by Anna Leonard
If so, she knew somehow that she would also consume and possess him. Unlike any man she had ever been with before, he was not holding back or building barriers even as the clothing was coming off. Everything he was, everything he could ever be, he was offering up to her. That this was…sex, yes, but more. More than a single night of on-the-lam passion, or mere physical desire. It wasn’t even only love, impossible though that might be, so quickly. It was belonging. It was…acceptance.
And, honestly, she didn’t care about any of that. She just wanted him inside her, moving rough and strong and sending her into oblivion. Everything else, everything, could wait until tomorrow.
His free hand slid under the waistband, fingers searching under the cotton of her panties. She had a moment’s regret it wasn’t something sexier, silkier, but all that was forgotten the moment his first searching finger found her own curls, slipping into the wet folds with only the slightest resistance.
“Mine,” he said, and moved another finger inside her, twisting his wrist somehow so that she cried out, not quite ready to come but closer than she could have believed possible, so quickly.
“Am not,” she denied, gritting her teeth as she joined in the game, resisting even as she welcomed him into her body and ached for more. Her fingers clutched at the bedspread, then reached instead for him, the warm length she could feel pressing against her thigh.
He tried to evade her, but she was quick, and he was distracted and hampered by the muscles clenching around his own fingers. Her hand closed around the thick flesh, sliding along the silky skin, letting her grip pulse, loose and then tight, in time with the beat of his pulse. She wasn’t trying to make him come; the angle wasn’t right, the time wasn’t right. But her hand was marking him, the same way his was marking her.
“More,” he growled. “More, now.” His hand pulled out of her and she almost whimpered at the loss, but then her jeans were pulled off her legs entirely, the plain cotton underwear following them onto the cheap carpet. He slid his hands under her sweatshirt, discovering that she had abandoned the still-damp bra when she changed clothing. Another deep growl rose from his throat, and he cupped her breasts, thumbs stroking the tips before he bent his head to nuzzle them through the fabric. It tickled, but she had no desire anymore to giggle. He tugged the garment up and over her head, swearing as it got caught somewhere between her chin and nose. With her help it was quickly untangled, and he tossed it to join her jeans and underwear on the carpet.
“Smooth move,” she teased him, reaching to stroke the side of his face to show that she was only teasing. She didn’t want smooth. She wanted him.
“Miles out in the sea, never hearing your name or knowing your voice, I knew you,” he said, kneeling between her legs and urging her to rise, meeting him halfway. Her thighs rested on his, his cock resting against her stomach. “I couldn’t describe your face, but I knew how you would feel. Like this. Did you feel me coming for you? Were you waiting for me, that night on the beach?”
She hadn’t been. She hadn’t known him, hadn’t dreamed of him, hadn’t imagined anything impossible like this. Not until she touched him. Her practical, land-born mind wouldn’t accept it, even now.
But if he was right, if he wasn’t crazy, there was a part of her that had known. Had rejected anything and everything else. Had been waiting, all this time.
“You came to find me. Now you’ve found me.” She wiggled a little, deliberately, and looked directly into his dark eyes. “You going to talk all night, or—”
The rest of that sentence went unspoken, replaced by a sharp, satisfied gasp as he grabbed her by the hips and lifted her, sliding into her without hesitation.
Their chests pressed against each other, slick skin to skin, and their breathing, ragged, slowly evened out as they both adjusted to the feeling. “Mine,” he said softly, so soft she barely heard him, the words soft against her neck as she started to rock, and his fingers tightened enough on her hips that she knew it would leave a bruise.
He might be crazy, in which case so was she. He might not be human, and if so, then she wasn’t entirely, either. None of that mattered right now, in this place. Nothing but the two of them existed, as she felt the restlessness that had dogged her all spring build into another kind of tension altogether.
