Burning Up

by Nalini Singh

  The young fisherman raised his head and coughed. Or was that the barking of a seal?

  Her vision wavered. Her mind grayed. She blinked, watching as a figure with flying skirts and braids detached from the huddle onshore.

  "Colin!" The girl dashed to the water's edge like a curlew darting in the tide.

  Morwenna smiled.

  Then the stones rose up sharply to take her, and the world faded away.

  When she woke, she could not hear the sea any longer, only the murmur of human voices.

  She recognized the smells of the taproom, beer and smoke, sweat and onions, and the clean soap-and-man scent that was Jack. His hard shoulder pillowed her cheek. His arms and legs supported her as if she rode before him on his horse. She felt cradled. Protected.

  Off-balance.

  "Never seen anything like it," a rough male voice pronounced.

  Oh dear. She opened her eyes.

  Immediately Jack's arms tightened around her. "Morwenna."

  Only her name, but she felt another shift in her chest as everything readjusted. His lean, strong face was very close, his deep brown eyes concerned.

  "Are you all right?" he asked. "What were you doing out there?"

  More than she could ever tell him.

  She sat up cautiously, aware of the villagers gathered around the fire. She recognized the baker with his curling orange beard, the dark and nervous shopkeeper, the nasty man with the crow's voice and the weasel's name. Stoat? Sloat, that was it. The young lovers cuddled in the corner, the fisherman's muscled arm around the girl's round waist.

  Jack was waiting for her answer. They all were waiting. She was truly a part of their circle now, the focus of all eyes. She fought the urge to hunch her shoulders, to hide from their attention.

  "I suppose I must have fainted."

  Jack's mouth compressed. "Before that."

  "I went outside."

  "Into the storm," he said flatly.

  She glanced out the windows to avoid meeting his eyes. In the wake of her magic, the setting sun had painted the sky orange and rose. "The weather is clearing, is it not?"

  "It is now," Jack acknowledged. "What about the seals?"

  She moistened her lips. "They must have washed ashore. In the storm."

  "Washed ashore." His voice was stiff with disbelief.

  She smiled at him. "Like that lucky young man saved by the tide."

  An old fisherman spoke from his place at the bar. "It wasn't the tide that saved him. It was the selkie."

  Morwenna's heart beat faster. The seals she had called to her were ordinary harbor seals. But the old man's guess was uncomfortably close to the truth. The selkie were water elementals like the finfolk, all children of the sea.

  Jack's brows drew together. "The what?"

  "The seal folk. They live in the ocean as seals, see, and when they come ashore they put off their sealskins and walk around no different from you and me."

  "Except better looking," put in another. "And naked."

  "Superstitious nonsense," Sloat said.

  The fisherman stuck out his jaw. "I've seen them out there in the waves. Guided me home once in the fog."

  The young man, Colin, lifted his head from the girl's brown hair and looked at Morwenna.

  "My grandda said if you find a selkie's pelt and hide it, the selkie must bide with you as man or wife," the second fisherman said.

  Sloat sneered. "Your grandda was at sea too long. I knew you Scots had sex with sheep. But seals?"

  Jack silenced him with a look. "It's a pleasant story."

  Morwenna released a relieved breath. Story. He did not believe a word of it.

  Colin left his corner and stood before Morwenna, fumbling beneath the open neck of his shirt. He wore a leather thong around his throat and the silver sign of the mortals' murdered Christ. He pulled the thong over his head and offered her the cross in his broad palm. "Thank you," he said simply.

  The ache in her throat grew to a lump. She swallowed hard. "You owe me nothing."

  Stubbornly, he held out his hand. "I know what I know."

  She shook her head, aware of Jack watching them. But she could not spurn the young fisherman's earnest thanks. Nor could she take his offering and send him away empty-handed.

  She curled her hand around the cross and traced a spiral in his palm, the sign of the sea. "I will treasure your gift and remember," she said. "Go in peace over the waters and return in safety to the land."

  His smile almost blinded her with its brilliance.

