The soft light of the morning, along with the breeze, made the island look new, sparkly. She’d left the shelter without breakfast and her stomach grumbled. The ocean was calm, like mirrored glass, and Syreena decided to go for a swim.
She shucked off the bodice and the skirt and tossed them under a palm tree.
Out here, clothes made no sense, especially when no one could see her but they’d washed up separately and she’d worn them to preserve at least some of her modesty, even if she was invisible. Thankfully, she’d had them when she found Dylan. Otherwise the situation would’ve been even more awkward.
Being stuck on an island with a mermaid was difficult enough. A naked mermaid would’ve been impossible.
The water felt wonderful on her skin. She smiled when the salt stung in places where Dylan’s stubble had rubbed her skin. After just enjoying the shallows for a bit, she focused her mind and prepared for The Change.
Nothing happened.
Syreena refocused.
Still nothing.
The Change had always been easy. From the beginning, she’d been able to switch back into her fins within just a few minutes. She touched the amulet that hung between her naked breasts and tried again.
Nothing.
Syreena had been ready to ditch her fins years ago but now that the option wasn’t available to her anymore, she was scared. What if she needed to swim through a storm? How was she going to make it back to Saint-Domingue without being able to swim?
For as long as she was stuck out here in the middle of the Caribbean, she needed fins.
Was it the love making? Had that sucked all the power out of the amulet?
After a couple more tries, she gave up and decided to try The Change later in the day. For now, she needed to find some materials for the raft.
On that account, she hit the jackpot.
Judging by the sun, it was past midday when she walked back to the small beach where the shelter was located. Dylan was hovered over his sand-drawings again, scribbling with a stick.
“I found fifty bottles,” she called. “Just around the neck of the cay.”
He looked up from his work and smiled. Syreena instantly warmed to him. In all the right places. “That brings our total to three hundred six.”
“Just a few more days and you should be able to start construction.”
“If I can figure out a way to tie them together,” he said. He clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “Maybe you can find some string later.”
Syreena didn’t want to tell him. She wanted to try again tonight before she told him that the mermaid fins might be a thing of the past. “We have your boot laces.”
He shook his head. “Not enough to be of much use.”
She stood over him and he wrapped one arm around her leg. His fingers trailed along the sensitive skin on the inside of her thigh. “Last night was …,” his voice trailed off and he grinned. He pulled her closer and kissed her softly on the lips.
“Magnifique,” she finished for him.
CHAPTER SIX
Syreena wasn’t herself.
Dylan should’ve known better than to sleep with her. Despite the fact that she was nearly two hundred and fifty years old, she was young, naive. She’d been a virgin. He felt like the biggest heel in the world. He should’ve taken the time to explain things to her, make her understand what was happening.
But the taste of her was just too much.
He watched her walk along the shore, dipping her toes in the water every few feet. He should go talk to her. Ask her how she was feeling.
With a groan he rose from the sand and walked toward her. “You okay?” he asked when he reached her.
She nodded. “Fine. How’s the leg?”
He looked down and ran his finger along the sutures. “Healing nicely but it’s still a little tender.”
“I did pretty good work, then.”
“Excellent,” he said. “Listen, last night, I didn’t plan for that to happen. I should’ve–,”
“I planned for it to happen,” Syreena said. “You didn’t like it?” She held her hand up to her forehead to block the sun. In the half-light, her eyes shifted between blue and green. The diamond ring on her finger caught the sun’s rays and flickered.
“I liked it,” he admitted. “I liked it a lot.”
She smiled. “Then everything’s okay?”
“Better than okay. Magnifique,” he said, borrowing her word. “You just seem a little different today and I wanted to make sure you weren’t upset about anything.”
She bit her bottom lip. “I’m okay.”
He took her small hand in his. “Want to look for some bottles?”
“You romantic devil.” She swatted at him with her free hand. “You know just how to keep a lady entertained.”
They walked down the beach in the opposite direction she’d gone this morning. The cay was long and narrow and walking all the way around took the better part of a day. The found two water bottles and a cut-crystal perfume bottle.
“It’s so pretty,” Syreena said. “It looks almost new.” The bottle was nearly half full. Syreena put it close to her nose and sniffed. “I can’t smell anything.” She frowned.
“Here,” Dylan said, taking the bottle into his hand and pressing down on the spray. “Like this.” Surprisingly, it still worked. The scent of vanilla and lime poured into the air. Syreena skipped through the mist.
“Did I get some on me?” she asked.
Dylan leaned in and took a sniff of her neck. “Mmmmm,” he said. “Good enough to eat.”
On the way back to the shelter, Dylan looked out into the blue of the Caribbean and prayed he’d see a ship. Something. He needed to get off this island and with his aquaphobia getting worse, he wasn’t sure how he was going to talk himself into getting onto the raft.
Lost in thought, he wasn’t paying attention to where he was walking. When the surf licked his bare feet, he cried out.
Syreena placed her hand on his arm. “Did something bite you?”
Dylan shook his head. “Just stepped wrong. Still some soreness in my leg. I’m okay.” He hoped she didn’t hear the lie.
