Shifter

by Lora Leigh

  “You should have told me,” she finished bitterly.

  “Aye.” He shifted, as if he were suddenly uncomfortable in his big, graceful body. “But I wanted you to stay.”

  Oh. A fissure opened in her heart.

  She ignored it. She didn’t want to fall into that chasm, into the emptiness and the dark.

  “Where is Una?” she asked. “How is she?”

  “She is well. As you can see.” He moved aside from the door, and Una, bright-eyed and pale, rushed into the room and flung her arms around Emma.

  Almost, Emma recoiled. But this was Una, a child, not a monster. A pretty adolescent who stumbled over fractions and flirted with Iestyn and had lent Emma her comb.

  Her arms came up automatically to embrace the girl as Una turned her head against Emma’s chest, her arms tight around Emma’s waist.

  Emma found it difficult to breathe.

  “The first time is hard,” Griff repeated. “They—we must generate our skins from within ourselves, the first time. But the change becomes easier with practice.”

  Easier for whom? Emma thought.

  As if he heard her thought, Griff’s mouth tightened.

  “I was glad you were there,” Una said against Emma’s dress front.

  Emma stroked the girl’s dark curls. “I’m glad, too.” Remembering the child’s screams, how could she feel otherwise? And yet…“I wish I had known how to help you.”

  “You held me. And the warden brought me back.” Una looked at him, her eyes shining. “The land beneath the waves…It was wonderful.”

  Emma had a sudden, uncomfortable vision of Griff’s big body crowding Una into the sea.

  Griff met her gaze stolidly. “The young ones need a guide the first time out. The call of the sea is strong in us. They must learn to find their way back to Sanctuary and human form.”

  They must find their way back.

  Yes.

  Only sometimes the things said and unsaid, the spoken lies and unuttered promises, formed an insurmountable barrier.

  “Sometimes,” Emma said, with a catch at the heart she refused to acknowledge, “there is no going back.”

  “Then we must go forward,” Griff said. “Off with you now.”

  Una turned her head against Emma’s breast, her curls tickling Emma’s chin. “But I haven’t told her anything yet about the surge or the sea forest or—”

  “Tomorrow. You can tell her anything you like tomorrow.”

  Una practiced a pout and a flounce on her way out the door. Emma smiled faintly as she caught Griff’s eyes. Apparently even a mythical beast was capable of behaving like an average thirteen-year-old when the mood struck her.

  He smiled back, and Emma stiffened.

  He knew she would be softened by seeing the child. He knew her. She was being manipulated. Again.

  Her smile faded. “What are you?” she whispered.

  He reached into the hall for something. His sealskin. Her breath caught as he tossed it onto her bed, as the rich, dark fur spilled over the frame and onto the cold stone floor. “I am that,” he said.

  He crossed to stand in front of her, opening his arms until she was compelled to look at him, forced to acknowledge him, his strong, hard face and broad, furred chest and overwhelming maleness. Her heart pounded. Her mouth was dry. She could feel the heat of his body.

  “And I am this,” he said in his deep voice. “I have not changed, lass. Nothing has changed.”

  She took a step back. “Rubbish,” she said in her farmer father’s voice. Judgmental. Accusing. She hated sounding this way. She hated feeling this way. But she could not help herself. “Unless by ‘nothing has changed’ you mean I’ve been living in a fantasy world all along.”

  Griff’s arms fell to his sides. “It was no fantasy, lass.”

  She looked at him in disbelief. “You’re a seal.”

  “A selkie. Aye.”

  Anger rose inside her, warming, burning. She did not want to feel it. She did not want to feel. The cold numbness hurt less than this. But she was furious with him. And with herself, for allowing her feelings to betray her into accepting an impossible situation. For trusting him. For loving—

  No.

  “Forgive me if I don’t see the difference,” she said.

  “Seals are animals. Selkies are elementals. We are the children of the sea, formed when God brought the waters of the world into being, the first fruits of His creation.”

  “Not human.”

  “No.”

  “Not…mortal?”

  Griff hesitated. “We can be killed. But we do not die as your kind understands death. As long as our bodies, our sealskins, return to the water, we are reborn again in the sea.”

  Emma’s legs refused to support her any longer. She sank down on the bed. The first fruits of God’s creation…

  “How old are you?”

  “There are older among us,” he answered carefully.

  Not lying, Emma thought bitterly. Just not telling her everything. “How old?” she insisted.

  “Two thousand years,” he admitted. “Give or take twenty.”

  She sat dumbly, her blood roaring in her ears.

