by Bea Paige
“I feel the same way…” I murmur, itching to touch him, hold him, love him.
Malakai’s nostrils flare, his body vibrating with pent up energy, desperate to find release because just like the ocean, he cannot resist the pull of the moon. We are joined, he and I.
Every part of me is hyper aware of him, and I know he feels it too. His physical reaction to me is just as powerful as mine is to him. I’m not the only one whose nipples are hardening with need. I can see the dark pebbles beneath his thin white t-shirt. Drawing in a steadying breath, I pull out a chair and sit down at the table.
“Will you please sit, Malakai?”
For a second I think he’s going to refuse me, instead he yanks out a chair and slams his arse onto the seat opposite me.
“Thank you,” I say, meeting his ragged breathing and angry stares with a sudden calmness that surprises him, given the way his eyebrows are halfway up his forehead right now. Instinctively I reach for him, my fingers barely grazing his before he yanks his hand away as though my very touch is painful. Perhaps it is. “I don’t want to argue with you. I just need you to listen, please?”
The only fight I ever want to have with him is when we’re tearing each other’s clothes off. I’m done fighting his reluctance and his constant refusal to acknowledge us. Because there is an us. There always has been, right from the start.
“Then do as I ask and go to the mainland.”
“I want to tell you about the curse,” I say, changing the subject.
“What?” He looks at me in confusion then, his eyebrows drawing together in that beautiful frown I’ve come to love.
“The Silva women are cursed, or so the story goes.” I smile a little at his incredulity. Believe me I’ve questioned this story over the years far too many times to count, but there’s no denying history.
“Cursed how? What the fuck are you talking about, Connie?”
“Cursed in love.” I let out a small laugh, but it’s sad, hollow.
“What utter horseshit,” he retorts, shaking his head. He moves to pour another shot, then decides against it, pushing both the bottle and the glass away.
“For a long time, I thought so too. I believe it now.”
He stares at me, taking in every detail of my face like a starved man craving sunlight when he’s been hidden in darkness for so long. “Explain,” he demands, one curt word given sharply.
“We’re each destined to find the man we love, but not destined to keep them. Every Silva woman going back in time has been lucky enough to find their one true soulmate…”
“I don’t believe in soulmates,” he cuts in, and whilst his body language tells me that’s true, his eyes… Oh, his eyes tell me another story entirely.
“My parents found one another. Their love was intense, beautiful, something I basked in growing up. Only their happiness was ripped away from them…”
“They died in a car crash, Connie. That isn’t a curse, it was an accident.”
“That’s what it looked like on the surface, yes. That’s what Grandma told the world, including me.”
“What do you mean?” He sits forward, that infernal muscle in his jaw bouncing as he tries to understand.
“I found a letter my mother sent to Grandma two days before they died. It was a…” I suck in a breath, refusing to let the tears fall. “It was a suicide note.”
“WHAT?!” he roars, anguish and anger both fighting for dominance.
“Dad had terminal cancer. It started in his pancreas and spread. They never told me. The day they left the island they’d said they were going on a trip to see a friend. It was a lie. They both knew he had no time and instead of allowing me to spend those final days with him, they decided to end their lives.”
“MOTHERFUCKERS!” Malakai roars. Reaching for the glass tumbler, he throws it against the wall. It shatters on impact, tiny shards raining down over the kitchen cabinets and floor. Neither of us move to clean up the mess. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to, because I’m stuck in my seat, the truth about their deaths a secret I’ve kept hidden, even from myself, weighing me down.
“Did Ma know about their intentions?” he grinds out eventually, his chest rising and falling in angry bursts.
“I’ve never had that conversation with her, I won’t ever have this conversation with her,” I add fiercely. She’s been hurt too much and despite the secret she’s kept, I won’t make her relive the pain. “I believe she only found out about his illness and their suicide when she received that letter.”
“So she lied to you about it? Told you they died in a car crash.”
“Yes.”
