Chapter Three
ELIAS
I shook the water from my hair and trudged through the knee-deep break toward the beach, invigorated from the exercise and eager for the night’s performance. “Good swim. Feeling more awake?”
“You know it.” Niko stretched his arms behind his back.
“Nice.” I clapped him on the shoulder. “All set for a night out and a week of front desk duty.”
He groaned and slumped his shoulders.
“And remember—no need to turn tonight into a first date. Just take the adoration hit and move on.” He rolled his eyes and shrugged off my hand.
“I’m serious, man. It’s in our nature. Embrace it.”
Niko’s forehead creased and jaw worked as if chewing on an idea. “Don’t you ever want something more? Something deeper?”
“No.” Simple. Definitive. True. “I don’t.”
He stared at me blankly for a moment before shaking his head.
But who in their right mind would tether themselves to a single person when an entire ocean of possibilities lay before them?
Not me. The rush of flexing my song’s power and basking in adoration slaked any thirst I had for connection.
All without strings. I didn’t need anything more, and someday, Niko would realize that’s all he needed as a siren.
“Good thing your dad didn’t feel that way, or you wouldn’t be here.”
I stopped, chuffed out a snort, and held up my hand to count on each finger the reasons he was full of shit.
“One: Dad got Mom pregnant. Two: he wasn’t an asshole, so he proposed even though he’d only known her for all of two months.
Which, three: absolutely changed his life.
And four: he was lucky Mom didn’t freak when she found out he was a siren and that she was pregnant with a demon baby. ”
“Okay, okay.” Niko held up both palms, relenting. “But you forgot five: regardless of how they got there, your parents, and my parents, love the hell out of each other and wouldn’t change things for the world. I’m just saying, E, something more is possible.”
I shook my head. Maybe, but he’d never convince me that possible was worth the drama of finding it or the risk of rejection. I was perfectly content being a bachelor.
We emerged from the water, and my attention snapped to a flash of pale blonde in my periphery.
A woman stood knee-deep among the shallow waves, eyes closed, face lifted to the wind.
Her hair, so pale it was almost white, was tied high on her head, the long ponytail a waterfall of sunshine cascading past her neck and ending between sculpted shoulders.
Wisps of hair floated around her freckled face in a halo of morning light.
My eyes travelled the length of her magnificent body.
She wore cropped yoga pants that hugged powerful yet slender legs, and she had an ass that made my hands fist. She held her hips, and her shapely, muscled arms, tinted pink from the sun, stood out against her flowy tank top.
She had to be an athlete. What a beauty.
I licked my lips and, with my gaze still laser-beam focused on my newly acquired target, tapped Niko on the shoulder. “Gimme a minute.”
He stepped alongside me. “Seriously, E? You can’t wait till we go out tonight?”
“And pass up an opportunity like that? Are you kidding?”
“She looks like she wants to be alone.”
I tore my eyes away from her killer curves and considered Niko. He watched the woman, his head tilted and mouth shaped into a frown.
I followed his gaze, trying to see what had him making that face, but my eyes landed on her ass in those yoga pants, and desire replaced any ability for rational thought.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But not for long.”
I toweled off, ran a hand through my hair to tame its post-swim disarray, and strode over to my target. My power surfaced as I closed in, my instincts urging me to entice her with my voice.
“Hi.” I wove my siren’s call into that single syllable.
She blinked her eyes open and turned to face me, full lips parted in surprise. Or was that irritation? It didn’t matter.
“Hello.” Her voice was quiet, but rich and husky. She scanned my face for the briefest moment, then fixed her eyes back on the water.
What the hell?
“I’m Elias Georgiou.” I introduced myself slowly, drawing out the words and threading them with invitation. “I don’t recognize you. Are you here for the tournament?”
“No.”
Her eyes never left the horizon. Why wasn’t she batting her lashes? Reaching out to touch my arm? Where was her smile? Her attention?
Determined, I thickened the power in my voice. “Just visiting then?”
She faced me with narrowed eyes as if studying an unwelcome blemish.
