Siren Song

Stephanie Draven

When Chloe Karras sings, she knows that no one can resist her sensual allure—except for the sexy naval officer seemingly immune to her voice. But Captain Alex Shore is just the man she wants to take home after her performance—until he tells her what she thought were imagined powers are real…and dangerous

Alexandros knows firsthand how seductive sirens are, as well as their potential to destroy. Yet the former sea soldier feels a powerful attraction to the beautiful rock singer that goes beyond her spell. Can he banish Chloe from the town he’s vowed to protect—or will he be drawn into the siren’s bed?

To the Marine Corp’s Lionesses who risk their lives in combat and to all the other brave women in the U.S. Military.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER ONE

They wanted her.

As Chloe sang, the funky bass line pounded through her body and sexual energy sparked through the Annapolis night club. She was hot. She was on fire. She was killing it. The crowd picked up the rhythm, sweating bodies twisting and moving. Her voice soared, a crescendo of music, pulsing beats with the wicked thrashing of guitar strings sending the crowd into a frenzy.

She had the audience in her thrall, and it felt so damned good. Under the flash of pink-and-green lights, she gyrated against the mic stand, exposing her fishnet stockings all the way to the top of her thigh; a midshipman’s mouth parted in a silent gasp, as if she were putting on a private show just for him. Someone spilled a beer. Someone else cried out her name. Her magic wove its way through the crowd into the dark grain of the timber support beams, even seeping into the old cracked mortar between the bricks. And when she whipped her long dark hair to the drumbeat, exposing a shock of dyed pink hair beneath, she knew there was nothing, nothing they wouldn’t do to have her and that no one could resist her.

No one but him.

For the past few nights, far away from the stage, one of the naval officers had watched her. It wasn’t hard to spot them—even when they weren’t in uniform—and for no good reason, he was. Navy guys were pretty much all the same, lonely and jacked up on testosterone. Easy lays. But this one was different. Solitary. Never ordering more than the two-drink minimum. Never tapping his foot to the music. Never applauding when the song was over… Just watching, as if he were immune to her spell. But was that even possible?

She hit the high notes of the song’s finale, staring right at him, trying to break through whatever bulwark he’d thrown up against her charm. Trying to get him up out of his seat because he was standing between her and complete power, pure bliss. Want me, damn it, she thought. But he didn’t react.

Her song ended with throaty cries—an exorcism of all her personal demons. Then Chloe eased up a little bit. No need to drive the rest of the men too wild. There’d been a fight a few weeks before and she wasn’t looking for a repeat performance.

“Thank you!” Chloe cried into the microphone, and applause thundered through the Ram’s Head venue, shaking the building. The audience erupted in shouts and calls for an encore.

Chloe’s drummer was up off his stool, ready to fend off the surge of guys that rushed the stage. “You’re a sick singer, girl,” someone said. “You’re gonna be a superstar!”

A man wearing a denim shirt and work boots rushed forward to buy her a drink, offering her the flower off his table. “Hey, why don’t you give that to your waitress?” Chloe asked. “And tip her well. She’s been on her feet all night.”

Flower Guy had a dark mesmerized look as he threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table, seeming not to know or care how much he spent. He’d do anything she told him. He’d set fire to downtown Annapolis if she wanted him to. But what Chloe really wanted was to get a record contract.

As the next band got ready to take the stage, everyone was still cheering Chloe’s performance. Everyone, that is, but the khaki-clad naval officer in the back. Who wore a uniform to a rock show? What was his deal? And why did she care? So one guy out of a hundred didn’t swoon when she crooned. It shouldn’t bother her. But it did. Maybe bother was the wrong word. More like, intrigued her.

With her Sex Pistols T-shirt plastered to her back and perspiration slipping over her belly ring into the waistband of her skirt, she caught him staring and felt an answering heat between her thighs. Maybe it was just the adrenaline. Putting on a performance like that would make any girl a little wild and wanton. Hell, to celebrate, tonight she wanted to go home with someone. With him.

Chloe’s roommate shoved through the crowd with a towel and water. “Chloe, drink this before you fall down. Why do you keep looking at that jerk in the corner?”

Chloe slugged back half the bottle of springwater before coming up for air. “Cuz he’s a total hottie…. Check out those forearms.” In addition to those Popeye arms, he was older than the usual crowd. Aloof. Like some kind of feral cat she wanted to tame.

“I don’t like the look of him,” Sophia said. “He seems like the kind of man who would follow you to your car and—“

“Oh, he does not!” It was only natural for Sophia to be protective. After all, Sophia was one of the few people who knew what’d happened to Chloe from firsthand experience, not because she saw it on the news. But tonight, Chloe wanted to live on the wild side. “He just needs someone to scruff up his hair, rumple his uniform and rock his world.”

To prove her point, Chloe sauntered over to the stranger’s table. The houselights were up and Chloe noticed the rank insignia on his collar—a captain’s eagle. A hotshot. An officer. But apparently, not a gentleman. He didn’t stand up. Didn’t offer her a seat. Just stared and took a long swallow from the clear liquid in his glass. And what the hell was he drinking anyway? Sparkling water?

“So, listen Captain America, what’s your deal?” Chloe asked, toweling off the back of her neck. “Are you stalking me?”

“You could say that.” He moved over in the booth so she could join him and she noticed a little silver-gray hair at each temple. She really liked that because, in her experience, older guys were just as sexy as the younger ones, but without all the bullshit.

She ordered a beer, then slid in beside him, her leather skirt sticking to the vinyl and riding up her long legs. Now that she was close to him, she was a little self-conscious. Singing and dancing on stage was sweaty work. But given the way his glance drifted down the curves of her body, she didn’t figure he minded. It was the first sign that he had any interest in her at all, so Chloe gave him her best come-hither smile—the one that sent most men to their knees—and went for small talk. “So, are you a fan?”

He stared straight at her with sea-colored eyes. “No. I’m not a fan. I don’t like how you use your voice.”

Wow. That was blunt. As her smile fell away, Chloe tried not to let him see how it stung. “What’s the problem? Is my rock music too loud for you, Grandpa?”

His expression took on a dangerous edge as he glanced at his sweating water glass. With a slow stroke, he traced a finger around the rim and a low hum reverberated across the table. “I’m a bit of a musician myself, you know.”

“Yeah? What does a guy like you play? The skin flute?”

He didn’t even smirk. “Let’s just say, you’re not the only one with a killer voice, Ms. Karras.”

Now, how the hell did he know her last name? She never used it in promotions. “It’s Chloe. Just Chloe. Like Shakira or Pink or Madonna. Am I supposed to know you, or something?”

“I’m Captain Alex Shore, a naval historian at the Academy”

Awesome. The only guys more uptight than military officers were academics. Was there anyone less appropriate for her to be attracted to? “Sorry, Captain Alex, but your name doesn’t ring a bell.”

Across the room, beneath the wild murals and brass accents, Chloe saw that Sophia had hooked up with her drummer. They were both now making out in the corner. Well, at least someone was going to get lucky tonight. Meanwhile, Captain Alex reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out two photos, and set them down on the table. “What about these sailors? Seeing them ring any bells?”

Chloe squinted, and made out the faces of two midshipmen in Navy coats and white caps. She recognized them, and not just from the news. “Aren’t those the two dumb-asses who got drunk and decided to take a midnight swim? Way to take yourself out of the gene pool.”

“I expected a little compassion from a former soldier like you, Ms. Karras.”

With some female veterans, you could just look at them and tell. It was in the way they talked, the tilt of their shoulders, or a steely gaze. But Chloe had been so young when she served that she hadn’t kept the military mannerisms and few people ever guessed. She must have looked as startled as she felt because he added, “I know all about you, Chloe. I know why your tour of duty was cut short. The whole decorated veteran thing may not go with your rebellious rock-diva image, but it’s not hard to look you up.”

