Siren Song by Stephanie Draven Page B

but oh what sweet relief! Her lungs filled and she gasped, her breathing erratic. But she was breathing. Water!
    “Open your eyes,” he said.
    Chloe didn’t even like to open her eyes in a nice clean chlorinated pool, but she’d trusted Alex this far. A radiant halo of sunlight filtered through the clear water and she saw a huge, spiked exotic fish swim by. Behind him, a reef of fire coral glowed orange while lacy sea fans swayed with the current. It was all so lovely! The water felt different, more slippery against her skin. Warmer. “Where are we?”
    “Bermuda.”
    The drag of the water on her eyelashes as she blinked was a surreal, almost erotic sensation. “But—“
    “I swim very fast. Faster than anything mortals know…”
    “Wait, we’re—“
    “Safe,” he said. “For now. Thanks to you.”
    “That’s right. Thanks to me. ” She supposed she should’ve been gracious, but she still remembered the way he’d looked at her just before he slammed out of his house and into Sophia’s trap. “You were saved by a siren. Bet that sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”
    “You didn’t know about Sophia?”
    “Of course I didn’t know!” It hurt almost as much for him to have believed otherwise than it did to realize it was the plain truth. How she could have been so close to Sophia and never guessed what was happening?
    “I suppose I have to believe you, because I’m still under your siren spell—and hers.”
    Chloe glared. “I’d have thought I kissed away any thoughts you might have had of her.”
    “She’s a very powerful siren,” he said. “You might have to try harder.”
    Was he teasing her? In the water, some of the serious lines of his face had gone to something more predatory. Underwater, he was sexier than she could have ever imagined— “Oh, God.”
    “What’s wrong?”
    “If I look down…am I going to see your big…fishy tail?”
    “Would that turn you on?”
    “Um, I think that’s kind of an obscure fetish.” Then a worse thought occurred to her. “Please tell me you don’t have tentacles.”
    “No tentacles. I only use the tail for swimming. Tritons have a panoply of disguises. I can have crab claws. Winged brows. I can even become a hippocamp.”
    “A what?”
    “A fish-tailed horse.”
    “Okay, that I wanna see.”
    “Maybe later. First, I want to show you something.”
    Under the water, he turned her so that her back was against his chest and stretched her arms to the side. The ocean floor was covered with starfish. It was like snorkeling together—a whole foreign world of wonder opened up before her eyes. A rainbow of brightly colored fish fanned out beneath her feet. It was beautiful. So beautiful! Then she saw it. Something was off, unexpected, a strange inclusion in an otherwise undisturbed wild ocean frontier. “What are those blocks in the shallows? Is that an underwater road?”
    “It’s the Bimini Road. It leads to my home.”
    There was a haunting beauty to it, like the ruins of some ancient civilization that had been swallowed by the sea.
    “I can’t see more than the road,” she confessed.
    “Neither can I. It is all beyond the mortal veil now. I sense them, but I can’t see them, or hear them. This is as close as I can come to bringing you home with me.”
    For him to share this with her tightened her belly with…want. He seemed to feel it, too. He caressed her, his body enfolding her like some exotic underwater dance. Moments later, she felt herself surfing through pink sand. They came to rest on a deserted beach, tangled together in seaweed and need. She felt his hardness against her, and rose up on her hands to push back against him. He only had to lift the wet shirt to enter her from behind, and she felt her hips cradled in his as he sank all the way into her.
    Their first time had been gentle, tentative and filled with longing. This was something altogether different. He needed her…and she needed him to treat her not like a wounded