MakeMeWet (5 page)

She sensed the pony, far up the beach. The connection so
weak Maille wasn’t sure if it was distance or dwindling life force that scattered
the signal the way static scattered a television picture.

He cut her off before she made it out of the dunes. His
whinny so piercing, Maille had to cover her ears. He herded her, as if she were
some prize mare he’d collected, and firmly escorted her back to the pony’s
nest.

With another stamp and warning flash of teeth, he made his
desires clear.

“Okay, okay. I’ll stay if you go and bring the mare back.”

Satisfied, the stallion took off in a mad dash that sent
sand spraying her skin and hair. Rather than follow him up beach, she followed
snuffling sounds, picking her way among the sand burrs, to a nest of trampled
grass in the shelter of dunes. A foal, wet from the womb, lifted its head at
her approach.

Maille squatted to inspect the filly, the newborn still weak
and resting on her side. But she lifted her head to investigate the newcomer.
Eyes wide and bright with the infant drive to be moving, exploring.

“Aw, baby girl.” Maille plucked a bit of straw dangling from
the fuzzy baby forelock, resisting the urge to stroke and soothe. “Sorry to say
I’ve been right where you are. My mother couldn’t get away fast enough, or far
enough either.”

Probably for the same reasons. The newborn a mirror of the
father and nothing like the mother. A baby too alien to ever be fully accepted
as hers. Even on her deathbed, Maille’s mother had looked at her daughter and
seen the father, said his name—Elan. It was the last thing she’d said.

Maille shoved the memory away. With a sigh, she closed her
eyes. Every minute she spent here took her deeper into the old ways she’d
worked hard to leave behind.

Energy hummed in the earth under her bare feet and rose
though her body as she pressed a palm to a spot just over the filly’s heart and
let go her resistance. The stallion’s presence was faint. Far up the beach. No
trace of the mare’s life energy. Had she left the mortal plane? Perhaps she was
just beyond reach of Maille’s rusty skills.

The foal snuffled Maille’s hand and she was tempted to lean
in, greet this little life in the same way she had greeted the father—a
mingling of vital breath that would bond them as life friends. But at the last
minute, she pulled back. Best give it a little time. No point in bonding when
Maille wouldn’t be around long. The mother should be the first bonded. If she
was alive. A weight settled in the pit of Maille’s stomach as she considered
the possibility that wouldn’t be the case.

Still she scooted back, not wanting the foal to imprint on
her if there was any chance the mother might return. It wouldn’t help matters
if Maille’s scent was clinging to the little one. For now, the baby was out of
the wind and in a bed of dry grass.

Something was off about the situation. Her training as a
wildlife biologist supplied data. Her instincts as a scientist weren’t comfortable
with where the data led. The foal looked just like the stallion, a sleek
palomino. She’d noticed the mare when she had passed by here earlier, a small
but sturdy wild pony of the sort you might find along the barrier islands
hundreds of miles to the south. While it was true most horse breeding was done
either through artificial insemination—or in vitro for the most valuable
animals—who in their right mind would implant such a small pony with an embryo
for such a large breed? Or why spend that kind of money and then risk the
foal’s and mare’s life by implanting in such a small pony?

The elements of this little scene were so technical,
practical and beyond the scope of normal dreaming she had trouble sticking to
her original hypothesis. Given that riding off on the stallion hadn’t changed
anything, she was running out of theories.

A lifetime ago on this very beach, the world had been full
of magick. Butterflies wooed nectar from flowers with a song. Whales and
dolphins let her swim with their pods. Birds sang ballads about ancient lands
and enchanted princes. Maille learned the arts of a beast whisperer, how to
heal them with herbs and laying on of hands. How much of that had been the
fantasies an old woman encouraged to entertain her granddaughter?

Most of it?

All of it.

She’d worked hard to earn her degree, to learn science that
gave her skills to make a difference, to protect wildlife. She may not be a
beast whisperer with magick to heal ills, but in the end, the same goal had
been accomplished.

She broke a piece of beach lavender and inhaled the soothing
scent. A flash of her sitting cliff-side on a sunny afternoon penetrated the
void in her memory. She remembered breaking a sprig of lavender then and
inhaling when she had been hiking that morning. Remembered too she had flown to
Maine landing the day before, arriving at Wolf Harbor by bus late in the
evening. She was here to sell Gram’s cottage.

Sell the cottage? Viselike tension constricted her chest. A
decision easily made far away in the Chihuahuan Desertof New Mexico.
But a choice that wrenched hard now that she was here, where she could smell
the wild heather and taste sea breeze on her lips.

Now was not the time for second-guessing choices. That could
wait for later. One question still remained—how had she gotten from a patch of
sunny heather cliff-side that morning to naked and injured on the beach at
night?

