Sea Lord

by Virginia Kantra

  “It’s a risk,” he insisted stubbornly.

  “Life is a risk. I chose this life with you. Let me live it fully.”

  Her love shook him.

  Her faith shamed him.

  “Maggie.” Shit. “I never could resist you.”

  Her smile was slow and provocative. She was so beautiful, with her wide, dark, understanding eyes and her come- fuck-me smile. “That’s what I am counting on.”

  “You didn’t conceive with your mate. What if I can’t give you a child?”

  “The selkies’ birth rate has been declining for centuries. It may be I am barren. If we cannot make a child together, we will do what other human couples do. Adjust. Adopt. I do not expect a miracle, Caleb.” Her smile turned rueful. “Or only a very small one.”

  She ripped his heart.

  She tossed back her hair and stood, giving him another of her direct looks. “Do you want to make another list of reasons why this is a bad idea? Or do you want to make love?”

  Heat kicked in his groin. Caleb swallowed. He was so screwed. Or he would be, if he gave her half a chance.

  If he gave them a chance.

  “Life is a risk.”

  “I want you,” he said honestly. “I always want you.”

  Her breasts in his hands, his body in her body. Nothing between them. Skin on skin, the way it had been the first time.

  “Well, then.” Her smile spread. Come and get me.

  Caleb grinned with love and lust and rounded the kitchen table.

  Bart Hunter fumbled with his front door in the dark.

  Something was wrong. Alarm pierced the damp evening mist and the fog of whiskey like a beacon.

  No porch light. Lucy always left the porch light burning for him. The knob turned under his hand before he could get the key in. She never forgot to lock the door either. She was a careful girl, Lucy. Responsible. Not like . . .

  But his mind winced from the comparison like an old bruise.

  He stumbled into the front hall. So still. So dark. The smell of the Crock-Pot—tomatoes, maybe, and onions—permeated the downstairs.

  Bart wavered between the empty kitchen and the darkened living room. His stomach rolled with a combination of hunger and too much Seagram’s. Maybe he’d have a bite, to please her.

  But first he’d have another drink.

  He lurched for the living room and the liquor cabinet. Stopped short, his heart banging.

  “Lucy?”

  She sat upright on the couch, her eyes wide open and gleaming in the dark.

  He covered his start, his guilt, in aggression. He hated her to watch him drink. “What the hell are you doing up? You should be in bed.”

  “I should,” she said. Impossible to tell from her tone of voice if she was questioning or agreeing with him.

  Bart scowled. “What’s the matter with you?”

  She paused, like she was really thinking about it. “I don’t know.”

  He took a reluctant step forward. She looked . . . different. Paler, maybe, though it was hard to tell in the dark. She smelled like she’d been working in the garden after school, a sharp, green smell like summer grass. “What are you, sick or something?”

  “I could be sick.”

  Inadequacy rose like bile in his throat.

  He had never known what to do with her, this youngest child, his only daughter. If Alice had stuck around, it would have been different, maybe. Better. Bitterness coated his tongue. A lot of things would have been better.

  He rubbed the side of his nose. “Well, did you eat?”

  “No.”

  He waited for her to move, to get off the couch, to jump up and offer to fix them both something like she usually did.

  He wanted her to go to bed, out of his way, out of his sight. He wanted a drink, damn it.

  But she continued to watch him with wide, unblinking eyes like a doll’s. Rooted to his spot on the couch.

  Shit.

  Bart stomped into the kitchen, burning his hand on the lid of the Crock-Pot as he spooned whatever mess she’d made that morning—chili, he guessed—into two bowls.

  He thrust one at her. “Go on. Eat.”

  She waited until he dipped his spoon and brought it to his mouth before she did the same.

  They ate in silence. He didn’t know what to say to her. Never had.

  She laid her empty bowl in her lap. Nothing wrong with her appetite, at least.

  “Well.” Bart stood. “I’m turning in.”

  His daughter regarded him blankly.

  “Got an early morning,” he explained.

