He stripped her pants and underwear away.
Beautiful. He took her with his eyes, letting his gaze roam where his hands had already gone. Beautiful and feminine and his.
“What are you . . . Oh.” Her voice trailed off as he crouched between her thighs. She tried to press her knees together, but his shoulders blocked the way. “You don’t have to . . .”
“Yes. I do. I want to eat you alive.” When her hips hitched, he shoved a pillow under her, cushioning her. She could not focus on pleasure with ropes chafing her skin. He wanted her to think only of this. Only of him.
He did not ask himself why. Reasons did not matter when she was spread wet and open in front of him. Leaning forward, he set his mouth on her most succulent flesh.
He lavished her with licks and nips, bites and kisses. She strained toward him and away, her fingers twisting in the webbing. Her response flooded them both, inflamed him like whiskey, warmed him like wine. Her smooth, firm legs tensed and stretched. Her toes flexed and curled against his knee, against his shoulder. She was helpless to stand or to stop him, at the mercy of his hands, his tongue, his teeth. He held her captive, his hard hands on her buttocks while he feasted. He was drunk on her, her scent, her cries, her soft, wet, luscious center.
Slowly, he thrust a finger inside her, then two, glorying in the slick, convulsive clench of her body. His blood pounded in his head, in his loins. His rod demanded release. Now, now, now. He fumbled with his clothing, desperate to take her.
Pressing her thighs wide, he braced his feet against the floor. He tipped the hammock, angling her just the way he wanted her. There. She arched. So hot. So wet. Taking himself in hand, he set himself to her, male to female, naked flesh to naked flesh. Now.
“Wait,” she choked out.
His lips pulled back from his teeth. She could not be serious.
She jackknifed in the hammock, her head nearly clipping his chin.
He grabbed for her before she tumbled them both. “Easy.”
She groped on the porch around his feet, nearly upending the hammock in her eagerness. As she fumbled with her discarded pants, her smooth hair brushed his groin. He sucked in his breath.
“There.” She righted herself, face flushed, eyes sparkling. Between two fingers, she gripped a small square foil packet. “Now.”
His mouth compressed in distaste. “A sheath.”
“Condom.” She cleared her throat. “I got it while we were upstairs.”
When she disappeared into her room, he realized. She wanted this, had planned for it. He could not get any harder, but the thought sent another flood of warmth through his veins. But . . .
“It is not necessary,” he said.
“Yes, it is.”
“I will not make you sick.”
The immortal children of the sea were not subject to the diseases of humankind.
“You could get me pregnant.”
Again. The unspoken word reverberated between them.
Under the circumstances, he did not think he could explain how unlikely that outcome was. Or how desirable. The finfolk population was declining. The begetting of children was an issue of practical and political survival.
Yet Elizabeth did not desire another baby, that was clear.
And at some point, her desires had begun to matter to him.
Her firm jaw set at his continued silence. “If we do this, we use protection.”
Morgan gritted his teeth, frustration pounding in his blood.
If?
His kind were legendary for their sexual allure. With the slightest exertion of magic, he could overwhelm her resistance, make her so wild for him she would let him do whatever he wanted to her without brake or barrier. But he would not violate her will in such a way. He respected her too much. He . . . liked her, he realized, with a vague feeling of discomfort. He wanted her not only willing but with him, in body and mind. Not any woman, but Elizabeth.
If that meant he must sheath himself, so be it.
“I suppose that is your usual practice,” he said stiffly.
She folded her arms across her naked breasts. “My usual practice?”
Had he said something to offend her?
“With your other partners,” he clarified.
Human partners. “I can have sex with whomever I want, whenever I want,” she had said.
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t have other partners.”
“Do you not?” he asked softly.
And why in the name of God and all the angels should he be concerned about whom she slept with or when? He was not bound by the silly strictures of human behavior. The children of the sea were free to follow the lusts and whims of the moment, their passions as powerful and changeable as the ocean which gave them being.
“That condom is almost four years old. I had to check the damn expiration date before I took it out of the box.”
Morgan felt his face go blank with shock. Four years. Her husband had been dead three. Did that mean . . . Surely that did not mean . . .
“There must have been others,” he said.
She did not answer.
Ah.
No others since her husband, then. And given the timing of her pregnancy and marriage, likely few before.
Only him.
The thought was humbling and strangely arousing. She was not simply hungry for sex, Morgan realized. For whatever reason, she wanted him. She had chosen him.
Which meant there was more involved here than a moment’s comfort or the easing of lust. The act took on weight, substance, significance.
Morgan felt a flicker of panic. For the first time, he doubted his ability to give her what she needed. He only knew he felt compelled to try.
She raised her chin another notch. “If you’ve changed your mind . . .”
“Do I look,” he demanded, “as though I have changed my mind?”
Her gaze fell to his ruddy cock, jutting proudly from between his thighs. “No,” she admitted.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, only half joking, “I am simply intimidated by your trust in me.”
She smiled wryly. “You don’t appear particularly intimidated either.”
Indeed, under her gaze, he was swelling, hardening further.
“Not on the outside,” he acknowledged. “But how lowering if you concluded, after so long a wait, that your patience was not adequately rewarded.”
