Siren Awakened (The Cursed Seas Collection)

by Elle Middaugh

  By the time I was done coming apart, he still hadn’t gotten off.

  “What the hell, Cruz?” I panted, barely able to lift my head from his shoulder to gawk at him. Was there something wrong? Was I not sexy enough to do it for him?

  He smirked and kissed me again. “Stamina, an unfortunate side effect of magic training.”

  I snorted. “Right. Unfortunate. I know men who’d cut off their limbs for endurance like that.”

  He nestled his face into my neck and kissed me. “Are you not enjoying yourself?”

  Desire stirred back to life, tickling up and down my spine. What kind of a question was that? I don’t know any woman who’d loathe double orgasms from a gorgeous guy.

  “Yes, of course, I am, but I want you to be enjoying yourself too.”

  “Hey,” he said, grabbing my wrist and pulling it up to his lips. “If I wasn’t enjoying myself—” He paused to pull my hand down his chest, abs, and groin and settle my grip around his still-incredibly-hard length, “—would I still be this turned on?”

  I smiled deviously. It inflated my ego to know I had that kind of effect on him.

  “We don’t have all night, though,” I said, putting a hand on his chest and pushing him backwards toward the riverbank.

  He stepped back to keep from falling and eyed me curiously.

  “We might not even have another day,” I added.

  The further we got, the shallower the water became. It didn’t take long for my breasts to rise above water, instantly drawing Cruz’s heated gaze. That look, coupled with the night breeze, made my nipples harden, which in turn, made Cruz groan. It was an animalistic sound that had me ready for round three in an instant.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, sounding a little worried that the fun might be over.

  I grinned, then sobered up and bit my lip. “Getting you off.”

  With a little shove, I pushed him into the grass and straddled his hips. His eyes were suddenly hooded, not quite shading the fire burning behind his gaze. I don’t know why, but I had a feeling this is what he needed—to be...not necessarily dominated, but pleasured. He’d given me mine, so now it was time for his.

  I lifted my hips, lined him up, and slowly lowered back down, taking in every rigid inch of him. Lust blaze across his features as he watched me. I ran my fingers through my hair and tossed it off to the side, then slid my hands down to cup my breasts. His chest rose and fell, as I thumbed my nipples and rolled my hips. Pressure and heat pooled between my thighs, squeezing me tight, and ramping up the tension. Apparently, my little show was turning us both on.

  The more I rocked, the heavier his breathing grew, and I had a feeling he was finally getting close. So I released my breasts and slid my hands down to rest on his chest, literally riding him. I don’t know if it was the pressure, the position, or just the buildup, but he suddenly gripped my hips and pushed up into me as far as he could manage, shuddering as he came long and hard.

  “Oh my god,” he muttered with a satisfied smile. “Please tell me this isn’t the end of the world, because I really want to come like that again.”

  Laughing, I pulled us both back into the water to clean up.

  “I feel the same way, magic boy.”

  I was happy. Happier than I’d been in a very long time. Certainly happier than I should have been, considering we were hours away from impending doom. I just couldn’t help it. Being with him had been even more amazing than I’d imagined it would be—and I had definitely come up with some pretty steamy scenarios in my mind.

  We floated lazily in the river, unable to keep the satisfied grins off our faces.

  And that’s when the bone-chilling sound of a conch filled the air.

  Chapter 19

  No, no, no! I mentally pleaded with myself. This couldn’t be happening.

  I rushed from the water, struggling to drag my skinsuit back into place, then sprinted toward camp, not even waiting to make sure Cruz was following. There was no time for waiting. Maybe if I hadn’t been neck-deep in the most blissful sex of my life, I would have had time to do my job and protect my people at camp.

  The reprimand stung, and it didn’t truly seem fair, even as the thought crossed my mind. I tried my damnedest to push it aside, tried to simply concentrate on running as fast as I could through the viny undergrowth, but it didn’t want to leave. I blamed myself, and maybe even Cruz a little bit, for us being absent during our team’s time of need. Who knew what sort of danger they were now in?

