Page 19 of Cruel Tides

Kai gulped down a breath as his eyes rolled up to the ceiling. “Please—” he gasped, his voice straining. “Don’t stop.”

I drew in my bottom lip and shook my head. He was saying the complete opposite of how he looked. “Kai, no. You look so uncomfortable.”

His eyes turned pleading. “I’m… nervous. No one has ever touched me here before.”

Goodness, Kai was innocent. What would he think of me if he knew I’d spent two nights cradled against Leander’s bare?—

“And it feelsfantastic.” Kai drew out the last word with a rough, raspy edge I wasn’t prepared for. The covers pulled tight over his hips as he shifted to massage a palm over the underside of his tented erection.

Whoa.I nearly fell straight backwards off the bed. I… hadn’t expected that. Kai was normally so shy, but then again, he never seemed to mind having his pants off around me—although, to be fair, that had been before he knew he had a penis.

My lips parted. “Yeah?” The word barely slipped out. I was so distracted by the slight movement of his hand over the sheet.

“So you can keep touching,” he whispered, tempting me back to his chest as his fingers curled around his erection. Although his elbow hadn’t moved, his grip was changing, kneading over his hard length.

Wait, wait, wait.This wasn’t what I had planned. Honestly, I just wanted to give him a sweet kiss. To thank him for saving me.

But now his eyes were on me, his lids heavy with an incrediblyun-Kai-likeemotion. Like I was a tasty treat, and him a starved shark. One with a craving that he was ready to satiate. And if it weren’t for his injuries, he would have already attacked.

I take back what I said before, I thought with a gulp. Kai wasn’t so innocent.

He’d only known about his human anatomy for a moment, but by the way he was handling himself in front of me, without an ounce of shame or embarrassment, he’d already found time to master the basics.

“Sorry.” His sweeping lips tilted, revealing those perfect, pointed teeth. A graceful tongue flicked over their tips as his elbow started up with long, leisurely movements, and I practically choked on my next breath.

He was staring straight at me, and although there was a layer in the way, he was still touching himself in front of me, slowly but deliberately. “Everything is so different on land. It’s crazy. I’ve had my legs for months now and it was never a problem. But ever since I met you, I can’t get this hardness to go away.” His voice strained in a way that made me want to chug down my whole bottle of water and then what was left of his next.

His free hand tangled with mine. “Though I still feel like I should be using both hands,” he added, his tone wavering between a groan and a laugh.

He couldn’t get his hardness to go away… because ofme?That thought was a head rush. Damn, he really was hard. Even when his movements had caused him obvious pain, he’d stayed fully erect. “Wait… Both hands?” My voice trailed as the image of him cupping his balls with one hand and sweeping long strokes up his length with the other sprang to mind, the sheet covering him long gone.

Then my face almost combusted, becausewhat the heck was I thinking?

“I’d never thought about human reproduction. Well, not until after that time in the pool,” he continued, color rising over his cheeks like he was finally embarrassed. “But I get the gist of how it works for merfolk. Well, in theory. I saw depictions of it in glyphs, and my brothers, they love to gloat whenever—” His expression soured, and he looked like he wanted to stuff the words back into his mouth. Even the hand on his dick had stopped moving. “Sorry. You don’t want to hear about this. I keep forgetting you’re an ex-mermaid, and what would an ex-mermaid need to know about tails?”

Tails.Of course. He was referring to his…mer-equipment. I had some idea of how merfolk reproduction worked. Leander had made sure of that. But not when it came to shark-tailed mermen—though I had already felt Kai’s claspers press against me right before Laverne had gotten between us. Plus, I’d seen the extent of his tail when all four of us were in the water. Unlike Leander, Kai’s tail didn’t appear to have a sheath that held its reproductive organs. No, they were right there. Out and proud.

Two long projections had sat on his underbelly, seated between Kai’s pelvic fins, fully rigid and exposed.Huh…Maybe it was fitting that his first orgasm had been from a stream of water.

I’d only snuck a quick glance, but his claspers had looked even thicker than they had felt brushing against my scales. So thick, in fact, I wasn’t sure if they were a part of him or if he had tried concealing a weapon down there, much like the harpoons the other two had strapped to their backs.

“You really havetwo?” I asked, my gaze flicking up to him.

His eyes searched mine. He took a strained breath and answered huskily, “Yeah.” Those lilac eyes were pulling me in again, gleaming like clouded gems in the low light. There was a hint of pride in his voice, too, like he could read my curiosity plainly on my face, and was enjoying the fact that, for once, he possessed something that other merfolk around me didn’t.

When the silence had stretched too long, Kai’s gentle hand moved to the side of my face. His thumb rolled over my lower lip, bringing flutters up from the depths of my belly.

“This might not be great,” he admitted, but damn, did he look determined. Lips tilting, pain pinched his eyebrows as he leaned toward me. He kept pushing forward, like even pain wasn’t enough to steal away this moment, until he paused just short of my lips. His hand swept back, passing through my hair to curl around the back of my neck. “But I really want to kiss you.”

I could barely contain my smile when I said, “I want you to kiss me.”

Kai’s face flared with heat as his gaze sank to my lips. He was staring at them so intensely I could almost feel it. “I’ll try to be gentle,” he murmured—wait,what?—then his lips were on mine.

He’ll try to begentle? That didn’t seem like a phrase typically used to preface a kiss, but—Oh.

Kai’s mouth gradually opened, and I realized what he meant by being gentle. His tongue lashed at mine, eager to deepen the kiss, and as my tongue slid against his, the top of it grazed the tip of one of his teeth.

He pulled back even before I registered the slight twinge of pain.

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