Page 116 of 'Til All the Seas Run Dry

“You didnae feel welcome?”

“Of course I did.”

“Well, then, of course it’s your home. You ken I willnae stand in the way of you returning whenever you wish.”

“It’s not that,” she said, turning her face so that her forehead rested against his chest. “It just… it’s not myhomeanymore.”

He paused, for just the barest moment, before he rested his cheek against her crown. She felt the pause in his body, the way he went very still as he asked, “And… where is your home then, my love?”

“You,” she said, the word carried on breath.

His body relaxed against her.

“Jory,” he whispered, pulling back to look at her, and she met his stormy gray eyes, seeing him clearly even in the darkness.

His head lowered slowly until his lips skated over her cheek, forging a path to her mouth. He paused, their lips barely apart, foreheads pressed close.

“Callum?” she asked, his name spoken against his mouth. “Take me home.”

Faster than a flash, he scooped her into his arms and raced toward the house. Her giddy shriek carried on the wind because, as long as she lived, she didn’t think she’d ever get used to the feeling of flying that accompanied being carried by Callum at a full, immortal run.

Through the blur of his speed, she registered the opening of a door, its slamming behind them, a short hallway with another door at the end, a deep, green room with exposed beams. And then she was on a bed, the mattress soft beneath her as Callum pressed a gentle hand to her sternum, forcing her to lay back.

She complied, her body spread and bared to the warmth of the room. Callum was above her, surrounding her, his lips and teeth and tongue everywhere, cool breath and cooler moisture following in their wake as he licked the salt from her body with worshipful attention, from her throat to her toes. He dropped to his knees next to the bed and spread her legs, bracing her heels against his shoulders before leaning in and licking the salt from the very center of her with such gentle, persistent adoration that she was writhing and begging before it was done.

She scrabbled at his shoulders with desperate hands, and he complied, standing next to the edge of the bed and sliding into her clutching, wet heat in gentle, short thrusts until she dug her heels into his rear and pulled him close, until she felt the cool shift of his flexing body against the back of her thighs. He gripped her legs and made her body ache with fullness as he leaned forward and continued his maddeningly slow pace.

“Yours,” he said softly between thrusts, kissing the word against her throat, licking gently over the spot where his teeth had been before.

She sighed and sank heavily into that truth.

43

Jory and Callum stood in the alley behind the Wok and Roll Dumpling house in Seattle. Her sealskin was safely stowed in a locked steamer trunk, the key on a chain around her neck. The iron key was heavy, the bow intricately carved with filigree that had always reminded him of waves.

It was the best Callum had been able to source from his random collection of items at the house, and as he had slipped the chain over her head, he told her about using that trunk on the RMSCelticon a journey from Liverpool to New York and later, back again on the same ship. He knew she liked things that had stories. She always had.

Once, at a formal dinner, he’d been seated next to a sociologist who told him that humans were acquisitional creatures. They liked to collect. Trinkets. Memories. Experiences. People. And while Jory wasn’t human, she had always been like a magpie. On windowsills and shelves in their cottage long ago, there had been neat lines of shells and polished rocks, a bird skull bleached white by the sun, dried flowers, bits of glass tumbled smooth by the surf.

He knew that had led her to her business. Collecting fashion and treasures from wardrobes and days gone by. When she’d returned to their London hotel after visiting an estate sale, she’d been practically bouncing with excitement, having purchased a collection of immaculately preserved antique corsets, as well as capes, bolts of silk, and even a damask lover’s chair, with two seats placed in the bows of an s-shaped frame, from the days when courting couples were forbidden to touch but wanted to be near, to speak face-to-face. She’d told him about the items, but had been more excited to tell him how they came to be, who had worn them and used them, and the lives these items had lived. Lives she was going to renew.

And wasn’t that just like her? To breathe life into things that had been forgotten.

He looked over, and in the glow of the fluorescent spotlight outside the restaurant’s back door, he saw her fidgeting with the key, rubbing her thumb down the shaft as she stared out into the night. A rush of affection and something that felt like longing overcame him. That key that had traveled across the ocean and back again in his pocket once upon a time and had just yesterday traveled across the ocean again around her neck, her hand in his.

A misty drizzle made the air damp, and she shivered and leaned into his side. Not for warmth, surely, because he couldn’t offer her that, a fact that he didn’t think he would ever truly come to terms with. But he wrapped an arm around her and drew her close anyway. Because she wanted him to. Because he could.

Headlights appeared at the end of the alley as a car turned, and she held up a hand to shield her eyes. A black SUV slowly approached, Robbie’s head hanging out the driver’s side window and bouncy pop music blaring.

“Knock knock,” he said cheerfully, popping the trunk.

“Who’s there?” Jory answered with a laugh, and Callum loaded the luggage into the trunk.

“You.”

“You who?” Jory said as she climbed into the backseat.

“Yoo-hoo to you too!” Robbie said with a broad smile.