Tempest Revealed (13 page)

“Do you ever regret it?”

“Regret what?” Mark’s voice was low, teasing, and I knew he was aware of what I was asking. That this was his way of telling me it didn’t matter.

But it
did
matter, and now that I’d worked up the nerve to start this conversation, I wasn’t going to be shut down. Not now, when it was so important. “Come on, seriously. Doesn’t it bother you?”

“That my girlfriend’s a mermaid?”

“Obviously.”

“Not even a little bit.” He bent down, brushed a kiss across my cheek.

It wasn’t the answer I was after, and so it rocked me back on my heels a little, left me floundering for what I was supposed to say next. Any other time I would be jumping for joy—his willingness to accept unquestioningly who, and what, I was, was one of Mark’s greatest gifts to me.

I knew he was waiting for me to say something, but I couldn’t. Instead I savored the exquisite pain brought on by his answer for long moments. Then, when it grew more and more impossible to suck air in through my closed-up throat, I shoved it deep down inside of myself so that I could do what had to be done. “Really? It doesn’t bother you even a
tiny
bit?”

“Why should it? You’re still the same girl I fell in love with, just with a little something extra now.”

“But can’t you see? I’m not that girl! I haven’t been her for a long, long time.”

“Why do you always do that?” he demanded, shoving a frustrated hand through his hair. “Every time I turn around, you’re vilifying yourself. Finding something else to blame yourself for. You’re the only one who doesn’t see how amazing you are.”

Yeah, I was so amazing I was about to break his heart. “You don’t understand.”

“I understand more than you think. Why do you keep putting this mermaid thing between us like it’s some huge, insurmountable problem?”

I laughed, but the sound was harsh. Painful. “It’s a pretty gigantic problem, Mark. You’re the only one who doesn’t see that.”

“Why? Because you grow a tail every once in a while?” he scoffed. “So what? You’re still you. Besides, do you have any idea how many guys fantasize about the whole mermaid thing?”

I knew he said it as a joke, as a way to lighten up the tension that stretched between us, taut as a circus high wire. But I didn’t see the humor in it. “I’m nobody’s fantasy,” I said with a glare.

“You’re mine. Doesn’t that count for something?” As he said it, he gave me his most blatantly smoldering look—the one he brought out when he was making fun of both of us—and I couldn’t help it. That time I laughed.

“Seriously?” I demanded. “That’s the best line you’ve got? That somehow I’ve become your twisted little fantasy?”

He laughed, his brown eyes sparkling even in the dim light. But he grew serious quickly, the moments of levity disappearing like they had never happened. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Tempest? You’ve been acting weird all night.”

I froze, my stomach dropping to somewhere near the vicinity of my toes. I’d told myself I was ready to do this, but now that the moment was here, now that he was ready to listen, I wasn’t sure I had it in me. “Have I?” I prevaricated.

His mouth grew grim. “Don’t play me, Tempest. I can put up with a lot from you, but not that. If something’s wrong, just spit it out.”

Despite his obvious concern—or maybe because of it—Mark had kept his arm around me. And I let him, even as I searched for the words that would end us completely.

It was wrong. I knew it, but I couldn’t help myself. Couldn’t help drawing the moment out, letting the warmth between us linger. It was going to be a long time before I felt warm like this again.

We kept walking, Mark’s question hanging heavily between us, and eventually we got to the rock I’d claimed as my own when I was little more than a toddler. Black and hulking, it stood about eight feet tall, with a flat top that was perfect for sitting. It also curved on both sides so that a small hollow—big enough for one or two people—existed on the side facing away from the ocean.

For years the rock had been my playhouse while my father surfed. By the time I was in junior high, it had become my refuge, the place I came to think when my life—and my brain—grew too crowded. And in high school it also became a great make-out spot as well. Mark had gotten to second and third base for the first time while stretched out on top of this rock with me, late at night.

It had been a year since I’d come here for comfort—or anything else. A year since I’d dived into the ocean after Kona and become the thing I’d always hated.