  She should know that. Wasn’t he out the door before she woke up every morning?

  He was relieved when she nodded.

  “I should be in bed,” she said. “I could be sick.”

  Something was wrong.

  The realization seeped through the fog in Lucy’s brain. Blearily, she raised her head, struggling to focus in the dark. She blinked. Her bed was in the wrong place.

  Her bed . . . Her room . . . Her stomach lurched. Everything was wrong.

  Everything had been wrong for a long, long time.

  But her mind jerked from the thought, the way a child learns to jerk his hand from a candle or the stove. If you didn’t linger, you couldn’t get burned.

  Her body felt stiff and weak, as if she’d been lying in one position for too long or had the flu. She’d been sleeping. Dreaming, the way she did when she was a little girl, of her mother’s voice. Her mother’s voice and the sea. Her head felt stuffed with straw.

  What had happened? Was she sick? Where was she?

  Where was Conn?

  Her mouth tasted foul. She worked a little moisture onto her tongue, trying to swallow. To think. The air was close and smelled like the inside of a locker or the closet under the stairs. Moldy. Still. She felt like she was underwater. As if she couldn’t breathe. The ceiling pressed down like the lid of a coffin.

  The mattress tilted. Water slapped the wall beside her bed. The lurching of her stomach made sudden, horrible sense.

  She was on a boat.

  Fear writhed inside her like a big, fat snake. A boat. Moving at the whim of the wind and the water. At the mercy of her fears.

  Her heart raced. Her teeth chattered.

  Creak. Creak. From overhead.

  She pressed her knuckles to her mouth. She hated the water. She was going to be sick. She struggled to hold it in, to hold herself together, to force everything back into its proper place, but her body wasn’t hers to control anymore. As if the orgasm that had ripped through her—how long ago? hours? days?—had torn something vital from her.

  Scrape scrape. From the direction of the hatch.

  Panic swelled her chest, robbing her of air. A whimper escaped her. Oh, God.

  A shadow loomed at the base of the stairs, broad and black against the dimness of the room. Coming closer. Coming for her.

  The tangle inside her rippled and coiled like a snake about to strike. She bolted upright.

  No.

  Power erupted from her gut, tore from her throat like a scream as the thing inside her launched at the approaching threat. Her control snapped like a thread. Force exploded from her mouth, slammed through the cabin like a shock wave.

  Objects hurtled, clattered. Crashed.

  Things shattered. Glass. Her mind.

  She couldn’t see. She couldn’t stop. Roaring filled her head.

  Like freaking Carrie, drenched in blood and wreaking destruction at the prom.

  Stop. Freak.

  “Enough.” One word, dropped into the raging dark like a pebble into a flood.

  She almost sobbed in relief. The wind, if it was a wind, died. Things settled or slid to the floor. The cabin righted. Her panic shriveled.

  That voice.

  She knew that voice.

  Lucy curled into a ball, gasping, sweating, deafened by the sudden silence.

  A light bloomed, soft and round like a marsh light, illuminat
ing a strong jaw, a long nose, a sardonic mouth.

  Conn.

  He had a cut along one cheekbone, black in the blue light. He didn’t wipe the blood away. For some reason, the absence of that simple human gesture chilled her heart.

  She trembled, waiting for him to take her in his arms, to say something, do something, to restore her world and her faith.

  He glanced at Lucy and then around the cabin. His eyebrows arched. “It would appear,” he said, “you are your mother’s daughter, after all.”

  5

  LUCY PULLED HER KNEES TO HER CHEST AND hugged them tight, struggling not to lose it. Again. She had survived bad dates before. But this . . .

  Conn’s face was inscrutable, his eyes shadowed in the odd, pale light.

  She’d had sex with him. Unprotected sex with a stranger. Like some stupid freshman who passed out at a kegger and woke up in an unfamiliar bed with no notion of how she got there.

  Lucy cringed. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She couldn’t believe . . .

  Objects hurtling, crashing, shattering in the dark.

  She must have lost her mind.

