Sea Fever (3 page)

“Quiet.”

She set her teeth. Okay, she owed him. But not—

His hand worked between their bodies, pumping once, twice, before

he gripped her hips with both hands. He ground himself against her, his

fingers digging into her flesh. She felt him jerk, felt his hot exhalation in

her ear, and then the warm stickiness at the small of her back.

Oh. Thank God he had pulled out.

He shuddered, his body warm and heavy against hers.

An odd tenderness stirred under her heart. Peeling one hand from the

cliff face, she stretched back her arm to pat his hip. His thigh. His leg was

hard with muscle and rough with hair. He turned his head to nuzzle her

hair, and the unexpected sweetness of the gesture made something turn

over in her chest.

She closed her eyes, willing away thought.

Gradually, her body cooled. His breathing evened. She became

aware of tiny, separate sensations: the gritty stone beneath her feet, the

rising mist around her bare legs, the rich salt smells of sea and sex . . .

And then he let her go.

She heard him behind her, adjusting his clothing, and shivered,

suddenly cold.

“You lost something.” His voice was deep, polite. Caleb’s voice.

Regina opened her eyes, leaning her forehead against the rock. “My

self-respect?”

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He didn’t laugh.

Okay, not funny. She swallowed against the tightness in her throat,

sobriety creeping in like the tide. Not funny at all.

“Your panties,” he said.

“Right.” Flushing, she turned. There they were, dangling from his

fingers. She snatched the scrap of nylon from him without quite meeting

his eyes. “Thanks.”

He inclined his head. “You are welcome.”

If he smirked, she would kill him.

But he continued to watch her with an unnerving lack of expression,

as if he’d never been inside her, as if they’d never—

Oh, God. Her insides contracted. Her knees wobbled. No way was

she pulling on her panties under that flat black gaze.

Regina balled the damp nylon in her fist. Now what?

“Are you going back to the party?” she asked.

“I have no reason to.”

Right.

Regina bit her lip, relieved and disappointed. “You could say good-bye.”

Not to her. She didn’t care if she never saw him again. His shoulders

shrugged under his well-cut jacket. “Margred will not notice my leaving.”

“Your brother will.”

Dylan’s black eyes glittered. “I did not come for my brother.”

An awkward silence fell, broken only by the whisper of waves on

the rocks, the stones tinkling and tumbling like wind chimes. Strains of

music drifted from the tent, too faint for Regina to distinguish words or

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melody. She opened her mouth to say something, anything. That was fun.

Let’s never do it again.

“You knew Maggie?” she asked. “Before she got married?”

“Yes.”

Regina sucked in her breath. Not her problem, she reminded herself.

None of her business.

But Margred was her employee. Regina had hired her to help out at

the restaurant after Caleb found her on the beach, naked and bleeding

from a blow to her head. Margred claimed not to remember anything of

her life before she came to the island. Regina always suspected the other

woman was fleeing an abusive relationship.

But if Dylan knew her . . .

Regina scowled. “How?”

His brows rose. “I suggest you ask her.”

“I will.”

As soon as she gets back from her honeymoon with your brother.

Maybe not.

“Or you could tell me now,” Regina said.

“No.”

She folded her arms, her underwear still wadded in her hand. “Are

you always this chatty after sex? Or is it me?”

“Maybe I don’t like gossip.”

“Or maybe you’re protecting somebody.”

He didn’t answer.

“Her?” Regina guessed. “Or yourself?”

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* * *

Human women.

Always wanting something.

Dylan regarded this one with frustrated resignation. He had liked the

look of her, the straight, cropped hair, the angular body, the contrast of

those soft, sensitive lips in that sharp-featured face. Her differences drew

him, all that tension and energy confined in a tight, feminine little body.

He had enjoyed unwrapping her and watching her fly apart.

But the big dark eyes had sharpened to points, and her chin was at a

militant angle. Now that he’d had her, she thought that he owed her—attention, answers, some damn thing.

Not so different, after all. He supposed her attitude was only human.

Too bad for her he wasn’t.

“Let me take you back,” he said. “You must have work to do.”

The chin rose a notch. “You don’t need to take me anywhere. I can

get where I’m going by myself.”

Almost amused, he stepped back to let her pass. She marched to the

edge of the water and stopped.

Of course. She would not be able to see in the dark. Dylan

remembered how it had been before his first Change. These rocks would

slice her narrow human feet to pieces.

She edged forward.

He frowned. He wasn’t going to waste the breath or effort to argue

with her. But neither could he stand by while she cut herself stumbling

around in the surf.

Jeering at himself for caring, he picked her up.

Regina yelped. Jerked. The top of her head connected with his chin,

snapping his mouth shut. Pain shot through his jaw.

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He unclenched his teeth and growled. “Hold still.”

She glared, her nose inches from his. Her hair was soft against his

cheek and smelled like fruit, strawberries or—

“You surprised me,” she accused.

“I surprise myself,” he murmured.

“What’s the matter? Never swept a girl off her feet before?”

“Not usually.” Apricots, he decided. She smelled like apricots, tart

and ripe. She was heavier than he expected, muscle wrapped around a

tensile steel frame. The skin behind her knees was soft and smooth. To

distancehimself, to bait her, he said, “Mostly they just lie down.”

Her smile sliced knife-sharp through the twilight. “That explains

why your technique needs work.”

He laughed softly. “And you?”

