Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

  “I need to be with him,” Olivia said.

  The woman shook her head and sighed, gave Olivia a sharp look, and followed the men carrying Kai into another room.

  Olivia followed as well. It was a bedroom, as it turned out, with more framed photos on the walls and a dresser with a gilded mirror. Kai was laid out on the pink coverlet of the bed and Panos set to stripping him of his wet swim trunks.

  “Come,” the older woman said, tugging on Olivia’s arm. “Girl, come.”

  I’ve slept with him, Olivia wanted to shout. He was naked with me in bed only this morning.

  But she let the woman drag her out, because this had to be her house and she didn’t want to be impolite. However, when the woman tried to pull her further away, Olivia resisted.

  “I’m going back,” she said evenly, hoping the woman could understand her. “Back to Kai.”

  Judging they must have stripped him by now and she wouldn’t be offending family sensibilities by being there, she tugged her arm free of the woman’s steel grip and flew back into the room.

  Kai lay on the bed, covered to his chest in a white sheet, his hands clenching in the fabric. A cold compress rested on his forehead. He was mumbling something, and with a start Olivia realized it was her name.

  “He’s calling for me,” she told Panos and shoved her way to Kai’s side. She sat by him and took his hand in hers. His skin was hot and dry. “I’m right here.”

  “The boat,” Kai muttered, his teeth gritting. “Mary... Jonas!”

  She squeezed his hand, her chest tight. “I think he’s remembering the accident. Were Mary and Jonas on the boat that sank?”

  “Yes. Family friends.” Panos leaned over and said something to Kai in Greek, which earned him a garbled response. He straightened, his face grim. “Pain, he say.”

  He hurt. She’d known since the beach, and could see it in the tight lines of his face, the muscles trembling in his arms and legs, his labored breathing. “Did he say what happened?”

  “Boat sink in storm.” Panos waved a hairy arm in the air. “All die—”

  “I mean now. How he got hurt. Why he’s feverish.” Maybe a poisonous fish had stung him. A jellyfish. Or a sea snake. Did they have sea snakes in the Cretan Sea?

  Panos shook his head. “Kai not say.”

  “So his parents and their friends died in the accident... He doesn’t have brothers or sisters?”

  Panos shook his head. “He is alone.”

  Alone. “He has you,” she said.

  Panos shrugged, as if to say it wasn’t the same, and rubbed his chin. “Has a wall around him.” Panos tapped his own chest. “His heart.”

  She bit her lip and nodded, her gaze returning to Kai’s flushed face. That made sense. She stroked a strand of wet hair from his temple, resettled the compress on his forehead. She should bring more ice.

  Kai shifted restlessly, gripping her hand. His eyes moved rapidly behind his lids, as if he was dreaming, and his body arched and twisted beneath the sheet. His lips peeled back and a moan came from deep inside his throat.

  Shit. She looked up at Panos. “Where’s the doctor?”

  “Doctor come now,” Panos said gravely, sitting on the mattress and placing a hand on Kai’s shoulder, keeping him still. “We wait.”

  *

  The doctor was a lively grey-haired woman who prodded and poked Kai until he moaned and tossed restlessly. She listened to his chest, then she took his temperature and pulse. She frowned as she listened to Panos chattering in Greek and answered some of his questions.

  Olivia seethed with frustration. She needed to know how Kai was. When the doctor grabbed her bag and stood to go, it was all Olivia could do not to scream. She jumped up from her seat and went after her.

  “What’s wrong with him?” She rounded the woman to stand in front of her, blocking her exit. “What is it?”

  “Who are you?” The doctor’s dark eyes held a hint of suspicion.

  “I’m Olivia. A friend.” She resisted the need to shake the doctor until she told her what she wanted to know. “Please tell me what’s wrong with Kai.”

  The doctor looked back at the bed, then at the door, as if she considered fleeing. “I don’t know,” she said, in her musical Greek accent. “He has a fever. He’s in pain. It’s not appendicitis, as I had feared. I thought that he hit rocks. In the sea.” She waved her hand in a vague gesture. “But no bruises. No wounds. No particular organ or bone hurts.”

