Page 108 of Ensnaring the Siren

He was going to take the job Lila offered him. Get his technical diving certification. And he was going to live on that research ship so he could see Nireed every single day for as long as she’d have him.

Taking her by the hips, he pushed himself down, staring up into her lambent predator’s gaze as he pressed a kiss to belly, just below her navel. And there, he considered a what-if. No, a secret hope. A someday.

Would their kids have his dark brown eyes? Or would they be luminescent like hers? Would they be able to breathe underwater and shift between human and merfolk forms? Would they like human things, too, like shoulder rides? He hoped so. He could picture himself giving plenty of those. Little ankles clasped in his hands. Joyful giggles and squeals.

He hoped they’d get the very best of both worlds.

A burning in his lungs forced him up for air. He sucked in a deep lungful, heart hammering as Nireed bobbed to the surface beside him.

A loon called out into the night, its haunting melody echoing from the opposite shore, sending shivers down his spine. Another answered, and they both paused to listen, smiling softly as they drifted into each other’s arms.

One of nature’s best sounds this side of the world had to offer. And Nireed got to hear it.

“Thank you for bringing me here,” she murmured, nuzzling his neck. “It’s becoming my favorite place.”

“I think the kelp forest is mine.”

Pulled into the deep by his sea goddess, hers was the only light in that dark abyss. Ravished. Bespelled. Utterly ensnared. The memory brought a new surge of heat.

Her amber gaze flashed, smile turning wicked once again. “Which part?”

“All of it.”

Clasping his hips, she dipped beneath the water, his heart racing at a million beats per minute as she kissed down his torso, his belly tensing beneath her lips. She nipped at the tender skin at his hip.

“Taste me,” he pleaded, guiding one of her claws.

It was unhinged, asking a flesh-eating siren to swallow him, but fucking hell he wanted it and nicked himself anyway. Giving his hip a light squeeze, she took him in the smooth glide of her mouth, chasing away the sting of salt, her tongue worrying over the tender spot where he bled. He groaned, fingers curling in her hair. He knew from their second meeting that she could retract her fangs, and she had done so for this.

It had been a gamble, but if he could trust her at one hundred feet beneath the surface, he could trust her now.

She sucked him down further, far, far deeper than expected, and when her throat convulsed around his tip, he almost blacked out from the pleasure of it.

Releasing him, she popped back to the surface, staring at him with a self-satisfied smirk, knowing that trick alone had him seconds from coming. Wicked, wicked tease. He seized her in a hard, demanding kiss, pulling them both back to shore where he could get some goddammed leverage.

It was his turn to ravish her with the land at her back.

Splaying her out on a smooth, sandy patch—his legs entwined with her tail in water—he tore into the foil packet he’d left on shore with impatient ferocity and sheathed himself. He tossed the wrapper away from the leisurely lapping tide—something to grab on their way out—and plunged his tongue into the plush seam beneath her parted scales, attacking her clit.

“Reid!” She gasped, back arching off the shore as she grabbed onto his hair, bioluminescence a rapid, erratic flashing.

He worked her with punishing strokes of his tongue, making her quiver and sing his name some more. Each moan dragged from her lips took on an enchanting lilt, just as eerie and haunting as the loon song they’d heard, but this made his mind fuzzy with euphoria.

Didn’t matter that he’d pinned her to the sand, demanded dominance, one word, and he was hers to command. Anything she wanted. She’d always bewitched him, had him wrapped around her pretty little claws, but this was something new, and he never wanted to escape her thrall.

“You singing for me?” He rolled his tongue where she liked it best, nice and slow.

“Yes,” she said, with a heavy-lidded nod. “Do you like it?”

“I love it.”

Her song began as a low hum, one he felt in his skin, his marrow, his very soul, thrumming in time to his beating heart. Building, building, until a soft crooning fell from her lips, dreamy as a lullaby, and yet seductive in its deeper, richer pitch. He loved watching her pretty throat work to make the sound as her body quaked for him.

A hard, well-placed suck made her song falter. “Keep singing,” he whispered to her slick flesh.

Her brow pinched, his name a breathy plea, the sweetest note.

I know, sweetheart. Almost there.

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