Forgotten Sea

by Virginia Kantra

  His eyes darkened at the sight of her, but all he said was, “There’s a comb in one of the bags. I’m going to clean up.”

  There was a comb, she discovered, investigating as he disappeared into the bathroom. And a brush. Canvas sneakers—size eight—jeans, a couple of tops, a zippered hoodie, and a multipack of cotton panties. But no bra.

  No nightshirt. She dug into another bag and found more Tshirts, men’s size large.

  She glanced at the closed bathroom door before dropping her towel.

  Ripping open the plastic, she yanked on one of the large Tshirts, layering the hoodie over it for good measure. The mirrored wall told her she looked ridiculous, her long bare legs poking out from under the white shirt and bulky navy fleece. But at least she was warm. She pulled a face. And her nipples were covered.

  The last bag held toiletries: toothbrushes, a razor, a tube of antiseptic cream. She frowned over the last, squinting to read the label.

  The bathroom door opened. Iestyn emerged, lanky and golden in a cloud of steam like a seraph streaming from Heaven. The towel slung low around his hips was every bit as small as hers had been.

  She jerked her gaze up. And widened her eyes in dismay.

  “Impressive.”

  He grinned. “Thank you.”

  She bit her lower lip. “I meant your throat.” She stepped closer to get a better look.

  Red stripes seared his neck just under the cord. The skin around the lampwork bead looked even worse, cracked white edges around a scarlet burn.

  She reached to touch him, to heal him, and he caught her fingers. Her nerve endings sparked. Her blood hummed and quickened.

  “No magic,” he said. “I don’t want any demons finding us tonight.”

  “But you’re hurt,” she protested. His neck looked almost abraded, raw and angry.

  He shrugged. “I bought some stuff to put on it.”

  She remembered the tube of antibiotic ointment in her hand. “Let me.”

  Using their linked hands, she drew him to the bed. He sat on the edge of the mattress, and she moved between his thighs, his knees on either side of her legs, his bare feet flanking hers.

  She sucked in her breath, acutely conscious of his difference, his size, his maleness, his . . . toes. His toes were webbed.

  Her hand shook.

  “I feel better already,” he murmured close to her breasts.

  Heat climbed her neck and into her face. “Hold still,” she ordered, although he hadn’t moved.

  She smoothed ointment into the crease of his neck, feathered it around his stitches and the awful sore in the hollow of his throat. His skin was very warm. Damp hair the color of oiled oak, gold and brown and bronze, fell into his face. He smelled like shampoo and something else, something musky and masculine. She felt his coiled stillness, the rigidity of his muscles, before he turned his head and kissed the tender inside of her arm.

  His jaw was rough, his lips velvet. Sensation tightened her breasts.

  He made a sound, a growl, low in his throat and looked up.

  Her breath caught at the hungry, knowing look in his eyes.

  She pressed her thighs together.

  Holding her gaze, he stroked her breasts with his fingertips, learning her by feel like a blind man reading Braille.

  Her heart pounded. When his exploring fingers found her taut peaks, he smiled and pinched gently.

  “You’re beautiful,” he said, still watching her face.

  She closed her eyes, unable to bear the heat in his eyes, the excitement of his touch, any longer. His stubble rasped against her T-shirt. She felt his warm breath on the inside curve of her breast, and then his mouth replaced his fingers as he suckled her through the cloth.

  She arched, clutching at his shoulders, his hair, careful of his head wound. The damp strands slipped like wet silk through her fingers. Pleasure flamed in the tips of her breasts, kindled like fire in her belly at the tug of his mouth, hot, wet, insistent.

  His arms came around her to bring her closer, one large hand sliding from the small of her back to the swell of her bottom, down the back of her thigh and up again under the T-shirt. She sucked in her breath as his flesh met her naked flesh, as his warm, calloused hand spanned her buttocks.

  Her legs trembled.

  He nuzzled the underside of her breast, biting softly.

