But it was only Dylan Hunter, Regina’s husband, standing on her back stoop. She sagged against the sink.
Morgan glanced up. “About time you showed up.”
Liz’s gaze searched beyond him, looking for Em.
Nothing.
A different anxiety squeezed her chest. “Where’s Emily?”
“At the community center with your son Zack. And my son Nick and my brother and Margred.” Dylan smiled reassuringly. “She is in good hands.”
He stepped over her threshold, surveying the wet floor, the shrinking foam, the black V on the wall above the stove. “What happened here?”
“Gau,” Morgan said.
Dylan’s black eyes widened in shock. “That cannot be. We buried him under half the ocean, Lucy and Margred and I.”
“Buried, not extinguished. I told you he was back.”
“But the island is protected.”
Protected how? Protected from what? Demons? Whatever they’d done, it hadn’t been enough.
“Not sufficiently,” Morgan said, echoing her thought.
Dylan scowled. “I know my job. He could not have breached the wards without an invitation.”
Liz shut off the water in the sink, struggling to find a footing in the conversation. “I thought that was vampires.”
Both men looked at her.
“Buffy?” she offered. “The Lost Boys?”
Morgan turned back to Dylan. “She did not invite this. She would not.”
“What about the kid?”
“Zachary is my son,” Morgan said, cold as ice.
“That’s what worries me.”
Their eyes clashed, black and gold. There were undercurrents here Liz did not understand, but she could feel the tension swirling in the air. “Not everyone shares your confidence in my loyalties,” Morgan had said.
She stiffened in his defense, in Zack’s defense. “It couldn’t be Zack. He isn’t even here.”
“He wouldn’t have to be,” Dylan said without taking his eyes off Morgan.
“Perhaps a former occupant,” Morgan suggested. “A dabbler in the black arts.”
“Witches in Maine?” Dylan sounded skeptical.
Morgan shrugged. “We are not so far from Massachusetts.”
“I can ask Caleb to check with the real estate office,” Dylan said. “Though I doubt their records go back that far.”
“Paula Schutte at Island Realty,” Liz said. “She sold me the house. The previous owner was a physician at the clinic, too.”
Morgan looked at Dylan.
“Neal Emery,” he said. “Here six months. Hated the winter, took off as soon as Grace was born.”
“Not that one,” Liz said. “The doctor before him. Donna something.”
Silence thickened the air.
“Ah,” Morgan said very softly.
Dylan nodded. “That would explain it.”
Liz was tired of conversations going over her head. “Not to me.”
“Donna Tomah, the previous inhabitant of this house, was possessed by a demon,” Dylan said.
Liz swallowed. “Paula told me the owner couldn’t come to the closing because she was in a rehabilitation facility.”
“She is. In Portland,” Dylan confirmed. He looked at Morgan. “Caleb’s been keeping track of her since the attack last summer.”
“Another attack?” Nerves lent an edge to Liz’s voice.
“What is this, open season on island doctors?”
Dylan would not meet her eyes. “The demon did not leave her willingly or gently.”
Liz’s stomach cramped. “So what happened?”
Dylan hesitated.
“When a demon will not exit its host,” Morgan explained, “the only recourse is to render its victim’s body uninhabitable.”
“Meaning . . .”
His teeth flashed. “Regina bashed her head in with a table leg.”
Liz winced. “Oh.”
“The doctor is expected to make almost a full recovery,” Dylan said. “Eventually.”
“Am I supposed to find that reassuring?”
“Yes.” Morgan’s eyes met hers, not promising anything, but at least he didn’t lie, she could trust him. “Because now you know Gau can be defeated if you have the will and the stomach. And now that I know how he gained access to your house, I can protect you.”
“The island is warded,” Dylan said again.
“The house must be cleansed,” Morgan said. “And sealed.”
“With what?” Liz demanded. “Holy water? Garlic?”
Morgan smiled and despite the general weirdness of her life and the awfulness of the situation, she felt better. He made her believe things could be . . . not normal, but okay.