“Elizabeth…” Nobody except Ben called her by her full name anymore. It should have sounded stilted, silly, considering their intimacy. Instead, it was sexy, seductive…. Her hands twined around his neck, curling into his hair, and she pulled him to her for another kiss. He nipped at her lips, then opened to her, allowing her tongue access once more even as he took over the motion of their lower bodies, rising and lowering her onto himself in an increasingly frantic pace, chanting under his breath. “My mate. Mine. Mine.”
Liquid heat washed through her, starting with the muscles of her vagina and spreading down her legs and up her spine, until Beth thought she might have melted from the onslaught. She shuddered, and Dylan surged once more in response, an inarticulate grunt replacing her name as he followed her into satisfaction, each of them intent on their own selfish completion.
They rested in that upright embrace for a moment, and then began the somewhat sticky process of disentanglement. Beth felt a physical ache when his now-soft member slid from her, but then he lay down on the bed and pulled her to him, spooning comfortably with her back against his chest, his arms wrapped around her waist.
“Selkies,” she said drowsily, just trying the word out.
“Seal-kin,” he corrected her.
“Tomatoh, tomatoe. And these Hunters…want our skins.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
He didn’t hesitate this time. “My skin is magic.”
“Magic.” She could hear the skepticism in her voice and winced.
“For lack of a better term…yes.”
She sighed and shifted to a more comfortable position within his hold. At this point, she wasn’t able to argue how impossible that was. “We’re in a lot of trouble, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, his breath warm on the side of her neck. And somehow, crazy on top of crazy, that agreement allowed her to sleep.
Unlike Beth, Dylan could not immediately find refuge in slumber. Instead, he stayed awake all night, listening to his mate breathe gently. Seal-kin weren’t warriors. They were sailors, fisherfolk. Playful, not aggressive. Yet, feeling this woman snuggle up against his shoulder, stroking the soft strands of her hair, he understood the overwhelming need to defend, to protect. Even more than before, when he would have died to protect her, he knew now that he would kill to ensure her safety. Kill, without hesitation, anyone who threatened her.
And so the hours passed and the sun reappeared, and he did not sleep, trying to come up with a plan to save her, and keep them both free.
Chapter 9
Beth woke the next morning, still sleeping on top of the itchy—if now rumpled—coverlet, and found her hand reaching out to the space beside her. She was alone. The bed next to her was still warm, but the entire room was warm, so that didn’t prove anything.
Normally, she would expect the memory of the previous night—hell, the previous twenty-four hours!—to make her cringe. She wasn’t the kind of woman who did all that. Especially when “all that” included, well, all that.
Instead, she stretched, toes pointed and arms over her head, the full length of the bed, feeling every muscle in her body bitch and moan about being abused. Get shot at. Swim several miles. Paddle same in a canoe. Walk along a dirt road, and then have mind-blowing sex. If that wasn’t an Olympic-level pentathlon, she didn’t know what was.
And it all seemed perfectly normal. That was the only thing really bothering her—how calmly she was taking all this. Why wasn’t she freaking out? She should be freaking out. She should be completely freaking out. Her entire world had not only been turned upside down and beaten like a piñata, but a lucky shot had also broken it into pieces and scattered her a
ll over the floor.
Despite that, she felt…relaxed. All right, some of that was the sex, which was exactly what the doctor had ordered. But it was more than physical, and deeper than letting off stress. Something had changed, something serious, and she had changed with it.
A wave breaking, taking her down but not drowning her. Green and blue, ribbons of shadows falling over her face…
The image came and went, barely registering. Sitting up cross-legged, still naked, on the bed, Beth went over her mental checklist.
Spring comes, and brings with it a bad, bad case of the restless twitches.
A man washes ashore down the street from her home—naked. No identification, no boat, no cash, no nothing.
That man, now clothed and named, chases after her relentlessly, with no provocation on her part.
She is drawn to the guy—admitting it now was much easier—and resents the totally illogical attraction, making her be even more stubborn.
They are shot at by people who knew who he was, and were looking for him.