  Her eyes opened in alarm and delight. The fire inside her grew, licking between her legs.

  Yet a small, rational part of her mind floated apart like an observer in a corner of the room. She watched in the mirror as he widened his legs, drawing her in between them.

  His towel parted. She felt the brush of his body hair on her thighs, the nudge of his erection, hot satin over stone.

  She gasped as he leaned back, lying against the bed, taking her down with him. Her legs sprawled. Her hands scrambled for support. Motel bedspread, her mind observed. Not very sanitary. Maybe she should pull back the covers . . .

  He adjusted her firmly against him, cupping, stroking, his erection lodged solidly against her belly. Her brain shut off.

  He brought her head down for another kiss, his mouth lush and wide, rubbing, searching. She was open to him, wet and open, her knees on the towel, her thighs straddling his hot flanks, he was there, thick and inescapable. He’s very large, her mind pointed out worriedly, but her body didn’t care, her body wanted his, wanted all the things he was doing to her with his hands, with his mouth.

  Until he rolled with her, pressing her back into the mattress. She stiffened automatically, her brain returning to her body with a whoosh.

  She gritted her teeth, managing not to freak out at his weight heavy between her thighs. This is Iestyn, she reminded herself, focusing on his face. She wanted him, or she had until a moment ago. Just relax.

  But she couldn’t relax. She couldn’t breathe. She wasn’t in control of him or her own body, and that scared her more than anything.

  “I can’t do this,” she said tightly.

  He kissed her neck. “Sure we can.”

  “No, I can’t.” A trickle of panic traced down her spine.

  She shoved at his shoulder. “Let me up.”

  He rolled instantly to one side. She bolted upright, sitting on the side of the bed, panting and humiliated.

  “Sorry.” She couldn’t look at him. “I guess I overreacted again.”

  “It’s okay,” he said, although she knew it wasn’t. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  She snuck a look at him, lying propped on one elbow, his warm golden gaze fixed on her face. He was being nice.

  Somehow that made her feel even worse. “It’s not you,” she felt compelled to say. “It’s me.”

  He laughed. “Kiss of death, honey. Right up there with, I hope we can still be friends.”

  She flushed. Smiled. “You must think I’m being stupid.”

  “No.” His tone was thoughtful. Despite his laid-back pose, she got the impression he wasn’t really relaxed at all.

  Maybe the fact that he was still fully erect was a clue. “I think you’ve been hurt. Who hurt you, Lara?”

  She shook her head. “It is important for you to be open about sex,” Miriam’s voice replayed in her mind, but the doctor wasn’t the one faced with explaining to another hot, nice, sexy guy how damaged she was.

  “Axton?” Iestyn’s tone was grim.

  She couldn’t let him think that. “No. Simon saved me.”

  “When?”

  She tugged her towel from under his hip and wrapped it around her. “It doesn’t matter. A long time ago.”

  He didn’t say what he must be thinking. That if it didn’t matter, there was no way she would have stopped him just now. “How long ago?” When she didn’t answer, he rephrased the question. “How old were you when you were .

  . . hurt?”

  She stared at the ugly brown carpet between her naked feet, not wanting to see his express
ion change from warm sympathy to horror. To pity. “Nine.”

  He swore.

  She swallowed painfully. “Of course, that was only my physical age at incarnation. As an elemental, I’d lived many centuries before that.”

  “Bullshit. You were a little girl.”

  She cleared her throat. “Technically. As I said, I was newly Fallen, so—”

  “Was it a demon?”

  Demons hunted the Fallen, she had told him. “No. Just a sick, bad man.” That’s what she’d called him in her head during the two days of her captivity. The Bad Man.

  “Give me his name. I’ll kill him.”

  Okay, not pity. Fury. Typical male response. Useless to her, but warming all the same. “You’re too late,” she said. “He’s already dead.”

  Silence, while he processed this new information.

  “Axton?” he said again.

  She nodded. Simon had swept through the seedy apartment like the wind of God, a tornado of destruction.

