“Thank you so much,” Lara said.
Iestyn dug for his wallet to repay him.
The cable guy tucked the money into his front shirt pocket.
“Ferry’s pulling in,” he observed with a nod toward the approaching dock. Green metal towers and concrete pilings overshadowed a strip of parking lot. “You need any help? Like on the stairs?”
“I’m fine. This helps.” Iestyn raised the water bottle.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” The repairman picked up his bucket and, after another busy glance between the two of them, clomped down the stairs.
Vibrations rose from the deck through the soles of Lara’s feet as the ferry chugged and churned into the harbor. A broken line of weathered gray buildings climbed the hill overlooking the water. A big white house stood on the crest of a cliff. There were gulls everywhere.
Lara shivered, reminded of the crows.
Iestyn offered her the bottle.
She shook her head.
He drank. “You have every reason to ask,” he said, capping the bottle.
“But no right.”
He rubbed his jaw, looking out at the water, where strings of buoys bobbed against the blue. “You ditched your people, you left your home and your job, to get me out of there. To bring me here. That gives you the right to ask me any damn thing you want.”
“I guess I wondered where you see this going.”
Us going.
“That depends on what we find here.”
“That’s a nice, noncommittal answer.”
A trick of reflected light made his eyes appear to gleam.
“After three days together, you want commitment.”
Yes.
“Of course not.” She swallowed the lump in her throat.
He was male. And merfolk. What did she expect? “Just a little communication.” To start.
He nodded slowly. “You want things clear.”
She nodded, relieved.
“I get that. You’re an angel. Everything’s light or dark for you, black or white.”
“I’m not asking you for promises,” she began. “I don’t make promises, ” he’d told her thirty-six hours—a lifetime—ago.
He made a rough sound. “This isn’t about promises. It’s about guarantees.”
The ship jolted into dock.
“I don’t understand the difference.”
“Because in your world, if you do the right thing, you get rewarded. Follow the rules, and everything will be fine.
My world, the real world, isn’t like that. I can’t tell you everything’s going to be all right because I don’t know.”
Hurt bloomed in her chest. Swam in her eyes. But when she blinked, it wasn’t impatience she saw in his face. It wasn’t irritation that ripped that ragged edge in his voice. It was doubt.
Sympathy moved in her, for the boy he had been, for the man he had become, struggling to steer an honorable course without compass or bearings.
“I don’t need guarantees,” she said gently. “I’ll settle for good intentions.”
The first car rumbled off the ferry.
Iestyn smiled wryly and stood, carrying the plastic bags that held all their worldly possessions. “Paving the road to Hell?”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Babe, you’re living proof of that. We both are. We’ve both made what we thought were the right choices for the right reasons. You turn back the ship, or you tie yourself to the fucking mast. You try to save something, a dog, a kid, a sailor you found hanging in the rigging. You put yourself out there, take a stand. And you fail.” His voice rang with quiet intensity. “You Fall.”
Beneath the sunlit surface, his eyes were deep and bitter as the sea.
Her heart wrenched with pity. This was what he believed.
This was why he was drifting. Lost. Not because he was selkie, but because he had lost faith in himself and his choices. Even his loss of memory was another layer of defense between him and what he perceived as his failure.
“So we’re not perfect,” she said, preceding him to the stairs. “We don’t have perfect knowledge. Sometimes we make bad decisions. And maybe sometimes things happen as part of a larger plan, and we just can’t see it yet.”
“What happened to you as a child wasn’t part of any plan.”
Oddly, the fury pulsing in his voice made her own pain and anger easier to accept. But then, she’d had years of therapy that made it possible to say, “What happened to me as a child wasn’t my fault. Or God’s will. I don’t blame myself or Him for the actions of one sick, evil man.” She drew a steadying breath as they emerged into the sunlight of the lower deck. “But sooner or later, my choices led me to you. This may not be the reward I was looking for at the time I expected it. But I think I was always meant to find you somehow. To bring you back where you belong.”
*
“Lara.” Iestyn stopped, at a loss for words. Her confidence shook him. Her strength awed him. “I don’t have your faith,” he said quietly. “But I admire the hell out of you.”
Somehow she had taken her Fall from grace and the trauma of her childhood to forge herself into the woman who stood before him, brave, clear-eyed, and strong.
He didn’t deserve her.
“Whatever brought us together—choice or chance or God—I’m grateful.” He rested his hand at the small of her back to steer her across the ramp to the dock. “But I don’t know if I belong here. I don’t know where I belong.”
She looked back at him, her smile misty around the edges.
“That’s why we came, isn’t it? To find out.”
She made it sound so simple. His gut churned. He scanned beyond her to the ragged line of rooftops climbing above the parking strip. World’s End wasn’t Sanctuary. No seals played in the harbor, no castle stood upon the hill, no shimmer of magic hung like mist around the rocks.
But despite his words to Lara a moment ago, something tightened his chest and his throat. Longing. Anticipation.
