Sea Lord

by Virginia Kantra

  He sprawled in the thronelike armchair on the other side of the bedroom hearth, watching her from beneath thick black lashes.

  Earlier, he had disappeared while the members of his household had bustled around her with hot water, towels, and tea. They addressed her as “lady” and “targair inghean,” but she did not know them. Kera appeared shaken, and Roth was subdued. None of her attendants comforted her as Conn might have done or teased her like Iestyn or answered her questions like Griff.

  She understood Conn’s need to closet himself with his wardens. Understood and resented it.

  Now that he was finally here, she felt like one more item on his To Do list.

  Outside the tower windows, the sky glowed pink and orange, bright as the beach roses back home.

  She had asked him for time.

  But there was no time. The past few days had slipped through her fingers like a rope of fat pearls, each one precious, perfect, glowing, whole. Now the string was cut, and she could only grab after what they had shared before it was lost.

  What they had shared . . .

  She was not his broodmare, whatever those wardens had said. She was . . . what? How did he see her now? What did he want from her?

  His hair was black and shiny from his bath. His face had fallen into its usual, inscrutable lines. Despite his stretched-out legs and half-closed eyes, she could feel tension emanating from him like the heat of the fire.

  “How old were you,” Conn asked quietly, “when you learned to fear the sea?”

  The dispassionate gentleness in his tone tore her apart. She hugged her elbows. “I don’t . . .”

  Remember. The lie died on her lips.

  Today she had faced down demons. Surely she could confront a few memories?

  She looked at Conn’s face, hard with kingship. She could at least try to be worthy of him and of her new title.

  “Eleven,” she said abruptly. “I was eleven.”

  “A difficult age.”

  She blinked, trying to picture the immortal lord of the sea as an eleven-year-old boy. “You remember?”

  A glint appeared in those silver eyes, so that for a moment he looked like her lover again. “We have—we had—children on Sanctuary,” he reminded her. “Many of them came to us then.”

  “So you know preteen girls.”

  He did not answer.

  “I took childhood development,” Lucy said. “I know adolescence sucks. But while everybody else was experimenting with nail polish and training bras and sneaking cigarettes in the woods, I was trying to cook dinner and make good grades so I could go to college like Caleb. And he was gone and my friends were changing and I hated it.”

  “You do not like change.”

  She twisted the sash of her robe. “Not really. I mean, as long as things stay the same, you know what to expect, right? You’re kind of in control. Even if you’re miserable.”

  “You did not want to Change.”

  “That’s what I just . . .” She dropped the ends of her sash, realization opening like a chasm in her chest. “Oh.”

  Oh.

  “We bring our young to Sanctuary so they will have someone to guide them through the Change,” Conn said. His eyes were deep and dark. She wished he would take her in his arms again. But he sounded like a psychiatrist rather than her lover. “You had no one to prepare you. No one to guide you through your woman’s changes or your first Change as a selkie. You were afraid.”

  Anger, unacknowledged, unexpressed for years, burned in her chest. “That wasn’t my fault.”

  “Of course not.”

  His dismissal only fueled the fire raging at her heart. “It was her fault. My mother’s. She could have stayed. She should have stayed with us. With me.”

  “She was selkie.”

  “She was selfish.” The accusation burst from her aching throat with the force of pent-up grief.

  “And you do not want to be like her.”

  “No.”

  “In any way.”

  “I . . .” Lucy closed her mouth. Opened it. “No.”

  “She would have come back for you,” Conn said, and his voice was so gentle she almost didn’t care if he lied. “If she had lived. She would have come back for you and Caleb both at the appropriate time.”

  “When you’re a kid, you don’t get the concept of ‘the appropriate time,’ ” Lucy said bleakly. “You just want your Mommy.”

  “It is different for us.”

  “Not that different. You miss your father.”

  Conn flinched as if she’d stuck him with a harpoon. “My father did not die. He went beneath the wave.”

