by Sonya Blake
“Seems like?” Sam asked. Something about the way she said it didn’t sit right with him.
Kaia shifted her weight, drawing closer to him. “Yeah, not that I want to bring up the past with you, ‘cause it’s not exactly a sexy conversation…”
“Tell me,” Sam said, “if you want to.”
“Going through surgical menopause definitely did a number on my, um, previous relationship,” Kaia said. “It kind of made my sex life suck and I felt like it was all my fault and it made me really, ugh, I don’t know, defensive and frustrated and—and then my ex started cheating on me and I blamed myself—”
“Not your fault,” Sam growled, feeling a surge of protective anger.
Kaia smiled wanly. “I know. I know that now.”
“Yeah?” He kissed her forehead, and Kaia wrapped her arms around his neck and drew his mouth to hers.
“I never thought I could feel this way again, Sam,” she whispered. “Honestly, I never thought I’d feel this way ever, with anyone, but you… you’re amazing.”
Sam couldn’t help smiling. “You’re amazing, too,” he said, brushing her bright curls away from her cheek.
“I know I maybe should’ve told you about it already but—”
“No,” he said, shaking his head. “You didn’t have to tell me before you were ready.”
“Well, I’ll admit it’s not something I like to dwell on,” Kaia said, pressing her lips together in a firm line. “It was a horrible experience and I spent a long time grieving the idea of being a mother and being terrified about the cancer coming back in another form, but I’m through that now and I don’t want it to define the rest of my life.”
The idea of Kaia being sick, going through pain and grief, made him wish violently that he could have been there to support her. “You don’t have any scars,” he said.
“Oh, I do,” she said, wriggling a little as her hands drifted to her belly. “But they’re subtle. It was a laparoscopic surgery.”
Sam let his body down beside her, wrapping an arm around her waist as he propped his head on the heel of his palm and gazed down at her. She pointed to two little places on either side of her pelvic bones, where there were subtle shadows on her skin about the size of two dimes.
“They went through my bellybutton, too,” she told him. “You can’t see that one.”
Goosebumps on her skin told him she was cold, so he grabbed the rumpled bedcover and tossed it over their bodies.
“Kaia,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to her temple as he drew his body close alongside hers. “I’m sorry.”
She turned to face him and smiled. “Don’t be.” Her fingers were soft in his hair, her smile fading. “I should’ve told you sooner. I didn’t tell my ex, not right away. I lied about the scars, said they were from ovarian cysts, nothing too serious.” She nodded, pressing her lips together as tears filled her eyes. “But he found out the truth and, well, he wanted a family. He told me it didn’t matter, but it did. Then, of course, he got together with Darla and”—she drew in a long breath—“they’re expecting a baby later this year.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah,” Kaia replied, and let out a shaky laugh. Her hands found his face and drew him closer. She kissed him softly, and whispered, “So, no condom, no problem. I want you, Sam.”
“I want you, too,” he told her, running his hand over the softness of her low belly. He rested his hand over the ridge of her pelvis, where one of her scars was. “And anyway,” he whispered as he nuzzled against her neck, “I’m pretty sure if you and I had a kid he’d be a sea monster.”
“Kraken baby,” Kaia said. She laughed and turned, twining her legs through his, coiling her body against his.
She was so smooth and soft, so warm. He felt the blood coursing through his veins focus its flow and in a breath he was hard again, aching for her. He lifted her thigh over his hip and reached between their bodies to guide himself inside her. Finding himself surrounded by nothing but her sweet giving warmth, he let himself thrust steadily as he cradled her closer. It felt so good, being together without anything separating them. He was very likely to come in the next thirty seconds if they kept it up like this.
Kaia let out a low moan, squeezing her eyes shut even as he felt her fine muscles squeezing his cock. Her eyes now opened wide and she groaned a loud and profane affirmation as he pounded into her, faster and faster, until he felt his joints shaking, his head and his cock exploding.