Beside her the foal shifted to her belly, stretching her
neck and bumping her damp muzzle against Maille’s arm. Maille got to her feet.

The distant bang of the screen door told her Ronin was
leaving. She should have handled that better. She’d taken the coward’s way out,
but when she looked into those eyes of his—dark and compelling as a
moonshadow—she never wanted to look away, let alone tell him to go away.

The foal’s hot breath tickled Maille’s toes. The filly
scrabbled at the ground, trying to get her legs under her, but only managed to
push herself back over on her side.

Maille backed out of the nest and knelt beside a tide pool a
few feet away, washing resentment from her heart as she washed sand from her
hands.

Gram had made the best of a tough situation when her
daughter, Cara, had left her newborn and never looked back. Not until Gram’s
death and the county social worker forced Cara to return.

Ronin, moving up the beach toward her rather than away,
distracted her. Still interested in finishing what he started?

Maybe it was the knowledge that her grandmother and her
mother had both had their lives irrevocably changed by a tourist on a moonlit
beach. Not that it was possible for Ronin to change hers in the same way.
Maille used birth control religiously. But she watched both women get that
far-off look on nights like this, never having taken another man after that
one, looking longingly to the sea as if he’d been carried off and might someday
reappear there. That longing, probably even more than her strange, silent
infant, had driven Cara to live in the desert as far from the ocean as she
could get.

It was a remedy Maille finally understood. Being here, with
the sea ringing in her ears, made her long for things that could never be. Made
her wish Ronin could be real. Wish he could be hers for more than a night.

If she let Ronin take her over, let go with him, there were
only two possible outcomes. Either this man she wanted more than she had ever
wanted a man was real. Was a tourist who would be gone in the morning, leaving
her to a lifetime of looking at the sea where she’d found him and wishing it
would give him back. Or he wasn’t real and she’d break free from this limbo
into whatever waited on the other side of life. Neither option included keeping
Ronin.

Fear zapped at her belly. She was tired of being controlled
by perceptions with no grounding in fact. She would give Ronin what he wanted
and deal with the consequences as they came.

Cursing himself as seven kinds of a fool, Ronin scrambled
through the deep sand, following what he hoped was the stallion’s trail. She’d
gone off with Trey. If Ronin just left her to it, he’d be free to walk away
from the curse when the sun rose.

Still something about Mere’s admissions smacked of a trick.
He just hadn’t worked out what the trick was. Did she fear Maille might have
the power to set Ronin free? Had she goaded Ronin with her story so he would
try harder with Maille?

Or was Maille the one who needed protecting?

It wasn’t Mere’s nature to be maternal and concerned about anyone
but Mere. She’d left something important out during their chat. Perhaps
breaking the curse would confer some level of power to Maille. Power that posed
some threat to Mere. That sounded more like Mere.

Question was, did he really care about the power struggles
of the Goddesses and mortals? Or hybrid mortals? Or whatever sort of magickal
being Trey and company were?

He didn’t.

Should he care?

He did care about Maille. He cared beyond the guilt over his
past failings. He cared beyond the usual bond he shared with an intended.

He’d check on Maille and be sure she was okay. He’d wait out
the dawn with her, or perhaps leave her with the stallion if that was what she
wanted. He just had to be sure she was safe. She could break the curse, give
him back his life. While every instinct screamed he should head the other
direction and keep walking until morning, he couldn’t.

He wasn’t sure how or when it happened, but he’d acquired a
bit of a conscience—royal bother that.

He followed hoof prints as far as the water. He’d miss his
night vision when he was mortal again. The fully risen moon cast more light
than he needed to find his way. The trail vanished. But his binding spell was
still in place to guide him. It may not have as much impact on Maille as he’d
like, but Ronin could feel a tug when he turned in the direction that led to
Maille.

She knelt by a tide pool. No sign of the stallion. Soft
scrabbling and miniature snorts of a foal nearby caught him off guard. He
stopped, keeping the tide pool between them. Still too close. The whole ocean
between them wouldn’t be enough to curb the rise of desire at the sight of her
lithe body in the moonlight.

“I know you said I should go,” he explained when she looked
up. “I just wanted to be sure you were okay. Stallions can be dangerous.”

“Sorry to run off on you. There’s a newborn filly tucked in
a nest between the dunes. Abandoned from the look of it. I’m just keeping a
watch, hoping the mother will be back.”

It was time to go. She’d handed him all the excuse he
needed. Time to look away. But when she lifted her chin, when the wind caught
her hair, when the moonlight illuminated her sadness… He couldn’t walk away.
Couldn’t turn away.

He resisted moving closer. “Is there something I can get
you? Your clothes? You must be cold.”

She chewed her bottom lip then ducked her head. His
attention followed hers, down to those ten dainty toes wriggling in the sand.
“A robe would be nice.”