With relief, he watched the light spring back into her eyes. “Maybe—after so long a wait—I won’t be very picky. Either way, it’s my choice.”
He really did like her, he thought. Even now, she took responsibility for her actions and reactions on her own shoulders. It made them equal in a way they had not been sixteen years ago.
“Shall we put it to the test, then?” he asked.
Wordlessly, she held up the condom.
He had never acquiesced to a partner’s demands or desires before. But Elizabeth was not like any other partner. For the first time, sex was not about taking what he wanted, but about giving what she needed. He could do this for her. He could give her one less thing to worry about tonight.
He took the foil packet from her hand.
Of course, being Elizabeth, she was not passive. As soon as he opened the packet, her hands were there. Her head bent gravely to her task, her smooth hair sliding forward. Her fingers stroked and encircled his aching shaft, pushing the sheath firmly to its base. When she was done, she cupped his stones gently in her hand, scraped her nails lightly over him. Exquisite sensation shot from his balls to his brain.
He clenched his fists in near agony. “I promised to make your wait worthwhile. I’ll have no chance at all if you do that.”
She shook back her hair and smiled up at him, her eyes gleaming in the dark. “Maybe I’m tired of waiting.”
She was tired of waiting, tired of thinking. She wanted to feel something besides responsible and alone.
Maybe Morgan wouldn’t give her what she needed in the long run. But he
was exactly what she wanted tonight.
She was no longer a naïve twenty-one-year-old dreaming of adventure, no longer a hopeful bride dreaming of forever. She was done with dreams.
Tonight, she would take what she could get: tenderness, trust, companionship, sex.
Her heart hammered. And Morgan could give them to her.
With her fingertips, she explored him, learning his textures. Sleek and then rough, cool and then hot, silky smooth and unyielding as stone. She rubbed her cheek against his stomach. She loved the way he smelled, musky and male.
Expelling a harsh breath, he caught her wrists and pulled her hands away from his body.
Startled, she looked up. She couldn’t see well. Only his body, smooth and strong and pale against the night, the gleam of his eyes, the glint of the medal on his chest.
It was Copenhagen all over again.
She pushed the thought away. No, it wasn’t. She knew what she was doing this time. She knew him.
“I want you.” His low voice resonated through her.
She quivered like a violin string in the dark. Deliberately, she smiled. “Then take me.”
He swooped. The sky swung and her world tilted as the hammock dipped and climbed like a skiff in a storm. His hands, his mouth, streaked everywhere, fast and hot and even a little rough. Pummeled by sensation, saturated with pleasure, she could do nothing but hold on and respond.
She heard herself cry out as the whirlpool dragged her under. Her body arched, her fingers tangled in the webbing. A quickening pulse beat in her blood.
Take me now.
She felt him at the entrance to her body, heat to her heat, hard to her soft. Her eyes slid closed.
“With me,” he demanded. “Elizabeth.”
His command recalled her from the depths. She opened her drowned eyes and saw him above her, the moonlight on his shoulders, his face a dark blur, her fantasy lover made flesh, pushing inside her, plunging inside her. Real. Here. Now.
The shock contracted her stomach, flung her to another peak. Her short nails gripped his sides as he worked her, as she met him, thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke. His feet braced on the deck, his hard hands bruising her hips, he pounded into her, strong and relentless as the sea. She was drenched, battered, swept away.
Until the long crest rolled through her like a gathering wave and took them both.
12
ZACK HACKED THROUGH THE SEAMS OF THE CARTON, exposing the soup cans inside. Almost through his first shift. Picking up the price gun, he shot numbers in a row: two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine.
Wiley’s Grocery didn’t have scanners in the checkout lines.
“No need for them,” George Wiley had explained earlier that evening as they were shifting cartons from the back room. “I know my store. This isn’t America, son.”
He meant the mainland.
I’m not your son, Zack thought.
A vision flashed into his brain of Morgan, tall and broad-shouldered, standing too close to his mother in the hall. His mom had looked strange, not like a mother at all, her cheeks too pink, her eyes too bright.
Zack’s chest tightened as if he’d been running. He stabbed the gun down another row of cans. Two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, and done.
Straightening, he slid the old cans to the front of the shelf and face out. Rotating stock, Wiley called it.
The work was physical. Mindless. Zack didn’t have to think, just follow instructions. He liked that, liked working alone. At the beginning of his shift, he’d had to help Mr. Wiley haul boxes from the afternoon’s delivery to the appropriate aisles. But now Wiley was arranging displays at the front of the store. He was okay, even if he was overweight and going bald and Stephanie’s dad besides.
Zack’s dad, his real dad, Ben, started losing his hair even before the chemo. You could see it in pictures, this dark, W-shaped hairline above a high forehead and warm brown eyes. The details of his father’s face were fading away, blurred by time, overlaid by images of his illness. Zack wasn’t sure anymore what he remembered and what he’d reconstructed from photographs.
A picture of his dad sat on his dresser, taken on a fishing trip to Holden Beach when Zack was ten years old. His dad had one arm around Zack’s shoulders, and they were both squinting at the camera and grinning. Zack’s hair was hidden by his ball cap, and his skin had tanned a golden brown. They looked related, like father and son.