He probably saves her life. Even if he was the one who put her in danger in the first place.
He is—according to him—a selkie, or seal-kin. And so is she.
Even if he is a nutcase, that doesn’t make the equally crazy people with guns go away. And she has a bad feeling he’s not a nutcase.
They need to find a way to stop the crazy people with guns.
She really wants to throw him down on the bed and screw him senseless again. And then again just to make sure.
Selkie-boy is currently AWOL, so she could get neither answers nor nooky.
She was starving.
Beth Havelock was a sensible woman. Once she faced facts, she dealt with them. “Clothes, then food, then a plan,” she decided. “And a shower before everything else, because, uck.” Dylan had gotten his shower yesterday, and then unfairly distracted her before she could take her turn. And where was the man, anyway? The bathroom was empty when she walked into it, and unless he was hiding in the room’s very small closet…
The thought came, unbidden, that he had left her. Walked out and left her there, alone, without a word of explanation. She stopped, her hand on the shower faucet, and thought about it.
“Maybe,” she decided. He had appeared out of nowhere, without warning; he might leave just as suddenly. But she didn’t think so.
Mine, he had said, his hands full of her hair, his legs tangled with hers. She got the feeling he didn’t say things that he didn’t mean. Not that way, anyway.
And if she was his… Was he, then, hers?
She thought about that for a while, luxuriating in the sensation as warm water touched her skin, when she heard the bathroom door open.
“Beth?”
“No, it’s someone else who came in and decided to take a shower while she was there.” She wasn’t usually such a wiseass; it just fell out of her mouth because, really, who else did he think it could be? Her nose twitched; he was carrying something that smelled incredible. “Tell me that crinkling noise I hear is a bag containing something greasy and egg-filled, and all is forgiven.”
The cheap shower curtain moved, and a bag with a familiar logo appeared briefly. “Eggy and greasy, as requested.”
“Oh, thank God. Gimme two minutes.”
A low chuckle that warmed her even more than the water was his response, even as the bag disappeared and the curtain fell back into place. “Don’t rush, you need the time under water. I promise not to eat yours before you’re done.”
The door closed before she realized what he had said. You need the time under water. She looked down at her skin and started to laugh. That answered that, then. Made perfect sense, really. Seals lived in the water. She guessed seal-kin did, too. Apparently her mother had been right; long showers and even longer baths were a family trait after all.
The smell of the egg and bacon sandwiches was making Dylan’s mouth water, but he was good and only ate his own. They had burned through a lot of calories yesterday, and dinner seemed a long time ago. She needed food to recuperate, and to keep her strength up for whatever the next wave brought.
Traditionally a male looking to prove his worth as a mate would bring the freshest fish of the day, proving his ability to provide, and then cook it up to prove that he wasn’t totally helpless. He had always assumed that second part was his mother’s addition to the ritual—he knew that he had gotten spoiled by his many sisters, and his mother felt the need to counteract that—but it was a good tradition.
Buying a sack of fast food didn’t seem to be quite on the same level as fishing, frying and serving, but you did what you could under the circumstances. Some day he’d do it properly. First, they had to avoid the Hunters.
“Hey.”
He turned to see Elizabeth come out of the bathroom. Unlike him, she had wrapped a towel around her body, but it was short enough to leave nothing to the imagination. Not that he needed his imagination. His eyes had seen everything, his hands had touched everything, his mouth had tasted everything.
He wanted to taste her again, and to hell with breakfast, plans, anything except making her his own. Her legs were muscled and firm, her hips sweetly rounded under the towel, her breasts, the towel knotted between them, firm and pale, and the tips, he knew, were deep rose and sweet to suckle.
“We need a plan.” She moved with assurance to the rickety table and grabbed the bag, pulling the sandwich out and barely pausing to unwrap it before eating. His gaze rose to her face, watching her mouth move, her throat swallow, and he had to force himself to concentrate on her words. He couldn’t afford to be so caught up in rut that he became useless. Not until they were safe. Then he could, they could…oh, the things they could do….