Sam growled as they fell apart, collapsing into the pillows. “Sorry,” he breathed. “I wanted to make that last longer.”
Kaia laughed. “I think that one holds the record for my fastest orgasm ever.”
“Really?” Sam brightened at the thought.
She nodded and turned to tuck herself into the crook between his shoulder and his chest, where she fit perfectly.
“Were you playing the banjo when I knocked on the door earlier?” he asked, after a while.
“Mmhm,” Kaia hummed against his chest, her little fingers moving over the short, dark hair that grew in tight whorls against his skin.
“I’ve got an idea,” he said. “I’ll make breakfast while you play me something.”
Kaia’s smile broke over him like a wave of sunshine and melted away whatever it was that had happened to him the day before and the bad, lingering feeling that had followed.
*
Sam cracked an egg into butter bubbling in the black iron pan. He glanced over his shoulder at Kaia, sitting at the long, battered oak table in the center of the kitchen, picking on her banjo. She was good. Really good. And he’d thought her voice was her talent. After a long instrumental intro, she broke into song and her voice filled the room.
“I been a moonshiner,” she sang, “for seventeen long years, I spent all my money on whiskey and beer, I go to some hollow and set up my still. If whiskey don’t kill me, I don’t know what will.”
Sam leaned against the counter and watched the clever fingers of her left hand moving over the banjo frets, hammering here, pulling away there, moving with mind-boggling speed and accuracy while her right hand beat a constant tempo against the strings. When she sang, her eyes went faraway and her face became placid, and she was more beautiful than ever.
The eggs started to fizzle and pop behind him and he reluctantly turned toward the stove again. She finished her song with a flourish of lightning-fast notes on the banjo just as he was plating the eggs and toast.
“This looks amazing,” she said, raking a hand through her unruly red curls as Sam set her plate in front of her. She placed her banjo on the table and began tucking into her breakfast eagerly.
Sam smiled as he sat catty-corner to her. “When did you start playing?” he asked.
“When I was seven,” she answered, one cheek stuffed with food. “My dad and I used to go on these fishing trips in Kentucky and we’d eat at a dive bar that always had live music. Mountain music, my dad called it. Banjo, fiddle, mandolin. I liked the banjo the best and begged him to let me get one.”
“Sounds like your dad is a good guy,” he said.
Kaia chewed and nodded, narrowing her eyes. “Yes and no. He’s an alcoholic.”
“And your mom?” he asked. “Do you… remember her?”
Kaia gulped down her food suddenly and diverted her gaze as she took a sip of the coffee Sam knew to be scalding. Eyes widening at the boiling heat in her mouth, she gulped and sucked in a long breath of air.
“Shit. Sorry. That was really hot, wasn’t it. Ice water?” Sam suggested, getting up.
She was silent as he cracked the ice and ran the tap.
“I don’t really remember her,” Kaia said when he set the frosty glass in front of her. She stared down at her plate. “But I think she was like me.” Her storm-cloud eyes lifted to his. “I think she was a siren.”
Sam nodded as he sat again, cutting into his eggs with his fork.
“And if that’s the case… then I don’t understand how she could’ve drow
ned to death.” Kaia chewed on her plump, delicious lower lip. “And if what my dad has said about their love is true, then I don’t believe she would’ve willingly left him. Which means… well, I don’t know what it means exactly, but I haven’t been told the truth.”
“Did you talk to your dad yet?” Sam asked. “Ask him if he knows about… you?”
Kaia shook her head. “I tried calling him, but he was wasted. I just hung up. But I suppose I should try again. I just don’t know how I’m gonna feel if it turns out he’s been lying to me all my life.”
The kitchen was surrounded by silence, even the crashing of the ocean buffered by the densely falling snow outside.
“Do you remember your mother?” Kaia asked suddenly, leaning toward him.
Sam swallowed his bite of food and washed it down with a cautious sip of coffee. “I remember her,” he said, at last, hoping his voice wouldn’t betray his emotion. “I remember her smell. Her face. She was… gentle. Attentive.”