  "Now go back to your sweetheart," Morwenna told him. "Thank her, if you must thank someone, and hold her tight for the time that has been given to you both."

  He ducked his head in shy acknowledgment and retreated.

  "An interesting blessing," Jack observed quietly.

  She shrugged, not daring to look at him for fear he would find the truth in her eyes. "It did not hurt me to say and may do him good to hear. Their lives will be short and hard enough. They should love each other while they can."

  "Excellent advice," he said.

  Finally she met his gaze. What she saw in his eyes made her pulse pound. Not distrust, not suspicion, but warmth and acceptance and desire.

  "Oh," she said with a foolish lurch of heart, "do you think so?"

  "Yes." He stopped and took her hands in his. Warm, steady hands. Strong, human hands. "Marry me, Morwenna."

  Her heart turned over completely and her whole world shifted again. She felt grit in her eyes like sand in an oyster and blinked. A single pearl rolled down her cheek.

  She smiled tremulously. "Perhaps we could start with dinner," she suggested. "You did say you would court me."

  FIVE

  "This charade has gone on long enough," Morgan said.

  Her brother stalked the confines of Morwenna's neat little cottage like a shark trapped by the tide, all sleek power and frustrated energy. "How long has it been now? Four weeks?"

  "Three," Morwenna said defensively.

  Three weeks of this odd human process known as courtship. Dinner at Jack's house, with her hair piled up and a bewildering array of cutlery on the table. Sex at hers, sweaty, sweet, and satisfying. He took her for a ride in his carriage. She took him for walks along the beach. They even sat side by side in the church one Sunday morning while the preacher droned like a drowsy bee and the sun cast colored patterns on the stone floor.

  Only three weeks.

  Not that the actual number of days mattered except as a measure of her brother's concern. If Morgan was counting time by human standards, in weeks rather than seasons and centuries, he was worried indeed.

  She watched him pace to the cupboard and turn. The once-empty shelves behind him were littered with items she had received since the storm, left at her doorstep or pressed shyly upon her when she walked into town: a pitcher of flowers, a package of candles, a loaf of bread, a shawl. She accepted the villagers' offerings as she accepted the gifts of the tide and gave them fair weather and good fishing in return.

  Yet somehow the trade had become more meaningful than a simple transaction.

  She tried to explain. "I have a place here."

  Morgan threw her an impatient look. "Your place is on Sanctuary. Among your own kind. Not with . . . with . . ."

  She raised her chin. "His name is Jack."

  "Does he know who you are? What you are?"

  She hesitated. She was venturing further and further from who she had been. Once she told Jack the truth, there was no going back. One way or another, their idyll would end. "He does not need to know. He accepts what he sees."

  "Then he is blind. Or stupid."

  "He is not stupid." She remembered the warm perception in Jack's serious gaze, the strength of his steady hands. "He loves me."

  Her brother looked down his long, bold nose. "Humans fear what they do not understand. And what they fear, they hate. He is not capable of loving you."

  His words touched her deepest fears. Her brother knew
her too well. And yet . . .

  "You do not know him," she said.

  Morgan stared at her, baffled, and shook his head. "Say that he loves you. It cannot last. He is mortal. He will die eventually. That is his fate, his nature. And you will go on. That is ours."

  "Unless . . ." She drew a shaky breath, daring at last to speak the possibility burning like a coal in her breast. Knowing her words would hurt and anger Morgan. "He has asked me to marry him."

  If they married, if she lived on land with Jack as a human, she would love as a human. Age as a human. Die as a human.

  "Wenna." Morgan's voice was shaken. Her throat tightened at his use of her old childhood name. He was her brother, her twin. In their carefree existence, in their careless way, they had always cared for each other. "You would give up immortality? You would give up the sea?"

  Yes.

  No.

  "I do not know." She bit her lip. "I might."

  "For what? For him?"

  Could she give up the sea for Jack?

  She admired him: his quiet strength, his bone-deep sense of responsibility, his constant heart. She liked him.

