Page 34 of Catch of a Lifetime
I went down to meet the frisky surf, hair tossed into my eyes by the even friskier offshore bluster. The cold wind slapped great handfuls of yellow foam clean off the caps of the waves and sent them skating past me up the dark, wet sand.
I walked the full length of the beach, all the way down to the cluster of rocks at the far end where the sand ended and the land jutted out into the sea. It was significantly warmer once I was in the shelter of the rocks and, after all that bluster, almost eerily quiet.
Leaning my arse against a rock that topped me by a good two feet, my wind-chapped and freezing hands tucked in my pockets, I heaved a sigh.
The initial hurt and upset over what had happened in my bedroom had faded somewhat. The confusion remained.
While I understood that Dave had needed to get back to the sea, I didn’t understand why he was staying away. I didn’t understand how hecouldstay away, when I ached for him.
The sullen grey sky was lightening, the dull pewter gaining a soft, pearly lustre. At this time of year you could start out wishing that you’d worn gloves and a hat, and by the time you returned home you were sweating and stripped down to your t-shirt. There was a reason I favoured zip-off cargo trousers. I could start off in boots, thick socks and trousers, and return barefoot in shorts.
I moved on to wander through the rocks, stepping over gleaming green tangles of bladder wrack and pausing now and then to inspect the rock pools as the tide continued to draw in. The last rock before the point where the beach ended in a solid cliff up to the headland had the largest pool of all. I bent over, hands on my thighs, and stared into the placid water. Instead of barnacles and seaweed, or a crab and some left-behind fish, I saw myself.
It wasn’t my reflection.
It was a jarring collection of angles and light, my image shattered apart like a migraine. I was made up of shards of shifting colour—pale skin that hadn’t had a chance yet to warm in the summer sun; the beige of my cargo trousers; the navyof my anorak; the black of my wind-tossed hair. Dominating all was the dove-like silvery grey which was how Dave saw my eyes.
Because this odd creature, not recognisably human to me, was how I appeared through Dave’s eyes.
This was him, looking at me.
My head came up and I scanned the rocks. “Dave!”
Water splashed loudly out at sea. It was the only sign that he was—or had been—near.
When we’d first had penetrative sex, not only had Dave stuck his dick in me, he’d stuck his fangs in me. He’d bitten deep and left a scar that, when I pressed it, sometimes showed me images.
Despite my irritated instruction not to, Jerry insisted on calling the scar my magic button.
To begin with, I’d thought that the images I saw were my fevered, lovesick fantasies. Then I segued into thinking that I was having a fun little breakdown. Even now, I found it hard to accept. I did accept it, obviously. But it was hard. A mental bond that allowed me brief glimpses of the world through someone else’s eyes was a hard sell—a lot harder than believing that my life partner was an honest-to-god merman.
I couldn’t really question that.
Not when he’d held me in his arms, kissed me, and slid inside me, and he’d done it all underwater, with a tail and gills.
If I pressed the scar and thought of him, I could bring up images on purpose. Sometimes, as had just happened, the flashes of what Dave was seeing or doing came out of nowhere. I didn’t know what caused them, though I suspected it happened when he thought of me.
Resting my fingers at the base of my neck where the scar was, I closed my eyes.
I slumped.
He’d swum off. He’d gone far; the water surrounding him was deep and dark.
And he was busy.
I watched through his eyes as he arrowed through the water in a blinding rush of speed, slicing through as he chased after a glitter ahead of him that turned out to be a group of fish that he?—
I snapped my eyes open and shook my head to clear it.
Nope.
I did not need to see that, thank you.
The rain came back and the tide came in. I stood and gazed out to sea.
He was still here.
That was all that mattered.