Up on the cliffs, the wolves launched into a chorus of
howls. A mournful whinny from the stallion, barely audible he was so far off.

Maille hugged herself. She added in a rush, “Maybe a lighter
and paper would be good too. I’ll build a driftwood fire to hold back the
wolves or lurking threats until the mare returns.”

The wolves were no threat. Ronin couldn’t say so without
some explanation of how he knew.

“Right then, I’ll get some things for you. Won’t take a
minute.” He turned away and then back again. “Stay right there. Don’t go off
again.”

She shot him a shy smile over her shoulder. “I’ll be waiting.”
Did that sultry tone carry more weight than the words themselves conveyed or
was his imagination running off with him?

He ran back to the cottage when he should have walked. Would
that he was back in a selkie body and had to wriggle across the sand on his
belly. Anything that could get the sun to rise before he did something stupid.
Yet he hurried, grabbing things she had requested and grabbing more than that,
things that would probably ensure he spent eternity at the bottom of the sea.

The binding spell gnawed at his belly, set his nerves a
jitter. He couldn’t bear having her out of sight. Maille, however, hadn’t
seemed disturbed by separation. He ran back to her.

Once he had Maille snug in a robe, they moved quietly around
the edge of the dunes, gathering driftwood and stacking it on the far side of
the tide pool where they could keep watch over the little one.

It surprised Ronan how easily they fell into step, their
motions mirroring each other instinctively. Usually mirroring was something
deliberate and calculated on his part, meant to build rapport with the woman he
was seducing. With Maille it happened without thought. Perhaps the practice had
evolved to habit, but he didn’t think so. It was more her mirroring him than
the other way around.

She didn’t speak as they worked—an air of resignation
permeated the air. His that he’d have to resist temptation and give up the idea
of making love to Maille. Hers… He didn’t know what she’d resigned herself to,
but he wanted desperately to distract her. Contemplating the reasons for her
sadness led to contemplating ways he could make her forget sorrow. His hands
twitched with longing to skim over the exquisite silk expanse of her skin, cup
those full breasts, dip in a finger to swipe a taste of her desire.

“Fuck.” He dropped the few sticks he’d gathered, hopping
around on one foot before landing on his butt in the sand. He cocked his foot
over one knee to examine the damage. “Fucking cocklebur.”

Maille tossed an armload of wood on the pile they were
building, before joining him. “Here, let me see.”

It had lodged in the tender part of his arch and already the
spine’s oils were irritating like bee venom. Not that he’d admit it. “It’s
nothing.”

Bracketing his foot between her hands, she leaned so close
he could feel her exhale. Curiously the sting eased under her breath’s caress.

“There’s a trick to this,” she said. “If I still have the
knack it won’t leave any fragments behind to irritate.”

She circled the spot, her fingertip dragging along the
sensitive skin. He dug fingers in the sand and bit his lip to keep silent.
Goddess!
That tickled
. With a flick of her nail, the offending burr was gone.

Maille kissed his arch. “All better.” She stood.

A fine shower of sand sprinkled his skin when the breeze
caught her robe.

“I’ll get more wood. You get the fire going,” she said.

Ronin stared at the spot she’d kissed. His fire was going.
He looked at the sky, gauging. Maybe an hour left.

She wanted him. He could scent her arousal. Nectar calling.
How the fuck was he to make it another hour? He scraped his brain for a safe
topic to discuss. After three hundred and twenty-two cursed years his polite
conversation skills were rusty.

“How’s your knee, love?”

“Fine.”

He tried again. “Do you remember anything more about how you
hurt it?” He knelt by the fire, coaxed a paper and kindling to light, then
started feeding small twigs to the crackling flames.

She started shaking her head but stopped, scooping a handful
of sand, then watching it sift through her fingers. She seemed to stare at the
fire through the shower of sand.

“Snow and fire,” she murmured. The way she said it was more
like a question, as if she wanted him to confirm it. When she reached to the
flames, Ronin leapt, capturing her hand before she could burn it.

“Maille?”

“There was a wolf.” Her tone was dreaming and distant. “He
had eyes like yellow flames. I’d collapsed or fainted or something. When he
woke me, I was staring right into those eyes.”

His fingers tightened around her hands, he sat cross-legged
and pulled her onto his lap.

“You said fire and snow. What does snow have to do with it?”

She nodded. “I was lost in the fog that rolled in after
lunch. Then wind blew up a snow storm to take its place. The temperature
plummeted.”

She was shivering. He hugged her tighter. “I wasn’t dressed
for it. It was so cold.”

“I’ve got you. Keep going. What happened next?”

“I fell, cracked my knee against a rock. I did try to keep
going, but I must have lost consciousness. Then there was the wolf. I must have
been out of my mind, but I followed him.”

“Where?”