  But more, she liked the person she became when she was with him. Someone softer, more open, more aware of others' emotions, more capable of feeling.

  Less alone.

  The children of the sea were alive to sensation. With Jack, she felt another part of her stir to life, like a long-dead limb responding to the pricks and tingles of returning circulation.

  She sought a way to put her feelings into words, searched for an answer that would satisfy her brother. That would satisfy them both.

  "For Jack, yes." The words came slowly, dragged from the depths of her consciousness, from the bottom of her heart. "And perhaps for . . . love?"

  Morgan's face closed. "We are finfolk. What do we know of love?"

  You love me, she thought.

  The realization struck like a fishhook into her heart, barbed and unexpected. They never spoke of their bond. It was not their way. But if she turned her back on Morgan and the sea, he might never recover. Would never forgive.

  She swallowed past the ache in her throat. "Enough to know how precious love is," she said quietly. "And how rare."

  "Love does not last, Morwenna." Her brother's gaze met hers, golden and implacable. "Nothing lasts forever but the sea."

  The sea shone as smooth as glass. Sunlight poured like honey over the green and gold hills as Jack handed Morwenna into the pony cart and walked around the horse's head.

  She twisted on the seat to regard the basket packed behind her. "A picnic?" Her voice rose with pleasure.

  Jack climbed up. Stiffly, because of his leg. "You said I should enjoy life more," he reminded her.

  "And I am delighted you listened," she responded promptly. "But didn't you eat off the ground often enough as a soldier?"

  He loved the way she laughed at him with her eyes. He picked up the ribbons, clicking his tongue at the pony. "Cook never prepared a basket for me in the Peninsula."

  "Champagne and sweetmeats?"

  "Meat pies and lemonade." He grinned. "I'm a man of basic appetites."

  He had a simple soldier's desires. For a home, a wife, children. And after years of wandering, he was finally on the road to achieving them all.

  These past few weeks with Morwenna he'd felt more at home, more at peace, than ever before in his life. Last night across the dining table at Arden, she had glowed in the light of the candles, her silver gold hair arranged in tousled curls. Like she belonged there, mistress of his heart and of his house. The servants all liked her. The villagers liked her.

  And he . . .

  He'd wanted to lay her down among the silver and china, between the puddings and the gravy, and lick her all over. He'd burned to take her upstairs to the master bedroom with its big, curtained bed and touch her, take her, own her.

  Of course he'd done none of those things.

  Sloat and the servants had been around to keep his lust in check. Whatever circumstances had driven her from her brother's home and protection, she was a lady. He would not show her less than respect in front of his dependents.

  Now, sitting in the open carriage with her hands folded demurely in her lap, she gave him the slumberous look he loved. "If you wished to satisfy your basic appetites, we could have stayed at the cottage. I have two chairs now," she informed him smugly. "And a bed."

  His blood heated even as he laughed. She might be a lady, but he was still very much a man. He was urgently, painfully aware that he could have her back at her cottage and naked in under five minutes.

  But he wanted more from her than civilized dinners or stolen rendezvous.

  He turned the cart down the narrow track that meandered to the cove and the boat he had waiting. He was sensitive to every shift of her body on the narrow bench, of her thigh warm beside his. Beneath his tailored coat, he was sweating, his body as hard as the brake handle.

  But he would not be distracted again. Every time in the past few weeks he had tried to broach the subject of marriage, Morwenna had turned the conversation aside, diverting him with a look, a touch, a whispered invitation.

  Not that he had been that difficult to distract, Jack admitted ruefully.

  He had planned this outing with all the care of a general plotting battle strategy. Out-of-doors, where she was most comfortable. By the sea, where he saw her for the first time. On an island, picturesque and private. He gave instructions for the basket, the blanket, the boat. His mother's ring was in his waistcoat pocket. He had even directed Sloat to draft a letter to his lawyer.

  This time everything was prepared.

  Everything was perfect.

  This time she would say yes.

