Immortal Sea (14 page)

Right into town? Or left to the beach?

He pulled the pillowcase from his pocket. The beach, he decided. The boy was young for sex and new to the island. He probably lacked an outlet beyond his own hand. So it would be the sea he aimed for.

More reason to find him and find him fast.

The finfolk charged with rebuilding Sanctuary sometimes had to be forcibly restrained to keep them on task and on land. Even an experienced elemental could slip permanently beneath the wave, could lose forever the will and finally the ability to take human form.

Zachary was not experienced. With an adolescent’s raging hormones and lack of control, with no training or understanding of his nature or his powers, he was doubly at risk.

Morgan gripped the pillowcase, casting for scent or sign of the boy’s presence. He had not found his only son to lose him again.

Zack was drowning. His armpits were drenched, he couldn’t breathe, and there was a roaring in his head like the ocean, tumbling him over and over, rocking him, driving him on. He gasped. Shifted.

“Zack.” Stephanie’s cool fingers wrapped his wrist. She tugged his hand from her naked breast. His fingers curled reflexively. She felt so good, like satin, like velvet, like nothing he’d ever felt before. She wriggled under him on the bench of the swing, making the world sway and his boner very, very happy. “Zack, we gotta stop.”

He couldn’t stop. He was going to explode. She liked it when he kissed her, so he tried kissing her again, warm, soft kisses, deep, drowning kisses, trying to get closer, trying to . . .

“Zack, I mean it.” She pushed at his chest, moved his hand again. With her elbow this time, sharp against the inside of his arm. The pain penetrated the rush in his head.

He swallowed hard and eased his weight off her. “I wasn’t trying . . .”

“Sure, you were,” she said easily. She sat up and wiggled her breasts into her bra. His brain blanked again. “. . . got to get in,” she was saying. “My mom’s expecting me. And I have work in the morning.”

He watched her tug her shirt down over her flat, pale belly. He hadn’t really thought she would do it with him in a swing in her parents’ backyard. He hadn’t thought at all. His body throbbed.

Dickhead.

He looked up, into her eyes. “Work,” he repeated.

“You know, that thing you do to get money?” Her smile was warmer and softer than her voice. He really liked her. “I’m saving up for college.”

“I’m getting a job,” he said.

“Yeah?” She pushed her red-black hair behind her ears, interest in her eyes. “Doing what?”

“I don’t know.” Something that had seemed like the worst idea in the world when his mother proposed it was suddenly acceptable. Desirable, even, because of Stephanie. “I have to find something.”

She stuck out her lower lip thoughtfully. The tiny silver ring winked in the moonlight. “My dad’s looking for somebody to stock shelves. I could talk to him for you.”

“You would do that?”

“Sure. Why not?” The swing swayed as she stood. “Maybe you could come by tomorrow.”

“To the store,” he said so there would be no misunderstanding.

“What, you thought I was inviting you back to the swing?”

He was silent.

“No reason you can’t do both.” She smiled at him over her shoulder as she turned and walked away.

Despite the erection straining at his zipper, he lurched to his feet. “Stephanie.”

She waggled her fingers. “See ya. Tomorrow.”

He watched her skip up the back stairs and into her house, his face hot and stiff as if he’d been crying, his body hot and stiff from what they’d done and all he hadn’t been allowed to do.

He couldn’t go home like this. He’d explode. Suffocate. His mother would be waiting with questions, always with questions, and he couldn’t answer them tonight any more than he ever could.

Stephanie.

Her breasts were so soft and surprisingly firm, the nipples a miracle under his hand.

He breathed through his mouth. Okay, that wasn’t helping. Think of something else. Do something else. He couldn’t stay here and jerk off in her swing. Suppose her parents came out? Or she did? He needed to move. Walk it off.

He pulled down the hem of his T-shirt and stumbled along the side of the house toward the street. A cool breeze washed his face. The sky pulsed with a billion stars. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, filling his lungs with sweet, clear, twilight air, willing his body to settle.

“So.” The man’s voice came out of the shadow of the trees, lazy and amused. “It was the sex after all.”

THE NIGHT WAS COOL WITH MIST AND MOONLIGHT, ripe with sex and frustration. Morgan surveyed the boy, his big hands restless at his sides, his oversized T-shirt hanging like a tent from his broad, bony shoulders, and felt a twinge of something warmer and deeper than humor. Sympathy, perhaps.

It had been a long time, centuries of time, but he remembered—didn’t he?—his first fumblings at sex. Fostered in a Viking household, he and his twin Morwenna had come quickly to adulthood. Even before Morgan was fetched away to Sanctuary, he had his first female, a human with curly pale hair and delightfully fast hands. He could not remember her name or, truth be told, her face. But he remembered the hot, sweaty anticipation, the primal, almost painful relief.