  The nephilim did not kill except in self-defense. Simon administered the Rule, he did not break it. Only that one time.

  Only for her.

  “So the son of a bitch did one good thing,” Iestyn said.

  “That explains why . . .”

  She stiffened defensively. There was nothing improper between her and Simon. “Why what?”

  “Why you trust him,” Iestyn said simply, disarming her.

  She turned her head. He sprawled beside her, lanky and golden and still half-erect, his skin smooth satin over muscle.

  For one moment, she allowed herself to yearn. To hope.

  Maybe she hadn’t ruined everything. Maybe he could accept her past—accept her—and move on.

  “You know, I have had sex since then,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact, like she’d had half a dozen sexual partners instead of only one.

  “With the ponytail guy.”

  “Who?”

  “Blond guy in the car. Your boyfriend.”

  “Gideon? He’s not my boyfriend.”

  “So this other guy . . .”

  Jacob. “He’s perfect for you, ” her roommate Bria had claimed. “He’s steady. He’s in our cohort. And,” her friend finished triumphantly, saving his best qualification for last,

  “I haven’t slept with him yet. ”

  “Which makes him unique,” Lara had said dryly.

  She almost smiled, remembering. Jacob had been . . .

  Not perfect. But earnest and convenient and too wrapped up in his own reactions to worry much about Lara’s.

  “He’d be the one who convinced you sex was no big deal.”

  Heat crawled up her face. “Well, it wasn’t. He didn’t . . .

  And I couldn’t . . .”

  She’d wanted to feel whole. Jacob had wanted to get laid. Achieving their goals had proven more awkward than painful. After the first few times, they’d improved beyond cautious acceptance on her side and a fumbling rush on his, but the sex was never great enough to inspire either of them to keep trying.

  Jacob had been honest breaking up with her. “I like you, Lara,” he’d said, his brown eyes sincere. “As a friend. But . . .”

  “He said I had too much baggage,” she told Iestyn.

  “Fuck,” Iestyn said. The laughter that usually lurked at the back of his eyes and the corners of his mouth was gone.

  “I’m sorry.”

  She couldn’t tell if he was expressing sympathy over Jacob’s rejection or apologizing because he basically agreed with him.

  He got up— Don’t leave me, she thought—and flipped back the covers of the other bed.

  Regret stung her eyes. “Me, too.”

  Sorry she had wimped out earlier and missed her chance with him. Sorry . . . Not that she had told him, but that it so obviously made a difference.

  “Are you going to be all right?” he asked quietly.

  Lara sagged. Skies, she was tired. Down-to-the-bones exhausted and sick almost to death of being defined by something that had been done to her thirteen years ago.

  She would not be a victim. She didn’t want him to see her as that scared, damaged child in need of comfort.

  So she straightened her spine and lifted her chin. “I’m fine,” she said, because it was important he believed that.

  That she believe it.

  *

  Iestyn lay on his back in the ratty motel room, contemplating the stains on the ceiling tiles and listening to the soft sounds of Lara in the other bed. The creak of the mattress.

  The rustle of sheets. The catch of her breath.

  She had to be exhausted, but she was still sleepless, still restless, still making him crazy.

  “I can’t do this,” she’d said, a thread of panic in her voice.

  So they wouldn’t.

  But, God, he wished he could touch her.

  Not for sex. Okay, yeah, partly for sex. Tough to pretend he didn’t want sex with his hard-on tenting the covers.

  He’d never been big on cuddling. Foreplay, fine. Nonsexual contact, not so much. He had a feeling, dimmer than memory, deeper than instinct, that his ingrained dislike of casual touch was part of who he was. What he was. But he would have liked to comfort Lara. To hold her in his arms, rub her back, stroke her hair, and tell her how amazing she was.

  Except she didn’t want that.

  “I’m fine,” she’d said, with a tilt to her chin that meant, Hands off, asshole.