  Morwenna sat in the front of the boat, trailing her hand over the side. The water flowed between her fingers, rippling along her nerve endings, murmuring her name. Beneath the stiff fabric of her dress, her breasts peaked. Her toes curled in her tight new shoes. She longed to be naked in the ocean.

  And yet she would not have given up her place in the boat for anything.

  She looked at Jack, his dark hair lifting in the breeze from the sea, the sun reddening his nose and cheekbones, and felt a rush of love for him so intense her heart stumbled.

  It cannot last, her brother had warned.

  But didn't that make the present even more precious?

  This moment must be enough. She would make it be enough for both of them. She would fashion a string of perfect moments like a necklace of pearls--her gift to him. He would never regret loving her. While she . . .

  Her throat felt suddenly tight.

  We are finfolk. Her brother's words echoed harshly in her ears. What do we know of love?

  She had no experience with love, no example to guide her. Few pair bonds among their kind lasted through the centuries. Children were rare, grudgingly born and quickly fostered.

  And yet . . .

  She watched the muscles of Jack's arms bunch and stretch, his big hands grasp the oars, and she lost her breath, falling into the creak and the rhythm of the oars. His scent, soap and linen, salty sweat and clean skin, tugged at her senses. He rowed strongly if not particularly well, digging deep into the water. One paddle caught a swell and shot a plume of spray into the boat.

  He grinned ruefully. "Army men are better in the saddle than at the oars."

  "I love you in the saddle," she assured him, and he laughed.

  The sound warmed her heart and eased her doubts. He was so different. Different from her, yes, but also unlike any man she had ever known before.

  All the men she had observed over the centuries were sea-faring men, Vikings, sailors, fishermen.

  "You did not learn to row growing up?" she asked.

  "Not in Cheapside. London," he explained. "My mother's family lived in Cheapside."

  Over his shoulder, she could see the island rising like a green wave from the blue and silver sea.

  She wrinkled her forehead,
struggling to recall what she knew of London. "There is a river in London."

  He glanced over his shoulder, angling the boat toward the narrow beach. "A very dirty one. Not for boys in boats and definitely not for swimming."

  "You cannot swim?" She could hardly fathom such a thing.

  "I can paddle. Or I could."

  Before the injuries that scarred his leg, she guessed.

  He turned back to her, his gaze lazy and amused. "I suppose you swim like a fish."

  "I can swim," she admitted.

  Her belly hollowed. Exactly like a fish.

  The boat rocked in the shallow water. A tumble of gray rock protected a pale sickle of sand. Above the beach the hills swelled, covered in long grass and white and yellow flowers, yarrow and meadowsweet.

  The paddles gleamed in the sunlight. The round hull scraped bottom. Morwenna stood, holding on to the side of the boat.

  "I've got you." Jack swung her into his arms.

  She clutched at his shoulders. "You will hurt your leg."

  "You'll soak your hem."

  "No matter. I--"

  But he was already striding through the ankle-deep water. He set her gently on her feet, his broad hands lingering at her waist before he left her to fetch the basket.

  She sighed and spread the blanket on the grass. The sun was very warm. She straightened, stretching her back, looking longingly at the bright blue water. She wished now she had waded ashore. Her dress chafed. Her boots rubbed. For a moment, she felt as confined by her human role as by her human clothes.

  "Show me," Jack said.

  The sight of him, dark and muscular in his tight blue coat, soothed her. Steadied her. "Show you what?"

  "How to swim."

  Longing surged under her skin. She resisted the temptation. "I cannot Change. Um. My clothes."

  "You don't need to change." A smile creased the corners of his eyes. "We can swim naked."

  Her heart tripped.

  He had seen her naked many times. This was no different, and yet she felt curiously exposed. The ocean was hers, her life, a part of herself she had kept carefully separate from him. Now he was asking her to share it, to bring him into her world.

  Jack stripped off his jacket and tossed it on the blanket. "There's no one to see."

  He pulled his shirt over his head.

  Her gaze traveled the heavy definition of his muscles, the pattern of his scars, the dark hair that fanned across his chest and narrowed to a line below his navel. Lust stirred, easy and familiar.