Siren Song (4 page)

It drove him over the edge. He growled like some land-based animal. Ferocious and bound together with her. His muscles twitched with pleasure and then pulsed with release. Again. Three, four, five bursts. The salty fluid of life pouring out of him, into her.

He wanted to hold her flushed face in his hands and crush her lips beneath his. He wanted to
kiss
her. He wanted to kiss her, and kiss her, and
kiss
her until his heart stopped pounding against his rib cage. But he didn’t, and in his torment, she turned her face away as if to remove the temptation.

Chloe’s body was still tingling, her throat raw. It had taken everything inside her not to kiss the sensual lips of the man hovering over her. She’d turned to him in grief but she hadn’t expected it to feel like this. She’d just expected it to stop the pain. It’d done more than that. They were still joined and she was storm-swept and shaky, as if every time she’d ever gone willingly to bed with anyone had only been child’s play. Adolescent fumbling. Hot, uncomfortable backseats, stolen moments in time; this—this was new.

Now she stretched out on the rumpled bedspread, her body still craving more. “Wow. Just wow. Next time, let’s do it in the bathtub, because if you’re this good on land…”

“You’re sure you want there to be a next time?”

Insecurity wasn’t her thing, so how could just one comment like that drive a wedge of anxiety straight down her spine? What if he didn’t feel the same way about what had just happened? “Why shouldn’t there be a next time? I didn’t try to kiss you. You’re safe from the big bad siren.”

He rolled onto his back and she could see the darkness creeping back into his expression. “I’ll never be safe from sirens.”

“Why not?”

“Because I kissed a siren once.”

She sat up, pulling a pillow from the bed to clutch against her breasts as she looked down on his face. “I thought you said that you couldn’t kiss a siren. That it would destroy you.”

“It did. One kiss and I lost everything. My willpower, my honor, my home and my place in the brotherhood of tritons.”

Chloe felt the color drain from her face. “That’s terrible. But I don’t understand.”

“There was a time when the ancient gods were more powerful, Chloe. When people believed in them. Back then, it wasn’t unusual for sailors to see merfolk. But now, most of the old gods have lost their magic. Even Poseidon’s power dwindled. Still, he ruled the ocean and up until my failure…he tried to see that justice was served.”

Justice.
Chloe had seen precious little of
that
in the world, so she asked, “What kind of justice?”

“When we heard a siren song, tritons like me were dispatched to capture the sirens and drag them into the deep to face Poseidon. Since tritons are immune to a siren’s spell, none of us had ever failed in our duties. Until me.” Chloe bit her lower lip, seeing the pain etched across his face as he continued. “I was given the task of capturing a pair of sirens. I followed them by the sounds of their songs. But one of the sirens… I felt compassion for her.”

Chloe was instantly and powerfully jealous. “And you kissed her?”

“I fell in love with her.” Oh, Chloe didn’t think the jealousy could get worse, but it did. It stabbed at her, just beneath her ribs, so that it hurt to breathe. “Then I kissed her. And when I did, I fell under her spell, Chloe. My invulnerability was broken. It’s taken me a long time to build up my resistance. I’m less vulnerable than other men. I can resist you, but it’s a struggle.”

“What happened to the siren you kissed?”

“She used her powers to make me let her go, and she went on to kill again. Because of me. Because I was weak.”

“You weren’t
weak,
” Chloe insisted.

“I was. I didn’t have to kiss her. I wasn’t compelled by her powers. Even knowing what she was, I
chose
to kiss her.”

This is what he’d been banished for, she realized. “Is it really a choice? When we find that one person we love how does anyone have the right to tell us that we can’t touch them or kiss them? Maybe it wasn’t the right time to kiss her. Maybe the thing to do would have been to wait until you’d set things straight. But were you really supposed to go your whole life without kissing the woman you loved?”

“Yes. I had my duties to Poseidon’s realm.”

“Love can’t belong to
a realm,
” she said, wanting to trace lines on his face, to taste the salty tang of his hot skin. To kiss all his pain away. But she knew she shouldn’t dare. “When did all this happen?”

“A few hundred years ago.”

Chloe blinked. “You’ve been exiled all this time? But you said that on land, you age as a normal man.”

“Yes, well, swimming the sea for hundreds of years when you cannot even see other merfolk anymore—it’s lonely.”

Her hands went to her face as the realization came to her. He’d chosen to come ashore, even though… “You gave up your immortality. You came ashore to—to—end it?”

He squeezed his eyes shut, lips parting as if in grief, trying to find the words to make her understand. “The sea is beautiful, but vast, and empty. Here, at least, I could hear voices of people, even if they weren’t
my
people.”

“I’m so sorry, Alex.”

“It’s Alexandros.”