  “Our people are of two kinds,” he continued, “sea born and blood born, those brought into being at the first creation and those born of a union between male and female, mortal and immortal. My mother was human. I can still give you children, Emma.”

  That roused her. She raised her head and glared at him. “Oh, no, you cannot. I’m not letting you touch me.”

  “Because I revolt you.”

  “No!”

  She saw the faint easing of tension in his muscles, the subtle relaxation of his lips, and hated herself for her ready response, for her vulnerability, for her honesty.

  Hated him for making her feel.

  Because he did not revolt her. Far from it.

  “A relationship between us is impossible. You must see that. I’ll get old and wrinkled and die, and you’ll always be…” She flapped her hand at him, one gesture encompassing his strength, his immortality, his perfect masculine physique. “Like this.”

  Griff took her hand. Held it, despite her attempts to tug away. “Not always. The island’s magic keeps us young. That’s why our children are fostered in human families and why they take so long to mature once we bring them here. But outside of Sanctuary, we age as humans do, for as long as we are in human form.”

  He sat beside her on the bed, lacing his fingers with hers. The mattress depressed under his weight until her thigh touched his. “We could grow old together, Emma. If we moved the school, moved with the children to a neighboring island, it would suit all our needs.”

  Emma’s hand trembled in his hold. She wanted nothing more than to fall into the promise of those warm, deep eyes, to fall into his arms, to fall in with his plans. But something niggled at the edge of her consciousness, swayed below the surface of her thoughts, like a sea anemone swaying and retracting in the tide. Something about the school…

  Slowly, she withdrew her hand from his. “What needs?”

  “I need you,” he answered so promptly she was almost disarmed. “The children need you.”

  His pelt still lay beside her on the bed. Dark, like the hair on his head and chest, and silky smooth. She ruffled the fur with her fingers and felt his sudden stillness, heard his breathing change.

  “Emma…”

  A scar slashed across the thick, smooth fur, a hard, silver ridge running like a road through a forest. She traced it with her finger. A scar…

  “What is this?” Her voice was high. Tight.

  “My chain.” Griff touched the silver band around his neck and smiled ruefully. “It…rubs, under the pelt.”

  Emma looked at the braided silver chain, the stylized spiral medallion glinting against his warm muscle and crisp dark hair.

  And saw the seal in the Liverpool harbor with the necklace of scars around its throat.

  “It was you,” she whispe
red. “The seal at the docks.”

  “Aye.”

  “You watched me.”

  “Emma—”

  “You followed me.”

  “Yes.”

  Her voice rose. “My being here—it wasn’t an accident, was it?”

  “Lass—”

  She felt sick. “The shipwreck wasn’t an accident.”

  He was silent.

  Dear God.

  She stumbled to her feet. She wanted to throw up. “All those people on the ship—”

  “—are safe. Not one life was lost.” He stood, grasping her shoulders in his strong, steady hands, forcing her to look at him. “I swear it.”

  Mary Jenkins, little Alice, her books, all her things… “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “It should,” Griff said grimly. “I did it for you.”

  Oh, God.

  “Which?” she flung at him. “Saved their lives or wrecked the ship?”

  A long pause, while their eyes warred and her heart broke all over again.

  “Both,” he admitted.

  She was no longer numb. Numb was too easy. This…this was agony.

  “You didn’t do it for me.” She was shaking, shivering, splintering apart inside. “You did it because your damned lord Conn wanted a damn teacher.”

  “The fate of our children was at stake. The future of our people.” Griff’s face was like stone. His voice grated like iron. “Nothing else could be of significance compared to that. You were needed.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “And you have been happy here. Emma—”

  “But I didn’t have a choice! Those poor people who lost everything on the ship didn’t have a choice. I may be human and mortal and insignificant, but I know we deserve a choice.”

  He was looking at her as if she were the monster, as if she were a strange, rare beast who might suddenly sprout fur and flippers and swim away.

  “A choice,” he repeated.

  Her chest felt tight. She stuck out her chin. “Yes.”

  He nodded slowly. “Very well. I will speak to my lord. Tomorrow, after you have said good-bye to the children, I will take you wherever you want to go.”

  Emma’s mouth dropped open. Her chest caved in.

  Why? It was what she asked for, what she wanted, what she had always wanted. Wasn’t it? A measure of control over her own life. “You are not serious.”

  His mouth was a hard, tight line. “Never more so.”

  “But…” She struggled to organize her thoughts. Her words. “What about the school? The children? They still need a teacher.”

  “There are other teachers. Conn will have to find one.”

  She had been warm and angry. Now she was cold all over, her hands, her spine, the pit of her stomach. “And will you wreck her ship, too?”