  Things like this didn’t happen to her. Things like this didn’t happen.

  The room rocked with the rhythm of the water.

  “What . . . Where are we?” she asked. Dim memories clung of being carried, lifted . . . fed? “Was I sick?”

  But no one ever fed her when she was sick.

  Conn stooped—she managed not to flinch—and fished something from the floor. She caught the gleam of a broken lantern as he set it on the table.

  “You will feel better soon,” he said, which wasn’t an answer. “The sleep took you harder than I expected. But now that you are awake, the effects will wear off quickly.”

  Not sick, then, she thought. Maybe not crazy either.

  She remembered—or had she dreamed?—his arm strong and warm around her shoulders, a cup at her lips.

  “You gave me soup.”

  Had he drugged her? Maybe she was hallucinating. That would explain the things flying around the cabin, the sense of something writhing inside her, waiting to burst out of her chest like the space monster in Alien.

  She shuddered.

  He nodded. “You needed food. Liquids.”

  The room still rocked. Her stomach churned. Nerves? Or motion sickness?

  “How long was I out?”

  Conn did not answer.

  “How long?” she insisted. Hours? Days?

  What had he done to her? For her? Under the covers—some kind of fur thing, heavy and warm—she was nearly naked.

  She watched his hands in the near dark. A match scraped and flared. Warm, yellow, honest light replaced the eerie blue glow. Stupid to feel cheered by a lamp under the circumstances. But the familiar light comforted her anyway.

  Until she saw the condition of the cabin.

  Holy crap.

  It looked as if a strong wind had scoured the room, or a bomb had exploded. Broken dishes, boat cushions, maps, and magazines splayed like bodies in the wreckage. An empty coffeemaker and a broken bottle rolled together under the table. Red wine, black as blood in the dim cabin, puddled on the floor. The soured fruit smell in the close, still air rose to her head and made her sick.

  She ran her tongue over her teeth. She wanted a toothbrush.

  Conn lifted a chair one-handed and set it upright. His head brushed the low ceiling. “Do not apologize,” he said. “This ship was furnished to withstand storms. The damage is less severe than it appears.”

  She felt a spurt of outrage, completely ridiculous under the circumstances. Like getting upset over a late assignment when the classroom was on fire. “I wasn’t going to apologize. I didn’t do anything.”

  One eyebrow arched upward. “Who else?”

  “Um.” She stared at him, stunned. “I was unconscious. I didn’t ask to be brought here. You need to take me home.”

  He righted another chair, holding it out from the table in invitation. “Come. Sit.”

  Lucy looked mistrustfully at the chair and then at his face. She didn’t want to go anywhere near him. But if she stayed on the bed, he might get the wrong idea.

  A hot flush swept her face. Yeah, like doing him in the dirt of her students’ garden hadn’t already convinced him she was a total slut bag.

  She clutched the blanket, the fur soft between her fingers. “Why?”

  Conn’s gaze rose from her hands to her face. “Explanations will take time. I want you to be comfortable.”

  “Then give me my clothes.”

  Something flickered in his eyes and was gone before she could identify it. “They are not here.”

  “Where are they?”

  “I had need of them.”

  She didn’t want to imagine what use he had for women’s clothing.

  “You promised to take me home,” she reminded him.

  Right before they’d had sex among the pumpkins. But she didn’t want to think about that either. She certainly wasn’t going to mention it.

  And he better not.

  “I said . . .” His voice was cool and precise. “I would take you where you need to go.”

  She stared at him in frustration. “What kind of a man are you?”

  “I am not a man.” He paused. “I should say, not . . . human.”

  The bottom fell out of her stomach. Fell out of her world. For a moment she was back in the dark, with the blood roaring in her head and chaos erupting around her.

  She took a deep breath, willing her mind to still, and felt everything inside her slide back into its proper place.

  The cabin was quiet. In the silence, she could hear the water rush and gurgle over the hull and the creaking of the rigging overhead.

  “Perhaps we should both sit down,” he said.