Chloe pulled her knees up.
“Alexandros.”
She tried it out on her tongue. It sounded exotic and worldly and it made her feel…

“It means
defender of man,
” he said, a little sheepishly.

Safe.
It made her feel safe. Like she had finally found an anchor in the storm of her life. Something solid to cling to. Yes,
he
made her feel safe, which seemed strange, since he may have been the most dangerous man she’d ever met.

Since the day he’d been banished, Alexandros told himself that he didn’t
want
to tell anybody about his past, but the truth was that there’d never been anyone he
could
tell. Until her. Now that he’d bared his soul to Chloe, he felt strangely buoyed. He was breathing freer. It was more than the intimacy they shared, not just in body, but in soul. There was something about her that brightened every moment. Something that made him feel genuinely grateful to be alive.

“I hate that someone did that to you,” Chloe said. “Betrayed your trust. Violated something so sacred.”

“It was my own fault.”

“Why? Do you think you were
just asking for it?
Because if you keep thinking like that, you’ll never get close to anyone.”

“I’m not sure I
should
get close to anyone,” he said, and instantly regretted it, because she looked stung.

“That’s why you came onto land, isn’t it? You were looking for a connection.”

He changed his mind; he didn’t want to have this conversation, after all. “I don’t know what I was looking for.”

“Yes you do,” Chloe said. “Tell me. Why did you join the Navy?”

“I already told you. It seemed like the only thing I was suitable for.”

“I think you did it because you want a sense of duty and purpose. You want to belong to something good, something noble.”

She was battering against something inside him, and he wished her words away. “Chloe…stop.”

“You don’t want to be alone. None of us do. But you have to learn to trust again, and I know how hard that is.”

He glanced at her, and shook his head at the look of determination in her eyes. She was no damsel in distress; after all she’d been through, she was trying to rescue
him.
It shamed him. If someone like Chloe could be brave enough to face down her past and her pain, he had to find the courage to do the same. He reached out for her hand, twining his fingers with hers.

“It’s not just about relationships,” Chloe whispered. “You have to forgive yourself or you’ll never be able to actually
live
your life.”

“I don’t have much life left to live. Now that I’m on land, I have no more than fifty or sixty years left.”

“Fifty or sixty…” She sputtered with sudden laughter. “Yeah, you’re just knocking on death’s door…”

He was abashed. Perhaps, for a mortal, that was a very long time….

“So, what do you plan on doing with those fifty or sixty years? Don’t you want to actually
live
them?”

He did. What’s more, he thought he knew just how he wanted to begin. He might be making the same mistake, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He leaned over her, lowered her to the bed and smoothed back her dark hair. She looked up at him wide-eyed and he was momentarily pulled into those sapphire depths, as elemental as the sparkling sea. But it wasn’t her eyes that held him in her thrall. Not her voice. Not even her perfect breasts. This time, it was those lips—lush, pink and softly parted.

He traced them with his finger and when she closed her eyes, he kissed her.

The whole world centered on the soft brush of his lips against hers. He deepened the kiss, and oh, the taste of her. His tongue swept gently over hers and then her teeth caught his bottom lip. They were locked like that, mouth to mouth, breath to breath, heart to heart, and he couldn’t pull away. When she finally stopped for breath, she had tears in her eyes. “You shouldn’t have kissed me. Why did you do it?”

Because he needed to. There was no reason not to. He’d already been banished. His immunity to a siren was already compromised and he’d already fallen under Chloe’s spell. “Because I don’t want to resist you.”

“But now I could manipulate you.”

“If you want to seduce me, I won’t mind. Maybe you should sing to make me clean your house. It could use some organization.”

He meant to drive away the tears in her eyes, but she wouldn’t be distracted. “I could hurt you….”

“You won’t, Chloe,” he said, pulling her into his sleepy embrace. “You wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I have faith in you. You should have faith in yourself, too. You don’t have to hide from your past. You don’t need a drink to steady you. You don’t need your siren powers to make men want you or to become a success. I heard the song you wrote—the one you sang when you didn’t think anyone was listening. You are magic even without your powers.”

She bit her lower lip, a habit he had begun to find endearing. His fellow tritons would see this as evidence of his fundamental weakness. But he couldn’t go on the way he’d been. If he was wrong to have faith in Chloe then there was really no point to this mortal existence at all.

She fell asleep quickly and he watched her until drifting off himself. He dreamed of the deep. The dolphins he played with as a child. The coral bed upon which he’d slept and the lovely sea grasses in vases that adorned every doorway. But the dream didn’t last.

Alex woke up to the bone-jarring wail of a siren.

Chloe was a sound sleeper, but the one thing sure to startle her awake was the sound of a gun being loaded. She sat up, almost tasting the metal barrel of a rifle as she clutched the sheets. “Alex?” He’d pulled on a pair of pants and now stood in front of the screen door, gripping a pistol in his hand. “Alex, what are you doing?”

