Page 33 of Cursed Waters

Leander’s palm molded to the curve of my neck, and my flesh prickled at the touch.Stupid, I hissed at myself.He doesn’t want you.

“I’m sorry—” I began, but my apology was cut short, smothered away by a hard crash of lips as Leander’s mouth reclaimed mine.

A little gasp worked its way up my throat, and he devoured that too, suddenly too greedy to let even a puff of air come between us.

He kissed me like it was a command, this intense authority that stole the breath right from my lungs. And oh, how easily I gave in to his control. Leander was nothing like I’d imagined—though, admittedly, I’d had little time to dream up how a kiss with him might be.

Sure, his tilted grin had never failed to strike a certain chord in me. And yes, it intrigued me how he wore that maddening grin of his around so carelessly, looking perpetually on the brink of laughter whenever I was near. But only occasionally had I imagined how those same lips would feel curled against mine. How the low hum of his irritating chuckle would feel with his mouth pressed over my throat.

But this—this was nothing like the playful Leander I thought I knew. The mask he wore seemed to dissolve with each authoritative slide of his tongue. Each touch was laced with urgency, like he feared that if he took his time with me, I might just turn to sea-foam in his embrace.

Whatever drove him not to push me away, I was thankful for it. The touch of his skin against mine was such a delicious, otherworldly sensation. I never wanted him to let go.

His tongue teased at mine, twisting and coaxing my mouth open wider for him, intoxicating me more than any reawakened magic ever could, and it was everything I didn’t even know I needed.

Suddenly emboldened, I let my hands roam him freely, tracing along the perfect lines of his chest. Remnants of his shirt fell off his shoulders as I worked my way over him, exploring the stretch of each hard muscle under my fingertips.

Even with my eyes pressed shut, everything seemed to reel around us—the boat, the water, the looming presence of his arms as they possessively closed in around me. Leander’s grip left my neck, and his other hand soon followed, sliding down the curve of my back, the swell of my waist, the scales covering my hips.

Then I felt the edge of his tail nudge under mine, curling around that worthless hunk of flesh, and our fins twined together. For one fleeting moment, I let myself feel grateful for my tail. I wanted—no,needed—to touch all of him, and craved his touch in return, however I could get it.

The vague sense that I was missing some important detail pricked at me through the haze, stalling my mind for a moment. There was something… somethingcrucialI was forgetting. But what was it?

Leander’s firm hands shifted, and nothing else mattered. He’d found the little points poking through my soaked shirt, and any lingering thoughts left me as I felt them harden under the insistent pressure of his thumbs.

I failed to suppress a groan, and suddenly, Leander broke the seal of our lips.

My eyes fluttered open as he eased back, and the golden flecks in his gaze greeted me, smoldering around his irises like hot metal. The impish tilt of his lips told me he was satisfied with the little reaction he’d caused.

A rising warmth flushed my face, and when he started teasing slow circles around those tight pebbles, our gazes still locked, my groan rose into a full-on moan.

Heat flared through me with each drawn-out stroke, sending my spine bending into an involuntary arch and—

Pop.

My tail suddenly—

Pop.

Both ofour tails burst apart at the seams, and the vicious sound of scales grating and flesh splitting flooded my ears.

Instead of dispersing as it should, magic swelled around us, building into a cyclone so intense the universe seemed to bend around it. The power released from our combined transformations fought, the forces tugging and pulling like two opposing whirlwinds at war before backfiring over us in a marvelous explosion of magic.

Strong arms locked around me, securing me in a tight embrace, and our bodies lurched across the deck, slamming into the side of the fishing boat as the magic crash-landed on top of us.

The boat creaked, bopping madly over the water’s surface while the whirlwind dispersed, its power quickly draining from the air, and suddenly, we were nothing more than a tangled heap of human limbs sprawled across the deck.

“Oof,” I groaned, fighting to free a section of hair pinned under Leander’s shoulder. “What in Poseidon’s Deep was that about?”

A low sound built in Leander’s throat as he flung one of my boots aside, rubbing at the crown of his head where it looked to have struck him. Pain strained his features, and my heart sank as some hard projection prodded at me from the space between us. He’d used his body as a shield for me. Had he broken something during the chaos?

“Are you okay?” I said, quickly shifting my weight to help relieve the pressure, but his legs were still hooked around mine, and I didn’t get far.

“Please. Just… stop moving,” Leander rasped, and I froze on top of him.

“But you’re hurt,” I countered. His head rocked back and forth over the deck, his eyes pinched shut. “So, you’re not hurt?”

Unconvinced, I endeavored to check for myself, quickly finding the part of his leg poking against my stomach. My fingers wrapped around it gingerly, sliding down with a featherlight stroke to find the source of the break without causing more pain, and—

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