She wasn’t about to let him rattle her. Not after a set like tonight. She’d been a goddess on stage and she wasn’t ready to come down off that high. “Am I supposed to be impressed that a guy your age knows how to use a search engine? Listen, I’ve mourned soldiers who gave their lives saving people, so I’m not about to shed any tears for these two.” She shoved the photos back toward him. “Might nominate them for the Darwin Awards, though.”

His expression soured and he folded his napkin in a very precise square. “Yet, I hear these boys were big fans of yours….”

Chloe shrugged and took a gulp of beer. Oak barrel stout. Cold, frothy and rich. She let it tingle all the way down before replying. Let him stew. He was pissing her off. “Yeah, well, they were also slobbering losers who didn’t know how to keep their hands to themselves. The last time I saw them at a show, they started a fight and my drummer had to step in. They were pretty much another Navy sex scandal just waiting to happen. So why are you asking me about Tweedle-Dumb and Tweedle-Dumber?”

“Because they were my students,” he said, pinning her in place with those cold, unnerving eyes. “And I know that you killed them.”

CHAPTER TWO

If Alexandros hadn’t known from personal and painful experience how easily a siren could lie, he might’ve been taken in by Chloe’s wide-eyed expression of shock. But as an ancient guardian of the sea, he knew better than to trust any protestation of innocence from a siren.

She was a siren. Every man in the room was mesmerized by her song; even Alexandros had been forced to steel his ancient bones against her enchanting voice. He wasn’t immune to her—much as he would try to convince her otherwise—but he wasn’t about to get taken in. Not again.

“You think I killed them?” Chloe started to laugh, a nervous sound, as if she thought he was deranged. “Dude. If this is some kind of lame pickup line, you’ve really got to step up your game.”

“This isn’t a game.” He grabbed her wrist. He wouldn’t be toyed with.

“Ow! Stop it,” she hissed.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her, but now he couldn’t seem to let go. It’d been so long since he’d touched a woman that his entire body awakened to the sensation. She seemed to feel it, too. Her beautiful sapphire eyes blinked from beneath dark, smudged mascara, too garish for his taste. He didn’t like the punk-rocker pink hair that revealed itself from beneath her dark curls, either. She was a wild child and everything about her screamed of exactly the kind of chaos he could not abide.

Still, she was captivating. He had to shake off the attraction. Sirens were treacherous but tragic creatures, and if he let himself, he could feel sorry for her. He could feel more than sorry. Yet, all he wanted now was to die in peace, and there could be no peace for him so long as a siren was near.

With her wrist still in his grasp, he became acutely aware of the heated, envious glares of all the men in the place. All she had to do was call them over and there’d be violence. They were all under her spell. Especially her drummer, who had disentangled himself from the arms of another woman, and now looked eager for a fight. But then, what man could stay sane listening to a siren sing, night after night?

Chloe’s voice lowered. “If you don’t let go of me by the time I count to three—“

“What are you going to do? Use your powers to make me take a long walk off a short pier?”

That shocked her. Like most sirens, it’d probably never occurred to her that someone might know her secret. In fact, she probably didn’t know there were any mortal men in the world who could resist her. She might not even know there were men who were more than mortal….

“Look, Captain Asshole, if you don’t let go of me, I’m going to have the bouncers throw you out!”

“I bet they’ll come running, won’t they? There’s not a guy in this place that wouldn’t do anything you asked him to. Except for me. I know what you are.”

“I know what you are, too. Crazy! I didn’t do anything to your students. If you think I’m guilty of something, call the cops. Otherwise, leave me alone.”

“The police won’t believe that you can control men by singing. Even if they did believe it, all you’d have to do is hum and they’d be dancing to your tune.”

This time she didn’t deny it. “What do you want from me?”

What did he want from her? In more ancient times, it would’ve been his duty to bring her to justice. But there was no justice in this modern world, which was one of the many reasons he’d chosen not to live in it any longer than necessary. Now, he just wanted her gone. “Get out of Annapolis. If you’re going to prey on sailors, do it in someone else’s town.”

“Prey on sailors?” Oh, she was a fine actress. Those wide sincere eyes. That plucky resolve as she yanked free of his grip. “I told you, I didn’t kill anybody!”

She had spirit, he had to give her that. She seemed so genuinely bewildered that it almost broke his resolve. She was young, after all, and still coming into her powers. Perhaps she was telling the truth….

No. He’d heard a fatal siren song the night those midshipmen died. Hardening his heart, he took the photos and slid out of the booth. “I’m giving you twenty-four hours to pack up your show and take it on the road.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”

Chloe watched him walk away, her heart slamming in her chest. He knew!

Ever since she’d returned from Iraq and decided to start singing, she’d told herself that her powers were just something she imagined to psyche herself up. To give her an edge on the stage. To make her feel untouchable, like no one could ever hurt and humiliate her again. Or maybe just to convince herself that she deserved to make it big. Didn’t every aspiring music star have some kind of magical charm?

Once, she’d even confessed to her therapist that she thought her effect on men was supernatural, but the shrink had chalked it up to post-traumatic stress disorder—as if she’d conjured up these feelings of power to compensate for all the powerlessness she’d experienced in the desert. But now this complete stranger believed that her powers were real. It might’ve actually been a relief to finally have someone who knew her secret…if only he hadn’t accused her of murder!

Okay, so she wasn’t blameless. Chloe used her charm to get out of speeding tickets and sticky situations. To get men to pick up her bar tab. To get a little extra oomph in the bedroom. And though she’d fantasized about using her powers to hurt people if she needed to, she’d never actually done it. She just wasn’t that kind of person, was she?

When Chloe left the booth, all she could think about was how Captain Alex Shore could know about her powers. And if they were real, why was he immune? She felt edgy. Freaked out. She just wanted to get out of the bar. She didn’t want to deal with Sophia’s protectiveness, but now her friends gathered around her.

“Hey, are you okay?” Sophia asked.

“Yeah,” Jay chimed in, his drumsticks tucked under his arm. “What’d that guy say to you?”

“Nothing. He’s just a jerk. Stop hovering!”

“Okay,” Jay said. “But only because I’ve got some great news! There’s gonna be a talent scout in the audience tomorrow.”

Chloe blinked. “Seriously?” Between drunken binges and late-night partying, her bandmates had always talked about making a demo and sending it to a music exec, but Chloe always put it off. She worried that her magic only worked live. But if a talent scout was going to actually come to one of their shows…this could be their big break. After all the practicing, the annoying promo, she was finally going to get her shot. Even if she’d given a nanosecond’s consideration to leaving town, that was a nonstarter now.

She was staying, even if Captain Tall, Dark and Dangerous wanted her gone.

CHAPTER THREE

Chloe was up early the next morning, restless. Hair in a ponytail, she slipped on a plain tank top over her favorite pair of faded jeans, then climbed over the mountain of pizza boxes in the living room and grabbed her guitar. She considered finding some breakfast, or maybe starting her day with a cold beer from the fridge, but she was too jittery for that.

Settling on the chair by the screened-in porch, she strummed the first few notes of a new song she’d been working on. Soul-baring stuff that made her really uncomfortable. Of course, that’s what music was for, wasn’t it? Maybe it was time to stop hiding from her past. It wasn’t like it was secret. After she’d been rescued, it’d been all over the news….

Chloe and Sophia had been assigned to a checkpoint, part of an effort to respect Iraqi culture by making sure that only female soldiers searched Iraqi women and children. Their position had been overrun and they’d been taken captive. Closing her eyes, Chloe sang the first verse, remembering the chafing sand against her body as they pinned her and yanked her pants down. The burning humiliation when they laughed. Her gut-wrenching revulsion at the sweating men working over her. And the pulse-pounding terror when they put the barrel of a rifle in her mouth to make her stay still.