  Lucy forced another swallow. At least if they sat at the table, he wouldn’t be looming over her. She scooted to the edge of the mattress, reluctant to give up the sleek weight of her blanket. Not that the PETA people didn’t have a point, but there was something almost sinfully comforting about the silky brush of fur. And the cabin was cold.

  She dragged the blanket off the bed and stood, wrapping it around her like a beach towel or a bearskin rug. The ends dragged on the floor.

  She hobbled to a chair. Not the one he held out for her. She didn’t want to get that close. Plopping onto the seat, she crossed her arms over her chest like a kindergartner refusing to join in circle time.

  Conn’s mouth tightened. His eyes darkened. Now that he had her where he wanted her—ha ha—he seemed curiously reluctant to begin. Unless this silence was his way of making her talk.

  “So.” Maybe she should humor him. Not a man. Not human, beat in her brain. “What are you?”

  “I am selkie.” Another pause thickened the air of the cabin. “Like your mother.”

  The thing inside her leaped, like a child in her womb, knocking the air from her lungs in a big fat whoosh. The blood drained from her head.

  The chair scraped behind her as she stood. “No.”

  His eyebrows rose. “You are unfamiliar with the legend.”

  “Um.” Her mouth was dry. Her skin felt flushed. Feverish. “There was a kids’ movie. The, um, Secret of Roan Inish. About a human woman who turned into . . .”

  Her throat closed. The pressure expanded in her chest. She couldn’t say it. Because then she would have to take him seriously. She would have to take a lot of things seriously that she was usually very, very careful not even to think about.

  Conn nodded. “A seal.”

  Maybe she was still hallucinating. Or dreaming. “Your mother was selkie.”

  Lucy shivered, pulling the blanket tighter. The fur whispered against her naked skin.

  Fur. Oh, God.

  She shuddered and thrust it away. The heavy pelt pooled at her feet.

  He watched impassively.

  “Was it . . . Is it . . .”

  “Mine,” he confirmed.

>   She struggled to breathe. “I was wearing . . .”

  “Think of it as borrowing my coat,” he suggested.

  She blinked. Was he trying to make her feel better? “You’re an animal.”

  He frowned. “An elemental.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “The elementals are immortal, part of the First Creation. Your own mother—”

  “You leave my mother out of this. I told you, I don’t even remember her.”

  “You are heir to her bloodline,” Conn said. “Her power. You and your brothers.”

  Her brothers.

  She caught her breath.

  His explanation burst in her head like a lamp in a darkened room. Like a door opening in her mind. The scene from the other night took on a whole new light. Her family, united against her. Caleb and Margred exchanging long, meaningful looks that for once didn’t have anything to do with them being newly married. Dylan, tense and silent. Even Regina had looked at her—avoided looking at her—with tactful sympathy.

  She didn’t know them anymore.

  She didn’t know anything.

  “They . . . know?”

  “Yes,” Conn said.

  She winced. “All of them?”

  “Yes. Your brother is selkie. Margred, too.”

  She stiffened in rejection, even as the knowledge lumped in her gut. “I don’t believe you. Caleb—”

  “Not Caleb. Dylan.”

  She was cold. Naked. Freezing. “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it? Where do you think he was all those years?” Conn’s voice hammered at her, relentless as the sea. “Where did Margred come from?”

  Lucy’s brain whirled. Her tongue stuttered. “She . . . She was attacked. On the beach. Caleb found her.”

  On the beach. Without clothes, without memory, without any idea of how to get on or any family to report her missing.

  Lucy’s legs folded like wet string. She sank back onto the chair. Oh, God.

  “Why didn’t they say something? Why didn’t they tell me?”

  Silence.

  “I believe,” Conn said at last, “they desired to protect you.”

  Her anger flashed again. “From what? You?”

  “From your destiny.”

  Her heart pounded. “I don’t think it’s my destiny to be stranded at sea in my underwear with you.”

  Stupid. She snapped her mouth shut. She shouldn’t have reminded him how naked she was. How vulnerable she was.