Ocean's Touch

by Denise Townsend

  Dylan keeping his eyes on Meredith, enjoyed watching her pleasure. Her eyes were squeezed shut, her muscles clenched around his fingers, a look of almost painful rapture suffusing her lovely features. Another wash of wetness soaked his fingers, and he smiled.

  “Come for me, lass. Let yourself go. Come for me…”

  She held her breath, urging on her own orgasm, as he pumped her with his fingers.

  “Come for me…” he commanded again.

  She released her breath with a shuddering cry, only to suck up another long draught of oxygen. Her eyes on his were pleading.

  He leaned farther over her, his fingers plunging in deeper, as he curled the fingers in her cunt just enough to stroke her inner walls. Seeking out the tough pad of her deepest pleasure with his clever fingers, he stared deep into her eyes.

  “I said, come for me,” Dylan told Meredith, his voice fierce. “Now.”

  And with that, she broke—the pleasure of her orgasm washing over her, suffusing her cheeks and breasts with color. As she groaned, her spine arching, he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking lightly as he withdrew his fingers from her ass, but kept working her pussy until she stopped shuddering around him.

  Only then did his fingers still, as he enjoyed the aftershocks wringing her tight channel.

  Meredith pulled him down into a fierce hug, gently touching his crazy, inhumanly wild, iron hair. And then she laughed, long and hard and joyfully.

  For she wasn’t sure which she found more amusing in its shock value—the fact that he was a selkie or the fact that she, Teddy’s widow, had just done something other than eat a meal on her kitchen table.

  Who says a leopard can’t change her spots, she thought, pulling Dylan up for another laughing kiss.

  Chapter Seven

  “Do you agree with the changes, Meredith,” Ron repeated gently.

  “What?” Meredith asked, snapping her eyes up from where they’d been resting on her white legal pad. It was note-free—not normal behavior for her in a business meeting of such importance.

  “Do you agree we can go ahead with these changes?”

  Meredith looked around the table. Ron’s face showed concern, while the expressions of his partners—two older men and one middle-aged woman—were carefully neutral. Teddy’s elderly mother, however, was by no means so polite. Her face looked upon Meredith with a combination of irritation, contempt, and that something else that Meredith could never quite put a finger on.

  “If you’re not going to pay attention, you shouldn’t attend these meetings,” Mrs. Casaubon said, her voice as brittle and sour as her expression. “Perhaps you have other more important things to do. Like spend my dear Teddy’s money. Take it out of the mouths of orphans and waste it on fripperies.”

  Meredith heard Mrs. Casaubon’s words through a haze. The fact was, Meredith heard such accusations a million times already. No matter how frugal she was personally, Mrs. Casaubon had decided long ago that Meredith was a gold digger, and nothing would change the old woman’s mind. If Meredith didn’t spend money, say, on the house, then she was “letting dear Teddy’s home go to ruin”. If she did, she was “living like a queen”. If she didn’t buy a new dress for a function, she was “not taking Teddy’s affairs seriously”. If she did buy a new dress, she was “wasting money on fripperies”. Meredith seemed forever linked to fripperies in Mrs. Casaubon’s mind.

  After hearing Teddy’s mother’s slanders for so long, they rarely affected Meredith anymore. Not to mention, Meredith’s thoughts were busy on other things—mostly Dylan-related. It’s not that she didn’t want to be at the meeting—and this particular charity was one close to her heart—but she couldn’t stop thinking about her morning with her selkie lover.

  “I’m sorry,” Meredith said. “I had a…a long night. Not much sleep. Please, can you repeat the proposed changes?”

  So Ron did with a patient smile. The changes involved tweaking the application process for microloans to women in Asia, to make the process both easier and more accessible. Meredith agreed with three of the proposed changes, but she saw a problem with the fourth.

  “Allowing a relative to appear at the bank in the place of the loan holder defeats the purpose,” she said. Meredith had spent nearly a year studying this subject and had even picked the brain of the Nobel Prize-winning creator of the idea of microloans. Of all Teddy’s endless charities, this was one she found genuinely fascinating, and one she felt she fully understood. Quite a few of Teddy’s other charities she felt a lot less capable of running.

