I did, and her skin toughened beneath my touch, her magic solidifying like liquid gold underneath the surface. She grabbed my face, her gaze unyielding.
“What did I tell you?” she asked.
“I know, baby. But if it’s too much, you say red. You promise me that.”
“I promise, and I trust you, Chase.”
Trust. Giving me that was more dangerous than she realized, but I wanted to be worthy of it. More than I’d wanted anything before in my life.
I rose on one elbow, grabbing my long, white claspers in one hand. They were already trying to flare, to expand, but I pushed them together, and like that, they weren’t much larger than my human cock, at least at the tip.
She spread her legs, and I tested them, sliding just the first inch of both into her willing pussy. She groaned, wrapping her arms around my shoulders, trying to pull my weight down onto her.
“Chase, I need more.”
“Always so greedy, bruja.” My tail pumped, and I pushed deeper, the shark roiling with every inch that sank into her irresistible warmth.Keep her. Bite her. She’s mine.I thrust in and out, letting her open for me slowly.
She squirmed, trying to work me in, but my shark brain reacted to the motion, and I grabbed her hair, pulling her head back until she moaned. Then I struck, and bit her—hard.
She had toughened her skin, and I had just enough of Chase Perez left not to clamp, but my teeth dug into her flesh, and pleasure ripped through me from my head to my fins. I surged deeper, my claspers rubbing together in her tight heat until I couldn’t take it anymore and flared.
“Fuck, Chase…so full, I’m…I’m…” Her whole body convulsed between where I held her with my mouth and cocks. Her walls clamped down against my expanding lengths over and over as she came, like she could hold them back. She was still fighting me for dominance even here, but this was my realm. I thrust until I knew I was lodged against her cervix and opened them just a little bit more, and her magic exploded with golden light and sparks all over my skin and the beach, and I didn’t let go. I would never let go again.
Every single sensor I possessed lit up, and all I felt was her. Her scent, her taste, her magic, and her warm, soft pussy until there was no holding back and I spilled deep into her.
Mine. All fucking mine.
When I had nothing left to give, I pulled away to see her neck already bruising in a distinctive ring. I gently licked each tooth mark, and they tasted better than any catch.
“Chase,” she murmured, drowsy, her magic dancing in swirling patterns beneath her skin.
“Yeah, baby?”
“Thank you. For coming in after me.” A beat. “And for the eight, nine feet at most.”
The laugh went deep into the part of me I’d kept underwater since I was twenty-two.
“Anytime, Torres,” I said, holding her close and not letting go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Selena
I openedShark Bites at five the next morning because I hadn’t slept, and after hours of rolling around in bed, I figured I might as well be productive.
The cut on my leg had a butterfly bandage I’d applied in the dark with shaking hands. It pulled when I bent to load the cooler, but I welcomed it. It was proof that the night had happened and not been invented out of exhaustion and near-death adrenaline. Well, that, and the throbbing bruise I had beneath my uncharacteristically high shirt collar.
I made myself a smoothie I didn’t drink and stood behind the counter, thinking about the shark shifter who had ruined everything.
RipTide was still holding a nationally televised competition during my “little local event” and had encroached on our space again. Just a few generators and lines, but I knew they would keep pushing. Then there were all the logistics of actually running the tournament I still had to deal with. Those were real problems, and I had built my whole adult life on being a person who handled real problems. They kept me too busy to worry about any of the emotional baggage that went with them, and right now, I couldn’t get a single one of them to hold my attention for longer than ten seconds before my mind went back tohim.
He had let me see him, the real him.
That was the part I kept returning to. Not the sex, though the sex was its own problem that I was choosing not to examine before seven in the morning while soreness still radiated between my legs and across my shoulder. It was that he had stayed in between, skin still rough in places, teeth sharp, eyes dark, the most exposed I’d ever seen him, and he had done it on purpose. He had not put the man back on like his sponsored smile. He had let me see the part of him that hid behind the cameras and the entire constructed persona called El Tiburón, ironically. The whole world got El Tiburón, but I got Chase Perez. When I told him I saw him, all of him, he had looked at me like I’d handed him what he’d been waiting years for.
I knew that look. I’d been wearing the opposite of it my whole life.
I had spent nearly ten years telling everyone, including myself, that I was happy. That I had chosen Crescent Cove and the shack and the small, good life. That my mother’s disappointment was her problem and not a fishhook lodged permanently behind my ribs. I was very good at saying it. I had said it so many times it had the worn-smooth quality of a rock at the beach, surrendering to the tide because it knew resistance was pointless. I had surrendered to a story I wanted to be true, even if, deep down, it still felt as raw as the day I’d stashed those acceptance letters.
