Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  If it’s selkie and female.

  And if it wasn’t, he’d be gone. Which meant she’d be right where she was before, on her own, raising her child, her children, alone.

  She pushed back her chair. “The appointment’s at ten.”

  “I will come with you,” he said instantly.

  Like he cared.

  He didn’t, of course. She couldn’t let the sweetness of his offer seduce her into thinking she could rely on him.

  “I’m not asking you to. But I thought I’d tell you in case there are any tests the doctor could do. Or shouldn’t do.”

  “The child was conceived in human form. It may be human. It will appear human, in any case, until it matures.”

  At thirteen. Her mind boggled at the thought of guiding a half-human adolescent— boy? girl?— through sexual maturity. How would she manage?

  How had Dylan?

  “Great.” She managed a smile. “I wasn’t looking forward to explaining to my mother why I had a fish tank next to the crib.”

  A shadow chased across his face. His eyes were stormy. “Regina . . .”

  She pulled her sweatshirt tighter around her. “Not now. Please. I’m . . .” Exhausted. Frightened. Overwhelmed. “Going to turn in. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  * * *

  Dylan glared at the blank white door that led to Regina’s bedroom. She had accepted his explanation. She was prepared to tolerate his presence and protection. That was enough.

  He didn’t expect her to seek his company or his comfort. In a matter of weeks, he had destroyed her peace, endangered her life, and strained the limits of her belief. She needed time to recover, recover and sleep. She needed space.

  He could understand. Wasn’t that what he wanted, too? What he’d always wanted. No human expectations, no messy emotional entanglements. To live forever in the license of the sea with its endless moods and changeable weather and endless, changeable sexual partners.

  Never mind that the one he wanted had just gone to bed without him.

  He imagined her undressing, taking off her bulky sweatshirt and soft black pants and sliding between the sheets alone. He should be in there with her. If he were in there, he could reassure her. He could put his hands on her, all that smoothness, all that delicate softness, taste the salt of her skin and the tartness of her mouth, slide hard deep inside her, pink, wet, his . . .

  He broke off, breathing hard, appalled at what he was thinking and thinking it anyway.

  Not his.

  He was not his father, to lay claim to another living being. He was not his mother, to sacrifice the freedom of the sea for sex.

  He was selkie. And he was sleeping on the couch. For tonight, at least.

  Satisfied with his decision, he grabbed the blanket from the back of the couch; and heard a whimper of distress from Regina’s room.

  Hell. He threw down the blanket and went to her door.

  She lay with her back to him, curled on her side like a child. Her hair was dark and messy on her pillow. He couldn’t see her face or her breasts, not even much skin, only her smooth, slim shoulder, her pale, tender nape, the delicate bump at the beginning of her spine.

  Longing shivered through him.

  She jerked and muttered. Dreaming, he guessed.

  “It’s all right,” he told her softly, standing in the doorway.

  “Nicky,” she croaked.

  “He’s fine. He’s here,” Dylan said, feeling like a helpless jerk. “I’m here.”

  She moaned.

  He’d had it with being helpless. He didn’t even think about staying uninvolved.

  He crawled into bed with her and took her in his arms, and she buried her face in his neck.

  12

  DYLAN’S BODY WAS WARM, SO WARM, AND Regina was cold, her toes and fingers freezing, the pit of her stomach an icy lump. She burrowed into him, needing heat, wanting skin, seeking to blot out the memory of pitch-black caves and her dreams of rising water. Chilling her bones, stealing her breath . . .

  She shivered, fumbling with his buttons, clumsy in the dark. He ripped open his shirt and gathered her against him, mashing her nose against the hard planes of his almost smooth chest.

  She shuddered in relief. But even in his arms, her dreams crept in, blanketing her brain like a heavy gray fog, clinging and cold. She hated those dreams. She reached for Dylan’s belt buckle instead, feeling the muscles of his stomach jump. Good. He felt warm, warm and alive, and—

  His hand closed over her shaking hands, holding them still. “What are you doing?”

  She was close to tears. She tried to joke instead. “Isn’t it obvious?”

  “Not to me.” He sounded grim.

  She felt a hot trickle of humiliation, and even that was better than the cold.

  “Bad dream,” she explained.

  “I guessed.” He didn’t let go of her hand.

  “I can’t stop remembering . . . I can’t help thinking . . .” She was back in the caves, in the dark again, only now the shadows were infested with demons. “I’m scared.”

  “You should be. And I am not the one to comfort you.”

  Because he wasn’t human? Or because he would leave? Neither mattered much to her at the moment.

  “You’re the only one.” The only one who understood what she had been through. Who knew what she faced. Who could deliver her from the dark. “You were there. You rescued me.”

