A - Immortal Sea

Only him.

The thought was humbling and strangely arousing. She was not simply hungry for sex, Morgan realized. For whatever

reason, she wanted him . She had chosen him .

Which meant there was more involved here than a moment‟s comfort or the easing of lust. The act took on weight,

substance, significance.

Morgan felt a flicker of panic. For the first time, he doubted his ability to give her what she needed. He only knew he felt

compelled to try.

She raised her chin another notch. “If you‟ve changed your mind . . .”

“Do I look,” he demanded, “as though I have changed my mind?”

Her gaze fell to his ruddy cock, jutting proudly from between his thighs. “No,” she admitted.

“Perhaps,” he suggested, only half joking, “I am simply intimidated by your trust in me.”

She smiled wryly. “You don‟t appear particularly intimidated either.”

Indeed, under her gaze, he was swelling, hardening further.

“Not on the outside,” he acknowledged. “But how lowering if you concluded, after so long a wait, that your patience was

not adequately rewarded.”

With relief, he watched the light spring back into her eyes. “Maybe—after so long a wait—I won‟t be very picky. Either

way, it‟s my choice.”

He really did like her, he thought. Even now, she took responsibility for her actions and reactions on her own shoulders. It

made them equal in a way they had not been sixteen years ago.

“Shall we put it to the test, then?” he asked.

Wordlessly, she held up the condom.

He had never acquiesced to a partner‟s demands or desires before. But Elizabeth was not like any other partner. For the

first time, sex was not about taking what he wanted, but about giving what she needed. He could do this for her. He could give

her one less thing to worry about tonight.

He took the foil packet from her hand.

Of course, being Elizabeth, she was not passive. As soon as he opened the packet, her hands were there. Her head bent

gravely to her task, her smooth hair sliding forward. Her fingers stroked and encircled his aching shaft, pushing the sheath

firmly to its base. When she was done, she cupped his stones gently in her hand, scraped her nails lightly over him. Exquisite

sensation shot from his balls to his brain.

He clenched his fists in near agony. “I promised to make your wait worthwhile. I‟ll have no chance at all if you do that.”

She shook back her hair and smiled up at him, her eyes gleaming in the dark. “Maybe I‟m tired of waiting.”

She was tired of waiting, tired of thinking. She wanted to feel something besides responsible and alone.

Maybe Morgan wouldn‟t give her what she needed in the long run. But he was exactly what she wanted tonight.

She was no longer a naïve twenty-one-year-old dreaming of adventure, no longer a hopeful bride dreaming of forever. She

was done with dreams.

Tonight, she would take what she could get: tenderness, trust, companionship, sex.

Her heart hammered. And Morgan could give them to her.

With her fingertips, she explored him, learning his textures. Sleek and then rough, cool and then hot, silky smooth and

unyielding as stone. She rubbed her cheek against his stomach. She loved the way he smelled, musky and male.

Expelling a harsh breath, he caught her wrists and pulled her hands away from his body.

Startled, she looked up. She couldn‟t see well. Only his body, smooth and strong and pale against the night, the gleam of

his eyes, the glint of the medal on his chest.

It was Copenhagen all over again.

She pushed the thought away. No, it wasn‟t. She knew what she was doing this time. She knew him.

“I want you.” His low voice resonated through her.

She quivered like a violin string in the dark. Deliberately, she smiled. “Then take me.”

He swooped. The sky swung and her world tilted as the hammock dipped and climbed like a skiff in a storm. His hands, his

mouth, streaked everywhere, fast and hot and even a little rough. Pummeled by sensation, saturated with pleasure, she could

do nothing but hold on and respond.

She heard herself cry out as the whirlpool dragged her under. Her body arched, her fingers tangled in the webbing. A

quickening pulse beat in her blood.

Take me now.

She felt him at the entrance to her body, heat to her heat, hard to her soft. Her eyes slid closed.

“With me,” he demanded. “Elizabeth.”

His command recalled her from the depths. She opened her drowned eyes and saw him above her, the moonlight on his

shoulders, his face a dark blur, her fantasy lover made flesh, pushing inside her, plunging inside her. Real. Here. Now.

The shock contracted her stomach, flung her to another peak. Her short nails gripped his sides as he worked her, as she met

him, thrust for thrust, stroke for stroke. His feet braced on the deck, his hard hands bruising her hips, he pounded into her,

strong and relentless as the sea. She was drenched, battered, swept away.

Until the long crest rolled through her like a gathering wave and took them both.

12

ZACK HACKED THROUGH THE SEAMS OF THE CARTON, exposing the soup cans inside. Almost through his first

shift. Picking up the price gun, he shot numbers in a row: two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-nine .

Wiley‟s Grocery didn‟t have scanners in the checkout lines.

“No need for them,” George Wiley had explained earlier that evening as they were shifting cartons from the back room. “I

know my store. This isn‟t America, son.”

He meant the mainland.

I’m not your son, Zack thought.

A vision flashed into his brain of Morgan, tall and broad-shouldered, standing too close to his mother in the hall. His mom

had looked strange, not like a mother at all, her cheeks too pink, her eyes too bright.

Zack‟s chest tightened as if he‟d been running. He stabbed the gun down another row of cans. Two-sixty-nine, two-sixty-

nine, two-sixty-nine , and done.

Straightening, he slid the old cans to the front of the shelf and face out. Rotating stock, Wiley called it.

The work was physical. Mindless. Zack didn‟t have to think, just follow instructions. He liked that, liked working alone. At

the beginning of his shift, he‟d had to help Mr. Wiley haul boxes from the afternoon‟s delivery to the appropriate aisles. But

now Wiley was arranging displays at the front of the store. He was okay, even if he was overweight and going bald and

Stephanie‟s dad besides.

Zack‟s dad, his real dad, Ben, started losing his hair even before the chemo. You could see it in pictures, this dark, Wshaped hairline above a high forehead and warm brown eyes. The details of his father‟s face were fading away, blurred by

time, overlaid by images of his illness. Zack wasn‟t sure anymore what he remembered and what he‟d reconstructed from

photographs.

A picture of his dad sat on his dresser, taken on a fishing trip to Holden Beach when Zack was ten years old. His dad had

one arm around Zack‟s shoulders, and they were both squinting at the camera and grinning. Zack‟s hair was hidden by his ball

cap, and his skin had tanned a golden brown. They looked related, like father and son.