“Nothing so exotic,” he said.
“What, then?”
He gestured toward the bucket in the sink. “What do you use to clean up?”
“Water?” she guessed.
This time his smile warmed her clear to her toes. “Precisely. We are not so different, you and I.”
17
MORGAN AND DYLAN WERE STILL OUTSIDE, PACING the yard, circling the house. Making magic, Liz thought, suppressing a flutter of unease.
She watched them through her kitchen window. They made quite a picture, Dylan with his dark, lean elegance and brooding black eyes, Morgan with his brutal Viking face and hair the color of sea foam, day and night, night and day, every woman’s fantasy brought to life.
Except she didn’t want the fantasy. She wanted more than fairy tales.
She poured the bucket of dirty water into the sink. She had her own rituals to perform. Domestic ones, scrub the wall and clean the stove and mop the floor, mundane, dirty chores intended to return things to the way they were before, to restore a bit of order, a layer of protection, a measure of control to her life.
“We are not so different, you and I.”
She sighed. It wasn’t that simple. Even if you believed.
She heard the slam of a car door as Dylan left. Morgan still stood in the front yard, eyeing the sky like a man debating whether or not to mow the lawn before a rain. What was he doing out there alone? She glanced at the clock. Not even nine, the second feature hadn’t even started, plenty of time to wash the smoke from her hair before Dylan brought her children home.
Shower, shampoo, condition, moisturize. More rituals, female and familiar.
By the time she padded from the bathroom, the light was fading, the night sliding in on a wave of clouds. Her skin felt scalded and tender from her shower. The towel rasped against her breasts. She cocked her head, listening to rain spatter against the glass, and walked to her bedroom window. Restless. Yearning. Confused.
He was there, Morgan, alone in the overgrown yard, his head flung back to the pouring rain, his palms turned open to the sky. Her lips parted in longing and in wonder. Power flashed around him like lightning, power and sex. Rain ran in rivulets down his strong face, plastered his hair to his skull, molded his wet white shirt to his body. He was beautiful, the most beautiful man she’d ever seen, his pale skin glowing in the dusk, a marble garden god come to life, primal, elemental.
Not-a-human, not-a-human, beat her heart.
She tightened her towel around her. She’d never liked the myths in school about the old gods descending to earth to satisfy their lusts with the daughters of men. She’d always felt slightly sorry for those women they had sex with, who got carried away by bulls or swans and ended up with wars and pregnancies and eternal punishment, got turned into trees or nightingales. No Disney studio transformations from Beast to Prince, no happy endings in those stories.
Nothing good ever came from sleeping with a god. She didn’t need that kind of fantasy in her life. That kind of grief. She’d stick to reality, thank you very much, no matter how limited.
Or lonely.
He looked up and saw her, and her heart stumbled, and it was just the two of them, caught in the storm and the twilight, caught in the moment, her wet fr
om her shower, him wet from the rain. His eyes darkened with everything she was feeling, desire and regret, surprise and confusion, and whatever else was the fairy tale, this was real, the emotion was real, she would never get over him this time.
This time, she vowed, he would never get over her.
Still holding his gaze through the window, she took a step back and dropped the towel.
Her image burned his retinas, Elizabeth naked with the light behind her, her strong calm face, her strong soft body, breasts, belly, thighs.
Her eyes, dark with invitation.
Morgan’s blood surged. He lunged up the stairs, his heart pumping, his head swimming.
The door to her room was open. A yellow square of lamplight spilled onto the rug in the hall. He bared his teeth, electric pinpricks racing over his skin, the gale crackling, collecting, inside and out.
He stalked into her room. He had a vague impression of order and softness—tall, dark furniture, white, billowing curtains, a thick white comforter on the bed—but all he really saw was Elizabeth silhouetted against the rain, her damp hair dark against her bare shoulders, her towel crumpled at her feet. Need crashed through him bright as lightning. He wanted her. He had never wanted a woman so much.