  Olivia shivered. “So what should we do?”

  The doctor shook her head. “Keep fever down. Maybe it’s a chill or a virus.”

  A chill or a virus. Kai, who never got sick.

  The matronly woman with the apron bustled inside, a bag of ice and wet rags in her hands. Olivia stood, feeling useless, as the woman wrapped ice in a cloth, placed it on Kai’s brow and wiped down his chest.

  “If the fever doesn’t drop,” the doctor said, “put him in cold bath or shower. Give him aspirin and water. I will check on him later.” She spoke to the other woman in Greek for a moment, nodded at Olivia, and left.

  Olivia watched the doctor go, her heart racing, and clutched the pebble at her throat.

  “What did you do?” Panos was standing behind her. “Let me see.” He examined the pebble, scowling. “Stone broken.”

  “I tried to smash it,” she said in a small voice, fear pressing on her shoulders. “You said I should break the spell. I tried.”

  “No good.” Panos rubbed his chin. “This no good. I find professor.” He muttered something more she didn’t make out, and left.

  Kai moaned and the matronly woman made a clacking sound with her tongue, wiping the water running down his face. His cheeks were flushed with fever and his chest rose and fell fast, his breathing shallow.

  Olivia had a lump in her throat and couldn’t swallow. Tears burned behind her eyes. She couldn’t just sit and watch him suffer. She had to find a way to help him.

  “Panos, wait.” She rushed out of the room and ran after him. “I’ll go with you.”

  If she’d brought this on Kai, she had to discover how to fix it.

  *

  Professor Skein was indeed skinny and short with a receding hairline and tiny glasses perched on his snub nose. He looked like an aged child, although his deep voice dispelled that impression as soon as he greeted them at the door.

  “Ho, Panos.” His face broke into a grin. “Welcome. Is everything all right?”

  He ushered them into a messy living room with huge French windows and piles of books and notes on every surface. He cleared the sofa and went to call for coffee. He came back inside as Olivia and Panos were taking a seat, rubbing his hands together.

  “So then,” he said, pushing some books aside and perching on the armchair across from them. “From Panos’s expression, I can tell something happened.” His grin fell. “Something bad, maybe?”

  “Tell him,” Panos muttered, nudging her in the ribs. “Tell what you do.”

  Feeling like a reprimanded child, she started to tell the professor what happened, when he clapped his hands and exclaimed.

  “Oh my. A mermaid scale! May I see?”

  Pressing her lips together, Olivia took off the pendant and handed it to him. The professor oohed and aahed, turning it over, moving closer to the French doors so he could examine it in the light.

  Olivia stole a glance at Panos. His expression was dark and closed off.

  “Did you find it like this?” the professor asked, returning to sit with them. “With this crack?”

  So Olivia told him everything — how she’d thrown her ring into the sea and found the pebble, how the sea reacted to her angry words, how she’d seen scales that appeared and then vanished on Kai’s skin, how she’d been asked by Panos to break the spell and how she’d cracked the pebble. Told him about the towering wave that disappeared afterward. Everything.

  It didn’t make her feel any better when she thought of Kai barely conscious back at the hotel.


  “Excellent,” the professor said, which prompted a tirade in Greek from Panos. He stopped when the professor said something else in Greek and looked sheepish.

  “What is it?” Olivia demanded.

  “It’s excellent to have that much information,” Professor Skein said gravely. “I’m truly sorry for what has befallen Kyler, and I mean from the beginning. For the magic in his blood, for losing his family, for having to live with this curse. And for this new hardship. Although...” He stared down at the pebble in his hand. “I believe that this talisman is connected to Kyler. By smashing it, you affected him as well.”

  Her eyes burned as she thought of how his body hurt without a mark, of the odd timing between cracking the stone and finding him on the beach. That couldn’t be. And still... “Oh god, I almost killed Kai, didn’t I?” Would she have killed him if she’d managed to break the stone to pieces? Her breath caught in her throat.