And where had she gone? Why hadn’t she come to land with him when it was his time to become a human? He had been plagued by these questions all his time on land.
“The day I changed,” Sam swallowed, lowering his brows over his eyes in hopes they wouldn’t fill with tears, “we were hunting and we got separated. I can’t even imagine what she went through, after I was gone. I’ve wondered why she didn’t come to land. Why she didn’t look for me. I guess it’s possible she wasn’t a selkie, but just a normal seal. But still, I never understood why she didn’t try to find me.” The conclusions he’d come to were not ones he could bring himself to utter aloud.
Luckily, he didn’t have to say more. Kaia reached over and rested her hand on his. She gave him a soft smile and they continued eating in comfortable silence.
“How’s the painting going?” Kaia asked later as they finished drying the dishes. “Getting geared up for your big show?”
Sam chuckled. “I don’t know how big it’ll be. It’s winter in Quolobit. There’s nobody here to come.” He lifted his shoulders and slid a plate into the shelf. “Doesn’t bother me. I’ve got a lot of work to do, though. I need more stuff.”
Kaia smirked. “Well, I think you got a good start on that painting of me,” she murmured, turning to stand on tiptoe to nudge a mug into its spot in the cabinet.
His eyes traveled down the curve of her back, over the swell of her hips and her perfectly round ass in tight leggings. Unable to resist, he reached for it, cupping her between her cheeks. “Since I’m here, maybe I should do some study sketches of you,” he said, pressing his lips into her hair.
She arched against him, gasping slightly as he squeezed. “What do you think?” he asked. “Would you sit for me?”
“Sit?” Kaia asked, a little breathless. “You sure that’s all you want to have me do?”
He growled against her warm skin. No, that certainly wasn’t all he wanted to have her do.
“Maybe we can start in the living room,” he suggested, reluctantly pulling his hand out from between her warm, soft cheeks. “I’ve got some paper and pencils hidden in the desk in there.”
Despite the snow, there was decent light hitting the couch, where he set her up for a portrait. Of course, he wanted to tell her to strip down and pose nude for him, but he didn’t think that’d be fair. He had asked her to take off her shirt; that way he could get the lines of her shoulders and neck.
“What do you think?” he asked, turning his back as he went to the credenza along the wall and selected a record. “How would you feel seeing your face on the walls at my show?” He looked over his shoulder and gave a playful grin.
“I think I’d like that, very much,” Kaia declared as she settled onto the couch, a soft wool blanket drawn about her bare shoulders.
“Good. ‘Cause I think I’d like that, too,” Sam said.
The fire popped in the hearth as the stereo crackled to life with the energized, fresh first notes of the Rumours album by Fleetwood Mac. Sam sang along in his tuneless way as he cut his first lines onto the page using light, fast strokes.
Curve from forehead to chin. Line of the neck. Yoke of shoulders. Slope of brows. Shadowed circles for the orbital cavities. The suggestion of a mouth—the mouth that he was dying to capture.
Kaia hummed along as the record switched to the second track and Stevie Nicks began to croon Dreams. Her features became clearer in his drawing, lifting out of whispered graphite. He traced the slightly downward curving line where her lips met. God, that full upper lip. That plump lower one. He struggled to maintain focus. She giggled.
“What?” he asked.
“Lemme see.”
“Not yet.”
Sam kept working, cross-hatching in the light, exaggerating the chiaroscuro that highlighted her round, beautiful face.
Freckles!
How could he forget? Yes, he had to include a few of those, too. He glanced up at her and committed a constellation on her cheek to memory before transferring it to the page. By the time Songbird came on, he had a decent sketch.
Her eyes widened, her mouth falling open as he turned the pad toward her. “Sam,” she whispered, “that’s so beautiful. And really freaking good. Like, Leonardo da Vinci good.”
He snorted. He was hardly that talented, but he did have to admit, he’d captured her well and his touch had somehow improved dramatically.
