Immortal Sea

by Virginia Kantra

  She inhaled sharply, her breasts rising, and he raised his head and took her open mouth. He felt a flash of heat, of triumph, of delicious friction, before her fingers tightened on his arms and she bit his lower lip. Hard.

  His head jerked back. Snarling, he met her gaze.

  Her eyes were dark and dilated, her mouth resolute. He was confident enough of her, of his own skill and experience, to believe he could still have her. He almost lunged again for her mouth.

  But she stopped him, slapping her palm against his chest. “My satisfaction isn’t the issue. This is about Zack. He comes first.”

  Of course the boy came first. Morgan would not still be here on this island otherwise.

  He leaned back slightly, his lip throbbing, his body tight. “So?”

  “So.” Her breath escaped in a short, explosive puff.

  “Any personal relationship between us, any physical relationship, complicates things.”

  Impatience licked him. “Without our physical relationship, the . . . Zachary,” he said carefully, “would not exist.”

  “As far as you’re concerned, he didn’t exist. Not until a few days ago.”

  “And you hold that against me. Would use that against me.”

  She opened her mouth to deny it. “Pretty much.”

  Surprise held him momentarily speechless. Surprise and respect.

  “It’s not like you have this great track record of sticking around,” she continued. “Until I’m sure you won’t hurt Zack, it’s better if we take things slowly. Our relationship begins and ends with him.”

  Strong words. She was a strong woman.

  But not, he thought, invulnerable. He surveyed her face. Her gaze was clear and fearless, her cheeks flushed with what might have been anger. But beneath the angle of her outthrust jaw, he caught again that tiny, betraying flutter of her pulse.

  “Is it the boy you’re protecting?” he murmured. “Or yourself?”

  Liz’s heart threatened to pound its way out of her chest.

  “Is it the boy you’re protecting? Or yourself?”

  Both, she thought desperately.

  “Zack, of course.”

  Well, it was half true, wasn’t it? She nudged Morgan out of the way with her hip and opened the freezer door. She needed to get a grip on the situation and herself. “The kids are waiting for their dessert. Why don’t you carry the ice cream out there while I make coffee?”

  She thrust the carton at him.

  His brows flickered upward. “You trust me alone with your children?”

  Not really. But she trusted herself alone with him even less.

  “I think you can deal with each other unsupervised for a few minutes,” she said, her tone as dry as his.

  She spooned coffee into a paper filter, trying to ignore the pounding in her blood and the trembling of her hands. She was not the kind of woman who quaked with lust. Not usually. Not since Copenhagen.

  Maybe stress and deprivation were finally getting to her.

  Or maybe Morgan was.

  He set the ice cream on the counter and came up behind her, moving silently and too close. “I am not finished. I want you.”

  Her breath backed up in her throat.

  “First lesson in parenting.” She flipped the switch on the coffeemaker and turned, leading with her elbow. He stepped back, avoiding a jab to his ribs. “What you want doesn’t come first anymore.”

  It was a good exit line. She grabbed four bowls and a handful of spoons and beat a retreat toward the dining room and safety.

  Emily leaned her head on her wrist, plowing tunnels through her rice and peas.

  Zack’s place was empty. Of course. She should have known he’d escape from the table the minute her back was turned.

  “Zack!” she called up the stairs. “Ice cream.”

  No answer.

  “Sulking,” Morgan observed.

  “Regrouping,” Liz corrected. “It’s been quite a day.”

  For all of them. And it wasn’t over yet.

  “Em, would you go upstairs and tell Zack it’s time for dessert?”

  Emily’s small face was tense, her gaze fixed on her plate. “He isn’t there.”

  She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “Well, wherever he is, can you tell him—”

  Emily looked up, her big eyes wide and clouded. “He went out.”

  A feeling tickled the back of Liz’s neck like a spider crawling along her hair line. “Out where?”

  Emily twisted, looking over her shoulder toward the front door.

  “Beneath the wave,” Morgan said.

  “What?”

