“What have you got there, kiddo? A crab?” Moss intercepted the crab before it could scuttle under another rock. “Good catch. We could make a start on brunch while Carol goes for a recce, eh?”
“Pree-oo?” Maggie tilted her head in a question, then forgot about it immediately when she spotted the crab in Moss’s hand. She shrieked in indignation.
“Don’t worry. You caught it fair and square. I’m not stealing your dinner, I’m just—”
“EEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
“—and there you go.” He dropped it in front of her. She stared at it as though she’d never seen it before.
“Prrrt,” she announced, and turned away to look under other stones. The crab scuttled to safety.
Carol reached down to tickle the little dragon on the top of her head. “If you can figure out some food for her, that would be great. She normally eats almost constantly. I’m worried—” She pressed her lips together. “About so many things.”
“But food is a nice, easy thing to worry about?”
Relief at his understanding flashed in her eyes. “It’s nice and easy so long as we find something to eat. If we don’t?”
He frowned and folded his arms. “Carol. I’m a chef. An octopus shifter who grew up on the coast. You’re suggesting I can’t find anything to eat in the world’s biggest larder?”
Her lips quirked. “No insult intended.”
“Well, I’m taking it as an insult, and I’ll use my righteous indignation to make sure the best meal you ever had is waiting for you when you come back.”
With no cookware, no seasonings, and oh yeah—no fire. How the hell was he going to live up to that promise?
“I look forward to it,” Carol said, with the barest hint of a smirk. Well, damn. She’d seen through him. He really was going to have to pull this off.
After a moment, she said, “Um?”
“What is it?”
“I’m going to shift to start swimming around, so…” The blush was back like it had never left. “Would you mind turning around?”
“Right. Of course.” He turned away at once, giving all his attention to the little dragon hunting through the stones in front of him and none at all to the fact that his mate was stripping on the beach behind him. Nope. No thought at all. Zero thoughts.
Zero.
Ze-ro.
Definitely no thoughts about her pulling her salt-crusted sweater over her head. Or what her body looked like underneath. What it felt like. Would she shiver as the breeze touched her bare skin, or relax in relief, trying to soak as much heat from the sunlight as she could?
Something light dropped to the ground. He bit back a groan.
Pants. Okay. She was going to take her pants off. This was a normal, boring thing that people did all the time when they hadto shift and didn’t want to end up wearing a pile of rags when they returned to human form.
Unless they were him.
He looked down at himself. His clothes were scuffed and dirty, but he’d turned into a fuckingkraken.A creature so immense it could tear ships to pieces. How had his clothing survived something like that exploding into existence?
It wasn’t normal.Hewasn’t normal. What he was, what he had to do, become—it had no place in the world Carol came from. The world he had to make sure she got back to.
Before he sank beneath the depths forever.
He had to remember that, no matter how tempting her smiles were.
Or how silent the kraken was. It was holding to their agreement. Staying away from Carol while he worked on getting her home safe.
And that was tempting him in a different way. A shiny lure, making him think maybe the kraken would always be this docile. Maybe he could control it. Maybe his fate wasn’t set in stone.
