Ocean's Touch (12 page)

But Alexander had to acknowledge that seeing Meredith tonight had tipped something for him. Suddenly, he knew how much he wanted her, always had wanted her. He’d avoided it for as long as he possibly could, in what he hoped had been time for Teddy’s ghostly hold on Meredith to weaken. Like any skilled hunter, he knew to wait till his prey was ready. She’d been entirely closed off before—trapped in her world of guilt, misery, and obeisance to Teddy’s unreasonable deathbed demands. Alex had recognized her intractability and had waited.

But the woman in front of him now—the one who’d introduced herself as “Merry” and wore a dress that flowed along her body like seawater—was different. Something tiny but important had changed in her demeanor. It was as if she’d unbuttoned just a single, telling button.

And Alex fully intended to undo the rest of those buttons sometime soon.

Dylan watched Meredith greet the handsome, red-haired man with the long, aquiline nose and the wide, sensual mouth. The selkie could sense she was still nervous, but that anticipation he’d felt coming off her earlier had peaked when she’d seen the man. The anticipation had then quickly given way to waves of desire so profound that the selkie was surprised they weren’t visible, even to the humans.

Dylan closed his eyes, tasting deeper of Meredith’s feelings.
Desire
, he thought, as he’d known.
But also respect. Admiration. Genuine…affection?

She could love this man very easily,
Dylan realized.
If she doesn’t already.

But before Dylan let himself get too carried away, he shut his eyes and sampled the man, tasting his emotions for Meredith.

Lust to equal hers. Much affection. Huge respect. He…cherishes her.

He went deeper into the man’s emotions.

Loneliness. He has many companions and has enjoyed them. But now he wants more. Something he can call his own…

Dylan opened his eyes, giving the redheaded stranger a hard look as the selkie checked and rechecked the man’s feelings for Meredith. Dylan didn’t want to make a mistake before he took action.

Only after his third scan came up trumps did Dylan finally allow himself to react to the fact that the man wanted Meredith as much as she wanted the man.

Dylan grinned hugely, his ancient brain coming up with its own strategies and plots. He watched, eagle-eyed, as the handsome stranger looked around as if realizing he’d been ignoring his own party. He made his excuses to Meredith and walked to the top of his foyer stairs, near the massive double doors.

Dylan returned to Meredith. She greeted him a little breathlessly, blushing. He could feel her embarrassment, and knew she felt guilty for wanting Alex when she was with him. It was a very human response, one that Dylan thought sweetly, touchingly mortal.

He took her hand as the man introduced himself as Alexander Ladislaw, welcomed his guests for coming, and then threw open the doors behind him before leading his guests into his gallery space.

Meredith looked up at Dylan with expectant eyes, the faintest hint of a guilty blush still lurking on her cheeks.

If she’d known what Dylan was really thinking of her red-haired friend, Meredith would be blushing for an entirely different reason.

“Beautiful,” Meredith breathed, her eyes large as she took in the huge canvases sprawled around the small room.

This wing of Alex’s house had been built especially for his gallery showings. As in an art museum, there were many rambling, small rooms, each containing paintings that were linked thematically. Unlike most art museums, however, these rooms weren’t stark and white, but lushly, decadently decorated. Couches, divans, and chaise lounges were tucked into corners or sprawled in the middle of the little rooms. Cushions were scattered everywhere. Lavish flocked wallpaper in rich jewel tones covered the walls behind the canvases, and thick rugs covered the gothic stone flooring.

Most of the lighting was done so it set off the paintings, leaving the rest of the room dripping in shadow, with candles peppered about to add ambience and the rich scent of beeswax. Rooms led off rooms, which led off into small nooks, which led off into more rooms and more nooks. All showcasing Alex’s remarkably sensual art.

Both Dylan and Meredith felt overwhelmed, if for different reasons.

Meredith couldn’t get enough of Alex’s art, and Dylan couldn’t get enough of Meredith’s emotional response to the paintings. He was drinking in her feelings like a wine connoisseur sampling the rarest vintage.

