I Taught a Siren to Court... Then Became His Mate novel · Chapter 30 of 32

Chapter 30: The Bluff Cottage

"From who?" I said.

"Margie. Out of her coat pocket, at supper." He looked pleased with himself. "She was going to give it to you tomorrow. I wanted to give it to you tonight."

I turned the paper tag over under the porch light.

One word on it, in Margie's square capitals.

BLUFF.

"Jet. What is this?"

"Get in the truck," he said. "I'll drive."

"You'll drive."

"I parked straight on Wednesday."

He drove.

Eleven miles an hour, all the way up the north road, with the turn signal on the whole time and both hands on the wheel.

He stopped at the top of the bluff, where the road ended in a turnaround of crushed shell.

There was a cottage there.

I'd seen it every night for nine months from the ledges below.

Gray shingles, a green door, one big window facing the cove.

A summer family had owned it for fifty years and stopped coming.

It had been for sale since before I came back to the island.

The lights were on inside.

"Jet," I said.

"Go on," he said. "It's your key."

The door stuck, the way island doors do.

I put my shoulder to it, and it opened.

The front room was swept clean, with a woodstove and two old chairs, and the window full of moon and black water.

The back room had a bed in it.

An iron bed, painted white, made up with a new quilt.

It had little boats on it.

"The brothers carried the bed up," Jet said behind me. "Margie found it in her barn. The librarian made the quilt. She says she's tired of curtains."

I turned around.

"You can't buy a house," I said. "You don't have money. You don't have a last name."

"Margie does."

"Jet."

"The pearls," he said simply. "The strand I gave you was the best of them. There were more. A jar, in the cave. Every one I ever found."

"Your whole life."

"Margie took the jar to a jeweler in Portland in June. She bought it with them. In your name. She said a man with a tail can't sign a deed."

I sat down on the edge of the bed, very suddenly.

He crouched in front of me, the way he had on the beach the night I found out about the rite.

"Is this the rite?" I said. "Is there a sixth step nobody told me about?"

"No. The rite's done. You said yes." He took my hands. "This is just me."

"It's too much."

"It's a house with a stuck door," he said. "And a window. From that window, you can see the cove where you sat in the sleet. I watched you from the water for nine months. Now you can watch me back."

My throat closed up.

He looked at me, very seriously.

"Lesson one," he said. "You ask. You don't take."

"Okay."

"Will you live here with me? When I have legs, and when I don't?"

There were stairs, I'd find out in the morning, cut into the side of the bluff, all the way down to the water.

Forty-one of them.

He'd counted.

"Yes," I said. "Yes. You absolute thief. Yes."

He laughed, and pulled me up off the bed and into his arms, and kissed me in the middle of our own room.

I pushed the flannel shirt off his shoulders.

He let it fall.

"Slow," I said against his mouth. "We've got a bed. We've got a door. Nobody's coming."

"Nobody," he agreed.

"Then take your time."

His hands came to my hips and stayed there.

Not grabbing.

Just holding, like I was something he'd carried up forty-one stairs without once asking if he could set me down.

I kissed him again.

Slower.

He made a sound low in his chest, almost a purr, and I felt it through my ribs.

"Lesson one," I said against his mouth. "You ask."

"I remember."

He pulled back just enough to look at me.

Gray eyes, steady, the moon from the window caught in them.

"Every time," he said.

"Every time what?"

"Every time I ask, you'll say yes."

He said it like a fact from the marine forecast.

I laughed.

"You're very sure of yourself for a man who drove here at eleven miles an hour with his blinker on."

"The blinker was for safety."

I kissed the corner of his mouth.

He let me.

Then his hands slid up my sides, slow, taking the hem of my tank top with them.

"Take this off," he said, his hands warm on my ribs.

"You know you can."

"Tell me," he said. "Out loud."

I lifted my arms.

He pulled the tank top over my head and dropped it on the floor.

← Chapter 29 · All chapters · Chapter 31 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend