Face the Fire (5 page)

She had humbled him, Sam thought later as he
walked back to the cottage. The pretty blue-eyed blonde who’d been bitingly polite, then brutally frank, then cautiously understanding all in one evening had brought him to his knees.

It was rare for him to want to earn someone’s respect, but he now wanted badly to earn Nell Todd’s.

He walked the beach as he had walked it as a boy. Restlessly. And turned for home, as he had as a boy. Without any sense of pleasure.

How could he explain that while he had loved the house on the bluff, it had never been his place? He’d had no regrets when his father had sold it.

The cove, the cave, they had meant a great deal once. But the house itself had just been wood and glass. With so little warmth inside. Demands, yes. To be a Logan, to succeed, to excel.

Well, he’d learned to do all three, but he wondered now what it had cost him.

He thought again of the spirit in the Todd house. He’d always believed houses had spirits, and theirs was warm, affectionate. Marriage actually worked for some people, he decided. The commitment, the unity, and the promise—not just for convenience or status but for heart.

That, in his mind, was a rare, rare gift.

There’d been little affection in his house. Oh, no neglect, no abuse, no meanness. His parents had been partners, but never, in his memory, a couple. And their marriage was as coldly efficient as any merger.

He could still remember being baffled, fascinated, and vaguely embarrassed when he was a boy by the open displays of affection between Zack’s parents.

He thought of them now, traveling around in their house on wheels and reportedly having the time of their lives. His parents would be appalled at the idea.

How much, he wondered, did who we came from form us? Did Zack’s staggeringly functional childhood predispose him to create his own functional family?

The luck of the draw?

Or was it all, in the end, what we made of ourselves? Each choice leading to another choice.

He paused now, looking out and watching the swath of white light sweep over the water. Mia’s lighthouse, on Mia’s cliffs. How many times had he stood and studied that hopeful beam and thought of her?

Wanted her.

He couldn’t remember when it had started. There were times when he thought he’d been born wanting her. And it had been terrifying, that feeling that he’d been swamped by some tide that had begun forming before his existence.

How many nights had he ached for her? Even when he’d had her, even when he’d been inside her, he’d ached. Love, for him, had been a storm, full of boundless pleasure and abject terror.

For her, it had simply been.

Standing on the edge of the beach, he sent his thoughts winging over the black water, toward the beam of light. Toward the cliffs, the stone house. Toward her.

And the wall she’d built around what was hers rejected them, bounced them back at him.

“You have to let me in,” he murmured. “Sooner or later.”

But he left it alone, for now, and continued to walk toward the cottage. The solitude he’d welcomed on his first day pressed down on him now and became loneliness. He shook it off, and instead of going into the house, he moved into the woods.

Until Mia talked to him, he would learn what he needed to learn, see what he needed to see, by other means.

The dark was deep, with a scatter of stars and a thin sickle of moon. But there were other ways to see. He tuned himself to the night. He could hear the babble of a little stream, and knew that wildflowers were sleeping on its banks. There was the rustle of a small animal in the brush,
and the plaintive call of an owl. One would feed, the other would perish.

He smelled earth, and water, and knew there would be rain before morning.

And he felt power.

He moved through the dark, through the trees, as confidently as a man walks down Main Street on a sunny afternoon. Power pulsed along his skin, that awakening thrill of magic.

He saw, where there was only ground scattered with fallen leaves, where the circle had been cast.

The three were strong when linked, he thought. He’d felt that same trickle of energy on the beach and had known that a circle of power had been cast there. But this one had come first, and so he would look here first.

“It would be simpler if they’d just tell me,” he said aloud. “But probably not as satisfying. So.”

He lifted his hands with palms up, like cups ready to be filled.

“Show me. I call to the three, once and ever a part of me. I use as my mirror the night to bring what transpired to my sight. Show me how and why this circle was cast that I might begin to complete my task. Grant this vision unto me. As I will, so mote it be.”

The night thinned, and billowed like a blowing curtain. Parted. Fear, like a rabbit in a trap. Hate, sharp as ravaging teeth. And love, wrapped warm in courage.

He saw what Zack had told him, saw Nell racing through the woods, and her thoughts were clear to him. Fear and grief for Zack, a desperation not only to escape what pursued her but to save the man she loved.

Sam’s hands fisted as he saw Remington leap at her, angle the knife at her throat.

Emotions pounded at him. There was Mia, in a black
dress scattered with silver stars, and Ripley, holding a gun. Zack, bleeding, his own weapon pointed.

The night was alive with madness and terror.

The magic began to hum.

It pulsed from Nell, who glowed as she rejected her fears. It shimmered around Mia, whose eyes gleamed as silver as the stars she wore. And slowly, almost reluctantly, it sparked from Ripley when she lowered her gun and clasped Mia’s hand.

And then the circle burned like blue fire.

The punch of it caught Sam unprepared and pushed him a full two paces back before he regained himself. But he’d lost his hold on the vision, and it wavered, faded.

“The circle’s unbroken.” He lifted his face, watched clouds stream across the stars. “You have to let me in, Mia, or this was for nothing.”

Late into the night, without plan, without design,
he reached out to her in dreams. Floating back in time to when love was fresh and sweet, and everything.

She was seventeen and leggy, with hair a tumble of fire and eyes as warm as summer fog. Her beauty struck him, as always. A fist in the heart.

She laughed as she waded in the cove. She wore trim khaki shorts and a bright-blue top that left her arms and an inch of her midriff bare. He could smell her, over the scents of salt and sea, he could smell that heady, taunting fragrance that was Mia.

“Don’t you want to swim?” She laughed again as she splashed up water. “Sad-eyed Sam, what are you brooding about today?”

“I’m not brooding.”