“When did you find out the truth?” he bites out, a restless kind of energy pours from him, buffeting me. He’s angry at them, for the choice they made. He’s angry at Ma for keeping it from me. But there’s something else too… I see pity in his eyes. Pity for me. I also see regret. That’s a little harder to unravel.
“I found the letter a few years back, hidden away in a box in the back of my Grandma’s wardrobe. It tore me apart, reading it. They were so in love that they couldn’t bear to live without each other. They left me… I wasn’t enough…” My voice cracks and I turn my gaze away, concentrating instead on the darkness beyond the kitchen window. It looms beyond the walls, threatening to enter and smother us both.
“You are enough…” Malakai murmurs, bringing more unshed tears to my eyes. Tears I won’t allow to fall.
Neither of us move. All I can hear are Malakai’s steady breaths and my heart cracking, the sound just like the door creaking closed on the wardrobe I’d found their suicide note in. When I’ve tempered my emotions enough to look at Malakai again, his face is a controlled mask. “Their story is just one in a long line of heartache. Grandpa died and left Grandma heartbroken. She’s never loved another man, Malakai. Never looked at anyone.” He doesn’t say a word, just nods, waiting for more. “My great grandma’s husband was lost to the ocean. He drowned in a violent storm… The stories go on and on. We find the love of our lives and they are ripped away from us.”
“It’s a coincidence, Connie. A story that has got out of hand. Curses aren’t real. They don’t exist. This world is full of heartache and tragedy. People die all the time.”
“That’s true, they do. But there’s no denying our history. I knew what was in store for us the second you stepped onto Broken Shores. Despite knowing that, I begged for your kiss. Selfishly I wanted to experience what it would feel like to be held in the arms of the man my heart had chosen. I thought, perhaps, you’d stay once you felt what I did, what I still feel…” I swallow hard. “I truly believed that I would’ve been enough, that somehow we’d find a way to beat the curse, together. Stupid, I know. Foolish.”
“Connie…” he warns, a tightness to his voice that has my skin prickling, but I continue on regardless.
“In some ways Ma telling you to leave, keeping us apart, was as much about keeping me safe from harm as it was you. Loving you is dangerous. More so for you than it is for me. Ironic, no, given the reason you refuse to acknowledge how you feel about me? You’ve been so busy protecting me from the King, when all along you should’ve protected yourself from the one person who has the power to hurt you the most. Me.”
“Connie, you don’t know what you’re saying. You can’t love me,” he laments brokenly, a tiny fissure cracking in his wall of armour. He’s not referring to the curse. No, he believes that he can’t be loved because of who he is and the darkness that litters his past and taints his soul.
“It’s too late for that now.” My heart hiccups inside my chest, my own soul crying out for him, for the both of us, and the inevitability of this damn curse, and everything else that seems against us. It looms, a fate neither of us can escape.
“No, you don’t understand. This stupid fucking curse is irrelevant. Your belief in its power, unwarranted, Connie, because it can’t hurt a man who’s already dead inside. I’m dead inside.”
“You’re not.
How can anyone who’s dead inside make me feel so alive.”
My throat constricts with loss and pain as he rears upwards, the chair scraping over the tiled floor, tumbling backwards as he stands. “I need you to leave. You have to go. I can’t do this with you here. I can’t. My life means nothing. Yours is worth so much more and I cannot see you hurt. Do you understand me, Connie?”
“I do.”
“And yet still you remain, why?”
“Because if this is all I can have, if this curse is going to take you from me anyway and you die at the Palace, then I can’t live a life not knowing how it felt to be loved by you, Malakai. Ma warned me not to love you, she warned me, but I fell anyway. We’re already cursed, so why not be with me, completely with me, for one night, then I promise you I will go.” I realise what I’m asking. I understand the finality of it more than most. But I ask anyway.
