Immortal Sea (11 page)

Her breath caught. Too damn close. “You’re not coming with us.”

Morgan looked down at her, his face as cool and unimpressionable as marble, and a chill chased the tickle up her spine. He was not a man she could boss around, which made him dangerous. And far too attractive.

She shook her head to rid it of that thought. “I need to talk to Zack alone.”

“So must I.”

“Not alone.”

“Very well,” he agreed so promptly she wondered if she’d been set up. “Then we will talk to him together.”

She frowned. “No, I . . .” She couldn’t think with him standing so close. She took a step back, still gripping Emily’s hand, and bumped into her car. “It’s my responsibility.”

“And you are always responsible.”

Was he mocking her?

Her lips set. “Yes.”

“Responsible and . . .” The pad of his thumb hovered at the corner of her eye where the skin was thin and sensitive. “Tired. Let me help.”

The unexpectedness of his feather contact robbed her of breath. Of speech. He traced a line from cheek to jaw, making her throat constrict. For one weak moment, she was tempted to close her eyes and lean into his hand, to absorb the warmth and strength of his touch.

Self-preservation straightened her spine. She was not a woman who leaned on anybody.

“I’m not tired,” she said, ice in her voice. “I’m frustrated.”

Unholy laughter gleamed in his eyes. “I could help you with that, too.”

Her jaw cracked. She was not swapping innuendos with this man in full view of the town and within earshot of her kids. “No, you can’t. Go away.”

“After I talk with the boy.”

“Not here. Not now. When you talk to my son, it will be on my terms and my turf.”

“Fine. When and where?”

“I . . .”

Their eyes locked.

Trapped, she realized, her heart knocking against her ribs. Emily leaned into her side, watching them with wide, anxious eyes. Zack scowled from the other side of the car.

For her children’s sake, it was important she maintain a pretense of civility. A semblance of control.

“You can come to dinner,” she decided.

“Tonight.”

She pressed her lips together in annoyance. “Fine. Six o’clock. Eighteen Juniper Road.”

“I will see you then.” He nodded across the car at Zack. “All of you.”

Liz’s gaze darted between them. They were nothing alike, one big, blond, commanding, the other bony and dark.

And yet something about the shape of their lips, the cant of their shoulders, those weird, pale, golden eyes proclaimed them father and son. Her stomach sank.

“
Maybe it would be best if you both talked to him,
” the police chief had said.

Maybe.

Liz bit her lip. And maybe she was making a big mistake.

Morgan stood half-naked at the pedestal sink in his room, scraping the blade of his knife over his face to remove three days of stubble. The finfolk’s skin was almost smooth, but to pass as a human, he must groom as a human.

The door to his hotel room banged open.

His hand checked and then continued carefully along his jaw.

Dylan Hunter, dark and furious, blew into the room behind him. “What the hell are you playing at?”

“Next time, knock.”

“Why? You were expecting me.” Dylan tossed an arm-load of clothes onto the wide, white bed.

Morgan put down his knife and reached for a towel. “I would prefer not to cut myself.”

“I don’t care if you slit your throat,” Dylan said.

Morgan met his gaze in the mirror. “I take it you spoke with your brother.”

“Yeah. He calls me into his office to find out what’s going on, and I have to tell him I don’t have a damn clue.”

“I do not answer to him. Or to you.”

A flush stained the younger warden’s cheekbones. “This is still my territory. My charge. We’ve had enough demon activity around here that anything out of the ordinary makes my brother twitchy. You need to keep me informed.”

Morgan crossed to the bed and pulled a couple of shirts from the pile. Fortunately, he and Dylan were almost the same size, though Morgan’s frame was heavier. “The prince ordered me to stay.”

“To recuperate.”

“Yes.” He held up a white shirt with buttons. “Linen?”

“Cotton. Natural fibers anyway, like you said. Read the damn label.”

He did not need a label to know it would chafe. He tossed it back on the bed.

“So what’s this bullshit story about a long lost son?” Dylan asked.

Morgan found a thin sweater in soft black, cashmere or silk. “Not bullshit. The boy is mine.”

“
You
have a kid.” Disbelief scored Dylan’s voice.

“You question my ability to father a child?”

“No, but . . . You, with a human woman?”

Morgan raised his eyebrows. “It is not only selkies who can fuck with humankind.”

He half expected Dylan to take offense. His mother had taken a human husband; Dylan, a human wife.

But the selkie only pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Still, that’s some coincidence you finding him now. Here. On World’s End.”

“I sired him sixteen years ago in Copenhagen.”

“Which makes him a teenager, right? Past the age of Change.”

“So was your sister when she first came into her powers.”

“You think he’s finfolk.”

“I suspect.” Morgan tugged the black shirt over his head. “Tonight I will know.”

“Then what?”

