Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

what the evidence team had found: tools they believed matched the marks of torture on Gwyneth’s body; traces of blood in the floorboards and drains.
     
    “So.” Maggie drew a long breath. “It is done, then? This explanation satisfies them? You are not a . . . person of interest any longer?”
     
    “It will take days—weeks—for the crime lab to process all the evidence. But Reynolds told me his lieutenant is already pulling detectives from the case.”
     
    Maggie reached across the table and touched the back of his wrist.
    He turned his hand over, linking his fingers with hers. They sat quietly, holding hands among the dishes. Caleb’s chest expanded. His throat ached with a mingled sense of peace and loss. This was what he wanted, what he’d dreamed of. Someone to share the end of the day. Maggie, in his house and in his life.
     
    Her grip tightened on his fingers. She smiled her siren’s smile into his eyes. “You are tired. Come to bed.”
     
    He was exhausted. And sore.
     
    But not, he discovered when she turned to him under the covers, too tired to love her.
     
    They lay on their sides, facing each other, her leg over his thigh, her breasts brushing his chest. Her eyes were dark and heavy with desire.
     
    Caleb threaded his fingers through her hair, stroking it back from the half-healed scar on her forehead. She cupped his battered jaw, her thumb grazing the puffiness under his eye, and kissed his shoulder above the bandages.
     
    His body responded, thickening, swelling.
     
    “Maggie, I don’t know—I’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said awkwardly.
     
    She smiled, feathering a kiss on his broken lip. “It will be all right,”
    she promised.
     
    And it was.
     
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    They came together in small, incremental movements, with soft, open-mouthed kisses and quiet, indrawn breaths. He slipped inside her—soft, hot, wet—holding still as she pulsed around him. Tenderness welled.
    Spilled. If this was the last time . . . But he wouldn’t let himself think that.
    To be in this moment, to be with Maggie . . . It was enough. He would make it be enough.
     
    They rocked together, wrapped in each other, lapped in pleasure, until the gathering storm within them broke in ripples and murmurs, soft and welcome as rain. He felt her crest, the sweet contractions milking him, drawing out his own release.
     
    She sighed against his throat.
     
    He exhaled into her hair. “Maggie.”
     
    “Love.” She rested her palm against his chest. “My love.”
     
    He twined his fingers with hers; raised their clasped hands to his lips and then to his heart.
     
    Joined, at peace, they drifted into sleep.
     
    Margred awoke to a great sense of well-being and the sun tickling her eyelids. Something warm and heavy lay on top of the bed covers. She smiled and stretched out her foot.
     
    Not Caleb.
     
    She opened her eyes.
    He sat fully dressed on the edge of the mattress. And bundled in front of him was the brindled bulk of Gwyneth’s pelt.
     
    Margred felt a chill that had nothing to do with the open window.
    “What is this?”
     
    “It’s yours.”
     
    Margred sat up. “No, it’s not.”
     
    “Gwyneth is dead,” Caleb said quietly. “You said you could take her pelt if it came to you. As a gift.”
     
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    “Yes, but—”
     
    “So I’m giving it to you.” Caleb’s eyes remained steady on hers.
    Only his hands clenched in the fur to hide their trembling. “Take it.”
     
    Margred regarded him in disbelief. Lovely, noble, exasperating man.
    “I don’t want it. Caleb, when I saw you under the water . . .” Drifting in his chains, his strength gone, his air gone, his skin like wax . . . “I thought you had died.” Her voice broke, and tears pricked her eyes, hard, real, human tears. She blinked them back impatiently. “I knew then I did not want to live without you.”
     
    The grim line of his mouth relaxed. “You don’t have to. I’ll always be here. I’ll love you as long as I live. As long as you’ll let me.”
     
    She searched his gaze. “And that would be enough for you?”
     
    He inhaled audibly. “It has to be. I’m not my father, Maggie. I don’t want to change you. I love you for who and what you are.”
     
    Her hands reached over the fur to clasp his.
     
    “Then we have a problem,” she said. “I am not . . . what I was.”
     
    “Beautiful? Gutsy? Caring? Smart?”
     
    She was pleased he saw her as all those things. But she was not casting for