  “Maybe the way you interpreted Panos’s words wasn’t entirely wrong.” The professor pushed his glasses up his nose. “Sometimes you have to break something to fix it.”

  “Something?” she muttered. “We’re talking about Kai.” He wasn’t a dish you could just glue back together.

  “It’s exciting to finally see it happen.” The professor stood and paced, waving the pebble in the air. “A ritual exchange. Gold for a favor. Alcohol and blood libations. One more sacrifice may be needed.”

  “Sacrifice. For what?”

  “To complete the ritual and give you the power to do what you want to do.” He stopped and turned toward her, frowning. “What do you want to do, exactly? You could ask for Kyler to be bound to the land, to a person, or to forget the sea completely.”

  It was so weird to hear the professor use Kai’s given name, the one Kai never used. “I want to free Kai,” she mumbled, looking down at her hands. “I want him to be able to choose.”

  “And if he chooses the sea?” The professor observed her keenly, and she also felt Panos’s eyes on her.

  “Then that’s his decision. Right now he’s not allowed a choice. I want him to have it.”

  The professor nodded, as if this conversation didn’t sound like a parody from one of the paranormal novels Olivia had been reading. But she was in too deep now to dismiss this curse or whatever it was.

  “What happened, then?” Her hands twisted in her lap. “What’s wrong with Kai? How do we fix it?”

  “You accepted a deal with the sea,” the professor said, sitting down and placing the pebble on the low coffee table. “Took the scale, gave the gold, and made a libation of alcohol. But instead of following the ritual as prescribed, you did nothing for a while. Then you gave blood by mistake and wasn’t prepared for the next step. And then you tried to break the stone, angering the sea. Respect is needed when dealing with the sea people.”

  “The sea or the sea people? Can you make up your mind?” Olivia took a shuddering breath.

  “The sea people belong to the sea. They don’t think like we do. They have one collective mind and act as a swarm. The sea magic directs them. Of course, they also have individual thoughts sometimes.” He chuckled. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have had children with humans over the centuries.”

  “But why was Kai hurt? Why is this pebble connected to him?”

  “Ah, this is a good question. This is just a thought, but...” The professor picked the pebble up again and offered it to her. “Maybe this is one of his fish scales.” He snorted when she gaped at him. “He’s merfolk. I thought we were clear about that. Half-breed, of course, so he’s not in his fish form all the time, but occasionally he must be.”

  Kai. A merman. Scales and fins. Breathing under water. “Why would I be given one of his scales?”

  The professor shrugged. “Maybe the sea wants him to be free. Maybe it doesn’t know how, so it gave you a means to try.”

  Olivia pondered this for a moment.

  “Why her?” Panos asked.

  Indeed, why her?

  The professor clasped his hands together and leaned forward. “Well, it sounds like you started it by giving it gold. Gold laden with emotions, aren’t I right?”

  Olivia winced.

  “Maybe it sensed a need in you, a reciprocal need, a similarity between you and Kyler.”

  A struggle with the past. A need to break its hold and move on. A need to trust and find someone who might understand.

  “Or maybe it wasn’t just your need it saw. Maybe it saw in you what Kyler saw.”

  “And what’s that?” she whispered.

  “The ability to do something nobody else can. Maybe you’re the one who can break Kyler and put him together again.”

  *

  “Why here?” Olivia looked down at the Navagio Beach distrustfully. She couldn’t help but remember how the sea had snatched her, the fear of almost drowning until Kai had pulled her out. And she couldn’t get the image of Kai facedown in the surf out of her head. “This isn’t where I found the scale.”

  “But it’s where you found Kyler today.” The professor shrugged. “Maybe the sea is giving you a clue.”

  “A clue to what?” she muttered darkly.

  “You want to be by his side, don’t you?” the professor asked.

  “Yes.” She wanted to return to Kai, take care of him.

  “If his illness isn’t natural, the best you can do for him is to fix this before you go back to him.”

