Page 30 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

Jory dropped her head back, banging it against the metal siding of the shed, and Callum instinctively brought a hand behind it, to cradle it. Because while he knew it would take a hell of a lot more than a shed to break Jory, while he wasfuriouswith her, he couldn’t bear the thought of her being harmed, even by accident.

He rolled his hips gently, finding a rhythm. Jory’s breath came in short, sharp gasps. “Do ye remember the day that I came home from being away, and ye missed me so much that you met me at the door naked as the day ye were born and I took you against the open doorframe?”

Her moan sounded like a sob. She grabbed his cheeks between her palms and pulled his face toward hers, kissing him desperately.

“Because I remember, Jory,” he said, her name still foreign on his tongue. Why couldn’t she have stayed there? Why couldn’t there have been a solid door between her and what he’d become? Why couldn’t she have told him what she?—

“Shut up,” she growled. “Just shut up and kiss me. I don’t want to talk. I hate you, Callum MacLeod. I hate you so fucking much.”

His hand left the back of her head and returned to her thigh, kneading it firmly. But he did as she asked, kissing her like it was the last chance he’d get. Because he knew that it very well might be.

He moaned into her mouth as she ground hard against him, writhing in his arms. Across the yard, on the other side of the shed, Callum heard Esther go into the house. He heard Hank collect empty bottles and then cross the yard to the shed. He heard the recycling bin lid lift, but then there was silence on the other side.

Just then, Jory bit down on his lower lip. Hard.

“Jory,” he groaned softly.

“Shut up,” she panted.

“Jory,” he whispered, his lips skating over her jaw. “Tha mi gad ionndrainn.”

It was true. He did miss her. He missed her like he missed the smell of heather and the simplicity of their life before where he’d lived by his sword for short spans of time and then lived for her the rest of his days. Even if he was livid, he could admit it. That longing for what had been, for her, had defined nearly his entire existence.

He heard the recycling bin close, but Hank’s steps did not retreat. Jory was oblivious, kissing his neck, dragging her lips across his skin over his collar and whimpering every so often as she did. He squeezed her ass once more before pulling his head back.

In Gaelic, he said, “I should go. I shouldnae have stayed.”

She stared at him as if he’d slapped her. And maybe he had. It seemed that all he could do was hurt her without meaning to. He never, ever,evermeant to. But that didn’t negate anything. Well meaning didn’t mean well done.

“I want…” he trailed off, looking into her emerald-green eyes, bright and otherworldly in the darkness. Too bright to be human. They always had been, hadn’t they? Why hadn’t he noticed that before?

There were so many secrets, and he was angry. He was more than angry. He wasenraged. But even with that anger boiling just below the surface, he could admit that he loved her. He’d never stopped.I don’t want to talk. I hate you, she’d said. She’d meant it too.

“I shouldnae have kissed ye. You hate me. It was wrong to… take advantage of old chemistry. I just…. I missed you so goddamn much. I never stopped. But you have a life. Without me. And I should do the gracious thing and let you get back to it. I’ll leave tonight.”

He heard Hank turn to walk away from the other side of the shed, and he bent at the waist to set Jory down, but she gripped his coat in her strong fingers and levered herself against his chest, her nose touching his as she hissed, “Not until you tell me where it is, you bastard.”

12

Jory had had lovers. There had been the Lycan prince she’d met while traveling through the Highlands. The relationship wasn’t destined to last, but they’d passed an enjoyable fifty years together before he’d met his fated mate in the middle of a dark forest under a full moon in a turn of events that felt almost overwhelmingly cliché.

She’d lived with an exiled demon on the Isle of Wight for another hundred years or so. Halphas was a munition and weapon supplier for Hell. He’d been exiled to earth for losing a battle and forbidden to do what he did best—wage war—for one hundred years.

They’d both been angry at their circumstances, their losses. It had been enough to bind them. His punishment was peace, and they’d found it together for a century. But on the last day of his hundredth year, he’d wrapped his rangy arms around her, called her his bigliad, his comforter, kissed her forehead, and been swallowed whole by a flash of flame and smoke. He’d liked her well enough to feel guilt for leaving, but not enough to stay.

She hadn’t loved either of them, Halphas or the Lycan prince. Not like she’d loved Callum. They’d been… companionable, which is why it hadn’t devastated her when they’d gone. But they’d still left. Jory had stood in yet another empty seaside cottage, this one smelling of brimstone and magic. Alone.

There’d been a vampire chimney sweep in London and a witch in Paris and a brief dalliance with a fae couple in Germany that had been as toxic as it had been thrilling. She’d had plenty of lovers. But nobody, mortal or otherwise, had ever made her body feel like she would catch on fire like Callum MacLeod. When he’d kissed her, when he pressed her against the shed, so strong in how he held her, every single nerve in her body had lit up like a wildfire.

As her body slid against Callum’s with so much familiarity that it made her ache, she could admit how desperately lonely she’d been. And now he was going to leave.Again.So be it. But she’d be damned if she let him leave without telling her where to find the sealskin. For centuries, she had searched, listening for news of it. But she had never found it. And eventually, she’d left Europe and found her way here, to the Pacific Northwest, to a place where the waves crashed loudly against the rocks and the wind whipped the coast and the trees grew lush and green and silent.

But all of it, absolutely all of it, had been in service of going home. Biding her time until she could return to the sea, to her family, to herreallife. That mission felt all the more essential since she’d learned that the life she’d left all of it for, the life she’dthoughtshe had, had been a lie.

Callum MacLeod would not be leaving without telling her where she could find her ticket back.

They were nearly nose to nose now, her breath making clouds in the cold air, his breath… nonexistent. But that crackling tension sparkled between them like heat lightning, and it would be so easy, so very easy, to close that breath of distance and kiss him again.

She gripped his coat in her fingers, feeling the artificial down compress within her grip.