All the emotions came roiling up inside Chloe now, even the relief at having been rescued before those animals could turn their attention on Sophia. Chloe reminded herself that the important thing was that she’d survived it. Of course, then she’d been discharged. The military didn’t like to bring too much attention to these kinds of things. Chloe hadn’t wanted that kind of attention, either, and unable to stand all the questions, she took her guitar on the road and ended up here, sharing a rented house with Sophia when her tour of duty was up.

Chloe liked their old row house with its weathered siding and back porch. She liked Nap Town, too. Annapolis was quaint and colonial. There was plenty of water. About as opposite a place from Iraq as she could find. Except for the soldiers. Well, sailors, really; she didn’t usually mind them. At least until one of them threatened her. That’s right. Captain Alex Shore hadn’t just accused her of murder, he’d threatened her, and she’d had more than her share of threats for one lifetime….

Whispers at the back of his classroom stopped Alexandros’s hand, midstroke, at the chalkboard. He turned with a stern look, as he had no tolerance for tomfoolery. He was serious about passing on his knowledge of naval history—after all, he’d actually been there for most of it. Just as he was about to propose some form of discipline, the primal notes of a siren’s song shattered his concentration. The chalk in his hand fell away as the sound reverberated through him, sudden arousal threading through his muscles and sinews, luring him.

His students didn’t react. They couldn’t hear it. They might be servicemen, but they weren’t his true comrades. They weren’t tritons; he was alone in this fight. Right now, the power of the siren’s song was driving him mad. He struggled through the rest of the lesson, desperate for class to end, all the while cursing himself for having ever thought that the siren would be sensible enough to simply pack up and leave. How many times in his life was he going to make the mistake of giving a siren the benefit of the doubt?

Unlike ordinary men, he could resist the song of a siren, but he could also hear her from miles away. She had to go. He had to be rid of her. Annapolis simply wasn’t big enough for the both of them.

He followed her voice a few blocks from the Academy and the City Dock, where he found himself outside an old historic row house. He went around the alley in back, where the music was loudest, and the effect on him strongest. He hopped the fence. Chloe was just inside the open back door. Eyes shut, guitar over her knees and completely alone in the most disorderly living room he’d ever seen. Softball equipment spilled over the makeshift coffee table, bills and papers scattered and a stack of empty beer bottles lined one wall. Amid all this, her voice emerged as a haunted, scratchy sound of violation and struggle.

For a moment, just a moment, he could almost believe she really was just a talented musician. That there was some healing in her music. Then again, he’d been fooled before.

He pried open the porch door. As her fingers strummed the end of the tune, she opened her eyes, saw him standing there and jolted up out of her chair. “Holy shit, holy shit! How did you find me?”

The fear in her eyes almost made him feel sorry. But only almost. “Let’s just say I have a very keen sense of hearing.”

She raised her guitar like a weapon to fend him off. “So you break into my house? Are you some kind of psycho?”

She looked even sexier in her street clothes than she did up on stage. With her hair casually pulled back and those low-slung jeans showing tantalizing peeks at her jeweled belly button, she had a sweetness about her that made her that much more dangerous. How many men might fall prey to her even before she parted those pretty lips? He had to get rid of her, but how? No jail would hold her and he didn’t want to drown her; he’d long ago lost his right to play judge, jury and executioner. Sirens weren’t his concern anymore, he reminded himself. But he couldn’t coexist with her. “I told you to get out of town, Chloe.”

“You said I had twenty-four hours. It’s only been fifteen.”

She had him there. “So why aren’t you packing? Or can’t you find your suitcases in this clutter?”

She lifted her chin. “Look, tonight is a big night for me. I’m not leaving and you can’t make me.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he said, catching her by the ponytail and yanking her head back.

He regretted it the moment he did it, and not just because it earned him a well-deserved rib-cracking blow to his side with her guitar, but also because touching her again reminded him of how long it’d been since he’d touched anyone. He’d crawled ashore and taken up this guise because he had to be with other people, even if they weren’t his own. But this—the feel of her hair in his fist, and even the feel of skin to skin as she pummeled him to get free—it was too much to bear. He let her go.

“What’s wrong with you?” she cried. “Talk about conduct  unbecoming—“

The front door opened and her keyboardist and drummer stumbled in. They were both anemic-looking young men with tattoos. The drummer had track marks on his arms and was weaving a bit too much to be sober. Even so, Alexandros reckoned that neither of them would be much trouble. He reckoned wrong.

“Hey!” the keyboardist shouted. “Uncool, man.”

Meanwhile, the drummer’s face became a mask of rage. “Chloe, is this guy hassling you?”

Chloe never had a chance to answer because the drummer grabbed a bat from the heap of softball equipment and wielded it like a club. The drummer was in love with her. Rehearsing with her, day after day, her bandmates didn’t stand a chance. Not against her. Not against him, either, but Alexandros wasn’t looking to shed any blood.

The drummer swung the bat. Alexandros caught it in his fist, smashed it against the wall, and it splintered in half. Then he turned for the door, stopping only to say, “There’s a bus leaving in about four hours. Be on it, Chloe.”

Sophia walked in the door not long after and when she heard what happened, she was adamant. “We’re calling the police and telling them that this man is stalking you.”

“We can’t do that,” Chloe said, pulling at the frayed knee of her jeans. “If we call the police, we’ll spend hours giving our statements. They might even cancel tonight’s show!”

Chloe hadn’t worked this hard and sacrificed this much just to blow her one big chance. Her bandmates would never understand her powers, but they did understand that talent scouts didn’t come along every day. Outnumbered, Sophia agreed not to call the police, but she made sure they all knew how unhappy she was about it.

That night, backstage, Chloe was shaky. Jay was pacing back and forth, so strung out that she worried he would do something crazy. Meanwhile, Sophia started pouring shots. Chloe was really more of a beer kind of girl, but right now, she’d make do with any kind of alcohol. She downed one shot. Two. Three. Then accidentally smeared her lipstick because her hands were trembling. “Ugh!” Chloe smeared it off and tried again. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

“I do,” Sophia said from her perch in Jay’s lap. “You’re letting some guy mess with your head. But you don’t have to be afraid. We’ll all be with you tonight. We’ve got your back!”

“C’mon, Chloe. Don’t be nervous. You look smokin’,” Jay said, looking her up and down. She’d never tried to use her powers on him to make him want her, but he did. She’d rebuffed him as gently as she could; it never seemed to work, and it made Chloe feel guilty.

But if Sophia noticed, she didn’t let on. “It’s all going to be fine, Chloe. You’re gonna kill out there.”

Five minutes later, Chloe hit the stage, microphone in hand. The lights blinded her a single moment before Jay’s sticks beat the air, centering her, helping her focus. Then Jay started drumming that backbeat, the first notes from her guitar wailed in the night and Chloe launched into her interpretation of Aerosmith’s “Dream On.”

After the first emotional verse, she had them. Somewhere in the audience was the talent scout and she felt…powerful. Onstage, every bad thing that had ever happened to her faded away. This was the magic of it. This was why she loved it. And she was giving the performance of her life. The audience knew the song. They knew the high, piercing note she had to hit, and she felt their anticipation build for it. Feeding off their energy, her legs pumped as she danced to the music, and she filled her lungs. If she missed this note, it’d be a complete disaster. But she wasn’t going to miss it. She was going to hit that note so hard and clear that it’d send shivers down their spines.

Alexandros braced for the high note. In the audience, he gripped the edge of the table, his fingernails digging in as Chloe’s voice rose, spiraling her way up the scale to impossible heights and then there it was. A perfect, powerful, sustained whistle at the top of the human register that shattered something inside him. His resistance to her was slipping and if he didn’t put a stop to this, he’d be the most dangerous prey she’d ever captured.

Well, he had a song of his own. A sound of home, a sound of the deep. One indrawn breath, one long exhale, and the blast of his sonic call pierced the air. The amp on stage blew, with a pop pop pop! Sparks flew like fireflies. At first, the audience thought this was part of the show, and they roared with excitement. Then Chloe’s mic cut out and both speakers screeched; it was clear that something had gone wrong. Chloe sputtered a few last notes in confusion, then opened her eyes, the spell of her song broken.

