Martha glared at him, which had absolutely no effect on his exceedingly smug smile. “You people clearly watch too many telenovelas. All this fuss over nothing.”
Nonetheless, she took two of the champagne flutes, heading back outside. She found herself going against the tide, as other guests were heading into the main hall in expectation of the start of the dance. She didn’t recognize many of the faces; more people must have boated over from the mainland just for the evening. Martha’s skin prickled with the electric, feral energy of so many shifters gathered in one space.
Careful not to spill the drinks, she edged her way through the crowd, emerging back onto the veranda. The soft evening breeze should have been like a glass of cool water after the heady, pheromone-filled air inside…but the singing in her blood didn’t diminish one whit. Instead, the fizzing excitement in her veins only grew, sparkling like the champagne.
Settle down, you fool dog, she told her coyote firmly as she followed the curving veranda. Honestly, it was ridiculous. No man justified this much panting anticipation, not even-
Then she rounded the corner of the building, and saw him.
She damn near dropped the champagne glasses. He was standing half-turned, his face in profile to her as he looked out to sea. The light of the full moon highlighted the stark, rugged planes of his features, and touched his iron-gray hair with pure silver. It gleamed from the vambraces encasing his powerful forearms, and from the massive, intricately-wrought steel plates protecting his shoulders.
He was, quite literally, a knight in shining armor.
Or no, not a knight—something more primal, more powerful. He looked like some hero out of ancient sagas, a demigod of war. If she hadn’t known he was a flesh-and-blood man, she would have thought him made of marble and iron; a guardian statue, eternally ready to defend the island from any evil.
He’d told her he’d once been a king. Now, she believed it.
He turned his head, and his vast chest hitched as if he too had momentarily forgotten how to breathe. She shivered as his hungry gray eyes swept over her, slowly, from head to toe and back again.
“Thank you.” His rasping voice was even hoarser than usual, just a scrape of stone on stone.
It took her two attempts to unstick her own tongue from the roof of her mouth. “For what?”
He made the slightest gesture at her own body. “For this memory.”
He was impressed by her appearance? Martha stepped closer, drawn like a moth to a flame. She could scarcely believe that he was real. Only the fact that she still had both hands full stopped her from reaching out to touch him.
Although his armor covered his forearms and shoulders, only wide leather straps crossed his chest. His bare torso gleamed underneath, pale as marble in the moonlight. Where the straps met, over his heart, was a broad disc of silver, set with a single huge pearl clutched in the talons of an engraved sea dragon.
A belt worked with an intricate design of inlaid silver waves circled his waist. Form-fitting black leather pants clung to the hard curves of his thighs…and to other hard parts as well. Martha tore her eyes back upward, heat rushing into her face.
“Wh-what-“ She swallowed, and tried again. “What on earth are you wearing?”
One corner of his mouth lifted fractionally, the closest he ever seemed to get to a smile. “Nothing on earth. This is what I wear under the sea, on formal occasions.”
She blinked at him. “Well, life under the sea sure must be different to up here, is all I can say.”
“Yes.” There was a certain wry glint in his eye as he gestured at a couple of empty loops hanging from his belt. “Under the sea, I would go armed.”
Holy Mother of God. Martha had a sudden vision of him with a sword in his hand, sweat-stained and savage, and felt weak at the knees.
His shadow of a smile dropped away as he misinterpreted her stunned silence. “I am sorry. I have no other formalwear. If you no longer wish me to accompany you-“
“No! I mean yes! Uh, that is, I definitely still want you. That. The dance. Um.” Keeping hold of a train of thought was proving somewhat difficult. Martha struggled to pull herself back together, even though all she really wanted to do was stare at him. And then lick him. All over.
She cleared her throat, certain her own face must be flaming red. “Here,” she said, thrusting a champagne glass at him to cover her own confusion. “Let’s make a toast.”
He hesitated, eying the glass without reaching for it. “I thought that was something to do with bread.”
Her own mouth quirked. “Same word, different meaning. A toast is having a drink in honor of something.”
“Ah.” Very carefully, he took the glass from her. “And what shall we honor?”
Martha held her champagne up to him, and the moon. “To…memories. Old and new.”
“To memories,” he echoed softly.
Closing her eyes, Martha drank. The