Celene closed her mouth over the junction between his neck and shoulder, licking, sucking, biting. He moved a hand from her back to cup the side of her face and lowered his lips over hers. Desire engulfed him. Hot, urgent, desperate, he sank his tongue into her waiting mouth.
She grappled with his ass, pulling his body hard against hers as her hips writhed and breath hitched in her throat. Tearing her mouth from his, she gasped. “Too long. It’s been too long.”
Liquid heat trailed the path of her mouth as she licked her way down his chest, stopping to tease his nipples. He kissed the top of her head and wove his fingers into her long hair. Every nerve came alive with wanting her, but it ran deeper than that. Touch was such a basic need, and he’d denied that essential part of his humanity—along with every other comfort.
For what?
No matter how much he gave the Celts, they took every shred—and him—for granted. He wanted to get a job, blend in with humans. Something mundane like driving a cab, or flipping burgers in a grill, but his requests were denied. The Celts provided for him. So long as they housed and fed him, why would he need to clutter his time with anything as humdrum as earning a living? What if they needed him, and he was in the middle of washing dishes in some nameless restaurant? He could almost hear Gwydion’s voice. See the master enchanter with a long-suffering look on his face—
He wiped his Celtic masters from his mind. This time was for him and Celene. No one else belonged in his head. Just because he’d chosen a semimonastic existence was no reason he couldn’t give her everything she needed. Months had passed since they’d last been together, maybe as much as a year. He moved back enough to fill his hands with her breasts, rubbing her erect nipples before he bent to suck on them, remembering the little biting motions she loved.
A low, guttural moan escaped her, and she threaded her fingers through his hair. Holding him against her breasts, she began to sing as he loved her. A series of low, sweet notes rose in cadence and intensity as she lost herself in his touch. He’d asked her about the music once, and she told him it was how sea people vocalized their joy. The music filled him with unbearable hunger—poignant, mind-bending need for another person’s touch.
Although he’d never done it before, he raised his voice and joined her song. The change was instantaneous. In that moment, he sensed her loneliness and isolation, twin to his own and recognized that both of them needed more kisses, more touches—even more than they needed sex.
“Lay on your belly.” His voice rasped with wanting her. He tore tufts of marsh grass and arranged them to make her a bed on a sandy stretch between rocks.
She lay down, continuing to sing. Angus sang too, as he straddled her and ran his hands down her back rubbing tension from her muscles. He followed his hands with his mouth and strung kisses across her shoulder blades and down the line of vertebrae from her neck to the curves of her ass. Between their song, the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips, and his cock getting stiffer by the moment, waiting became almost painful, yet he held back, not quite sure why.
The rhythm and cadence of her song shifted as he alternated his mouth and hands across the sculpted planes of her back. The intense pressure in his balls receded almost as if he’d reached a peak, though he hadn’t come. Maybe she sensed his need for warmth, contact, much as he’d sensed hers.
“Move off me so I can look at you.” Celene flipped over to face him, kneeling above her. Rose and gold splotched her pale skin, and a broad smile split her exotic, high-cheek-boned face. “Today was different. You sang with me. You’ve never done that before.”
He shrugged, suddenly self-conscious. “It felt right. Even though I wasn’t inside you, what happened between us felt right.”
She cocked her head to one side and trained her gaze on him. “Are you sure you don’t have sea blood?”
A flicker of annoyance at the Celts’ staunch refusal to disclose anything about his birth narrowed his eyes. “I have no idea what I am.” He ticked what he did know off on his fingers. “I’m not immortal, but I’ll live well beyond human lifespans. My magic is closer to seer and witch than anything else, yet I’m neither of those. The covens acknowledge me as one of theirs, but only because the local witches are too kind to tell me to go away. The time-travel portals accept me.” He shrugged again. “I don’t suppose knowing more would make a hell of a lot of difference.”
“You’re not from Scotland, even though you live there.” She stated it baldly, as fact.
He frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“Your speech. There’s something about the lilt of Scotland that’s impossible to rid yourself of. You don’t sound Irish or British, either, at least not from the time we live in.” Her nostrils flared. “Maybe that’s it.”
“Maybe what’s it?”
“You could be from the past, and not just a few years back, perhaps hundreds—or even more. I’m not old enough to recall what human speech sounded like then, but some Selkies are.”
“Fine.” Frustration tightened his chest, like it always did when the mystery of his origins became a point of discussion. “My first memories are when the god of the dead dragged me out of a time-travel portal when I was fifteen.”
“I’m sorry.” She draped a hand over his hip, cradling it. “I’ve upset you.”
He started to protest, but she silenced him with a look. “Don’t insult me with a lie, Angus, but you don’t have to talk about it, either. Such a pretty man.” She stroked hair back from his face. “With your deep brown hair and amber eyes. Did you know they shade to dark gold when you’re angry?”
She was trying to divert him with flattery, but he wasn’t buying it. “You have no idea what it’s like not knowing—” He shook his head, and the rest of his words died unspoken. It didn’t matter what she knew or didn’t know about him. She’d never be more than an occasional lover, and both of them knew it.
“It could be more,” she said softly, obviously having been in his mind.
Angus took her hands in his and gazed at her. “You get more of me than anyone, and you see how pathetically little that is. There’s nothing more to give.”
“There could be,” she persisted. “You could refuse next time they send you on—”
He bent toward her and laid a hand over her mouth. “I’m not free. Not now. Not ever.”
“I don’t understand.” She pushed his hand away and closed very white teeth over her full lower lip.
He smiled crookedly. “Not sure I do, either. Every man has a life’s work. No matter how I feel about it, this appears to be mine.”