Chapter Four
“You still sure you’re okay to be mine forever?” Eliza had asked the question half a dozen times already but she needed to ask one more time.
Tara rolled her eyes. “Yes. I’m sure.”
“Okay okay, I just… Want you to be sure.” She turned to walk into the deeper water. The twilight sun cast a magical glow across the water but didn’t change the nerves knotting in her belly.
“Babe, I’m not leaving you.” Tara tugged on her hand, stopping her. Her gaze was intense, burning through Eliza’s anxiety and sealing her fate. “You don’t need to worry about that.”
Eyes burning with threatening tears, she held her lover’s gaze. How she had gotten so lucky she didn’t know… and wasn’t about to question.
“A hot lover, the best sex I’ve had in my life, some cool scars, and the chance to turn into a shark whenever I’m ready? I’d be a fool to turn any of that down.”
Eliza laughed. When she’d explained to Tara about the possibility of being able to become one of the Ocean Kissed, to shift into a shark herself, her eyes had lit up with a hope and desire almost as desperate as Eliza had ever seen.
“Okay. If you’re sure…”
“I am.”
“Then let’s do this.” Eliza took Tara’s hand and led her out into deeper water. Despite having completed the necessary paperwork and counseling with Monty earlier that day, she still felt nervous, almost like she was about to be caught doing something she shouldn’t do.
“Hey.” Tara’s voice broke through her anxieties again, a tug on her hand centering her.
“We got this. We’ll figure it all out. We might have dived right into the deep end with this but…
What we have? What we feel when we’re together?
” She raised their joined hands and kissed Eliza’s knuckles.
“If it can handle the chaos of a rushed mating, I’m betting sand dollars it can handle a whole lot else.
So, whatever is going through your mind, don’t worry. We’ll take it on together.”
Eliza held her gaze, dark in the dim light of the stars.
She was right. Just because she’d been alone all this time didn’t mean she had to remain alone, or that she wouldn’t have Tara’s support going forward.
And she wasn’t wrong about their connection, either.
Over the last few days, they’d built something beautiful and trusting together, all things considered.
“Okay,” she said at last.
“What do you need from me?” Tara asked, smiling nervously. They’d been over the process before, the bite, the common ways people did it, and Monty was waiting up the beach for the proof to be displayed once it was done. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t both be nervous anyway.
“Just your trust, pretty girl.”
“You have it.”
Eliza stepped close and kissed her, the waves lapping around them gently. Naked as they were, she could feel when Tara’s nipples hardened with arousal, and stroked her hand slowly down her lover’s stomach to the thatch of hair at the apex of her thighs.
“Let me make you feel good,” she whispered when their lips parted.
Tara nodded and spread her stance obligingly.
Eliza deepened their kiss as she dipped her fingers below the waterline and into Tara’s folds, slipping in the warm desire flowing there.
She toyed with her lover until she was weak in her knees.
When Tara’s legs buckled, Eliza turned her around and nestled her back to front, supporting her weight with her knees and the help of their buoyancy in the water.
Tara’s head fell back against Eliza’s shoulder as she continued to tease her, and soft moans slipped between her lips.
Her pineapple and coconut scent was intoxicating as she became completely soft and pliant in Eliza’s arms. She raised one hand to pluck at Tara’s nipple and felt her lover shiver.
“Getting close? Gonna come for me, pretty girl?” she purred.
“Yes.” Tara’s voice held a note of pleading. Eliza kissed her neck, licked the delicate skin between shoulder and jaw, tasting the salt water and musk of her lover… her mate.
Eliza let the magic of the Ocean Kissed burn partially through her, just enough to shift her teeth.
It hurt, controlling herself like that, but it was necessary for the ancient rite they were now undertaking.
She felt her mouth water as she thought about sinking two rows of teeth into Tara’s luscious flesh…
Tara ground her hips into Eliza’s hand and gasped, a sure sign she was on the edge.
“Good girl,” Eliza growled in her ear, the words hard to form around her now pointed teeth. “Come for me.”
On a sharp cry, Tara did as ordered, gushing into Eliza’s palm.
An instant later, Eliza sank her teeth into her trapezius, feeling another hot gush, but this time of blood in her mouth.
Tara’s cry of pleasure became a cry of pain, and Eliza pumped her jaw to stimulate the venom to enter the bloodstream faster and ease the burning ache.
She knew the second it worked, as Tara convulsed again, this time with an orgasm so strong it squeezed Eliza’s fingers like a vise.
Her guttural moans carried across the water, and Eliza almost couldn’t hear them from the racing of her heart.
The same surge they’d shared from that first touch rose within them again, boiling up through their blood, their souls binding together with the ancient rite and exchange of venom and blood.
Eliza disengaged her jaw at last and licked the crescent-shaped wounds in Tara’s flesh. Tears stung her eyes and her heart felt like it would burst with joy. I’m not alone anymore, she thought. I’ll never be alone again.