To Enchant a Dragon by Amanda Milo Page 0,20

off the rest of them taking off their tops to better show off their assets.

Kalos nearly freezes into a stone statue beside me.

With a siren’s screech of fury, I lunge out of Kalos’s grasp and fling myself into the water, intending to permanently tie their seashells to their bodies, probably with lengths of their own hair. Hair I’m going to shear off even if I have to chew through it.

Instead, the slap of the seawater as I dive in makes me gasp. Everything below my belly button tingles—and most alarmingly, my ankles snap together and fuse. It isn’t a pleasant sensation, and I’m scared until my oh-so-missed tail-scales erupt over my lower half. Their shine and flash of color is blinding and welcome.

“Adella!” Kalos shouts, dropping into the water and making splashes big enough to better fit his real form. “Where are you hurt?”

I realize I’m floating, motionless. I tread water with my hands as my tail finishes forming under the water. I beam up at the man who’s rushed to crouch over me. “I’m all right! Kalos,” I breathe in wonder. “I’m turning back into a mermaid.”

Kalos’s face falls, and he stares around us, at the glorious seawater we’re wading in, like it’s poison. His eyes, when they meet mine again, are dead serious. “If you didn’t look so happy, my mate, I’d—”

My sisters shriek, “You’re MATED?!”

“—To that hunk?”

“—We’re still sharing him, though, right?”

“No! There’s no sharing!” I holler. “Kalos belongs to me!” I’m snarling the words, but the declaration brings a massive grin to Kalos’s face. He drops deeper into the water beside me, and his arms come around my middle and squeeze me for dear life, making us both sink until I flex my tail.

My tail! Oh, how I’ve missed it! I sigh happily and lean back against my mate.

“Where did you find him?” Pearl asks. “And how did you escape the dragon?”

“This is the dragon—” I start to say.

And then Kalos twitches against me and grunts.

And I just know. I spin around, sliding out of his surprised arms and ducking under the water—and I catch Sirena and Katiana each with hands full of Kalos’s anatomy that belong strictly to me.

Kalos manages to haul me out of the water with him before I rip out more than a few handfuls of their hair.

CHAPTER 12

ADELLA

Kalos was so uncomfortable being ogled (and fondled) that he fashioned a loincloth to cover himself. This act also saved my sisters because I was having visions of blinding the lot of them in a jealous rage—which is a completely alien reaction for any mermaids let alone my sisters and me, who have shared countless willing men.

The key being ‘willing.’ Because Kalos has no interest in being shared. And stars above, I love him even more for that. Me, a mermaid who’s never thought twice about sharing a man, is willing to attack my own sisters to protect my man.

The dragon I love.

Kalos is thrilled at my raging possessiveness, although he never teases or baits me—he understands that the way I feel about my sisters’ hunger for him is no laughing matter. Not to me. But it isn’t a laughing matter for him either. My dragon is quite shy.

Although, even with his natural reticence while surrounded by slavering women other than me, I’m able to introduce him to the bliss of cove sunning, sharing my rock with him just as soon as I shove my sister Ianthe off of it, the thieving sea cow.

We’re drowsing, replete after stealing away for a good hard session of lovemaking, when suddenly, a shadow swoops over us.

“DRAGON!” Pearl screams, and everyone dives for the water.

My reflexes have been broken; I don’t dive.

Kalos, though, is struck by fear enough for the both of us. He throws me into the water.

Or that’s what it seems like. It’s only later that I put it together that I was catapulted off our rock not because he chucked me off of it, but because his body expanded so fast I was flung aside.

At the first hint of danger, at the very first threat to my safety, Kalos erupted into his dragon form.

And his dragon half is not only defending his mate, which is enough to make him bellow in rage—Kalos’s dragon side is serious about territory too, and as far as he’s concerned, all of our cove is now his and under his protection.

My sisters whoop as Kalos aims the first of a volley of unerring blasts at the very bewildered dragon who