Shifter

by Lora Leigh

  you going?”

  He was not used to having his actions questioned. “To get you food.”

  “And clothes,” she said. “My own clothes, please.”

  Spine, he thought again, amused and appreciative. “What is wrong with the clothes you have on?”

  “Nothing. They are very nice, thank you. However, the, um, castle is rather cold.”

  Selkies, even in human form, did not feel the cold. But of course she was not selkie.

  “Iestyn will build you a fire.”

  “And there isn’t much to them,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken.

  Griff narrowed his eyes. The long red cloak draped her from her slender white neck to her pretty bare feet. “You look covered to me.”

  “Well, I’m not. Not underneath. I don’t mind giving up my corset, but I can’t run around without a petticoat and stockings. Oh!” She pressed her palms to suddenly rosy cheeks. “I cannot believe I am discussing undergarments with you.”

  Griff grinned. He did not understand her embarrassment. Hadn’t he seen her naked? But he took her frankness as a good sign, an indication she was slowly lowering her barriers with him.

  “It was your petticoats that nearly drowned you,” he said. “But you can have them if they make you comfortable.”

  Opening the trunk at the foot of the bed, he rummaged under layers of linen and wool until his hand closed on a hard, solid object at the bottom. He withdrew a knife in its sheath and offered both to her.

  “Maybe this will make you more comfortable, too.”

  Her eyes widened. She regarded the dagger in his hand as if it were a sea urchin or a spiny lobster or some other creature dangerous to touch. “You said I would not be bothered again.”

  Griff scratched his jaw with the hilt. Any bull could disarm her before she inflicted a scratch. But they would recognize the blade—and the woman—as his. “If you say ‘no,’ they will hear ‘no,’” he promised. “But you may need to get their attention before you say it.”

  “With this.” She took the broad black hilt in hand as gingerly as a virgin with her first lover.

  Griff felt the pang in his belly. Shaking his head at them both, he adjusted her grip. He showed her how to draw smoothly and guided her hand through the thrust. “Like that.”

  She sheathed the knife and smiled at him, her blue eyes rueful. “I don’t feel very dangerous.”

  The look, the tone, cut him to the heart. So beautiful, she was. So achingly human.

  He sucked in his breath. “More dangerous than you know, lass.”

  Emma watched from her window as the sun stained the western sky, setting the ocean on fire.

  She breathed deep. After the vermin-infested boardinghouse in Liverpool, after her cramped and stinking quarters belowdecks, it was a relief to fill her lungs with crisp, clean air. To be standing in a castle by the sea as the sun went down in a welter of crimson and gold.

  It felt good to be alive.

  The boy Iestyn had kindled a fire and provided her with a bucket of warm water to wash in. The girl with him—Una, all glossy brown curls and dark, sidelong glances—brought her clothes and a comb. Emma had been surprised no trace of salt or moisture clung to her skirts. Or to her hair, she realized belatedly. As if it had been washed while she slept.

  The burning fire warmed the room, creating a flickering illusion of home. All the room wanted to be completely comfortable was a rug on the floor. Emma rubbed her arms. And perhaps glass in the windows, to keep out the rain and hold the sea at bay.

  The rich salt-brew sea smell poured through the casement, pushing back the heat from the fire. The boom and hiss of the waves rose from the rocks below. She could see seabirds, wheeling and dipping in the pink-streaked sky, and—she caught her breath in mingled pleasure and dismay—seals in the water. She watched them, wondering at their fluid grace as they plunged and played, their big bodies perfectly at home in their element. She groped her way through a swaying forest of half-remembered impressions, dark and tangled as kelp.

  What had she seen?

  And how much had she imagined?

  The door to her room bumped open. Emma whirled, her heart crowding her throat at the large, male silhouette filling her doorway.

  Griff.

  He waited, a smile in his eyes and a tray in his hands, and her heart jumped again for a different reason.

  Awareness filled the room—along with a strong aroma of grilled fish.

  Emma’s stomach rumbled.

  A corner of Griff’s mouth lifted. He set the tray on top of the chest. “Dinner.”

  She flushed. “It smells wonderful.”

  “It’s not much.” Four small, dark apples, an enormous fish cooked whole, and a handful of raw oysters gleaming in their shells. “Not what you are used to.”

  He sounded gruff. Defensive.

  “For the past four days, I’ve been on a diet of stale bread and foul water,” she replied frankly. “This is better than what I’m used to.”

  His smile warmed her from the inside out.