“To a shabby mansion. It looked like something right out of
one of those old Goth movies.”

“Did it?” What the hell was a Goth movie? “Maybe if you
describe it, it’ll help you remember more.”

“Tall, dark and spooky.”

“Ah, that’d be Shadowling Manor.”

“I still don’t know how I got from there to here.”

If she’d gotten here from Shadowling, it was probably best
not to delve deeply into the how. She cuddled against his chest as he watched a
small tongue of fire catch in larger branches, going to flame and then flame
going to blaze. He maneuvered her back to the pile of blankets and pillows he’d
arranged between dune and fire, sheltered from the wind. Her skin still
unnaturally cold.

Her feet were like ice. He massaged them, gentle circles of
his thumbs along the arches, fingers cupping and warming her toes. He made no
move to take the intimacy to a new level, letting her have the control.

Maille nestled her head under his chin, her finger absently
traced the pattern of a heart on his chest while she considered what he’d said.

“I grew up here. I must have hiked those cliffs a thousand
times. I have never seen Shadowling.”

“It’s remote. Hard to find even if you’ve been there
before.” Truth was you couldn’t find it at all except on special nights when
sex magick called it up from the ether.

Her skin was warming and her breath quickening, all signs
she was growing more ready, but her thoughtful sigh was weighted with sadness.

“What, love?”

She shrugged. “This sounds crazy. I had this idea at first
that I must be in a coma or something. That’s why I couldn’t figure out how I
got to the beach. That maybe a coma is like a lucid dream. I know I’m dreaming
and I can’t get out.”

“You feel like a real flesh and blood woman to me.” He
couldn’t quite bring himself to say he was a real flesh and blood man. He
wasn’t sure what he was anymore. Well, he was sure of one thing. He was not a
liar.

She pressed one palm over his heart. As if by magnetic pull,
a responsive tug stirred in his chest.

“I thought you were like a grim reaper or something,” she
said, “here to escort me to the other side.”

He covered her hand with his. Could feel the beat of both
their pulses cupped in his hand. As if he held their fates safe. He didn’t.
Should he grasp what pleasure they could share now, or toss it away—as if
casting dice—and see what fate would deliver?

“Ah, Maille mine, I don’t know much about the afterlife. I
would suppose grim reapers don’t need anyone to rescue their sorry asses from
rip currents.”

She giggled. “Good point.”

He pressed his nose into her hair, inhaling her softly
herbal scent. Mistake, that. He was drunk with hunger for her.

“Maille, love, could I ask you something more personal?”

“You can ask. I may not answer.”

“Have you ever… How can I put this delicately? Have you let
go with a man? In bed I mean?” His hand wandered over embroidered silk coming
to rest on her thigh.

Her legs parted. Slightly. An ever-so-subtle invitation.

“Ronin? I know I haven’t really been that great a lover
tonight—”

“No… No. It’s just I get the feeling… I’m twisting this all
up, I know. I just had the feeling you haven’t ever let go with a lover.”

“If you’re asking if I’ve ever had an orgasm, yes.” She
wriggled in his lap. Edged away, putting a little space between them. A movement
that had him grinding his teeth to keep from groaning aloud. That sweet bottom
scooting over his lap was not tamping down desire.

“Have you now?” He made his tone playful, nipped her
shoulder. “Just not with a man?”

“Um…” He didn’t need to see her face to guess a lovely blush
was creeping into her cheeks before she stammered out, “N-n-not with a woman
either. If that’s what you’re getting at.”

“Ah. Then solo.”

She looked left. Then right. Then ducked her head. “I should
check on the foal,” she mumbled.

“Now, see there. You’re off again. You either run out or
fake your way out or reason your way out. What are you afraid of?”

She tried to rise, but he wouldn’t let her go. “I want an
answer first.”

“I don’t know. It’s just this feeling creeps up on me, a
sense that something bad will happen if I do.”

“And it’s like that with everyone?”

“Well no.” She fidgeted, kept her chin tucked to her chest.

“Maille, love. Trust me. Tell me. Help me understand.”

“With everyone…well not really everyone. With the, I mean
my…my boyfriend. It wasn’t exciting. I mean I just wanted it to end and he
never noticed when I pretended.”

“I notice when you do.”

She swallowed noisily. “Sorry.”

“And this boyfriend who doesn’t notice, he is what you
want?”

“It doesn’t matter what I want because he broke it off for
someone he really wanted later on.”

“Ah, so this doom you feel. It’s only with me and you don’t
think what happened with him has something to do with it.”

“No.”

“Care to put that to the test?”

“Haven’t we done that a couple of times tonight?”

He chuckled. “You decimate my ego.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”

“No apologies. I deserve it. Believe me I do.” He captured
both her hands and brought them to his lips. Held them there. Reverent.