The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

David.”
    He let out a breath, and I felt his arms tighten around me.’ ‘This time you are,” he said. “No more games, Jo. Back to shore.”
    I didn’t have to swim, only float; David towed me, making for shore with steady, tireless strokes. I caught sight of the bubble I’d formed around our rescued girl. She was almost to shore now, swept in on the waves. I popped the bubble as the final wave crested, and she toppled into the surf and ended up on the sand, caught up in Calvin Harper’s arms.
    A happy ending, after all.
    “What are they?” I asked David. “Those . . . creatures?”
    He said a word I couldn’t understand, much less pronounce. It sounded like dolphin clicks. “They’re powerful,” he said. “Even for the D j inn, they’re dangerous. To humans, even to Wardens—”
    “Deadly. Got that part.” I coughed out a stray mouthful of salty ocean and pushed streaming hair off my face. The surf was pounding now as we neared the shore. I could feel the ocean bottom rising to meet us, and the warmer waters felt welcoming. Almost safe. “What set them off?”
    “Nothing. They hunt for prey. Sometimes it’s humans,” he said. “But once they realized I was in the water, and you were a Warden, they wanted us.”
    “To eat?”
    “You, maybe. Me, to keep,” he said. “They have Djinn trapped below, not many, but over the millennia there have been a few, here and there. We can’t save them.”
    I imagined a zoo, far in the dark, crushing emptiness of the deep ocean - Djinn, held captive, unable to break free. I imagined that happening to David, and felt ill. “What do they want them for?”
    David shook his head. “We don’t know.”
    That was . . . unsettling.
    David slowed our progress as our feet touched the sandy bottom. A wave crested and lifted, then lowered us gently down.
    I turned into his embrace.
    His lips tasted of salt, hot metal, urgency. His skin was warmer than it should have been, as warm as bronze left in the sun, and it felt so good against my chilled flesh. I shivered against him and held on as tides swept us towards land.
    “Well,” I whispered, as our lips parted for a breath, “you wanted me in the water. I’m here.”
    “So you are.” His hands travelled over me, pouring heat into me with every brush of his fingers on my skin.
    “We should check on the girl,” I said - not really feeling the urgency though, because his touch was waking all kinds of other thoughts instead.
    I saw it mirrored in his smile. “She’s being well cared for,” he said. And he was right, absolutely right. A small crowd of people had formed around Cal and his girl, and I saw the distant flashing of emergency lights heading in from the street.
    I could even see that Muscles was out of any danger; his friends were digging him out of his hole. After that, and the arrival of police and paramedics, they’d be withdrawing from the field of battle as fast as their stumpy legs could carry them.
    David recaptured my focus with a gentle kiss on my forehead. “I love you, Joanne.”
    It wasn’t that he hadn’t said it before, or that he hadn’t meant it, it was the intensity with which he spoke that made me shiver down to my bones. I put my arms around his neck and stared into his eyes - hot copper, shimmering with passion and almost-alien power. “I know,” I said. “I can feel it, every moment. And I love you, David. More than my life.”
    His thumbs smoothed wet hair back from my cheeks and lingered in a caress. “Then I’m very lucky,” he said. “Luckier than I’ve ever been in all my lifetimes. And I’m going to make sure your life is long and rich, my love. Despite your willingness to throw it away.”
    He kissed me, and this time it was full of fire and need, and it melted me into a hot, glowing puddle inside. I hardly felt the waves lifting and rolling us; if the ocean chose to strike at us, it would find me entirely unaware.
    But I surrendered to David, and I knew, in that moment, that he could protect me. He would. Not from the obvious threats I faced every day, by chance or choice, but from myself.
    His hands dragged over me and, where they touched, my wet bikini faded away. Top first, and then bottom. He’d already disposed of his swim trunks.
    I could feel how much he wanted me, and it took my breath away. He slid his fingers slowly from the notch of my collarbone, down between my breasts, gliding through the warm water all the way to the softness between my