Page 33 of Female Fantasy
Understanding washes over me like the salt in the water. “The ropes…you think I might one day be captured.”
He bobs his head in confirmation. “Merriah, I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. I would rather lose my own eternal life than see yours cut short.”
He swears this oath to me with so much sincerity that even beneath the salt water, my eyes sting.
“But if a day ever comes when you find yourself in enemy hands, I want you to be able to hold your own and escape. To fend for yourself. I will teach you how to evade ropes. How to outsmart even the cleverest of locksmiths, the wisest of riddlers. You will become a masterful spy, a savant of seduction and manipulation. No bonds will be able to hold you, do you hear me?”
His next words make the hairs on my arms stand up straight.
“You have spent too much of your life living in fear, Merriah, believing yourself to be weak. Let me train the fearright out of you, my warrior. Allow me to show you just how strong you actually are.”
And then, just then, I feel guppies swimming around in my abdomen.
A fluttering feeling.
Followed by a clenching
I think I have found my core.
I look up at him, eyes defiant.
“Enough talk, Prince Ryke,” I tell him. “Let us begin.”
Chapter Eight
“Joon, are you awake?”
My head is nestled somewhere soft and warm. Safe. All at once, I’m overwhelmed by a familiar yet foreign sensation. I’m transported back to winter mornings growing up in Mystic. Tey shoveling snow outside my window. Freshbarbaribread baking in the oven. Coming inside after a cold day and heating up by the fire. Sighing, I lean deeper into my pillow, mussing up my hair.
Then the bedding below me shifts. Moves out from underneath me.
And that’s when I realize that the cotton is no bedsheet.
It’s a living, breathing organism.
A man.
Odd. Normally, my dreams about Ryke are less snug and secure and more pulse-racing, body-jerking fantasies.Regardless, I nuzzle into his chest, desperate for the three more minutes before my alarm goes off and I have to get up and start writing.
Wait a damn minute.
I recognize that voice.
That isn’t Ryke’s voice at all.
And this isn’t Ryke’s cold, wet, chiseled body.
No, these arms belong to someone way more dangerous than the prince of the mer.
My eyes fly open.
The light around us has dimmed, the sun starting to sink beneath the bony silhouettes of the evergreens. The trees now look like ghostly shadows haunting the abandoned field. Daylight Saving Time came and went mere weeks ago, so I’d put the time at around 2 p.m. But that must mean—
Holy shit.
Did I fall asleep for fucking hours?
Worse, did I fall asleep onNico’s shoulderfor hours?!
