Sea Lord (13 page)

He did not want to let her go. The longer she submitted to his touch, he felt, the more chance she would

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accept him. “The stairway is dark. You cannot see.”

“Oh, and you can?”

“Yes,” he said simply and silenced her.

He carried her up the spiral stairs, his shoulder brushing the rough stone wall, her bare feet suspended

over the drop. Tall, narrow chinks of light pierced the gloom. In the stillness, he could hear her breathing

and the dog’s nails clicking behind them.

The stairs divided, circling to his rooms on the one side, broadening to wide, flat steps and an arch on the

other. She adjusted her arm about his neck, pressing her soft breast into his chest. Anticipation pulsed

through him. Almost there. He resisted the impulse simply to throw her over his shoulders and take the

steps two at a time.

“My lord!” The call rang from the hall.

Madadh growled in soft warning.

Lucy stiffened and turned her head.

Conn tightened his hold.

A broad bulk loomed in the stone archway. Frustration jabbed Conn. But the man who had hailed him

was his most trusted warden. No purpose was served by snarling at him. Or by ignoring him either.

“Griffith ap Powell, the castle warden,” he said shortly. “Lucy Hunter.”

The warden frowned. “Dylan’s sister?”

Lucy blinked. “You know my brother?”

Griff spoke over her head to Conn. “What is she doing here?”

“Don’t ask,” she muttered.

Something in her voice, some subtle alteration of her posture, broke through Conn’s lust and impatience.

He glanced down. Her shoulders were hunched, her eyes lowered. She seemed almost to have shrunk in

his arms.

“My lord, I must speak with you,” Griff said, as if the warden had forgotten his own question. Forgotten

the girl’s very presence.

Conn’s skin prickled.

“
Don’t ask,
” she had said. Was it possible the words were not simply a comment, but a command?

Unease trickled through him like melted ice. What did it mean, if she could command the castle warden?

“She is the daughter of Atargatis,” Conn said, answering Griff’s question. “And my guest.”

Griff rubbed his grizzled jaw, his dark eyes momentarily confused. “Then she is welcome. My lord, a

delegation from—”

“Later,” Conn said. “She needs fire, food, and clothes. In the upper tower room. See to it.”

And he would see to her.

“My lord.” The warden was respectful but firm. “This cannot wait.”

“I have been gone two weeks.” Conn bit out the words. A blink of an eye in a selkie’s long existence.

His father had been absent for damn near a millennium and no one was after him to attend to his duties.

“Whatever it is can wait another hour.”

“Gau knows that you were gone,” Griff said.

Conn went still.

Gau was a lord of Hell, an emissary for the children of fire. Ruthless, humorless, self-important, and

dangerous, the demon lord was quick to scent an opportunity or a weakness. He would have seen

Conn’s absence from Sanctuary as both.

Something dark and fierce rose in Conn. “I do not owe Hell an accounting of my whereabouts.”

“No, lord.” Griff met his gaze, his expression somber. “But Gau requests an audience.”

“Gau can go to Hell.”

“He has been to Hell, my lord,” Griff said with grim humor. “Now he is coming here. With a delegation.”

Madadh’s shoulders quivered as the dog responded to the tension in the air. Lucy’s gaze darted from

face to face.

“He dares much in my absence,” Conn said through his teeth.

“Perhaps he knew you were returning,” Griff suggested.

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“Or hoped I would be gone,” Conn said. “Summon the other wardens. Let Gau see our strength.”

Such as it was, he thought bleakly.

“Done, lord. Morgan and Enya have arrived already,” Griff said. “The others . . . there may not be time.”

Strain dug into Conn’s shoulders at the combined weight of responsibility and the woman in his arms.

“How long?”

“Until Gau arrives?” Griff shrugged. “I cannot map the demonkind as you can. But soon, I think.”

Conn’s gut clenched. His grip on Lucy tightened.

Gau must not find her
was all he could think. The demons had tried to kill Dylan’s woman Regina

simply because she carried the selkie’s child. The children of fire were determined to prevent the birth of

a selkie female who might fulfill the prophecy. So far, they had dismissed Atargatis’s only daughter as

human, unworthy of their notice. But if they knew she had caught Conn’s eye, they would swarm like

wasps around fruit.

A chill rose from the stairwell and settled in his bones.

Better to keep her hidden.

Even on Sanctuary.

Conn lowered Lucy’s feet to the floor. Her toes winced from contact with the cold stone. She clung to

him a moment, the only warm and familiar thing in the room, while she got her balance and her bearings.

The hound pressed in beside them and circled the room, its staccato nails loud in the quiet chamber.

The high, curved walls were finished stone. The windows overlooked the sea. If she concentrated, she

could hear the hiss of the retreating water and the gulls crying as they dipped over the waves. But unlike

the other chambers they’d passed through, this room had actual glass in the windows, veined with lead

and filled with tiny bubbles. The carved and gilded furniture looked built for a giant or a king: a vast,

empty fireplace, two high-backed chairs like thrones, an enormous wardrobe, a massive carved and

canopied bed. Deep blue hangings shivered in the draft.

Lucy shivered, too, cold and overwhelmed.

Madadh yawned and settled in front of the empty hearth.

“Someone will be up soon to build the fire,” Conn said. “If there is anything you need, you have only to

ask.”

How about you take me home?

She swallowed the words before they escaped. He would only say no. And each time she begged and he

refused, she felt more helpless, more frustrated than before.

