Immortal Sea (4 page)

“I could satisfy you,” he whispered and bit her lip.

She moaned and shuddered against him, falling helplessly into his kiss, under his spell, against his body. He slid his palms down to cup her buttocks and ground slowly against her, stoking her hunger. Feeding it. Grabbing his shoulders, she kissed him back, tangling her fingers in his hair, sucking on his tongue.

His hands clamped on her hips before he pushed her gently away.

Her breath rasped like a drowning woman’s. “What?” she demanded, frustrated. Embarrassed. Bereft. “Too pushy? I’m just supposed to stand here and take it?”

“Take it, yes. But not standing.” He stripped off his coat and tossed it on the ground.

Her eyes widened. He wasn’t wearing any shirt. Just pants and some kind of necklace, a textured disk on a silver chain. He should have looked ridiculous. He did not. Above the black pants, against the dark trees, his body looked white and smooth and very strong. His shoulders were knotted, his chest heavy with muscle.

She gasped as he swept her off her feet, laying her on his open coat under the spangled sky.

He loomed over her, on his knees, between her legs. In moments, he had his pants undone, her top ruched up, and her jeans shoved down around her ankles. She blushed and squirmed. His cock reared up against his stomach. No shirt. No underwear either.

She reached out—to cover herself? to push him away?—and her hand brushed his stomach and then the broad, smooth head of his penis. It jerked at her touch. Morgan made a sound between his teeth and covered her hand with his, holding her palm against him. He felt wonderful, thick and hard. She wiggled closer, fluid and restless as water, running her free hand over his chest, his thighs. He caressed her stomach, making the muscles there contract, before he pushed her legs wide. Crouching over her, he rubbed himself slowly up and down her slit.

She arched toward him; twisted away. “Wait.”

“Why?” He thrust one long finger inside her, then two. “You are ready.”

Before she could say “condom,” he slammed inside.

She convulsed in shock.
Too much
, her mind cried. Too soon. Too . . . perfect.

She had not known that she had been so empty, that she could feel so full. She felt him everywhere, in her breasts, between her legs, and deep, deep inside. He didn’t do anything fancy or fumbling, none of the tricks she’d tried with her few boyfriends. She was glad. She didn’t need technique, only this, only him, his hot skin, his overwhelming size, the violent grace of his body in hers. He pinned her down and pulsed inside her, pounded inside her, slippery and strong, while the cold ground dug into her shoulders and the sky wheeled and changed colors behind his head. She cried and clawed and came, again and again.

He stiffened above her, his back rigid, his lips pulling back in a snarl. She couldn’t help him. She was stretched too full to do anything clever with her muscles. It didn’t seem to matter. With a growl, with a groan, he erupted inside her, pressing deep, setting her off again.

She trembled as he lowered his weight onto her, his body hard and slick with sweat, cradled between her thighs.

She closed her eyes, stunned. Numb. Her body quivered with aftershocks as her brain struggled to process what had just happened. What
could
happen as a result.

Oh, dear God.

Something brushed briefly across her forehead before he withdrew, his shaft dragging from her wet and swollen flesh. She concentrated on breathing, in and out. The light of dawn pressed against her eyelids. She heard a scrape as he rolled to his feet, a rustle as he adjusted his clothing.

She opened her eyes.

He stood half-naked in the blue shadow of the trees, his back to her. She regarded the strong indentation of his spine, the faint scratch marks on his shoulder blades, and wanted to weep.

He turned, his face calm, composed, polite, and offered her something. His hand? She blinked sudden moisture from her eyes. A handkerchief. An absurd bubble of laughter rose in her throat. No shirt or underwear, she thought, but he carried a fucking handkerchief.

She managed to sit up and take it, pleased to notice her hand was steady. Evidence of her awesome self-control, she thought, and winced.

“You are all right.” His voice was deep and without expression. She couldn’t tell if he was asking her or telling her.

“Fine, thanks.” She finished with the handkerchief and, after a brief internal debate, wadded it up and stuffed it in her pocket.

“We can leave now,” he said.

A hollow opened in the pit of her stomach. She stared at him blankly. His eyes weren’t blue at all, she noted inconsequentially, but tarnished gold.

“The gates unlock at six,” he explained. “The bridge will be open.”

“Oh. That’s . . .” She struggled to force words past the constriction in her throat. “Convenient.”

“You will wish to return to your place of lodging.” Another statement.

“I guess.” She got a grip. “Yes.”

“I will accompany you.”

She wanted to tell him she didn’t need his charity or his company. But that was stupid and unfair. He hadn’t promised her anything. Only his protection, which she’d been plenty grateful for. Face it, anything could happen to her wandering around the streets of a foreign city in the early morning hours.

She looked at his brutally handsome face, her insides aching and her heart sore.
Anything at all.

“Thank you,” she said.

They walked through the open gate without incident and across the bridge to a strip of park. The waterfront was waking up with chugging boats and rumbling busses and early morning joggers. Liz finger-combed her hair, uncomfortably aware of her bare shoulders and her companion’s naked chest, magnificently visible in his open leather coat. Oddly, though, no one seemed to notice. Maybe the Danes were inured to tourists stumbling home at sunrise.

Golden clouds streaked the sky. Sunlight sparkled on the blue waters of the harbor. The buildings were flat and bright as dollhouses or images on a postcard.

Liz raised her head, momentarily roused from her funk by the scene. “That’s the Little Mermaid.”

Morgan spared a glance for the rocky shore and the life-size statue gazing out to sea. “A facsimile.”

She stopped. This was still her trip of a lifetime. She might never get another chance to see the iconic statue, its bronze warmed to blush by the rising sun. “She looks sad.”

