Page 18 of Betrayed Kidnapped Mate

I feel a wave of lust rush over me, hard, and I have to grip the steering wheel to keep from looking at her. I don’t know what I’ll do if I look at her.

“I know what you’re thinking about,” Rosa says, her voice low. “And you’d better stop.”

I swallow hard. Her telling me not to think about it only makes it harder to ignore how good she looks in my passenger seat, her arms crossed, her face fixed into a perfectly angry mask. Maybe she wasn’t happy at the lake today—but she wasn’t nearly as miserable as she has been. And Kaila was having a great time.

Kaila told me all about her love of the ocean, which didn’t stop at surfing and extended to everything, including details about the chemical composition of the water and the creatures living there.

“There’s such a thing as a flapjack octopus,” Kaila had said, using her hands to scoop up water, dumping it back out again. “It’s called that because flapjack is another word for pancake—and the flapjack octopus likes to smush itself against the ground in the ocean.”

“Wow,” I’d said, taking a deep breath and turning to float on my back next to her.

“And there’s also sea angels—they’re not real angels, they’re more like slugs. And a sea pig!”

“Don’t say that too loudly, Linnea might adopt one,” Aris muttered. He had his hands under Araya’s back and was trying to teach her how to do a backstroke, but she was mostly enjoying the support without focusing on floating. “You have to move your arms, love.”

“There are interesting things about lakes, too,” I’d said, “We’re actually not far from one of the biggest lakes in the world.”

“Exaggerating much?” Aris laughs.

“It’s the fifth biggest,” I defended, and he splashed me with water, which made the girls giggle.

“What other things?” Kaila asked, her eyes still focused on the water as she strained it through her fingers.

“Well, lakes can be open or closed,” I said, thinking of the water sprites. “This lake is open, because water comes in and out from the Mississippi River, but some lakes are closed, which means they aren’t connected to any other water.”

“What about creatures?”

I thought immediately of leaches but decided not to share that little nugget of information with her. I didn’t want her freaking out and running to tell Rosa that there were blood-sucking parasites in the lake.

“Well,” I said, trying to think of something that wouldn’t frighten her too badly. “There are fish called sturgeons, which can grow to be really, really big. Like me and Araya’s daddy would both have to help to hold it up.”

“Oh, no,” Kaila said, glancing into the water like the fish might come to eat her.

“They don’t like to come to the shore,” I said, my heart pounding. I didn’t want to do anything that would make Kaila hate the lake. For some reason, it was really important to me that she liked it.

“Oh,” she said, visibly relaxing.

“Nice one,” Aris had muttered, low enough that the girls couldn’t hear him. I’d shot him a look, but he returned it with a sympathetic smile.

Now, Rosa stares resolutely through the windshield, refusing to look at me or even acknowledge my existence. Because I sometimes have no control of my mouth, I say the worst possible thing I can.

“Is Kaila mine?”

“What?” Rosa asks, turning to me, eyes wide.

“It’s just,” I say, forcing myself to relax when I see my knuckles turning white on the steering wheel. “The timeline matches up. And Kaila—she just seems so much like me.”

“She’s not yours,” Rosa says, waving her hand, her jaw set. “I was with someone else.”

“When?”

“Excuse me?”

“When? Because the timeline is so close. When is her birthday?”

Rosa works her jaw, not looking at me.

“I was with someone else, Bigby. She’s not yours. I stopped taking my birth control and saw someone the week after you left.”

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