The warrior she was coming dangerously close to loving tilted his head. Didn’t he understand her words?

Lucy sucked in a breath and fought the tingling of tears.

Torun would give up on her. He had to. The realization that she cared about it had shocked and horrified her at the Cancun marina, but even then, it was way too late.

Now, he would regretfully kiss her goodbye and that would be that. Farewell Sea Opals. Farewell Torun. His imagined farewell knifed her in the gut.

“You do not wish for young fry?” he asked, cautiously frowning.

He didn’t get it.

“I can’t have them,” she repeated. “It’s biological. I can’t have them, you know, inside me.”

“You do not wish for young fry inside you?”

“No. I want them, but they won’t grow. Now, do you get it?”

“Yes. Young fry do not grow inside you because we have not lain together.”

“No! Because I can’t have kids. There’s something wrong. It’s impossible for me.”

He frowned harder. Clearly, infertility was entirely new to his tribe. “I think it is very possible for you. If we lie together, you will carry a young fry. That is how it happens.”

“Not for everyone.”

“Yes, Lucy. I will teach—”

“Torun!” Lucy was going to strangle him. She gripped her belly in her fists. “There’s something wrong with me. My ex-husband and I tried for kids a thousand times.”

His brows lightened. “With me, it will be different.”

“With you, it won’t be different. There was nothing wrong with him.”

“Lucy, a mate who dimmed your light as he did must have something wrong with him.”

Well, okay. Fair enough. She appreciated Torun for saying so.

But that was beside the point.

“He could not possibly give you a young fry,” Torun continued. “I brighten your light, and so, I will perform this gift for you.”

If only that were true.

She’d cried buckets of tears, and each one started with the fervent wish, if only.

Torun didn’t understand. He waited expectantly for his pronouncement to ease her sadness.

She took a deep breath and tried again to explain.

“I went to doctors. I took injections. I went through all of my savings, credit cards, money I didn’t have. All it did was prove I don’t have ‘a conducive uterine environment for ovum implantation.’”

Her hands shook, and a helpless tear from her memories leaked out.

Sitting in the exam room with her hospital gown tied up in the back, kicking her socked feet and trying on names — Willow? Scarlet? Blake Junior? — with her hands resting on her still-flat belly. The nurse coming in; the sympathy on her lined face not matching the happy news she was supposed to be giving Lucy. We reviewed your test results. It’s not a baby.

Opening the mail two years later in the front hallway. Exhausted from treatments, exhausted from life. The top letter was the final decision from the insurance company to discontinue treatment on account of Lucy’s change in employment status. The bottom letter was a notification of divorce proceedings from Blake’s attorney.

But the thing that really made her cry that day was the cactus. She gave it to Blake for their first anniversary because it was un-killable. She didn’t notice until right then, but it had dried up and fallen over. It was a husk rather than a plant. Perhaps it had never been alive.

“Lucy,” Torun said urgently, jerking her free of the past and centering her on the rusty trawler in the dark, sea-scented night.

She swiped the tear away. Hadn’t she promised herself not to cry? And here was a big, stupid, gorgeous tribal warlord with sexy tattoos and muscles begging her to mother his children. She wanted to mother them. Please god, let her mother this hot male’s children! And now she had to go through the same denial and acceptance and grief all over again.

Lucy jabbed her index finger against his hard pectorals. “Stop trying to convince me that I didn’t go through all that, okay? We don’t always get our dreams. Get used to disappointment. It’s a fact of life.”

He closed gentle hands over her trembling ones. Sincerity burned in his gaze. “You are strong. Strong enough to overcome any challenges.”

“Not this one.”

His words, like his warmth, were a balm on her soul. But it would go away. Once he got it through his willfully thick skull that he needed to seek babies for his tribe elsewhere, then he would have no choice but to leave her cold and alone.

“I lost my savings, my house, my car, my job, my size, and my dreams. Blake gave up on me. I gave up on myself. But I’m here, and I’m trying to get back to the person I was before all this happened.”

“That is impossible.”

She choked on a sharp laugh. “Harsh! At least tell me I have a chance. I wasn’t always this weepy, or weak, or fat.”

Each adjective made him wince as though she had struck him with a dart. She shut her mouth. A pity party didn’t help.

“Are you finished injuring yourself?” he asked softly.

The lump in her throat squeezed. She cleared it. “I’m not sure.”