  “And mine went out on his boat and got drunk. Gone is gone. There’s more than one way to be abandoned.”

  “Lucy . . .” Regret weighted his voice.

  She shook her head. Her eyes were dry. Gritty. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I’m all grown up now.”

  “It may be that your power focused on suppressing your Change,” Conn offered carefully. “And the exercise of that power, the discipline of your gift, day after day, year after year, has made you strong.”

  She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Well, that’s what you want, isn’t it?” she managed with only a trace of bitterness. “For me to be strong. For me to be the targair inghean.” She stumbled over the unfamiliar phrase: targuhr een-yen.

  His eyes darkened. “I want you to be yourself.”

  “Then you should have left me alone!”

  Her words reverberated between them. She would have snatched them back if she could.

  She stood there miserably. This was not her fault.

  Or his either, she admitted fairly. Sometimes being able to see both sides sucked.

  “I cannot,” he said grimly.

  She nodded, resigned. “Because of the prophecy.”

  His eyes blazed. “Because that was not you,” he snapped. “Cautious, fearful, unfulfilled, eking out some dutiful half-life. You are more than that. You deserve more than that.”

  “It wasn’t that bad,” she muttered.

  Conn flowed out of his chair with a ferocious grace that made her pulse jump. “It is intolerable. To deny your nature . . . To give up your freedom . . .” He broke off.

  She gaped at him, and she knew. She knew, and her heart cracked.

  “There is no choice,” he had told her. “For either of us.”

  She had not understood then. He was as isolated in his world as she was in hers. As bound by his duty. As trapped by his destiny.

  If she had been his broodmare, then he was, what? The king’s stud?

  She set her teeth. He had made her role as easy on her as he could.

  Now she could return the favor. She could release him from at least one of his responsibilities.

  “Intolerable for me?” she asked softly. “Or for you?”

  His face was hard as arctic ice. “I beg your pardon?”

  “You’re as stuck as I am. You said so yourself.” “I am more your prisoner than you are mine,” she remembered. “But at least you don’t have to have sex with me anymore.”

  She waited for him to protest, prayed for him to object.

  He did neither. Only watched her with narrowed eyes.

  She hugged her elbows, heartsick and determined in the face of his silence. “I’m the promised daughter, right? The one in the prophecy. So you don’t need to get me pregnant.”

  “Are you barring me from your bed?”

  His tone was still measured and even, but there was a turbulence in his storm gray eyes that raised the tiny hairs along her arms and made her hope.

  “Not if you want to be there,” she answered.

  “You called my name,” he said unexpectedly.

  She blinked.

  “Before,” he explained. “When you stood with Iestyn. You called, and I sensed you needed me.”

  “I did,” she whispered.

  I do.

  “There is a connection between us. I do
not know what to call it. I have never experienced such a bond before.” He prowled across the room, stopping in front of her, close enough to touch. “I only know when the demons attacked and the connection snapped, when I believed that you were taken or dead, the sun was blotted from my sky and the oceans ran dry.”

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, not even air.

  “And then I saw you, fair and valiant, pale with fear and shining with power.” He stood so close his breath stirred her hair. His deep look sizzled along her nerves like lightning. “You fill me. You restore my sun. You replenish my spirit. You know . . . Lucy, you know what I want.”

  Her heart shook. Did she?

  All her life, she had dreamed of being wanted for who she was. She had never believed in her own desirability, never felt herself loved.

  Never imagined herself the way Conn saw her.

  She moistened her dry lips. She had never initiated their lovemaking before either. “Maybe you could show me.”

  “Indeed.” A smile warmed his voice and lingered in his eyes.

  His long fingers traced her cheek, cupped her chin. She shivered in anticipation and desire, prepared for him to claim her. His mouth settled on hers gently, almost delicately, his lips warm and persuasive. The tenderness of his kiss stole the breath from her lungs and drew her heart from her chest.

