The Mammoth Book of Paranormal Romance

spoken to her. And until now, she had never thought of Rick as anything but the elegant man who was supposed to be a vampire, locked in a prison cell.
    “I’d never hurt you, Robin.”
    Now when he looked at her, she flushed. Quickly, she turned towards the aquatics lab.
    “Robin, stop,” he implored. “Don’t go in there. Don’t let him use you like this.”
    She gripped the doorway so hard her fingers trembled. “I’ve never felt like this before,” she murmured.
    She hadn’t meant for him to hear, but he was a vampire, with a vampire’s hearing. He replied, “It’s not real. Let it go.”
    “It feels ... I can’t,” she said. Because she had never felt so good, so much before, it was like a drug that filled her up and pushed every other worry aside. A part of her knew Rick was right, that if this feeling was a drug, then she’d become an addict in a day and she should stop this.
    The rest of her didn’t care.
    When she reached the aquatics lab, the selkie hung on to the door of the cage, his dark eyes shining in anticipation. As soon as she’d given Marina her supper, Robin pressed the button for the lock.
    Friday night.
    Colonel Ottoman left a message on voicemail saying he’d be back Saturday. So this was it, for her and the selkie.
    She lay in his arms, on the rock in the aquarium. He played with her loose, damp hair, running his fingers through it. She held his other arm around her waist. He was strong, silent. He wrapped her up with himself when they were together.
    She couldn’t let it end.
    “We’ll go away, you and I.”
    He looked away and laughed silently. He kissed her hand and shook his head.
    It was a game to him. She couldn’t be sure what he thought; he never spoke. She didn’t know if he couldn’t or wouldn’t.
    “Why not?”
    He traced his finger along her jaw, down her neck. Then he nestled against the rock and closed his eyes.
    She couldn’t hope to understand him. Colonel Ottoman was right, they weren’t even human.
    His seal skin lay nearby, on the rock where he had discarded it. She grabbed it, jumped into the water and swam to the door. He splashed, diving after her, but she climbed onto the catwalk and slammed the door shut before he reached her.
    She stood, clutching the skin to her breast. Glaring at her, he gripped the bars of the locked door.
    “Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”
    He pressed his lips into a line and rattled the door.
    She put the skin out of reach of the cage and pulled on the slacks and shirt of her uniform. All expressions of playfulness, of seduction, had left the selkie. His jaw was tight, his brow furrowed.
    Skin in hand, she ran to the main lab where she found a knapsack stashed under her desk. She needed clothes for him, maybe an extra lab coat . . .
    “You know how all the selkie stories end, don’t you?” Rick leaned on his window.
    “They’re just stories.”
    “I’m just a story.”
    She smirked. “You’re no Dracula.”
    “You’ve never seen me outside this cage, my dear.”
    She stopped and looked at him. His eyes were blue.
    “Robin, think carefully about what you’re planning. He has enchanted you.” The vampire’s worried expression seemed almost fatherly.
    “I - I can’t give him up.”
    “Outside this room, you won’t have a choice. You will throw away your career, your life, for that?”
    The official acronym for it was AWOL, not to mention stealing from a government installation. Her career, as far as Robin could tell, amounted to studying people in cages. People who defied study, no matter how many cameras and electrodes were trained on them. The selkie had shown her something that couldn’t be put in a cage, a range of emotions that escaped examination. He’d shown her passion, something she’d been missing without even knowing it. She wanted to take him away from the sterility of a filtered aquarium and a steel cage. She wanted to make love with him on a beach, with the sound of ocean waves behind them.
    “I have this.” She held up the knapsack in which she had stuffed the seal skin and left the lab to stash it in her car and find some clothes.
    For all its wonder and secrecy, the Center was poorly funded - it didn’t produce the results and military applications that the nearby bionic and psychic research branches did - and inadequately supervised.
    She knew the building and video surveillance patterns well enough to be able to smuggle the selkie to her car without leaving evidence. Not