“She was a fool,” Morgan said.

“Excuse me?”

He looked down his brawler’s nose at her. “To sacrifice the sea.”

“Well, but she had a good reason, didn’t she? She fell in love. With a prince.”

“Another fool.”

She was not going to let him ruin her fairy tale. “The point is, she chose love.”

“She chose death.”

Liz looked at him wryly. “I take it you’re not a believer in the Disney princess version.”

He looked blank.

“You know, Ariel and the happily-ever-after ending?”

“Ah. No,” he said. “I am not a believer in happy endings. Not when there is such . . . difference between two people.”

Which pretty much said it all, didn’t it? They were too different.

So she wasn’t surprised when he dropped her off at the hotel without asking for her cell phone number. Or when he didn’t drop by the next day or the next to see how she was doing or invite her out for a beer and a hot dog. She asked the concierge. He didn’t even leave a message.

It was just another one-night stand, she told herself.

Just a summer romance.

Just the best sex of her life.

And like her vacation, when it was over, it was over.

Boy, was she wrong.

WORLD’S END, MAINE, PRESENT DAY

 

“YOU
SAID
WE COULD GO TO THE BEACH TODAY.” Seven-year-old Emily bounced on the sofa, her doll Molly clutched in her arms.

Dr. Elizabeth Ramsey Rodriguez glanced up, distracted, from unpacking the last of the moving cartons. The box had traveled with them for nine hundred miles, crammed into the back of the CRV with Zack’s Xbox, Emily’s American Girl doll, and Liz’s laptop—items too precious, too necessary to living, to trust to a stranger’s care.

“We will,” she promised. “Just as soon as I . . .”

“Finish,” Emily said for her and grinned.

Liz smiled back, love and guilt weighting her chest, tightening her throat. The whole point of this move was to spend more time with her children.

Today was Sunday, her first official day off. The clinic was closed today. Of course, as the island’s new and only doctor, she was still on call. In an emergency—fish hooks, boating accidents, strokes, earaches—she was all that stood between the residents of World’s End and a hasty trip to the hospital on the mainland.

But today was for Zack and Emily.

Liz glanced at the clock. Almost noon. At home in North Carolina, fifteen-year-old Zachary rarely emerged from his room before lunchtime. Yet ever since their arrival on World’s End, he’d roused himself from bed to watch Emily while Liz saw her morning patients. His behavior was hardly extraordinary on World’s End, where other boys his age got up at dawn to haul lobster traps.

But the change gave Liz hope. Maybe this move was just what her son needed.

“Don’t you want to wait for your brother?” she asked.

Emily fiddled with Molly’s braids, so different from her own halo of soft, dark curls. The doll’s pale, stiff complexion contrasted sharply against Emily’s warm, honey-colored skin. But they were dressed alike for the beach in bathing suits, flip-flops, and shorts. “Zack doesn’t like the beach.”

“Of course he does,” Liz said automatically and then stopped.

When he was a little boy, Zack had loved the water. From the time he could hold a pole until Ben’s illness four years ago, their annual fishing trip to the pier at Holden Beach had been the highlight of Zack’s summers. Now he wouldn’t swim, wouldn’t even walk barefoot on the beach, and wore big, black, laced-up combat boots all the time. He had spent the ferry ride from Rockland buried below deck, ears plugged and eyes glued to his iTouch. Liz didn’t know what her son liked anymore. What he wanted. What he was doing all those hours alone in his room.

“Why don’t you grab a sweatshirt,” she suggested. “We’ll take our walk now, and when Zack gets up, I’ll make us all some pancakes.”

“Cool.” Emily scrambled off the couch and bolted for the hall as if afraid her mother would change her mind. Her flip-flops slapped up the stairs.

Liz smiled and reached for the bottom of the box.

Ah.

Her hand froze.

Her heart clenched.

She recognized the swaddled lump at once by the weight, the feel of it in her hand. Her doves. Ben’s doves. She lifted the package carefully from the carton. With trembling fingers, she pulled at the bubble wrap to expose the heavy sculpture: two birds blown of lead crystal, joined at the base and their beaks, Ben’s gift to her on their first wedding anniversary, an unexpected and utterly romantic gesture from her normally prosaic husband. “
One heart,
” he had written on the card.

Sudden, hot tears flooded her eyes.

Bernardo Rodriguez had been dead three years. Long enough for his scent to fade from his pillows and their closet, long enough for her grief and rage to recede to a faint throbbing like an aching tooth.

She stroked a finger along the smooth crystal breast of a dove. They nestled together in their plastic wrapping, their perfection undimmed by time. Beautiful. Complete. Whole.

Emily clattered on the stairs. “Hey, Mom.”

Liz blinked. She didn’t want her daughter to catch her crying. Not now. Not here, where they were making a fresh start.

She swiped at her eyes, reaching blindly to set the doves on the mantle. The crystal slipped through her fingers.

Splinters shimmered on the cold stone hearth. The heavy base rolled on its side.

Oh, God. Oh, no.

“Mom?”

Liz fell to her knees on the carpet, her mouth opening in a silent cry. Not broken, please, not . . .

Upstairs, a door creaked. Footsteps shuffled in the hall.

Zack’s voice, rough with sleep and adolescence, drifted down. “What happened?”

Liz lifted the doves from the hearth, ignoring the glittering dust of tiny shards. The fall had knocked off a chunk of tail, a corner of the base. A crack ran through the crystal’s heart like a flaw in ice.

“Shit,” Emily said in a small, awed voice, and Liz couldn’t even find the words to correct her.

Her children stood in the door to the living room. Zack towered at his sister’s back, a black T-shirt hanging off his broad, bony shoulders, his dull black hair sticking up in every direction.