Page 24 of Ensnaring the Siren

What had he done wrong?

Chapter

Eight

Deepest, murkiest depths, her scales had parted.

Right along the front, revealing tender, secret parts that should only come out for a mating frenzy. And all he’d done was touch her.

“You don’t like being dry, Starfish.”

The nickname fell from his lips like an endearment, a little teasing, but entirely sweet.

And not just that.

Wetting down her hair had been a gesture. A ridiculously small, why-was-she-even-fixating-on-it kind of gesture, but a gesture, nonetheless. He knew she hated being dry—she’d apparently complained about it enough and how itchy, uncomfortable, and all around awful it was. What Reid did was sweet and thoughtful, and just the sort of thing Killian would do for Lorelei. Just the sort of thing Nireed always wanted from her own mate…

Not your mate. He barely even likes you.

Nireed slapped her tail hard, propelling herself through the water at breakneck speeds, tricking her body into thinking it was in flight-mode. Because even it knew better than to be primed for a potential mate when “danger” lurked. It didn’t need to know that all that had been threatened was her pride.

Knowing how terrified and repulsed he’d been when they’d met, and still opening for him after a single touch? Mortifying. Reid would never want someone like her. Not when he knew she and her kin sometimes ate other Surface Dwellers.

Cold water caressed her scales, not something that discouraged arousal among her kind, but the urgency in her swimming demanded they close, shielding the vulnerable flesh beneath. That, at least, made the trip home less awkward.

On the dive to the city, she caught up with a returning hunting party and was relieved to see her friends Melusina and Delphine among the group. If anyone might offer her sympathy, it was those two. But apparently not Aersila, who wouldn’t even look at her.

Her heart twinged, hating that they were fighting. They never fought.

What happened with Reid, and all the weird, confusing feelings that accompanied it, was exactly the sort of thing she’d want to talk with Aersila about. Everything from sharing the pangs of an ill-timed, unrequited mating frenzy to confessing the type of thoughtful, loving mate she wanted but would never have.

Melusina and Delphine flashed a cheerful greeting, their respective topaz and red lights winking back at her.

Melusina had dark brown skin, due largely to her Black Surface Dweller-ancestry, but she also spent a lot of time near the surface, hunting in the light of the sun. She wore her hair in long locs that fell to her hips, ornamented with shiny bits of metal scavenged and painstakingly polished from old, sunken ships.

Delphine, on the other hand, was white from head to fin, even her scales. She rarely ventured near the surface, the sun too bright for her pale, light blue eyes and too harsh for her even paler skin. But her inner luminescence was red, rendering her virtually invisible to the other creatures of the deep, making her an especially lethal deepwater hunter.

“Can we talk?” Nireed signed, her amber glow illuminating her hands.

Aersila stiffened, but still didn’t look her way. And that cut deep.

No matter the risk, Nireed had always been there for her sister. Whether she agreed with her or not didn’t matter. She never turned her back, never refused to talk. Why couldn’t Aersila afford her the same respect and support?

Hurt turned to simmering anger.

Just because she was the younger, least experienced of the two didn’t make her an incapable fool. She wasn’t a child anymore and hadn’t been for a long time.

If Aersila wanted to ignore her, fine.

Delphine glared at the older mermaid, blue eyes flaring red, then signed to Nireed. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.” Melusina nodded in agreement, snapping her tail with extra force.

Nireed didn’t spare a single glance for her sister as she followed her friends. Why waste energy? Aersila had made her feelings perfectly clear.

They swam for the kelp forest, Delphine grabbing the old bit of rope they used to mark out pathways—a navigational network branching out through the towering stalks. This particular piece led to a series of others, each knotting around a barnacle-covered anchor, and spiraling out. One of them led to their old hangout, the place they’d been meeting since they were deemed old enough to swim away from the city unsupervised.

All those years ago, they cleared out a little grove for themselves, filling it with sunken “treasure”—pretty, but useless, trinkets scavenged from wrecks—and built a fort from old, rusted out ship parts. They’d play “Sirens and Sailors,” a game that went exactly how one might expect. Two of them would pretend to be oblivious sailors, chugging across the sea in a roaring hunk of metal. They’d take turns being the third character, a powerful, shipwrecking siren who’d hunt them down despite the awful noise, quieting the ocean and feeding the pod in one fell swoop—a heroine to her people.

Other times, they’d just play with one sailor, and the spare would pretend to be Lady Leviathan, the mighty kraken goddess of the sea. There was a makeshift skirt around here somewhere, made from twenty strands of old rope, one for each of the goddess’s tentacled arms.

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