His skin prickled at the sound of her otherworldly singing. She spoke in the hidden language of her kind. Her magick flowed through her, filling the room with its power.
She didn’t compel him though. Her magick was benign. All she was doing was holding him spellbound as she poured her soul out to him through song.
Compelled or not, he would not have been able to move even if the bar was on fire. Jack looked like an angel with the way the lights radiated across her ethereally glowing skin. He didn’t so much as move a muscle until the last note faded away.
“That was beautiful,” he whispered with a voice that had grown rough and gravelly.
Full lips turned into a beatific smile that stole the breath from his lungs. “I wrote that for you last night.”
He was a damned liar for ever thinking they could just be friends. It didn’t seem possible that even a mating ritual could carve this woman out of his heart. Jackson was everything to him.
Holding out his hand to her, he waited for her to walk off stage and slip her tiny palm into his. The feel of her skin on his was magick, the purest kind of magick. It made him whole, made him terrified.
For the past month, a crazy thought had begun to consume him. What if it was possible? What if he just decided not to go through the ritual?
“I want to get your gift,” she said softly. Then, releasing him, she jogged toward the employee backroom. August plopped into the nearest seat, staring at the neon-lit walls in front of him without really seeing any of it.
In no time, she’d returned to him, carrying not only her box, but two beers.
August was pretty sure Jackson wasn’t much of a beer drinker. It took her half the night to nurse the thing, and even then, she barely managed to finish half of it.
But it had become their thing, their way to unwind after a long night. Truthfully, he liked nothing in the world more than being with her and having her attention solely focused on him.
Why had he ever fought this attraction? Because some damned mating ritual had told him to? Screw that. August was tired of living a lie. Reaching over to the table, he snatched up the box he’d set aside for her an hour ago.
Her eyes lit up, and she laughed when she saw his badly wrapped package. He’d tried, but she was lucky he’d bothered at all. August had always been a simple guy.
“Wow,” she said with a trace of laughter. “I know you must have really tried hard with this.” Picking at the shoddy wrap job with her pinky nail, she snickered again as a badly taped-down edge popped free.
Snorting, he forked his fingers through his hair, mussing it. He’d started growing it longer two months prior to prepare himself for the ritual. It was now almost shoulder-length and felt unnaturally long on him. He would be happy when he could get a cut. “I did try. Hard.”
She puckered her lips. “Should I kiss you for the effort?”
His breath hitched, and he had to fist the neck of his bottle tightly just to keep from reaching out and dragging her across the table and onto his lap.
Jackson seemed completely oblivious to his inner turmoil and began tearing the wrapping off the gift. Then, flicking the box lid off, she laughed, and her ice blue eyes danced.
“Oh jeez, Auggie.” She reached inside and pulled out a CD of classical music with a rock twist.
He shrugged. He’d never really been one for gifts. There had been a couple of women in his life that had piqued his interest, but never enough for him to go down the road of emasculating himself.
August just wasn’t that kind of guy. He’d always been honest with his flings. If they wanted something safe and steady, then he was their guy. But if they wanted to be wooed and seduced, then they stood a better chance with anyone else but him.
And yet there he was, handing her a box that had taken him almost two months to complete for her. He’d looked high and low for her favorite things. Sometimes, he’d been forced to order shit online because in this remote spot in Alaska, finding a CD of classical music had proved impossible.
Reaching in again, Jackson pulled out a box of Alaska fresh-smoked salmon. He’d actually caught the salmon himself and smoked it.
But Chance had stated in no uncertain terms that handing a woman fish wrapped in a brown paper sack was the very opposite of romance. So he’d been forced to shell out a couple of bucks and a promise to help his neighbor clear out dead tree stumps from his property the next month in exchange for a cedar-carved box with an image of a sockeye burned into it.
Judging by her reaction, he’d scored major brownie points so far.
“Fancy,” she teased him, toeing his booted foot with her own.
His heart ached. What they were doing tonight should terrify him out of his mind. He was playing with fire. But he didn’t care anymore. He was tired of caring, of pretending that Jack didn’t affect him the way she did.
Setting the box down, she lifted the lid and gently took out one sliver of the fish. She slipped it into her mouth and beamed as she chewed.
“Oh gods, mouthgasm.” She rolled her eyes, acting as though she really was in the midst of a mind-blowing orgasm, which caused his cock to grow heavy and his stomach to bottom out.
Taking a deep swig of his beer just to ease his nerves, he chuckled. “If I’d known that giving you fish was all it took to—”
“Shut your face, you ugly bear.” She sassed him back with a wink then snatched up one more piece of fish before moaning and shaking her head. “Gotta put this away right now, or I’ll never stop.”
Tail or not, she was a typical siren, and there was nothing she liked to eat more than salmon. He’d known it, which was why he’d made it. Her smile had been worth all the effort of finding sockeye when it was out of season. She was worth getting up at the ass crack of dawn to go hang out in an empty, frigid stream in the faintest hope of finding a straggler swimming through. It had taken two weeks before he’d finally caught a pair of them with enough meat to make the effort worth it.