  But he asked you to, she reminded herself. He wanted you, and only you.

  Meredith was snapped out of her own thoughts by Teddy’s mother’s tutting, although everyone at the table ignored her, including Meredith.

  “Part of the purpose of these loans is to make women financially responsible for themselves and to enhance women’s public profile as holders of economic power. It’s fine for them to have chaperones, if the country’s mores require such things, but the women can’t be replaced by male relatives as the public face of the money holder,” Meredith said firmly to Ron and his partners, ignoring the grimace Mrs. Casaubon was giving her.

  Ron nodded. “That’s what our experts said, but there was still pressure to include this measure from local governments and religious leaders.”

  “I’m sure there was,” Meredith said dryly.

  “I don’t understand why you have to interfere, Meredith,” Mrs. Casaubon said from the other end of the table, ignoring Ron’s words. “If the women want their husbands to go to the bank for them, why can’t they?”

  Meredith took a deep breath, reminding herself that Teddy’s mother knew nothing about the region in question or about microloans or realistically about any gender-related issues past 1945.

  So why is she talking? Meredith couldn’t help but ask herself.

  Everyone around the table ignored Mrs. Casaubon. Meredith didn’t like to go that route, because she knew it drove Teddy’s mother crazy. But there were times when they had to. Meredith had neither the time nor the patience to explain the real world to the elderly woman, and Meredith knew Mrs. Casaubon wouldn’t listen anyway.

  “Is that all for today?” Meredith asked Ron, instead of engaging with Teddy’s mother.

  “Yes. We’ll have to rearrange the wording to articulate our stance against the fourth proposal, but everything else has been dealt with, so that should be it.” Ron smiled warmly at her as he stood, along with his partners. Meredith stood as well, although Mrs. Casaubon remained seated.

  She shook the partners’ hands as they filed out of the room, but Ron stayed. He dropped his voice so that Mrs. Casaubon couldn’t hear.

  “I know you say you’re tired, but I have to say, you look wonderful today, Meredith. The best I’ve seen you look in months. Have you done something?” he asked.

  “Done something?” she questioned guiltily in response.

  “To your hair? Or perhaps a new workout or something.”

  Meredith thought carefully before answering, “I did do a new workout this morning, actually. That must be it.”

  “Well, keep it up,” Ron said, clasping her hand in both of his. “You’re absolutely glowing. Grace and I worry about you, you know.”

  Meredith smiled at the thought of Ron and his wife discussing her health. “Thank you. I know you do. Give my love to Grace.”

  Ron nodded, squeezing her hand in his, and then left the boardroom.

  Meredith looked over to where Teddy’s mother sat waiting.

  Like a rattlesnake, Meredith thought as she went to help the elderly woman up from her chair.

  Mrs. Casaubon harrumphed, but allowed Meredith to help her to her feet. Then Meredith ensconced her mother-in-law in the embrace of her walker before helping her to the door.

  “You can stop fussing,” Mrs. Casaubon said overly loud once they were at the main exit of Ron’s suite of offices. Her caretaker, a heavyset Latina woman named Inma, gave Meredith a
sympathetic smile as Meredith handed over her mother-in-law.

  “Next time you come,” the old woman said, peering up imperiously at Meredith, “make sure you bring your brain. I may not know what Teddy saw in you, but you made my boy a promise. You owe him more than ill-attention to his great work.”

  And with that, Mrs. Casaubon heaved herself through the doors while Inma shook her head at Meredith as if to ask, “Why do you put up with her?”

  Meredith sighed. That she didn’t have to put up with Teddy’s mother was well known to her since it had been rubbed in by countless friends, acquaintances, and even some strangers who saw how badly the old harridan treated Meredith. After all, Teddy had left Meredith both the house and her very own trust fund, which was maintained independently of all his charities. The work she did for those had nothing to do with the amount of money she earned or had inherited. But he’d left the running of his foundations to her, and had charged her, especially, with overseeing them. And she knew it would break Mrs. Casaubon’s heart to be cut out of their running entirely, so Meredith dealt with her mother-in-law as best she could.

