Feeling shot into Aya’s limbs like a thousand darts and raked her veins with prickly spines. She folded over with a shriek. It was the worst phantom pins-and-needles of her life.

Soren floated beside her. His wide hand rested on her thick, neoprene-covered back and his face reflected his worry. “Aya?”

His voice sounded funny. Less growly and more rumble-y.

Something had changed.

But she couldn’t focus on what it was. Deep unease filled her.

“Relax. Don’t fight the transformation.”

“Just…give me…a second.”

She had drunk the nectar. Her fins would transform in the future, but she should be able to breathe as a mermaid under water now.

But she couldn’t.

Cold pooled in her lungs, like she’d accidentally swallowed an ice cube and felt it all the way down her throat. Her lungs filled with seawater.

It took iron will not to react in a thrashing panic.

She would not panic. As a company vice president, she was harder and smarter and more disciplined than the average woman. Lucy, the first woman to discover mermen and be transformed, and Aya’s cousin Elyssa, the second modern woman to transform, had panicked. Neither of them knew what to expect. But Aya had researched. She had prepared herself. She could not lose a fight to discipline.

Aya held herself taut as the long second passed and her brain caught up with her body.

Look. She was not suffocating in a world of horrible darkness.

…But she was.

Wasn’t Soren’s kiss enough? Fear zagged in her belly. Maybe it wasn’t possible for Aya to transform. Van Cartier Cosmetics scientists had conducted a hundred tests trying to recreate the magical nectar. She’d drunk gallons as a test guinea pig – and never transformed.

Maybe the missing ingredient wasn’t in the nectar. Maybe it was in her soul. The piece that made others soft, loving, and friendly like Elyssa and Lucy was missing from Aya.

It was too late to go back to breathing from her cracked tanks. The air hoses collapsed and the dive computer beeping on her wrist announced over and over she was out of oxygen.

She gave herself a pep talk. “The first transformation is the hardest.”

Soren rubbed her shoulders. His worry was sweet. Just like his kiss. His presence made her feel safe.

Aya didn’t do “sweet.” She didn’t do helpless, and she definitely didn’t do the welling happiness of remembering how he’s pressed his lips to hers and swept away in his kiss.

“I will never claim you as my bride,” Soren had snarled at her during the company bride pageant she’d organized two months ago. “Not even if you were the last female on the shore.”

Which was saying quite a lot since the recently-discovered mermen were in desperate need of females to repopulate their race.

Aya hadn’t forgotten the hot slice of pain. It wasn’t fair that she was compulsively, almost obsessively drawn to Soren. He made it clear he didn’t like her at all.

And now, of all the mermen in Atlantis, he was the one who had saved her life.

She twitched to get away from him. She didn’t want to face him until she was at her full strength and able to converse like an adult. Under full control.

And right now, it didn’t feel like she would get there. Something was wrong.

He stopped stroking her but he didn’t move away.

The fire-ants-eating-her-limbs sensation changed into a new, desperate, clawing sensation.

She couldn’t breathe.

Aya clawed at her mouth. At her throat. Something awful constricted her. She was trying to breathe through plastic bags. And she was going to panic. In spite of her determination not to.

“Aya?”

“It didn’t work.” Pain localized in her frontal lobe. Her brain, deprived of oxygen. She thrashed. “I’m not transformed.”

“Fins come later.”

She shook her head.

Agony pierced her brain. Her stomach roiled like the water had grown rough, and it bolted for her lips.

Soren gripped her biceps. “What is it?”

“Take me to the surface.”

He looked up. His brow darkened with determination. “Give up the air world. You are a mer now.”

“There’s something wrong with me. I don’t have the right soul to be a mermaid.”

“Lies.”

“I can’t breathe!”

He blinked. Realization dawned. His large fists gripped the neoprene squeezing her body. His pectorals flexed. Fastenings popped. The thick fabric tore in half.

Her chest expanded. Water flushed through her with refreshing relief. The headache faded.

He tugged the garments off, discarding them.

She trembled with weakness.

He pulled her into his arms.