“You do not need me to explain to you the importance of offspring.” Not when the sea lord himself had come to celebrate the birth of Dylan’s half-blood daughter. “Our people are dying. The finfolk are going beneath the wave in even greater numbers than the selkie. Children are survival and power.”

“Children are children. What if the boy isn’t finfolk?”

Morgan shrugged. “Then I have no use for him, and he has no need of me.”

A memory of Elizabeth’s taut, white face flared in his mind.
“Ben was there when it mattered. Zack is still adjusting to his loss. He doesn’t need another disruption or another disappointment in his life. He doesn’t need you.”

Morgan’s teeth clenched.

“And if he is?” Dylan prodded. “What will you do then?”

Morgan regarded him blankly.

Their kind flowed as the sea flowed. If fate had given him a child, he would take it, as he accepted the bounty of the oceans or the gifts of the tide.

“I will take him,” Morgan said.

“To Sanctuary.”

A trickle of unease rolled between Morgan’s shoulder blades. “Why not?”

“In the first place, Lucy won’t stand for you taking the kid anywhere without his consent.”

“I do not answer to your sister.”

“Conn, then. He listens to her. And the kid is only fifteen.”

“You were younger.”

“I was miserable,” Dylan said frankly. “And I did my damnedest to make everyone around me miserable, too. Kids have feelings, you know. The situation on Sanctuary is difficult enough. Do you really think you can run the work crew if you’re baby-sitting some misfit teen with a bad attitude?”

The prospect appalled him. “I do not intend to baby-sit anyone.”

“Then before you take this kid from the only family he’s ever known, you better figure out what you
are
going to do with him,” Dylan said.

Morgan regarded Dylan with dislike. All he wanted was a chance to secure his posterity and engage in a mutually pleasurable seduction. He did not need this half-blood selkie muddying the emotional waters with his talk of feelings.

“The boy will survive,” he said shortly.

They all would survive. Conn would see to that. Would agree to it.

Survival was all that mattered.

The hearty scent of chicken asopao—garlic and onions, pepper and chorizo—rolled from the kitchen and followed Zack’s mom up the stairs and into his room. “
Puerto Rican comfort food,
” his dad Ben used to say whenever Mom made one of his family’s recipes.

Zack sniffed. Mom was really pulling out all the stops tonight. Because she thought he needed comfort? Or because that guy was coming to dinner? Morgan. His biological father.

She sat on the end of Zack’s bed, watching him with a sad, patient expression that made him feel about two years old and two inches high.

“You know you can tell me anything,” she said like she believed it.

Zack wanted to believe it, too.

But he knew better. He couldn’t tell her what was really wrong with him. And so he couldn’t say anything at all.

They’d already gone a couple of rounds, his mom hitting him with a combination of concern and sneaky open-ended questions she’d picked up from the counselor she’d dragged him to see back home.
“Tell me what happened.” “How are you feeling?” “What do you want to happen next?”

Zack stared down at his hands. He didn’t want to discuss his feelings, for Christ’s sake. Or what happened next. He wanted to be left alone. The pressure—to speak or keep silent—built in his head and chest like a scream.

In sheer desperation, in self-defense, he went for his mom’s weak spot. “So how well did you know this guy Morgan before you slept with him?”

His mother’s face turned white and then red. “Not as well as I should have,” she said calmly. “We’ve talked before about choices. I made some bad ones. But I’ve never regretted having you.”

Guilt pressed his ribs like a five-hundred-pound gorilla. “Until today.”

“Today was not a good day,” Liz agreed. “But you’re still my son, Zack. I love you.”

“I’m his son, too,” he said, hoping for . . . what? Reassurance, confirmation, denial?

Her eyes met his, straight on. “Yes.”

His sneer slipped. He wrenched it back into place. “So what am I supposed to call him? Dad?”

She couldn’t quite hide her wince. “You’ll have to decide that for yourself.”

A knock, sharp and imperative, sounded from the front door.

Zack swallowed the lump of nerves in his throat. Like this guy never heard of a doorbell.

His mother stood, wiping her palms on her slacks. “That’s probably him now. Why don’t you answer the door while I add peas to the asopao?”

Liz looked around the dining room table, trying to snatch satisfaction from the jaws of impending doom.

Dinner so far was not a disaster. The chicken was good, not as good as Ben’s mother’s, but with the same desirable soupy texture. Emily was spooning up rice with the concentration of a starving child. Zack hunched over his plate, sullen and silent.

On Liz’s right, Morgan was dressed all in black, fitted black pants, slim black sweater. Like a jewel thief or an assassin. Like . . . Zack, she realized. An older,
Esquire
version of Zack. He leaned back in his chair, a glint in his eye she didn’t trust.

Not a problem. All she had to do was stick to neutral subjects, satisfy whatever curiosity Zack harbored about his biological father, and then shove him out the door.