Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

ready. Wet.
     
    Good .
     
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    He wanted to make it good for her. He wanted to make it last.
     
    But she gripped him with her sweet, feminine heat and small, strong hands, and her hips rose to take him, all of him, and the need that drove him surged and broke. She moved with him and under him with grunts and little cries, her breasts swaying as he thrust into her. Her thighs tightened around his waist. Her bare heels rode his buttocks. He clutched her like a drowning man, his head spinning, his chest heaving. Sweat slicked them both. He was shuddering, shaking, falling apart. He felt her crest take her, felt her arch and flow around him, and in the wake of her release he let go, he gave it up, he gave everything up to her.
     
    He bowed his head, his mind emptied. His body, emptied. At peace .
     
    The sound of the surf drummed in his ears like the echo of his heartbeat. A sea breeze snuck through the trees and tickled his bare ass.
    His pants were crumpled around his knees.
     
    He raised his head.
     
    She lay quietly, her sleek, pale body spread out like some exotic picnic against the weathered wood, watching him with gleaming eyes in the firelight.
     
    He wanted to give her . . . something. Tell her something. Thank her.
    He didn’t know how. He didn’t know her.
     
    “Caleb,” he said.
     
    Her level dark brows arched. “What?”
     
    “My name,” he told her. “It’s Caleb.”
     
    Margred did not need to know his name. She did not want to know anything about him. She chose human males for sex because they had short lives and even shorter attention spans.
     
    But this one ...
     
    He regarded her with his sad, steady eyes, his hard, scarred body still lodged within hers, and something inside her softened and opened like a sea anemone in the tide.
     
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    He had worked her well. Her muscles felt loose and relaxed. The prickle in her blood was satisfied. She could give him at least a pretense of interest in return.
     
    “Caleb,” she repeated, testing his name. Tasting it, as she had tasted him.
     
    He smiled faintly. “Caleb Michael Hunter.”
     
    Michael , the demon scourge. And hunter . . . Unease tweaked her.
    She ignored it.
     
    “Those are warrior names,” she observed politely.
     
    “I guess.” He shrugged. “I was in the Guard.”
     
    “You were a soldier?” That would explain the scars, she thought.
    And the wounded, wary look in those eyes.
     
    “In Iraq.”
     
    She nodded as if she understood. “Do you want to talk about it?”
     
    His mouth set. “No.”
     
    “Good.” She wiggled under him. “Neither do I.”
     
    Humor lit his face, banishing the shadows from his eyes. “Well, we’ve got to find something to do for the next twenty minutes, Maggie girl. You destroyed me.”
     
    She had not.
     
    She could. She could make him respond to her, force him to service her, empty him out like a clamshell. But his humor pleased her, and his wry self-deprecation.
     
    Releasing him, she stretched and sat up. “You brought food, you said?”
     
    He stood unmoving, with his pants around his knees, as she combed her fingers through her hair. The firelight slid over his strong, man’s
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    body: broad, hairy chest; flat, ridged abdomen; heavy genitals. Quite lovely, really.
     
    “Sandwiches,” he said. “And a bottle of wine.”
     
    “Well, then.” She smiled at him.
     
    He laughed and shook his head, hitching his pants over his hips. “I thought you weren’t hungry.”
     
    “Maybe you’ve given me an appetite.”
     
    And for more than food.
     
    She did not seek the company of her own kind. She and her mate had lived apart. Most selkies, like the harbor seals they resembled, were solitary. Even on land, in human form, they rarely touched except to mate. As their numbers dwindled and their ocean territories expanded, they barely interacted outside of Sanctuary, where the king’s son kept court.
     
    But this mortal male— My name is Caleb , he had said— attracted her like a fire on the beach. She was drawn to the deep sea green of his eyes, tempted to linger by the timbre of his voice.
     
    I thought we could spend some time getting to know one another .
     
    Impossible. The less he knew, the happier he would be. The safer she would be.
     
    And yet . . .
     
    He poked the fire, sending sparks shooting into the dark, and added another log. He’d brought a blanket, which he draped over the table.
     
    “I should have done this before,” he