Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

Caleb when her brother returned from Iraq.
    As she pulled her cloak from the wardrobe, a memory flashed across her brain: Conn, carved of marble and moonlight, gazing out to sea, so weary, so proud, so alone.
    Well, he wasn’t alone anymore.
    Dragging the sealskin off their bed, she turned to face him. Her heart hammered in her chest. “Ready,”
    she said.
    He froze.
    She stumbled to explain. “I thought . . . After the day you had . . . Here.” She thrust the pelt at him.
    He made no move to take it. “You are releasing me.”
    Did she imagine the question mark at the end?
    “I guess.” He was a child of the sea. The sea could heal him. She had not attached any larger significance to her gesture than that. But . . . “I mean, yes. I don’t want you to feel like my prisoner.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “You humans have a saying: If you save a life, it belongs to you. You saved more than my life today.”
    “You saved mine yesterday.”
    “After bringing you here against your will,” he pointed out. “I merely restored the balance between us.”
    She swallowed. She was no good at putting feelings into words. Her family didn’t. And selkies supposedly had no feelings to speak of. But a combination of hurt and fairness drove her to blurt out,
    “The hell with the balance. I’m not fucking keeping score, okay? I’m here because I want to be here. I choose to be here. Now. With you.”
    His silver eyes gleamed. “And you think to offer me the same choice.”
    “I . . .” She drew a sharp, bitter breath. “Yes.”
    He crossed the room in two strides. He took her hands. The sealskin fell between them. He raised her hands to his lips, one after the other, kissing the backs and then the palms. His lips were warm. So were his eyes.
    “Then I choose you,” he said. “Only you. Now and forever.”
    Later, much later, they climbed down the narrow rutted path to the beach. The sea had the texture of beaten silver; the sky was molten gold.
    Lucy felt weak-kneed, warm, and satisfied. Every time Conn made love to her, she felt closer to him.
    More free to be herself.
    Yet after only two weeks, how well did they really know each other? He had never said he loved her.
    She had never seen him Change.
    She eyed the black sealskin slung over his shoulder and fought a little shiver. “You go ahead,” she said.

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    “I’ll watch.”
    He tugged his loose shirt over his head. He had a beautiful body. “Come with me.”
    She jolted, the impositions and restrictions of a lifetime clenching her stomach. “Oh, I . . .”
    Couldn’t.
    Can’t.
    Won’t.
    “You have been in the water before,” he reminded her.
    Her heart tripped in panic. “Not when it was this cold.”
    He stooped to unbuckle the knife from around his knee; divested himself of his pants. His long, arched feet were already bare. His toes . . . For the first time, she noticed his toes were webbed.
    She jerked her gaze back to his face.
    “You braved Hell for me,” he said softly, holding her gaze. “Will you not come with me into the ocean?”
    Put that way, how could she refuse?
    She gritted her teeth and stood while he unfastened the buttons of her cloak, untied the skirt at her waist, and slid her blouse over her head. The clothes she wore on Sanctuary offered more coverage and fewer challenges to a man than her jeans back home. All the while he undressed her, his hands were busy, touching, brushing, stroking, cupping. By the time he had her naked, she was shivering with cold and fear and desire.
    Her nipples peaked. She crossed her arms over her breasts, pressing her thighs together.
    “You know, on World’s End, when the ice breaks, we have this thing called the Polar Bear Plunge,” she babbled nervously as he herded her toward the line of foam, his muscled arm around her waist. “But nobody actually goes into the water naked.”
    Conn smiled at her, his eyes very bright. “Trust me,” he murmured. “Trust yourself.”
    “Easy for you to . . . Shit , that’s cold.” She hopped from foot to foot.
    Conn steadied her against his broad, naked side as the water ran over her knees. “It will be all right.
    Hold on to me now.”
    She clutched him, grateful for his warmth. His support. “What about your, um.” With her free hand, she gestured toward the shore, where his sealskin lay in a lump.
    “Not this first time. Not your first time. You will