  His face was grim. “I will go after him.”

  Liz quelled her unease. His urgency was infectious, but there was no point in overreacting. “That’s not necessary. He’s fifteen. It’s still light out. How much trouble can he . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Morgan met her gaze. “Precisely.”

  Her heart hammered. “I’ll call his cell phone.”

  “Do as you wish. I am going to find him.”

  “You can’t. He left because of you.”

  Because he was hurting, angry, and confused, questioned by the police and confronted with his biological father. And she’d told him to get a job. She winced.

  “You give him too much credit,” Morgan said. “I doubt he is capable of rational thought. He is a young, rebellious male. He runs on instinct.”

  “Runs where?” She knelt by her daughter’s chair. “Em, honey, did Zack say anything about where he was going? When he’s coming back?”

  Emily’s lip trembled. She shook her head.

  Liz strode to the living room and dug in her bag for her phone.

  Morgan followed. “I need something that belongs to him. Something he sleeps with or wears next to his skin.”

  She lowered the phone from her ear. “Why?”

  “You are wasting time.” Morgan’s gaze was cool and implacable. “Get it, please.”

  “I’m not going to . . . We don’t need search dogs. Or psychics.” With relief, she heard the connection to Zack’s cell phone go through. But the call switched over instantly to voice mail. Her stomach hollowed.

  Emily’s sandals slapped as she ran upstairs. Upset, Liz thought.

  She swallowed her worry and anger, struggled to keep her voice calm. “Zack, this is Mom.”

  She left a message, flipped her phone shut. She needed to check on Em. But even as she headed for the hall, her daughter reappeared in the entrance to the living room, hugging a pillow to her waist.

  “Your brother’s?” Morgan asked.

  The little girl nodded.

  His smile this time was no cool curve of lips but something warm and genuine. Liz’s heart stuttered in her chest.

  “Good girl.” Morgan plucked the pillow from her small hands.

  Emily gazed up at him the way she had in the police station, like he was all the Disney princes and Anakin Sky-walker rolled into one.

  Liz watched him strip the case from Zack’s pillow, his movements swift and fluid, as if every second counted. “This is ridiculous. We’re on an island. He can’t go anywhere.”

  Morgan ignored her, folding the pillowcase, shoving it in a pocket.

  Liz set her jaw. “If anyone goes after him, it should be me.”

  “Where he has gone, you cannot follow.”

  “You know where he is?”

  “I have some idea.”

  Which was more than she had. At least in Chapel Hill, she’d known Zack’s few friends and his hangouts. Here, she was clueless. Doubts assailed her. She should never have moved them to Maine.

  “Then I’ll drive you,” she said.

  Zack was her son. Whatever mood had driven him from the house, whatever trouble he found, he was her responsibility.

  Morgan stalked to the door. “You stay here.”

  “But . . .”

  He glanced over his shoulder. “In case he comes back.”

  A
nd before she could summon another argument, he was gone.

  She kept staring even after the front door closed behind him. She wasn’t Emily’s age anymore. She wasn’t looking for a prince to ride to her rescue, and she’d lost her belief in fairytale endings when Ben died. But inside her flickered the hope that this one time everything would turn out all right. With Morgan’s help. For Zack’s sake.

  Even if it meant Morgan was more firmly entrenched in their lives than she’d ever imagined or wanted him to be.

  Zachary glanced at his cell phone display, ignoring the blinking message icon. Almost nine, barely past sunset. Man, he couldn’t get over how dark it was here. He could see in the dark since . . . His mind shied from the thought. Well, he could see. Enough to avoid tripping over his feet on the crumbling edge of the road. But the lack of street-lights, headlights, made him feel even more alone.

  No city glow stained the horizon. Only red clouds marking where the sun went down and silver clouds veiling the moon. Nothing to do in this hick town but go to the beach—“Amazing the things one finds underwater,” don’t go there, don’t go there, don’t—or sit in his room jerking off.

  His mouth hung open. He couldn’t get air in his lungs. His chest was hot and tight.

