Children of the Sea 02 - Sea Fever

in a tight, feminine little body.
    He had enjoyed unwrapping her and watching her fly apart.
     
    But the big dark eyes had sharpened to points, and her chin was at a militant angle. Now that he’d had her, she thought that he owed her—attention, answers, some damn thing.
     
    Not so different, after all. He supposed her attitude was only human.
     
    Too bad for her he wasn’t.
     
    “Let me take you back,” he said. “You must have work to do.”
     
    The chin rose a notch. “You don’t need to take me anywhere. I can get where I’m going by myself.”
     
    Almost amused, he stepped back to let her pass. She marched to the edge of the water and stopped.
     
    Of course. She would not be able to see in the dark. Dylan remembered how it had been before his first Change. These rocks would slice her narrow human feet to pieces.
     
    She edged forward.
     
    He frowned. He wasn’t going to waste the breath or effort to argue with her. But neither could he stand by while she cut herself stumbling around in the surf.
     
    Jeering at himself for caring, he picked her up.
     
    Regina yelped. Jerked. The top of her head connected with his chin, snapping his mouth shut. Pain shot through his jaw.
     
    22
     
    He unclenched his teeth and growled. “Hold still.”
     
    She glared, her nose inches from his. Her hair was soft against his cheek and smelled like fruit, strawberries or—
    “You surprised me,” she accused.
     
    “I surprise myself,” he murmured.
     
    “What’s the matter? Never swept a girl off her feet before?”
     
    “Not usually.” Apricots, he decided. She smelled like apricots, tart and ripe. She was heavier than he expected, muscle wrapped around a tensile steel frame. The skin behind her knees was soft and smooth. To distancehimself, to bait her, he said, “Mostly they just lie down.”
     
    Her smile sliced knife-sharp through the twilight. “That explains why your technique needs work.”
     
    He laughed softly. “And you?”
     
    Water splashed around his ankles.
     
    Her grip tightened on his neck. “What about me?”
     
    “Do you often get, ah, carried away?”
     
    “Are you asking if I sleep around?”
     
    He did not know what he was asking. Or why. “Your sexual history is no concern of mine.”
     
    She snorted. “Obviously. Or you would have used a condom.”
     
    In truth, she was no more likely to get him sick than he was to get her pregnant. But Dylan could not be bothered to explain that to her. She would not believe him if he did.
     
    He walked out of the water and set her on the beach, keeping his hands on her forearms while she found her balance.
     
    23
    She sighed. “Look, you don’t need to worry. You’re the first in—oh, a long time.”
     
    He felt a tinge of satisfaction, a twinge of guilt, and scowled. He should not feel anything. His kind did not. They sought the sensations and the physical release of sex. They did not blind themselves with emotion or bind their partners with expectations.
     
    “Your shoes.” He jerked his head toward them.
     
    They lay on their sides just out of reach of the water, the flirty heels and skinny straps totally unsuited to this stretch of rock and sand.
     
    “Right.” She scooped them up. “Thanks.”
     
    “You’re welcome.” He met her gaze, warm and wary, and felt heat curl in his belly. He wanted her again. But that flash of feeling had alarmed him.
     
    He should have learned by now not to fuck with humans.
     
    He was too close to being one of them.
     
    This one hadn’t even been that good, he told himself, ignoring the intensity of her response, his satisfaction at making her come. Oh, she was acceptable by human standards. But he was accustomed to partners who knew what pleased them and how to please him. He was fourteen and grieving for his mother when he had his first lover, a lush selkie female who had honed her skills and her lust over a millennium of practice. Nerienne had been nothing at all like this uptight, argumentative human.
     
    Her words pounded in his temples. “You’re the first in— oh, a long time.”
     
    His chest tightened.
     
    The air was too warm. Warm and close. It dragged on him like a fisherman’s net, constraining his lungs, cutting off his air. He could not breathe. He was wild to go, to run, to return to the freedom of the sea.
     
    He stood immobile at the cliffs while the woman— Regina—fumbled with her sandals.
     
    24
     
    “Well.” She straightened and