  “Will you join me?” she asked. And then realized, too late, there was no place to sit but the bed.

  “I have eaten,” he said politely in his deep voice. “But I will take a glass of wine.”

  He sounded so civilized.

  Emma clasped her hands together. She did not entertain strange men in her bedroom, she certainly did not drink wine with them, she was a teacher—

  Had been a teacher, she corrected crossly. She was ruined now. She could hardly be ruined twice.

  While she debated with herself, Griff folded his big body and lowered himself to the floor.

  Well.

  That took care of the seating problem.

  She perched on the edge of her mattress, watching him pour wine from a crusted bottle into deep-bowled glasses. Two glasses. Her eyes narrowed as he handed her one, shifting forward in the firelight so that the lovely warm glow slid over his smooth shoulders and hard, furred chest. Her mouth went dry.

  She gulped her wine.

  No gentleman of her acquaintance would sit down to dinner without his coat, much less his shirt. Yet Griff seemed perfectly at ease in her room. In his skin.

  His skin…

  She had barely been able to look at him before. Now she found it difficult to look away.

  “You do not touch your food,” he said softly.

  She grabbed her fork and stabbed at the fish. “It’s delicious. Oh.” She closed her eyes a moment in appreciation. “It really is. Thank the cook for me.”

  “You are welcome.”

  “You? But…” She hid her confusion in another sip of wine.

  “No doctor,” he had said. No priest. No cook, either?

  “We live simply here,” he said.

  Emma scowled into her glass. Simply, fine. But even the most modest households had one female who could cook.

  A horrible thought struck her.

  “You’re not—” Dear God. “You’re not smugglers, are you?”

  His low laugh reassured her. “Not smugglers or pirates.”

  Relief made her giddy. Or maybe it was the wine on her empty stomach. “Too bad,” she teased. “I always thought being kidnapped by pirates would be very romantic.”

  “Kidnapped,” Griff repeated without expression.

  She set her glass down. “I didn’t mean—I hope you’re not offended.”

  “No.”

  “Because you didn’t kidnap me. You rescued me.” Or the seal did. She was a little confused. The wine must have gone to her head.

  He handed her an apple. “Eat.”

  She bit obediently. The fruit was crisp and tart enough to pucker her mouth. She took another sip to wash it down. “So…You grow apples.”

  He did not look like any farmer she’d ever known. His skin was smooth and the same warm gold all over. Cream and honey.

  The corners of his eyes crinkled. “The apples grow,” he said. “We are sea folk. We take wh
at we need from the sea.”

  “And that’s enough for you? You said yourself you were isolated here. Don’t you ever want to see the world?”

  “All of us may roam. But this is our home. Our way of life. I belong here.”

  Emma sighed. “That’s nice. I never belonged at home. Or at school either, really.” A red-haired charity student with an impulsive streak and dreams beyond her station had not always fit in at the solidly middle-class girls’ school. “But I love to teach.”

  Griff watched her, an elbow on his knee, his long body absorbing the heat of the fire. She shivered.

  “And that is all you want,” he said. “To teach?”

  Emma blinked. No one ever asked her what she wanted. “I wanted what every girl wants, I guess. Marriage. A family. A home of my own.”

  Paul’s voice jeered in her head. “Good God, I never intended to marry you.”

  “You wanted,” Griff repeated, picking up on her use of the past tense.

  She raised her chin. “No point in crying after what you can’t have.”

  His eyes darkened. “I am sorry for the…change in your circumstances.”

  “Don’t be. It’s my own fault.”

  His brows lowered. “How is it your fault?”

  “I’m ruined,” Emma explained, and maybe it was the wine talking, and maybe it was relief that she was alive and not headed to Canada, after all, to work twelve months on a farm, and maybe she was just tired of pretending she was in control and everything was all right.

  Griff said nothing.

  “I thought he loved me,” she bumbled on. “I thought—” Her throat closed with remembered pain and embarrassment. Tears pricked her eyes.

  “I wanted to,” she insisted. “He said I did. But he didn’t love me, after all, and it was horrible. Disappointing, he said.”

  Her voice broke on the word. Her vision blurred. She did not see Griff move. But somehow he was there beside her on the bed, his arms warm and strong around her, his chest hard and close. She turned her face into his smooth, warm throat and cried.

  His large hand cradled her head against his shoulder. He didn’t say anything, only held her as she gasped and wept, her hot tears smearing her face and his throat. She inhaled the musk of his skin and let everything else boil out, all her pain, her rage, and her grief. She cried for her lost dreams and her violated trust. She cried for her friend and mentor Letitia, who had turned her out, and her family, who had turned their backs on her. She cried until she was heavy and hollow and limp, lying against him.