Everywhere Meredith looked, sinuous figures wove around each other. In the most contemporary of painted styles—one which almost looked digital in its precision—Alex had created a world that was part-mythological, part-human, and part-machine. Influenced by manga and other Asian art forms, liquid-eyed women, with the barest hint of horns or wings or hooves, offered succor to men built partly of machines. Forests twined over canvases replete with creatures known to both mythology and science. Children with robotic joints fed unicorns on one side of the room, as dragons burned down well-known corporate fast-food restaurants on the other.

Dylan followed Meredith. She had a loose grip on one of his fingers, like a child might, as she wandered from room to room, making various noises of appreciation. Meanwhile, the feelings coming from her washed over Dylan—if she’d wanted Alex before seeing his art, now she lusted over the artist as well as the man.

Meredith was so riveted, in fact, that she’d failed to notice that the other guests were as affected as she was by Alex’s sensual paintings.

It started slowly—after about an hour of trailing behind Meredith as she walked very, very slowly from room to room, Dylan noticed a couple kissing. Then he saw two women embracing on a divan in a dark corner of the same room. Two men walking behind him and Meredith stopped to watch, but the women only stretched themselves out on the divan, deepening their kiss sensually.

“Oh,” Meredith gasped, tugging on his finger as she stopped in front of the painting of a buxom mermaid, sitting on the lap of a man in an old-fashioned diving suit—bulbous glass helmet and all.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked, leaning closer to peer into the mermaid’s transfixed, flushed features. The sea nymph was very happy to be sitting on her diver’s lap, it seemed.

“Yes,” Dylan answered, loving the echoing flush in Meredith’s cheeks. He ran his hand from the middle of her back over her buttocks, caressing each cheek in turn. Meredith shot up straight, pulling away from him slightly.

“Dylan, there are people,” she said, peering about. And then flames really crept up her cheeks as she noticed exactly what those other people were doing.

On the chaise lounge in the corner of the room, three figures were draped. They were mostly in shadow, but Dylan and Meredith could hear the susurrating sound of clothes being removed, as well as the soft, wet sounds of kissing. Leaning against another wall stood a woman, one hand inside the slit of her dress, clearly touching herself, while a man in a tuxedo loomed in front of her, transfixed by the subtle movements of her hand inside her dress. The woman watched the man watching her, her lips parted as her limbs trembled.

“Oh,” Meredith repeated, as breathlessly as before.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they,” Dylan said, letting his eyes wander appreciatively over both sets of people.

“Um,” Meredith said, clearly shocked. Dylan could tell she didn’t know where to look—her eyes darted from the chaise lounge, to the painting, to the couple against the wall, to another painting.

Before she could flee, Dylan took Meredith’s hand, leading her farther into the maze of rooms in front of them. In each room, they were greeted with more beautiful art and equally provocative flesh. Meredith could feel her body grow hot—both in embarrassment and arousal. Her first reaction had been to run, to get as far away as possible from all the writhing bodies around her. But as Dylan led her through the rooms, openly appreciating all the sensual acts being performed in public, Meredith admitted that she felt more than aversion—she felt desire.

Passing through one room, she saw a woman kneeling before a man, his hard cock pumping into her mouth as his hands held tight to fistfuls of her hair. In other room, two men sixty-nined as two women watched, openly masturbating without shame.

Where is Alex?
she wondered, much to her surprise.
Who is he with right now?

Curiously, the thought made her as excited as it did jealous. She wondered what Alex looked like naked…what sort of woman he went for…what he did with, and to, the women he bedded…

From what felt like a great distance, Meredith heard Dylan chuckle. She came back to herself to realize that they’d walked into a very small tower nook with stone walls and lovely stained-glass windows. A rich tapestry-like covering was hung over the arched doorway, fastened out of the way by an elegant fringed tie-back. For furniture, there was a long, cushioned bench, over which hung another of Alex’s richly colored paintings. The only light came from a gentle spotlight on the painting, and candles lit in wall sconces.

