I prop one knee against the rock as I take the fork, easing strands from the tangle. Goose bumps rise along his neck. I can almost taste that gleaming skin, feel the sharp buds of his nipples against my tongue. I force my breath out when I want to gather a lungful and hold it in, savoring the scent that rises from him, deep and secret as the ocean.
“This might take a while. Shall we pass the time with a story?”
He nods, mindful of the fork.
“Once upon a time, there was a sad princess. She tried so hard, yet she wasn’t the princess people wanted. Year after year, she asked the king, ‘Am I now fit to rule?’ And the answer was always ‘no.’”
I’m untangling slower than I need to. Stealth-tugging his hair, watching it mess up his breathing.
Lifting his hands from the rocks, the merman sketches a wide circle with his fingers, then mimes putting it on my head. A crown.
“Yes, I’m a princess, but not the one in the story.” My nipples tug and tingle, so sensitized that the slightest brush of the shirt against my thin, lacy bra sets them aching. My skin is alive. I can have him right here on this beach. Or I can coax his legs out of that tail and bring him up to the castle.
“One day, she realized all her joy had died. Stricken with grief,she threw her crown in the sea. A beautiful merman emerged from the waves and handed it back to her. They fell in love. But he could no more live on land than she could live under the sea.”
The last of the tangles dissolves. I set the fork aside.
“So she went on a quest to find the magic that would bring them together for good. Some say she’s still searching. Some say she found it. Some say they’ve seen the lovers on the beach at dawn.”
Our eyes meet. A bolt of energy shocks my heart to life, pain and pleasure mixed. He bites his lip, and somehow puts the better part of a decade into one small movement. Our history, our love, closeness and distance, triumphs and failures, everything.
Everything.
Of course I fall in love with him again. Of course I do.
Braced against the rock, I hover one finger over his belly. When he nods, I trail my shaking hand down ridge after ridge. He gasps, stomach muscles jumping in time.
One hand comes to my chest as he leans back a little. Then a little more.
Then way too far, way too fast, out of my reach in what feels like no time at all, arms grasping at nothing.
He goes down without a sound, scales sparkling, tail giving one last flip as he tumbles ass first out the window. In character, right to the end.
“Tobin!” I shriek, shoving my head and shoulders through the window. “Oh my god! Are you okay?”
Six feet below, he lies in the soft, raised earth of his herb garden, chest heaving.
“’S okay,” he pants. “Wind… knocked out…”
“Don’t move!” I race for the back door, shirt flapping like a sail. What if he’s hurt? What if he landed on one of his cute copper garden markers (whose lethality I only now appreciate), and there’s a spike labeled “cilantro” in his chest?
Out of my mind with fear, I wrench the door open with a bang. It ricochets closed as I leap over the railing and stumble to my knees beside his inert form.
“Oh, shit. Oh, Tobe. Lie still.” I try to remember my most recent first aid training, which was meant for fingers that crossed paths with staplers, not vital organs turned into kebabs.
Sparkle-encrusted eyes wide, he follows the movement of my hands over the slick, square planes of his chest, his muscles jumping under the touch I try to make gentle, clinical.
His eyes flutter closed as I skim a hand underneath his head and torso, checking for bleeding. My face grows hotter the lower my fingers go, from nape to back to ass cheeks.
He makes a tight sound when I move to the other side.
I freeze. “Does it hurt?”
“No.” A stripe of hectic pink paints his cheekbones.
My hands come up dry, if dirty.
He cracks one eyelid. “Can I get up now?”