His fists clench and unclench, his jaw grinding as he considers my offer. Every sinew, every muscle is tense, pulled taut. I wait, a calmness settling over me as he fights the connection between us. It’s almost visceral, the pull, the intense lust and desire, the love. He might not be able to admit it yet, but I know that’s what he’s most afraid of, because it scares me to death too. He was right when he said he couldn’t give me roses and romance, love songs and happily ever afters. What we have isn’t a fairytale with a perfect cliched ending, it’s dark and possessive, intense and damaging, fragile. So very, very fragile. Just like the moon and the ocean, one has no purpose without the other.
“One night. That’s it,” he agrees.
Then just like two stars colliding we obliterate each other.
Thirty-Two
Malakai
I’m not sure who moves first, but one minute I’m on the opposite side of the table and the next Connie’s crushed against my chest, our mouths clashing in a hungry kiss that annihilates any kind of self-control.
Instinct kicks in and a feral hunger claws at us both as we tear each other’s clothes off. They fall to the floor, discarded in seconds, destroyed by our need, incinerated by our lust.
Her lush body presses against mine, heat radiating from every inch of skin as she moans into my mouth, her tongue circling and lapping at my own. In response, my cock jerks painfully against her stomach, wanting entry into her wet heat, needing the release that’s been almost two years in the making. There have been so many hours spent fantasising about all the things I would do to Connie if I ever gave into my base desires. All those lonely nights I’ve spent on Princess dreaming of her in my arms, wanting her with an ache so deep, so painful, that not even the cool ocean was able to soothe. But no matter how many times I’ve pushed her away, I’ve been pulled back to her. I’d fought it. Fought the feelings within me, but this invisible, unexplainable force brought me back to her…
My Little Siren.
“Malakai,” she whimpers, her arms and legs wrapping around me as I haul her up into my arms. My fingers tangle in her hair as I grasp fistfuls, tugging on her head, and gently forcing it backwards so that I can kiss and suck at her neck. My teeth graze the delicate pulse thrumming beneath her skin. It thumps in time with the blood throbbing in my cock.
Neither of us are immune to the dangerous attraction we have for one another. It’s been simmering, bubbling, boiling for so long now. But the guilt I’ve carried with me for being attracted to my best friends’ daughter is long gone. So too is the struggle I’ve battled with regarding our age difference, so insignificant now given what we face. My own self-disgust over the kind of man I am, and the things I’ve done, have also been forced away by this invisible power that no longer sparks but incinerates.
There was nothing we could’ve done to prevent this inevitability.
One way or the other this was always going to happen. Though I’m well aware that this kind of energy comes at a price. A costly one. Connie believes that the price we’ll have to pay is my death, and I believe it will be hers. Either way, the outcome will hurt both of us in unfathomable, unthinkable ways. All I know is that I’m willing to do this to save her. I don’t care about myself. I’ve done too many despicable things to ever hope for any more than this one, painfully beautiful moment together.
Connie’s kisses rain down over my face, making me feel adored in a way I’ve never felt before. Sex has always been enjoyable, but never anything more intimate than that. No one has touched me in the way Connie has, and I don’t just mean physically.
“Please, Malakai,” she whimpers, her wet heat rubbing against the hard plains of my stomach. It’s all I can do not bend her over the kitchen table and fuck her until we both go blind.
“Bed,” I grind out, not wanting to fuck her in the kitchen where shards of glass glitter in the overhead light. We make it a few fumbling steps down the hallway before I stumble, my legs barely able to hold me upright, not because she’s heavy, but because she makes my knees weak. She slides from my hold, drawing out a long kiss before taking my hand in hers.
“Come,” she says, and I follow.
It takes everything in me not to take her on the stairs, her perfect arse, rounded hips and long legs tormenting me with every step she takes upwards. Her long, dark hair kisses the top of her arse, swishing provocatively in time with the sway of her hips, forcing my dick to grow impossibly bigger. I’m in agony.
Fucking agony for her. My Little Siren. Mine.
When she reaches the top of the stairs and smiles down at me with such love in her eyes, I’m almost rendered to my knees.
Goddamn this girl. This beautiful, dangerous, girl.