“Lucy. Your culture is very focused on a body’s size. Yes? A smaller size like Gracie’s is more desired.”

“Or Elyssa.”

“Or that one.” He held her in his warm hands and fixed his steady aquamarine eyes on hers. “Under the water, this body difference disappears. All women are radiant. Your soul sings and shines. It does not matter what you look like. Under the water, every woman is beautiful.”

She swallowed hard.

“Now, you are feeling the pain of your old injury.” He stroked her fingers with his, soothing and calming her with his touch. “But, Lucy, a bride who has drunk the elixir of the Life Tree has never failed to produce a young fry. In all the generations, there has never been a single failure.”

She sniffed. “Trust me to be the first.”

He stroked her cheek, palmed her head, and pressed her to his chest, drawing her into his embrace and rocking her softly. “These are the thoughts that dim your soul star.”

Yeah. She closed her eyes and accepted his kind comfort. Yeah, they probably did.

The tired thoughts, the negative thoughts, the powerless thoughts, the defeated thoughts. Maybe he was right. She had been battered for so long, it was impossible to recover on her own. She needed his helping hand, his undefeatable strength, to rise once more and become a bright, vibrant, determined woman.

She needed to reclaim her power.

“Believe in yourself,” he said softly, echoing her thoughts. “Believe you can overcome any obstacle.”

Of course, if she believed, the pain of slamming into that obstacle would hurt a hundred times worse. Skepticism was the thin shell that held her guts in place when she sobbed so hard she could barely breathe. It wasn’t much. But it was better than nothing.

“Believe,” he repeated firmly.

“Yeah. Okay.” She scrubbed her face and stepped back. “Sorry. I’ll drink your magic elixir and believe in myself tomorrow if that’s okay. Tonight is kind of a no-go.”

“Do not despair your old injury. You will understand when you meet the Life Tree and become healed by it.”

“Sure. Healed. Right.”

He raised his brows. “Is a secret race of mermen living beneath your ocean really more believable than a healing tree?”

“I already said I didn’t believe in you.”

“Your friend does.”

Elyssa.

Jealousy shot through Lucy.

“Sorry I can’t be more like her.” She turned away and gripped the railing to stare into the dark, star-spattered night.

He moved behind her. His presence was cool and soothing. When she did not move away, he stepped against her once more, his arms hemming her in against the railing, his hard body pressing against her soft derriere.

“You are tense.”

“Gee, I wonder why.”

He still didn’t get that she couldn’t have children, and she honestly didn’t want him to. She’d already promised to try his diluted elixir. That was one step away from being his bride. A truly good person would have told him firmly no. Giving into temptation, flirting with the dream, would only end in heartbreak. Hers. Also, just possibly, Torun’s.

And for that, she couldn’t forgive herself.

“I really am going to hell,” she murmured.

He rumbled a low laugh. “If you are going there, I will join you.”

“I believe you will.”

The long length of his masculinity brushed against her inner thigh and buttocks.

Her heart pounded and her body came to sudden awareness. His skillful fingers had been inside her minutes ago, bringing her right to the delicious edge of a hot orgasm. For a dying civilization of virgins, he had an excellent command of female desire.

Hey. Wait a minute.

“How come you are so good at getting me off?” she asked.

“Am I?” His deep voice purred with pride. “I listen.”

“Just listening?”

“And taste. I can see a color of your desire.”

Her desire had a color?

“It is easier to sense in the water, but I am getting familiar with this sensing in the air, also.”

His rough jaw brushed her cheek. It was a good sensation. A masculine, husband sensation.

An honest person would push him off and an angel would force him to find another bride.

Lucy tipped her head to the side, making room to fit him closer.

She was dishonest. Hellward bound. And she was dragging Torun with her.

He murmured an order against her sensitive neck. “Come with me into the water.”

“Right now?”

It would feel great to slip into the ocean depths with him. Naked, their slippery bodies pressed together, with nothing between them.

“Now, while the others are sleeping below.”

She could forget about her problems, forget that Torun’s embrace was temporary, forget that she would wake up tomorrow still the same broke, fat woman that no one believed in. “So long as that’s all you’re asking.”

He wrapped one powerful forearm around her waist and tightened, pressing her against his mounting arousal. His lips nibbled sizzling imprints on her trembling earlobes.

“We will swim to the deep cave, and you will drink the temporary elixir, and become mine.”