Sweet silence! Alexandros almost sagged in relief.

Chloe cussed somebody out, then stormed backstage. In the chaos, Alexandros got up and slipped past security. He’d worn his uniform precisely because it intimidated people and no one challenged him. He found Chloe at the back entrance, leaning against the propped-open door, sucking in deep calming breaths of night air. The moment she saw him in the shadows, her eyes widened. “You! Seriously? Seriously!”

“I gave you twenty-four hours to get out of town. Time’s up.”

“What the hell did you just do to our equipment? You’re going to pay for that!”

He grabbed her. In spite of her military background, she was no physical match for him. It was her voice that was dangerous. So when her lips parted to scream, he clamped his hand over her mouth. She thrashed violently in his arms, but even in struggle, the touch of her skin was electric. The way her hair threaded between his fingers made him remember another woman that he’d like to forget. But now wasn’t the time for reminiscing or regrets.

He bent close to her ear, and let out a primordial sound, one with all the power of the ocean. The call of a triton could calm waves or call storms; no mortal could withstand it.

CHAPTER FOUR

She must be drunk again. On some kind of bender. Because the last thing Chloe remembered was a sound by her ear that seemed to split her skull. Then she must have passed out. Now she was being carried. Squinting into the night, she caught glimpses of Main Street through the alleyway. The parked cars. The closed shops. Then she heard the lapping of water in the marina.

Solid arms holding her in an iron grip had to belong to a man. Her eyes focused and she saw that her stalker had her in his grip. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Taking you for a swim,” he grated out.

She didn’t believe him until they hit the water. Until she heard the splash and felt the chill of the harbor as it swallowed her up. She’d been captured once before and escaped with her life. But she felt in more desperate danger in these watery depths than she had in the sand. She came thrashing up out of the water, gasping for air, fighting against the drag of her wet clothes. She tried to scream that a madman was trying to drown her, but Alex’s powerful forearm closed over her throat. A moment later, she was underwater again, clawing at him in the inky blackness.

Swallowing water, she realized with perfect clarity that she was going to drown and went limp with terror. Good God, after everything she’d been through, she was going to die in the arms of some hostile stranger? Oh, hell no! Her teeth sank into his arm when she was suddenly buoyed by some sort of propulsion beneath her. As if she’d stepped on the back of a shark. No, faster than that. Much faster.

The next thing she knew, she was being propped up out of the water. Land? No. Something hard. Solid. A boat. A sailboat? She clung to the deck, gasping air into her lungs. The full moon illuminated her captor’s body as he hoisted himself out of the water. With his shirt sucked tight and wet against his chest, he was a veritable poster boy for the U.S. Navy, but she wished she had a knife to stab into those washboard abs; he was no officer, no gentleman, no human as far as she was concerned. He was something else. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear he’d turned himself into some kind of torpedo and sped her to this very spot. But men didn’t…couldn’t…”What is going on?”

“Relax,” he said. “You’re the lucky winner of an all-expense-paid cruise out of town.”

“You tried to drown me!”

“You’re in no danger of drowning. As long as I have hold of you, you can breathe water as if it were air. You’re safe.”

Chloe gave his comments all the consideration they deserved and then sputtered with near-hysterical laughter. So, this was what a nervous breakdown felt like! She’d finally cracked. It’d happened to other soldiers who had been through worse. She was imagining this whole thing. Including the feel of his arms as they closed around her. She was shivering, and he was wrapping a towel around her, and none of it made any sense. “O-o-okay, so I’m locked up in the nuthouse, and you’re the big burly orderly strapping me down in the padded room, right?”

“No.”

“Where am I, really? Because I’m hallucinating that I’m standing on a fucking boat in the middle of the Chesapeake Bay!”

“Stop it, Chloe.”

“No, seriously. Whatever meds you’ve got me on must be kicking my ass, so help me out. What are you? The psychiatrist?”

“I’m a triton,” he said, pulling up the anchor.

She paused. “Like the missile or the mermaid?”

“I’m not a mermaid,” he snapped. “I’m a triton. A soldier of the sea. And if it weren’t for your kind, I’d still be serving in the sea instead of living on land.”

This was doing nothing to convince her of her own sanity. “My kind? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You’re a siren. Didn’t you know it? Didn’t you guess?”

A siren. The word screeched through her brain. She wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or offended. “You mean, like a sexy siren? Like, you think I’m attractive? Seductive? Alluring?”

“I mean that I think you’re dangerous, untrustworthy and monstrous.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’re Greek, aren’t you? With a name like Chloe Karras, I’d have thought you knew the old stories. Remember Poseidon? I used to be one of his sworn minions—“

“Never mind about you. What do you mean I’m a siren?”

“You’re a war-forged siren. What happened to you in Iraq changed you. Warped you—“

“Hey!” she said sharply, angrily. Just because anybody with an internet connection could apparently find out what happened to her didn’t mean she was about to let him use it to shame her. “You try being raped at gunpoint. See if it doesn’t make a new man of you.”

For the first time, his hard shell cracked. He looked down, abashed, then back up at her with a softer expression. “Chloe, what happened to you was horrible, unthinkable, unforgivable. Unfortunately, you don’t want justice for it. Like all sirens, one man hurt you, so now you want to take it out on the rest.”

Chloe shook her head and tears sprang to her eyes. It hadn’t been just one man, but she wasn’t going to tell him that.

When he started up the engine, she grabbed at the keys but he held them tight. His terrifying eyes fixed her in place as he said, “Realize that I’m only using the boat for your comfort, Chloe. I can drag you back into the water if you want.”

“Screw you. Just screw you. And that’s what you’re gonna be when the police catch up with you for kidnapping me. Screwed.”

“I’m not worried,” he said, turning on the motor. “You’ll turn up tomorrow morning in New York City. If you’re smart, you’ll stay there. If you’re not so smart, you’ll sound like a strung-out drug addict full of wild tales that nobody will believe.”

“I don’t do drugs, fuck you very much, and when I call the police, my friends will back up everything I say.”

Now he looked particularly smug. “I’ll swim back before you can even finish dialing. Nobody is going to believe that you were kidnapped by a triton.”

Chloe was out of arguments except for one. “You’re such a coward! You stand there talking about justice, but you think I kill people and all you want is to get me out of town? What a cop-out.”

Oh, that struck a nerve with him. In the moonlight, she saw him clench his jaw. “I’d like nothing more than to bring you to justice, Chloe. But that isn’t my duty anymore.”

“Not your duty? Then what’s with your uniform and shiny captain’s insignia?”

“That’s my mortal guise—disguise, if you will. I’m alone in this world until the end and I just want to be rid of you.”

“But I keep telling you! I didn’t kill those midshipmen.”

“I might believe you if I hadn’t heard a siren song the night they died. It nearly shook me out of bed but I was too late to save those young men. I can resist you, but those midshipmen didn’t stand a chance. You lured them to the water’s edge and made them jump in. Didn’t you?”

“No!”

“You said they got in a fight after one of your shows. So what happened? Did they flirt with you? You decided they had to pay for it with their lives?”

Chloe clenched her fists. “I didn’t do anything to them. They were aggressive with me and got into it with my drummer. Jay pummeled one of them pretty good, then they left the bar and I never saw them again.”

She was telling the truth, wasn’t she? So why did she hear the doubt in her own voice? She didn’t understand her powers and she didn’t know what being a siren really meant. Was it possible that by singing, by doing what she loved, she was killing people?