He had been. His parents were freezing him out because
he’d chosen to work on-island that summer in the hotel rather than in New York. He’d been wondering if he was making a mistake, a terrible mistake, by being so desperate to stay on-island because of Mia.

Because the idea of being away from her month after month was both tantalizing and unthinkable.

Yet he had begun to think it. To wonder about it more and more every time he left the Three Sisters to go back to the mainland and college. He’d begun to consider testing himself by making some excuse not to come back to the island, back to her, some weekend during the semester.

Every time he left the mainland on the ferry, they pulled him back. The island and Mia. Now he was refusing to take the escape hatch that had been tailor-made for him. He needed to think it over again. Reconsider.

But when Mia had come along to his beach, he’d been too crowded with lust and longing to brood or to think about being anywhere but with her.

“If you’re not brooding, prove it.” She walked backward in the water so that it lapped at her calves, her knees, those long white thighs. “Come in and play.”

“Too old for games.”

“I’m not.” She slid into the water, skimmed through it like a mermaid. And when she surfaced, water raining from her hair, her shirt clinging seductively to her breasts, he thought he’d go mad. “But I forgot. You’re nearly nineteen. Too dignified to splash around in the water.”

She did a surface dive and streaked through the dark blue water of the cove. When he grabbed her ankle, she kicked and came up laughing.

Her laughter, as always, bewitched him. “I’ll give you dignity,” he said, and dunked her.

It was innocent. Sun and water, the bright beginning of summer, the slippery edge between childhood and the future.

It couldn’t stay innocent.

They splashed, warred, swam as sleekly as dolphins. Then came together as they always did, lips meeting first under the surface, then clinging when they burst through into air. Need rose with them, strong and urgent, so that she trembled as she wrapped herself around him. Her lips, warm and wet, parted for his with a trust and acceptance that shook him to the bone.

“Mia.” Knowing that he would die wanting her, he pressed his face into the wet ropes of her hair. “We have to stop. Let’s go for a walk.” Even as he spoke, his hands were moving over her. He couldn’t help himself.

“I dreamed last night,” she said softly. Cradled in his arms, she sighed. “Of you. It’s always of you. And when I woke, I knew it would be today.” She dipped her head back, and he all but fell into those great gray eyes. “I want to be with you, and no one else. I want to give myself to you, and no one else.”

His blood pounded for her. He tried to think of right and wrong, of tomorrow. But could only think of now. “You have to be sure.”

“Sam.” She traced kisses over his face. “I’ve always been sure.”

She slid away from him, but only to take his hand. It was she who led him out of the water and to the cave tucked into the bluff.

The cave was cool and dry, high enough at its heart for him to stand upright. He saw the blanket spread near the far wall, and the candles scattered over the floor. And looked at her.

“I told you I knew. This is our place.” Watching him, she reached for the tiny buttons running down the front of her shirt. And he saw her fingers tremble.

“You’re cold.”

“A little.”

He stepped to her. “And afraid.”

Her lips curved. “A little. But I won’t be either for long.”

“I’ll be careful with you.”

She let her hands fall to her sides so that he could finish unbuttoning her shirt. “I know. I love you, Sam.”

He lowered his lips to hers as he peeled the cotton away. “I love you.”

The little niggle of fear inside her vanished. “I know.”

He’d touched her before, and been touched. Glorious, frustrating caresses, too often hurried. Now as they undressed each other, the candles flickered into life. As they lowered to the blanket, a thin film seemed to coat the mouth of the cave, closing them in.

Their mouths met, sweet and hot. Even as her pleasure began to rise, she sensed him holding back. His fingers, sometimes unsteady, skimmed over her as if he feared she would vanish.

“I won’t leave you,” she murmured, then gasped when his mouth, suddenly urgent, found her breast.

She arched beneath him, hands stroking, body as fluid as the water that scented it. When he looked at her, her hair damp and tumbled on the blanket, her eyes clouded with what he brought her, he shuddered with power.

And made her fly. She cried out, a long, full-throated sound that rippled through him and made him feel invincible. When she opened for him, offering him her innocence, he trembled.

Through the rage of blood, the pound of need, he struggled to be gentle. Still, he saw the flicker of shock.

“Only for a minute.” Delirious, he ran kisses over her face. “I promise. Only for a minute.” Then he surrendered to the demands of his body and took her.

Her hands fisted on the blanket, and she bit back the
first cry. But almost as soon as the pain began, warmth replaced it.

“Oh.” Her breath shuddered out again, on a sigh. “Of course.” She turned her lips to the side of his neck. “Of course.”

And began to move under him. She rose and took him deeper, fell and drew him with her. When warmth simmered to heat, their bodies grew slick. Clinging, they took each other.

When she lay wrapped in his arms, half dreaming, the candlelight burned gold.

“This is where she found him.”

Sam traced his fingers over her shoulders. He couldn’t stop touching her. The lazy sexual haze clouded his mind so he forgot all he’d thought of on the beach. “Hmm?”

“The one who was Fire. The one who’s mine. This is where she found her silkie, in human form, and fell in love while he slept.”

“How do you know?”

She started to say she’d always known, but shook her head instead. “She took his pelt and hid it away so she could keep him. For love. It couldn’t be wrong when it was for love.”

Basking in the afterglow, Sam nuzzled her neck. He wanted to be here, with her. He wanted nothing, no one else. Never would. Never could. Now, the realization steadied rather than unnerved him.

“Nothing’s wrong when it’s for love.”

“But she couldn’t keep him,” Mia said quietly. “Years later, after they’d had children, after she’d lost her sisters, her circle, he found his pelt. He couldn’t stop what he did. It was his nature. Once he’d found his pelt, nothing, not even love, could make him stay. He left her, went into the sea, and forgot she existed. Forgot his home, and his children.”