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Leander’s jaw clenched as he lifted his head. His mouth started to open, but I pressed a finger to his lips.
“Occupied,” I called aloud, not even bothering to hide how breathless I was. One of Leander’s eyebrows rose, his lips quirking into a lopsided grin as his head shook with amusement.
“She’s going to murder you,” he mouthed, and I gave him a shrug.
Oh, he had no idea. But let her try it. As long as I was around, I’d never let Aleena get her claws into him again.
I dropped my finger and pulled him into another kiss.
Mine.
28
Claira
Eyes followed me like tiny heat-seeking missiles during my entire walk back from the bathroom. Everywhere I looked, necks seemed to swivel away, only to settle right back on me as soon as I glanced away.
Nice try, but after last night, not even nosy mers could kill my mood.
Reaching Leander’s room, I returned the plastic dolphin’s static smile with a cheeky one of my own before throwing back the curtain. “I think maybe we should have been a little quieter last—” My eyes swept to the left, then to the right. Clothes and blankets littered the floor, Leander’s sorry excuse for a pillow looking cold and abandoned in the corner he’d been laying when I left to brave the line for the bathroom.
“You’re not in here,” I hummed, backing right back out of the room.
The plastic fell into place behind me as I started down the line of compartments, snuggling my jacket hood up over the top of my head to keep a low profile. Well, as low a profile as someone with a shock of blazing red hair could hope for anyway.
Pairs of eyes seemed to materialize behind each curtain I passed, but I swallowed down my unease. Let them look. I couldn’t have been the first in the warehouse to get laid, right? Surely others were doing it, considering how cramped everyone was here. Determined to ignore the observers, I continued my search.
There was only one mer I for sure didn’t want to run into—two if you counted King Eamon, but he rarely seemed to move without an entourage of captains at his heels—so I steered clear of the row Kai had taken me down the day before.
I was about to turn down a new row when a voice drifted around the corner. “This is perfect, Klester.” Leander’s voice.But why the conspiratorial tone? “I knew I could count on you to come up with something.”
I poked a head around the corner to find Leander halfway hunched in the entrance of a compartment, his back and shoulders cloaked in the frayed rags serving as its door. With his butt sticking out in the hallway as it was, how could I resist coming up behind him to make my presence known?
My fingertips sank into the firm, rounded muscles of his rear, and rags went flying as Leander jerked upright, his spine going straighter than a ship’s mast at sail. “Claira, fuck,” he gasped, drawing a hand through his hair after getting a good look at me. He looked exhausted—not that I found it surprising. Neither of us had gotten much sleep last night. “You startled me.”
A knowing smirk settled at the corners of his mouth as he looked me up and down, no doubt noticing how exhausted I looked as well. Last night was worth it, though, and I had to wonder if either of us would be getting a full night of sleep in the warehouse again. Who knew there were things more relaxing after a long day of chaos than sleep?
“I thought you might be one of the Turbula twins,” he murmured, a shudder moving through his spine.
I scoffed, feeling strangely possessive of his ass all of a sudden. Neither of them had actually touched it, had they? Maybe I shouldn’t have abandoned the knife in Aleena’s foot so quickly.
“Just payback for making me look for you.” My arms crossed in mock outrage, but his smirk only grew. Clearly, he was okay with this brand of payback.
“Sorry,” he chuckled. “Had to retrieve something for when we head out. Come here. Look.” He drew half the rags back so I could peek inside.
A mer sat cross-legged in the center of the room, his hand slowly stroking a long, wiry stretch of beard as he muttered over his wares. Scraps of metal and debris covered every available inch of the floor, and an assortment of tools and pipes of all lengths and sizes hung curiously from the walls. Was this feeble-looking merman some sort of tradesperson?
I knew the merfolk had all sorts of builders, thinkers, architects, even blacksmiths that worked in magma forges, making the spears and lances like the ones Papa used to collect. My heart fluttered at the thought of his prized collection, abandoned and useless underwater, a spread of barnacles fusing them to the walls.
Though even on land, he was still collecting, wasn’t he? Empty bottles, lost trinkets, discarded wardrobe from discarded offspring.Ugh. That thought was still messing with me.
A small part of me wished I’d run into him just so I could confront him. Question how it was he’d found the hairpin and why he’d thought to keep my ocean silks as well.
But mostly I just wished I didn’t care that he’d had them at all.
“Look at this,” Leander whispered, raising some sort of glass enclosure from the floor for me to inspect. He brought it to eye level and all I could do was blink. “I’ve been waiting days for Klester to finish it up.”
It was…something.