He hoped his fear would cure itself before he had to tell Syreena.
*****
Syreena wasn’t an engineer but she knew incredible bounty when she found it.
A huge fishing net had washed up onto the island overnight. There was enough string in it to make several rafts. She pulled it along the beach, kicking up sand as she half-skipped, half-ran back to Dylan.
“Look what I found!” she yelled. “It’s perfect!” She placed the net on the sand in front of Dylan’s drawings.
He picked up one end of it and looked it over. “It is perfect. The only thing we need is a way to lash them together once we put the bottles inside.”
“I have an idea.”
An hour later, her fingers were sore and bleeding but they had lashing. Syreena remembered a vine growing in the center of the island and she used a sharp shell to cut large sections of it off the trunks of the trees. She’d brought it back to the shelter and stripped the leaves from the vine. A large pile of naked vines, three to five feet in length, lay piled at her feet.
“Is this enough?” she asked Dylan.
He was systematically opening all the water bottles and draining every drop of water from them. “I think it will be.”
“Why do the bottles have to be completely empty?”
He looked up at her and her heart beat a little faster. She was becoming more and more attracted to him each day. And each day, concentrating on The Change became more and more difficult. Just the idea of raw fish made her stomach threaten to flip over.
“My math isn’t exact. Every droplet of water, no matter how small, adds up. We want the most buoyancy we can manage.”
Syreena still didn’t quite understand but she didn’t have to. She trusted Dylan.
“When I’m sure they’re dry, we’ll close them all
back up, divide them into two piles and tie a section of net around them. They’ll be like pontoons.”
“What about a platform?”
Dylan shook his head. “Still working on that.”
“There’s a large metal plate just a few hundred feet off the beach, on the ocean floor. Maybe I could bring it back and we could try it.”
He chewed on his bottom lip. “Depends on the weight of it but it’s worth a try.”
Syreena had forgotten she wasn’t quite the mermaid she used to be. She hoped she could pull it off. “I’ll dive for it tomorrow. It’s already getting dark.”
Maybe tomorrow, when she woke, she could concentrate enough to bring about The Change.
“Night time is the right time,” he said in that growly voice she was beginning to love.
“The right time for what?” she asked batting her eyelashes in an exaggerated way.
“Come over here and I’ll show you.”
After Syreena went to sleep, he eased his arm out from under her and walked outside to the beach. He lay back the sand and studied the stars. It had been a long time since he’d studied a star chart but he remembered enough to quickly located Polaris, the North Star. This far south, just over a thousand miles from the equator, it was low on the horizon. Luckily, it was a clear night and he spotted it after only a couple of minutes.
If only he had a proper chart and a calculator. He’d even settle for a sextant and some notebook paper.
All he had was his hand. He used his outstretched fist to take a rough measurement. He remembered, from a book he’d read aboard the boat, that the angle of an outstretched fist was approximately ten degrees. In just a few minutes, he’d found North and estimated his latitude.
He tried to remember the course of the Coast Guard Cutter, tried to figure out where he was when he went overboard. They’d sailed between Cuba and Jamaica with Cuba on the port side. They’d been heading southeast which meant Haiti must be to the east.
While there was no way to be extremely accurate, they could sail by night and navigate using Polaris and his outstretched fist.
Dylan took a deep breath. Haiti. Of all the beautiful Caribbean islands, she had to be from the one that wasn’t safe, stable. He had no desire to visit Haiti, especially after the destruction of the 2011 earthquake, but Syreena insisted on going back there.
The things men do for love.
Love. The word froze in his mind.
He couldn’t fall in love with a two hundred and fifty year old mermaid. He wasn’t in love with her. Attracted to her? Yes. Fascinated by her story? Absolutely.
In love? Nope.
If she insisted on Haiti, he’d take her there. He could find a phone, call for help and find a way back to his tub.
In five years, this would be a pleasant dreamlike memory. Nothing more. A story he’d tell his Coast Guard buddies after too much rum. Not that any of them would ever believe it was anything more than a story he made up just to impress them.
If Syreena could find the metal sheet and it was light enough to use, they could be off the island in a matter of days. She’d finally break the curse and he’d be back on active duty.
Not all relationships were meant to last forever.
He wasn’t sure if that realization made him happy or heartbroken.
*****
Syreena was up early the next morning. Making love to Dylan was like a magical sleeping draught. After the nights they’d shared, she no longer worried about her bodice and skirt. She was totally comfortable being au naturel with Dylan. Any modesty she might have possessed was a thing of the past.
She wanted to try The Change while she was rested and alert. She walked past Dylan and said, “I’ll be back.” He’d found a breadfruit tree in the center of the island and he was eating a large one for breakfast. “I’m going to see if I can find that piece of metal.”
“Be careful,” he said, chewing on a large bite. He swatted her naked fanny as she passed by him.
Syreena giggled with delight. “I’ll be back soon.”
In the shallows of the water, she closed her eyes and concentrated on her tail. She imagined the iridescent scales, the feel of the muscular fins. It took a while, but she finally began to feel the gentle tugging and fusing she’d become so familiar with over the years. The Change. It was happening.