For the first time in possibly her whole life, she didn’t fight. Because it was Soren. Aya gave in and gasped, resting her forehead on his broad shoulders and clinging to his immoveable biceps. Their naked legs brushed and their feet dangled.

Her feet were still small and human. His legs were normal until just past the ankles, where they elongated into the giant, accordioned, scuba-fins of the mer.

They floated in the ocean.

Logic eased into her with the calm.

How silly to panic. She’d been primed for failure because she had made so many mistakes.

First, there was her distraction at the bride pageant two months ago.

The mermen emerged from the ocean desperate for women to repopulate their race. Van Cartier Cosmetics was only too happy to organize a pageant-style selection process – in exchange for the mer’s valuable Sea Opal gemstones. While she’d struggled to control her obsession with Soren, the male in charge who should have been the real target of her interest, King Kadir, had slipped from her grasp.

At least King Kadir had shown excellent judgment by selecting her loyal, kind-hearted cousin Elyssa as his queen.

Second, Aya had been so distracted trying to support Elyssa and outsmart her rivals she had missed key signs of betrayal at home. Furious at Sea Opal shipment delays, Aya’s CEO mother broke Blake Edwards out of jail, armed him with Aya’s scientific research submersible, and set him on Atlantis to take the coveted Sea Opals by force.

The Life Tree of Atlantis was life for the mermen. There was no photosynthesis at these depths. The mermen of the city existed in a symbiotic relationship with their city’s magical plant. Yes, the magical plant also produced Sea Opals, but ripping it out of the ground was the same as killing the golden goose.

Destruction of the Life Tree hurt Aya’s precious cousin Elyssa, turned the vibrant city into dead mulch, and it would outright kill Elyssa’s husband, King Kadir.

Days ago on the surface, when Aya realized how she had made it possible for Blake to pilot straight to the city and execute her mother’s xenocide, she had lost her mind. She’d tried so desperately to save the Life Tree. To save her cousin, and to save Soren.

Of course when she transformed, she would have gills in her back. The tight diving suit constricted the water flowing past her new fish-lungs and she had confused being unable to breathe through her mouth with the real issue.

She was a mer now.

Wonder tingled into her body.

In fact, the ocean was not dark at all.

It was bright as day. She could see approximately how many miles? Elyssa had reported she could see “forever” and Aya had warned her not to water down the report with hyperbole, but now it seemed like Elyssa had been right. Bright colorless “sky” stretched for miles in every direction. Like standing at the top of the Grand Canyon. The sea was vast.

How amazing that she could see hundreds of feet without her glasses or contacts. The mermaid elixir must have healed more than the life-threatening internal injuries during her transformation.

Schools of fish voyaged across the depths like flocks of birds in an endless sky. Predators swooped like hawks. The hidden world she could barely penetrate with a flashlight was exposed with a crescendo.

A crescendo of music.

The silvery fish sang a peculiar, haunting tune. Swordfish boomed a bass line. Even the bare rocks far beneath her thumped with an audible beat. Her senses had crossed and things that should only be visual took on strangely beautiful auditory quality.

She was transformed.

Well, except her hands and feet were still normal. But, like Soren said, they would emerge later, after she mastered her new form.

She would set her mind to mastering it.

What was Soren thinking about her hanging out, clinging to him? She lifted her head.

His face set in cold fury.

That she did not expect.

His gaze flicked to her. It did not soften. “You can breathe.”

“Yes.” She reached for poise. Their naked bodies were touching, rubbing, and she was suddenly far too aware of him. She let go and paddled back. “Thank you.”

“Stay here.” He focused on something over her shoulder and kicked.

Stay here?

With two strokes, Soren was already half a soccer field away. He focused on the fleeing, growling…submersible? Yes, that shuddering, whining metal machine was the submersible. It looked so different with her new eyes. Instead of being this barely visible monstrous thing, it was now just an ordinary, brightly lit scientific probing vessel churning across the oceanic sky.

Soren closed on it with deadly intent.

Why? The Life Tree was no longer pinched in its claw. It had fallen free at the same time she had. So what did he want with…

Oh.