  When I finally reached camp, I was stunned to find them peacefully sitting around the fire as if nothing had happened.

  I gasped for breath as I asked, “What’s going on? Why’d you sound the conches?”

  A smile suddenly tore across Alanza’s face and she erupted into a fit of laughter. Her amusement was apparently contagious, as the others started smiling and chuckling a bit too.

  A glare cut across my face, sharp as icy water. If Arlo had been here, he would have threatened her life and removed her conch privileges. I thought about doing those very things myself, but the guilt from not being there was too strong. It was almost as if I deserved the nasty trick.

  “The conch is reserved for the direst of circumstances,” I said seriously, working hard to calm my ire and my breathing. “Don’t ever use it like that again.”

  Alanza had the decency to look slightly ashamed. Though, if her smile and the twinkling in her eyes were anything to go by, she was definitely still amused.

  “All right,” she conceded reluctantly. “I’m sorry.”

  Cruz showed up a moment later, huffing and puffing and dripping wet, sending Alanza into another fit of giggles. This time Catalina and Danny joined in on the laughter, and even Alex chuckled. I rolled my eyes but smiled a bit. Their amusement was ridiculous.

  “What’s going on?” Cruz puffed, looking right at me with furrowed brows and parted lips.

  I sighed and straightened my posture, trying to appear queenly. “Apparently the team thought it would be funny to trick us into thinking there was an attack.”

  Cruz’s frown deepened as he scanned the crowd, whose laughing faces were lit up in a jovial orange glow thanks to the light of the fire.

  “Why the hell would anyone do something so stupid?” he demanded.

  Alanza valiantly raised her hand. “The look on your faces was absolutely priceless. I mean, seriously, you two thought you were being so clever by sneaking off in different directions. But you came running back from the exact same place.”

  “It was definitely obvious,” Danny added, glancing up through his dark lashes. He was way too pretty to be pirate. It had me wondering, yet again, who he really was.

  Cruz rubbed at the back of his neck almost nervously, while I kept my attention on Danny.

  “How did you become a pirate?” I asked, seemingly out of nowhere.

  His grin spread wider. “Trying to change the subject, love?”

  My icy glare came back and deepened. “Answer the question.”

  Noting the seriousness in my tone and gaze, Catalina and Alanza sobered up and jabbed two tridents in the pirate’s direction.

  “The queen has spoken,” Catalina told him. “You will answer her.”

  Danny licked his lips, and it seemed to me that he was stalling. Was he coming up with a lie, or was he debating on telling us the truth? I had no clue what the truth might’ve been, or if I’d even know it if I heard it, but I wanted to know what he had to say nonetheless.

  Eventually, he sighed and leaned back against a tree.

  “I was a sailor. I’ve always been a sailor, since I was knee-high running around the deck of my father’s ship. I came from a lucky family, one who’d suffered little since the meteor. Sailing was my father’s hobby of choice, and I’d picked it up immediately, growing up to be quite the sailor myself. But then, things got hard.”

  Danny glanced around the group, and sighed once more, realizing he had to continue the tale.

  “M
y mother got sick and my father had to sell his boat to help pay the local healers, but nothing helped. She was dying, and she needed more treatment. So my father sold as many of our possessions as he could, he borrowed money around every turn, but it still wasn’t enough. She died anyway. And he was left with a ton of debt. He started getting threats on his life. The debt collectors said that if he didn’t pay up, they’d kill him.”

  Danny swallowed hard. “I couldn’t let that happen. I had skills in sailing, and pirates had loot. I realized that if I joined them, I’d have no trouble paying off my father’s debts. So I tracked down his debtors, one by one, and promised to repay them myself. Finally, they laid off the death threats.”

  Alanza lowered her trident and placed it in her lap. “So you became a pirate to save your father’s life?”

  Catalina lowered hers too.