“These Hunters. They’re not going to give up?”
He shook his head, letting go of the fantasy for a moment. “I doubt it. We’re worth too much money to them. Once they locate one of us…” The thought was enough to distract him from his libido—and the fact that she was eating all the hash browns, her even white teeth tearing apart the bites with obvious relish.
She swallowed and wiped her mouth with a napkin. “Why? You said they want our skins, but you never said why. Not that I want details, particularly, because it’s seriously not something I want to think about, but…assuming everything else is true, which I am for lack of anything else to believe, what makes our skins worth having?”
That was the question he hadn’t wanted to answer. Trust Beth, his Elizabeth, to ask it.
“That bad, huh?” she asked when he didn’t respond right away. She put down the last bite of her egg sandwich and reached for the coffee. Her skin was so pale, her hair slicked against her scalp the way it had been in the ocean, but this time smelling of shampoo, not salt.
Awareness kicked him in the gut. She should have been safe in her house. She would have been safe in her house, her ancestry hidden, if he hadn’t come for her. This was all his fault. Guilt and regret, unaccustomed and unfamiliar, rose in his gullet, making him want to rid himself of breakfast as though that would evict responsibility, as well.
She fortified herself with caffeine, and then tilted her head, looking at him. “Tell me. You’ve told me everything else—tell me that last thing. I mean, being skinned is pretty much as bad as it gets, right? So what…what do they do with them? The skins.”
He felt sick, breakfast suddenly a greasy weight in his aching stomach even as the guilt literally choked him. She had asked. He had to tell her. Nathan had been right; his Elizabeth wasn’t the sort to run or hide. “I told you that seal-kin were human once, before they…changed. The longer they lived with the cousins, adapted to life in the sea. Learned to speak with the colonies, formed their own… And they changed in more drastic ways, too.”
“Drastic.” She frowned, and then he saw sudden comprehension come into her eyes. “Selkies…they can take seal form, as well as human. According to the legends. Right?” She didn’t wait for him to respond, b
ut stood up and started to pace the small hotel room. Her towel slipped, and she tightened it over her breasts absently, not quite as comfortable with nudity as he was. “You…didn’t have a boat, did you? When you first showed up. God, I’m a moron. You swam. In seal-form. Like you did yesterday, didn’t you? That was you.” She seemed to suddenly realize that she was rambling. “But your skin…where is it?”
His lips twitched, trying to hold back a totally inappropriate smile. His mate was sexy, beautiful and smart. She was going to make his life…challenging. Amazing. “I’m wearing it. The legends say that seal-kin have a seal-skin they put on to change form, that if you steal one skin, they—we—are trapped in the other form. Legend’s not quite right. There’s no second skin. Just us. Just two forms in one body.”
“So they can’t steal it to keep you from changing… But how do you change?” She was confused again, trying to work the puzzle out in a logical fashion.
“They steal it, just not the way the stories claim. It’s not discarded on a beach somewhere, or folded up while we swim, or anything neat or pretty like that. The change, the ability…it’s in our skins. Genetic. Seal-kin can change form, human to seal, passed down parent to child. But when the skin is placed around a true human… They can change, too. Not to seal, but to another human.”
“So anyone who had a seal-kin skin…” She still wasn’t quite getting it, not yet. Her mind was so practical, it hadn’t quite made the jump to the wonder of what they were, just yet.
“Could change form to whatever he or she wished. One time only, change their size, shape, color…everything except their gender.” And here was the truth of the matter. The reason the Hunters chased them so fanatically, the reason why a selkie’s life was worth more than gold, so long as his—or her—skin was intact. “Can you imagine how much money that goes for, among humans who wish desperately to change their form entirely? To become another person, completely and seamlessly? What someone—criminals—might do to get their hands on that? On us?”