“Which room?” she asks, her tremulous voice the only sign that she’s just as affected by me as I am by her. I don’t answer, instead I leap up the last two steps and sweep her into my arms, her surprised laughter a balm to my aching heart. Outwardly, I’m still holding back, not allowing my face to show one ounce of feeling, but when she looks in my eyes, I feel naked. She strips me back to my very barest form. She sees me in a way no other person ever has, or ever will.
Kicking my bedroom door closed behind me, I lay her down in the centre of the bed, brushing away tendrils of hair off her face. She lays beneath me, looking up, a sweet blush covering her cheeks and reddening her lips. For a moment, I just stare at her, my knees resting between her parted legs, my hands pressed into the soft duvet either side of her head. At this moment I’m caught between the deep desire to bury myself within her and wanting her reassurances that she will leave just like she promised me she would.
“If the wind changes, you’ll stay like that,” she says, a gentle smile pulling up her lips as she pushes up onto her elbows and kisses away the frown that seems to be permanently fixed on my face whenever she’s around.
“Lie down, Connie,” I order, my voice deep, rumbling. She obeys.
My fingers move gently over her skin as I trace her rib cage up one side then down the other. Her breathing halts as my hand lowers, my fingertips circling her belly button then slowly moves lower. She’s so soft, so goddamn soft. Her breath stills, as she watches me.
“Breathe, Little Siren,” I remind her, even though my own breaths are stuck in my chest.
I let out a ragged, lust-fuelled groan as my fingers feather along her lower stomach. I rest the flat of my palm just below her belly button, my fingers sliding a few inches lower. Leaning over, I press a hot kiss just below Connie’s ear, breathing in deep, as my teeth scrape along the shell of her ear.
“I took advantage of you that morning on the beach. I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t. I wanted your touch. Craved it. I still do…” she reassures me, placing her hand over mine, urging it lower.
“I watched over you whilst you slept,” I admit, capturing her fingers and holding them still. “That night when you went on a date with Abel, I followed you home. I wanted to make sure you were safe.”
“So you saw…” Her pulse beats faster as I press my mouth against it.
“I saw that little bastard kiss
you, Connie. I’m not going to lie, I wanted to fucking kill him then, even before I knew the kind of man he was,” I say, my lips resting over the corner of her mouth now.
“If it makes you feel any better I only let him kiss me to see whether he could make me feel the way you do. He didn’t,” she replies, brushing her lips against mine.
“Fuck, the things you do to me…” I groan, my thoughts silenced as I lick against the seam of her lips, tentative, searching.
“Ditto,” she murmurs against my mouth. “Ditto.”
I’m well aware that we’re suspending reality, that very soon this will be over, and I’ll have to become the hardened bastard who cannot let anyone in, but in this moment with my body pressed against hers, I give in. Just a little.
“You were saying?” she reminds me, her mouth pressing against the course hair of my beard.
I swallow hard, feeling like a teenager giddy with lust. “I never did the teenage love thing. First base is just kissing, right?” I randomly say.
“We’ve already jumped to third base. The only thing we haven’t done is a home run,” she responds with a small smile.
“A home run…?”
“That’s when you fuck me, Malakai.”
I groan, my head dipping closer as her lips brush against mine. “Kiss me, Little Siren. Just fucking kiss me.”
She does. She kisses me, mewling and moaning with every lap of my tongue. I’ve never been much of a kisser, but for Connie, for my Little Siren I would kiss and kiss and kiss her until her mouth and mine have melded together for all eternity. Eventually, reluctantly, I pull back still needing her reassurance that she’ll leave, that she’ll go as soon as we’ve tortured ourselves long enough to survive the coming days. That’s if we survive at all.
“Promise me now, Connie. Promise me right now that you’ll leave,” I demand, my cock hovering over her entrance, teasing her clit with its heaviness. She bites down on her lip, not giving me an answer, so I lower my mouth to her tight pink bud, drawing her nipple gently between my teeth, sucking and licking. She whimpers, grasping my face and urging me to take her other nipple. Reaching up I cup her ample tit, squeezing gently whilst my thumb teases and my tongue licks, replacing one sensation with another.
