Sea Lord (16 page)

took the ship?”

“The whelps needed a teacher. I do not apologize for doing my duty for my people.”

Her mind whirled. Her mouth was dry. “Is that why you . . . Why I . . . But Iestyn told me there aren’t

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any children anymore.”

“That is why,” Conn said.

Her heart slammed into her ribs. “I don’t understand.”

But she did. Oh, she did.

“I need children,” Conn confirmed. His gaze collided with hers. “I need you. Your children. Ours. Your

blood and my seed to save my people.”

9

“CHILDREN,”
LUCY REPEATED. SHE STARED AT him, shocked. Angry. Dismayed. He couldn’t

want . . . He couldn’t mean . . . “I haven’t even agreed to have sex with you.”

“Again.”

She flushed hotly. “
Ever.
”

His brows arced upward. “You cannot deny there is passion between us.”

Deny it? Even now, with her heart burning in a sheath of ice, she was aware of him. Attracted to him. Her

weakness where he was concerned infuriated and scared her.

“Passion’s not enough,” she said stubbornly. Desperately.

Conn watched her from his chair, as still as a cat at a mouse hole, his silver eyes molten in the flames of

the fire. “There is no shame in pleasure.”

She remembered the feel of his warm, sleek hair under her fingers, his mouth suckling her breasts, the

startling fullness of his invasion as he moved on her, as he plunged into her. Her body remembered and

wept for his.

No shame
. . .

“And no future,” she said.

Look at her parents.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I can give you a better life than the one you left. I would be faithful to you.

There would be no other partners for either of us as long as you live. You would be honored here.”

Emotions churned under the ice, threatening to break through her shell of composure. She could smell the

clean burning wood and the scent of her own arousal.

“Honored?” Her voice cracked.

“Of course. You are the daughter of Atargatis,” he said and shattered her heart.

“I don’t want to be honored.” She flung the words at him. “I want to be . . .”

“What?” His eyes were as sharp and brilliant as glass.

She took another deep breath, almost a sob. “All my life, I imagined being needed. Waited to be wanted.

Dreamed of being loved for myself, for who I am.”

She raised her gaze to his. “Not fucked because of who my mother was.”

Her deliberate crudity hit him like a slap. He was out of his chair and over her before she could draw

breath. Not touching. Never touching. But leaning close, caging her with his arms on the arms of her

chair, overwhelming her with his closeness, sucking away her will.

“I want you,” he said between his teeth. His hard face loomed over her, mesmerizing in its intensity.

“Never doubt it. I want to put myself in you as deep, as hard, as often as I can. I think about taking you

on the boat, on the beach, on the bed, against the wall. I want to feel you come apart around me as I fill

you with my seed.”

His images made her weak. Hot. She swallowed hard and lifted her chin. “You want sex.”

“Not just sex.” His tone was dark with threat or promise.

“Right. You want to knock me up.”

He drew back, his light, penetrating eyes searching her face. She forced herself to hold his gaze as the

fire ate all the oxygen between them. She could not breathe.

“I want to give you children,” he said. “Children who would love you. Need you, as I need you.”

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Her heart constricted. She squeezed her hands together in her lap to contain her desperate longing. He

could not give her what she wanted. She could not be what he needed. “Because of some story about

my mother.”

“Because my people are dying.” His tone was harsh. The stark look in his eyes pierced her heart. “You

promise life.”

He pushed up on the arms of her chair and strode to the window. The shape of his head and the lonely

set of his shoulders were framed in stone and outlined by the night. The uncompromising line of his back

made her want to weep.

She swallowed hard. “I thought you were immortal.”

“Yes. But the cumulative years away from Sanctuary weaken our human bodies. Fear of aging drives us

to the sea until we lose the will and finally the ability to Change. The oldest can no longer speak, act,

think as rational beings. My own father . . .” He broke off, staring out the darkened glass.

Her mind struggled to comprehend. “Your father?” she prompted softly.

Conn’s shoulders were rigid against the dark glass. “My father, Llyr, abdicated rather than rule any

longer from Sanctuary. He went beneath the wave, never to return. That’s what we call it, that’s what we

say, when one of our own is seduced by the sea. And every time it happens, our numbers diminish by

one more.”

His bleak tone opened a chasm in her chest. So they’d both been disappointed and abandoned by their

parents. That didn’t mean that she could help him. Or even that she should try.

“Then you’re, like, the king now.”

His back appeared to stiffen even more. “ ‘Like’ the king?” he repeated. “Yes.”

“So there must be something you can do. Something else.”
Besides get me pregnant
, she thought.

“We could do more once,” he said, still without turning. “In the time before my father’s time, when our

blood was thicker and our gifts were stronger, before the sea sickened and our people declined. This is

the fading of our season. We do not have such power anymore.” His voice was bitter. “I do not have

such power.”

Which didn’t stop him, apparently, from taking responsibility. She wanted to resent him for what he was

prepared to put her through. But she admired him, too.

“Can’t you . . . You could have other children,” she said.

“Few, too few, conceive. Our numbers dwindle as our magic ebbs. No children have been born of selkie

parents in a hundred years.” He turned, his face hard-edged as winter ice. “I gathered the human

fosterlings, the children born of human mothers or raised by human fathers, and brought them here. There

are not enough to ensure our survival. Not nearly enough. Your brother was the last.”

