by Anna Leonard
Thinking of that, she added a denim baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses to her cart. Clichéd, but useful.
She made her purchases, then sat down on a bench and switched to new socks and sneakers. She dumped the old shoes into the bag, thinking that she might be able to salvage them, and went in search of Dylan.
He was already standing in line to check out, she was surprised and pleased to see.
“Get everything you need?”
“Yes, mother,” he replied semi-seriously. She leaned over and investigated his cart. He must watch the same television shows she did, because he had gone the same route: clean plain clothing without any logos or obvious flash, although his sneakers were actual running shoes, complete with stripes, and a pair of black sweatpants.
He also had a six-pack of Coke, a large bag of beef jerky and a gallon of bottled water, plus two oversize beach towels and a knapsack.
“Looks like you covered everything,” she said dryly. “I don’t know what I was thinking, going off without my towel.”
He gave her a blank look, and she just shook her head. “Never mind. Pay, and let’s get out of here. There’s a diner across the parking lot, and if I don’t get food in me soon, even that jerky’s going to start to look good.”
“I like jerky.” He sounded as defensive as a little boy scolded for hoarding frogs.
“Good. You eat it. I want a hamburger. With bacon. And fries. And coffee. And maybe even a hot-fudge sundae. I’m starving.”
She was. Her normal appetite was healthy, but this was overwhelming.
With their purchases in his new bag, fresh clothing on their bodies and food on the table in front of them, Dylan still wasn’t able to relax. Not because he thought the Hunters were still after them—he knew they were, but there was time to eat before they had to move on. No, his nerves had less to do with them, and more to do with the woman shoveling a cheeseburger with bacon into her mouth with an appetite that made him wonder if she would be that hungry in other appetites, as well. Now that the immediate danger had passed, the urgency had returned. He wasn’t quite at the stage of taking her on the table…but he wanted to.
She wiped her mouth with a napkin and looked across the table. “You’re staring at me.”
“I like the way you eat.”
He also liked the way a flush ran up her neck, all the way to her ears, when he said something that embarrassed her. It didn’t show on her face, just her neck. It made him want to follow the path with his tongue, from collarbone to the delicate area just behind the rounded lobe of her ear….
He forced those thoughts out of his head with an effort and went back to eating his own steak and eggs. Protein. Keep the brain working, not the cock. He couldn’t woo his mate if they were both skinned and mounted.
All right, wrong word choice. Dylan shifted uncomfortably and tried to think of the most disgusting shark carcass he had ever seen wash up onshore.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he muttered, knowing he was flushing as badly as she was. “I’m fine.”
“Do you think…do you think they can find us here?”
“Yes.” He risked looking up and saw her face scrunch in worry and a hint of fear. He had to make that fear go away. “But not right away. It’s okay. You were right, they’ll search the coastline first. So long as we head away, right away, we should be able to stay ahead of them.”
The thought of leaving the security and familiarity of the water made his voice shake, but he hoped Beth would not notice it. She was right; there was no choice. If he stayed, they would find him. If they found him…he was reasonably brave, and death wasn’t a terrifying thought to him, but that was not the way he wanted to go. And if he were Hunted, who would protect Beth? She didn’t even know what she was, much less why anyone would want to kill her….
And he had to tell her. Before anything else. Before he could woo her. He had to tell her who—what—she was.
That—that one thought—scared him more than an entire pack of Hunters. She didn’t know, had been kept in ignorance of her heritage, which meant that her family probably didn’t know, all the way back to the grandfather who came from the ocean. It was unheard-of, but there it was. Who knew what might happen once she knew? He couldn’t even imagine. She might…she might turn away from him, in shock, or disgust or…
“I’m sorry I got you into this. I… It wasn’t what I was intending. I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” She put the last bit of her hamburger down and used a French fry to scoop some ketchup off her plate.
“That you were…like me. I didn’t know you at all, it was just…” He dropped his fork and sank his face into his hands, almost laughing at how impossible all of this was.