  Given time and opportunity, he could probably change her mind. But putting the moves on her now, when she’d asked him to stop, when she was alone and vulnerable . . .

  He couldn’t do it.

  She was only with him because she wanted to help.

  She’d stood up for him against Axton. Axton, who had saved her, who had done what Iestyn couldn’t do, destroyed the sick son of a bitch who’d hurt her. Yet Lara had turned her back on her hero, on her people, her family, because she thought it was the right thing to do. She believed in Iestyn even before he believed in himself.

  The least he could do was try not to screw her over.

  He glanced toward the other bed. She lay on her side, one arm tucked under her pillow, her knees drawn almost to her chest. The light creeping under the bathroom door outlined the angle of her shoulder, the curve of her hip. He studied her face. Dark, winged brows, long black lashes. Her mouth like a lily at night, cool, pale, closed. He imagined warming it with his, pictured her lips flushed and open, swollen and damp from his kisses. Recalled the mind-blowing softness of her breast in his hand, the delicate point of her nipple.

  Her taste.

  She shifted and sighed.

  He shifted, too, reaching down to adjust himself in the dark, remembering the way she’d gasped and arched when he suckled her.

  Her clear gray eyes opened, staring directly at him.

  “Am I keeping you up?”

  Busted.

  He raised his knee so she couldn’t see his erection standing like a mast against the sheets. Not that she meant her question the way it sounded. “I’m good. Go to sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  Did she have nightmares? Probably. The thought made his back teeth grind together. He unclenched his jaw, made his voice as gentle as possible. “You’ve had a stressful day.”

  “It’s not that.” She flipped onto her back, making the mattress squeak. Her breasts moved in interesting ways under the T-shirt. “My hair’s wet.”

  He forced his gaze back to her face. He didn’t know what to say. The Heart of Jersey wasn’t the kind of hotel that stocked hairdryers in the guest rooms.

  “And now my pillow’s wet, too.”

  The complaining edge to her voice made him grin. He didn’t dare hope she was as frustrated as he was, but at least she wasn’t lying there shattered, reliving her past.

  “You have two pillows,” he pointed out.

  She flounced back ont
o her side and fixed him with those big gray eyes. Hopeful. Expectant.

  Frustration and desire churned inside him. What did she want from him? Whatever it was, he would find a way to give it to her. But he needed a freaking clue. “You want one of mine?”

  She was silent so long he wondered if maybe she’d fallen asleep after all. Then, “All right.”

  He sat up, reaching behind his back for a pillow.

  But he never had a chance.

  Before he could toss it to her, she climbed out of bed, all smooth bare legs and bra-less breasts, and plucked the pillow from his hands.

  “Thanks,” she said and slid into bed beside him.

  Every muscle in Iestyn’s b o d y t i g h t en e d .

  “What are you doing?”

  Dickhead. Like it wasn’t obvious.

  Lara propped the pillow behind her and settled against the headboard, the bounce of her breasts momentarily robbing him of breath. “I thought if I slept with you, we could both get some rest.”

  Rest. Right.

  The T-shirt was damp where he’d had his mouth on her.

  He forced his gaze up to meet her eyes.

  “You want to sleep with me,” he said. Like he needed her to draw him a diagram when his brain was already playing the movie in glorious 3D color and surround sound.

  “Mm.” She tilted her head, gauging his reaction. Despite her casual tone, the pulse beneath her jaw beat like a caged bird. “That’s a euphemism.”

  “It’s a mistake,” he said harshly.

  She blinked. “Why?”

  “Because . . .” His mind blanked as his blood abandoned his head and went south. “I can’t give you what you need.”

  She glanced at his lap, still covered by the sheet. Raised her eyebrows. “Apparently you can.”

  He strangled a laugh. “I mean . . . I can’t be who you need.”

  Her brilliant gray eyes softened. “What if you’re what I want?”

  His mouth dried. His pulse pounded.

  “Damn it, I’m trying to do the right thing here,” he said.

  “The right thing for you? Or for me?”