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Happy Reading xoxo J.L. Myers

A scream lodged in my throat as my loft melted around me and a new scenery arose. Open salty air. A calm glittering ocean. Whipping breeze that flung my long hair back—to see my stalker at the end of the pier I was suddenly standing on. I gripped the railing and saw my mother’s and father’s initials etched inside the lines of a carved heart shape. The same pier from the photo of my mom? I had to have hit my head on something and passed out, right? This was nuts. Cuckoo. Totally bonkers. 

I pinched myself—and nothing happened. “Shit biscuits.”

“Calliope?” Sexonlegs actually seemed surprised, and if I hadn’t been having an aneurysm from the shock of what the hell just happened? I might have noticed the way his casual black V-neck sweater clung to his seriously toned chest. But I didn’t. Okay, well I still did, but I wasn’t dwelling on it much…because he was suddenly walking toward me. “Why are you…” His eyes lowered, but this time it wasn’t to check out my body under my sweaty T-shirt that clung to me in all the wrong places. His dark caramel brows shot up as he stared down at my hand and what I held. “Ah, I see.”

“You see what?” I shocked myself at my sudden ability to speak and at the fact that I was asking for answers from the psycho that had stalked me all the way home twenty-four hours ago. I gasped as the scale he’d been staring at disintegrated from between my fingers. “What the—?”

“She wanted us to meet. Her backup brought you to me.”

I edged back as he kept coming forward. “Uh-uh. No way, Batman. Cool your jets.”

Sexy Stalker’s eyes narrowed, but thankfully he stopped. “Batman? Jets? You say the strangest things.” 

“I say—” I cut myself off with a growl. “How did I get here? Where the hell am I? And why are you here, Psycho?”

His face cracked with a sudden smile that dared me to smile back. “Psycho?”

His reactionary chuckle sent spears of warmth from my chest down through my body. Don’t you dare, Calli. Don’t get friendly with Mr. Tall dark and killer with a smile.

Sexonlegs held out his hand, making me flinch. He held it sideways in the air between us, surfer locks blowing perfectly back from his face while mine tried to strangle me. “I’m Adamaris. Heir to the Deep. And you are in the sleepy town of Mystic.”

I kept my hands safely beside my body, curling them both into fists. “Oh, right. My next killer is a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Got it.” And Mystic? How had I ended up almost an hour away from home at the same freaking strip of beach I’d ended up at after she vanished? It didn’t make sense, and I wasn’t buying into whatever gibberish he had already spouted. No way.

Sexonlegs laughed again, and this time I couldn’t stop it. I laughed back too, those dimples of his killing my self-control and apparently my good sense to remain on guard. But then I sobered up, his darkening look reminding me of the terror I’d felt when he’d chased me from Uni and then appeared in the back alleys near my loft. “I did not expect you to be like this.” He indicated my figure, and I picked at my shirt, swearing when it clung back to my breasts as if it were controlled by his seductive stare. A distant trumpeted horn sounded out over the water, carried on the rough breeze. The look was gone from his face instantly, and his nostrils flared as his jaw clenched. He took a step back as if being a few feet away from me was suddenly way too close. Seriously? Ada-whatever-his-name-was chases me all the way home, appears in my bathtub, and then somehow is on this pier that I am totally dreaming about, and backing away from me? Well, if this was a dream…

“Nuh uh. You don’t get to back away from me. I want answers—” I gasped as I stepped forward. I darted straight back, seeing a rusty protruding nail sticking up from one of the thick wooden planks that made up the pier and had just penetrated the thin side of my sneaker. “Great. When was my last tetanus shot?” 

“Are you hurt?”

Sexonlegs came forward, reaching for me. I retreated this time, hitting the railing as my foot throbbed. Not a dream. This was real. My breath rushed and the pumping of my chest drew my stalker’s eyes. “Hey, my eyes are up here, jerk. And—and I asked you a question.” Well sort of, I hadn’t quite gotten that far, but that didn’t matter. 

Sexy Stalker seemed to get the hint as his roving eyes pegged me with a chilling stare. “I am here to complete a task. A dying wish of a powerful woman in desperate need, a partnership my father agreed to with certain…conditions.”

Conditions, it seemed, he was on the fence about, looking both intrigued and yet downright pissed at the idea…whatever the idea was. 

I shook my head. “Whatever you are talking about, it has nothing to do with me. I’m nobody. I’m nothing. And I want you to leave me alone.” 

“I’m sorry, Princess. I can’t do that. The deal is done, the terms set.” His lips curved into a sardonic smile. “Besides, your mother sent me. It was her drowning wish.”