Page 15 of Something Real with the Sea Monster
I should have seen this coming. I think I probably did. It still catches me off guard. Everything about this woman has me offbalance, flustered. I need to get her out of here. I can’t be her one-night stand, but I can’t explain that here. “Come on.”
Thank god for the cool sea breeze as we step out of the pub and onto main street. It clears my head a little.
We walk down the hill in silence. I’m still tangling with the words in my head, trying to find a way to explain to her why we can’t do this, when I find we’re standing at the door to the Inlet Views.
As I slide a hand into my pocket to get out the key, she slides hers around my waist and up my body, making the key almost impossible to retrieve when a huge bulge stretches the front of my jeans.
God damn it, she’s not going to make this easy.
I manage to get the key and extricate myself from her arms long enough to let us in and head for the stairs. As soon as I start climbing, I realize my mistake. Since she’s behind me, she has the perfect access to squeeze my ass.
I smother a groan.
When we get to the top of the stairs, I spin and catch her in my arms. “Hey.”
Her gaze is focused on my mouth. She leans closer, and I know she’s expecting me to kiss her.
I want to kiss her.
It feels like something is physically yanking me off balance when I pull away. “Why don’t I get you a drink of water?”
She laughs. “You’re the tallest drink of water I’ve seen in this whole town. And I’m thirsty tonight.”
“Listen, you’ve had a few. Let’s talk. Let’s order in. If you still want to fool around after that…” I don’t finish the sentence because what I should finish it with isthen I’ll have to disappoint you.
She pouts. “I’m fine.”
I take another step back. “Tegan. I really think you should—”
“You can stop right there. Don’t tell me what I should do. You don’t know me.”
“No, that’s just it. I don’t. And you don’t know me. I don’t think we should go there. Not…today.”
Tegan presses her lips together, and I realize she’s struggling not to cry. “Why did you bring me back here just to reject me?”
Shit. I hastily get out a glass and fill it with water. “Here. Drink this.”
Instead of taking the glass, though, she glares at me. Then she grabs it and tosses the water straight into my face.
There’s a horrible ripping sound from my jeans. My legs split into eight tentacles, which burst my pants at every seam. The glass smashes onto the kitchen tiles, and Tegan gasps.
I react instantly. Keeping three tentacles on the ground, I wrap the others around her and haul her off her feet, slithering away from the shards of broken glass and bringing her to safety.
It’s an automatic reaction. I don’t even notice the prick of sharp glass in my skin until I stop, and by then I’m much more focused on the sweet, heady scent of her skin, magnified a hundred times by contact with my tentacles on bare arms and legs.
Oh fuck.
Fuck!
If I was finding it hard to resist her before, that was nothing. Now that I’ve tasted her, I can’t even unwrap my tentacles and set her down. All I can do is stare at her, my heart lurching around in my chest, my whole body on fire with awareness of her curves, her sweet flavor, the way she wriggles in my grip.
And then the unusual glow in the room registers, and I stare in horror at the tips of all eight tentacles glowing a bright, iridescent purple: a sight I’ve never seen before.
Why would I?
A kraken only glows for his fated mate.
This is it. The moment I’ve been waiting for, but it’s all wrong. She’s drunk. She’s hurting. I’ve hurt her and rejected her. How am I supposed to backflip on that now?
