“It’s not her style.” I kissed his chin. “What do you say? Be seen in public with me? And maybe vouch for me to the Lordens? This will be easier if they don’t hate me.”
“I’ll try,” he said, a deep fondness in his voice. “Are you planning to charge out and save the world tonight?”
“No. I can’t exactly visit the Undersea, and I know where the Lordens will be tomorrow night. I can meet with them then. Besides, it’s late. It’d be nice to start a crisis without a side order of sleep deprivation for once.” Fae society essentially shuts down when the sun comes up. If we were going to go to war, it wouldn’t be until late afternoon at the absolute earliest. Plenty of time for sleep . . . and other things.
“Can I stay the day?”
I smiled. “Like I’d let you leave?”
Connor didn’t answer me in words. Instead, he kissed me hard, lifting my feet off the floor in the process. I responded by kicking off my shoes and locking my legs around his waist, grabbing hold of his sealskin belt again, this time for traction, and kissing him back, trying to grind myself all the way into him. He carried me down the hall like that, kissing me all the while, like he thought I might have forgotten how he felt about me sometime in the last five minutes.
I barely had the presence of mind to pull one hand free of his hair and slam the bedroom door before any of my pets could follow. I really didn’t care if Cagney and Lacey were spying for Tybalt, but there were some things he just didn’t need reported to him.
Connor kept backing up until he hit the bed and sat down, leaving me sitting in his lap. I unwound my legs so that I was straddling him, peeling his shirt off over his head at the same time. He was more than willing to help, especially since it meant he could balance the scales by unbuttoning my shirt and tossing it to the floor. I kissed him again while he worked the clasp on my bra with fingers that were surprisingly dexterous, considering that they were webbed all the way to the first knuckle.
Both of us were naked to the waist when he paused, giving me a sidelong look that made me glad I was already sitting down. I’d waited for a long, long time to see that expression on his face. Now that I saw it on a semi-regular basis, it was one of my favorite things in the world.
Then his hands were busy with the strap on my knife belt, and I forgot about anything beyond getting both of us as naked as possible, as fast as possible.
Selkies keep all their magic in the sealskins they carry with them. That meant that no matter what we did, Connor kept his belt somewhere on his body, keeping himself tied to Faerie. I barely even noticed anymore. His jeans joined mine on the floor, and then it was just us, tangled so tightly together that it would have taken an act of Oberon to pull us apart.
He grunted when he came, the sound a close cousin to a seal’s bark. I just moaned, rocking harder before the movement died. We’d timed things exactly right. The sun was just starting to crest when we pulled apart . . . and then the pressure of sunrise slammed down, burning the magic out of the world.
I buried my face in Connor’s shoulder, struggling to breathe. Sunrise doesn’t hurt as much as it used to, but it still incapacitates me, and it still hurts like a bitch. Connor put his arms around me, holding tight. Skinshifters like the Selkies don’t feel the dawn the way that the rest of us do. It hurts them. It just doesn’t render them completely useless.
The pressure faded, leaving the air ashy with the taste of dying magic. I coughed, curling against Connor and breathing the reassuring sea-salt scent of his skin as I drifted into an uneasy sleep.
The quality of the light filtering through the curtains was dusky when I woke: Lewis Carroll’s classic golden afternoon. The sheets were twisted around my waist, evidence of a restless day’s sleep. Connor stirred beside me. I snuggled against him. “You up?”
“Mmm.”
One Salt Sea: An October Daye Novel
Seanan McGuire's books
- Atonement
- Gone with the Wolf
- Just One Song
- Lone Wolf (Shifters Unbound)
- Of One Heart
- One Desert Night
- One More Kiss
- One More Sleepless Night
- One Night of Misbehavior
- One Night Standoff
- One Texas Night
- Only Love (The Atonement Series)
- Someone I Used to Know
- Sweet as Honey (The Seven Sisters)
- The Lone Rancher
- When Love's Gone Country
- Campbell_Book One
- Top Secret Twenty-One
- One Night with Her Ex
- One Lavender Ribbon
- What the Greek's Money Can't Buy
- The Bone Orchard: A Novel
- Just One Kiss
- Ruin: Part One
- Just One Day
- BROKEN AND SCREWED(Broken_Part One)
- Driven(book one)
- Only One (Reed Brothers)
- Arouse: A Spiral of Bliss Novel (Book One)
- Honeysuckle Love
- The House of the Stone
- A Man for Amanda
- Dance Upon the Air
- Moon Island(Vampire Destiny Book 7)
- A game of chance(MacKenzie Family Saga series #5)
- Death Angel
- Loving Evangeline(Patterson-Cannon Family series #1)
- A Changing Land
- A Clandestine Corporate Affair
- A Gentleman Never Tells
- An Inheritance of Shame
- And Then She Fell
- Anything but Vanilla
- Anything for Her
- Anything You Can Do
- A Rancher's Pride
- A Stranger at Castonbury
- An Act of Persuasion
- An Unsinkable Love
- Angel's Rest
- Be Good A New Adult Romance (RE12)
- Beauty and the Blacksmith
- Beauty and the Sheikh
- Blood and Kisses
- Captain Durant's Countess
- Cardwell Ranch Trespasser
- Cavanaugh on Duty
- Chances Are
- Cinderella and the Sheikh
- Currant Creek Valley
- Cowboy Enchantment
- Dance With Me
- Dangerous Refuge
- Dicing with the Dangerous Lord
- Down and Dirty (Dare Me)
- Ein Mann fur alle Lagen
- Emancipating Andie
- Entanglement (YA Dystopian Romance)
- Forever and a Day
- Grace Anne
- Guardian Wolf
- Her Hesitant Heart
- Her Man in Manhattan
- Highland Defiance
- Meant-To-Be Mother
- Highland Heiress
- Highland Master
- Highlander Most Wanted
- Hotter than Texas (Pecan Creek)
- Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.)
- Lady Vivian Defies a Duke
- Lanterns and Lace
- Leather and Lace
- Lightning and Lace
- Lost and Found
- Meant to Be (Heaven Hill Series)
- More Flirts! 5 Romantic Short Stories
- More Than One Night
- Need A Want Companion Novel
- Night Maneuvers
- No Stranger to Scandal
- Norma Jean
- NYC Angels Flirting with Danger
- Once and Again
- Operation Endurance
- Radiant
- Real Romance
- Rock and a Hard Place
- Roman Holiday
- Sand Angel