AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A faint tapping caught in my ear, and I flinched, wondering if the trident wielder was already returning with his hooks. Another tap sounded, and my eyes darted around.
It was too soft to be the striking of a trident, but what could it be?
My gaze landed on the leather pouch of pearls. I stared at it, too afraid to even breathe, until the middle moved ever so slightly. Something was alive, knocking around inside it.
My mouth fell open as a tiny nose poked its way out of the drawstring top, then an eye, followed by the delicately frilled body of a fish.
No… no.It wasn’t right. I’d tried to save him. He… he shouldn’t be here, not in this prison, not with me.
“Leander,” I choked out, and the fish seemed to hear my call, its little eyes shifting in my direction.
I watched him swim closer, his tiny fins carrying him slowly, carefully, in the still water like even that was a struggle, and I couldn’t hold back.
No one can cry underwater, but I made a damn good effort as Leander’s fins fought to get closer, my sobs leading him back to me through the darkness.
Pop.
And then he was on me, his brilliant body up against mine, his throat venting a starved gasp for air like he hadn’t had a proper breath since the moment he’d turned into a betta. “Claira.”
But he didn’t seem to care about breathing or conversation past that. Hands trembling from exhaustion found my face, and lips crashed against mine, his mouth drinking me down like Iwas his oxygen.
He was shaking all over. He neededactualoxygen.But he just kept tending, pressing, skimming my lips with his tongue like he couldn’t get enough. I turned my head away the moment his lips let up on mine. “Why did you—?”
But no, his stubborn mouth claimed mine again, too needy to listen to reason. My mind reeled—he wasn’t supposed to be here. He should have been working his way up to the surface, back to Barren and Kai and the rest of his kingdom.This… this infuriating idiot!
I bit at his lip, hoping the sting would finally drive him away, but he let out a hungry growl for more that stoked a fire deep in my belly.
“You cannot tell me you love me,” he rumbled, tongue slashing, teeth raking, “and expect me not to follow you.”
34
Claira
“You shouldn’t be here,” I gasped as a desperate hand slid around my neck, cradling it away from the discomfort of the stony wall behind me. “How will you get—?”
“Claira,” Leander cut me off with a groan. His face strained with emotion as he set his forehead against mine. “When I heard those words…” Tousled hair swept over my forehead, his head slightly shaking. “Do you know how long I’ve been in love with you?”
What?
The timbre of his voice was so raw, so heady it had me shivering in my bindings. A briny lump formed in my throat, but I forced it down with a hard gulp. “You don’t have to say it just because I said it, you know.”
An insufferable smirk formed on his lips, but when he laughed, it was a harsh, tortured sound. “Do you know,” he repeated, pressing close enough for his lips to brush over mine, “how long I’ve loved you, Claira?”
Dumbfounded, I glanced up at the intense eyes before me, lids heavy and pupils blown from staring through darkness. But the tenderness, the determination there… It was like finding me captured, imprisoned, and bound was of no consequence to him. That none of it mattered, not while I was in his arms and we were together.
“How long you’velovedme?” That was such a jarring thought.
Did I even want to know how long? Was it when he’d realized my touch could break his curse? When my voice called to him, or when I’d curled up next to him in his sorry excuse for a bed? I swallowed hard before saying carefully, “I don’t know, Lee. How long?”
Then I guarded my heart. It hurt to admit, but I knew lust could be easily confused with all sorts of feelings, and with the magic ofthe thrallrunning between us, the love he thought he felt was probably just—
“Twelve years ago,” he started, and a confident hand slipped through the weave of seaweed to skim over the sensitive spot where my scales formed at my waist, “A cowardly, pain-in-the-ass merfry fell hopelessly in love with a tiny mermaid who couldn’t stand him.”
My throat went tighter than the surrounding bindings. I nearly choked on my words. “But we were just kids. How could you—?”
“Fuck, Claira, how could I not?” A hard jaw nuzzled under my chin, and Leander was suddenly streaming water across my neck, burying into me, breathing me in.
“I was such a cowardly little shit back then,” he rumbled, his lips pulling over me, tasting, teasing at the tender column of my neck. “You were all I thought about every morning, during every guard meeting, in my bed chambers after the feast horns. You drove me fucking crazy, Claira, and I did everything I could think of to get you to look my way.”