“Dylan?” Her voice, her lovely silken wind-tossed voice, the same sound he had heard on the shore that first night, bypassing his ears and going straight into his soul. His heart rose to it, even as his cock did the same.
my mate.
“What?”
She had heard him. The tone of her voice changed, making that much obvious. The same way she must have heard him urging her to swim, to keep swimming, except that now she had no way to pretend it was anything other than what it was.
Proof, if he needed it, that he had chosen correctly. Not that he doubted.
“My mate,” he said, looking up and meeting her gaze squarely. “I came looking for my mate. I came…washed literally to your doorstep, and there is nothing but Fate in that.”
He winced at the rhyme, but held her gaze, watching as her irises widened in shock and—he hoped—shared awareness and arousal.
“I sensed you, even in my village, miles away. I could taste you in the wind, feel you in the water. You drew me unerring as the tide and constant as the waves. And all the time I thought I was leaving the familiar, leaving the known, only to discover you…long-lost and dreaming of me, as well. Long-lost, but kin.”
“Kin?” Her voice was soft, lost in the picture he was drawing with his words.
Once you’re in deep water, all you can do is swim, and hope you make safely it to land. “Seakin, you’re called. A daughter born on land, but to the sea. That’s why you are in danger from the Hunters, as well as me. I don’t know why your great-grandfather brought his children up onto the shore, all those years ago. For their safety? To please his land-born wife? I don’t know. But the sea remained in your blood, waiting. Waiting for me.”
“Waiting… Wait a minute.” Her eyes narrowed, and he discovered that Beth Havelock intent was even more arousing than Beth Havelock dreamy. “Just…wait a minute. Waiting? Mate? What the hell are you talking about? And kin to what?”
The moment of truth, and Dylan forced the words out, despite his fear. “My people. Seal-kin. Landers—humans—call us selkies.”
Beth believed him. She didn’t know why, but she believed him. It made no sense; he was a crazy man. A hotter-than-hot crazy man, but crazy nonetheless. The people shooting at them were probably doctors, using tranquilizer guns to bring him back to the loony bin. Weren’t there studies that said artistic ability and being nuts were often found together? She remembered reading that somewhere, once.
But she looked into his deep brown eyes, listened to his voice, and believed him. No: more than believed, worse than believed. She knew. The dreams, the stories her father used to tell…the feeling of restlessness, and the sense that she could trust him, could let herself drown in him, that she’d never felt with anyone before…
“Selkies.” The word sounded strange, felt strange to say.
“Seal-kin,” he corrected her, then relented. “Selkies. Yes.”
“Seal-kin. As in, like…you’re not human.” That was freaking her out, overriding the sense of comfort briefly as half-remembered bits of Creature from the Black Lagoon ran wildly in the back of her memory. Not that Dylan looked anything at all like that. Not even anything like The Island of Dr. Moreau. Cat People, maybe. She watched too many old movi
es. “Are you? Or…”
“That’s…never really been settled,” he told her, picking up the last bit of steak on his fork and eating it, thinking as he chewed and swallowed. “Physically, we’re human. We obviously can breed with humans—otherwise your entire family wouldn’t exist. The legends say…” He paused, obviously trying to remember the old stories. “The legends vary, depending on the culture, and whatever fit best with the belief system of the human population telling them. They go back into prehistory, most of them. But the story I was told is simpler, and not quite so ancient.” His voice took on a storytelling, singsong quality. “Once, hundreds of generations ago, a sailing ship foundered off the coast of an unnamed land. All hands were thought to be lost, and their families mourned.
“But not all died in the cold waters. Several—good sailors, who knew the sea, and knew how to placate her, with kind treatment and smooth sailing—were rescued by Neptune’s children, Tethys’s children, whatever your preferred mythology…the dolphins and the seals.”
“Water mammals,” Beth said, nodding. That made sense. You couldn’t grow up near the water, in a sailing community, without hearing stories of dolphins who were reported to have saved drowning sailors, although as far as she knew they were all just urban—aquatic?—legends….