The painting itself was of a long-limbed woman with pale skin, dark hair, and dark eyes. But what had made Dylan chuckle was that draped around the woman in the painting was the skin of a seal. Her face peeked out from underneath the seal’s sweet face, which she wore like a hood.

Her transformation was half complete—her lower half was the plump, flippered body of a seal, while her upper half was all woman. She floated in midocean, but behind her, in the distance, loomed another old-fashioned diver, only this one carried a spear.

Meredith studied the painting closely, her heart pounding.

Did Alex know about Dylan? Do they know each other?
She wondered.

“Not bad for a human,” Dylan said into her ear as he reached down to put his arms around her from behind.

“What?” Meredith asked somewhat sharply to her own ears.

“He did a good job getting us right, for a human,” Dylan explained.

“So, you don’t think he knows about your kind?” Meredith asked, thinking carefully.

“I doubt it,” Dylan said. “We are rare and secretive.” Then his warm mouth found her ear as he kissed and nibbled her sensitive lobe. “In fact, we only come out of the sea for beautiful women who need a break from their lives.”

Meredith’s brain was working overtime. She was relieved to hear that Dylan and Alex weren’t somehow in cahoots. But she’d also noticed his choice of language.

“Is that what this is?” she asked, turning around in his arms. “A break?”

Her voice was carefully neutral, and he couldn’t read her emotions. She was either very conflicted or suddenly very guarded.

“Meredith,” he said hesitantly. “You know what I am…”

They stood holding each other, feeling their hearts thump against the other’s chests, as they stared in each other’s eyes.

“You’re a selkie,” Meredith said. “A bridegroom of the sea.” And with those words the warm spill of her emotions came tumbling over him. A hint of regret, yes, for a relationship that was good but could never be. But mostly her acceptance and understanding of his nature and of his commitments. He lowered his forehead to rest on hers, their mouths only inches from each other as their breath mingled.

“I could no more ask you to leave the sea than you could ask me to live within it,” Meredith whispered after a few long moments. He felt both her heartache and her relief. She very much cared for Dylan, yes. But she was a woman who knew her own heart and knew that, as much as she cared for him, her destiny lay with someone other than her selkie lover.

Dylan’s only answer was to kiss her, hard and deep. His tongue speared her mouth as he scooped her up in his arms, only to deposit her rather unceremoniously on the bench beneath the painting of the selkie maiden.

Meredith’s breath gasped as she pushed him away, anxiety over being seen warring with her desire. Dylan knelt at the end of the bench on which she reclined, her legs akimbo as she held up her upper body on her elbows.

He very slowly ran the tips of his fingers up the inside of her long, stocking-clad legs. She shivered, moaning as her legs fell open a tad farther.

His hands stopped just before her cunt, her desire ripe in the air as her chest heaved. Their eyes met, and Dylan let Meredith feel his own lust for her.

“The curtain,” she requested as a shudder racked her body.

Swiftly, Dylan rose to release the tapestry’s tieback, then returned to his place between Meredith’s legs.

He loomed above her, grasping her ankles in his large hands. Pulling her legs apart, Dylan pulled her body down the bench until her bottom teetered precariously on the edge, only inches from his face. Still holding her ankles wide, with her knees bent, Meredith felt her selkie’s hot breath on her inner thighs.

Licking and nibbling her flesh, Dylan worked his way closer to Meredith’s already soaking wet cunt. The thin mesh of her thong did nothing to conceal her arousal, and he breathed deeply of her salty scent. Then he licked along her plump lips, savoring their tang.

Meredith, meanwhile, had covered her mouth with her own hand to help muffle her moans. She couldn’t believe she was doing this here, with all those other people out there doing everything they were doing. The privacy of the curtained alcove was something, but not enough. She wanted a door, her own bedroom, or an anonymous hotel.