A Mermaid's Ransom (Daughters of Arianne 3)

While she kept her senses tuned all the way there and found nothing, she was relieved when she shut the door of her town house and had them both safely ensconced inside. While Dante was showering off the tank's salt water at her suggestion, she pushed aside her weariness to practice some old hearth magic. Sprinkling salt at the window and doorjambs, she murmured a Protection Spell. It might not stop anything capable of attacking Dante, but it would serve as an additional security alarm, buying precious seconds. For the first time in a long time, she even removed the key from the outside pot.

Now that the incident was over, she found herself getting irritated about it. As if getting him used to his new environment wasn't challenging enough, every time she turned around they were being attacked by vampires or Goddess-knew-what. Still, it wasn't like she was used to life being predictable.

As she made herself a dinner with choice tidbits she knew Dante would like to sample, she listened to him in the shower with the hint of a smile. Earlier thumping had suggested he was investigating her cabinets, making her hope he wasn't dismantling all her toiletries. If he mashed her lipstick tubes putting the caps back on, she was going to consider child locks. Regardless, he was now in the water flow, if the sounds of bottles opening and closing were any indication. She had lavender-and jasmine-scented hair and body products in there, and it amused her to think of him emerging smelling like a combination of the two flowers.

Putting on some romantic piano music, she lit candles and resolved to shrug off her worries. A vampire didn't walk out of a hell dimension after sixty years, go to a couple scenic spots, learn how to use a shower and do hunky-dory, happily-ever-after. There was no manual for this. They had to keep going the direction they were going and see what happened. Taking a page out of Reba's book, she'd give herself permission to celebrate the small things, because there might not be as much to celebrate as they faced harder challenges.

Would he ever be able to share tenderness with her? Laughter? Those were things she'd always expected to find with the male to whom she gave her heart, but he had little of those things to offer himself, let alone anyone else.

When she looked up to see Dante standing in the doorway, watching her set the table, she gave a half laugh. "You're too good at that."

He didn't smile. "This male you wanted. What other traits did you want him to have?"

"I don't think it really works that way with love. You can imagine, but where you end up may be somewhere different. It doesn't mean anything."

He shook his head. "That is not the question I asked. I can reach for it in your mind, but I'd rather you tell me. I am not the person you would have picked for yourself, Alexis, or that your family or your friends would have picked for you. They want you to have . . . love. I've heard this word in your mind, theirs . . . I saw your father display it toward you when he held you and your mother, when we returned. Love. You love him, your mother . . . many others. It is an easy thing for you, like sunshine."

She gripped the fork instead of putting it on the napkin, needing the illusion of employment. "You'll learn about it in time. You've only been here a few days."

"Alexis," he said softly.

She shook her head, closing her eyes. "Please don't say it."

"Not saying it does not change the truth. If I can ever understand this feeling, it is likely to be years before I learn enough of it to love another the way you do, or those around you. From what I see, trust is a large part of this feeling. Understanding. Regard. I have fought for my life, for everything that I am, every day of my life. And I have lost, often. These kind and soft things you experience every day are as foreign and suspicious to me as my world was to you."

Alexis looked up then, for she felt a sharp and piercing emotion from him, like a fatal stake through the chest. The comparison chilled her. He met her gaze. "It is possible that Mina and your father are right. After all these years, it may have taken too long to get here. The only place I truly belong may be the place I most abhor."

Distractedly, she realized he did smell faintly of the jasmine shampoo she had, but she was more concerned about the aching reaction she'd now identified. Resignation. Goddess, was he really thinking he should go back? What the hell had happened in that shower?

"No." She slapped down the fork and faced him, her hands clenching into fists. "That isn't true. This is your world. I wish . . . Damn it, Mina, my father . . . all of you. You just need to give it time. When people get out of prison, they talk about how freedom is scary at first. Sometimes they want to run back to their jail cell, to the familiar. You are not a coward," she said fiercely. "You can do this. I will help."

"At what cost to yourself?" He straightened from the doorway and came to her. "I've seen enough of this world already to know you shouldn't give up all you are to someone who can promise you nothing."

"That's my choice."

"No. It's my choice. That, out of everything else, is the most clear. In thirty days, I could destroy all that you are and leave you a shell."

"I'm not that fragile."

"I think you are far more fragile than you are willing to accept, when it comes to your heart."

It might be a moot point, if I've already given my heart to you. And angels only give their hearts once.

"You are only half angel." He turned away from her, glanced at the table. "What are you having for dinner?"

She stared at him. To her ears, he'd just proven his point, that it might take decades for him to love someone, or at the very least, not slice her heart to ribbons when she offered it to him on a platter. But she couldn't be struck down by his words, not when they were merely a weapon guarding his real feelings on the matter. Just as she sometimes forgot he could hear her thoughts, he'd apparently forgotten that, while his emotions were hard for her to decipher, some things were as clear as lighthouse beacons.

On top of the vampire attack and the mystery of what else was hounding his heels, she wouldn't tolerate him turning on himself. He damn sure wasn't going to go back to that Dark One world. Her father, Mina, even Dante himself, would have to walk over her feathered, finned, pink skinned, multispecies dead body to do it.

When his head swung around to give her a sharp look, she pivoted on her heel, marching out of the kitchen to the living area. "Let's try some dancing before dinner. I've lost my appetite."

"You are angry."

"What gave it away?" She went to the music player, punched in a playlist of ballads at the tempo she wanted and turned to face him. He was wearing jeans and a white dress shirt that he'd not yet buttoned. His chest still had a bead of water here and there. Every girl's idea of a poster pinup, no denying it, but it was more than that.

She'd let hers

elf get distracted by Mina's talk of sexual dominants. While there was no doubt he was one of those, what if the compulsion that made him claim her was simply a different version of what she felt toward him? It was a physical deception, the way a woman's anatomy yielded, men's equipped to invade. The truth of it was a stronger magic, such that when the two were locked together, she was just as capable of holding him in her body as he was of taking hers.

"You're absolutely right," she said, as his eyes narrowed. Lifting her chin, she stripped off her overshirt, revealing the thin tank she wore under it, no bra, so her breasts moved generously under the thin fabric, the nipples prominent, dark smudges. She moved toward him. "You don't match my catalog list of what I wanted in a guy, not in the slightest. Steady, gentle, loving. Tender and playful, with an easy laugh and a love of animals, children, anything weaker than him that might need his help. He'd have a kiss that makes my knees weak, just a little, and I'd look forward to his touch."

Stopping in front of him, she met his gaze in bold challenge. "I wouldn't crave it like water, and his kiss wouldn't drown me. He wouldn't be immersed in violence and death, pain and loneliness. I wouldn't be absolutely certain there's an unbreakable line connecting us, and that's all that's keeping him from disappearing forever into desolation. You don't choose who you love, Dante. Love chooses you."

"So should I be grateful for your pity?" His lip curled.

"There's a difference between compassion and pity." She gripped his hand, guided it around her waist, and laid her other one on his shoulder with firm intent, a determined dancing posture. "What about you? You'd let me go, just like that? It would be okay with you if I found another guy, one who'd touch my breasts"--she brushed them over his bare chest with deliberate provocation--"fuck me, make me scream out with pleasure when he put his tongue--"

Dante let out a warning growl, fire growing in his eyes, and she slid her thigh across his groin. "In my cunt," she said precisely, "so wet for him that I'd beg for his cock, hold his hair and tug him closer, grind myself against his face."