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Luke clenched his teeth so hard his jaw popped.

This. Fucking. Merman.

23

LUKE

Luke shuffled back on Syrus’s thick thighs. He was tempted to vault off Syrus’s lap completely in a clearer demonstration of his extreme disapproval, but Syrus’s cock slipping out of him was a visceral reminder that sitting on the couch with his bare ass dripping cum was not on today’s to-do list.

Syrus gave him a knowing look. “Shall I grab a washcloth, dear Luke?”

Luke glared. Syrus wanted to throw him off the scent by gently and thoughtfully cleaning him like some sort of generous lover instead of a tricky, secretive creature with too many mysteries and no inclination to share them? No, thanks. Hard pass.

It wasn’t like Luke regretted the sex. His need might have been raised to a fever pitch by whatever paranormal bullshit was going on, but the underlying attraction was real enough. Luke had wanted Syrus. He still wanted Syrus.

But he also wanted some goddamn answers.

He grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch and wrapped it around his hips, then plopped off Syrus’s lap onto the couch. A blanket he could launder.

Syrus, of course, made no move to cover himself. He just sat there, large and nude, his spent, glistening cock resting against his thigh.

“Explain,” Luke bit out. He was not going to be distracted by bare dicks or tingly skin sensations that insisted on closeness rather than separation.

Syrus’s eyes crinkled in that way of his when he thought Luke was either being obtuse or adorable. “Did you think, if I stayed, things would continue as they were? You slicing your precious thumb into tiny glasses? Me out in the ocean with you unable to reach me?”

Luke ignored the hitch in his chest at that big old “if.” (Where had that come from, when Syrus had been so fucking insistent on staying?) Because yes, he had thought that. And he’d been willing, fool that he was. What were a couple nicks in his hands for the next forty or fifty years if it meant Syrus stayed in his life, big and beautiful and ridiculous, caring for Luke and Colby both as if it were the most natural thing in the world?

He sighed, swiping some sweaty strands of hair back from his forehead. “So what’s a mating dance, then?”

“A courtship.”

“Uh-huh,” Luke said flatly. “And that’s all?”

“Well…”

“Syrus.”

Syrus let out a heavy sigh of his own. “It’s the beginning of a kind of…binding.” He gave Luke a look that was maybe supposed to be sympathetic but came across as more than a little condescending. “We’re different species, Luke. We need a little…boost, to smooth things over.”

Right. Binding. Smoothing. Words that meant nothing in particular. “And what happens at the end of it? This dance?”

Syrus’s eyes softened into something almost sappy. “We’re bound, bodies and soul.”

He was gazing at Luke like he was offering him the world, but it was more vague bullshit, wasn’t it? The binding ended in being bound. How helpful. Luke gathered all the patience he’d learned from toddler parenting.

“And that means…?” he prompted.

Syrus huffed, like Luke’s lack of romanticism was really bringing him down. “It means I’ll be able to shift at will. I won’t need your blood anymore, since your essence will be bound to mine regardless. You, in turn, will gain more ease in the water, the better to admire your mate in his natural habitat.”

“A tail?” Luke asked with alarm.

“No,” Syrus said mournfully. “Though, you’d look stunning. A muted, mossy green, I think…”

Luke chose to ignore that completely. “So we gain…abilities?”

Syrus waved a hand dismissively. “And of course, our souls are entwined forevermore.”

“Of course,” Luke echoed faintly. The room had suddenly become ten degrees warmer. And someone had possibly turned down the gravity, with the way his belly swooped and churned alarmingly. “How did this even start, this dance? Me kissing you?”