Licking her lips, she pushed the box away and reached in for her final gift. That last one had taken him the longest to make. He’d been roaming the woods of his property one morning when he’d stumbled across the four-leaf clover, and an idea had popped into his head almost immediately.
Her mouth formed a tiny O when she pulled out the chain with her fingers. She stared at the clover, trapped in a clear coat of resin. “August.” She looked at him, and he couldn’t mistake the tears shimmering in her eyes for anything other than shocked joy. “I love it.”
His siren wasn’t much for jewelry. She wore a pair of freshwater pearls in her ears, but that was about it. He’d never seen her with anything really flashy. It was why he’d decided to combine her favorite color, emerald green, with something soft and understated but also unique. Just like her.
Crushing the necklace to her breast, she gave him a tremulous smile. “I love it. I mean, I really love it.” Unhooking the latch, she slipped it around her neck then tossed her arms out wide. “How does it look?”
The pendant rested just above her heart, and his own ached with tenderness.
Words were trapped on his tongue, words that once spoken, couldn’t be unspoken. August didn’t know what he should do at that moment.
As if sensing his confusion, she gave him a swift smile and nodded. “Okay, my turn. Open yours now.” She pushed her box toward him and effectively shut the door on that moment.
Cursing himself for being a coward and not seizing the chance when he had it, he pulled her box toward him. Unlike him, she had not wrapped it, which oddly pleased him. Jackson knew him just like he knew her. She’d known he wouldn’t have wanted anything too fussy.
Flipping open the lid, he stared at the bags of deer jerky crammed inside the box. He said nothing at first until finally, he tossed his head back and laughed to the rafters. If his brothers could only see him, they would be baffled.
August didn’t laugh. Not really. He was a steadfast kind of guy, content with his lot in life. Get
up, go to work, eat food, go to bed, start it all over again the next day. That was life.
He’d never realized just how gray and dull his world was until Jack had breezed into it and splashed everything with a kaleidoscope of colors. She’d woken him up from a lifelong stupor to the possibility of more.
“I know how much my bear loves his deer. Do you like it?” she asked softly.
He nodded. “I love it.” It was a simple gift for a simple man. And that’s what made it so perfect.
She smiled happily.
They settled into a comfortable silence. But inside of him, the tension grew because he knew that at some point during the night, if she just stayed long enough, he would finally be able to say it.
Opening his mouth, he tried, but when she looked up at him, he froze. Instead, he said the first thing that popped into his head. “Why Jackson Rose?”
The question made no sense, but she seemed to get it. Shrugging, she sipped tentatively on her beer. “My mother let my father pick my first name. I think she tried to soften it by putting Rose in there, but yeah... not really.”
He chuckled. “I like it.”
Tipping her beer bottle at him, she nodded. “I don’t hate it. Plus it’s fun to screw with people’s heads. Am I guy, a woman? Who knows, right?”
“I’m pretty sure no one could mistake you for a guy, Jack.”
“Well, not once they see me. But I can always hear the shock in their voice when they call expecting it to be a man, and it’s not.”
“Well, now.” He leaned back in his chair, relaxed and ready for another round of a hundred questions. “We all have our funny stories. What’s yours?”
Snorting, her eyes took on a faraway look. Slowly but surely, the smile slipped off her face.
He regretted asking the question for a second until she started talking.
“Braden.” Icy blue eyes flicked up toward him, holding him fast in her gaze. “He and I got set up on a blind date. He thought I was a man.”
Something about that name tugged at his memory. There’d been a Braden mentioned at some point in time. But he couldn’t quite remember... Then, like an image in a mirror, the memory suddenly crystalized for him. Braden of Angoon, the mystery man that had caused her to leave the fishing village.
He frowned. “So Braden was gay?” Not exactly the question he’d meant to ask, but he’d tripped over the plethora of words on his tongue.
She chuckled. “Sirens aren’t gay or straight. We’re fluid. It’s just people, so if we like you, we like you.”
“Have you ever been with a woman?” He really hadn’t meant to ask that, but...
Again she chuckled. “Auggie, are you going to let me finish my answer or keep distracting me?”
He held up his hands. “Yep. Sorry. You’re right.” Damn, he was curious now.
She rolled her eyes. “To answer your question, of course I’ve been with women. Like I said, we’re gender fluid. Anyway...” She flicked her wrist.
Hmm... he would have to ask her more about that later. The thought of his Jack with another woman had him squirming in his seat. But she was right, now wasn’t the time. Later for sure, though.
“Anyway, when he met me, he almost had a spaz attack.” She giggled as though recalling a favorite memory, and he frowned.
“Oh, stop. You don’t have to be jealous.”
“Not jealous,” he grumbled.
“Yeah. Whatever, you ugly grizzly.”
He winked. “Sure, Jack. You just keep telling yourself that. If it helps you sleep better at night.” It shocked him how different he was with her, but she brought out a different side of him, one he’d never known existed before—a carefree flirt who lived only to see her smile.
Once again, her foot found his. This time, though, she left it on top of his, and he let her.
They’d had sex only once and kissed only a few times. In the past three months, they hadn’t allowed themselves to get touchy-feely at all, as if both of them understood that opening Pandora’s box would lead them right back to where they’d been before.