Alexandros stared at her, trying to read her thoughts. Could she genuinely be unaware of the harm she’d done? In thousands of years, he’d never heard of such a thing, but times had changed. Maybe in this modern mortal world, a siren could lose herself in her own song. How was he to know when everything else he’d relied upon was gone? The old immortals had lost most of their powers, and the divine creatures of the sea had retreated to the kingdom of the deep. The Sargasso. Poseidon’s Realm. Atlantis. Whatever its name, it was a place forever lost to him, and maybe he’d been taking out his bitterness on someone who didn’t deserve it. Instead of bullying Chloe, perhaps he should help her come to terms with—

Damn it. What was it about sirens that always plucked at his old dry-rotted heartstrings?

He watched her shiver underneath her towel, staring off into the moonlit waves, as if she were really as innocent as she pretended to be. When she was singing, she was all but irresistible. Yet, even in silence, she was lovely. With her mascara smeared, her actual imperfections only made her more alluring. There was a kind of directness in her that he didn’t find in most women, much less murderous harpies of her ilk. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the salt-and-brine scent of the open sea. This trip was going to take a while.

“What happened to your pink hair?” he asked.

“It washes out. I don’t like to do anything too permanent.”

“Yes,” he said, remembering her hard-partying lifestyle and wreck of a house. “You seem to revel in chaos.”

“Don’t think you know me. I used to be a shipshape kinda girl. Followed orders. Obeyed all the rules… I just wanted to serve my country. I really was that idealistic once, you know. I didn’t ask to get captured. And I didn’t ask for these powers.”

He glanced up to see that she was crying and his chest tightened with an emotion that he couldn’t name. “It’s an admirable thing to want to fight for your people.”

“What would you know about it? Didn’t you just tell me that you had no sense of duty anymore?”

He stiffened. No duty, no honor, no brotherhood of tritons. All of it gone. “You’re right.”

“So why did you join the Navy?” she asked.

“It seemed like the only thing I was qualified to do.” It had also seemed like the fastest way to end it all short of loading his service weapon and putting a bullet in his own head.

“Why can’t you go home…to, I dunno, wherever tritons live?”

“Because I failed in my duties.” Tension pounded at his temples. He didn’t think he wanted to talk about it, but he’d been living in exile so long that he wondered how it would feel to just admit the truth. “I was banished.”

“Harsh…” Her face fell. “So you can’t even see your family? Do tritons have family?”

“Yes, they do, but I shamed mine long ago. Now, I’ve chosen Annapolis as my new home until I die.”

“And you’re like, what? Nap Town’s self-appointed defender against sexy singers?”

“You’re not just a sexy singer, Chloe, and you know it. You’re a siren.”

“Stop saying that!”

“I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”

She shook her head, her voice throaty with emotion. “Why me?”

He wondered how best to explain it to her, but she stopped him before he could. “It seems like I’m always asking that. Why me? There were other female soldiers captured, you know, but I was the one they—“

“There’s no reason behind what happened to you. You can’t blame yourself.”

She gripped the end of her towel with trembling hands. “Well, I’ve tried to put it behind me, okay? I’ve refused to let it shape how I deal with everything. I’ve tried to embrace my own sexuality—do you have any idea how hard that is? But now I’m supposed to believe my powers of seduction are fatal…”

“I’m sorry, Chloe.”

“You’re sorry?” Now her tears turned to anger. She glared at him. “Somebody should be. Women like me not only get to be violated and tortured but end up monsters besides? That’s fair. Way to blame the victim!”

As a soldier of the sea who had seen more than his share of death and destruction, he’d have told her that life is unfair and the sooner she figured that out, the better off she’d be. But he took one look at her and couldn’t say it. “None of this is fair. War is an ugly thing and sometimes it turns men into monsters. Literally.”

She hung her head and was silent for a long time. “Did they suffer?”

“Who?”

“The midshipmen. If I hurt them—and I’m not saying that I did—would they have, you know, known they were going to die? Would they have been scared?”

She didn’t have to tell him that she was thinking about her own narrow escape from her captors. Her expression was haunted, her eyes half-closed. Alexandros imagined that she must have feared she’d never live through it. Now she seemed to wonder if she’d done to others what had been done to her. “They wouldn’t have been afraid, Chloe. A siren’s song is seductive. Pleasurable. They’d have gone willingly to their deaths. Although, drowning isn’t quick.”

“No. Just…no. I can’t believe that I’d ever do that to someone—even subconsciously. I don’t use my music to hurt people!”

“What about your drummer? You’re slowly driving him insane. He’s obviously resorted to drugs to get the fix that he can’t get from you. You can’t tell me that you haven’t noticed how unstable he’s become….”

She shuddered, then lowered her face into her hands, choking back a sob. Perhaps he’d misjudged her, and now he had no idea how to help her. When she was finally composed enough to speak, she asked, “So, what am I supposed to do now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Singing was always my dream.” She kicked at the life vest that was strapped onto the rail in frustration. “What am I supposed to do now that I can’t sing?”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You’re giving up singing?”

“Is there another option? I mean, if I’m killing people and don’t even know it, I can’t risk singing for an audience anymore.”

In all his many years, he’d never heard of a siren who was willing to give up her song. Chloe could be lying to him, but somehow he didn’t think so. Like him, she was trying to make her way in a world that would never believe, much less understand, her powers; and she was so young. She shouldn’t have to do it alone.

The idea of simply dropping her off in the New York harbor and leaving her to her own devices now seemed heartless and unworthy of him. If she truly stopped singing, there was no reason they couldn’t both live in Annapolis. He was hesitant to suggest it, knowing how vulnerable she was. Still, he gently offered: “You could do a speaking tour. Share your experiences so that other soldiers are better prepared. I could arrange for you to talk to my classes.”

“I got the impression that if I ever showed my face in Annapolis again, you were gonna hunt me down, Captain Ahab.”

“That was before I realized you were…” Different, he thought. “Willing to change.”

“You could have just asked me to stop singing,” she said.

He doubted that. “Would you have believed me if I didn’t take you for a swim?”

“Maybe not, but you didn’t have to kidnap me from the middle of a show to do it.”

He wanted to argue that she’d left him no choice, but that wasn’t true. From the beginning he’d treated her with nothing but contempt. She hadn’t deserved it. Once, like all tritons, he’d been unmoved by siren songs, but then he’d been an idealistic fool. Obviously not much had changed because he found himself turning the boat around, chugging back toward Annapolis.

The hour was late when he held out his hand and helped her down the gangplank. They stood there awkwardly for a few moments and then he said, “Let me walk you home. It’s the least I can do.”

“Yeah. That makes up for everything.”

He fell in beside her on the outside of the street, and they walked together beneath the awnings of overpriced restaurants and quirky shops that were typical of Annapolis. “Oh, man,” she said, all but pressing her nose against the glass of Uncle Bob’s Fudge Kitchen. “I could really use some chocolate right now. That’s my drug of choice, by the way, in case you were interested.”

“The empty bottles in your apartment gave a different impression.”

“Okay, maybe I drink too much.”

“Listen, I know I’ve been—“

“A judgmental, overbearing jackass?”

Not the words he’d been about to say, but he took it. “I’m usually more of a gentleman.”

“I just bet you are,” she said, turning under the lamplight to look at him with curiosity. “Must get tiring after a while. All that impulse control. You’re an accident waiting to happen. The first time I saw you, sitting at the back of the room watching me, I remember wondering, ‘What must it be like to be  so…in control?’ It made me sing better, I think, trying to break through your walls. Trying to make you applaud at the end of a song.”

“Is that all you wanted to make me do? You’re sure you weren’t trying to get me in the water?”

“I’m sure,” she said, wrapping the towel tighter around her. “I wanted to get you in bed, not dead.”

There was no flirtatious wink. No meaningful eye contact. She just dropped that bomb on him as if she had no idea that it would send a jolt of arousal through him. “You wanted to get me in bed?”

“Sure,” she said, doing a double take. “You don’t seriously need me to stroke that huge ego of yours, do you? You’ve gotta know how hot you are. For a guy your age, I mean. What are you, like a hundred in triton years?”

He found himself smirking. “I age like a normal man on land.”

“See, I wanted you even before I heard you say weird stuff like that.”

