Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

imagined another man might stroke a horse or the hood of a car. He looked sweaty, preoccupied, and very male.
     
    She dropped the black plastic trash bags at her feet to watch.
     
    At the sound, he turned his head. “Come to see me on my knees?”
     
    She tilted her chin at a challenging angle. “I’ve seen you on your knees before.”
     
    “Ah. Remember that, do you?” he said in a satisfied tone.
     
    Remember his dark head moving between her legs, the whirling stars, the whispering sea, and the heat rising in her blood, created by his mouth and hands and breath?
     
    “Um. Maybe. Vaguely.”
     
    His rare grin cracked like lightning across his face; sizzled along her nerves. “Perhaps I should refresh your memory.”
     
    She swallowed hard. “I thought you had to go commune with your prince or whatever.”
     
    “I do. But I must set a ward first. I will not leave you unprotected.”
     
    He went back to his bricks. She picked up the black garbage bags and pitched them into the Dumpster, ignoring the gulls that squawked and settled on the roofs around.
     
    Dylan was tapping and pressing on the mortared wall like a safecracker. She set her hands on her hips to watch.
     
    “Go back inside.”
     
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    She glanced nervously, compulsively, around the alley. “Am I in danger?”
     
    “No.” He looked at her and sighed. “You are distracting.”
     
    “Oh.” A warm feeling melted her belly. “Okay.”
     
    She took a step toward the door and stopped, observing his careful hands and frowning, slightly frustrated expression. The warm feeling spread. He was an immortal creature of the sea whose natural home was a magic island. Yet here he was on his knees in the dirt of the alley because she would not go away with him. He was putting his own life on hold for her sake. Her sake and her son’s. Under the brooding and the bluster, Dylan Hunter was a good man. Not only hot and exciting, but principled and even . . . tender.
     
    A tender, principled guy who was also hot. Which made him about as rare in her life as a selkie.
     
    She walked back. His dark brows twitched together in annoyance.
    Smiling, she brushed a kiss on the top of his head. Dylan went as still as the broken concrete underfoot, his hair warm against her lips.
     
    She straightened. “Thanks,” she said and went back to her kitchen.
     
    *
     
    Regina’s kiss— her warm lips, her sweet smell, her simple words of gratitude— fell like rain on Dylan’s parched heart and churned up a storm in his soul.
     
    Or where his soul would be if he had one.
     
    Alone in the alley, he closed his eyes, pressing his forehead to the rough brick. Her affection would not endure, he reminded himself.
    Nothing human endured. Families were torn apart. Children grew up.
    Parents died.
     
    Better to live in the moment as the sea folk did than pin your heart and hopes on . . .
     
    Love.
     
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    And yet the moment when she kissed him, not from lust or need, had been almost unbearably sweet, ripe with trust, pregnant with affection.
     
    Pregnant. The sharp stones of the alley pricked his knees. The birds on the roof watched with bright, merciless eyes. Regina was pregnant with his child, and she would not go with him to Sanctuary.
     
    He was responsible for her. And if he failed to protect her, he would be responsible for the deaths of the only two women who had ever mattered in his life.
     
    He splayed his fingers on the wall.
     
    He was not a warden. The foundation between his hands was man-made bricks and mortar, not stone and sand. He did not know if what he attempted could even be done.
     
    The selkie flowed as the sea flowed. Their gift was like water, powerful, changeable, and fluid. Like the wind or a woman’s lust, it was fickle. Ephemeral. But to protect Regina, this ward must stand against time and the power of Hell.
     
    He was on his knees with his hands raised. As if he prayed. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he should.
     
    He opened his mind, sent it spiraling down and down, feeling his gift like water trapped in a sponge, saturating each cell and fiber, lubricating each joint and sinew. Conn said the magic of the merfolk had declined as their numbers declined. But Dylan could feel the power in his blood like a silent sea waiting for the pull of the moon.
     
    He tried a cautious internal pressure, making a space— between heart and lungs, between liver and spleen— for the power to fill as water fills a footprint in the sand.