CHAPTER FIVE
ELLIOT
“I wasn’t,” the woman rasps between coughs, kneeling on all fours in the wet sand as she retches seawater onto the shore.
Her indigo-dark hair is plastered to her face and back, moonlight silvering the strands, her whole body trembling from cold or shock or both.
If I hadn’t been patrolling after the surfers packed it in for the night, trying to track whatever strange pulse of magic had been thrumming through the air, and if her dog hadn’t barked like a possessed thing from shore, she’d be dead.
The thought hits me harder than it should.
“Then what,” I ask, trying and failing to keep my voice neutral, “do you call tumbling head over heels in an undertow?”
She lifts her face and glares up at me, blue eyes sparkling in the moonlight.
Something primal, ancient, and instinctive rears up inside me.
Mine.
The word slams through me so suddenly I almost stagger.
Impossible.
I don’t even know who she is.
Still, something in me recognizes her.
Or wants to.
“I was walking the dog when she took off down the beach.” She points accusingly at the golden doodle now sitting nearby like the picture of innocence, tail thumping in the sand.
“That still doesn’t explain how you ended up in the water,” I press. “Don’t you know it’s dangerous to swim out there alone? At night? There could be sharks. Rip currents. Sea lions waiting to bite the first delicious thing they see.”
The second it leaves my mouth, I want to walk into the ocean myself.
Delicious?
Really?
I groan inwardly.
Her brows lift despite everything. “Sea lions don’t live on the East Coast.”
I blink.
Well.
“Touché,” I concede. “Mostly true. But there is a small colony near Crescent Cove.”
Her expression says she’s deciding whether I’m serious or unwell.
I’m not sure myself.
“That is beside the point,” I add, because somehow I’m the one flustered here. “What are you doing out here alone?”
She pushes shakily to her feet and attempts to dust sand from her soaked sweats—a losing battle. Water clings to every curve, and I have to make a conscious effort not to stare.
She notices me noticing.
Takes one cautious step backward.
Interesting.
“I was walking,” she says slowly, eyeing me now like I might be the dangerous thing on this beach. “What are you doing out here alone?”
“I was patrolling.”
“What are you, some kind of lifeguard rescue hero?” she asks, voice dry. “Looking for damsels in distress?”
There’s bite in it.
I like bite.
“Actually,” I reply, folding my arms, “sort of. Marine rescue.”
Her gaze narrows. “You’re trespassing.”
I bark out a laugh. “It’s a public beach.”
She points up the shoreline toward the old Victorian rising over the dunes.
“That is my family’s house. This is our beach.”
The Prescott house.
Well, I’ll be damned.
The esteemed Prescott granddaughter.
And suddenly things make a little more sense.
“Your family doesn’t own the whole beach.”
“We kind of do, actually. Why do you think there are no houses for half a mile in either direction?”
She crosses her arms over her chest in challenge.
Wet. Furious. Beautiful.
And somehow even more beautiful the more she argues.
That seems unfair.
“Well,” I murmur, unable to stop the grin tugging at my mouth, “good thing I’m your neighbor.”
“My what?” she sputters.
I hold out my hand.
She looks down at it like I’ve offered her a live electric eel.
“Elliot.” I tip my head toward the dunes. “I own the house a mile north of yours.”
Her eyes flick to mine, suspicious.
“So you could say,” I drawl, “I was just doing my neighborly duty.”
Her gaze drops to my hand again.
Doesn’t take it.
Interesting.
“Seeing as we’re both south of our houses,” I continue, leaning in just enough to make her notice, “it would only be gentlemanly of me to walk you home.”
Her chin lifts.
“I don’t need help walking home.”
“No?” I glance pointedly at her. “You’re soaked, half-drunk, missing a shoe, and still have to walk your dog.”
Her eyes dart guiltily to the dog.
Score one for me.
“And,” I add, lowering my voice, “you owe me for rescuing you.”
“I do not owe—”
She cuts herself off, jaw tightening.
Goddess, she’s adorable when she’s irritated.
Finally she exhales sharply. “Fine. Walk me home and we’ll call it even. The last thing I need is owing favors to random strangers.”
“Deal.”
She bends to grab the leash, and my brain, traitorous thing that it is, catches the curve of her backside outlined by wet sweatpants.
A saint would look away.
I am not a saint.
The woman could be wearing a potato sack and still ruin a man.
She straightens and catches me looking.
One dark brow arches.
Caught.
I recover with a smirk. “After you, damsel in distress.”
She huffs a laugh despite herself and starts walking.
Gin trots between us as if supervising. I’d seen Mirabella walking her a few times over the years I’d been in Crescent Cove. Enough to know the dog’s name, but no more than friendly neighbors.
And as I fall into step beside this impossible, sharp-tongued woman I just pulled from the sea, one thought lands with unsettling certainty.
This woman is going to be the death of me.
Why didn’t you invite her over? You really want to leave our mate alone after she nearly drowned?
For the hundredth time since I left her on the back steps of the Prescott beach house, my inner sea lion has not stopped his incessant commentary about the dozen ways I should have ended the night—except for the one thing I actually did.
Come home alone.
I exhale and brace my hands on the kitchen island, granite cool beneath my palms, staring at the clock on the stove. Half past eleven. The house is too quiet, the kind of quiet that presses in on your ears until all you can hear is your own pulse.