He arched a brow. “Why?”

“I dunno. You looked like you needed me.”

This rankled. “Needed you?”

“Sure. You’re the kind of guy who thinks he’s gonna save the world from bad guys—or bad girls—and you don’t even realize that you’re the one who needs to be saved.”

He scowled. “I don’t need anything.”

“Yes you do. You need someone to rock your world. I knew it the first time I saw you. All uptight, wearing your uniform in a civilian bar when you shouldn’t, folding your napkin in a precise square and sipping at what—water?”

“Water’s good for you.”

“Maybe you should try something that’s bad for you once in a while.”

Sirens were bad for him. Very bad for him. So why did he find himself inching closer to her? She didn’t shy away and somehow ended up in his arms. He’d have blamed it on her powers, but she wasn’t singing. She wasn’t trying to seduce him—at least he didn’t think so. “Chloe, what’s going on here?”

Her lips quirked at the corners. “Either another example of my spectacularly bad taste in men, or a little thing called sexual chemistry.”

“After everything you’ve been through, Chloe, how can you—“

“What am I supposed to do? Learn my lesson and throw on a burka? No way. Not gonna happen.”

“I just find it hard to believe that you’re so…well-adjusted.”

Chloe snorted. “You mean, other than my alleged alcoholism?”

Okay, he deserved that. “I just think you should take better care of yourself.”

“Look, after about three years in fetal position, I managed to stand back up on my own two feet. Am I all healed up? No. But I don’t have to wear my pain on my sleeve. I get to party if I want. I get to be sexy if I want. And I get to be attracted to men if I want.”

Sirens weren’t attracted to men so much as they were attracted to the power they had over them. They were creatures who took all the rage twisting inside them and turned it against others. But the spell Chloe wove over him now was hopeful and pure. Born of something other than her voice. He found himself leaning over her, inhaling the subtle notes of citrus under the scent of seawater. “You’re shivering, Chloe.”

“Not because I’m cold.” Her eyelashes lowered, her lips parted, wet and trembling, begging to be kissed.

Somehow, even his dented self-control prevailed. It was a Herculean effort, but he pulled away. Her eyes fluttered open and a blush swept over her cheeks. “Did I just read this wrong? I thought—“

“I can’t kiss you, Chloe.”

“You can’t?”

He shook his head. “A siren’s kiss destroys a triton, robs him of his resistance.”

She sighed, tucking wet tendrils of hair behind her ear. “That’s a major buzzkill.”

He was going to have to let her go. Physically, emotionally…although sirens were no longer supposed to be his concern, he found that this one was. “Chloe, if you want me to set something up for you at the Academy—“

“Thanks, but, I’ll figure something out. I’ve got to…I dunno. Is there gonna be a funeral for the midshipmen?”

He nodded. “Maybe I’ll see you there. Take care of yourself.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Once inside, Chloe leaned on the door and closed her eyes. This should have been one of the best nights of her life. Instead, her show was ruined, she had to give up singing, she was some kind of ancient monster, and the first guy she’d felt an intense attraction to in a long time was a kidnapping merman who couldn’t even kiss her.

Awesome.

The whole night seemed like one long nightmare, but one word kept echoing through her. Siren. It just couldn’t be true. The men that had attacked her—they were monsters. Not her. She still didn’t believe that she’d hurt those midshipmen. If she let herself believe it, she really would crack. But she couldn’t just ignore the possibility, either. She was going to have to find a way of proving her guilt or innocence, one way or another.

Sophia must have heard Chloe come in, because now she rushed out into the living room crying, “Oh, my God, are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Chloe mumbled.

“Jay’s still out looking for you! What happened?”

Right now, Chloe was exhausted. She just wanted to close her eyes. She waved Sophia away with some vague promise to explain everything in the morning. Then, pushing a pile of clothes off the end of her bed, Chloe curled up under the blankets and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

Alexandros stared down at the lanky, tattooed body of Chloe’s drummer as the authorities hauled him out of the water. Two of the officers talked about the rash of drownings and how they’d caught a couple of kids shooting up and daring one another to jump in the river. “Some kind of deadly new game in the nightclub scene,” was the conclusion.

For once, Alexandros was hard-pressed to disagree.

Someone must have called Chloe, because she came racing up the cobblestone walk wearing only a pair of denim shorts, a tank top and a pair of flip-flops. The paramedics on scene were just about to zip the body bag closed, but they weren’t fast enough. Even from where the police had taped off the area, Chloe glimpsed the dead man’s face.

“No, no!” she cried, as the police held her back. Then she saw Alexandros, marched over to him and yanked him away from the crowd. “How can this be happening? You tell me why I would kill Jay! He was my friend!”

Alexandros ground his teeth. “You didn’t do this, Chloe. You couldn’t have. He went missing last night after your show and turned up dead this morning before I even turned the boat around. You were with me.”

“Then what happened to him! What happened?”

“I don’t know, but you didn’t kill him.” And Alexandros had to admit to himself that if she didn’t kill this one, she probably had nothing to do with the midshipmen, either. He’d jumped to conclusions. He’d been tormenting her for a crime she never committed, making her pay for another woman’s sins, and he felt sick over it. “You’re innocent of all this. I’m sorry.”

At that, Chloe burst into sobs that racked her body, a mixture of relief and grief. Annapolis was a tourist town; there were always lots of gawkers, so he shielded her with his body until she said, “I have to tell Sophia.”

Since the day he’d tracked her down, he’d done nothing but mess up her life. He’d ruined her show—maybe her career. He’d behaved abominably toward her. He’d frightened her, made her relive her painful past and made her believe that she was a murderess. If he hadn’t come along, she may have never had to know that she was a siren. How was he supposed to make up for that?

He walked her back to her house and when she went inside, he sank down on the front porch, his head in his hands, trying to make sense of it all. The police hadn’t suspected foul play, so why had he? He didn’t used to be this kind of person—the kind to always believe the worst. He’d like to blame it on living amongst the land-dwelling mortals, but he feared the truth was buried much deeper inside himself, a fault in his character that he didn’t want to examine.

He didn’t know how long he sat there watching the traffic go by. The outside of Chloe’s house was as disorderly as it was on the inside. A few abandoned potted-plant projects adorned the sills. A bicycle lay on its side against the house. A crystal wind chime with a broken hook hung lopsidedly beside the door. And yet, something about the place said: music is made here.

Eventually, Chloe emerged from the house. Her eyes were bloodshot. “She wants to be alone.”

“Are you sure? Wasn’t Jay her boyfriend?”

“Sort of. But Sophia’s really strong and stoic. It’s just…I have nowhere to go.”

He took her to his house. He didn’t know what else to do. The walk wasn’t far, but Chloe was silent the whole way. He took her round back, to the hill overlooking his private dock. Then he opened the gate and she passed through the neatly trimmed hedges and into the shelter of his back porch where she settled into the swing as if she belonged there. “I—I really need a drink. Do you have any beer?”

“No.”

“Vodka. Tequila. Rum?”

“That’s not going to help,” he said.

“You’re just saying that because you probably don’t have a drop of liquor in your whole house.”

That was true, but if he thought it would do her any good, he’d find some. “I’m saying it because you’ve surrounded yourself with people who just let you float adrift.”

“Don’t diss my friends,” she hissed.

He held up his hands in surrender. She needed someone in her life to steady her, but he obviously had no right. “I’ll get you some lemonade.” When he returned from the kitchen with a pitcher, he found her crying again. He sat down next to her and put his arm around her shoulders. “There’s no good consolation for a lost friend. I should know that better than anyone. The only good thing to come out of this is, well, maybe you don’t have to give up singing after all….”

She nodded, using the backs of her hands to wipe away her tears as if she were ashamed for him to see them. Then, putting on a brave face, she reached to pluck one of the lilies by the side of the porch and peered into his picture window. “Nice digs you’ve got, by the way. I didn’t know Naval Academy professors made that much money.”

