Sea Fever

by Virginia Kantra

  “Our old room,” Caleb said. “Nothing’s changed.”

  Dylan’s face was blank and hard as the sea cliffs. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  14

  DYLAN KNELT IN THE WEEDS AND GRAVEL BEHIND the restaurant, running his long-fingered hands over the brick of the building the way Regina imagined another man might stroke a horse or the hood of a car. He looked sweaty, preoccupied, and very male.

  She dropped the black plastic trash bags at her feet to watch.

  At the sound, he turned his head. “Come to see me on my knees?”

  She tilted her chin at a challenging angle. “I’ve seen you on your knees before.”

  “Ah. Remember that, do you?” he said in a satisfied tone.

  Remember his dark head moving between her legs, the whirling stars, the whispering sea, and the heat rising in her blood, created by his mouth and hands and breath?

  “Um. Maybe. Vaguely.”

  His rare grin cracked like lightning across his face; sizzled along her nerves. “Perhaps I should refresh your memory.”

  She swallowed hard. “I thought you had to go commune with your prince or whatever.”

  “I do. But I must set a ward first. I will not leave you unprotected.”

  He went back to his bricks. She picked up the black garbage bags and pitched them into the Dumpster, ignoring the gulls that squawked and settled on the roofs around.

  Dylan was tapping and pressing on the mortared wall like a safecracker. She set her hands on her hips to watch.

  “Go back inside.”

  She glanced nervously, compulsively, around the alley. “Am I in danger?”

  “No.” He looked at her and sighed. “You are distracting.”

  “Oh.” A warm feeling melted her belly. “Okay.”

  She took a step toward the door and stopped, observing his careful hands and frowning, slightly frustrated expression. The warm feeling spread. He was an immortal creature of the sea whose natural home was a magic island. Yet here he was on his knees in the dirt of the alley because she would not go away with him. He was putting his own life on hold for her sake. Her sake and her son’s. Under the brooding and the bluster, Dylan Hunter was a good man. Not only hot and exciting, but principled and even . . . tender.

  A tender, principled guy who was also hot. Which made him about as rare in her life as a selkie.

  She walked back. His dark brows twitched together in annoyance. Smiling, she brushed a kiss on the top of his head. Dylan went as still as the broken concrete underfoot, his hair warm against her lips.

  She straightened. “Thanks,” she said and went back to her kitchen.

  * * *

  Regina’s kiss— her warm lips, her sweet smell, her simple words of gratitude— fell like rain on Dylan’s parched heart and churned up a storm in his soul.

  Or where his soul would be if he had one.

  Alone in the alley, he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the rough brick. Her affection would not endure, he reminded himself. Nothing human endured. Families were torn apart. Children grew up. Parents died.

  Better to live in the moment as the sea folk did than pin your heart and hopes on . . .

  Love.

  And yet the moment when she kissed him, not from lust or need, had been almost unbearably sweet, ripe with trust, pregnant with affection.

  Pregnant. The sharp stones of the alley pricked his knees. The birds on the roof watched with bright, merciless eyes. Regina was pregnant with his child, and she would not go with him to Sanctuary.

  He was responsible for her. And if he failed to protect her, he would be responsible for the deaths of the only two women who had ever mattered in his life.

  He splayed his fingers on the wall.

  He was not a warden. The foundation between his hands was man-made bricks and mortar, not stone and sand. He did not know if what he attempted could even be done.

  The selkie flowed as the sea flowed. Their gift was like water, powerful, changeable, and fluid. Like the wind or a woman’s lust, it was fickle. Ephemeral. But to protect Regina, this ward must stand against time and the power of Hell.

  He was on his knees with his hands raised. As if he prayed. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he should.

  He opened his mind, sent it spiraling down and down, feeling his gift like water trapped in a sponge, saturating each cell and fiber, lubricating each joint and sinew. Conn said the magic of the merfolk had declined as their numbers declined. But Dylan could feel the power in his blood like a silent sea waiting for the pull of the moon.

  He tried a cautious internal pressure, making a space— between heart and lungs, between liver and spleen— for the power to fill as water fills a footprint in the sand. Slowly it seeped in, a trace, a glimmer, a pool, growing in the gaps of his ribs, in the hollow of his gut. The power rose, and hope rose, too, swirling, eddying inside him, but not enough, not quite enough, like water blocked by a twig, a trickle when he needed a torrent.

  Sweat slicked his palms; beaded his forehead. He tried to force power, to wring it from his bones, to squeeze it from his heart, but like water, the magic eluded his grasp, reabsorbed into his tissues.

  “You need someone else,” he had told her.

  And her voice replied, firm in its faith. “I don’t think so.”

  He groaned. He wanted, needed . . .