A woman swung down from her landscaping truck—Cora’s Floras was painted on the side—to sign for a pallet of mulch being offloaded from the ferry. Iestyn caught a flash of blond braid beneath her cap and stiffened like Madagh spotting a hare.
Lara glanced over quickly. “Is that her? Lucy Hunter?”
He took a second, longer look. Sure, there was a resemblance, but . . . This woman’s face was too full, her eyes too green. “No.”
“I thought I recognized her,” Lara said. “From your dream.”
She was a Seeker, Iestyn remembered. “You didn’t pick up some kind of vibe?”
Regretfully, she shook her head. “Only with you. Usually I need physical contact to identify the presence of another elemental.”
His mind stumbled on that only with you before he grinned.
“That’s your plan? Walk around the island groping people?”
“I don’t have a plan,” Lara admitted ruefully. “I was sort of hoping that when we finally got here, it would be like the return of the prodigal son.”
He raised an eyebrow. “ ‘Father, I have sinned against Heaven and in thy sight’?”
Her laughter bubbled, surprising them both. “I was thinking more along the lines of killing the fatted calf.”
“Hungry, are you?”
Her cheeks turned pink. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
She was brushing him off. Just the way he’d brushed aside her concerns on the boat.
He hadn’t given a thought to where they would eat tonight.
Where they would sleep.
For years, he hadn’t bothered to plan ahead. Hadn’t needed to think about anyone but himself. The fact that he was now, that he wanted to now, was something else he’d have to think about. Later.
“I’ll take you out to eat as soon as we find a place to stay,” he promised.
She glanced around the empt
ying wharf. “Shouldn’t we stick around here? In case someone shows up with the welcome selkies banner?”
“Berth first. Search later.”
“It’s the middle of the season,” Lara said. “It might be hard to find a vacancy.”
He regarded the picture postcard view, the parked cars and storefronts staggering up the hill, the snapping flags and spilling window boxes. She had a point. He didn’t know much about vacation rentals. But he knew rich people.
Yacht people. There would be a room somewhere, for a price.
He nodded at the big white elephant overlooking the harbor. “So we’ll start at the top.”
*
The Island Inn was undergoing renovations, red-haired Kate Begley told them when she finally answered the bell at the front desk. She was a younger woman, wiry and energetic. Judging from the paint in her hair and under her nails, she was doing at least some of those renovations herself.
“I’d hoped to have more of the guest rooms open by now.
But we do have a king suite available on the third floor,” she said, regarding them over the top of her little black glasses.
“Private bath, great ocean view.”
“How much?” Iestyn asked.
Her gaze flickered to the plastic Walmart bags in his hand.
“The suite lists for three fifty-five a night. But I can let it go for three hundred.”
He winced inwardly, doing the mental calculations. Beside him Lara had the fine-boned, fragile appearance of an angel in a stained glass window, her skin pale and transparent, every shadow showing. After all he’d put her through, she deserved the best the inn could offer. The best he had to offer.
He still had most of his roll from his last job. He could swing at least a couple of nights.
“One fifty cash in advance,” Lara said.
They both regarded her with varying degrees of surprise and respect.
“We came in on the four o’clock ferry,” Lara said, suddenly looking a lot less unworldly. “It’s highly unlikely you’re going to see any more late drop-ins tonight. You can either leave the room empty or take our money.”
“Two hundred,” Kate Begley said. “That includes breakfast in the bar in the morning. Our dining room’s closed during renovations. But I can set you up with coffee, bagels, fruit, stuff like that.”
Lara looked at Iestyn.
“That’d be great,” he said. “What about dinner?”
“Antonia’s on Main Street is very good. A lot of the locals eat there.”
Iestyn peeled a couple big bills off his roll. “You’re not a local?”
Kate’s face set. “I am for now.”
It was an opening. He dived right through. “It must be hard moving into a place like this where everybody knows everybody else.”
“I don’t plan on staying.” She wiped her hands, fished a key from a cubby. “My parents bought this place ten years ago.
I’m just trying to turn enough of a profit to sell.”
Iestyn ran his tongue over his teeth. “So, I guess you don’t know Lucy Hunter.”
“Hunter . . . I know Caleb Hunter. The chief of police,”
Kate explained in response to Iestyn’s lifted brow. “And the chef at Antonia’s is a Hunter, too. His sister-in-law, I think.
Regina.”
Memories scuttled like crabs on the sea bottom, stirring him up.
Caleb Hunter.
Regina Hunter. “His sister-in-law, I think.”
Which meant . . . The connections pinched at Iestyn with razor-sharp claws. Which meant . . .
“Dylan’s wife.” He forced the words from his thick tongue.
Kate Begley shrugged, pushing two keys across the counter. “Maybe. I haven’t met her husband.”
Iestyn’s head pounded. He couldn’t breathe.
Lara slipped her hand into his arm. He looked down at her, abruptly recalled to the present.
“Thanks.” He pocketed the keys. “Antonia’s, you said?”
Kate’s glasses glinted as she nodded. “Order the swordfish. Or the lobster fra diavolo.”