  “She feeds you, clothes you, shelters you like a child.”

  But he didn’t feel like a child. He felt . . . The pressure in his chest built and pushed at his throat like a sob, like a scream.

  He walked faster along the broken road to escape it.

  Occasional lights pierced the dusk and his solitude, the pale flicker of a TV through a window, the yellow glow of a lamp. Real families secure in their homes, with mothers who didn’t drag you off to Bumfuck, Maine, and tell you to get a job, with fathers who didn’t die or show up sneering out of nowhere.

  A screen door creaked and slammed. Something thumped and was dragged rattling down a driveway.

  He didn’t want to see anybody. He couldn’t talk to anybody, not with the weight sitting on his chest, cutting off his air. He stopped in the shadow of the trees a few yards away as somebody—a girl—lugged two garbage cans down to the road.

  It was her. The girl—his mind fumbled for her name—Stephanie, from Wiley’s Grocery Store. Stephanie Wiley. Her dark red hair was almost black in the twilight, her arms smooth and pale. He could smell her, the salt of her skin, the freshness of her shampoo. Her gum. Inside him something quivered and went still like a cat stalking a bird on the lawn.

  He didn’t speak, but maybe he made a sound because her head jerked up.

  She whirled toward the road, eyes widened against the dusk. “Who’s . . . Oh.” Her shoulders visibly relaxed. “Zack? It is you, isn’t it? God, you scared me to death.”

  He unglued his tongue from the roof of his mouth and shuffled forward, no longer a stalker in the shadows, a sleek predator in the grass, but himself again, fifteen and awkward.

  Her silver lip ring glinted as she smiled, flipping her hair back over her shoulders. “What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, just, you know.” He gestured largely. “Out. Walking.”

  “You could have made a little noise,” she said. “Next time cough or say hi or something.”

  Next time. His heart swelled. Like she thought he would come by again, like she expected to see him.

  Of course she’s going to see you, dickhead. She couldn’t avoid him if she tried. The entire island population was probably smaller than his old high school.

  He cleared his throat. “Hi.”

  She cocked her hip, tilted her head. “So, where were you out walking to?”

  “Nowhere.” He was going nowhere. In more ways than one.

  The porch light flicked on, and the front door opened, revealing a woman’s backlit shape. “Steph, honey? Everything okay?”

  “Fine, Ma,” she yelled without turning around.

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “Just talking to a friend.”

  “Well, don’t be long.” The door closed.

  “Parents.” Stephanie rolled her eyes. “They worry, you know?”

  Guilt needled him as he thought of his unanswered phone, his mother’s strained face as she sat at the foot of his bed.

  He swallowed the lump in his throat. “Yeah, I know.”

  Brilliant. Girls everywhere threw themselves at his feet because of his deep insights and sparkling conversation.

  “It was even worse last summer,” she confided. “Some lunatic was running around the island killing people.”

  “Yeah?” he asked, distracted. She was so interesting to look at, her mobile mouth with that silver lip ring, her small, firm breasts.

  “Well, one person. A woman from Away was murdered on the beach. Then Regina Barone at the restaurant got attacked by some homeless guy. And after that, somebody broke into the clinic and beat the shit out of her and the doctor.”

  “Probably looking for drugs,” Zack said. There. Practically a complete sentence.

  “Probably. Anyway, my parents were really freaked.” She stuck her hands into the hip pockets of her jeans, studying him in the dim light. “So . . . You want to sit for a while?”

  His tongue felt too big for his mouth. “Sit?” he repeated stupidly.

  “Out back.” Her smile flashed like a fish underwater, bright and quick. “We have a swing.”

  “That would . . .” He cleared his throat. “That would be good. Great.”

  Morgan glided down the stairs and melted into the long twilight of northern summer.

  Sex or the sea?

  The boy would seek one or the other. He was young, male, finfolk. At dinner he had quivered with too much tension, too much energy, all of it unsatisfied.

  He needed relief. That moment of entry into a body of water or a woman, the plunge and rock to completion, the ebbing peace that followed release.