  He raised his head. “This is not fair.”

  Her eyes opened. Her arms tightened around his neck. He couldn’t stop now. Could he?

  “What?”

  “You should have what you want, too,” he murmured against her lips.

  His teasing was new and sweet, but her body had moved beyond laughter. Her blood raced warm and urgent. She arched against him, feeling his desire hard against her stomach. “I’d say you’re about to give it to me.”

  “This rug, for instance,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. His hand on her hip caressed her lightly through the slippery silk. He was only touching her with one hand, but every nerve in her body was dancing and alive.

  She glanced down, distracted, at the rich blue patterned Oriental. “What?”

  He brushed his lips over hers. His body was hot and broad and close. “I had the rug delivered for you. To keep your feet warm against the stone. But it serves me as well.”

  “Um. Great.” Why was he still talking?

  “For example, when I do this,” he said, and knelt in front of her.

  He slid open her robe, breathed her in through her gown, nuzzled between her thighs. His breath seared her through the fabric. Her knees trembled as he drew up the hem.

  Long minutes later, her hands fisted in his hair, warm, damp silk beneath her fingers. She was panting, twisting, breathless, blind.

  “Oh, God,” she choked out.

  He licked into her again, making her moan, and then pressed a kiss low on her stomach.

  “Don’t stop,” she begged.

  “You haven’t told me if you like it.”

  “I love it.”

  “The rug.”

  She stared at him wildly.

  “It’s blue.” His gaze fixed briefly on the aquamarine at her belly before traveling up to her face, his expression pure male and smugly satisfied. “Your favorite color.”

  “I’m crazy about it,” she said, shaking with laughter and need. Crazy about him. “Would you fuck me, please?”

  His face was suddenly serious. “I want to make love to you.”

  Her breath went. Her heart stopped. “Yes. Now.”

  “On this rug,” he said.

  “Anywhere.”

  He pulled her down and loved her, rode her, until she cried out and came apart in his arms.

  That night the sun went down over the sea in banners of scarlet and gold.

  Conn rose on one elbow, watching Lucy’s profile in the pale light of morning. His other arm draped across her waist. His hand curved over her thigh. Even in sleep, her face never relaxed completely. Her long, mobile mouth was closed and composed. Faint lines scored the wide space between her brows.

  Only in sex, only with him, did she release her customary control.

  The thought swelled his morning cockstand, nestled against the sweet curves of her bottom. He bent his head to sniff her thick, fair hair rioting across their pillows. She smelled of sweat and sex. Musky scents, earthy and arousing.

  A wave of gratitude and lust washed over him.

  He nuzzled her neck. She murmured and hunched her shoulder, making the covers slip, exposing the strong, smooth curve of her arm, the upper slope of her breast. Her skin was so smooth, so soft and damp and lovely to him. His cock twitched impatiently. He had to have her again. He had to have her.

  Last night he had used her well and ridden her hard. It did not seem right to wake her.

  He grinned against her tickling hair. So he wouldn’t.

  He bent her forward, so he could see the delicate bumps of her spine, and lifted her leg over his thigh. He cupped her small ripe breasts, brushed her velvety firm nipples, explored the curve of her belly and the dangling jewel at her navel before stroking down, down, to where she was still warm, wet, and swollen from their play.

  He sucked in his breath. Perfect. She was perfect for him. She shivered and stirred as he slid a finger through her slick folds, swirling, sliding, making her wetter, hotter still. She moaned his name. He kissed her shoulder. She pushed back against him, eager, reaching. He nudged her forward, bending her over his arm. Her hand flexed, digging into his thigh. And then he slid home, sheathing himself in smooth, sleek heat. He felt her jolt as he thrust, heard her soft, panting breaths as he ground and rocked against her, hot, perfect, his.

  “Conn.”

  “I have you,” he assured her.

  He would never let her go.

