Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

need me with you.” His face was serious, intent, like the first time they’d made love.
    With another internal quiver, Lucy realized he didn’t expect this to be easy. What had Iestyn said? “ The first time, you must generate your own skin from the inside. It hurts. Like your guts being torn out. ”
    Crap.
    She sucked in her breath and waded into the icy water. Cold speared her feet, gripped her legs, swirled toward the juncture of her thighs. She clenched; inched into the ripple of the surf.
    “Brave girl,” Conn said.
    She nodded weakly and slid another foot forward.
    Pain shot through her belly, white-hot, nauseating. Her body locked. Spasmed. She felt like a poker was being driven into her stomach. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t yell.
    Conn’s arm was an iron band around her waist. He held her upright in the freezing water as the agony battered her in waves. Like the worst kind of cramps, like what she vaguely imagined childbirth might be, like death . . .
    Sweat broke out on her face. Panting, she leaned her head against his shoulder and prayed for the pain to end.
    Surely it must end.
    Conn swore and hauled her out of the surf. She stumbled. He held her tight, his body her shelter. She clung to him, trembling. He pressed his lips to her hair.
    “I’m . . . okay,” she managed. “Just let me get my”— nerve —“breath, and we can try again.”
    Maybe. If she didn’t throw up or pass out first.
    He frowned. “Something holds you back.”

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    “Yeah,” she joked through chattering teeth. “Incredible pain.”
    He shook his head impatiently. “Something else.”
    “You mean it’s not supposed to feel like that?”
    “Not without Changing.”
    She winced. At least he wasn’t still suggesting she was suppressed or repressed or whatever.
    “I did try,” she said defensively.
    “Yes.”
    That single syllable—“yes”—sounded good and solid. The sick feeling in her stomach eased slightly.
    But Conn was still frowning, staring out to sea.
    She bit her lip. “Maybe I’m not selkie, after all,” she suggested.
    He did not answer.
    “Are you disappointed?” she asked.
    He glanced down in apparent surprise. “No,” he said simply. “You have accepted me as I am. I can do no less.”
    His near echo of her words made her breath hitch: All my life I have waited to be wanted for who I am . . .
    “Come.” He swept her cloak from the sand and wrapped it around her. “We must get you warm.”
    Her gaze dropped to the sealskin lying just beyond the reach of the waves. “What about you?”
    His face set in familiar, formidable lines. He stooped for her skirt and blouse. “I will not put my pleasure before my duty to you.”
    That, she thought, was his strength. And her problem. She appreciated his care of her. But who took care of him?
    “You can’t always put off what you want, what you need, because you feel responsible for everything and everybody else.”
    Speaking the words, she even believed them. Who knew?
    Conn’s mouth compressed with annoyance. That was okay, Lucy told herself. Annoyance was an emotion. She could deal with his emotions.
    “I am responsible,” he said, very coolly and precisely.
    “Which is one of the reasons I love you,” she told him honestly. “But sometimes—now, for instance—those responsibilities can wait. I can wait.”
    “You should not have to.”
    She dug her heels in the sand. “Neither should you.”
    She could see the turmoil swirling in his eyes, gray as storm clouds.
    “What are you afraid of?” she asked gently.
    “The selkie flow as the sea flows. The water is our blood, our home, our life, our delight. Yet if we are to survive, someone must remain on shore to reason and to rule.”
    “Someone has to be the grown-up,” she murmured.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    She shook her head. She admired Conn’s decision to step up, to step into his father’s role. Hadn’t she and Caleb, in their different ways, tried to do the same? But doing so had cost them a part of their childhood.
    It had cost Conn a piece of himself.
    “You think if you Change, you’ll forget who you are? That you’ll stay out at sea like your father?”
    Conn’s face was bleak as February. “That I will want to. Yes.”
    “I don’t believe it.” She stooped, as he had done, and raised his sealskin from the sand. “You’ll come back.”
    “You