His son had found distraction, apparently, but no release.

“A swim would help,” Morgan observed.

Hectic color stormed the boy’s face. “Water’s too cold.”

“The colder the better, I’m thinking.”

The boy jerked his shoulder, neither yes or no, and started to walk along the road.

Morgan fell into step beside him.

Zachary glared. “What are you doing?”

“I told your mother I would bring you back.”

“I don’t have to go anywhere with you.”

“No,” Morgan agreed. He felt the boy’s start of surprise and pressed his advantage home. “But I’m not facing your mother without you, so you must decide how much of my company you will bear.”

“I don’t want to talk to her. Or you either.”

Morgan was half tempted to drag the boy to the water, dump him in, and be done with it.

But it was not enough to prove the boy was finfolk. He wanted him as an ally, a willing tool. Dylan was right. The situation here and on Sanctuary would be easier if there was some understanding between them. It would take time to win the boy’s trust.

“Your conversation is not so highly prized as you imagine,” Morgan said dryly.

“You don’t know my mother.”

Morgan lifted a brow.

“She’ll
ask
things,” Zachary said desperately. His voice cracked on the word.

“She does not need answers,” Morgan said. “Only reassurance. And perhaps . . . an apology.”

“You’re telling me to apologize.”

“You worried her.”
And me
, he thought. A new, disturbing notion. “The more you show yourself sensitive to her concerns, the less concerned she will be.”

“You mean, the more I tell her, the less she’ll ask,” Zachary said shrewdly.

Morgan smiled a shark’s smile in the dark. “Precisely.”

Liz read to Emily and tucked her in, both of them comforted by the familiar bedtime ritual. She missed the years when Zack was small and could be protected with a nightlight and a kiss, when the only monsters were imaginary and could be banished to the closet.

She padded downstairs to switch on the porch light, her bare feet silent on the wooden treads.

The porch was empty. The yard was dark. The incessant whir of crickets filled the night.

The words of the storybook wrapped her heart like barbed wire, leaving a dozen tiny, bleeding punctures.
“And Max the king of all wild things was lonely and wanted to be where someone loved him best of all.”

Closing her eyes, Liz leaned her forehead against the cool glass by the side of the door. “Zack, come back,” she whispered like a prayer. “Come home.”

Where was he? For that matter, where was Morgan? She hated being stuck in the house with no way to reach them and no way to fix this.

Zack still hadn’t answered her calls.

She took a deep breath and forced herself away from the door. Turning on another lamp, she settled into a deep chair and booted up her laptop. Work was a good antidote to worry. So she would work. Fifty-three-year-old Henry Tibbetts had come into the clinic after an unexpected fall on his boat. Listening to the lobsterman’s halting explanation, Liz suspected he might have had a seizure. She took a careful medical history and ordered him to the hospital on the mainland for an EEG. In the meantime . . . The clinic stocked phenobarbital, but surely there were newer drugs with fewer side effects? Frowning, she pulled up the research online.

She was making notes when she heard a scrape on the porch, a rattle at the door. Her head rose. Her heart constricted with hope.

“Zack?” She uncurled her legs, sliding the laptop to the floor.

The front door opened.

Zack.
Thank God. Relief crashed over her in a wave.

Her son loomed in the opening to the living room, shoulders hunched, watching her from under his thick, fair lashes. She jumped to her feet, barely registering Morgan coming in behind him.

Her son didn’t want her touching him anymore. She didn’t care. She grabbed him hard and hugged him tight. So tall, she thought, with a man’s big bones and a boy’s lean chest. When did he get so tall? His T-shirt smelled of young male sweat and grass.

He patted her awkwardly on the back with one arm. “Sorry, Mom.”

Foolish tears, angry, grateful tears, filled her eyes. “Where were you?”

Zack’s arm dropped.

She stepped back and saw him exchange a look with Morgan over her head. Unease brushed her spine like a cold hand in the dark.

He cleared his throat. “I went to Stephanie’s. Stephanie Wiley? Her family owns the grocery store. She thinks her dad can maybe give me a job.” Another quick glance at Morgan. “Stocking shelves and shit.”

The fist in her chest loosened. “Zack, that’s wonderful.”

“Yeah.” He shuffled his feet. “I should turn in. Got to be rested for my big day tomorrow.”

“What time do you need to be there? Do you have clean—”

“ ’ Night, Mom. Good night, um . . .”

Morgan’s gaze met Zack’s. Their eyes were the same, exactly the same, gleaming gold with thick, pale lashes. “Good night.”

Zack practically bounded up the stairs, moving with more energy than he’d exhibited in months.

Liz faced Morgan. “Who are you and what did you do to my son?”

The gleam spread to a smile. “Perhaps he is simply growing up.”

“You think?” Liz asked doubtfully.

“And perhaps it is the girl’s influence.”