She was sick of feeling helpless, tired of being silent and careful and afraid.

“Is everything all right?” she asked. “This guy that’s coming, this Gau—”

Conn’s mouth formed a hard line. His eyes assumed the cold, flat sheen of tempered metal. “All will be

well,” he said. “You are safe here.”

Which didn’t answer her question at all.

Lucy’s heart hammered. Her spine straightened. All her life, she had avoided confrontation. She was the

good child, the one who smoothed things over, who made things work. She was used to covering for her

father’s failures, to denying her own anger and her needs.

But Conn had prized her from her comfortable shell. And however exposed she felt, however naked or

afraid, she couldn’t crawl away and hide. What was he going to do if she offended him? Throw her back

like an undersized lobster?

“Safe from what?”

He released her and crossed to the vast wardrobe, tossing the sealskin carelessly on the bed. “I will

answer all your questions . . .”

She blinked. “Really?”

“Later,” he finished smoothly. He laid a hand on a carved panel of the wardrobe, swinging it open to

reveal a flash of red, a gleam of gold, a fall of black as rich as midnight. Shrugging out of his shirt, he

dropped it on the floor.

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Because holding a conversation wasn’t hard enough. No, she had to push for answers while he was

stripping.

She jerked her gaze from his hard-planed, hairy chest to his face. “When?”

His hard mouth softened. “Tonight. Over dinner. Right now, more urgent matters require my attention.”

He thrust his hands into his waistband and shucked his pants.

No underwear. He was naked except for a long black knife strapped to the inside of his left calf.

She sucked in her breath. Okay.

He was broad and hard. Her gaze skimmed the ridges of his stomach to the dark hair between his thighs,

down to the knife, and up again. All of him stood broad and hard.

Her mouth dried. His gaze locked with hers.

Arrogant asshole. As if she would take one look at his magnificent manhood and beg him to take her.

Oh, wait. She had.

In fact, she admitted wretchedly, if she weren’t so worried that she was committing more than her body,

she would be tempted to again.

She moistened her lips. “How urgent?”

His eyes had darkened to gray smoke. But instead of reaching for her, he pulled a long, loose shirt from

the wardrobe. “The wardens wait. I cannot stay. Not even to satisfy your . . . curiosity,” he added softly.

Hot color whipped into her face.

She stood there while he dressed with swift, easy movements, apparently undeterred either by his

impressive hard-on or her presence. Soft black pants—ha, that took a moment—loose white shirt, a

tunic the same deep purple as the inside of an oyster shell. And instead of looking ridiculous, which might

have soothed her confused feelings at least a little bit, he looked comfortable. Masculine. Assured. As

though he wore velvet every day of his very long life. As if . . .

Lucy frowned. “He called you ‘lord.’ ”

Conn shot her a quick look. His hands were busy fastening a heavy gold belt low on his hips. Something

in the gesture, something in his eyes, reminded her of Caleb strapping on his gun, preparing to go on

patrol.

“Dylan did, too,” she said slowly, remembering. “When you came into the restaurant. ‘My lord.’ I

thought he was just saying it because he was surprised. Like, ‘My God’ or something. But he wasn’t,

was he? I mean, he was surprised, but . . .”

Conn gave a final tug to his belt. “I must go.”

She stood there with her frozen feet and yellow slicker, realization seeping into her tired brain. “Who are

you?” she whispered.

His eyes were cool as burnished silver. “You know who I am.”

“No, I don’t,” she said, amazed by her own audacity. “Or I wouldn’t have to ask.”

Did he hesitate, for just a moment? His face was hard as marble. “I am Conn, the son of Llyr, prince of

the merfolk and lord of the sea. And Gau must learn that I protect what is mine.”

The hound rose from the hearth, its gaze fixed on his face, its small round ears erect.

“Madadh, stay. Guard,” Conn commanded.

And before the girl or the dog had opportunity to react, he was gone.

8

STAY. GUARD.

Standing in the middle of the cold stone floor, Lucy eyed the big, hairy dog blocking the door. “Are you

supposed to keep me safe? Or keep me in?”

The hound gave her a long, level look and turned its head away.

“That’s what I thought,” she muttered. “Who does he think he is anyway?”

“
I am Conn, the son of Llyr, prince of the merfolk and lord of the sea.
”

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Prince
. The word crashed on her like a wave, robbing her of balance and breath. And she was what,

Cinderella? She paced. Alice in Wonderland. Beauty in the castle of the Beast.

She wanted to go home. Longing swept her for her brother’s smile, her father’s querulous voice, her

students with their quick hugs and straggling garden plots. She squeezed her eyes tight as if she could shut

out the castle, as if she could make everything go away, go back to what it had been. Like Dorothy after

the tornado, waking to find her journey had all been a terrible dream. A nightmare.

Her nightmare.

She had always dreamed of the sea. The sea and drowning. In her dreams, the oceans came for her, a

hungry wall of water that swept everything, destroyed everything, killed everyone she loved.

Her mother had drowned. “
Trapped in a fisherman’s net within the year after she left you.
”

The sea took everything.

Pressure crushed her lungs. She couldn’t breathe. Roaring filled her head, louder than the ocean. The

sound of loss. Of fear.

She trembled. She
remembered . . .

Standing in her crib, crying in the dark, holding out her arms. And Caleb, kind and bleary with lack of

sleep, trudging in to pick her up. A boy forced by circumstance to be a man. Patting her back, bringing

her water, whispering that everything was going to be all right. She had allowed herself to be comforted