Page 41 of Blood of the Sirens
A large hand spanned my belly and tugged. Properly shamed, I let Merrick tow me back to the surface. I flipped my soaked hair out of my eyes, my face heated.
“Well then, Mr. Olympic swimmer, how did the both of us get through the first time—”
Something large and scaly touched my legs, and I yelped. I thrashed wildly in the water, paddling like mad to get back onto the rocky shore and ignoring all of my training and years of swim meets in my panic. I hauled myself over the edge and flipped on my back, rolling and pointing at the water.
“Something’s in there! Get out!” I begged him, my eyes straining in the semi-darkness to make anything out under the water. It was impossible. Every horror movie where the kid gets sucked down by the leviathan raced through my mind.
“Jesse! No! It’s just …” Merrick’s voice was tinged with distress, the cave too dark to make out his exact expression at the lip of the pool. His shoulders slumped in defeat.
“There is no … thing. It is just me. I am tired of trying to hide, and it seems inevitable you will find out.”
“What are you talking about?” I laid down on the cool stone, tracing the ridges and dips of the stone with my fingertips. I could easily nap here if I wanted to. At least that would stop the racing thoughts, and I could pretend everything was fine. Normal. Ha!
“I can explain bluntly, if you wish,” Merrick offered, wrapping his arms around my waist and tuggingme toward him in the water. I jerked and dug my heels in, not wanting to head back and encounter whatever it was I had grazed.
“Please just tell me,” I begged, tired and confused.
Merrick’s blond head nudged against my lower stomach, almost like he was nuzzling it as he settled against me, hugging me to him like I was his long lost teddy bear. My hands tangled in his dreads, scraping across a few of the shells that were interwoven in his braids.
One callused hand had a vice grip on my hip, and the other slid up from my knee to my thigh. I was embarrassed by how large my thighs looked splayed out like this, like two large hams at a market.
His sharp teeth scraped my inner thigh, effectively ending my self-conscious thoughts.
“Those men wanted to mate with you,” he rumbled against my thigh. “You call it having sex, right? That is the sole purpose of why they are here.”
It was hard to focus on his words while his hands ran up and down my legs, his tongue tracing the slight pink lines left behind from my wounds. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t scar.
“Y-you said you knew them,” I protested. “Does that mean you want to have sex with someone too?” The very thought had my insides squirm unpleasantly. I couldn’t imagine him with anyone else.
His head nudged my stomach, pushing me down until I was flat on my back, my pelvis held in place at the edge of the pool. Merrick tried to spread my legs further, only to be stopped by the constraints of my dress.
He growled and tore a large rip in it.
“Merrick!” I gasped.
I gripped his hair in my fingers as his hands and tongue slowly, tantalizingly converged toward one spot: one final goal.My hips tried to jerk upward toward him, but he held me down firmly.
“Yes, I would very much like to have the sex,” he purred. “But unlike them, I won’t force you. I won’t bury myself in the first female to favor me. I will only sex you. I will only bleed for you.”
Oh fuck. Something was wrong with me. No one had said anything so hot to me in my entire life. I’d never believed a man before when he was trying to talk his way under my skirt. Even the way he’d said the word wrong was so fucking hot. Sex me, indeed.
The look in his eyes was predatory—deadly serious. I believed him. He wanted me. Only me. And he’d fucking skewer any other guy who came for me. Oh, my god. I was falling for him.
His fingers spread my inner lips without actually penetrating them. Hot air blew over my innermost parts, and my pulse raced beneath my skin.
“F-force?” I gasped out. “Archie—”
“Is not one of us, but if he were, I suspect he’d fit in just fine,” Merrick growled, his voice low and feral.
His nose nudged my center, and I jerked at the intimate contact. Shamelessly, I tried to grind my hips up, but he refused to let me move. He held me down with ease.
“I’ll take that as consent then, my little siren.”
The way his voice vibrated against me was criminal. His tongue stroked the length of my slit, and I pulled his hair while holding in my moan. I felt his answering rumble in my core.
“No, you won’t distract me,” I panted. “Tell me more about those guys. Tell me what I just felt against my goddamn legs. Tell me what you want, following me around like you have.”
His tongue delved inside of me, and I couldn’t contain mymoan. He chuckled darkly, squeezing and stroking my thighs as his tongue moved in and out. In and out.
