us.”
Her eyes widened slightly.
“Were youjealousof Elliot?”
Yes.
“No. I was thinking it’s messed up that a guy with a mate of his own was working that hard to?—”
“Wait.” She held up a hand. “Catherine is Elliot’s mate? How could you possibly know that?”
I shrugged, brushing sand out of my collar. “Just shifter things.”
“So you knew that.” She crossed her arms. “You knew he had a mate, no threat to anything, and you goaded him into a fight in the sand, anyway. Why?”