And what he wanted, he took.
He strode across the room to her, ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders and lightly down to her breasts, watched the storm swirl in her face and in her eyes. The coolness of his palms made her skin prickle. She tilted her head back, exposing the strong, lovely line of her throat. He wanted to bite her right there, at the tender join of shoulder and neck, wanted to feel her tremble, hear her moan.
Her heart raced under his hand. She wanted this. Accepted him. Even knowing what he was, even after she’d been threatened and attacked, she welcomed him.
Unless . . .
The thought slid into his mind, disturbing and unwanted.
Unless she wanted him because she had been threatened. She was frightened. Who else could she turn to for comfort, for relief?
For protection.
Cursing himself for six kinds of fool, he released her.
“Elizabeth.” Only a breath separated her naked body from his. He could feel his control slipping, seeping like water through his fingers. “You do not know what you are inviting. I am not . . .” Her scent was in his head, tangling his thoughts, tripping up his tongue. “Fully in command of myself.”
“I don’t want you in command.” She smiled at him, making his blood pound. Tugging open his shirt, she trailed her fingers down his chest, over his abdomen. “I’m seducing you,” she said, and followed her hands with her mouth.
He had the most amazing body, she thought, hard and smooth and strong. She opened her mouth, breathing him in, licking the cool moisture and hot salt dampness from his skin, feeling him tense, absorbing his quiver. His stomach muscles contracted. He slid his hands over her torso, cupped her breasts.
She allowed that—he had wonderful hands, big and strong—but when his thumbs brushed her nipples, she slipped out of his grasp. “Take off your clothes.”
He lifted an eyebrow, surprised. Amused. Aroused, she hoped.
Holding her gaze, he stripped out of his shirt and shucked his pants. He stood before her, all clean lines and heavy muscle, magnificently naked. Her eyes slid down his broad torso, following the trail of dark blond hair that ran from his navel to his thighs. Definitely aroused. Hers to seduce and command.
Or not.
Her heart fluttered. She ran her tongue over her upper lip. “On the bed.”
His eyes flickered. His shaft jerked. Tension throbbed in the air between them. She held her breath, testing the limits of his control and hers.
With a shrug, he stalked to her wide, white bed. He lay across her mattress, arms and legs slightly spread, his moonlight hair captured on her pillow, his body powerful even in repose.
Agitation surged from her breasts to her loins, a thrill of desire, a trickle of doubt. She squeezed her thighs together.
She was the thirty-seven-year-old mother of two with a limited sexual repertoire. How could she make him ache as she ached, yearn as she yearned?
His gaze met hers, hot, golden, intent. His mouth quirked. “I am in your hands.”
His gentle taunt restored her confidence. Her skin bloomed. Her breath caught. Everything female in her rose to his challenge.
“Not yet.” She smiled. “But you will be.”
Her hair fell forward, a sleek waterfall sliding over her shoulders, against his skin. She flowed over him, restless and fluid as water, lapping, teasing, caressing, seeking the paths of least resistance, the points of greatest pleasure.
Morgan strained and quivered under her attentions, thrusting his hips forward, his cock jutting, demanding, pleading for her attention. She hummed low in her throat, a sound of pleasure and possession, and took him in.
Sensation sluiced through his limbs, blanketed his brain. Hot, wet suction. Her neat doctor’s hands skimmed over him, her neat nails raked lightly up and down his ribs. He fisted his hands in her sheets as she fed, vulnerable in a way he had never been before, giving himself up for her pleasure, giving himself into her control, letting her take him with her small, smooth hands and avid mouth. His vision blurred. His breath tore in his lungs, fast and jagged. He felt his release building, gathering force in his balls and brain like a storm at sea, and choked out something, an imprecation, a plea.
One lick, and then she rose over him, powerful and hungry as the sea, her lips slick and swollen, her eyes hot and tender, bewitching in her beauty, irresistible in her greed.
His heart stopped.
