Page 59 of Ballad of Sea and Sky

I wondered again if sirens had the same gifts. “Can you see in the dark?”

“That is…not what I thought you would say next,” Caspian confessed, sounding amused as he contemplated me across the dark room. “But yes. Can you?”

I nodded, biting my lower lip as I tried to figure out where we went next from this impasse. “I can sleep on the floor,” I offered, reason dampening the hot desire in me.

“Skies, Marina,” Caspian sighed. “You know I won’t let you do that.”

“Then what, Cas?” I asked, confusion and frustration now warring with desire. “What now? We both agreed we can’t do this.”

“We did,” he said. “We shouldn’t.”

There was a long beat of silence, one that I thought might stretch into eternity as we held our ground on opposite sides of the tiny room.

And then all of a sudden he was before me, his lips crashing into mine with the force of a hurricane, his hands sliding beneath the seal skin to caress my bare skin. I shivered as he cupped a breast with one hand, brushing his thumb over my sensitive, peaked nipple.

“Just to be clear, Marina,” he growled, his lips trailing across my jaw and down my neck. “I will not be fucking you in this bed.”

“What?” I gasped, feeling like his hands and his lips were saying two very different things. “Why not?”

Caspian chuckled, nipping my neck and then breathing in my scent there. “Primarily because this bed is too small, and this whole damned hut could come down around us.”

“So you admit weshouldhave stayed in the cave,“ I pointed out, trailing my hands down his chest toward where I knew very well that he wanted me, despite his arguments about the bed.

He caught my hands, tsking in mock admonition. “Naughty,” he purred, holding my hands fast as he trailed his lips over my bare shoulder. “If you touch me there, Marina, I won’t be able to hold back.”

“I don’t want you to hold back,” I pleaded, trying to twist out of his grip.

He chuckled again, pulling me close enough that my hands were pinned between us. “But I do,” he purred, his eyes a swirling vortex of gold.

“Why?” I asked, squirming against him as I tried to get free.

He laughed, pulling me into a bruising kiss and flicking his tongue against mine before pulling back. “As much as I want to take everything you could give me, Marina—and believe me, I have some truly filthy ideas about what I want from you—I won’t. I can’t. Not yet.”

“That doesn’t even remotely answer my question,” I pouted, the feel of his lips pressing softly against my temple too chaste for my overheated body. My heart pounded a tattoo against my ribs, and I ached to be filled with warmth and heat, to be wrapped in every inch of him.

“I know,” he admitted, capturing my lips in another kiss. “But if I take you now, Marina...” He trailed off, looking conflicted as he shook his head. “I won’t do that until you understand what it will mean.”

“Tell me then,” I begged, the warm ball in my chest threatening to splinter under cold reality, the warmth of his hands on my bare skin the only thing keeping it together. “What does it mean? Something in siren culture?”

“Yes,” he murmured, his thumbs teasing my nipples again. “Something permanent.”

“Cruel Seagull,” I gasped, arching into his touch. “You can’t work me up and then leave me wanting.”

“I won’t leave you wanting, Princess,” Caspian growled, his mouth hot against mine as he worked his way down to my bare breasts.

Seas, it wasveryhard to think like this.

“You said no sex,” I reminded him, gasping again as he took one peaked nipple into his mouth. “You literally just said itmeanssomething to your people.”

“I did,” he agreed, pausing his attention to look at me. “And it does.” He bent his head again to nip the tightened bud, smoothing over the hurt with a kiss in a way that made my pulse skitter. “But pleasure, Urchin, can be given inmanyother ways.”

“Like what?” I said suspiciously, knowing very well the ways most males gave pleasure. I had been fumbled over enough times to know that it was never that exciting, and usually just a prologue to the main event.

Caspian laughed again, looking at me with disbelief. “Are you a virgin after all, Urchin?”

“What? No,” I protested, feeling a flush rise to my cheeks unbidden. “I just haven’t found much pleasure in anything other than the main act, I’m afraid.”

“Ah,” Caspian said, looking faintly smug. “Then your previous lovers were both unskilled and impatient,” he declared, kissing me again in a way I felt down to my very bones. Maybe such a thingcouldbe better with Caspian, if this was how my body responded to just his kisses. “It would be my pleasure to undo the stain of their inexpertise.”