Page 2 of Catch of a Lifetime
In the autumn, Dave left me and returned to the sea. In the spring, he came back. I ran down to meet him at the beach, he appeared from the waves like a sea god of ancient myth, and we spent the next week straight in bed. On the floor. In the garden.
Everywhere.
It was glorious.
It was?—
A sleek, dark head broke the surface of the choppy sea about a hundred feet out. I must have been looking the wrong way when he leapt, and missed it.
“Dave!”
He ducked beneath the waves and re-emerged waist-deep in the surf.
The delighted grin dropped clean off my face and I stared at him for a long, stunned minute.
Shit.
Shit.
“Dave!” I hurled myself at him. “What happened?”
I was pretty good in the water. I should be. I spent damn near six months of every year splashing around in it with my merman lover. In my desperation to reach him, however, all grace and coordination went right out the window. I tripped and fell, thrashed up to my feet, and flailed on.
Dave huffed a small laugh as he moved to meet me. It was a shadow of his usual obnoxious, seal-like bark, and he immediately winced and sucked in a sharp breath.
I stopped in front of him, hands held out just short of making contact. I wanted to grab him and hold on, but I couldn’t see where to do it that wouldn’t hurt. “Oh my god. Dave. What happened? What did this to you?”
His muscular torso was criss-crossed with ugly, open gashes. The edges of the wounds were jagged, as if something had…had ripped into him. They were sluggishly bleeding.
That wasn’t even the worst of it. Huge, oddly circular bruises the size of dinner plates went from one side of his waist, tracking up and over his chest to the opposite shoulder. The spacing of them was chillingly regular.
He caught my hovering hands in his and gripped tightly, pulling me closer.
“No!” I yelped, digging my heels in and resisting. “Don’t. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He bared his teeth and growled at me, continuing to exert pressure. The silvery gills that ran along the lines of his ribs fluttered as he gasped, then growled again.
I stopped resisting. “All right, all right,” I said. “Easy. We’re okay.”
We were not even a little bit okay.
Dave drew me in, stopping when there was a scant inch of space between our bodies. He curved his big shoulders and lowered his head, looking me over before he took my face between gentle hands, pulled me up onto my toes, and laid his lips softly on mine.
Oh.
Every time he came back to me, there it was. Right there: a dark, deep throb at my very core that rippled out through my blood and sang down every nerve. A realignment, a fundamental shift of my being. A click, a snap, a righting of my world.
It had never been like this, though.
Usually, he hauled me into his arms, wrangled me about, knocked the laughing breath out of me, rolled me under the waves, and then ran me up to the house to make love to me until I passed out.
Our reunion had never been slow and cautious. I’d never felt that realignment so clearly.
So deeply.
Dave made a soft noise into my mouth, that siren song of his.
Even this was different.
