She glanced at his lap, stil covered by the sheet. Raised her eyebrows. “Apparently you can.”
He strangled a laugh. “I mean. I can’t be who you need.”
Her bril iant 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?”
“For you. I’m probably screwing up — hel, I know I’m screwing up — but cut me some slack. I haven’t had a lot of practice thinking about other people.”
Her lips curved, but she didn’t look happy. “You know, I’m getting pretty tired of other people deciding what’s best for me.”
He sucked in his breath. That’s what she was running away from. Asshole Axton and his angel horde. He didn’t want to be like them, didn’t want control of her life or her choices.
He didn’t want the responsibility. But.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
This time her smile reached her beautiful eyes. “I think you underestimate yourself.”
She reached out, her fingertips tracing the shape of his lips, the sensitive skin at the corner of his eyes. The tenderness of her touch clogged his throat.
“So, do you want to. sleep with me?” she asked.
“Real y sleep.”
The hesitation in her voice nearly did him in. Hel, yes, he wanted to sleep with her. He wanted to peel her out of that 14 6
V i r g i n i a K a n t r a
T-shirt and get his hands on what was under it. He wanted her on him and him inside her for whatever was left of the night. For however long they were together.
He looked into her eyes, shining with trust, and knew he couldn’t do it. She might say sex wasn’t that big a deal, but women often said that. In his experience, most of them felt differently in the morning.
He wasn’t taking advantage of her. He owed her too much, liked her too much, for that.
“Sleep would be good,” he said.
She nodded and scooted down on her pil ow, making the mattress and everything under the T-shirt shift. He closed his eyes briefly. He must be out of his mind. He settled next to her, tucking her alongside him, her head under his chin, her arm across his chest, her smooth legs against his thigh.
Torture.
Her hair smel ed fresh like rain and clean like soap. It was also, he discovered quickly, stil damp.
Sleep was hopeless. He lay staring at the ceiling, trying not to disturb her, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily in and out. He could feel the faint vibration of their connection, the beat of her heart, the whisper of her breath.
In and out.
He dreamed again. Dreamed and remembered.
Three of them boarded the ship in the gray dawn light. Four, if you counted the dog. Iestyn, his arms ful of ninety pounds of wet, excited deerhound, definitely counted the dog. If not for the prince’s hound Madagh, they might al have Changed into seal form instead of leaving Sanctuary by boat.
Or maybe not. Iestyn boosted the shivering dog onto the swim platform at the back of the boat before hauling himself, dripping, from the cold sea.
How did you outswim the end of the world?
The dog’s claws scrabbled on the smooth deck. Roth set down the sea chest and turned to help.
At the ship’s rail, Kera stood, her gaze fixed on the rocky shore where the sea lord Conn stood with Griff, the castle warden, to see them off.
Kera’s face set in lines of mutinous distress. “I should stay.”
“The prince commanded us to leave,” Roth said.
Kera raised her chin. “I could help in Sanctuary’s defense.
I am Gifted.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.”
Iestyn ignored their squabble. The three of them had been raised together since before the age of Change. The magic of the island that kept their elders from aging prevented the young selkies from reaching maturity for a very long time.
Once there had been enough of them to fil a classroom.
But he and Roth and Kera were the youngest.
The last.
Seabirds clamored around the southern cliff face, disturbed by the fretting wind or the tension in the air. Smal waves slapped the rocks below the towers of Caer Subai.
Iestyn eyed them anxiously.
Miles away, outside the wards that protected the island, demons labored under the crust of earth to turn the sea itself against the children of the sea. When the ocean floor erupted, the quake would create a tidal wave, a roaring wal of displaced water that would crest and fal on Sanctuary.
Unless the sea lord stopped it. Somehow.
A white bird, its wings sharply angled as a kite, circled the mast like a portent.
Madagh caught sight of Conn on shore and whined, pressing against Iestyn’s thigh. Iestyn rubbed the dog’s bearded muzzle. He knew exactly how the dog felt.
Lucy might have stopped the destruction of Sanctuary.
In the brief time she had lived on the island, Lucy Hunter had channeled the flood of the wardens’ power and tapped a wel of feeling in the cold, proud sea lord as deep as it was unexpected.
But Lucy was gone now.
When the demons threatened, she had turned her back on the prince and her selkie heritage to protect her human family in Maine, half a world away.
No one dared speak of her desertion to the prince. But among themselves, Iestyn and his friends could talk of little else.
“Traitor,” Kera denounced her.
But in the weeks Lucy had been on Sanctuary, she had been Iestyn’s friend. She stood with him back to back against the demons. She had healed his wounded arm.
Iestyn tightened his fingers in the rough fur of the dog’s back, his throat constricting. He would have gone with her, if she had asked. He would have fol owed her if he dared.
The cold wind whipped through Iestyn’s clothes and tugged at the rigging. On shore, Conn’s face was set like stone, his eyes like ice.
“You are our hope and our future,” the prince had said that morning to the three young selkies before ordering them away.
Iestyn had wanted to argue. Lucy was the important one. He wished Prince Conn would go after her and find her before it was too late.
The earth rumbled. Iestyn’s heart pounded as he bent to secure the barking dog to the rail.
Unless it was already too late.
He woke suddenly, his heart drumming in his ears and in his chest. There was somewhere he had to go, something he had to do. “You are our hope and our future. ” “Who’s Lucy?”
Lara’s voice. Lara’s face hovering over him, revealed in the crack of light from the bathroom. Her side pressed warm and soft against him, breast, hip, thigh. His body reared awake.
He cleared his throat. “Who?”
Her gray eyes narrowed. “You were dreaming about a woman. Lucy Something.”
“Lucy Hunter.” Memory engulfed him like a wave. He couldn’t breathe. “Lara. ” He gripped her shoulders too hard, his fingers denting her smooth flesh. “What happened?”
She caught her ful lower lip in her teeth. “I’m not sure.
It’s this connection thing we’ve got going. Like I was in your dream, but watching it, you know? I could see you — you were younger in the dream — and I could sort of hear your thoughts, but I didn’t understand everything that was going on.”
Neither did he.
Seven frigging years. Gone. The realization was as sharp as a knife, the loss as new as yesterday.
And Sanctuary.
He shook his head to clear it. “What happened to Sanctuary?”