The horse flicked an ear at her approach.
“I beg your pardon,” she told it and took the man’s hand.
“Steady.” He tugged.
She felt the pull in her shoulders and gasped, more disoriented than alarmed as he swung her up and over. Somehow he lifted and turned her so that both her legs were on one side of the horse and her buttocks pressed his thigh on the other.
Morwenna had never been on horseback before. She clutched the man’s coat as the gray horse tossed its head. The ground seemed very far away.
But his chest was hard and unbudging at her back. The warmth of his body, the strength of his arms, enveloped her.
“Comfortable?” his voice rumbled in her ear.
She nodded, her fingers relaxing their grip on his sleeve. The muscles of his thighs shifted, and the horse stepped forward.
She sat very still, absorbing a swarm of new sensations, most of them pleasant. He was so very close, touching her. Surrounding her.
“Hobson tells me he has not seen you in the village before,” he remarked conversationally.
Morwenna straightened her swaying seat. She must remember not to get too comfortable. Her lover was human and male, which made him tractable, but he was far from stupid.
“No.”
“So you are new to the area,” he said, still in that not-quite-questioning tone.
She had no fixed territory. Unlike the selkie, who alternated between seal and human shape, the finfolk did not need to come ashore to rest. Their ability to take their chosen form in water gave them greater range and freedom than the other children of the sea. But their fluid nature made them even more susceptible to the ocean’s lure. Dazzled by life beneath the waves, they could forget their existence onshore, losing the will and finally the ability to take human form.
Even her brother admitted that time on land kept them safe. Kept them sane.
“I am visiting,” she explained.
“You must have friends nearby, then. Or family. You said you live alone.”
She squirmed on her perch above the horse’s neck. Most men were too distracted by sex to pay attention to anything she said. How inconvenient—how flattering—to find one who actually listened.
“Family.” Was that enough to satisfy him? “My brother.”
The horse lurched up the track that climbed the bluff. Water boomed in the caves as the tide rolled in.
“Older or younger?” the man asked.
Her brow puckered. She could feel his body heat through her dress along one side, his arm, strong and warm across her lap. Was all this chatter really necessary? He had not talked this much while they were having sex. Perhaps she should suggest they have sex again.
She eyed the distance to the ground and the cliffs that plunged to the sea. Perhaps not on horseback.
“We are twins,” she said.
“You are close, then.”
The children of the sea did not bind themselves with family ties as humans did. But she and Morgan were among the last blood born of their kind, fostered together in the same human household until they reached the age of Change. For centuries, he had been her playmate, her companion, her second self.
She nodded.
“This brother . . .” he persisted, following some linear train of thought, as men and humans did.
Morwenna sighed.
“He does not object to your living alone?”
She grinned. “Oh, he objects. Frequently. Recently. Yesterday, in fact.”
The arms around her relaxed. “He was your visitor yesterday. The man you were expecting.”
“Yes. Morgan thinks I should return with him to court to—” Whelp babies, she almost said. “To be with my own kind. He does not think I can make a life for myself here.”
“So you went to the village today to prove him wrong.” His voice was dryly amused.
“Something like that,” she admitted. She turned her head to smile at him, pleased by his perception. His brown eyes were steady on hers, flecked with green and gold like the surrounding hills.
She felt a quiver in her stomach deeper than desire. Inside her something clicked like a key turning in a lock, like a door opening on an undiscovered room. Her heart expanded. Her breath caught in dismay.
Oh, no.
He did not know her. He could not know her. He was human and she . . .
“Tell me about your family,” she invited hastily.
Get him talking about himself. Men liked to do that. She would rather be bored than intrigued by him.
“There isn’t much to tell,” he responded readily enough. “My father was a gentleman—a distant connection of the Ardens, as it turned out—who married a merchant’s daughter. I was their only child. They died together of a fever when I was sixteen, and, having no other prospects, I ran off to be a soldier.”
So he was essentially alone. Like her. She pushed the thought away.
“Do you like being a soldier?”
He was silent so long she thought he would not answer. She told herself she was not interested.
“I liked the order of it,” he said at last. “The sense of purpose. The responsibility.”
To have a purpose . . . She could hardly fathom it. “My existence would seem very frivolous to you.”
“Ladies are more restricted in their occupations.”
“I am not restricted.” She saw the frown forming on his brow, the questions gathering in his eyes, and added, “But I can see the appeal of feeling a part of something larger than oneself.”
“Yes,” he said. “I did not always like my job. Killing is an ugly business. But I liked doing my job well.”
How very odd he was.
How attractive.
The gray horse crested the bluffs. The sea sparkled to the western isles and beyond. Morwenna lifted her face, letting the wind snatch away her thoughts. The briny breeze mingled with the wool of his coat, the sweat on his skin, the scent of his horse. Sea smells, earth smells, animal smells, blended like water and wine. She drank them in, holding them inside her until the sky spun around her and she was dizzy with lack of oxygen.
She released her breath on a puff of laughter.
The man Major was watching her, a bemused expression on his face.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He shook his head. “It’s just . . . It’s you.”
She raised both eyebrows in question.
“You seem to enjoy things so much,” he said.
“Things?”
He gestured at the sunlit hills and bright water. “Everything. Life.”
She did not understand. “Is not existence meant to be enjoyed?”
“Not for most people.”
“Not for you,” she guessed.
He did not speak.
An unfamiliar tenderness unfurled inside her. She cupped his face in her hand, tracing the line beside his mouth with her thumb. “We must see what we can do to change that.”
His chest rose sharply with his breath. He angled his head, brushing her mouth with his. He kissed her once, again, warmly, softly, sweetly enough to steal her soul through her lips. She trembled.
Assuming she had a soul.
He raised his head, a curve to his lips, a troubled expression in his earth brown eyes. “I did not escort you home to seduce you.”
Her pulse pounded. As if he could, she thought with desperate pride.
“Then I suppose I must seduce you.” She paused before adding wickedly, “Again.”
Her heart lurched at his slow, wry smile. “I am at your service always.”
She chuckled against his mouth.
They rode down the hill together, his arm holding her secure against him, the horse swaying beneath them. They did not speak. Morwenna felt oddly breathless. She was used to lust, to the rush to rut. There was something new and delicious about this slow, sizzling delight, this gradual buildup to the act of sex. Her blood hummed in anticipation. Riding cocooned against his strength, she had time to savor her arousal.