  Danny nodded. “It’s a dangerous lifestyle, but I managed to navigate through it pretty well. I paid off my family’s debts, and then some, helping my father to refurnish the house and even acquire another little boat for sailing. It wasn’t nearly as large or elegant as the one I grew up with him having, but the way my father’s eyes lit up upon seeing it, that made it worth every jewel I’d spent on it.”

  All my suspicions vanished. At least now it made sense why he seemed too pretty to be a pirate—he was too pretty. He’d come from a family of wealth and happiness and love. He wasn’t born into the brash and cutthroat world of pillaging and plundering.

  “Why did you remain a pirate after his debts were paid?” I asked.

  It was the only thing that didn’t really make sense.

  “Captain Seabane wouldn’t let me leave. He recognized my skill as a sailor and wanted me as his first mate. If I left, he said he’d personally set fire to the island I grew up on, killing not only my father but all the other inhabitants. So, I stayed.”

  “Which explains why you didn’t go rushing back as soon as you could after we captured you,” Alex added while rubbing an oily cloth along his gun barrel.

  Danny nodded again. “I’d rather him think that I’m dead and gone, just like the others. Maybe now he’ll leave my father and my island alone.”

  Alanza stabbed her trident into the ground and crossed her arms. “And what do you think of us? We kidnapped you and forced you to join our crew. Sent you on a suicide mission for a race of people you care nothing about. Threatened to kill you around every turn.” She pursed her lips and shook her head. “We’re no better than this pirate captain.”

  I uncrossed my arms. Alanza was right. But before I could give the order to set him free, he continued speaking.

  “That’s not true,” he said softly. “I’ve had dealings with sirens in the past, long before I became a pirate. We both have a deep-seated love of the sea, so we actually get along quite well. I’d never want to see them dead, or their entire race extinct.”

  This time I spoke up before anyone else could.

  “You are free to go, sailor.” I made sure to avoid calling him a pirate this time. “We won’t keep you from your father. You’ve served long enough as an unwilling crewmate. It’s time for you to return home.”

  He chuckled but stayed put. Not exactly what I was expecting.

  “I can’t. It feels like I’d be going against who I truly was to neglect the sirens like that. To neglect the sea like that.” He stayed silent for a moment before chuckling again. “And seriously, after witnessing firsthand what’s out there, do you honestly think I’m going to try my chances in these woods on my own? Hell no! I’m staying right here, thank you very much.”

  Everyone chuckled and I turned my gaze towards Cruz, who wasn’t laughing.

  “You do realize,” he began slowly, “that stealing from innocent people is not exactly honorable, right? It’s possible those very people were scrapping coins to pay healers to save their own sick loved ones.”

  He had a point.

  I turned back to Danny, who nodded. “Yes, I suppose it is. But that’s the law of the lawless. When have you ever had to scrape by for anything? When have you left your high seat at the magic academy long enough to witness the suffering of others? When have you had to make a hard choice, knowing full well there was no right answer?”

  Cruz’s lips twisted and he turned away. “I’m not going to pretend that I’ve walked a mile in your shoes, sailor,” he said, adopting my new title for the ex-pirate.

  “Good, because you’ve never even walked a few feet in shoes like mine.”

  Alex glanced up from wiping down his gun and pointed the dirty rag at Danny. “Don’t go acting like your life has been nothing but miserable, kid. You were a spoiled rich boy too, up until a few years ago.”

  Danny and Cruz glared at each other.

  Alex sighed and started putting the rags and brushes of his gun cleaning kit away. “I think you two need to just agree to disagree. Whatever rivalry you have going on all of a sudden, it’s not doing us any favors. Let’s just lie down, and get a good night’s sleep. We need to be focused and ready to tackle whatever Yaxchilan throws at us tomorrow.”

  I swallowed hard and avoided Cruz’s stare.

  He was right about Danny, but the sailor’s past didn’t really matter all that much to the current mission. What was the point in bringing it up? To stir up trouble? Did he not trust him? Was he jealous? Was there something he wasn’t telling me?

  I didn’t know, but Alex was right: it was time to sleep.