“You seem determined to have a conversation. All right. Here it is.” She folded her Linda-Hamilton-in-Terminator-Two arms across her chest and held me in place with an equally fierce stare.
“My grandma—my only family—passed away last week, and I’m here to deal with her estate.
I just came from her—now my—empty house after a real upbeat phone call about finalizing my divorce.
So, yeah, not really in the mood for small talk. ”
Her harsh tone lashed me like a whip, and I winced. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to intrude. You were alone, and I thought you might enjoy some company.”
She glared at the water, nostrils flaring with quickened breath, and tapped an impatient finger on her arm.
She wanted me gone, but an unrelenting force pushed me to try again. Maybe it was my siren’s compulsion. Or maybe it was the challenge of her indifference. Or maybe it was her lower lip sticking out in a sexy pout begging to be kissed…
I blinked hard to clear my head of that mental image. Whatever the case, I craved her attention.
“Look.” I opened my arms in an inviting gesture.
“If you want to take your mind off things for a while, there’s an open mic tonight at Shelter Cove.
Sometimes the best medicine is a change of scenery.
” I flung a thumb over my shoulder. “Niko and I will be there.” I shrugged, trying to affect casual indifference even though my stomach roiled at the possibility of rejection.
“Might help to relax with some drinks and music.”
“Thanks. I’ll think about it.” She unfolded her arms and showed me her back.
A quick breath escaped me, her perfunctory words a verbal elbow to my gut. I hesitated, dumbfounded by her lack of interest and nauseated from her denial. But…
She hadn’t said no. And I’d only used my speaking voice.
A full-on rejection of my song would have left me in far worse condition.
For all the strength and satisfaction I gained from my siren’s compulsion, the flip side of the deal was not great.
I had to take her open-ended rebuff as a win. “Hope to see you there.”
The generic words died on the wind, and stunned by her blatant disinterest, I walked away.
I ignored the smug expression on Niko’s face, grabbed my towel, and started hightailing it back to our beach house. He fell in step beside me, shaking his head in a way that let me know he thought I was an idiot.
“You’re so single-minded. You didn’t even bother to read her, did you?”
My head snapped up in confusion, and Niko’s smug expression transformed into a judgmental frown. “You’re unbelievable. You didn’t feel that? How much pain she was in? I felt it, and I wasn’t even talking to her!”
Sirens had emotional intuition, a type of empathy that went far beyond instinct. It allowed us to experience other’s attraction, adoration, and devotion, to soak up those emotions and satisfy our siren’s compulsion. Unfortunately, the ability wasn’t limited to those feelings.
“Really?” I grimaced, a twinge of guilt adding to my discomfort, and glanced over my shoulder to where the woman stood hugging herself and gazing out over the ocean. “No, I suppose I didn’t.”
“Grief, fear, loneliness—they were rolling off her in waves. It’s no wonder she blew you off.
Your speaking voice alone would’ve been hard-pressed to cut through all that.
” Niko regarded me with serious intent, eyes steady and assessing, mouth stern.
We’d known each other our entire lives, and he’d never looked at me with such judgment.
“And I don’t believe you’d be heartless enough to try. ”
“No.” I shoved a hand into my hair and tugged hard at the strands. “No, I’d never do that. I should have read her.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and gave it a squeeze. “Just making sure.”
Something inside me dislodged at the thought of that sharp-tongued, sexy goddess in pain. It banged on my chest for attention like a crazed beast rattling the bars of a cage.
I craved her undivided attention, the compulsion to sing to her and secure her adoration unrelenting.
But Niko was right; I wasn’t a monster. And this reaction—this thing inside my chest—it didn’t feel like my siren’s instinct.
I wanted to talk to her, soothe her, brush my thumb across those pouty lips.
I shook out my arms, rocked my head from side to side, and rolled my shoulders, trying to dispel those unwelcome thoughts and the nausea that still lingered from her earlier rejection.
But despite my efforts to forget the chance encounter and focus on the upcoming night, a seed of hope sprouted that I might see her again and get another chance.