  After Teddy’s mother had caught an elevator downstairs, Meredith finally left Ron’s office suite. Then she went and hit the Down button, chewing on her lip as she thought about her promises to Teddy, about his mother and her ever-increasing asperity, and the fact that Meredith had a selkie lover waiting for her at her house.

  What am I going to do with him? she wondered, for about the fourth time that morning.

  I can tell you what to do with him, that sly, freshly-awakened part of her brain suggested, then proceeded to dazzle the rest of her brain with a series of unadulterated, if very adult, images.

  The elevator pinged and the doors opened. Immersed in her fantasies, Meredith took a step forward without looking. Only to run flush into the man stepping off the elevator she was trying to enter.

  Ladislaw smiled when he saw Meredith as the elevator doors slid open, but her gaze was turned inward. He took a step forward to greet her, not expecting the normally careful woman to come flying forward to crash into him.

  He chuckled. “Well, hello there, Meredith,” he said as she looked up, startled. To his surprise, her face was flushed and her eyes, a little glassy. He knew that look.

  Desire, he thought, and he felt his cock harden even though he knew she probably wasn’t thinking about him. But still, to see Meredith Casaubon with a look of lust in her eyes…

  Alex suddenly wanted, very much, to tear open that horrible cardigan and rip off that god-awful turtleneck. If he did so, he’d reveal the full breasts that he knew, from seeing her on the running trails around Seal Harbor, were lurking under her frumpy clothing. She only ever wore anything remotely revealing while working out, a fact that had helped keep Ladislaw fit and trim throughout the long Maine winter.

  “Alex,” Meredith breathed, her brown eyes meeting his green. She felt the knot of sexual tension that had been building in her belly nearly explode upon seeing the artist. She couldn’t, however, read the look in those inscrutable jade eyes.

  For a split second, she imagined herself leaning in to kiss him, just to see how he’d react.

  Instead, she took a hasty step back, pulling her cardigan closer around her before smoothing her turtleneck higher up under chin.

  Ladislaw followed her out of the elevator, stepping rather too close to her for her current liking. Or, to be more accurate, she liked him being that close, which disturbed her. Deeply.

  First Dylan. Now Alex? What am I becoming?

  But a small voice in her acknowledged the truth.

  First Alex, it whispered, now Dylan. For she recognized now the real meaning of the nervousness, the anticipation, the strange feeling of queasiness and hunger that she’d always felt around Ladislaw. She recognized it because it was the same way she felt around her selkie lover.

  She wanted Alex. She always had.

  She’d ignored that fact—sublimated it, buried it, denied it—and had convinced herself it was both ridiculous and naïve to feel something, anything, for the man in front of her. But this time, upon seeing Alex so soon after leaving Dylan’s presence, she couldn’t deny the truth. What she felt around Dylan was what she’d always felt around Alex. And those feelings were lust, desire, and something more… A curiosity deep enough that it frightened her.

  For Meredith wasn’t a stupid woman. She knew the selkie legends; she knew that Dylan’s first mistress would always be the sea. Just as she knew that Ladislaw was not a man for settling down. He could never give her the emotional connection that she craved.

  Neither man is for me, she thought. At least, not in anything more than body.

  But why can’t that be enough? another part of her whispered.

  “Alex,” she said with a firmer tone to her voice as she hushed her unsettling thoughts. “How are you?”

  “I’m well. And you?” he asked, his green eyes so intent it felt like they were absorbing her.

  “I’m fine. Tired,” she added, hoping to excuse her clumsiness in bumping into him.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, genuine concern lacing his question.

  “Oh, yes. I just finished up a meeting with Teddy’s estate lawyers.”

  “Was the Dragon in attendance?”

  Meredith couldn’t help it; she let slip a giggle before carefully schooling her features. “If you mean Teddy’s mother, then yes.”

