Page 29 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

A war raged inside of Jory at that moment. On the one side, her rational, wounded brain was shrieking at her to put as much distance as possible between them. To scream at him and claw at him and make him feel every bit of her pain and loneliness. That side screamed about his empty chest and expensive cologne and bottled blood and how she didn’t know a single thing about him anymore and how she was righteously, incandescentlyfuriouswith him.

But on the other side of the battlefield was the part of her that had loved him enough to give up everything for him, who had loved him enough to beg a god for a miracle, to mourn him for a millennium. The side that looked into his stormy gray eyes and couldn’t believe that he was here either. Across millennia, across continents, across lifetimes and life spans.

It was that side that had her reaching up with a hesitant hand to stroke the stubble on his cheek, so familiar and yet so strange at the same time. He groaned like a contented animal and leaned into her touch, a sound so embedded in her memories that fresh tears sprang to her eyes.

“Why are you here, Callum?”

He brought his hand up to her cheek, their bodies mirrored. His hand was cold, and she swallowed against the lump in her throat at the feeling of that coolness against her skin. He’d always been so warm. Like a blaze on a summer night. She’d tucked her hands and feet under and all around him in bed while he groused about how cold they were. But he’d let her do it anyway. He’d let her steal his warmth.

But he had none to offer her now. Only cold hands and an empty chest.

She leaned in anyway. Because she liked to torment herself or because she couldn’t not, she didn’t know. But she leaned into his palm. He brushed a thumb under her eye, sweeping the moisture away. Another familiar gesture. It felt as natural to let him do it as it had to let him hold her.

And so she let him. Just for a minute, she told herself. She let him wipe away her tears and take a half step closer. She let him cradle the back of her head with his other hand. She let him draw her closer to his empty chest.

While that formidable, fighting side of her brain screamed that she should run, she let him lower his head and press his mouth against hers, shivering when he groaned like he’d found an oasis after days in the desert. She wrapped her arms around his neck. And she let herself kiss him back. Just for a minute, she told herself. Just for a moment she would let herself feel like she had before. The emptiness, the anger, the despair would all be there in a minute.

11

Callum wrapped Marjory up in his arms, pulling her flush against his chest, feeling the strong contours of her body against his. She let out a breathy little sigh as she twined her arms around his neck and pressed into his kiss. The slick slide of her tongue against his lips made his knees momentarily weak.

“Marjory,” he murmured against her mouth before chasing her tongue with his own.

She pulled back enough to say, “It’s Jory now.”

Jory.He didn’t know what to think of it. Marjory was the most beautiful name he had ever heard in all his life. It was lyrical and lovely and the kind of name that required you to chew it a bit even as it rolled easily over tongue and teeth and lips. It was the name for a queen. For a goddess. Hadn’t she been just that to him? His goddess, rising from the sea to save his life, to drag him back to the land of the living the way she’d dragged his half-dead body across that beach so many years ago?

Maybe shewasa goddess. Maybe she always had been. He had no way of knowing. BecauseJoryhad so many secrets. Which, of course, meant that his Marjory had too. He didn’t know what to do with that. He didn’t know what to do with her, Because this new person, thisJory, was a stranger to him. He wanted to hate her. But when had he ever gotten what he’d wanted since?—

She bit at his bottom lip, her sharp teeth nipping. He groaned and pulled her tighter against him.

Jory. It was shorter. Without the soft yawn of theMarbefore it, it slid off the tongue like a blade. Sharp. Honed. Without any attempt at pretense or nonsense. Perhaps it suited her after all. Because the woman in his arms now was sharp like a dagger.

Perhaps that part was his fault. Perhaps he was the stone that had sharpened the blade. Perhaps his abandonment had given her that cutting edge.

“Jory,” he whispered, and she pulled herself closer against him again, kissing him with more fervor. Or was it fury? So be it. He was furious too.

She moaned softly into his mouth, and he pivoted their bodies, pressing her back against Hank’s shed. He reached behind her, palming above the back of her knees, and lifted her. Her legs wrapped tightly around his waist, and he drove her against the siding.

As he kissed her, he remembered one of his bouncers talking to a bartender about “putting a date through the wall during sex.” He smirked, thinking that while his mortal bouncer would have had to work very hard to do that, it would be no trouble at all for Callum to put Jory through the whole goddamn shed and out the other side.

“What’s so funny?” Mar—Jorysnapped at him.

He almost lied. It was on the tip of his tongue to say something about being ticklish—he always had been—but he decided against it. Hadn’t there been enough untruths between them?

“I was just thinking about one of my employees bragging about?—”

“You’re thinking about an employee right now? I can—oh.”

He ground his hips against hers roughly and set his teeth against her throat. Gently. So very gently. Not enough to hurt or evenhintat hurt, but enough. Her words died in her mouth with a moan. He felt his hands shake. The last time his teeth had been against her throat, he’d… he couldn’t think about it.

But now, he scraped his fangs against her racing pulse before latching on with his lips and sucking gently—a kiss, not a bite.

“I cannae believe it,” he whispered against her throat.

Jory swallowed, her throat bobbing against his kissing lips. “Don’t,” she hissed.

He pictured her snarling. He pictured them both snarling, circling one another in a rage that was nearly a thousand years built, one tear at a time. They kissed like that, all teeth and anger and anguish. It was not a lover’s kiss.