  “So, what’s this? ‘Thank you’?”

  The humiliation spread, a warm flush of embarrassment in her cheeks, in her chest. She hunched a shoulder. “If you want.”

  “Let’s talk about what you want,” he said, cool as a priest in the confessional.

  “I want to stop thinking,” she said, her voice shaking as much as her hands. “I want to feel something besides afraid and alone. I want you.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “I’m already sore all over. Sex isn’t going to make me feel any worse. It might even make me feel better.” Make me feel alive.

  “A comfort fuck. How very . . . romantic.” There was an edge to his voice now. Annoyance or amusement? She hardly cared. Either was better than his indifferent calm.

  “This from a guy who did me drunk and standing against a rock?”

  He did laugh, then, a vibration in the dark. She felt him shift—not close enough, not nearly close enough— and rise on one elbow. Moonlight from the window behind her painted the hard line of his cheek. His teeth gleamed. “I thought that was romantic.”

  She sniffed. “You thought I was easy.”

  “You?” He combed a strand of hair from her forehead, his touch lingering behind her ear. She felt the faint rasp of his roughened fingertips and shivered all the way down to her toes. Not with cold this time. “You’re the most difficult woman I’ve ever known.”

  He watched her a moment, his dark eyes swallowing the moonlight, making her breath catch in her throat. He laid his mouth gently, lightly on hers, his kiss teasing, almost tender, almost . . .

  She groaned and arched to meet him, craving his taste, his tongue. He gave them to her, feeding her in sips and tiny bites that promised more than he delivered.

  She curled her fingers into his shirt front to pull him closer. Still not enough. Her hands wandered under his shirt, learning his shape, hard where Alain had been soft, smooth where Alain had been hairy. Different. She flattened her palm on his chest, where his heart beat hard and fast, and something inside her softened. Sundered.

  He was here. He was hers. At least for tonight. Tonight she needed him.

  His hands smoothed over her camisole top, shaping her breasts, rubbing the peaks, making her clench with excitement. Her legs moved restlessly between the sheets, twining with his. The scrape of denim against her bare skin irritated and aroused her.

  She drew back, touching her tongue to her lips, tasting his kiss on her mouth. “You really want romantic, you could take off your pants this time.”

 
Another breath of laughter. “There you go, being difficult again.”

  The covers heaved as he shucked his jeans and threw them on the floor. He rolled back to her, eyes gleaming. “Satisfied?”

  Her heart pounded. “Not yet.”

  He came over her in one smooth movement, nudging her legs apart with his knee, fitting himself between her thighs. He was thick and hard and hot against her. So very hot. Her pulse stumbled as he rocked into her, as his lips brushed hers once, twice.

  “I want to be inside you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come inside you.”

  Why not? She was already pregnant. And she wanted this. Wanted him.

  “Yes.”

  He licked into her, taking her mouth, his kiss deeper, wetter, wilder. His hands slid around and under her, under her panties, against her flesh. Fabric ripped. She didn’t care. He was pulling her down in the dark again, in the wet, swirling blackness, his body her rock and the darkness like velvet, thick and warm. Sensation swirled behind her closed lids, whispered along her veins, rose in her like the tide. She lifted her hips; opened her mouth to breathe. His hands spanned her buttocks. He gripped her, flipped her, turned her belly down on the mattress and dragged her hips up.

  She gasped in protest. In excitement. She wanted to touch him. She wanted to see him, his face, his expressions. There was something vaguely disturbing about having him so close and still out of her reach, beyond her control. Disturbing and— okay, she could admit it— exciting. He came down on her, taking his weight on his elbows, holding her in place with his thighs, and she could feel him, all of him, his naked flesh hot against her back, hard against her buttocks, thick and wide at her entrance.

  Her nerves thrummed. Her belly quivered. He looped one arm around her waist, his long-fingered hand skimming her stomach to find her slick, soft folds. She sucked in her breath as that hand explored her with curious delicacy, stroked her, spread her. She was warm now, warm and achingly alive, every nerve, every muscle desperately attuned to his touch. His fingers circled, plucking her response from her, coaxing her open. Her hands fisted on the sheets. Waves of pleasure rolled through her as she pressed upward shamelessly, as she arched to take him in.

  She heard him grunt in satisfaction and then he pushed into her a little way, his full head stretching her. Possessing her. Her eyelids slid closed. She’d forgotten how big he was. How good this felt. Too much. And still not enough.

  His hair fell forward against her cheek. His breath was hot at her ear, warm against her temple.

  “Like this,” he said.

  She could not see his face, but she heard his need. For now, it was enough.

  “Yes.”

  Anything to ease this terrible want. His. Hers.