Dylan, the brother she barely knew, the selkie brother who had only recently returned to World’s End.

He had moved back into the room he once shared with Caleb. Although now that he was engaged to

Regina, he spent most of his time with his new family.

His
family
.

Lucy blinked. “Dylan is having a child.”

“Indeed.”

“So why don’t you talk to him? Why don’t you ask him to . . .”

Oh.

Her brain stumbled. Her gut churned. She stared at Conn, remembering. “You did,” she said slowly.

“That night at the house. You came to talk to Dylan.”

His eyes were wary now and cool. “I offered them a chance to raise their child on Sanctuary.”

She pressed her hands to her stomach. “You offered them more than a chance. You gave them a

choice.”

“Lucy—”

“Which is more than you gave me.”

Conn clasped his hands behind his back. “Your brother knew what he risked and what he rejected. You

do not.”

“I heard you talking on the stairs.” She sorted through the jumble of memories and emotions, picking her

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words. “You said I carried the bloodline. My mother’s bloodline. You said I had the right to choose.”

“They should have told you.”

“Well, they didn’t.” Her lips trembled and then firmed. Her family’s failure to include her, to trust her, still

hurt. “And neither did you.”

And that hurt even more. It scared her, that he had the power to hurt her emotionally.

“I’m telling you now,” he said evenly.

“Telling me.” She stood on shaky legs. “Not asking me. What happened to
my
right to choose? I’m

entitled to say no.”

“You said yes.” His voice was clipped and precise. “In the garden.”

His hand gripping her jaw, his face dark and intent above her, haloed by the blue, blue sky.

“Come with me,” he commanded. “Come.”

She shuddered a little in longing and reaction. “I don’t remember saying anything.”

“Your actions were assent enough.”

Her cheeks burned. “I agreed to have sex with you. Not have your babies.”

His jaw bunched. “Humans do conceive after sex. Or did that not occur to you when you were under

me?”

He might as well have punched her in the stomach. All her breath went. Her knees wobbled. She hadn’t

even considered the possibility she might be pregnant.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

“I got carried away,” she mumbled. “I won’t again.”

He flowed across the room to her in two quick strides. “You will.”

She threw up her hands, panicked. If he touched her, she was lost. “I can’t. You can’t make me.”

He stopped dead. Their eyes locked.

Her heart hammered under her breastbone. He could, she realized. Who would stop him? Who would

even blame him?

“
My people are dying,
” he had said with a look. With
such
a look. He wrenched her heart.

Oh, God. She could feel herself slipping, feel her resolve eroding like sand. What should she do?

They faced each other across a foot of bare floor. Tension hummed between them. He was so close, so

big and male. If he reached for her, would she scream? Fight him?

Or would she let him do anything he wanted?

Everything she wanted.

“I will not force you,” he said coldly.

Relief rushed through her. Of course it was relief. That crash of feeling couldn’t possibly be anything else.

Let-down. Disappointment.

She sucked in her breath, aware of the rise and fall of her breasts under the padded silk. “Okay,” she

said cautiously, waiting for the “but.” She was pretty sure there was a “but.”

“Neither can I let you go. You belong here. In time you will come to accept that.”

The tension spilled as anger. “I’m not some homesick kid at summer camp. I won’t wake up one

morning and suddenly decide to get with the program.”

“Nevertheless, you will stay.” His austere face looked hard and worn, like a stone carving of a medieval

king or a saint. “You will sleep here tonight.”

She twisted her sash, holding on to her self-control. She felt restless, itchy, disagreeable.

Dissatisfied
.

“This is your room,” she said.

“Yes. You are safe here.”

“Really.” She hardly recognized that hard, provoking voice as her own. An itch built in her blood and

crackled under her skin. “Who’s going to protect me from you?”

His gaze moved over her face. “Is it me you must defend against?” he murmured. “Or yourself?”

Her hand flew to strike him. He gripped her wrist, letting her feel his strength. Held her, while her pulse

beat a frantic tattoo in her throat and the air throbbed thick between them. His eyes darkened. His grip

shifted.

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She felt the beat of his blood through his fingers on her wrist, pounding through her, overtaking the

rhythm of her heart. Her pulse slowed to match his. His heart drove hers, one pulse, one beat. He pulled

her close, closer, until his face was an inch from hers. She was surrounded by him, his scent, his heat.

Her lungs clogged. His breath skated over her lips. She parted them in anticipation, almost tasting the

wine of his kiss.

And still he didn’t close the gap between them. His mouth hovered over hers, daring her participation,

taunting her control.

Frustration vibrated in her throat. She lurched on tiptoe to meet his mouth. Her teeth scraped his lower

lip. Her body registered the jolt of his before he plunged into the kiss with her, taking her, tasting her, in

soft, hungry bites. Her muscles tensed at the shock of heat and then the surge of delight like slipping into

the bath before everything went fluid and warm. Response seeped through her blood and rose in a flood

to her brain.
More, yes, now, again . . .

She suckled his tongue. She wanted to eat him alive. All her life she’d been starving for him, for this. He

slid his hand under her hair, holding her head still while his mouth plundered hers and her heart threatened