Page 2 of Waves
Not a tear for me.
It couldn’t be.
“Don’t. You can’t,” he murmured.
A shower of shocked hurt and sorrow and a strange yearning made my empty chest pulse with feelings that didn’t belong there. Emotions that were oddly intense and borderline painful. Perhaps I was awash with longing that he and Icouldbe right for one another.
Maybe in some other life.
I shook my head because that was wishful thinking. Foolish. I was merely a charred remnant of the hopeful girl I used to be. And who knew what sort of monster I’d devolve into?
This was for the best.
Better to disappoint him now than destroy him.
Stavros turned, boxing Julian’s limp form between us, the dead man’s head lolling to one side. The siren reached for me with his free hand, his fingers squeezed mine desperately, his black ring digging into my flesh, hard and insistent. “Please, don’t do this,” he begged.
Oh no.
He must have felt differently about that kiss.
Fool!I cringed.Look what you’ve done. More damage.
Swallowing, I dropped my eyes to our linked fingers, which clutched at me almost as if he was afraid to let go. As if I was somehow his lifeline. “I need this,” he urged.
I was bowled over by a furious sort of desperation racing through my ribcage. A need to prove myself. To whom? For what? My body was going haywire, and these feelings made no sense.
Gah, I was a mess.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I admitted softly. Though I'd never give him the whole truth, that the price of my magic was my humanity—I could give him a simpler explanation. One that wasa trutheven if it wasn’t everything.
With a shake of my head, I glanced back up at his face, to find his jaw clenched as he braced himself for my words. “I don’t want what happened to Julian to happen to you too. The world needs good men like you, Stavros. You’re a gift. And I’m a danger.” Untwisting our fingers, I dragged my hand up to cup his cheek and he leaned into the touch, his warmth soaking into my palm.
A staggering, swimmy daze overtook me, and my hand stayed against his face longer than I’d intended as a hollow sort of longing intense as hunger pain pulsed right through my bones.
What isthat? Where was this feeling during our kiss?
Strange, changing emotions shone inside me like dappled sun rays bursting through the waves only to be cut off a moment later—as if a cloud in the sky, one invisible beneath the sea, had blocked off the light. There one second. Gone the next. Then another splintered fragment of sunshine would appear. Bizarre.
It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before.
It was as though I was a stranger to myself. As though I was outside my own body.
As if Stavros’s emotions had leaked out into the ocean with his tears and somehow leached into my pores.
Blinking, I pondered how that might be. But as my eyes traced over his handsome face, a theory came to me. A revelation.
What if Stavros wasn’t a full siren?
What if he was a half-blood and didn’t even know it…
Did he have magic?
Perhaps he was like one of Bloss’s husbands? Growing up, I’d watched as Connor had been able to taste the feelings of others.
What if the man in front of me didn’t swallow emotions with his golden lips…but what if he emitted them? If they spilled out of him like a lantern and lit up whoever was in his proximity?
A serrated inhale nicked my throat.
