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I took a deep breath, tried to force air into my starving lungs. Told myself it was okay, that I was being stupid, that maybe I was having a panic attack. It wasn’t like I could actually be smothered standing in the middle of my hallway.
It had been days since I’d so much as felt the water on my toes, let alone been surrounded by it, and I was feeling the loss. My lungs hurt—like breathing air for this long was just too harsh for them. My skin itched and burned with dryness no matter how much lotion I used, and there was a restlessness deep inside of me, a pressure that screamed to be relieved.
Without making a conscious decision to do it, I was out the front door, padding down the block and across the street to the beach that had always been such a big part of my life. The second my feet touched the sand the fear from the nightmare was gone, the dull ache that had been inside of me for days dissipated, the tension I’d carried melting away.
Just get your feet wet, I told myself as I walked to the waterline. God only knew what was lurking offshore waiting to grab me. This was one of Tiamat’s favorite stomping grounds, after all.
Something about that thought caught my attention, niggled at the back of my brain. I tried to figure out what it was, what I was missing, but the harder I tried to understand it, the more elusive the thought became. It was right there, not quite fully formed, waiting for me to extract it. But I couldn’t reach it, no matter how hard I tried.
Besides, everything Kona told me put Tiamat thousands of miles away tearing up the Pacific’s power structure. Which was awful, but should mean my late-night dip went unnoticed.
More at ease now, and unable to resist the siren call of the ocean, I waded a little deeper—enough to get my knees wet and send relief coursing through me. As the water lapped around me, all my fears and worries dissipated, replaced by pure, unadulterated pleasure. Joy. Excitement.
I moved out farther without making the decision to do so. In seconds, I was up to my waist, then ducking down until my shoulders were covered. As long as I was careful, I told myself, everything would be okay.
A part of me hated how good this felt, how necessary. It was the part that longed to be normal, to be human. The same part that wanted to stay here, with my family, forever.
But another part, one that I feared was growing larger by the day, relished the feel of the water against my skin. That part wanted to go under, to dive deep, to submerge itself and never come back. Just the thought had me stumbling backward a few steps. Toward the shore and my house and the family I refused to give up.
Suddenly, something wrapped itself around my upper arm. Alarm and anger raced through me as I whirled to face the threat, my other arm raised to deliver a shot of pure energy to whoever dared come to this beach, to the beach where my family and friends swam. This time, I would send a message to Tiamat that warned her to stay away from here forever.
Except it wasn’t Tiamat or one of her minions behind me. It was Mark, a wild look on his face as he took in the soaked tank-top and boyshorts I had been sleeping in. My heart stopped and my blood ran cold as I used every ounce of strength I had to pull back the energy and stop the fatal blow that I had aimed right at him.
“Tempest, wait,” he said, almost as frantic as I was but for completely different reasons. “I’ve been watching for you. Don’t go. Not yet. I’m not ready to lose you again. Not now, before we even have a chance to—” He stopped, tried again. “Please.”
My heart started again, in a frantic staccato rhythm that was impossible to control—or ignore. There was a roaring in my ears and a blurriness to the world around me.
I’d almost killed Mark.
I’d almost killed Mark.
I had almost killed Mark.
The words chased themselves back and forth in my head, a macabre mantra that turned my knees weak and made my blood boil. If I had hit Tiamat or one of her minions with that energy blast it would have hurt them badly. But Mark … Mark was human. He couldn’t have withstood the strength of that blast.
I really had almost killed him.
Panic-stricken, terrified, operating under a driving need to assure myself that he was okay, I threw myself at Mark, hitting him square in the chest and knocking both of us back a few feet and down into the shallow water. It swirled around our legs and hips as I straddled him, tangling my fingers in his shaggy blond hair.
“Whoa! What’s wro—”
I didn’t give him the chance to finish. Instead, I tugged his head back so I could look into his beautiful eyes, see the life still shining in their dark chocolate depths. And then I kissed him with all of the fear and relief and longing that were rocketing through me.
The world exploded.
A crazed kaleidoscope of spinning colors whirled around us, between us, and heat spilled through me, enveloping me in a frenzy of emotion with no room for thought. Only action. Only sensation.
Leaning in to Mark, I pulled him even closer, until there was no space between our bodies, nothing between us at all but the thin, wet fabric of our clothes. And even that was too much for me right now, when the horror of what I had almost done was a nightmare burning inside of me.
I tugged at his shirt, shoved it up so that I could run my hands over the warmth of his stomach and chest. So that I could feel the hard, fast rhythm of his still-beating heart.
Mark yanked his mouth away from mine and I tried to protest, but then he was skimming his lips over my jaw, down my throat to the ragged rise and fall of my chest. He kissed the hollow of my throat, licked drops of salt water from my collarbone before trailing kisses along the deep V of my camisole.
“I love you,” I told him, the words bursting out of me as I slid my own mouth down his temple and across the rough stubble of his jawline. “I love you so much.”
I kissed him again and it was as powerful, as amazing, as it had been the very first time. I never wanted it to end. Fumbling with the hem of my own shirt, I tried to pull it over my head so we could be closer, but Mark put a hand over mine, stilling my frenetic motions.
Pulling his lips away, he wrapped his arms around me, pressed me back to his chest. And just held me, his breathing harsh and disjointed in my ear as he tried to calm down a little. Mine sounded the same—I knew it did—but I didn’t care.
“Mark, please,” I begged as I kissed his shoulder, his chest.
“Tempe, what’s going on?”
“Don’t you want me?”
His laugh was harsh, painful. “Tempest, I want you so badly I can barely see straight. But not like this, in the shallows where anyone can look out their window and see us. And not when you’re obviously freaked about something.” He grabbed my hands, held them tight in his own. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”
I shook my head. Closed my eyes. Laid my head on his chest and tried to relax. To breathe. Just breathe.
I didn’t know what to say to him, how to explain what had almost happened. I didn’t want him to know. He’d taken the mermaid thing pretty well—better than I had ever expected. But that didn’t mean he could deal with everything that came with it, particularly the dark, powerful stuff.
In the end, I didn’t answer his question and he didn’t push me to. Instead, we lay there, tangled together—half in the water, half out of it—until the multihued dawn broke slowly over our small part of the Pacific.
