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Did I?
“Lee, please,” I pleaded, my voice straining with some emotion I couldn’t quite place. My heart hammered in my chest; I couldn’t stand him looking at me like this, like I’d somehow caused all his suffering. “I really don’t know how…” I grasped for some rationalization to offer him, but I couldn’t find the words. None of this made sense. How could I possibly prove my innocence when I didn’t know why the curse didn’t affect me or how my touch seemed to break it for him?
Even if he wasn’t on top of me, Leander would have me pinned with just the sharpness of his gaze. A talent, it occurred to me, he’d inherited from his father.
Droplets of salt water fell from disheveled strands of his hair, dripping down my face as silence chilled the air between us. His broad chest squeezed me with each breath he heaved in, but I hardly felt it. I hardly felt anything as my mind sought answers it couldn’t possibly find. Then, unexpectedly, his head dropped, and his forehead relaxed against the curve of my shoulder.
“You’reamazing.” I barely heard him utter the words between heavy breaths. Exhaustion draped over his shoulders in an instant, and his whole body seemed to relax on top of me. I was suddenly thankful for the concealment of night. Fire scorched my cheeks, and I was certain my face was red enough to blend right in with my hair.
“I’m not amazing.” I frowned, suddenly feeling ridiculous. Sure, I’d helped one shark, but I didn’t deserve that kind of praise. Not from him. Not from any of the merfolk. “Please don’t say that. I haven’t done anything.”
Wet hair licked at my chin as Leander’s head lifted. “You saved me.”
I blinked up at him in astonishment. Was he seriously not suspicious about the effect I seemed to have on his curse? “Yeah, well, you saved me first. Punched a shark for me, so I guess we’re even.”
“Yeah, I did do that,” he said, and a curl formed at the edge of his lips. I felt my lips curl, too.
I hated to admit it, but my reunion with the ocean hadn’t been as traumatic as I’d imagined. Sure, maybe I thought I was going to get eaten at first, but as far as late-night adventures went, it was actually kind offun.
My chest constricted, and I felt some foreign emotion tug at my heart. It was like something was unraveling inside of me, invigorating my very soul. Was it because I’d reawakened some of my magic underwater? Whatever it was, I liked it.
“You know you’re not actually supposed to punch them in the nose, right?” I said, shifting an arm free to give Leander a little bop on the tip of his nose. “You’re supposed to go for the eyes.”
“I wasn’t aiming for its nose.” He grinned, his jaws feigning a snap at my finger. “I was aiming for its mouth.”
“What?That’s even worse! Why would you punch a shark in the mouth?” The image of razor-sharp teeth grating against my scales came to mind, and I shuddered at the thought of how effortlessly they would have shredded Leander’s fist had he not missed.
“Because it bit you.” He gave a little half-hearted shrug. “I wanted to knock its fucking teeth out.”
How could someone be so disarmingly stunning while admitting to something so stupid?
Those smug lips of his tilted, and his blue eyes flashed with the unspoken promise that if he could do it all over, he wouldn’t hesitate to go for the shark’s mouth again. But why would he do that? Because he once thought of us as friends?
The way he was looking at me now, a deep longing burning behind the cool blue of his eyes, was definitely not friendly.
No, we weren’t friends. He was my catch, my captor, my savior… A complete pain in the ass pretty boy prince, and I couldn’t stand looking at his idiotic smirk for one more moment.
Cupping my palm over the hard line of his jaw, I let my fingers glide over the slight dampness of his golden skin. A part of me had always yearned to touch him. To decide for myself if his perfection was real or just an illusion meant to trap a vulnerable mermaid’s heart. That maybe, if I looked hard enough up close, the layers of merman magic would crumble away like a mask and I’d be able to see Leander for who he truly was.
But even up close like this, he was still perfect—an untouchable, gilded prince. Only now—with a dangerous cocktail of magic and adrenaline fueling me—was I brave enough to touch him.
I let my thumb brush against his bottom lip, hoping to follow the bend of that grin of his that always gave me so much grief, but all the humor in his face seemed to melt under my caress.
“Claira,” Leander groaned. The hoarseness of his voice sounded like a warning, but I didn’t care. I raked through his hair, winding the damp strands at the base of his neck around my fingers, and used that handful of hair to draw our lips together.
Leander didn’t seem to know how to react to my little impulse. His body stiffened like a man at war with himself, his hard lips paralyzed underneath mine.
Raw disappointment hit me like a punch to the gut. Clearly, he didn’t want this.
Didn’t wantme.
I loosened the fist holding him captive, reluctantly letting his damp hair slip through my fingers.
What the heck was wrong with me? A pinch of adrenaline, and suddenly I was some sort of lust-filled deviant, too caught up in a merman’s spell to use even a fraction of my brain. I’d always known being ridiculously alluring was just a part of Leander’s nature. All mermen were divinely orchestrated to rouse emotions no human male ever could. How had I let myself forget?
Nice, Claira. Very smooth.
In a pitiful attempt to hide the hurt, I dropped my lashes so I wouldn’t have to look at him. I went to pull away, but a broad hand caught me on the way back.
