Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

Gwyneth might have. She was .
    . . adept at self-preservation. She would have safeguarded herself. Better than I did,” she added with faint bitterness.
     
    Uneasily, Caleb remembered Maggie’s desperate struggle to reach the fire the night of her attack. “ I need what he took from me .”
     
    Could she be right about Gwyneth? Or was she projecting, hoping for . . . what, exactly?
     
    “Before, you said a selkie without her sealskin can’t change form.”
     
    “More than that. The sea is our life. Without it, we die.”
     
    “Everything dies,” Caleb said harshly.
     
    Maggie’s eyes were shadowed and heavy with loss. “But not forever.
    Humans have souls. Selkies return to the sea.”
     
    He was a cop. He didn’t know how to respond to her talk of souls.
    But he understood guilt. Motivation.
     
    Evidence.
     
    “Your selkie friend didn’t hide anything. Not on that beach. The searchers combed the rocks and the surrounding woods. If her pelt was there, they’d have found it.”
     
    “The island,” Maggie said.
     
    “What island?”
     
    “Dylan mentioned an island where he keeps a few things. If Gwyneth followed him here, she might have done the same.”
     
    Caleb couldn’t think about his brother. Not yet.
     
    “There are thousands of islands in Maine. We can’t search every uninhabited rock in the ocean hoping to get lucky.”
     
    226
    “This was a private island three miles east of here. You could find it.” Maggie looked at him confidently, resolve shining in her eyes. “I could find it.”
     
    “I’m not letting you dangle yourself out there like bait.”
     
    Her lips curved. “Then it seems we are in this together.”
     
    He could not resist her. Not when she was right.
     
    “Fine,” Caleb said wearily. “Tomorrow I’ll get us a boat.”
     
    “Why not tonight?”
     
    “It’ll be too dark to cast off in a couple hours, and way too dark to search. Besides . . .” He forced himself to meet her gaze. “I can’t leave the island without Reynolds’s okay.”
     
    “But . . . you are the chief of police.”
     
    “I’m also a person of interest in an ongoing investigation, ” he said evenly. In light of what had happened, he couldn’t afford sentiment. Or outrage. Or even pride. “I volunteered to take a polygraph. I’ve offered them my financial records, my post-deployment health assessment, and my ex-wife’s phone number. But it will take a while to clear the record.”
     
    Longer to clear his name.
     
    “Then we must use the time we have,” Maggie said.
     
    He nodded. “I’ll be done with the polygraph before lunch. What time do you get off?”
     
    “Two o’clock. But I was not talking about our work schedules.” She cradled his hand; placed it on her breast. Surprise held him immobile.
    “Take me home with you tonight.”
     
    His mouth dried. His mind blanked as the blood in his head rushed to his groin.
     
    He worked hard to sound relaxed. In control. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day. But I can’t.”
     
    227
    So move your hand, dickhead .
     
    But apparently he couldn’t do that either. Her breast was so soft, the nipple stiff against his palm, and the sight of his hand spanning all that fullness, all that roundness, gave him another rush.
     
    “Why not?” she asked.
     
    He jerked his mind back but left his hand where it was. Why not? Er . . . “It’s the middle of the season,” he explained. “Every room on the island is booked. So we’ve got half a dozen detectives sleeping in shifts on jail cots and a sergeant catching naps on my couch. I’m not tiptoeing you past him to get to the bedroom.”
     
    Margred’s lips curved. “Then we will tiptoe past your sister.”
     
    She was serious. She wanted him. Tonight. Now.
     
    He struggled to laugh. To breathe. “You gonna smuggle me to your room?”
     
    Her warm mouth skated over his jaw. “It is your room.”
     
    “Was my room.” He cleared his throat. “We’re not in high school anymore.”
     
    “I was never in high school.” She nipped his earlobe. His bottom lip.
    “Teach me.”
     
    His eyes damn near crossed. He was already hard. Her voice, her hands, her breath slid over him, sluiced over him, warm and irresistible.
    She was a goddess risen from the sea, Aphrodite, bewitching him, seducing him, with the same hungry, skillful intent of their first time.
     
    “I can’t teach you anything,” he said, his voice rusty.
     
    “Ah.” She