“Yes. Kin. Distant, perhaps, but…not entirely unalike. Ones who came out of the sea, and returned again.”
Beth nodded, absently reaching for another fry and eating it. They, dolphins, that is, and whales, had evolved hands, and given them up for flippers again, preferring the ocean to the land; she remembered that theory from somewhere.
“Some of those sailors found new berths in other ports, taking sail once again,” Dylan went on. “But others…stayed with the kin, and grew to understand them, to comprehend them and their ways. And…changed, with that understanding. And they eventually brought wives to that understanding, and raised their children with the kin-pups, and both sides of that generation grew together as one….
“And so the seal-kin were established, and grew into myth. Or maybe the myth grew into them. Either is possible, I suppose.”
There was something in that story he wasn’t telling, and she wasn’t going to ask. If there was actual seal-blood in the mix somewhere, it went from being semiplausible to totally impossible, and she’d have to call the men with the butterfly nets on both of them.
“And my great-whatever-grandfather?” Her grandmother had died before Beth was born, her grandfather only a faint, shuffling memory, standing on the widow’s walk, looking out over the moonlit waves, while her father wrapped his arms around her, and told her stories about the stars.
“He came from the sea, with his wife and children, and never again set foot in water…but never left it entirely, either?” That was the gossip, and gossip was as good as history, in seafaring towns.
“Selkie.” It was half question, half statement.
“I can see it, feel it in you. So…yes.”
“And these Hunters…they want us, want our skin? Because…we’re selkies?”
“More or less.” He dodged the question. “Hunters hunt what is rare. We’re quite rare.”
“But they only want…our skins.” She was having less trouble dealing with that now, for some reason. After being told that your great-whatever-grandfather married a seal-woman, whatever that meant in terms of genetics, the idea that someone would want to kill and skin you seemed almost…natural.
Almost. But still deeply disturbing, and Beth wasn’t sure how much more disturbing she could take right now. So because asking more questions would mean more answers, she accepted his incomplete answer. For now.
The motel room they got was… Beth looked around. Dinky was the word she was looking for. But it had two double beds and a shower that was reasonably clean, and towels that were thin but likewise clean, and they didn’t ask for any identification when the two of them showed up and paid in cash.
The clerk also managed not to leer, insinuate or otherwise be suggestive at the two of them checking in midday without any luggage. Beth appreciated that. She felt worn-thin enough without having to deal with sexual innuendo from a stranger.
Bad enough the moment they got into the room Dylan had disappeared into the bathroom, and the sound of the shower had started up. Immediately visions of his body, wet and slick again, but this time warm and soapy, filled her brain. Did he soap up briskly, she wondered? Or was he the slow type, making sure every inch was lathered?
“Oh, God…enough,” she moaned, and fell back onto her bed with a heavy thump. She was running for her life with a crazy man, everything she thought she knew about her family, about herself, thrown into disarray, and all she could think about was her libido?
Yes, apparently.
That settled, she took a look around. Clean, and dinky, and not exactly high-end. The headboard was nailed to the wall, as were the cheaply framed prints and the mirror over the desk. The television was bolted to a heavy wall-mounted arm, like the ones found in hospitals.
And the bedspread was of some fabric that itched against her skin. Or maybe it was her skin that was itching. She should have thought to buy moisturizer when they were at Target. She wondered if Dylan had dry skin, too, if that was a selkie thing, or a human thing, or just a Beth thing.
“You’re as crazy as he is. This guy comes to town, gets washed up onshore, says he came looking specifically for you, even though he’s never even heard of you or seen you before, people start shooting at you, then he tells you your granda-times-whatever was a seal-whatever, which makes you one, and that there are people who want your skin and you’ve got to run, now. And you believe him! You go along with him! And you still want to jump his bones!
“You’re insane, Elizabeth Havelock. Clearly, incurably, stupidly insane.”
