Children of the Sea 03 - Sea Lord

ball, a board game, a pair of gloves. But she had never had the experience of waking early Christmas morning and scrambling downstairs.
    Heart fluttering with unfamiliar excitement, she dragged on her clothes and followed Conn down the tower’s spiraling stairs.
    “It’s not a pony, is it?” she joked.
    He stopped at the bottom of the steps so that she almost ran into his broad shoulders.
    He turned. “You want a pony.”
    She stood on the step above him, their faces almost on a level. She smiled into his eyes. “Not since I was about eight.”
    “I am relieved to hear it,” he said dryly.
    Love for him tightened her chest. Her throat.
    “Conn.”
    He waited, eyebrows raised.
    He was selkie. How could she make him understand what it meant to her to have her desires considered, her needs met? By him. More than by any other man, any other human, she had ever known.
    “I . . . Thank you,” she said softly. “You’ve already given me everything I ever wanted.”
    His eyes deepened with emotion. His mouth curved, tender and amused. “You might have said so earlier,” he complained, his voice wry. “I could have been back hours ago.”
    She laughed and jumped off the last step into his arms.
    “A rosebush,” Lucy said.
    Her voice was flat. Stunned.
    Conn shifted his gaze from her downturned head to the wet burlap sack on the courtyard stones. Four thorny canes protruded from the mouth of the bag. The damned bush had been the very devil to transport.
    Despite his own disappointment with her reaction, he could not blame her for her lack of enthusiasm.
    “Not much of one, I am afraid.” It was almost winter, after all. “I brought it from Scotland. For your garden.”
    “You . . . dug it up?”
    He remembered—too late—that she had problems with him taking things. He clasped his hands behind his back. “Yes.”
    “How did you get it here?”
    Dragging it with him through the sea. “There was some little magic involved,” he admitted.
    Lucy regarded the pathetic bundle of sticks with their sharp, wicked thorns. Anything looking less like a rosebush would be hard to imagine.
    “There are seeds, too,” he offered, feeling like a fool.

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    Never surrender to impulse.
    He should have brought her pearls or gold, precious treasures to show her she was precious to him. But Griff had advised him to pay attention to her character and habits, to find something she wanted but could not ask for.
    He ought to strangle Griff.
    She raised her head. Her eyes were huge and translucent with tears. Her expression struck him like a quick blow to his gut.
    “You brought me a garden,” she whispered.
    He shrugged uncomfortably. Never admit emotion. Never reveal weakness. Yet with her, his defenses crumbled like the mortar of the tower. “Only the beginnings of one. To remind you of home.”
    “Oh, Conn.” To his horror, the tears welled and began to roll.
    She scrambled from the ground and launched herself at his chest.
    He had just enough presence of mind to catch her. Soft hair, soft breasts, soft, foolish, female sounds beyond his understanding like the gurgle of the fountain. He deciphered enough, however, to comprehend that she was pleased, that he had pleased her, and the slippery knot in his gut eased.
    He stroked her back, pressed a kiss to her hair. An unfamiliar tenderness swelled his chest until he could scarcely breathe. All this fuss for sticks and seeds. She had not cried like this—noisy, abandoned tears—when he kidnapped her or when she faced the demon wolves or when she dragged him back from the gate of Hell.
    “You . . . So thoughtful . . . Love it,” she wept.
    He was baffled. “Then why are you crying?”
    She shook her head, mumbling something into his chest.
    He put a finger under her chin and lifted her head. “Tell me.”
    “I know I can’t . . . And I don’t want to.” More tears spilled. “Not to stay.”
    His heart froze in his chest.
    “You do not wish to stay here.” It was possible, he discovered, to form words, to speak calmly and precisely, even as his whole world turned to ice.
    She raised those soft, drowned eyes to his. “Of course I want to stay,” she said. “I miss them, that’s all.”
    His heart began beating again. “Miss . . .”
    “My family.”
    Ah. He released her.
    Her teeth dented her lower lip. “It’s all right. I totally get you can’t leave Sanctuary for