But when Zack looked in the mirror this morning, it wasn’t Ben’s face he saw.
It was Morgan’s.
Hands shaking, he grabbed cans, slung them to the back.
“Last aisle,” Wiley said behind him.
Zack’s hand clenched around a can of chunky chicken soup, two-sixty-nine. He faced it out carefully before he turned. “Yes, sir.”
“You did good tonight. We’ll finish early.”
The praise made Zack uncomfortable. He hung his head, staring at his feet. Big feet, like his . . . like Morgan’s. “Yes, sir,” he said tonelessly.
Wiley chuckled. “Southern boy, aren’t you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Calling me sir. Makes me feel damn old.”
Zack didn’t know how to respond. He was old, as old as Zack’s mom, anyway. Too old for . . .
Another image of his mother standing with Morgan at the foot of the stairs seared his brain.
Too old for . . .
“Any questions before we call it a night?” Wiley asked.
“No, sir. Um, Mr. Wiley.”
Maybe his mother didn’t feel old either. The tightness returned to Zack’s chest. Maybe . . .
“I need to buy cat food,” he blurted. “Oh, and some litter. To take home.”
“You have a cat?”
“We do now,” Zack said grimly. Morgan’s cat. But they could take care of it without Morgan’s help.
Wiley rubbed his chin. “You can’t buy anything now. I already closed out the register. But you pick out what you need. You can settle up when you come in tomorrow.”
“Sure. Thanks. What time?”
“Be here at twelve. I post the schedule on Monday.”
“Twelve o’clock,” Zack said, committing it to memory. His heart knocked against his ribs. “Is Stephanie working tomorrow?”
Wiley shot him a sharp glance. “Everybody works weekends in the summer.”
Zack swallowed. “I just, um, wondered. Since she wasn’t here tonight.”
Oh, God, could he please shut his mouth?
“She stayed home,” Wiley said. “Some guy coming over, I think. You need a ride?”
Zack’s gut churned. She had some guy coming over.
Not him.
Disappointment nipped at him.
Wiley was watching him with astute blue eyes like his daughter’s, waiting for an answer.
“No,” Zack said. “I don’t need a ride.”
Not where he was going.
Liz was breathing. Barely.
She lay cocooned by the hammock, pinned by Morgan’s weight, dazed, sated, satisfied. Her legs were numb below the knee, her mind empty and at peace.
If she could have summoned the energy to smile, she would. For the first time in years, she hadn’t thought like a doctor or a mother. She hadn’t thought at all. She had let herself desire and be desired, let herself feel like a woman again. She was more than relieved. She felt smug. Triumphant.
Gradually her heart rate slowed. Her skin cooled. A chorus of discomforts and doubts crept back, pervasive, persistent as the tree frogs in the yard, and began to compete for her attention. A crick in her neck. A cramp in her thigh. A knot digging into her back. She was wet from sex and nearly naked, hot where Morgan covered her and cold everyplace else.
She ran her hand down his back, savoring the feel of smooth skin and solid muscle. She didn’t want to get up. Didn’t want to let him go. The realization trickled down her spine like ice dripping.
She was a grown woman, she reminded herself
. She could have sex—heart-stopping, mind-blowing, jungle-thumping sex in a hammock if she felt like it—without things falling apart. Without falling in love.
She could have Morgan.
She pressed her lips together, staring over his head into the dark. As long as she didn’t think too hard, say too much, feel too deeply.
Life had already dealt her the bitterest blow it could and she’d survived. Surely she could survive . . . she could enjoy an affair without romanticizing reality? Without expecting promises or guarantees, without neglecting her children or responsibilities.
Her children.
Her heart jolted with panic. Her mind clicked back into gear. “What time is it?”
Morgan’s lips moved against her neck. “What does it matter?”
It mattered. Her world hadn’t changed, even if for one magical moment the earth had rocked on its axis.
She pushed at his shoulder, dragged her arm from under him to peer at her wrist. The dial of her watch glowed in the dark—10:05.
Her head dropped back in relief. She had time to clean up, to compose herself, before Zack came home.
If she could move. Morgan’s solid weight still pressed her into the webbing.
She poked his upper arm. “You’re heavy.”
He trapped her arms and rolled with her, somehow avoiding overturning the hammock. A quick lurch, and she sprawled against his naked chest, straddled his naked thighs. Her breath caught.
“You are delicious.” His warm mouth captured one nipple. His big hands kneaded her butt.
She trembled in discomfort and delight, trapped between his hot body and cold reality. “I’m cold.”
Conflicted.
He nuzzled her other breast. “I can warm you.”
Yes.
No.
“That’s not . . .” His erection rose against her stomach, hot and hard. Oh. She sagged. “The point,” she finished weakly.
He ran his fingertip along her jawline, blew his hot breath in her ear.
For one moment, she let herself be tempted, let him drag her into the warm sea of desire. Her body yielded, softened, and flowed over his.
Mistake.
She may have temporarily lost control. That didn’t mean she’d lost her mind. Her perspective. Her heart.
Immortal Sea Page 14