  He glared back at her, all the heat and frustration and anger she had felt burning in his eyes, and she said, “Or will you seduce her into doing what you want, the way you did me?”

  “It’s no concern of yours,” he growled. “Or mine, either.”

  “What does that mean?” she snapped, still goading, still wanting…What?

  “There are other teachers,” he repeated. “There is no other woman. Not for me. When you go tomorrow, lass, wherever you go, I will follow you.”

  Emma looked stunned.

  He might as well have clubbed her over the head, Griff thought. Her mouth opened and closed several times like a fish’s, and her eyes and nose were red from the weeping she had done and the weeping she had not allowed herself to do.

  He should not have found her beautiful.

  He should not love her.

  He should not abandon his home and his prince, his duty and his very nature to follow her around the world.

  But he did, and he did, and he would.

  Passionate, brave, determined Emma. He would follow her to hell if he had to.

  Apparently the opening and closing got her mouth working again, because she asked, “You would do that for me?”

  Hadn’t he just said so?

  His jaw set. “Aye.”

  Her blue eyes were wide and bewildered enough to break his heart. “But…why?”

  “I told you. I am courting you.”

  “Oh.” A jagged breath like a sound of pain. She shut her eyes. “It isn’t fair to say such things to me.”

  “There is no ‘fair’ with the heart,” Griff said. “Only what is.”

  He went into the hall and returned with a package. He pressed the gift into her hands, folding her fingers around it. “I have never courted a woman before,” he told her gruffly. “So you must be patient with me while I learn.”

  Her eyes opened. “Two thousand years, and you expect me to believe—” Her gaze fell to the package in her hands. Her throat moved as she swallowed.

  “A man who is courting brings presents. Or so I have heard,” Griff said.

  “My books.” Emma smoothed the oiled paper back with trembling fingers. “You brought my books to me.”

  He shrugged, trying to hide the quick jump of nerves in his stomach. “You said you wanted them.”

  “Weeks ago. I can’t believe you remembered.” She looked up, her eyes shining with appreciation. He hoped it was appreciation and not tears. “Thank you.”

  “I could not find them until today.” When he went into the sea with Una. Best not to remind her of that. “So…I am forgiven, then?”

  “For always knowing what I want and giving it to me?” Her lips curved. His heart thumped in sudden hope. “That depends,” she said.

  “On what?” he demanded.

  She clasped her hands tightly on the books. “On whether you will give me what I want now.”

  Griff’s face, his mind, went blank. He had offered her everything, his loyalty, his life. He did not know what else to give.

  “You,” she told him, and took his breath away. “I want you.”

  He reached for her and then stopped himself, his hands hard on her shoulders. “Now? Because I do not think I can wait until we get to Canada.”

  “I don’t want to wait. And I don’t want Canada. I just need to know that you—” Her gaze dropped. She wet her lips. “—care for me.”

  Tenderness swelled his chest. “I love you, lass. And I want you willing. No more making the best of a bad choice.”

  Her throat worked. “You love me?”

  “I do. And I always will.”

  “Even when I’m old?”

  He heard the hope in her voice, and his own pulse surged and quickened. “I will love you until we both are old and gray,” he vowed. “And I will hold you in my heart forever.”

  “Oh, Griff.” It was the right answer. He saw it in her eyes. “I do not need to make the best of anything. Because I have the best of everything with you.”

  He cupped her face.

  She smiled into his eyes.

  He took her in his arms then, drawing her onto the bed, letting his weight down on top of her, spreading her thighs with his. He felt her stiffen, and he remembered that other one, the one who hurt her.

  So he reversed their positions, pulling her on top, coaxing her to straddle him. “Better?”

  She bit her lip. Nodded. Smiled. Relaxed.

  He absorbed her hum of pleasure as he moved against her, as he rocked against her, as he lifted her hips and slid hard inside her, wet, slippery, hot. His shudder shook them both.

  He loved her. They loved each other. Face-to-face, body to body, breathing and moving together in a rhythm as old as the sea, as compelling as the tides. Griff clenched his teeth, trying to hold back, trying to hold on, wanting this to last forever. Until Emma rose above him like a goddess, the moon burning in her hair, bright and beautiful and his. With a soft cry, she jerked and tightened around him. And again. Her peak surged through him like a wave, undulating, sucking him under. His blood roared in his ears. He gave himself up to it, gave himself up to her, releasing hotly, deeply at her center. />
  Afterward, she lay against his chest as he stroked her hair, listening to the sea break and break on the rocky breast of the shore below, eternally new, forever changed.