Page 4 of Blood of the Sirens
I tried again. I knew I wasn’t super attractive or anything, but this hardly seemed like a reasonable reaction.
“Hello?”
He blinked and opened his mouth. An odd, huffing sound came out before he cleared his throat and tried again, blushing like mad.
“H-hi.”
An utterly gorgeous,shyman?
And it wasn’t even my birthday.
I put my paddle down across the length of the boat and with my free hand, dug in my life vest pocket. I pulled out a small pocket knife and flipped the blade open, offering it to him, handle first.
“Here. Assuming you’re stuck?”
Those eyes went wide at seeing the blade, then shrunk as Ioffered it to him. He held my gaze for a moment longer before snatching it and diving under the water.
I frowned at the brief bit of contact. His touch had been cool, but warmer the more he held onto me. He must have been in the water for quite a while to be so cold.
Seconds went by. Then minutes.
Anxiety pooled in my belly. What if he was down there drowning? Caught in some trap? And I was here … waiting like a ninny?
I had to get out of the kayak and see. I was the only one around for miles.
I secured the paddle inside the kayak and pushed myself further into the reeds until the bow stuck. Assured it wouldn’t be going anywhere, I clipped off my lifejacket and threw it in the boat as well. Swinging my legs over the side, I tumbled over the side of the kayak and into the inlet with all the grace of a flailing duck. I’d never mastered how to get out of this thing with any sort of dignity.
I sank immediately into the murky water, my feet sinking into the sandy bottom as the water settled up to my breasts.
No gators. There were no gators. Don’t think about the gators, and they wouldn’t come.
Taking a steadying breath, I dove under the water toward the group of bubbles he’d disappeared under.
Salt water burned my eyes as I forced them open, my hands blindly reaching out for him. My fingers jammed hard against something hard and scaly, but before I could completely panic, strong arms seized me around my waist and pulled.
We exploded up through the water, blondie striding through the water with me in his arms like a proper damsel, dumping me back into my kayak like I was an errant toddler and not a grown woman closer to the three-hundred-pound mark than the hundred-pound one. My tailbone hit the bottomof the kayak hard and the vessel momentarily dipped down in the water before its natural buoyancy bobbed us back up.
I grit my teeth. I wouldn’t complaintoomuch, because I wasn’t sure what I had touched, but it felt scaly and I was pretty happy to be back in my kayak, away from it.
I turned around, but blondie had disappeared back under the water.
Hopefully, it wasn’t a gator. I wasn’t sure I had the fortitude or strength to wrestle a full-grown man out of a gator’s mouth.
Fuck.
I scooted forward and pushed desperately with my paddle to get out of the reeds. I made it back to open water just as Blondie’s head broke the surface.
Thank Christ.
“Hey! What was that about? I—”
Blondie cut off my tirade, grabbing the front of my kayak with two massive hands and pushing. Not expecting such a sharp and sudden change of direction, my body slammed forward, and I almost tumbled into the water again.
We moved backward fast andaway from the reeds. Away from whatever he’d been caught in. And whatever scaly thing lurked in the reeds.
I was going to yell at him again, but his eyes brokered no negotiation whatsoever when he quickly glanced behind us. Following his gaze, I caught a ripple in the water following behind him. Us.
From this distance, it looked like a bumpy log.