  More.

  MORE.

  Power burst through him like a wave through a flume, sluiced his senses, roared down his veins, erupted from his mouth, shot from his eyes, exploded from his fingertips. Everything, heart and brain and loins, was swept up and carried away like burning branches borne by a flood.

  He let the power take him where and how it would; until he was left, tumbled and empty, on the stones of the alley.

  The magic retreated, leaving him beached and gasping. He sprawled on his stomach, with rough green weeds poking between his fingers and broken glass glittering before his dazed eyes like stars.

  He heard a scrape, an indrawn breath, and turned his head.

  His sister, Lucy, stood in the shadow of the door well, her usually soft, overcast eyes blazing like the sea at noon.

  The ground tilted beneath his cheek.

  She blinked, and it was as if a shutter dropped over her face, transforming her brightness, making her once again a tall, rather ordinary young woman in a green Clippers T-shirt and a white kitchen apron.

  “Are you all right?” she asked anxiously.

  His hands were scraped raw. His lip was split. A headache drove spikes through his skull. But buoyed by the power that had surged through him—the wonder of it, the rightness of it— he barely noticed.

  “Did you see . . . Did you feel that?” he demanded.

  She took a step back as he lunged to his feet, retreating farther into the shadows, into herself. Her lashes swept down like a curtain closing behind shutters.

  “I’m glad you’re all right,” she said.

  Like the world hadn’t tilted on its axis. Like nothing had happened at all.

  Like nothing happened. Fear raked him, more painful than the gravel embedded in his hands.

  He turned his head sharply and inspected the building.

  There. Relief shook him. The warden’s mark, etched deep in brick and mortar. The sign of power was scoured into the eastern corner of the foundation, where it would draw strength from the sea, the earth, and the rising sun.

  Even though he had placed it there himself, carved the connecting spirals with his need and his gift, the sight robbed him of breath.

  He looked back at his sister.

  She smiled uncertainly and turned to go.

  Driven by an urgency he did not understand, he called after her. “Lucy.”

  She wavered in the doorway, looking quiet and inoffensive and as if she would rather be anywhere but here.

  Regina’s words beat in his brain.

  “Do you . . .” He hesitated.

  Need me? What a lame-ass question.
He had robbed her of their mother. What possible use could he be to her now?

  “Could I come stay with you awhile?”

  She blinked again, slowly. “Stay?”

  “In the house,” he said, feeling like a fool.

  “It’s not my house. Or my decision.”

  “If you want me to ask . . . him, I’ll ask him. But would you mind?”

  “I wouldn’t mind. But I didn’t mean that. The decision’s up to you.” She smiled, an oddly aware, bitter little smile that lifted her face from ordinary to arresting. “It’s always been up to you.”

  * * *

  Regina frowned and applied antibiotic ointment from the kitchen first aid kit to Dylan’s scrapes. He sat on a stool at the dining room counter, out of the way of the prep continuing in the kitchen. She had to stand between his thighs to dot ointment on his cheek. He flinched as she brushed an abrasion near his eye.

  She winced in sympathy. “I don’t know how you did this,” she grumbled.

  He grinned at her foolishly, making her heart lurch. “Neither do I.”

  “You sound disgustingly pleased with yourself.”

  “I am.” He waited until his words caught her attention, until his gaze caught hers. “I warded the building.”

  “You . . .” Comprehension, relief, gratitude, all rushed in on her. “Wow. That’s . . . wonderful.”

  “I didn’t think I could,” he confessed.

  Her heart tightened at the aching uncertainty in his voice. She touched him lightly, unable to keep her fingers from lingering on the tender skin beside his eye, below his jaw. “Well, you did. Congratulations.”

  He caught her hand and pressed it to his cheek. The stubble of his beard rasped her palm. “You don’t have to do this.”

  She swallowed and tugged her hand away to feather ointment on his broken lip, struggling to keep her tone light. “Yeah, I do. You took care of me, seems I should take care of you.”

  He touched his thumb to the side of her mouth, to her own cracked and throbbing lip. His mouth was so close to hers, and his eyes were close and dark and full of heat. “Now we match,” he whispered, and his words and his look stopped her breath. Caught her heart.

  She smiled crookedly. “I guess we do.”

  But she knew better than to believe it.

  She wiped her fingers on a napkin and reached for the top to the ointment. However tempting she found this strange, addictive new mood of his, it would pass. Sooner or later, Dylan would remember that he was selkie and she was only the human incubator of a child who might one day be useful to his people.

  And then he would break her heart.

  She dropped the ointment back in the box. “So, are you still going down to the beach this afternoon?”