  “Is she still going after you about spending Teddy’s money?”

  Meredith’s sigh was her only answer.

  Alex grinned, but with little humor. “She’s an evil old witch, always has been. You’ve a right to your money. You earned every penny you inherited, taking care of Teddy the way you did. And now working like a dog for his estate…” Alex only just managed to curb his tongue when he saw the expression on Meredith’s face. She looked genuinely disturbed—but whether it was at the truth of his words or at him for saying them, he couldn’t tell.

  “Anyway,” he amended, using a gentler tone. “You’ve a right to spend any money you wish on yourself. You should pamper yourself. You deserve it.”

  She laughed again, but it was a well-trained social laugh. “I’ll think about it,” she said, although he knew she wouldn’t. She was probably planning on going home, exercising herself into a stupor, and then sleeping.

  Not going to happen, he thought. Not if I can do anything about it.

  “Well, at least buy yourself a new dress,” Alex told Meredith.

  “A new dress?” She asked nonplussed.

  “Yes. For my party tonight,” he reminded her. He could tell she’d forgotten.

  “Oh,” she said. “Oh.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I expect to see you there, young lady. And I expect to see you wearing something gorgeous. Something clingy and absurd and entirely too expensive.” Meredith giggled again as he continued. He considered himself a lucky man. He’d not heard her laugh in a very, very long time, and today he’d made her giggle twice.

  “I don’t know,” she started, but he cut her off.

  “I won’t take no for an answer—not to attending my party, and not to buying yourself something audacious.” Alex took out his wallet and rooted around inside it. “Here,” he said, handing her a business card as he replaced his wallet in his back pocket. “This is for my friend Wendy, who owns a gorgeous boutique over in Bar Harbor. I expect you to visit her within the hour and spend atrocious amounts of money. Scandalous amounts of money. I want you dripping in…what does the Dragon call them? Fripperies?” Meredith laughed outright then, and Alex grinned in response. “Fripperies, yes. I want you positively dripping in fripperies.” He took a step closer, touching the back of her hand that clutched her briefcase very gently with the tips of his fingers.

  Meredith bit back a gasp. For while she knew his fingers were actually cool, she felt as if she’d been branded.

  “And I want to see you tonight,” he concluded, latching his green eyes onto
hers.

  Meredith panicked. The heat in that gaze, the promise—she didn’t know how to react. She heard herself blurt out, from what felt like a mile away, “Can I bring someone?”

  Alex frowned for just a split second, before recovering his smile—or a semblance of his smile.

  “I’m sure that would be fine. Who is it?” he asked nonchalantly.

  “A friend,” she said, blushing. “Named Dylan.”

  “Dylan,” was all that Alex replied.

  “Yes, Dylan.”

  “Of course you can bring a date,” Alex said, taking a step back and tugging gently on the lapels of his coat.

  “It’s not…” she started, unsure what she wanted to say. “He’s not…” she tried again. “Thank you,” she finished, giving up.

  “So I’ll see you tonight?” Alex asked.

  “Yes,” Meredith replied, “I’ll see you tonight.”

  “And you promise to wear something new?” His mischievous smile was back, but it wasn’t as strong as it had been before. Nonetheless, she was happy to see it.

  “Yes,” she said, kicking herself as she did, but still wanting to please him. “I’ll wear something new.” He stage-glowered at her, and she chuckled. “I promise.”

  And with that, they took their leave of each other. Alex went in to do his own business with Ron, and Meredith went home.

  “You look troubled, lass?” Dylan said, upon Meredith’s arrival. He was where she knew he’d be—sitting on her beach. He stood when he saw her approaching, and she noticed he was wearing his sealskin and nothing else. A fact that made her mouth water.

  Without thinking, she went to him, and let him put his arms around her and stroke her hair.

  “What happened, Mer?” he asked again.

  After a moment, she spoke into his chest.

  “I have to go to a party,” she said the way other people say they have to enter a war zone.

  “And?” he asked, confused at her apprehension over something that should be enjoyable. Instead of answering, she peered up at him.