When she opened her eyes, she was shocked at what she saw. Her tail wasn’t nearly as shiny as it once was and it looked weak. Small. Withered.
It scared her. While Syreena had been ready to give up her fins for a long time, she didn’t want to be stuck out here in the middle of the ocean with no way to get the things she might need from the ocean.
Being a mermaid made a lot of things easier. Like finding food, resources she could reuse and keeping safe in a storm.
She had to find the metal plate and she and Dylan had to get off the island. This might be her last swim as a real mermaid.
Syreena swam into the shallow water, flicking her tail behind her. Her fins weren’t very strong and she had to exert herself just to swim past the jagged reef that ringed this part of the island and into the deep. Since the first time Dylan kissed her, she’d spent more and more time on land and her fins had suffered.
She fought her way to the bottom, foot by agonizing foot. She swam along the sand, never slowing to pay attention to the fish or the coral. Syreena was on a mission and she had tunnel vision.
Only a few minutes into her swim, she felt like she wasn’t getting enough oxygen, as if she wasn’t swimming fast enough to keep water moving across her gills. She’d never felt that way before. Swimming as a mermaid had always been effortless, now it was a chore.
She was beginning to lose hope of ever finding the piece of metal when light reflected off something tucked partially beneath the sand. She swam over and used her fingertips to wipe the sand away. She’d found it.
The only thing left was to get to the surface with it.
She pulled it free and kicked as hard as she could with her tail toward the surface.
Halfway to the top, she knew something was terribly wrong. One glance down at her tail, and she knew she had to get to the surface fast. After centuries of wishing, her dream was coming true. At the worst possible time. Syreena wasn’t a mermaid anymore.
And if she wasn’t a mermaid, she couldn’t swim.
Before The Change, the deepest water she’d ever been in was the bath. She wasn’t sure she could make her legs work like fins but she didn’t have any choice. Her muscles burned like they were on fire. It took every ounce of determination she had to fight her way to the top. She was determined not to be the mermaid who drowned.
When she broke the surface, she gasped. Air rushed into her lungs making her feel light-headed. She cradled the plate against her chest, rolled onto her back and tried to slow down her breathing. No doubt she looked like a winded otter.
The cay wasn’t far. She had to get there.
By the time she walked onto the beach, she was exhausted. Dylan rushed out to meet her. “What happened? Why are you so tired?” He took the metal plate from her and tossed it onto the sand.
Syreena shook her head, unable to explain. She was so short of breath she wasn’t able to talk. She collapsed onto the sand. Dylan sat beside her and wrapped his arm around her.
Then the realization hit him. “You didn’t have to Change.” She looked up at him and their eyes met. “I don’t understand,” he said.
“I don’t think I’m a mermaid anymore. I never learned to swim before The Change. Without my tail, I’m in big trouble.”
*****
While Syreena dozed in the sand, Dylan moved the piece of metal to his staging area. He’d already made the pontoons using the empty water bottles and the net. The metal was thin and light and if he could find a way to use the remaining vines to lash it to the raft, it should work perfectly.
As he worked, he wondered about Syreena and her inability to Change. She’d told him several times a
bout the spell her father and his servant had cast. There were only two things needed to break it: she had to find a man who was her equal and her protector, and she had to return to the place where the spell was cast and drop the amulet in the ocean.
Neither of those conditions had been met.
Oh, Christ.
What if they had been met?
Dylan shook his head. He wasn’t her equal. She was the daughter of a wealthy plantation owner. Her father had been at the wedding of Marie Antoinette. Syreena was privileged, a French aristocrat. He was a kid from Miami who’d gone to college on scholarship.
On the other hand, whatever spirits were watching from above might count he and Syreena as equals. He designed the boat, she found the missing materials. She found and prepared the food, he built the shelter.
They were, kind of, equals.
Oh, fuck.
He didn’t intend to be her protector. That, too, just happened.
He couldn’t be the one. Wouldn’t be the one.
He didn’t have time for love. He had a career, a daughter.
A daughter he intended to spend more time with as soon as he touched solid ground.
“Ouch,” he yelled. The edge of the metal plate cut a gash into his finger. “Son of a bitch.”
Dylan still wasn’t convinced this whole experience wasn’t some kind of hallucination. A lucid dream. Something other than reality.
He was so busy trying to figure out how the hell he ended up on an island with a mermaid who needed to get back to eighteenth century Haiti, he didn’t realize Syreena was standing right behind him.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “We can leave as soon as I get this shit all tied together.”
“Did I do something wrong?” she asked. “Are you upset with me?”
He looked up at her and hated the way his body instantly reacted to hers. He was old enough to know better than to think with his dick but when he was around Syreena, he couldn’t help it. She was everything he’d ever dreamed of in a woman. If only she were really just a woman.
Even if they broke the mermaid curse, she was still a product of eighteenth century Haiti. The world was nothing like the one she remembered. There were computers and smartphones and credit cards. Television and radio. Electricity and cars.
Falling in Deep Collection Box Set Page 75