  Her contractions took her, shook her, seized them both. He gripped her hips as she convulsed, absorbing her sweet shudders as she bit the pillow and came over and over again. He wrung her orgasm from her before he groaned and slammed himself all the way inside her, emptying himself inside her, hotly, deeply inside her.

  Slowly the room settled. His breathing returned.

  He stroked her hip, his heart expanding in his chest. “Ask me for something.”

  She yawned and smiled all at once. “You mean something else?” Her voice was slurred.

  He smiled fiercely over her head. “Anything you want.”

  She wriggled to face him, her hair catching under her. “Do you mean it?” She sounded almost awake now. Alert.

  “Yes,” he said certainly.

  She had given him everything. Her body. Her affection. Hope for his people. There was nothing he would not give her in return.

  She fixed those great green-and-gray eyes on him and said, “I want to go home.”

  Conn’s face wiped clean of expression, becoming dark and flat as a chalkboard.

  Lucy felt a chill that had nothing to do with the cold draft prying through the stones.

  “Not to stay,” she added hastily. “Just for a visit.”

  “I cannot let you go,” Conn said.

  Which sounded good, except he immediately released her and climbed out of bed. She made a grab for the covers as he stalked to the fireplace.

  Lucy eyed the smooth, strong lines of his back with frustration. “I want you to come with me. To meet my family.”

  He crouched to make up the fire. The soft gray morning light slid lovingly over the curve of his muscled haunches, the flex of his arm. “We have met,” he said in a damping voice. “I know your brother better than you do yourself.”

  “You know Dylan. Caleb is the one who raised me.”

  Yellow flames shot upward on the hearth. Conn stood and faced her, magnificently naked, superbly unselfconscious. “So?”

  She jerked her gaze from his penis to his face. Awareness of her reaction glinted in his eyes. It was another weapon in this quiet battle they waged, his experience, knowledge, and sensuality pitted against her will.

>   She raised her chin. “So, where I was brought up, when you love someone, you bring them home to your family.”

  Her heart banged against her ribs.

  “Sweetheart.” Something softened in Conn’s posture and in his eyes. He looked almost . . . shaken.

  Abandoning his post by the fire, he sat beside her on the bed, his weight depressing the thick, soft feather mattress. He took her hands, this selkie male who never touched except as a prelude to sex. His gaze, his hands, enveloped her. “You must see I cannot leave Sanctuary now. Even to please you.”

  She did see.

  “Because of Gau,” she said.

  Yet an unreasonable disappointment hollowed her chest. Like any girl in love, she wanted the people she loved together around her.

  I want Conn to say he loves me back. She swallowed hard against the realization.

  He was nodding, agreeing with her for once. Maybe because she was agreeing with him.

  Funny, how that thought didn’t make her feel any better.

  “I cannot leave my people leaderless,” he said.

  As his own father had done.

  She admired Conn’s devotion to his duty and his people. But the empty feeling in her chest did not go away.

  “I could go myself,” she suggested.

  “No.”

  She knew that look. Every woman with a brother knew that look. “Just to let them know I’m all right,” she said.

  “They have not even noticed you are gone. Stay,” he urged, his gaze warm, his hands steady on hers. “You will be safe here.”

  She wanted to believe him. But his assurances hadn’t kept her safe yesterday, and her presence had put both Madadh and Iestyn in danger.

  “What if the demons come back?”

  “They will not. They cannot. We seal the springs today.”

  Lucy frowned. Not over the loss of hot water, but because she couldn’t imagine the power it must take to close a rift in the earth’s crust. “You can do that?”

  “We must,” he said grimly, releasing her hands. “Gau’s trespass cannot go unanswered.”

  She watched him cross to the hip bath on the hearth. He rang a rag over his face, his armpits, his genitals, his gaze abstracted, his movements brisk and automatic.

  Like Caleb’s, before he deployed.

  In Conn’s mind, he was gone from her already. She recognized the signs.