Grabbing a packet from the bedside table, she sheathed him. Straddled him. “Now.”
He growled, low and savage. “Yes.”
Now.
Forever.
Elizabeth.
She rubbed herself over him like a cat, feeling his stiff cock prod and nudge apart her slick folds, delighting in his big hard body straining and shaking under hers, his hot strength, his leashed power. He gripped her hips to pull her down and she grabbed his arms, leaning over him to pin his thick, square wrists to her soft pillows, her breasts brushing his smooth, hot chest, his breath searing her lips, his body rearing under her.
Time shimmered and stood still as she lowered herself by increments, absorbing him by degrees, impaling herself on his rigid flesh, biting her lip at how full he felt, how good she felt, how powerful this was, how right. He arched, his thick shaft cleaving her, splitting her open, hard into soft, male into female, giving her what she wanted while she took everything he had. His arms flexed. His wrists twisted. His fingers turned and gripped hers as she rode him in a slow, rocking rhythm, their hands joined, their gazes locked, their breathing matched and ragged. She watched his eyes go blind and bright as her orgasm rolled through her like a wave, as he drove deep, held, and shuddered in his own release. Lowering her head to his shoulder, she let herself be swept away.
Morgan stared up at the flat white ceiling of Elizabeth’s pretty bedchamber as she melted over him, their limbs tangled, her hair spread over his chest like a net drying in the sun, all warm, moist, fragrant woman. His woman. Sleepy. Satisfied.
She had taken him apart the way Emily’s kitten would unravel a ball of yarn until his guts were strung out for her to play with and his heart rolled across the floor. He could not find strength to move or breath to speak, but his instincts, honed over centuries of survival, quivered in warning.
He was in very deep danger here.
She raised her head from his shoulder, the glow still on her cheeks and in her eyes. Her kiss-swollen lips curved. “That was nice.”
His system was swamped, his world had been shaken to its foundation, and she thought it was “nice”?
He struggled to form words. “Yes.”
She stretched against him, making his libido sit up and beg like a dog. “I feel wonderful.”
He raised one hand, unsticking a str
and of hair from her parted lips. “Yes.”
She blushed, modest even after sex. “You’re awfully agreeable all of a sudden.”
“You have destroyed my brain,” he told her truthfully. “I cannot think.”
She grinned, pleased, and bounced a quick, affectionate kiss off his jaw. Another layer of his defenses swirled down like a sand castle assaulted by the tide. “I have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
He cleared his throat. “How did you survive without a lover all these years?”
“Oh.” She wiggled, distracting him. “I have a decent imagination. And some good memories.”
Memories of him? Or of her husband?
An unfamiliar stab of possessiveness caught Morgan under the ribs. “The finfolk live in the moment. We are not bound by memories.”
Elizabeth shook back her hair. “What about love?”
“We are not bound by love either.” The words, practiced for centuries, came easily. “Emotions are ephemeral. We are immortal. Nothing lasts forever but the sea.”
She narrowed her eyes. “The sea and love.”
He shrugged, uncomfortable with the conversation. “That’s what my sister thought, and she died.”
“You have a sister?”
“Had.”
“What happened to her?”
He drew a quick, harsh breath, regretting he had ever introduced the subject. “She died. She took a mortal lover and gave up everything for him, the sea and her life.”
Elizabeth’s brow pleated. “Did she regret her decision?”
“I do not know. I never spoke to her again.”
Not a decision he was proud of, upon reflection. But he was not much given to self-examination.
“How sad,” Elizabeth said.
“I believe she was happy,” he offered stiffly. “There were children. Five.”
Tiny figures on the shore, playing by the sea that should have been their birthright. Morwenna had walked with them, her pale hair floating in the breeze, her husband at her side. The lady of Farness. A wave of yearning for what had been, for what never was, swept through him.
“The first year . . .” Elizabeth’s voice faltered.
His attention sharpened. She was no more prone to faltering than he was to introspection. “Go on.”
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