“When you’ve lived as long as I have, it’s not hard to accumulate wealth.”

“You keep it so neat and clean, too. I bet if I put my hands on the glass and left a smudge—“

“Don’t,” he said, and enjoyed the tear-streaked smile it put on her face to needle him.

But the smile was short-lived. “So, how did Jay drown? He was a hard partier. A screw-up He got in fights and did crazy things. If he was the only one, I’d buy that it was an accident. But there were the midshipmen, too. How is this happening?”

“When I heard a siren’s song the same night that two men drowned, I assumed the worst. But coincidences happen. It’s a hot summer. Maybe it’s just what it looks like. Reckless young men paying a terrible price for bad judgment.”

Chloe shook her head. “No such thing as coincidences. Things happen for a reason. The things that have happened in my life may test me, but I’ve gotta have faith that they’ll help me end up somewhere good.”

He didn’t believe that everything happened for a reason. At least, not a good reason. After all, everything that had happened to him had led him to a life in exile. But what he said to Chloe was, “I want that for you. I want you to end up somewhere good.”

“Where I am now isn’t so bad,” she said, nestling under his arm, the warmth of her breath on his shoulder. Her face was so close that he could make out tiny freckles on her nose. He wanted to keep her here, in his arms, and make sure that nothing ever harmed her again. And as her long dark hair fell across his chest, he couldn’t help but touch it. It slipped through his fingers like the silkiest sand.

When she looked up at him, it was with a soft, inviting look that made him groan. “Chloe…”

“I know you can’t kiss me,” she whispered, twirling the orange lily between her fingers. “But…can you…do the rest?”

The electricity of her suggestion arced through him. His mouth went dry, his belly tightened and blood coursed hot through his veins. He wanted her badly, but his aching need was tempered by the circumstances. “Chloe, you’re upset. I don’t want to take advantage.”

“Maybe I want to take advantage of you. Would you mind?”

His hands skimmed over her breasts in answer. He caressed her, kneaded her hips, then let his hand drift between her thighs. She trapped his hand there, slowly grinding her hips. Her wetness seeped through the scratchy fabric of her shorts and onto his fingertips. The feel of her desire for him was like a wave of pure physical need. It crashed over him.

Madness. He grabbed her, pulling her so that she was straddling him on the swing. That’s when she pulled away and he realized his folly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to frighten you. I got a little carried away. I’ll stop.”

She made an indelicate sound and threw back her head so that he could see the pulse of her heartbeat at the base of her throat. “I don’t want you to stop!” Crossing her arms over herself, she peeled her tank top off and flung it into his yard.

For a moment, he was paralyzed at her brazen act. Then, any thoughts he might have about the propriety of having a half-naked woman on his porch were crowded out by the two most perfect breasts he’d ever seen. High and pale and tipped with tight rose-pink nipples, they shimmered in the sunlight and mesmerized him. It took him several moments before he could even speak. He bent his head to capture those sensitive peaks between his teeth, then stopped. “Chloe, I can’t—“

“You can’t kiss me…anywhere?”

He wanted to drag his teeth along the curve of her shoulder. He wanted to let his tongue tease at her earlobes. He wanted to feel her creamy breasts against his lips. To taste the salt on her skin. But he shouldn’t even have allowed himself to be this close to a siren, much less put his mouth on her. “No. Not anywhere.”

“So, you can’t…we can’t…”

She looked so crestfallen, he found himself saying, “There’s more to sex than kissing.”

Her eyes met his as she straddled him, rocking slowly against his erection. “Then teach me. You’re an instructor, aren’t you?”

He felt his lips curve upward in the semblance of a smile as he took the lily blossom she’d all but crushed in her hand. He lifted it to her bare throat, imagining it was his lips, petal soft on her skin. She gasped and threw her head forward to watch, a dark cascade of hair falling like a curtain between them. He trailed the flower between her breasts, lower, to her stomach, where her little gemstone belly ring winked in the sunlight like a flirtatious lover. She shivered as the flower petals slipped across her skin, leaving a glistening trail of golden pollen behind them. He could smell her earthbound scent again. Something like orange blossoms and sunshine. Something uniquely hers and utterly foreign to the sea. Still, he wanted her more than any woman he’d ever met in the deep.

She panted near his ear, the whispered riptide of desire, grinding against his lap in a slow and steady rhythm that drove him crazy. Still, she seemed to be the tortured one. The flower petal against her nipples made her quiver. He enjoyed that, so he kept drawing slow circles on her body until she cried, “Oh,

God, just take me to bed! Take me somewhere. Just take me.”

He stood up, carrying her into the house. His bed was made up in crisp white linens, and when he laid her down on it, he said, “Don’t move. I just want to look at you for a moment.”

She sprawled, her hair tumbled and wild on the bed behind her. Laid out like a banquet for a starving man, her flushed skin invited him to taste and smell—to devour. She didn’t move except to lift her hips when he unfastened her shorts and pulled them off.

Given her stage presence, he would have expected to find dark lacy panties or maybe cheetah print. Instead, he found pink cotton with a tiny satin bow at her hip. He hadn’t anticipated that. The things about her that didn’t make sense only made her that much more alluring.

She turned her face to kiss the lily when he dragged it over her cheek. Then her belly trembled as he pulled it lower still, to the parts her panties covered, and she wet her lips, undulating under the lucky flower. He added his breath to the mixture, blowing on her skin, concentrating as if raising goose bumps on her flesh was the most important thing he’d ever done.

She moaned, clenching her hands. “Aren’t you going to touch me?”

“What if I can make you come without touching you?” he asked, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

“Don’t you dare!”

He laughed and let his fingers flow over her body. Then, only after she’d slipped off her own panties and given him a peek of pink, wet folds, did he climb over her. She was frantic now, pulling at his shirt, all but popping the buttons. She pulled his undershirt off and flung it. There wasn’t time for him to get his pants off. As soon as he’d unzipped and freed himself, she started stroking him, trying to guide him inside her. It seemed important to let her do it.

She had the reputation of a hard-edged, young rocker. Yet, the way she opened up for him, pale thighs spread wide, she seemed like the purest, most innocent thing in the world above or below. He glided into her, then held himself still, glorying in the feel of her body clenching him. Being inside her was as awe-inspiring as the morning sun rays breaking through the surface of the ocean to illuminate the deep.

Suspended over her body, he nudged against some soft spot deep inside her that elicited a gasp. He did it again, and she gasped louder. He liked that. He also liked the way she became wetter when he did it a third time. She trembled all over as he tortured that sweet spot. His instinct to plunge into her and find his own release would have made him abandon this slow stroking, but the way she squirmed and cried out made him hold back.

She had a natural sense of rhythm, but every time her hips found it, he changed the pace until she was groaning, begging, pleading. Cursing him, too. All at once, she surrendered to it. The breath went out of her, and her ankles locked at the small of his back and he heard her scream. That voice of hers, with all its clarity and beauty, captured her own rapture perfectly in one shattering note that told him, for just this one moment, he was not alone.

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.

CHAPTER SIX

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.

CHAPTER SEVEN

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.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Chloe had used her powers to make men want her before. She’d made men fawn over her, and cheer for her songs, and buy her drinks at the bar. She’d never tried anything like this. Swim away, she thought. Get away from here now!

But Alex just bobbed up and down in the water beside her while Sophia cried, “Chloe!”

That break in Sophia’s siren song was the chance Chloe needed. She pressed her wet shivering lips against Alex’s mouth and felt him stop struggling. He was completely under her power now. Or so she hoped. Chloe tried again. Swim away! Swim away!

Of course, she hadn’t thought he’d take her with him. The powerful propulsion of his body as he hastened to her command was like a rocket through the water. He dragged her, and for one thrilling moment, it was like riding atop a killer whale. Then his arms clasped around her and he pulled her under.