“Guess it helps when you’ve got a muse,” he said, angling the portrait now so he could look at it, too.
The record hit the end of side A and the room was enveloped in quiet once more. Sam looked up at Kaia. Her eyes were soft and sweet, her lips parting, the blanket falling from her shoulders. He made a low noise in his throat at the sight of her breasts. She unfolded her legs beneath her and stood from the couch, stepping towards him.
Sam set the drawing down on the coffee table as Kaia approached where he sat on a stool beside the hearth. His hands found her bare, silky waist as she straddled his hips and lowered herself onto his lap. She kissed him with eager, sucking lips, her hands gripping the hair at the back of his head.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been anybody’s muse before,” she whispered against his mouth.
His heart started pounding as he spread his hands under her bottom, pulling her closer. She arched her back, growling as his fingers pressed into the seam between her legs. Lowering his lips, he took one nipple between them. She smelled of honeysuckle and tasted of vanilla and he was suddenly out of his head and desperate for more of her.
“I’m going to taste every inch of you,” he told her, inhaling the warm scent between her breasts.
Chapter Thirty-Five
“But first, I’ve gotta get a shower,” Sam said, suddenly pulling away. “I’m covered in bacon grease.”
Her heart was keeping a steady, up-tempo rhythm against her chest and she was aching between her legs. She wasn’t sure she could wait that long.
“Fine,” she said, standing up. “I’m coming with you.”
Sam smiled up at her as his fingers began to lift the hem of his T-shirt. He stood and pulled the shirt away, revealing his hard, lean body. She started unbuttoning his fly while pulling him upstairs.
The shower screamed to life as the plumbing lurched. Sam shoved his jeans down over his hips and stepped out of them as Kaia watched. When he stepped into the steaming shower and offered her his hand she took it and followed. He let out a groan of pleasure as the water struck him, throwing back his head of dark hair into the spray.
“Feels good?” Kaia said, sidling closer and rubbing his chest with a bar of soap.
Sam smiled down. “Not as good as that bar of soap in your hands.”
She pushed the suds down through the tight curls below his navel, sliding lower. He let out a low groan and leaned against the tiled wall as she stroked him.
She felt the mischievous urge to push him to the brink and leave him aching. Tightening her grip, she pressed him against the wall as the hot water fell over them. She w
as sure she was about to be victorious when he stopped her, pulling away and laughing.
“Give me that goddamned soap.” He wrested it from her fingers with one effortless grab and used it to perfunctorily wash the rest of his body, scrubbing his face, his pits, his butt. “Keep going like this and I might be out of commission. Now,” he said, when he was apparently finished, “it’s your turn.”
She laughed at the ticklish sensation of his soap-laden hands scrubbing beneath her arms, then began to pant as he rubbed her breasts, her back. He gathered more soap between his palms before slipping one hand behind her.
Sam smiled like a devil and slipped his other hand along her belly, gliding down between her thighs. His slow, deliberate rubbing was making her so delirious she couldn’t even move. His dark, wild eyes held hers. “I can’t get enough of you, Kaia. I want everything.”
She let out a moan but managed to say, “I want that, too. Everything and forever.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Everything and forever. It was what he was afraid of. And what he wanted most.
If Sam could have Kaia, he could deal with life on land till the end of his days. She really made him almost forget the bone-deep longing for the ocean he’d carried around for fifteen years. Almost.
His head was still spinning from yesterday. There was no rational explanation for his behavior, for his forgetting. And if there was no rational explanation…
No. This had nothing to do with the supernatural. Nothing to do with his sealskin. Impossible. The thing was probably gathering dust under somebody’s bed. Or buried in a landfill and not rotting because it was magickal, because the creature it belonged to was still alive. He was damned lucky it hadn’t been cut into pieces to make some stupid garment or throw pillow. That would’ve been the end of him. Felicia Dunne had been straight-up when she told him that without his sealskin, his life-expectancy was bleak.