  And before she left Crete. It made as much sense as anything in this mad world.

  They took the path down to the beach. “This is where the sea almost killed me,” she said.

  “Be nice this time,” said the professor. “It seems to sense you, perhaps through the scale. Be respectful. She’s a goddess of old.”

  “And what should I do?”

  He was pensive as they skidded to the sand where they’d found Kai only an hour or two ago. “Just say what you desire. Try to keep your feelings clear, your voice low and calm. And I think you should give back the scale.”

  “But you said it’s Kai’s.”

  “The sea gave it to you.”

  She stared at his hunched shoulders, his glasses that reflected the blue. “You’re playing by ear, aren’t you? You have no idea what I should do.”

  “It’s never happened before,” he admitted. “There are stories of fishermen who found such scales and asked for favors, but no mention of how they went about doing it, apart from the usual ritual: gold, wine, blood and tears. No details are given.”

  Panos skulked after them, hands in his pockets, his face a thundercloud. “Now?”

  “Now she does her thing and we wait,” said the professor.

  My thing. She took off her sandals and walked stiffly down to the water’s edge, fear making her shake. What if the sea didn’t listen? What if it got her again and nobody could save her this time?

  Taking a deep breath, she unclasped the pendant’s chain and pulled off the pebble. She stared at it.

  For you, Kai.

  The waves lapped at her bare feet, cold and ticklish. She knelt on the wet sand and held out the pebble. Be calm. Be clear. What do you feel?

  “I’ve brought it back,” she said, feeling goddamn weird sitting there with the two men watching her, talking to the water. “I didn’t know what it was.”

  A wave crashed, sprinkling her with foam, wetting the pebble. It glittered in the palm of her hand like a jewel.

  Be respectful. Be honest.

  “Thank you for giving it to me. I’m afraid of you. I don’t understand you.”

  Smaller waves, licking her knees.

  “You love Kai.” She paused. “I think I love him, too.” She lifted the pebble, feeling like a pilgrim of old kneeling in an ancient temple. “I want Kai to be free to choose. Free to live as he likes. Let him go. Please.”

  The sea heaved a few feet away. Deeper inside, the water moved as if forms frolicked and arched up right under the surface, swimming up and down.

 
; Behind her, the professor exclaimed in surprise. She did her best to ignore him, focus on the pebble in her hand. It seemed heavier now, so heavy she let it drop and roll on the beach. Pain streaked up her arm. She clutched it.

  “I know you want him,” she said. “He’s your blood. You tried to take him but took everyone he cared for instead. Maybe you don’t realize how much you hurt him. How that tore him apart.” The tears that had been stinging her eyes all morning slid down her cheeks. “You hurt him, but he’ll never stop loving you. Don’t you see that? He’s your child, but he’s also of the land, and you keep dragging him back, tightening the leash. He needs to live and be happy. Let him go.”

  Her arm throbbed as if she’d been hit with a club. A sob caught in her throat as she reached for the pebble which shimmered among the other stones, a deep blue.

  She thought of the blue streaking Kai’s eyes, of his laughter, of his faint smile.

  “I know you want him to be happy. Maybe that’s why you gave me this. I was told I should give it back to you. So there you go. Take it and release Kai.” She drew back her aching arm and flung the pebble into the waves.

  It sank without a sound or ripple. The sea spread flat as a mirror, the waves ceasing their come and go on the sand.

  Olivia held her breath.

  Nothing happened.

  She turned toward the professor, not knowing what to do. He looked puzzled, too, and a little sheepish.

  “Maybe this wasn’t how we were supposed to do it,” he said quietly. “Maybe—”

  “Maybe, maybe!” Panos threw his hands in the air. “No use. No work.” He turned to go.

  She sat, exhausted and drained. She’d thrown back the pebble — Kai’s scale. She didn’t have leverage anymore. Should she dive into the waves and find it? Her goggles were at the hotel. Tears kept sliding down her cheeks and she wiped them on the back of her hand. She scooted closer to the water and washed them off.