“You wanna sit?” Mark asked, jerking his chin toward the top of the rock. The closer I got to breaking his heart, the more dark and brooding he became.

“I don’t think this is going to work.” The words tumbled out before I knew I was going to say them.

He lifted a brow. “So you’d rather stand?”

I shook my head. He knew what I meant—I could tell by the sudden stiffness of his spine, the angry set of his mouth.

“Mark—” I reached for him, put my hand on his arm. He shrugged me off.

“You don’t get to do this,” he told me, his voice sharp with anger and a hurt I knew he was working hard not to show. “You don’t get to go back and forth, changing your mind again and again because you’re afraid or feel guilty. I let you walk away from me once. I’m not going to do it again, not when I know you love me.”

“It’s not that simple—”

“Bullshit. It is exactly that simple.” He lowered his head so that we were eye to eye. “Last night you stood out here and you cried because you loved me so much. Now, I don’t know what happened today to spook you like this, but that kind of emotion doesn’t just change from one day to the next.”

“I never said I didn’t love you, Mark. I said this wasn’t going to work.”

“I don’t accept that.”

I swallowed back the lump in my throat. “You don’t have a choice.”

“The hell with that. We broke up once because I thought it would make things easy for you. Because I thought it was what you wanted. But I’m done with being the guy who just steps aside so that everything can be tied up in a pretty bow. What I feel for you isn’t always pretty. It’s raw and it’s deep and, damn it, it’s real. You aren’t going to take that from me. From us. Not on a whim.”

“This isn’t a—”

He kissed me then, and it was wild and electric and real, so real that I couldn’t do anything but kiss him back. If this was
the last time I was ever going to hold Mark, then nothing would stop me from taking—and giving—everything I could.

Tilting my head, I opened my mouth, let him in. As soon as I did, he relaxed, his mouth softening to sweetness on mine—as if my acquiescence was what he’d been waiting for all along.

I loved the honeyed taste of him, the pure simplicity of his kiss, but I wanted more. Craved it with a dark, desperate intensity I had never felt before. Pulling him closer, I nipped at his lower lip before sucking it between my teeth and running my tongue over the small sting.

It was the right move, because Mark went from sweet to needy in an instant. One of his hands came up and tangled in my hair while the other worked its way beneath his jacket and the low-cut fabric of my dress to press against the skin of my lower back. His fingers were callused from all the hours of playing basketball and waxing his surfboard, and they sent shivers through me wherever they touched.

I arched even as his mouth consumed mine, his tongue stroking deeper into my mouth with every second that passed. My breathing grew harsh, fragmented, and I could feel by the ragged movements of his chest that his was doing the same. In those moments I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anything—even my humanity. I wanted to hold him forever, to crawl inside him and let his love shelter me from everything I had done, everything I still had to do. But I knew that wasn’t to be, and that knowledge only made me more determined.

Without conscious thought, I moved my hands to his dress shirt and tugged it out of his pants. He groaned a little, gasped as my ice-cold fingers made their way up his back to the
bunched muscles of his shoulders. He felt so good, so right—made
me
feel so right—that I never wanted this moment to end. Which was why, when he lowered me to the sand behind the curve of the rock, I let him. More, I welcomed him.

We stayed like that for long minutes, the crashing sea and wild wind only adding to the urgency I felt to be with Mark. In these final moments he was mine in a way he never would be again, and that was enough. More than enough, which was a good thing, as it had to last me for an eternity.

Caught up in my feelings for him, I slid my hands around to his flat, muscular stomach. I wasn’t sure what I was doing, I just knew that I wanted more. Wanted everything. After tonight I was going back to Coral Straits to find Tiamat and end this war once and for all. If I succeeded, we might have a future together. But if I failed … if I failed, this would be the only chance I’d ever have to show Mark just how much I felt for him.

As I moved my hands up to stroke the hard muscles of his chest, Mark tensed against me, wrenched his mouth from mine, and I knew he was going to stop. To tell me that this wasn’t the time or the place. To demand to know if this was what I really wanted or if I was just doing it to shut him up. He was that kind of guy, that kind of boyfriend. And while most days I really appreciated how much care he took with me, tonight I wanted him to just act. To let himself be swept away.

