Ocean's Surrender by Denise Townsend Read Free Book Online

“I’m from Milwaukee.”
    “Isn’t that…?”
    “A seal shapeshifter, yes.”
    River had only recently seen Ondine , and remembered her disappointment at the film’s ending. She’d wanted the girl to be magic, not something sordid and all-too-human.
    “What does that mean?” River asked, her emotions roiling. Fen felt trepidation–a natural reaction for a human faced with an alteration of their worldview. But he also felt excitement, interest, and a touch of joy, as if some deep-seated prayer of River’s had been granted to her.
    “If you mean how I work, I have this sealskin.” Fen reached up to where a sealskin did, indeed, lie underneath him. “If I don this, I’m a seal. If I take it off, I’m a man.” Fen’s hand moved from his skin to her face, only to playfully flick the tip of her nose with his thumb. River felt an answering shiver in her spine.
    “But what does it mean?” she repeated, at a loss for words.
    Fen studied the woman before him, and her emotions.
    “Ah,” he said. “You mean why am I here, and what do I want with you, and what will my being here mean for you and Jason?”
    River nodded, mutely.
    “What do you think it means, lass?” Fen asked, shifting forward ever so slowly so that his firm, lush lips were just inches from River’s own.
    “It means magic is real?” River asked first, and Fen smiled, desperately wanting to kiss her but wanting her to want it, as well.
    “You’ve always hoped it to be real, haven’t you?” he asked of her.
    She nodded, her eyes moving to his mouth.
    “Well, you were right, sweet girl. Magic is real.”
    “Are you all that’s out there?”
    “No. There are other selkies. And many other creatures.”
    “Are they all like…you?”
    “What do you mean, like me?”
    “I mean, you seem…good. I feel…safe. Are you making me feel this way?” At that question, River backed away a few inches, and Fen felt her searching for those barriers his revelation had finally burst through.
    “I’m not making you feel anything that’s not real,” Fen soothed, reaching up to run a hand gently down her arm, over her layers of clothing. His touch settled her, but she looked down at his hand as if surprised it could do so.
    “I am letting you feel what I feel. It’s like a broadcast. I’m opening my emotions to you. But you would feel anything that was there, whether positive or not. I mean you only good, so you feel that. But if I did mean you harm, you’d feel that too.”
    River felt Fen’s honesty as he spoke. She also knew that she’d face quite a philosophical conundrum if she ever tried explaining how this whole “I feel I can trust him because I can feel I trust him” worked.
    But it did work. All those well-honed knives of distrust and fear that had grown up inside of her withdrew in Fen’s presence.
    And how often did a girl meet a man who was really magic, anyway?
    “So you’re magic. And you’re good,” she said.
    Fen smiled. “I am magic. And I don’t know if I’m good, but I try to be. Although sometimes I can be very greedy.”
    Fen’s inhumanly dark gaze swept over River’s body in a possessive, hungry way that made her cunt clench. Fen lingered over her desire, pleased at how deeply and intensely she could feel. River would be a wonderful lover.
    “What else?” she asked, almost shyly.
    “Well, most of it you can guess. I’m of the sea—she’s my mother, my lover, my sanctuary. I’m only a guest on land.”
    Interesting, River though, filing that information away for later.
    “And why are you here?” she asked, realizing that Fen might have good intentions, but that she didn’t know the parameters of those good intentions.
    What if he thinks I need a supernatural babydaddy? Isn’t that what all the Fae did in the stories my mother read to me? Knocked up the humans, since they had trouble conceiving?
    The knives crept back into position as her wariness flooded through Fen’s empathic channels.
    “I’m