Yes, he went home every night with a raging hard-on and had to relieve himself by hand just to get sleep, but that was better than the alternative of her ignoring him and him pushing her away.
They were too explosive together. This was their safe place, together but also apart.
But the dynamics had shifted. They both seemed to understand that it was their last night together, so the unwritten rules were being tossed aside.
“What happened to Braden?” he finally asked. “Why did you leave Angoon?”
Happy as he was that she had left, because otherwise he would never have known her, August hated seeing her sparkle die.
Her words were so low, he had to strain to hear them. “I did the one thing all sirens know not to do.”
Not sure if he wanted to know more, but also knowing that he would never be able to let it die if he didn’t, he asked, “What’d you do?”
She took a deep swallow of her beer, and that act alone shocked August enough to know that whatever had happened had shaken her to her core.
Squeezing her eyes shut, she whispered, “I fell in love with him.”
It felt as if someone had just ripped the rug out from under his feet. Intellectually, he understood that he had not come first. Neither had she. But August could honestly say that he had never fallen in love before either. There had never been a woman alive who had held his interest the way Jack did.
He had never met anyone else who had made him curious enough to know everything about her. He had never willingly suffered through hell each night just by being in another woman’s presence and not being able to touch her.
Hearing her admit to him that she had been in love before felt like a blade to his chest. He clenched his back teeth, not sure what to say or how to say it.
Her hand reached for his and she gave it a gentle squeeze. “Look at me, bear.”
It was hard, but he did. And he drank the sight of her in—her oval-shaped face, her pretty blue eyes and bow-shaped lips, those high, razor-sharp cheekbones, and her delicate nose.
“He didn’t love me back because sirens aren’t capable of love.”
He cocked his head, confused. “But you just said—”
She sighed, letting him go, or at least trying to. But he snatched her hand back, holding fast to it as if it was his lifeline.
And she let him.
“I’m broken, Auggie. I’m not like normal sirens. We enjoy sex. The chase. The hunt. The feel of bodies pressed close. It’s our lifeblood. But we don’t want or need more than that. Except me. I had to leave Angoon because I was suffocating there.”
He squeezed her fingers. “And now you’re going to leave here too.”
Her smile was so sad that it made him tremble, desperate to wipe it off her face.
“Yeah, well, I just can’t seem to help falling in love with people that can’t love me back.”
As if someone had just punched a fist through his gut, August went absolutely still. Was she implying that she loved him?
Hurt shrouded her, and this time she put a little more effort into pulling her hand out of his, but he hung on, refusing to let her go.
The words he’d been dying to say all night slipped out as easy as a thought. “What if I don’t?”
This time, she went absolutely still. “What?”
Licking his lips, he plowed on. “What if I refuse to do the mating ritual? I can, Jack. I can choose not to do it.”
Her eyes widened, and in them, he read fear and panic, but also hope. The fire was small, but it was there. “You would do that for me?” Her words seemed to echo through the empty bar, causing his heart to squeeze painfully in his chest.
He nodded. “I would do almost anything for you, siren.”
Her mouth parted just slightly. Then in a flash, she was up and out of her chair, walking around the table to him.
Stunned by what she was doing, he didn’
t fight her when she released his hand and placed her hands on either side of his chair, pushing him back away from the table.
His little siren was much stronger than she appeared. Her face was intensely serious as she stood up, placed her hands on the hem of her shirt, and with one smooth motion, pulled it up and over her head.
His body went rigid at the sight of her lacy black bra and her smooth, flat stomach. He swallowed hard.
Next, her fingers landed on the button of her jeans. With a flick, she had them undone. Then she was unzipping and shoving them down her long, lean legs.
His eyes feasted on the skimpy, black lace panties she wore. When her hands landed on his waist, he sucked in a sharp breath. His body was a riot of sensations—hot and cold, excited and impatient.
Was she telling him yes? Was that what this was? Was she going to seal this partnership with their bodies?
His thoughts scattered when she undid his button and zipper. Quickly, he helped her shuck off his jeans, leaving him only in his boxers and shirt.
She tugged at his hemline. “Shirt off.”
With the type of speed he wasn’t generally known for, he whipped his shirt off and tossed it over his shoulder.
Holding out her hand to him, she helped him to stand. Again with very few words between them, she pushed his boxers down.
He was hard as a rock and bobbed at attention under her touch. A happy, mewling sound slipped off her tongue that caused his flesh to tingle.
He wasn’t so delicate with her under things. With a heavy growl, he dug his fingers into either side of her panties and ripped them off, shredding the delicate lace. He would buy her another pair, or twenty, a hundred, a thousand, whatever she wanted.
August started to reach for her, but she shoved him back down into the chair. He landed with a plop, ready to growl at her. But then she was straddling his legs, and his eyes rolled into the back of his head as she eased her drenched sex over the top of him.
She fisted him expertly as she positioned him. His cock slipped in smoothly as though she’d been made just for him.
Immediately, her sex magick filled the space between them, heightening the already incredible pleasure to near nuclear levels.
August: Mating Fever (Bears of Kodiak Book 2) Page 5