“I’m fine,” I told him, reaching up and cupping his cheek with my hand. His jaw was prickly with stubble, his skin heated despite the chilly night, and I felt an answering warmth deep inside myself. This was Mark and I loved him, so much that sometimes it was impossible to think around the feelings
that welled up inside of me. Here, now—a million miles away from Tiamat and the evil that permeated the very water she breathed—it was enough. More than enough.

I wrapped my arms around him, held on tightly. He must have felt my resolve, my certainty, because as I pulled him back down to me he didn’t say anything else. And when he leaned forward, once again covering my mouth with his, I knew I had gotten my way. At least until I heard footsteps padding along the beach toward us.

Sitting up abruptly, I shoved my dress back down just as a deep, sardonic voice drifted from the foot of the rock. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

I froze at the sound of it, my entire body stiffening as a feeling of unreality came crashing down on me. I would know that voice anywhere, even behind a rock in the middle of a windstorm.

Kona had come to find me.

Part Three
Seismic Waves

“It is of great use to the sailor to know the length of his line,
though he cannot with it fathom all the depths of the ocean.”

—John Locke

Chapter 11

“What are you doing here?” I demanded as I ducked out from under Mark and scrambled to my feet. My heart was beating double time, whether from Mark’s kisses or Kona’s sudden appearance, I didn’t know. It was probably a combination of both, I admitted to myself, as I had no idea what to expect from this meeting. Had actually hoped to avoid it as long as possible—maybe even forever if my plan to disappear from my human life had actually worked.

Kona and Mark hadn’t come face-to-face with each other since that last violent battle with Tiamat, and I was okay with that. There was no need to rub Kona’s face in the fact that, in the end, I had chosen Mark over him or to remind Mark that for eight months I’d chosen to be with Kona instead.

But as I was making my way to the front of the rock, I caught my foot on one of the rough edges and pitched forward. I stretched my hands out in front of me in an effort to break my fall, but I never hit the ground. Mark reached out a hand to grab my arm at the same time Kona caught me. So instead of
smacking into the sand, I collided with Kona’s warm, broad, naked chest.

His arms wrapped around me—out of habit, I’m sure—and behind me I swore I heard Mark growl a little. Kona responded by pulling me closer to him and pressing a soft kiss to the spot where my cheek met the corner of my mouth.

I shoved him away, annoyed beyond measure. He’d spent the last four months ignoring me, treating me like I was completely beneath his notice. And while I understood why—though I hadn’t meant to, I had hurt him at a time when he was already vulnerable from the loss of his parents—that didn’t mean I was going to let him kiss me. Especially not when I knew he was doing it in a juvenile attempt to antagonize Mark.

An attempt that was working if the sudden tension in my boyfriend’s body was anything to go by. The second I got free from Kona, Mark pulled me to him, my back to his front, and wrapped both arms around my waist. At the same time he shot a don’t-touch-my-stuff look at Kona.

Normally I would have shrugged him off—I had absolutely no interest in being fought over like a shiny new toy—but the very air around me felt explosive. One wrong move on my part and I had the feeling that this barely civil meeting was going to go up in flames.

So I stayed put, giving Kona a wide berth as I asked again, “What are you doing here?”

The look he gave me was a touch snide, a touch annoyed, and loaded with arrogance. It was pure selkie king, a trick he never would have used on me before. But things had changed
between us, and despite my best intentions, I found myself withering under it now. Exactly as he intended.

“Playing errand boy,” he answered. “Believe me, it’s not a role I enjoy.”

“So why take it on?” Mark demanded, his arms tightening around me. “There must have been someone else you could have sent to run this errand.”

Kona eyed him with distaste. “Being king isn’t all about giving orders. It’s about serving my people and delivering disturbing news even when it’s easier to send someone else.”

“What happened?” I demanded, latching on to the only part of his sentence that mattered.

Kona inclined his head, held out a hand. “Walk with me?” Mark stiffened. “I don’t think so—”