Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

cupped his face between her soft, warm hands and touched her lips to his. Drew back to smile into his eyes. “But you have.”
     
    His heart turned over painfully in his chest. This . . . this was different, he thought. The laughter and self-awareness in her gaze. The tenderness in her touch.
     
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    "Maggie...”
     
    I love you .
     
    Did he say it out loud?
     
    “Shh. Upstairs.”
     
    She led him up the steps and down the hall to his room, both of them breathless, bumping, struggling with buttons, trying hard to be quiet. Her hands were all over him. His tongue was in her mouth. He backed her into the wall and—
    Bang . The door to his parents’ room—almost twenty-five years since his mother walked out on them and he still thought of it as his parents’
    room, how pathetic was that? Anyway, the door flew open, and his father swayed, framed in the doorway.
     
    Caleb twisted, putting Maggie behind him, shielding her with his body.
     
    Unnecessary. Bart never glanced at her, her untucked blouse, her kiss-swollen mouth.
     
    Fixing his gaze on Caleb, he growled, “She won’t stay. She’ll leave you like your bitch of a mother left me.”
     
    He staggered past them to the bathroom. The lock clicked. The toilet seat banged. And then the unmistakable sound of peeing hissed through the closed door.
     
    Caleb’s jaw tightened. “Just like high school,” he said bitterly.
     
    Maggie stroked the knotted muscles of his back. She pressed her lips between his shoulder blades. “Come to bed.”
     
    He wanted to. He wanted to close his eyes and lose himself in her for a while. Like maybe forever. “I have things to do.”
     
    “Yes.” She tugged him. Turned him. “Me.”
     
    That surprised a laugh from him. How could she want him after seeing that? After knowing who and what he’d come from?
     
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    But she did.
     
    She rose on tiptoe and kissed him, the corner of his eye, the underside of his jaw, the hollow of his throat. All the neglected, unexpected, tender places.
     
    His heart swelled. “Maggie . . .”
     
    “Shh.”
     
    She pulled him into the stark brown room where he’d spent his childhood. Vaguely, he noticed changes: a bright skirt tumbling off a chair, extra pillows softening the narrow bed. The room even smelled like her, like woman, like Maggie, shampoo and lotion and, under that, the deeper, wilder notes of the sea. He breathed them in like a patient released from a hospital, like a man returning from the desert.
     
    Her touch flowed over him like rain, warm and healing. He was parched for her, his mind restless as blowing sand, his spirit dry and discouraged. She poured herself over him, her mouth lush and giving. Her hands stole over him, under his shirt, over his chest, rousing him to life.
     
    He grabbed at her. Smiling, she slipped through his grasp to his bed, sliding backward until she lay against the pillows. He drank in the vision of her long hair waving against the white sheets, her skin shining like pearl through her open blouse, the white globes of her breasts. He forgot .
    . . everything else. There was only now. Only her, her smooth thighs and her warm smile and her great, dark, unfathomable eyes. He yanked at his belt, tore at his shirt. She was rain, water, life, and he was dying for her, his hands shaking, his touch feverish as he sank beside her on the bed, reaching, touching, wanting—
    She was so warm. So soft and pink and slick. He spread her with his thumbs, loving the feel of her, ripe and wet, the sight of his tanned hand working in and out against her silky thighs, her soft, dark bush. He bent to kiss her, to drink from her, dizzy with her scent. Her sweetness. She gasped and moved with him, under him, rising and falling like the sea, and his blood pounded in his head. He was drowning, drenched in her. He felt her crest around his fingers, against his mouth, as he suckled her.
     
    She tugged his hair. He indulged them both with one long, last, lingering lick before he dragged his body over hers—wet, quivering, his—and shoved his scarred knee between her thighs.
     
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    Her hands pushed at his shoulders. “Your leg—”
     
    He didn’t care about his leg. He didn’t care about anything except being inside her as close, as deep, as far as he could go. He straightened his arms, shifting his weight. She rose to meet him; strained to take him.
     
    Theirs eyes linked. Locked. With one swift, deep thrust, he entered her.
     
    She gasped and