  Morgan’s lips curled back from his teeth. It was not only the boy who was frustrated tonight. But his own needs must wait.

  Elizabeth’s wry voice came back to him. “First lesson in parenting. What you want doesn’t come first anymore.”

  He had to find the boy. Zachary.

  At the fork in the road, Morgan raised his head, scenting the air. He could smell the fog rolling in from the water, heavy with brine, and the breeze rising through the trees, carrying the scent of spruce and decaying leaves.

  Right into town? Or left to the beach?

  He pulled the pillowcase from his pocket. The beach, he decided. The boy was young for sex and new to the island. He probably lacked an outlet beyond his own hand. So it would be the sea he aimed for.

  More reason to find him and find him fast.

  The finfolk charged with rebuilding Sanctuary sometimes had to be forcibly restrained to keep them on task and on land. Even an experienced elemental could slip permanently beneath the wave, could lose forever the will and finally the ability to take human form.

  Zachary was not experienced. With an adolescent’s raging hormones and lack of control, with no training or understanding of his nature or his powers, he was doubly at risk.

  Morgan gripped the pillowcase, casting for scent or sign of the boy’s presence. He had not found his only son to lose him again.

  Zack was drowning. His armpits were drenched, he couldn’t breathe, and there was a roaring in his head like the ocean, tumbling him over and over, rocking him, driving him on. He gasped. Shifted.

  “Zack.” Stephanie’s cool fingers wrapped his wrist. She tugged his hand from her naked breast. His fingers curled reflexively. She felt so good, like satin, like velvet, like nothing he’d ever felt before. She wriggled under him on the bench of the swing, making the world sway and his boner very, very happy. “Zack, we gotta stop.”

  He couldn’t stop. He was going to explode. She liked it when he kissed her, so he tried kissing her again, warm, soft kisses, deep, drowning kisses, trying to get closer, trying to . . .

  “Zack, I mean it.” She pushed at h
is chest, moved his hand again. With her elbow this time, sharp against the inside of his arm. The pain penetrated the rush in his head.

  He swallowed hard and eased his weight off her. “I wasn’t trying . . .”

  “Sure, you were,” she said easily. She sat up and wiggled her breasts into her bra. His brain blanked again. “. . . got to get in,” she was saying. “My mom’s expecting me. And I have work in the morning.”

  He watched her tug her shirt down over her flat, pale belly. He hadn’t really thought she would do it with him in a swing in her parents’ backyard. He hadn’t thought at all. His body throbbed.

  Dickhead.

  He looked up, into her eyes. “Work,” he repeated.

  “You know, that thing you do to get money?” Her smile was warmer and softer than her voice. He really liked her. “I’m saving up for college.”

  “I’m getting a job,” he said.

  “Yeah?” She pushed her red-black hair behind her ears, interest in her eyes. “Doing what?”

  “I don’t know.” Something that had seemed like the worst idea in the world when his mother proposed it was suddenly acceptable. Desirable, even, because of Stephanie. “I have to find something.”

  She stuck out her lower lip thoughtfully. The tiny silver ring winked in the moonlight. “My dad’s looking for somebody to stock shelves. I could talk to him for you.”

  “You would do that?”

  “Sure. Why not?” The swing swayed as she stood. “Maybe you could come by tomorrow.”

  “To the store,” he said so there would be no misunderstanding.

  “What, you thought I was inviting you back to the swing?”

  He was silent.

  “No reason you can’t do both.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she turned and walked away.

  Despite the erection straining at his zipper, he lurched to his feet. “Stephanie.”

  She waggled her fingers. “See ya. Tomorrow.”

  He watched her skip up the back stairs and into her house, his face hot and stiff as if he’d been crying, his body hot and stiff from what they’d done and all he hadn’t been allowed to do.

  He couldn’t go home like this. He’d explode. Suffocate. His mother would be waiting with questions, always with questions, and he couldn’t answer them tonight any more than he ever could.