Water splashed around his ankles.

Her grip tightened on his neck. “What about me?”

“Do you often get, ah, carried away?”

“Are you asking if I sleep around?”

He did not know what he was asking. Or why. “Your sexual history

is no concern of mine.”

She snorted. “Obviously. Or you would have used a condom.”

In truth, she was no more likely to get him sick than he was to get

her pregnant. But Dylan could not be bothered to explain that to her. She

would not believe him if he did.

He walked out of the water and set her on the beach, keeping his

hands on her forearms while she found her balance.

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She sighed. “Look, you don’t need to worry. You’re the first in—oh, a long time.”

He felt a tinge of satisfaction, a twinge of guilt, and scowled. He

should not feel anything. His kind did not. They sought the sensations and

the physical release of sex. They did not blind themselves with emotion

or bind their partners with expectations.

“Your shoes.” He jerked his head toward them.

They lay on their sides just out of reach of the water, the flirty heels

and skinny straps totally unsuited to this stretch of rock and sand.

“Right.” She scooped them up. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” He met her gaze, warm and wary, and felt heat

curl in his belly. He wanted her again. But that flash of feeling had

alarmed him.

He should have learned by now not to fuck with humans.

He was too close to being one of them.

This one hadn’t even been that good, he told himself, ignoring the

intensity of her response, his satisfaction at making her come. Oh, she

was acceptable by human standards. But he was accustomed to partners

who knew what pleased them and how to please him. He was fourteen

and grieving for his mother when he had his first lover, a lush selkie

female who had honed her skills and her lust over a millennium of

practice. Nerienne had been nothing at all like this uptight, argumentative

human.

Her words pounded in his temples. “You’re the first in— oh, a long

time.”

His chest tightened.

The air was too warm. Warm and close. It dragged on him like a

fisherman’s net, constraining his lungs, cutting off his air. He could not

breathe. He was wild to go, to run, to return to the freedom of the sea.

He stood immobile at the cliffs while the woman— Regina—fumbled with her sandals.

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“Well.” She straightened and pinned him with a bright smile. “Have

a nice stay on the island.”

“I am leaving tonight.”

Her smile faltered; set. “Oh. Then I guess I won’t see you again.”

Her casual pat on his flank, that tender, careless touch on his thigh,

burned like a brand. The mer did not touch. Only to fight, or to mate.

His hands curled into fists at his sides.

“No,” he said.

She turned away without another word.

He stood without moving as she wobbled up the beach, toward the

lights and the music, leaving him alone.

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Three

THE TOWER OF CAER SUBAI WAS VERY OLD, mortared with

mists and magic. The prince was older still, weary with the weight of

years and responsibilities. But as long as he stayed within this tower on

the selkie isle of Sanctuary, he did not age. He would not die.

Conn ap Llyr, prince of the mer, lord of the sea, gazed west out his

windows, listening to the sea song rise from the rocks below and the

north wind pry through the stones like a knife. He could feel the demon’s

presence from half a world away, swirling like an oil slick, dark and

corrosive, lapping at the island the humans called World’s End.

Conn did not give a damn if the humans were overrun with demons

and their island sank into the sea. For millennia, the children of the sea

had maintained an uneasy peace with demonkind, a peace struck from

pride and self-interest, cobbled together with compromises and broken

promises, defended through centuries of violationsand encroachments. A

peace he believed would hold.

Until six weeks ago, when a demon had murdered one of Conn’s

people on World’s End.

He gripped the edge of his desk, a massive slab of iron and carved

walnut salvaged from a Spanish galleon wrecked off the Cornish coast.

Everything that dwelled in and under the sea, everything that fell below

its surface, was his to claim or dispose of. Nine tenths of the earth was in

his realm. But the demon eluded him.

He reached outward, his thoughts eddying, circling the darkness,

seeking its source, its threat. He might as well have tried to sieve a drop

from a current. The demon slipped his grasp, lost in a moving tide of

humanity.

Conn bowed his head, failure bitter in his mouth. The hound

sleeping at his feet twitched and whined. Beyond his tower windows, the

bright sea rolled, wild, wide, and deep, beyond his reach, taunting his

control.

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There was a time— the whales sang of it— when the sea lords’

power ran high and full, when the mer were attuned to every creature in

and over the sea, when they could summon glaciers or transport

themselves in a shower of rain. Even Conn’s own father, Llyr, before he

abandoned human form and all responsibility—

But Conn could not think of the absentee king without anger, and

anger was something else he had learned to deny himself. Deliberately,

he uncurled his hands, splaying them against the map on his desk.

In recent centuries, the sea kings’ gifts had dwindled as their

people’s numbers declined. All that was left for the sea king’s heir was to

safeguard what remained with whatever tools he could find.

Footsteps sounded from the tower stairs.

Conn glanced up as Dylan emerged, the top of his head nearly

brushing the arch of rough cut stone.

Here was a tool. A weapon, rather. Dylan was ambitious and

resourceful, a son of the sea witch Atargatis and her human husband.

After her death, Conn had taken the boy under his own protection. Dylan

had yet to demonstrate any power beyond what every selkie possessed,

sexual glamour and a little weather magic. But he had proven his courage

and his loyalty; and in the current situation, Conn must use what lay at

hand.

“You sent for me, lord?” Dylan asked.

“Yes.” Frustration had made him abrupt. He leashed his tone. “I