Read Online Children of the Sea 01 - Sea Witch by authors_sort - Free Book Online Page A

mother, who had followed the sea king beneath the wave centuries before. She did not know the fate of her father. She had no mate, no child. She hunted, slept, lived alone.
     
    She shook her head and then winced.
     
    A crease appeared between Caleb’s eyebrows. “No one?”
     
    Her hands clenched beneath the long jacket cuffs. She did not relish his pity. She was selkie, one of the First Creation, a child of the sea.
     
    Or she had been.
     
    In the sea, in her own territory, her lack of connections had never troubled her. But in the human’s world, maybe everyone was tangled and bound together.
     
    He must not suspect she was not of his world.
     
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    She let herself sway on her feet, let the jacket fall open over her bare breasts. It was not so hard to pretend dizziness. Her head throbbed. Her legs trembled. The demon’s attack had frightened her—weakened her—more than she wanted to admit. “I . . . can’t think. I don’t remember.”
     
    Caleb did not look at her breasts. Those clear green eyes remained fixed on her face with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. “All right,” he said slowly. “You can wait in the Jeep until Ted gets here, and then I’ll drive you to the doctor.”
     
    The inside of his vehicle—Jeep, Margred repeated silently to herself—was dark and warm and smelled of metal and oil and man. Land smells. Alien smells. In the quiet dark, reaction seeped in, corroding her fragile composure. The roof and frame pressed in on her like the iron bars of a cage. She shifted on the slick upholstery, her blood pounding in her head, staining her fingers through the folded white square he had given her.
     
    She opened her mouth to breathe.
     
    The driver’s side door popped open and Caleb slid into the seat beside her, his big body looming out of the darkness. She managed not to jump.
     
    “All set,” he said. “You keeping pressure on that cut?”
     
    She nodded carefully, as if her head might fall off.
     
    His lips curved. “Atta girl. Still bleeding?”
     
    Her fingers were warm and sticky. “Not as much.”
     
    “Good. That’s good.” He thrust a key into the side of the wheel, and the Jeep shuddered to life. He glanced at her. “Buckle up.”
     
    She blinked.
     
    His mouth compressed before he reached for her. She inhaled once, sharply, as his shoulder flattened her back against her seat, as his hard arm brushed her breast. His hand was almost in her face. He drew a strap down across her body, securing it with a click beside her hip.
     
    The pressure on her chest increased.
     
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    He leaned back. “There you go.”
     
    Her mouth was dry. She could not go anywhere. She was strapped in. Tied down. Trapped.
     
    He twisted in his seat to pull a similar belt over his own broad body, grunting as his knee connected with the steering wheel. A little of her panic leaked away.
     
    “You’ll like Donna. Dr. Tomah,” he added when Margred didn’t say anything. “She retired to the island about five years ago before she decided retirement wasn’t really her thing. Talked the town into building her a clinic, and now she handles pretty much everything that doesn’t require a trip to the hospital in Rockport.”
     
    She forced herself to listen as if his words held some clue to her dilemma. As if she cared. She didn’t. But there was something soothing, all the same, in his quiet manner and deep, easy voice.
     
    He was talking now about the council budget and a new X-ray machine, soft, meaningless words that filled the silence and washed over her like water. She leaned her aching head against the cool glass and stared out at the darkness rushing beyond her window.
     
    His voice stopped. The vehicle stopped.
     
    Margred roused to find him watching her. “Did you do that on purpose?”
     
    “Do what?” he asked, straight-faced.
     
    “Bore me to sleep?”
     
    Caleb smiled. She had the sense he was not a man who smiled often or easily. A trickle of warmth