Page 45 of Hooked By a Hero
Caspian laughed loudly, tilting his head back so that the sun caught the highlights of his hair and the sparkling droplets of water that clung to his shoulders and face. “It’s all still there,” he said, gazing at Elias with a smile so full of love it began to calm Elias’s addled brain. “My people live both in the water and on the land. We mate in our more human forms, though women give birth in the water.”
Elias gaped at him for a moment, then blurted, “You’re amphibian.”
Caspian giggled as if the idea was endearing. “Not quite. We are nothing that has been classified or quantified by you Englishmen.”
Elias caught his breath as even more hints from the past few months struck him. Caspian had never truly lied about what or who he was. He’d said things, small hints, from the very beginning that had set him apart as something different. Elias remembered them all. He’d interpreted them to mean Caspian was foreign, but he hadn’t made the leap to guess just how foreign.
“I have so many questions,” he said, moving his hands from where he’d circled his arms around Caspian’s shoulders to touch his face. “You have just obliterated everything I thought I knew about the world, and now…now I am uncertain what to do with myself.”
“I am sorry,” Caspian said, though he was still smiling. “There is more that will likely upset your mind as well.”
“More?” Elias blinked.
“So much more,” Caspian said, sliding his hand up Elias’s back beneath his floating shirt.
He pulled Elias close and pressed his mouth against Elias’s in a kiss. Despite the madness of who and what Caspian was, Elias still wanted him. He melted into the way his lover held him and parted his lips with a sigh to deepen their kiss. Caspian seemed hungry for more and played his tongue against Elias’s before delving deeper.
A sudden feeling of buoyancy filled Elias. He closed his eyes and gave in to the sensation. It was nothing he’d ever felt before and certainly nothing he could explain. The lightness that filled him as he kissed Caspian harder, wishing that the two of them could tangle up together in whatever form and enjoy pleasure beyond telling went so much farther than anything he’d felt when kissing Caspian before. It was like the strong pull he’d felton the shore, the need to be with Caspian always, but so much more potent.
When Caspian shifted to kiss him from a different angle, Elias opened his eyes…and nearly shouted with alarm.
They were underwater. Both of them. He could see the surface just a few inches above his head, but they were most definitely under the waves. And yet, somehow Elias could breathe.
No, it was not that. It was as if he had no need of air in his lungs at all. Something else was feeding his body the oxygen it needed. Something that had come from Caspian’s kiss. More than just that, instead of being distorted and murky, everything around Elias was crystal clear. He could see through the water as if it were nothing.
The shock was too much, and he pushed up, surfacing and gasping. Part of him expected to gape like a fish on dry land, but no, the moment his head broke the surface of the waves, he could breathe as usual.
“What just happened?” he gasped as Caspian surfaced beside him.
Caspian’s grin was absolutely cheeky. “Merman magic,” he said teasingly.
Except that Elias did not think he was teasing. Not completely. “Explain,” he said, back to treading water as he put a bit of distance between himself and Caspian.
Caspian reached for Elias’s hands under the water, and Elias let him take them. “I do not know how or why these things came to be,” he said, “but my people can do things that you land-dwellers cannot. Influence the minds of weaker people, for one. That was how I managed to keep Ruby and the other women concealed from the likes of Dick, though it took so much more energy than I anticipated.”
Elias’s mouth dropped open, but he could not think of a single thing to say. He had found himself wondering how Dick and the other mutineers could have been so thick that they did not see through the ladies’ disguises for weeks in close quarters. Caspian had been responsible for that?
“We also have the ability to keep our soulmates with us in whatever form is necessary for us to be together,” Caspian went on with just a touch of bashfulness in his voice and expression.
Elias yanked himself from where his mind was still contemplating how the women were concealed to focus on Caspian’s newest words. “Your soulmate?” he asked.
Caspian’s smile returned. “I knew almost from the moment I saw you running away from that woman on the wharf in London,” he said. “There was simply something about you that called to my heart.”
“And mine as well,” Elias whispered, uncertain whether he believed himself.
But he did. He had felt something special about Caspian from the moment he laid eyes on him.
“I do not wish to alarm you in any way,” Caspian went on, back to being cheeky, “but because of this connection between us, if necessary, and if you’d like, I can give you an aquatic form exactly like mine.”
Elias gaped at him. “You can make me into—but how is that possible? Mankind cannot transform their anatomy into something else. The structure of our bones and muscles is set. I do not know of any species that can change its fundamental structure so completely.”
“Butterflies?” Caspian suggested.
Elias pressed his mouth shut, part of him wanting to scold Caspian and part of him wanting to laugh until there was no more air in his lungs. “I am not an insect,” he said.
“And I am not an amphibian,” Caspian laughed. “I am glad we have that sorted.”
Mirth and joy bubbled up inside Elias. A snorting laugh escaped from him that he attempted to swallow, but his giddiness could not be contained. It was madness. Everything about the moment he found himself in—not just the moment, but the larger situation and everything he’d experienced—was madness. But it was beautiful madness.