  “I must.” Dylan hesitated. “The prince will expect a report.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  Not his problem anyway. She’d made it clear her family was her priority. Dylan had been equally up front about having other priorities. Other allegiances. Now that he’d delivered on his promise to protect her, she wasn’t looking at him to hold her hand or change her life. She didn’t need him hanging around, getting underfoot, in her way, in her hair, in her heart . . .

  “Regina.” Dylan’s voice shivered through her, shaking her resolve. “What is it?”

  “Nothing.” She snapped the first aid kit shut and stepped from between his thighs. “I’m fine. I don’t want to bother you.”

  “Woman.” His low growl vibrated in her ear. “You have badgered, pestered, distracted, and annoyed me since I met you. Why stop now?”

  A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. She stole a look at him and saw an answering smile lurking in his eyes.

  Sighing, she relaxed against his restraining arm. “Well, since you put it so nicely . . .”

  He laughed, attracting Antonia’s glance through the kitchen pass.

  Regina lowered her voice. “If you’re going through town, could you stop at Wiley’s? I need vitamins.”

  “Pills?” Concern leaped into his black eyes. “Are you sick?”

  “No, I’m pregnant. I need prenatal vitamins.”

  “But you’re all right,” he pressed.

  “Fine.” She was almost embarrassed now to have brought it up. Since when did she need a guy to run her errands? “Well, I’ve had a little cramping, but—”

  “Have you called the doctor?”

  She blinked, confused by his urgency. And more touched than she could say. Although, of course, he had Selkie Baby to consider. “I gave her a call while you were outside. She said a little cramping and nausea were perfectly normal and to keep taking my vitamins. So—”

  “What if I buy the wrong kind?”

  She sighed. “Listen, never mind. I can—”

  “No, I’ll do it. You need vitamins, I’ll buy vitamins. Prenatal ones.” His tone was grim, his gaze almost panicked.

  Regina couldn’t decide which was more adorable, his masculine discomfort with his errand or his obvious determination to do the right thing. Good thing she wasn’t sending him out for tampons. To tease him, to test him, she whispered wickedly, “Or you could stay here and explain to my mother why I need them.”

  His face paled beneath his golden tan. “Better your mother,” he muttered, “than those squawking gulls in town.”

  “At least you can charm the gulls.”

  He raised one eyebrow. “I can charm your mother.”

  He probably could, Regina thought, contemplating that dark, handsome face. He could charm anyone. He’d certainly charmed the pants off her.

  “Not after she learns you knocked me up.”

  He leaned closer, making her heart race. “You still find me charming.”

  Her breath went. “Ha.”

  “You can’t help yourself.” His breath skated over her lips. His lips skimmed her jaw. Desire drizzled like honey under her skin. “My power over women is irresistible.”

  She heard the laughter throbbing in his voice and under the laughter something else, something deeper, something almost like . . . yearning.

  She felt herself leaning, melting into him, and closed her eyes. “Your ego is unbelievable.”

  “Let me prove it to you,” he murmured, his hands circling her ribs, his voice warm and seductive at her ear. “Let me charm you, Regina. Let me love you.”

  Oh. Her heart contracted sharply.

  “Oh.” Lucy’s voice, high and mortified. “Antonia sent us to . . . I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  Regina disentangled herself from Dylan. Lucy stood in the kitchen door, with Margred behind her.

  “You’re not interrupting,” Regina lied, heat creeping up her face. “I was just giving Dylan an errand to do for me in town.”

  Margred arched her brows. “Is that what you were giving him?”

  “I don’t pay you to stand and talk,” Antonia bawled from the line. “Let’s clean those tables. We open in an hour.”

  Margred strolled forward, as elegant carrying a rag and a bottle of sanitizer as a sommelier with a folded napkin around a bottle of Grand-Cru.

  “Is that wise?” Margred murmured to Dylan. “To leave her . . . now?”

  “It’s safe.” Dylan looked over her head to Regina, directing his assurance to her. There was a new confidence in his voice, she realized, an energy she hadn’t heard before.

  “I warded the building,” he said.

  Margred inhaled. “I’m impressed. That was you?”

  “Not only me. I thought . . . I felt . . . You?”

  She shook her head, eyes wide.

  Regina watched their byplay, lost.

  Dylan frowned. “Then . . .”

  Nick barged through the kitchen door, his sneakers squeaking on the old wood floors, and fixed Dylan with wide, hopeful eyes. “Nonna said you were going to the store. Can I come?”

  Dylan glanced down. “Not this time.”

  Regina winced. Ouch.

  Nick hunched a shoulder in a b
oy’s gesture. “Okay. Whatever.”

  Regina read his body language as easily as his heart: I didn’t want to anyway. Better to pretend that you didn’t want something, than to hope and have it denied . . .