  He never spoke a word. And his silence gave her courage to admit the secret she had not confessed even to herself, the betrayal more shameful than Paul’s.

  “I’m ruined,” she said bitterly. “And I didn’t even enjoy it.”

  Griff was silent.

  Humiliation seared her. Women were not supposed to enjoy it.

  It was only her own perverse nature that led her to imagine she might.

  “I wanted to feel close to him.” As if any explanation could excuse her. “And instead I felt used. Empty.”

  Griff got up, the mattress shifting from the sudden removal of his weight, and set the tray outside in the hall.

  Emma stared at him, her throat aching and her eyes puffy. Confused and bereft. “What are you doing?”

  He shut the door and smiled at her, and the warm intent in his eyes thumped her in the stomach. “Let me fill you, lass. I will not disappoint you.”

  FOUR

  “Let me fill you.”

  Emma gaped. Impossible to mistake his meaning. Irresistible to imagine, for one taut moment, how it might be, his body covering hers, his legs pressing and parting her thighs, his weight pinning her as he stretched her, filled her, hurt her—

  The memory clenched her body. No.

  “No!” She scrambled off the bed in panic.

  Griff didn’t move.

  Her heart pounded. She struggled for composure. He was in her room, where she had invited him. She was to blame, just as Paul had said.

  But Griff was not Paul. Emma was sure—almost sure—he would not take advantage of her momentary weakness, her lapse in judgment, to force her.

  “It’s all right, lass,” Griff said, his very dryness soothing. “I can hear ‘no’ even without the knife.”

  Emma flushed. “It’s just—” I’m afraid. Of him, of herself. “I won’t be used again.”

  He remained by the door, watching her with heavy-lidded eyes. “Then use me. Let me give you comfort.”

  His deep voice resonated in the pit of her stomach. But she had felt these lovely little rushes and flutters before, in the early days of Paul’s courtship, and her feelings had betrayed her. The reality had been messy and violent, over quickly and best forgotten. Anything less comforting would be hard to imagine.

  “Comfort?” The question should have been scornful. Instead, she sounded uncertain. Even, God help her, intrigued.

  Griff nodded. “Comfort, aye. And pleasure.”

  She thought of what had been done to her on the cloakroom floor and shuddered. “How could there be pleasure in that?”

  His dark eyes lit with…laughter? “Let me show you.”

  Emma licked her lips nervously. She had risked and lost everything—her position, her family, her hope of marriage, her self-respect—without feeling even a fleeting pleasure in return, without once experiencing the intimacy she longed for. She had nothing left to lose. Did she dare take one more chance at finding…What? Comfort and pleasure in the arms of a stranger?

  “It’s a risk,” she said.

  A terrible risk for any woman, but particularly an unmarried one. That fear, piled on top of all her other fears, had haunted her in the boardinghouse. What if Paul got her with child? For days afterwards, she had watched for her courses and prayed. Her prayers had been answered a week ago. But what if—

  “I will not do anything you don’t want me to,” Griff said. “Let me take care of you.”

  Oh. Longing stabbed her.

  He was a careful man, thoughtful, thorough. He had already fed and clothed her, protected her, and held her while she cried. And now…Could he really care for her that way, too? Could he care for her at all?

  He watched her, patient. Waiting.

  Emma trembled. She desired him. Or rather, she desired what he could give her: a memory to blot out that other memory, the closeness she yearned for and had not found with Paul. Had never felt with another human being.

  She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Why?”

  “Because I know you.” His rough voice ran over her nerves like sandpaper, smoothing, soothing. “Because in one day I have seen the spirit and the spine and the heart of you. You showed courage on the ship and kindness to young Iestyn. Let me show you some tenderness in return.”

  The brilliance in his eyes pierced her heart. Her chest ached. She had refused the security Paul had offered with its strings and conditions. She might have resisted comfort. But tenderness…

  She trembled. When had anyone touched her in tenderness?

  Griff stalked across the room toward her, all male strength and animal grace, and panic rose like a bubble in her throat.

  “I have seen the spirit and the spine of you…”

  She swallowed hard and held her ground. She was already ruined. Was it so wrong to wish for something else, to grasp at something more, before she went back to exile and indentured servitude? Griff at least would be gentle. She was sure of it.

  He stopped in front of her, close enough for her to feel his heat.