His grip was so strong she couldn’t break it. She kicked to pull free, already panicking that she didn’t have enough air in her lungs, and not sure if he was even conscious of his actions. She held her breath, praying that he’d break the surface again. Feeling the rush of water over her face, her arms, her legs. Ripples of water, scales of fish, scrape of silt. He only dived deeper.

He was going to kill her, she thought. She was going to drown in his arms. As she clawed at him to release her, she heard him say, “As long as you hold on to me, you can breathe the water.”

She hadn’t expected to be able to hear anything other than the rush of the ocean as it filled her ears, but his words were as clear as if they were standing next to one another on land. “Breathe, Chloe. Breathe.”

There was no way she was going to try that! The few times she’d inhaled pool water as a kid had been extremely unpleasant, but now her lungs were burning. She needed air! A moment later, she was thrashing again, her survival instinct to get away from him and break the surface stronger than anything else. Bubbles blew out her mouth and nose, but it was only a little relief. Her eyes were squeezed shut and now speckles danced against the blackness.

“Trust me, Chloe.”

She had no choice. Taking in that first big breath of water may have just been the hardest thing she’d ever done, but oh what sweet relief! Her lungs filled and she gasped, her breathing erratic. But she was breathing. Water!

“Open your eyes,” he said.

Chloe didn’t even like to open her eyes in a nice clean chlorinated pool, but she’d trusted Alex this far. A radiant halo of sunlight filtered through the clear water and she saw a huge, spiked exotic fish swim by. Behind him, a reef of fire coral glowed orange while lacy sea fans swayed with the current. It was all so lovely! The water felt different, more slippery against her skin. Warmer. “Where are we?”

“Bermuda.”

The drag of the water on her eyelashes as she blinked was a surreal, almost erotic sensation. “But—“

“I swim very fast. Faster than anything mortals know…”

“Wait, we’re—“

“Safe,” he said. “For now. Thanks to you.”

“That’s right. Thanks to me.” She supposed she should’ve been gracious, but she still remembered the way he’d looked at her just before he slammed out of his house and into Sophia’s trap. “You were saved by a siren. Bet that sticks in your craw, doesn’t it?”

“You didn’t know about Sophia?”

“Of course I didn’t know!” It hurt almost as much for him to have believed otherwise than it did to realize it was the plain truth. How she could have been so close to Sophia and never guessed what was happening?

“I suppose I have to believe you, because I’m still under your siren spell—and hers.”

Chloe glared. “I’d have thought I kissed away any thoughts you might have had of her.”

“She’s a very powerful siren,” he said. “You might have to try harder.”

Was he teasing her? In the water, some of the serious lines of his face had gone to something more predatory. Underwater, he was sexier than she could have ever imagined— “Oh, God.”

“What’s wrong?”

“If I look down…am I going to see your big…fishy tail?”

“Would that turn you on?”

“Um, I think that’s kind of an obscure fetish.” Then a worse thought occurred to her. “Please tell me you don’t have tentacles.”

“No tentacles. I only use the tail for swimming. Tritons have a panoply of disguises. I can have crab claws. Winged brows. I can even become a hippocamp.”

“A what?”

“A fish-tailed horse.”

“Okay, that I wanna see.”

“Maybe later. First, I want to show you something.”

Under the water, he turned her so that her back was against his chest and stretched her arms to the side. The ocean floor was covered with starfish. It was like snorkeling together—a whole foreign world of wonder opened up before her eyes. A rainbow of brightly colored fish fanned out beneath her feet. It was beautiful. So beautiful! Then she saw it. Something was off, unexpected, a strange inclusion in an otherwise undisturbed wild ocean frontier. “What are those blocks in the shallows? Is that an underwater road?”

“It’s the Bimini Road. It leads to my home.”

There was a haunting beauty to it, like the ruins of some ancient civilization that had been swallowed by the sea.

“I can’t see more than the road,” she confessed.

“Neither can I. It is all beyond the mortal veil now. I sense them, but I can’t see them, or hear them. This is as close as I can come to bringing you home with me.”

For him to share this with her tightened her belly with…want. He seemed to feel it, too. He caressed her, his body enfolding her like some exotic underwater dance. Moments later, she felt herself surfing through pink sand. They came to rest on a deserted beach, tangled together in seaweed and need. She felt his hardness against her, and rose up on her hands to push back against him. He only had to lift the wet shirt to enter her from behind, and she felt her hips cradled in his as he sank all the way into her.

Their first time had been gentle, tentative and filled with longing. This was something altogether different. He needed her…and she needed him to treat her not like a wounded girl, like something broken, tarnished, or fragile. But like a woman he could trust. She met him thrust for thrust, as if to convince him that his nature was safe with her. That he could be just who he was.

He was close now. Gasping. His erection pulsing inside her, and it felt so damned good. The waves pushed her forward in the surf, water hissing all around them as Alex’s hand tightened on her hip. The other one reached beneath her, stroking her most private places. He came first, jerking against her, the godlike muscles of his arms pinning her in place. But moments later, as she felt the heat of his orgasm fill her, her own pleasure overwhelmed her. She cried out and he made a fist of her hair, pulling her head back into a kiss. Salt and sweetness. Primal. Hers.

CHAPTER NINE

Afterward, Alex cradled her in his arms beneath the shade of a palm tree.

“I take it I’ve broken Sophia’s spell?” she asked.

“Thoroughly,” he said, kissing her. He couldn’t seem to stop kissing her. “You’re the only siren for me.”

“We’re going to have to go back to Annapolis…”

Right now, Alex was feeling so content that he didn’t see why they ever had to go back. They could just stay here in Bermuda in a little shack on the beach, making love in the mornings, swimming in the afternoons, feasting upon fish and coconut milk in the evenings by a fire. But Chloe said, “I feel like, if I could just talk to Sophia…if I could get her to understand that she never had to carry this by herself all these years…I could get her some help. If I can’t get through to her, what are we going to do?”

It was a good question. Sophia was deadly and dangerous. Without Chloe’s song, he would have blown his brains out and the memory made him itch for vengeance. For Chloe’s sake, he swallowed it down. And with her in his arms, looking up at him, it was as if his entire worldview had changed. He did have a duty. He had his commission, his students, and even if he’d never see his home again, he was still a triton. Sirens were his concern. “I’m just going to have to find a way to stop her before she kills anybody else.”

“Well, you’re not going to do it alone,” Chloe said.

“Chloe, she’s a dangerous woman—“

“Yes. And now, because of me, you’re even more vulnerable to her than you were before. So, you may not have your triton brotherhood anymore but you have me, and we’ll deal with Sophia together.”

It was the word Alexandros had been missing for a very long time. “Together, then.”

“Don’t just say it,” she said. “I want you to mean it.”

“I do mean it. Remember the Bimini Road I showed you, under the water? When I look at that road, I remember the great spiraling coral towers. The pearled gates and the giant urns filled with pink sea anemones. I can’t see them anymore, and I can’t go back—“

“I’m so sorry—“

He put his hand up, stopping her. He didn’t want pity. He was trying to explain something, and having trouble finding the words. “I’m always going to miss the brotherhood. I’m never going to forget my family, my friends, or Poseidon. But being with you gives me something to look forward to. It’s like coming home again.”

She propped herself up on her elbow. “Don’t say things like that. I’m the kind of girl who would totally believe you. Heartbroken musicians write the best songs, but I already have enough angst to fill my creative well.”

“You’re going to be the heartbreaker, Chloe,” he said with a wry laugh. “You’re going to be a huge star. When that happens, you’re not going to want a starchy naval officer hanging around, scaring off your groupies.”

“Pfft. After all this, you think I’m going to just let you go? Besides, you could just be nice to my groupies.”

A little growl rumbled at the base of his throat. “No, I don’t think I can.”

“You could try.”

“I’ll try,” he said.

After all, for her, he’d do just about anything.

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-8016-2

Siren Song

Copyright © 2011 by Stephanie Dray

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