Page 31 of Seashells and Daiquiris

"Come here," he says, a hint of a command in there that makes me weak at the knees.

My lips curl upward, and I’m certain I’m blushing. “I’m right here."

"Closer."

My pulse picks up as I shift across the sand until our knees are almost touching. He's looking at me with those honeyed eyes, and the playfulness from a moment ago has faded into something steadier. Something that makes my stomach feel like it's free-falling.

"I want to try something," he says, his voice warmer at this proximity. "And I need you to tell me if it's too much."

Dear god, I’ve never written anything that made me feel this way. Is this real life for me?

He reaches forward and takes my hand. Turns it over in his, veins protruding, even visible through the ink. His thumb traces a slow line across my palm, following the crease, and the sensation travels all the way up my arm and into my chest.

"When I touch you," he says, watching his own thumb move across my skin, "I feel things I'm not supposed to be able to feel. Not full emotions. More like... the shape of them. The outline. Like hearing a song through a wall."

My anticipation deflates like a balloon being punctured. “Is that new?" I ask, trying to retain composure. I can’t let him know I basically just tripped and fell head over heels for a solid minute, hoping for a much more profound confession.

He raises his gaze to connect with me. “That's only with you."

Oh, nope, I’m right back to falling for this man—“His thumb on our palm is unreasonable… We want more.”

The air between us collapses.

He doesn't move immediately. He stays there, holding my hand, his jaw tight, his breathing deliberate, looking at me like he's standing at the edge of something and deciding. I can almost see the war behind his eyes, the six years of keeping his distance, the thirteen times it went nowhere, the disciplined refusal to want things he can't have.

Then something in him shifts. I see the exact moment he stops fighting it.

He lets go of my hand. Both of his move to my face, one on my jaw, one sliding into my hair, and he pulls me to him. Not gently. Not politely. He pulls me to him like a man who just made a decision he can't take back.

I meet him halfway.

This kiss is full of heat and intention and the kind of urgency that makes you forget where you are. My hands grab the front of his shirt and I pull, and he lets me, before taking over.

His fingers tighten in my hair—not enough to hurt, enough to direct—and he tilts my head back to deepen the angle. A sound escapes me that I will absolutely deny later. He swallows it like he was waiting for it.

My back hits the sand.

I don't know how it happens. One second we're sitting, the next he's shifted and I'm lying back and he's braced above me on one arm, his silver hair falling around us like a curtain, and the warm softness of his mouth hasn't left mine through any of it. The bioluminescent water glows beside us, the sand cool against my shoulders. His body is so warm and heavy where it presses against mine, completely and irreversibly ruining me. Especially as he re-positions so both of my legs are wrapped around him, his hips dropping all the way to press against me.

I don’t think anything can top making out with a hot merman on a beach.

He kisses my jaw. The spot below my ear. The column of my neck, slow and deliberate, and I arch into it before I can stop myself. My fingers find his hair and I grip it the way he gripped mine and the sound he makes against my throat—low, guttural, starving—sends something electric through my entire body.

"Freddie." My name in his mouth, against my skin, like he's tasting it.

"Yeah." It's barely a word.

He pulls back enough to look at me. The darkness of his pupils have eaten away at the brown, his expression is completely unguarded for the first time since I've known him. There's no mask. No careful control.

“We should possibly stop,” he says, and his voice is wrecked. “I haven’t felt… the curse stole a lot from me. Not that. That’s not what I mean⁠—”

“Thank god.”

We both slow roll into a laugh, not even bothering to see where the shell is. Liam looks me over. “What I mean is, I don’t know if I can control myself with you.”

“Oh god please don’t.”

For once I’m so happy to have that shell, because that’s exactly what went through my mind as electric warmth utterly floods my system. I have my hands on his chest, on his shoulders, my fingers still threaded in his hair. “I agree with the shell.”