  She faced him, thrumming with anxiety and desire, her nerves stretched and humming like cello strings.

  If he did not touch her soon, she would scream.

  She bit her lip, an inappropriate bubble of laughter rising in her throat. Of course, if he did touch her, she might scream. That would stop him.

  She did not want him to stop.

  He raised his hand, his eyes dark and intent. This close s
he could see they were not black, not all black. A ring of deep, warm brown circled the wide pupils.

  Emma braced, her heart hammering in hope and dread.

  His thumb, warm and callused, rested on her mouth and rubbed lazily back and forth, freeing her lower lip from the grip of her teeth. She tasted him, his salt, his skin, there at the entrance of her mouth, and her stockinged feet curled against the cold stone floor. He cupped her jaw. She inhaled sharply in anticipation of his kiss.

  And then his hand slid further, under her hair, against her neck, and his fingers dug into the tight muscles of her nape.

  She almost moaned in relief.

  He massaged tiny circles along the cords of her neck, the line of her shoulders, his thumbs pressing, his fingers stroking, his touch firm. Seductive. Under her bodice, her nipples beaded. But he did not touch her breasts, only tugged her, turned her, so that her back was to him. Heat flowed into her, his heat, moving through his fingers, loosening her stiff muscles. It blanketed her brain, smothering thought. There was nothing overtly sexual about his touch, and yet inside she was melting, desire pooling in her belly as she yielded to his hands. Her head dropped forward in surrender. She could feel him behind her, his breath warm on her cheek, the solid slab of his chest and abdomen, the blunt ridge of his erection against her buttocks. Lovely little thrills ran like fire under her skin. Her knees sagged.

  He gripped her hands and raised them, flattening her palms against the tall wooden bedpost, holding them there until she clung. Combing his fingers through her hair, he gathered it up, letting the strands fall over her shoulder. His hands skimmed down her arms.

  He moved on her, his chest supporting her back, his knee between her thighs. And all the time his strong hands worked their magic, rubbing, kneading, leaving her aching and limp as string.

  Gently, so gently, he closed his teeth on her neck. She shuddered in reaction. She felt the warm nip of his mouth, the cool kiss of air on the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades. Fabric sagged. Her dress. He was unbuttoning her dress.

  Emma gasped and would have turned to face him, but he only pressed closer against her back, holding her in place with the weight of his body. She felt his rod, the promise and the threat of it, hard against her bottom, but his hands wouldn’t leave her alone long enough to worry about what came next. They flowed over her, gliding, sliding, commanding her attention. Her response.

  He reached through the open back of her dress, his hands skimming along her ribs, stroking over her shift to find and cup her breasts. His thumbs rubbed her nipples. His leg nudged, thrust, lifted, until she rode its muscled length like a pony. She squirmed, trying to find her balance or her breath, and his hands and voice soothed her.

  “Easy now, lass. Be easy. I’ve got you.”

  She sucked in her breath. The air was close and thick with the smell of the fire, the musk of his skin, the scent of her own desire.

  She flushed, relieved she could not see his face. She did not remember this embarrassing wetness from before. Only blood.

  His hands stroked down and glided up, dragging her shift and her petticoat with them until the material bunched against the bedpost and spilled over his arms. Emma closed her eyes, overwhelmed by her own recklessness. Abruptly, all sensation sharpened and intensified. Her focus narrowed to his hands as they moved over her, learning her shape, discovering her secret places.

  “I know you.” And, oh, he did. Better, it seemed, than she knew herself. There was something reassuring—and terrifying—about his intimate knowledge of her body and its reactions.

  His long fingers trailed along her thigh, traced between her legs, brushing just the ends of the curls there until she quivered. She squeezed her eyes tighter, squeezed her legs tighter, embarrassed at what he would find.

  “So wet.” A growl of masculine satisfaction. “So sweet.”

  Heat flooded her face, her breasts. He expected the dampness, then. Expected and approved. Another layer of doubt dissolved, burned away.

  Griff eased the angle of his thigh, letting her down gently, freeing her, freeing himself to touch and explore. Emma moaned and moved instinctively, rolling her hips into his hand, feeling his touch everywhere, wanting his touch. Everywhere.

  She gripped the bedpost as he pressed and probed, teased and stroked her wet, sensitive flesh. His arms were hard as ropes around her, his breath hot in her ear as he worked her with his fingers, around and around, in and out.

  The fire crackled and popped. Behind her closed lids, red sparks rose and danced in the heat. Her ne