  ///

  The next morning, tension had started growing between Cruz and me. It’s like there was something we needed to talk about, but neither of us was willing or able to start up the conversation. I thought that after we’d been intimate I’d be able to move past the part where my thoughts were solely focused on him, but even now, as we marched ever closer to the sacred resting place, he was all I could think about.

  After the horn-blowing bullshit Alanza had pulled last night, it wasn’t like our relationship—whatever the hell it was—was a secret. Not that it ever really was. I mean, they’d seen us holding hands and making out on numerous occasions. We should have been able to openly flirt around or whatever. But for some reason, we weren’t even walking close to each other today. I was up behind Alex and Catalina as usual, and he was in the very back behind Alanza and Danny.

  It was so unlike him to be this distant. Was last night not as purely fucking magical for him as it had been for me? Was a one-night stand seriously all he was after? And now that he’d gotten what he wanted, he didn’t have a reason to talk to me or even look at me anymore?

  That theory alone burned a hole into my chest. My fingers clenched tightly, as did my teeth.

  I was the queen of the sirens. I didn’t need a man, least of all a human one who made me feel used and unworthy. My only reason for journeying above land with these slimy human assholes was to find the Legacy Stone and save my people. End of story.

  Besides, we were likely to all be dead in a few hours anyway.

  He didn’t use me. I used him. Yes, that’s what I’d tell myself. I was only interested in taking the edge off, and now that it was way, way off, I’d be moving on. Forward, to better things. Or, worse things. Terrible, deadly, world-ending things.

  And best of all? I was happy about it, damn it!

  With those thoughts filling my head for the next few hours, I’d gotten distracted enough to not even realize where we were. I scanned our surroundings, as sheer and utter disbelief filled me like a puffer fish. We’d we made it to Yaxchilan...and there was absolutely nothing there.

  No mutants. No pirates. No random forest animals chirping or scuffling through the trees. Nothing.

  Cautiously, I walked around, temple to temple, placing the stone down at potential sacred places. I don’t even know how many stairs I climbed, or how many hours it took, but by the time I was done, I was sore, sweating, and thoroughly pissed off.

  We’d chosen the wrong location.

  Yaxchilan was not the sacred resting pl
ace of the Legacy Stone.

  Chapter 20

  “You mean to tell me,” Alex growled, ripping his hat off his head and fisting it, “that I lead you through the jungle, battling mutants, hurricanes, earthquakes, and more mutants, and we weren’t even headed in the right direction?”

  He cursed and threw his hat, stamping it into the dust.

  “You knew this might happen,” I said, squaring my shoulders and refusing to back down. In fact, I took a few solid steps in his direction, jabbing my pointer finger at him. “I can’t see the damn future, ranger, and neither can you. None of us can. Yaxchilan was mine and the mage’s best guess, but we were wrong. Time for a new plan.”

  Cruz’s eyes narrowed, probably at hearing me call him by his job description rather than his name.

  Well good. Hopefully, he knew I was pissed at him.

  “And what exactly is plan B, Queenie?” Alex retorted, reaching down to pick up his stupid dusty hat. Maybe that meant he regretted his little temper tantrum. It’d be back in full force here in another minute though, once I told him there really was no plan B yet.

  “Tikal,” Cruz said before anyone could witness me flounder.

  Alex steered his glare in Cruz’s direction. “Tikal? That’s in the completely opposite direction! What makes you think it’s not just another dead end?”

  Cruz shrugged. “Honestly, after seeing what happened right here, I don’t think anyone or anything could guarantee the probability of our success in any particular area. All we can do is keep trying, and we have to keep trying. Finding that damned stone unleashed all sorts of dark sorcery. I’m assuming that’s where all the mutants came from, and if that’s the case, they’re going to keep coming—which makes this an above-sea problem too.”

  Alex let out a string of vivid curse words before aiming his gun at the trees and randomly firing. Once the anger was out of his system, he laid the gun on the ground, ripped open his pack, and studied a map to reorient himself.