Jessamy E. Fairfax

Suometar Tuominen wants silence, rain, and steady data from her submerged hydrophones across the Suvantola sound. She does not want Kaarle-alt—a pale, predatory sea-shifter tangled in the intake rotors of her pump station. Kaarle-alt carries the crushing cold of the gulf trench in his lungs and a psychic hum that vibrates through Suometar's jaw whenever he watches her. When regional dredging cutters begin saturation-bombing the shoals with acoustic charges to scour the water of anomalies, Suometar hides the creature in her flooded workshop basement. Trapped together between rising sea surges and encroaching automated patrol boats, the strange resonance between her nervous system and his instincts turns intimate. Saving him means letting an uncanny sea beast claim her home—and her heart.

Running an all-night highway bakery at the junction of three international truck routes leaves Pacha-uay with flour in his hair and very little company. That changes the rainy night Quilla-illa walks into his diner. A disguised storm-witch and wandering cloud nymph, Quilla-illa travels the continent writing culinary reviews while searching for the sacred rain-bread that keeps the sky-spirits fed. When a massive drought threatens to dry up her cloud-weaving magic and trap her as a mortal, Pacha-uay offers his kitchen and his family’s ancestral recipes to brew a continental rainfall. Between flour fights, midnight proofing sessions, and tiny lavender rainclouds floating over the coffee counter whenever she blushes, Pacha-uay learns that cooking for a goddess is wonderful, but falling in love with her is heavenly.