And her.
She filled every thought like the tide creeping in, slow and relentless.
And her scent.
You’d think nearly drowning in the ocean would leave her reeking of salt and seaweed, but even through that, through the brine and the storm, her sweet jasmine and bergamot overpowered everything. It clung to my skin, my lungs, like I’d swallowed it whole.
She just smelled… right.
Like spring rain on blossoms.
Like something I didn’t know I’d been missing until it was suddenly there.
Not to mention the amount of magic radiating off her.
What was she even trying to do, attract the attention of every magical being for miles?
Even the water had listened to her. It hovered, suspended in trembling droplets when I’d dragged her from the surf, the waves reaching toward her like hungry fingers that didn’t want to let go.
The air had practically vibrated, elemental magic without direction, without control.
Chaos wrapped in something soft and unsuspecting.
I’d meant to ask.
But the way she’d looked at me, glossy-eyed, unfocused, like she was caught between worlds, left me wondering if she even knew.
Shock. She had to be in shock. And the faint scent of gin on her breath.
Groaning, I drag my fingers through my thick brown hair, pushing it out of my eyes. It’s getting too long, curling at the ends, brushing my lashes. I should’ve cut it weeks ago, but work had a way of making time disappear.
What if she likes our hair longer?
“We are not trying to impress a witch we just met,” I mutter, the words sharp in the empty kitchen. “Let alone one radiating off-the-charts levels of magic unintentionally.”
But she’s ours. She smelled good.
“Yes… she did,” I admit, quieter now, the fight leaking out of my voice as I glance toward the window.
The Prescott house sits just within view through the dark, its outline softened by the night. One by one, the lights blink out until the place goes still.
Good.
At least someone’s getting sleep.
She needs it. After the gin. After nearly drowning. After… whatever the hell that was with the ocean answering her like it knew her name.
I wonder if she’ll even remember tonight.
How could she forget? Oh—that’s right. You left her on her doorstep and didn’t even claim her as ours. Didn’t even scent mark her.
“For the last time,” I snap, pushing off the counter, “I’m not scent marking someone or claiming them. I just met her, and you can barely call it that.”
We rescued her.
“We would have rescued anyone.”
The lie sits heavy in my chest the second it leaves my mouth.
Because no one—animal, human, or inhuman—has ever affected me like that. Being near her, smelling her, touching her. It sent something primal snapping awake inside me. Protective instincts roared to life so fast it nearly knocked me off my feet.
It had taken everything I had not to throw her over my shoulder and take her home. To make sure she slept. To make her eat. To keep her safe where I could see her.
If you would’ve listened to me…
“If I would’ve listened, she would have called the cops,” I shoot back, yanking the curtains closed with more force than necessary. “And I wouldn’t have a second chance.”
The house settles behind me as I head down the hall, the wood floors creaking beneath restless steps. The bedroom offers no relief, just rumpled sheets and the lingering scent of salt air clinging to my clothes.
The alarm clock glows in harsh neon red.
12:32 a.m.
“I don’t care about some magical instinct that thinks she’s ours.”
You’re telling me you don’t feel the pull? Her scent isn’t driving you crazy?
“That’s not what I said.” I drag a hand down my face, exhaustion finally beginning to creep in at the edges. “What I meant is—that’s not how we’re going about this.”
Silence stretches for half a second before I add, quieter, “My main issue is why her magic was so out of control.”
And why the ocean answered her.
And why it looked like it didn’t want to let her go.
The thought follows me into the bathroom. I flick on the light, wincing as it floods the small space, too bright, too real. The mirror reflects a man who looks just as restless as he feels, hair a mess, eyes too sharp, like he’s still standing on the shore instead of tile.
And how do I protect her from herself?
The question weighs on me more than anything else tonight.
I don’t answer.
Instead, I grab my toothbrush, squeezing a line of mint across the bristles before shoving it into my mouth. The familiar routine does little to quiet the storm in my head. Foam builds as I scrub harder than necessary, like I can scour the memory of her scent from my lungs.
It doesn’t work.
It’s still there.
Jasmine. Bergamot. Salt. Her.
I spit, rinse, then lean over the sink, turning on the faucet. Cool water pools in my hands before I splash it over my face once. Twice. Three times. Droplets cling to my skin, sliding down my neck like echoes of the ocean.
When I reach for the hand soap, my fingers still.
A cheap bottle. White label, peeling at the edges. Something I got at a white elephant exchange with my coworkers last year, some overly floral nonsense I’d never bothered to replace.
I press the pump anyway.
The scent hits immediately.
Floral. Sweet.
Too close.
Not the same, but close enough that my chest tightens.
Jasmine.
My grip on the counter hardens as the memory of her surges forward, vivid and unrelenting—the way her body had felt in my arms, the way the ocean had fought me for her, the way her magic had pulsed wild and untamed beneath my hands.
Ours.
I rinse the soap off quickly, like it burns, staring down at the sink as the water swirls and disappears.
No.
Not ours.
Not yet.
But the thought lingers anyway, persistent and unavoidable as I shut off the faucet and lift my gaze back to the mirror.
“How the hell am I supposed to stay away from her now?”