She let the sound of the words die down in the empty room and wondered idly if there was anything about the shooting on the local news. Had anyone even noticed she was gone? Unlikely—she had been holed up all week, avoiding everyone; more likely people would notice when Dylan didn’t appear somewhere.
A sad comment on her life, she supposed, and decided that she really didn’t care if they were on the news or not. She didn’t think anyone was going to cover open season on selkies, not unless someone was coming after them with clubs and…ugh.
The bathroom door opened, and a waft of warm steam came into the room. Beth rolled over on the bed and started to ask, “Why do they want…”
Her mouth dried and she forgot what she was going to ask. She forgot everything, in fact, down to her name and how to breathe.
“Oh my god, where did you get that?”
That wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, based on his expression, but Beth was too horrified to care. Her eyes hadn’t exactly skipped anything, but the raw red scar running down the inside of his thigh had all—all right, most—of her attention right now.
He followed her gaze down and shrugged. “Barracuda. Nasty beasts. Decided to take a chunk out of me. I objected. I won.”
He waited a beat, then gently echoed her earlier words to him. “You’re staring at me.”
She choked on a totally inappropriate gurgle of laughter. “You’re naked. Specifically, you walked out of there naked. Would you rather I didn’t look?”
She expected a comeback to that, some comment or come-on. Instead, he…blushed.
“I know how to do this among my own kind. But…” He stumbled for words and swallowed hard, almost as though he was angry. “You’re not human. But you are. I don’t know how to do this.”
His uncertainty, matched with the passion in his eyes, was irresistible. She gave up trying to resist. If this was crazy, well then she was crazy. They should, as the saying went, be crazy together.
“I’m a woman,” she said, stepping closer to him. Her nostrils flared at the scent rising up off him. Clean skin, warm from the shower, and soapy, yes, but musky, too. Salt and musk, and she licked her lips, already an
ticipating what that toned flesh would taste like, once she put her mouth to it. Would it be like her dreams?
He groaned, and she was taken by surprise at how fast he moved, closing the short distance between them and backing her against the nearest of the two beds, scooping her up at the knees and placing her on the coverlet before she could do more than draw a surprised breath.
“Beth. Elizabeth. My Elizabeth.” He stood over her, magnificently naked, and her gaze slid from his face down past his smooth, strong chest, his muscled stomach, to the erection rising quite proudly from the sparse curls at his groin. “You’re mine.”
“Hah. I’m mine,” she told him, not quite ready to be swept away into this whole “mate” thing just yet, but wanting him to stop talking and get on the bed with her already. “But I play well with others.”
“I’m not playing,” he said, and as fast as that he was on top of her, his hands on her shoulders, pushing her deep into the mattress, his bare leg caught between her denim-clad ones, pushing them apart at the knee, arranging her into a position to his liking, less helpless than inviting. Not that it took much doing; the moment he was distracted with undoing the snap of her new jeans, Beth snaked her arms around his neck and gave in to the impulse she had been fighting all day and then some, to touch her lips to his.
The moment she did that, he let out a moan deep in his throat, his fingers fumbling, and a touch wasn’t enough. Her mouth claimed his, tongue dipping inside to discover that he did, as expected, taste of warm salt and sea spray, and something green that she couldn’t identify, but immediately wanted more of. Her dream, all of her dreams recently, only better. Real. Her tongue ran over the flat of his teeth as his mouth opened, delving farther, trying to taste every inch before the need to breathe made her pull back slightly.
He had managed to unsnap her jeans while she was busy, and she was impatient to get out of the clothing, sweating and needing to feel the cooler air on her flesh, feel him on her flesh. She lifted her hips to help him, and he slid the fabric down slightly, shifting so that he was practically kneeling over her, on top of her. His one hand was still on her shoulder, holding her down, and in another place and with any other man she would have been uneasy at the expression on his face, the one that suggested that for all of her brave words, he intended nothing less than to consume and possess her.