  With one thick thrust, he filled her. She moaned, overtaken. Overwhelmed. In this position, she could feel everything. The strength of his arms, the sweat on his chest, his sex deep within her, stroke after stroke, driving away the cold inside and out. She had always been self-sufficient, self-possessed. Now he had her, controlled her, and his command of her body, his hold on her emotions, was at once freeing, terrifying . . . and terribly erotic. She bucked and wriggled, trying impossibly to get closer, to take more. She wanted to touch him, needed to reach him, but he was behind her, surrounding her, his legs bracketing her legs, his arm hard beside her head, his face damp against the side of her face.

  He reached under her, cupping her snugly, and she felt the darkness build and throb, felt it well and spill, felt it fill her, flood her as she came, over and over, biting the pillow to keep from crying out. His rhythm changed, quickened, each slow drag, each sudden intrusion, almost more than she could bear. He pumped in and out, rigid above her, hard inside her. Again. Again. His fingers clamped her hips. His long, lean body convulsed. She shivered, and he groaned against her hair, burying his face in the curve of her neck.

  Well.

  Eventually the bed stopped spinning and settled down with Dylan still heavy on top of her, his weight pressing her into the mattress. Regina lay with her nose in her pillow, feeling dizzy, trying to hold on to the leftover warmth. Waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal. For her life to return to normal.

  She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe either. She coughed, and Dylan rolled off her, rolled away, leaving her cold, damp, and alone. She winced. Well, that was normal enough.

  But then, without speaking, he reached for her and hauled her into his arms. Arranging her against him, he flipped the covers over them both. Her heart stood still. She froze in sheer surprise, her head on his hard shoulder, glued to his side by sweat and sex and exertion.

  “Are you . . . cuddling with me?”

  A snort. Or maybe that was a snore.

  Regina bit her lip. “That’s so . . . romantic,” she said, needling him.

  “It would be.” He sounded annoyed. “If you’d shut up.”

  She grinned and snuggled into his side. Warmed, comforted, she drifted into sleep, lulled by the rise and fall of his chest and the slow beat of his heart.

  * * *

  “What is this?” Surprise rippled through Margred’s low voice. Her small, warm hand explored him under the covers.

  Caleb set his jaw, torn between the pleasure of that exploring hand and the challenge posed by her question. “It’s a condom.”

  “I know what it is. I want to know why you wear it.”

  “To protect you,” Caleb said tightly.

  “From what?”

  “Pregnancy.”

  She eased away from him, all that softness, all that warmth, retreating. “But . . . I want to get pregnant. We want to have children. We talked about it.”

  Caleb winced, her bewilderment cutting him more deeply than her indignation had. “That was before.”

  “Before what?”

  He was silent.

  “The prophecy.” She answered her own question. “You are afraid that if we have a daughter, she will be in danger.”

  “Or you will.”

  “That is a risk I am willing to take.”

  He had always admired her courage. But he could not, would not, risk her life. Her safety.

  “I just think with what happened to Regina . . . Until we know . . . It’s not a good idea right now.”

  “But I want a baby.”

  Fear for her made him sharp. “You can’t have everything you want, Maggie.”

  His words echoed like a slap in the darkness of their bedroom.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know.”

  Ah, shit. Caleb closed his eyes. She had given up everything to be with him, her life in the sea and immortality. All she had ever asked from him in return was his love and a family.

  If he denied her the second, would the first be enough for her?

  * * *

  Regina woke to a dented pillow and an empty mattress. Alone again.

  That much of her life was back to normal.

  She rubbed her face with her hand, wincing from the splinters of sensation in her cracked fingertips, the shard at her heart. Damn. She eased to a sitting position, ignoringthe morning chorus of birds outside her window and the hit parade of pain from her various scrapes and bruises. Some of them were turning very interesting colors. Her toes, for instance. She hobbled to the mirror. Her throat.

  She stared at her pale, hollow-eyed, battered reflection, blinking away the easy tears that welled in her eyes. She looked like crap. No wonder Dylan hadn’t stuck around. Just like a man, she thought, fishing her sweatpants from the floor. Got what he wanted and . . .

  But that wasn’t fair. Last night was on her. Unlike some people, she knew how to face up to her actions, how to take responsibility. Thinking of the way she’d thrown herself at him, the things they had done in the dark, she blushed. At least she didn’t have to worry about making eye contact this morning. This way was easier on everyone. On her. Nick would be getting up soon. Just because Dylan had managed to explain away his presence in their a
partment last night didn’t mean she was up to explaining his presence in her bed this morning.

  She dragged the sweatpants over her hips. It was already after seven o’clock. On a regular morning, she’d have been up two hours ago. She’d just sneak down to the kitchen and—

  Her bedroom door cracked open.