She winced. “Interesting good? Or interesting as in the ancient Chinese curse: ‘May you live in interesting times’?”
He gave her a rueful smile. “A little bit of both, I guess.” They sat in silence for a minute, and he hoped he hadn’t hurt her feelings, but he wasn’t going to lie to her and pretend that this was easy for him. He suspected she wouldn’t believe him if he said it was.
“So what’s bothering you right now?” she finally asked. “Clearly something is. I’d like to help, if I can.” She put one hand on his bare arm, and the warmth of her skin touching his moved him more than he could say. It was as if all the caring and passion between them had been summed up in that one simple gesture. But he just wasn’t in the right frame of mind to appreciate it right now.
“It was bad enough to discover that there are really such things as magic and Merpeople and Selkies,” he said. “I’m not sure I could deal with having a father who was one.”
Beka gazed into his eyes. Even in the near darkness, those blue irises were vivid and clear like sapphires, able to see through his surface fears down to the soul underneath.
“Which are you more afraid of?” she asked. There was no judgment in her voice. “That he will decide to take the King up on the chance to live life as a Selkie? Or that he won’t?”
“I’ll lose him either way,” Marcus said, bitterness lying on his tongue like acid. “The chemotherapy has stopped working, and the doctors say there isn’t anything else they can do.”
He was surprised to find out how deeply he cared. Somehow during his days on the boat, sharing close quarters with the father he thought he’d hate forever, he’d come to terms with his anger and resentment toward the man. They would never be close, and what affection they had for each other would always have an element of strain to it, but affection there was nonetheless. And now . . . this. A choice between the devil and the deep blue sea.
“I can’t tell you how to feel,” Beka said, tucking her arm around him and leaning her head against his shoulder, so they both sat facing toward the changeable sea. “But you might want to think about this: the ocean is in your father’s blood already. Maybe he would prefer a life lived in the element he loves to the prospect of a slow death on land.”
“No matter how strange that life is?” Marcus couldn’t even wrap his mind around the possibility.
“Aren’t all things strange to us when they’re new? I’m sure that life in the Marines seemed strange in the beginning.”
She had a point. He remembered how alien it had all been, all rules and regulations, and well-ordered training. And no ocean, when that had been all he’d known his whole life. Then the military became normal, until he’d left it to come home, and had to adjust all over again.
Now the sound and the smell and the rhythms of the sea had gotten back under his skin. Just like the woman sitting next to him.
He turned to face her, pulling her in close, breathing in the scent of her and that strange, elusive hint of strawberries. One hand rose to caress the velvet of her cheek, and the other tangled in her silky hair as he bent down to press his lips against hers in a kiss that he’d intended to be gentle but that somehow turned to fiery passion as soon as their lips touched.
Her arms reached up to wrap around his neck, holding on as if she would never let go. She kissed him back with an ardor that astonished, gratified, and aroused him all at once, and for a moment, he lost himself in the kiss, and in the woman, thinking to himself, now this, this is magic.
She finally pulled away, leaving Marcus feeling as if she took all the oxygen with her as she went. The space within his arms where she had been felt strangely empty and cold.
Beka’s smile glinted at him in the darkness. “What was that for?” she asked. “Not that I’m complaining.”
Marcus stood up with a sigh, handing her the box containing the Water of Life and Death and then tugging her up with him and turning them both back toward the Jeep and the complications of reality.
“I have a feeling it is going to be a long night,” he said. “And I wanted something pleasant to think about in the midst of all the craziness.”
“I could give you even more to think about, if you like,” she said in a throaty voice, and his pants were suddenly tighter than they had been. He was incredibly tempted to run away from all of his troubles and hide in the warmth of her arms. And her bed. Images flashed before his eyes of Beka, naked and lovely, smiling her bright smile, long lashes half hiding those remarkable eyes.