The stair carpet was covered in plaster dust. An empty utility bucket sat out on the second floor landing. But their room was large and clean, with a thick white comforter on the bed and thin white sheers at the windows framing a spectacular view of the harbor.
As soon as the door closed behind them, Lara asked,
“What was that about?”
Iestyn crossed the window and stood looking out at the sea.
“It appears we have a lead.”
“The police chief. Caleb Hunter?”
“Yes.”
“He’s selkie?”
“No.” Iestyn jammed his hands in his pockets. “But his brother Dylan is.”
“How does that work?”
“Their father was human. Their mother was the sea witch Atargatis. Halfbloods are more often human than not. It is one of the reasons the merfolk are dying out.”
The sun was slipping in the sky, staining the water rose and gold.
“I thought the children of the sea were immortal,” she said.
He turned to face her. “As long as we stay in the sea. Or live protected by the magic of Sanctuary. But we pay for that immortality with a low birth rate.”
A pause while she digested that. “So Dylan Hunter is selkie.”
“A selkie warden, one of the sea lord’s elite.”
“You know him?”
“I did.”
He remembered the day Dylan’s mother brought him to the prince’s court on Sanctuary, a sneering, black-eyed boy with a chip on his shoulder and a shield around him even Griff’s patient teaching could not dent. Dylan had been younger than Iestyn then. Dylan’s determination to grow up, the time he spent away from the magic of Sanctuary, had quickly aged him beyond the others.
Still, it had been a shock, Iestyn recalled, when he learned the sullen youth had been made a warden on the human island of World’s End.
He could practically hear the click, snap, pop, as Lara’s busy mind made the connections. “So if Caleb is Dylan’s brother, then their sister is . . .”
“Lucy Hunter.”
Her smile broke like dawn. “But that’s wonderful!
You’re almost there. We’re almost done.”
“We’re not done.”
She nodded seriously. “Of course not. We still have to find him. Her. But . . .”
“We’re not done,” he repeated. His heart pumped, panicked for the first time by the end of a journey. “I’m not finished with you yet.”
When she stared at him, wide-eyed, he crossed the room to her and pulled her into his arms.
18
H e wa s d e s pe r at e f o r h e r .
Her taste. Her smell. The wide, soft curve of her lower lip.
The fine, shining core of her, like tempered steel.
He pressed his lips to her shoulder and felt her tremble, pressed a kiss to her throat and heard her sigh. The quiet exhalation stirred his soul like wind on the water, moving him to the depths.
“Lara.” He stopped, at a loss for words.
“I’m not asking you for promises,” she’d said.
But he wanted to make them.
“Ssh.” Her fingers winnowed his hair, brushed his jaw, her touch as light as air. “Kiss me.”
How could he think when she looked at him from under those dark winged brows, her big eyes shining with trust and need? How could he speak?
So he kissed her, hoping that would be enough, trying to tell her without words all the longing that bloomed in his heart, soft, tender kisses to her temple, her cheek, her mouth.
When her fingers found the edge of his shirt and the hot skin underneath, he stepped back and ripped it over his head.
Her eyes widened and then narrowed. She reached for the burn that still throbbed below the hollow of his throat.
; But he didn’t need her healing now. He needed her with him, in this room, in this moment, all of her with him.
Catching her hand, he pulled her to him, coaxing her shirt up, inch by inch.
Her skin had the thick, creamy texture of lilies. Her scent swam in his head. He pushed her jeans down, frowning at the faint shadows that marched along her hip. Bruises.
He’d bruised her with his hands, his fingertips.
Sinking to his knees, he kissed each careless mark and then the curve of her belly and then the silky dark thatch between her thighs. Her legs trembled. Her hips arched in silent invitation. He pushed her back to lie on the bed, licking into her, sipping from her skin, drinking her heady response. She moved with him and against him, against his mouth and hands, her body fluid and restless as water, until everything that was in him gathered like a flood, and he surged from the floor, rising over her, crawling to get to her, dying to be inside her.
He dug a condom from his discarded jeans— almost the last one, maybe the last time, the finality of it beat in his blood—and covered himself with shaking hands.
She lay back, watching him, as he nudged her thighs apart and found his place between them. Everything he was, everything inside him, he gave to her, pleasure flowing through him, tenderness brimming inside him, and it almost didn’t matter where they went from here, what they did, who they found. If this was love, he was fathoms deep and drowning.
When he sank into her, he was already home.
*
She wanted to take him inside her, hold him inside her, absorb him through her skin. Every kiss, every stroke, pulled her deeper into something sacred, something holy, a sacrament of flesh and love. She loved him.
But she would not force her words on him and risk his puzzled disbelief. He did not want her guarantees.
And so she gave him herself instead, her body, loving him with everything in her, everything she’d held inside, pouring herself into their union, feeling his pleasure rise and build and crest. Until the wave that took him swamped them both, carrying her away, leaving her heart stranded on an unfamiliar shore.
Forgotten Sea Page 20