She tried to paddle after him. “Soren, stop!”

“Stay there!”

“Please wait.” He was so much faster than her it was as if she were stuck in one place. “I borrowed that submersible. It’s worth half a million dollars.”

“I will rend it into pieces and it will never attack Atlantis again.”

She knew it.

Aya had taken out insurance policies, but “destroyed by enraged merman” was likely not covered.

“It’s not going to attack again,” she promised. Her chest vibrated loudly to cover the distance. “When it reaches its port, authorities are waiting to take Blake into custody. I’ve set it all up.”

“It will never reach port.”

She floated helplessly as the warrior grew further and further away. She had no skills for this. Watching men walk away from her was a too-familiar sight. And this time, it was Soren.

Her gut clenched.

“Soren?” She left the edge of panic in her cry. “Soren!”

He checked. “What?”

It worked.

She swiftly calculated which response would most likely end with a partial return of the submersible’s security deposit. “Don’t leave me.”

He looked at the submersible over his shoulder, then back at her. “I will remain within your sight the whole time.”

“I’m frightened. This is new. Don’t leave me all alone.”

He growled and kicked. Faster than it seemed possible, he returned to her side.

And she saw him with her new eyes.

His chest loomed even wider and more powerful than before. Even sliced with new injuries from the recent battle, he was magnificent naked. His body was broad like a Maori warrior, all muscle covered in intricate black tattoos, and the sharp vee lead from his tapered waist to a proud, thick cock.

She wanted to reach out and touch.

That was dangerous.

Aya rested her hands on her bare thighs. What did he see when he looked at her? A slender woman without any curves, who worked hard and starved herself to fit into a size six, and no one appreciated it?

His dark gaze focused on her eyes, not on her body. “You are not frightened.”

True. Frightened wasn’t the correct feeling. But her words still held a kernel of her inner emotions.

“It’s dangerous.” She flexed her too-human ankles. “I’m afraid.”

He scanned the ocean. “You will see predators.”

Well, that was true. Right now, she could see impossibly far in all directions. He focused on a distant creature that looked like a prehistoric alligator with fins instead of feet, but it was far away, and he clearly didn’t consider it an immediate threat.

He focused on her again. His eyes narrowed. “Twice now you have forced me to let my enemies go. They will use our weakness to strike again.”

Aya didn’t know what first time he had let his enemy go, but she knew Blake was done. “If the submersible doesn’t crack and implode from the pressure, Blake will be grateful to land in the hands of authorities.”

Soren turned away.

“Please wait.”

He barely hesitated.

She needed a distraction. Logic didn’t work on him. Didn’t she remember their doomed interactions after the bride pageant? She had tried to politely gather information about where her cousin would be going as a new queen. Soren nearly threw a table through the window. Only when Aya lost her temper back and snapped at him to sit down had he calmed.

He was always getting under her skin.

She had to reach him. “I think something is wrong with me again. I feel strange.”

He turned and his gaze raked her for the problem. “You can breathe.”

“It’s not that.”

She paddled forward and linked her hands around the back of his neck. His short, dark hair teased her fingertips. She rested her forearms on the hard cords of muscle tightening along his neck. A deep cut was pale and healing on his shoulder, and she took care to rest her forearm next to it, away from the jagged edge.

“I’m feeling strange urges I can’t control.”

He focused on her with his full, heart-stopping intensity. A woman could get lost in his burning gaze. Those hardened cheeks. That inflexible mouth.

Down lower, toward his—

“Aya.” His growl drew her attention up where it belonged. On his suddenly smoldering gaze. “Urges like what?”

Urges to save her company a half-million dollar repair fee.

Urges to taste the male who had teased her with a soft brush of his lips, and now teased her to do so very much more.

Urges to give into the temptations she ordinarily denied herself.

This was how mistakes got made. This was how people got hurt and projects got destroyed. This was how she convinced herself to go home alone night after night. Always alone.

She was different now. Transformed.

Aya could be anyone she wanted.

“Urges like this.” She lifted her lips to his hard mouth.