Free Under a Blood Moon: Beaux Rêve Coven, Book 2 by Delilah Devlin Page B

the price for the morning’s catch, Miren nodded and reached out her hand to seal the deal with the buyer who seemed young for the job. He was dressed in cutoffs, was bare-chested and he looked mightily disappointed as he eyed Miren’s crew.
    Renner guessed the scrawny younger man knew he didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of attracting her attention when he and the two mermen accompanied her.
    When she walked back to the boat, he loosened the line and held out his hand to help her step aboard. In minutes, with her guiding the boat through a narrow inlet, they were back in open water. Only they didn’t follow the shoreline.
    “Where are we going?” he asked, coming up behind her to wrap his arms around her narrow waist.
    She glanced sideways, challenge in her eyes. “Want to wash off the smell of shrimp?”
    He smiled, glanced at the clear sky above them and then over at the two mermen, who had been restless all day as she’d methodically dropped nets to drag the ocean bottom for tasty crustaceans. So near the sea, and the mermen hadn’t dipped their tails even once. He guessed they were all ready to play.
    “Sounds like fun.” And a nice diversion to get their minds off the coming full moon. Tonight, everything would change.
    Once they were far enough out to sea that the risk of another seagoing craft crossing their paths diminished, she shut down the engine, dropped the anchor and began rifling through a chest for snorkels and fins.
    “We won’t be needing those,” Mikkel said, already shucking his shorts and tee.
    Elias laughed and leapt nude off the side of the boat.
    Renner and Miren glanced over the side to watch as Elias’s body shimmered. A moment later, he surfaced with a long green and blue tail, which he flapped at the water. “Join us for a swim.”
    Miren glanced at Renner. “That’s disturbing.”
    Renner laughed. “I don’t need the snorkel. I can breathe the water.”
    “Right.” She shook her head. “Do you change?”
    “Do you want me to?”
    “You are a draugr. And I’m marrying you tonight, so you have to make me happy. I’d love to ride a dolphin.”
    With a laugh, he dropped his shorts on the deck and stepped off the back of the boat. The moment he submerged, he closed his eyes, and envisioned himself a dolphin. When he swam back to the surface, he glided onto his side to wink at her with his dolphin eye.
    The look on her face was well worth the effort. With her snorkel in place and her flippers making her walk clumsily to the edge, she looked blissful as she stepped off.
    As promised, he held still as she mounted him just behind his dorsal, and then he nosed around, flipped his tail, and they were off.
    For Miren, it was a magical day. She skimmed the sea atop a dolphin and then snorkeled lazily, watching her three lovers play in the depths. The mermen were somehow no less masculine, no less impressive, their lower bodies a study in rippling muscle cloaked in tiny iridescent scales that caught the sunlight streaming through the water, glinting blue then green, even purple. Truly beautiful.
    She grew anxious as they lingered beneath the water before she reminded herself they didn’t need to surface, that they were as at home in the sea as they were on land. More connected than even she was.
    Well into the late afternoon, after feasting on a shrimp chowder she heated over a hot plate, they all sat on the edge of the platform at the rear of the boat, their feet dangling in the water, the four of them completely nude and completely relaxed about it.
    “I could get used to this,” Mikkel said, echoing her thoughts.
    Elias caught Renner’s gaze and nodded. “It’s not a bad idea.”
    “What’s not a bad idea?” Miren said, knowing the men were already making plans and not including her. “Are you all planning to crew on a permanent basis?”
    “Those two, perhaps,” Renner said. “But I’m a construction chief. I’ll still be needed at Vindlér.”
    Miren