Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch

shuddered.
     
    So did he.
     
    They plunged together, fused by sweat and passion. Complete.
    Connected. Whole. He was part of her as he had never been part of another being in his life. Her legs wrapped his. Her hair tangled his fingers, a net of texture and fragrance. She tightened around him, a silken fist, and he turned his face into her neck and spilled himself into her, gave himself up to her, body and soul. She shuddered again, vibrating under him, her nails digging into his shoulders.
     
    The last shimmering wave retreated, leaving him beached and breathless on top. Wrecked. At peace.
     
    When he could breathe again, when he could speak, he raised his head and said it.
     
    “I love you.”
     
    Margred lay stunned under him, trying to regulate her breathing and her thoughts.
     
    Caleb’s words curled warm against her heart. I love you .
     
    Selkies did not do love any more than they did miracles.
     
    He loved her?
     
    What was she supposed to do about that?
     
    What was she supposed to say?
     
    “Thank you.”
     
    231
    Wrong answer. She saw his eyes cool, felt him distance himself even as his body still filled hers.
     
    She moistened her lips and tried again. “You honor me.”
     
    “No, I make you nervous,” Caleb said. “What are you afraid of?”
     
    It was hard to be honest with him lying on top of her, lodged inside her, studying her face with assessing green eyes. Hard to think with her body still thrumming and moist from sex.
     
    She wanted him again. Possibly she would want him forever. Maybe that was why she was afraid.
     
    “We are very different,” she said.
     
    “That’s why we work. You told me once I lived in my head. With you . . . I feel like I’ve found my heart.”
     
    Whatever breath she had left escaped in a soft rush. “I cannot think when you say such things to me.”
     
    His eyes narrowed. “Maybe I don’t want you to think. Tell me how you feel.”
     
    “I . . . care for you,” she admitted. “More than I have ever cared for anyone in seven hundred years of existence.”
     
    His body went very still. “Seven hundred—”
     
    “Years. I am immortal.”
     
    “My mother wasn’t. You said she died.”
     
    He told her he did not want her to think. But she could almost hear his brain ticking like the clock in the hall. “Her life—her present life—ended. But because she returned to the water, she will be born again on the tide and the foam.”
     
    “And that was more important to her than her husband. Her children.”
     
    232
    Margred thought of pointing out that Atargatis had taken Dylan with her, but his mother’s choice would hardly soothe Caleb’s feelings. “She was selkie.” Margred defended her. “We belong to the sea more than we can ever belong to another.”
     
    “She stayed with my father for fourteen years. I thought they were happy.”
     
    Ah . Margred bit her lip, the tiny pain an echo of the one at her heart.
    The boy Caleb had believed he was the child of love, of a true union between husband and wife. Atargatis’s desertion not only had deprived him of his mother, but had tarnished his earliest memories and perceptions of family.
     
    He deserved better of her. He deserved love.
     
    Or at least the truth.
     
    “They were too different.” As she and Caleb were different, Margred reflected with a pang. “Your father possessed a selkie. He never had her love.”
     
    A muscled worked in Caleb’s jaw. “You think I’m trying to possess you?”
     
    He already had more of her than she had ever given another, even her long-dead mate. Her feelings for him filled her like a pregnancy, crowding and pushing inside her. She felt swollen, stretched into someone—-something—she almost did not recognize.
     
    Doubt wrapped tentacles around her heart. Could she ever be what he needed? Could she give him more than his mother had given his father?
     
    What would it do to her to try?
     
    The fear in her chest tightened, squeezing the air from her lungs.
    And what would it do to both of them if she failed?
     
    “I think,” Margred said carefully, “that you belong here, in this place. With these people.”
     
    “And you don’t.”
     
    233
    “I am selkie,” she repeated. Her words sounded thin, even to herself.
    “The ocean is our element. Its magic is in our blood. We must return to it or die.”
     
    “You can’t return. What if you’re going to die anyway?”
     
    His question quivered like an arrow in