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Even the sounds of the ocean seemed to kick up around us, the water churning like the fluttering nerves knocking around my insides.
Then all rational thought left me as the side of his angular jaw tightened, his chin daring to dip to meet mine. I felt my body relax into his arms.Just once.The words hummed through me, a beautiful spell or a terrible curse. A promise I wasn’t sure either of us could keep.Just once.
“You dare touch Big Brother!”
Words speared into my mind, dropping like ice cubes into the hot muddled mess lust had left of my brain. Shocked and confused, I instantly pushed away.
I didn’t even recover when a whoosh of gray and a spray of water came across my vision and—
Slap.
I heard the brisk clap of skin striking against skin before I felt the sting of a wet flipper smacking right across my cheek.
The force of the blow turned my face, and by the time my head rolled back, a gaping jaw full of dark teeth and whiskers was waiting.
“Rrrrrrraw!” The open throat keened, my eardrums vibrating as a pungent puff of hot fish-breath flared over my face.
“What the—” Kai’s arm fell from around me, his body wedging between me and the angry sea lion. “Laverne!”
I felt my mouth drop open, the dull throbbing on the side of my face stinging more with each second that passed.
Laverne… she’d actuallyslappedme.
Kai lifted his hands, his mouth opening to reprimand her, and…Oh no.
I reached out, desperate to grab hold of Kai’s back before the contact between our bodies was severed completely, but—
Pop.
Kai’s shirt, dampened and empty, landed over my arm, and my heart nearly burst from terror.
I plunged into the shallow water, frantically peeling back the layers of fabric to find him trapped inside. Only, he wasn’t inside. He wasn’t in his shirt. Not anymore. My fingers splayed and reached, searching all over for any sign of where he went, desperately hoping a hand might collide with him in the water so he might turn back before the ocean took him. Before he was lost to me forever.
My eye caught a shimmer of royal blue in a thick spume of sea-foam. It was bobbing over a wave, and I scrambled toward it the best I could without a tail or legs to help.
But I was too late. I stared in horror, completely helpless, as Laverne’s wide mouth clamped around the glob of sea-foam, devouring it in full, flailing betta fish and all.
“No!” The sound of my shriek pierced even my own ears, but it wasn’t enough to stop Laverne. She tossed her long neck back in triumph, and her flippers kicked into a gallop, furiously heading for the shore before my arms could circle around and catch her. “Laverne!”
I followed after her, pulling and raking through sand and not getting anywhere fast. She made it back to the sand, and I clawed even harder.
I needed to get to her. To grab hold of her jaws and wrestle Kai out of her mouth before it was too late.
“Drop him!” I pleaded, my voice shuddering with anguish as I fought my way up the shore. I dragged Kai’s shirt back with me, not ready to let go of it because that would feel too much like letting go of him.
“It’s Kai! I know he looks like a fish, but it’s Kai in there, Laverne.YourKai! Please just listen to me and drop him!”
Laverne’s neck twisted, and I was taken aback by the scathing look she gave that somehow screamed,Of course I know it’s Kai, you idiot, without her projecting a single word.
She turned back and spat the sickening glob of green foam out on the dry sand, her snout gently rooting through the mess until a tiny fish popped free from the bubbles.
Kai.
He was okay. Well, maybe notokay, but his little blue fins were still moving, and that was infinitely better than becoming sea lion chow.
“Thank Poseidon!”The words slipped out, and even though I’d promised I would stop praising Poseidon, the relief I felt was great enough to let this one slide.
My heart was still pounding, slowly piecing itself back together little by little with each new beat as I slid up the sand. When I finally pulled the end of my tail from the water, emotions swelled up inside of me like warring tempests, and I couldn’t decide whether to explode with fury or burst into tears.