His whole body quaked as if he were a junkie coming off of a high. “
Gods above and below!
You don’t hear that?”

“Hear what?” she asked, listening only to his labored breath.

“There’s another siren, dammit!” Then he looked at her, with such pain, such contempt. He had the look of a man who believed himself betrayed. He looked utterly destroyed. Crushed. He held her to blame. “I should have remembered that sirens usually come in pairs.”

“Pairs?”
Chloe didn’t know what he was talking about. She tried to hear what he was hearing. She heard the rush of the river as it flowed into the bay. The chirp of crickets. The croak of a frog in the distance…there it was. Just beneath the whisper of the leaves, from the direction of the dock, someone was singing a lullaby. Worse, Chloe recognized the voice. “Alex, wait!”

But he was already out the screen door, which banged closed behind him. Chloe threw on the nearest item of clothing she could find, which happened to be his shirt, then ran after him. The damp grass against her bare feet sent a chill through her. But more chilling was the sight of Alex crouched, his weapon at the ready.

“Stop!” she cried after him.

He may have gone out with the intention of defending himself with his gun, but now he almost dropped his weapon as he clamped both his hands over his ears. His attention was riveted upon the figure of a woman in a white dress who stood on the wood planks over the water. His posture changed with each note. “What’s happening to you?” she cried.

“You know exactly what’s happening to me, Chloe. I’m falling under the spell!”

He’d been reckless enough to kiss her and now he was totally defenseless. All at once, she saw his self-control crumble and he swayed with the music. He was being lured! Chloe grabbed at his arm, but his eyes were on the water where the singer’s pale face was illuminated in dawn’s early light. Now there could be no denying that Chloe knew her. “Sophia?”

“Stay out of this, Chloe,” she said, then picked up her melody again as Alex began to fill his pockets with stones.

“You’re a siren?”

Sophia’s song stuttered to a stop. “A siren? I’m
powerful,
that’s what I am. Now no man will ever make me feel powerless again!”

“But…but you said that when we were captured, the enemy never got the chance to lay a hand on you. You lied?”

Sophia started singing again, so Chloe grabbed her by the arms. “What are you doing to him, Sophia?”

“I’m protecting you, Chloe. I couldn’t help you in Iraq, but now I can. I won’t let anyone treat you like an object ever again.”

Chloe staggered back. “You killed the midshipmen!”

“You weren’t crying any tears over those two until
he
came along.” Sophia motioned to Alex, who stumbled along the shore, his pockets filled to bulging.

“Those midshipmen never hurt me. I didn’t need to be protected against them. Certainly not against Jay! He was into you, Sophia.”

“He was a cheating scum. Or at least he would have been, if I’d given him the chance. I saw how he looked at you…”

Sophia’s voice slid back into the notes of her melancholy song, and Chloe watched as Alex’s face was transformed by desire. It infuriated her to see the way his eyes caressed Sophia’s curves. Chloe only ever wanted him to look at
her
that way. “Leave Alex alone!”

That made Sophia sputter to a stop. “I have to protect you from him. He’s going to hurt you like all the rest.”

Alex looked dazed, half-caught up in the desire, but he managed to lift his gun. “Give it up, Sophia. You can’t drown a triton.”

Chloe didn’t expect Sophia to know what a triton was, but she
did
expect her to show fear at the sight of a gun. Instead, Sophia’s voice rose an octave, a powerful sound that even pulled Chloe toward her. Alex was just standing there on the dock, his hand shaking. Then, slowly, he turned the gun toward his own head. In the morning light, Alex’s trembling finger hovered over the trigger.

“No!” Chloe cried. “Stop it, Sophia! Stop it right now!”

Chloe didn’t think. She just reacted. She took three running steps toward Alex. The next moment, she was hurtling herself through the air. Her body collided with his, and then they both plunged into the river with a cacophonous splash.

Under the water, Chloe was disoriented, lost in the murky current that threatened to suck her deeper. But she had hold of Alex’s arm and wasn’t letting go. He was trying to get away from her, trying to swim back to Sophia. So Chloe did the only thing she could think to do. She broke the surface of the water, took a gasping breath and sang!

Sophia.
Pure blue desire for her burned through him. He wanted the siren. He wanted to
have
her, to be inside her, to do anything she asked him to do. He wanted to kiss if she wanted him to kiss, to dance if she wanted him to dance and to die if she wanted him to die…. He had to get back to her. He had to hear how her song ended.

But the one thing stronger than Sophia’s siren song, was what he heard now. It wasn’t soft as the lullaby had been. It wasn’t a pretty melody. This was a soaring anthem of pain and need that could come from only one woman.

Chloe.

He became aware of her, treading water as she sang, as she fought for her life—and his.