For the Taking. Lilian Darcy

hot meal for a while. A curry or a casserole. But I found…”

      Lass stopped. His face was wooden.

      “I’m boring you stupid with this,” she said.

      Lord, what was happening to her, confiding the petty details of her business to him like this? She was rattling on like a runaway train! She, solitary Lass Morgan, who rationed small talk as if words were an endangered species, and never had deeper conversations at all. She was babbling.

      Loucan laughed. “Wait until I tell you about my past life as a bond trader. That’ll bore you stupid. This is nice. It reminds me of…well, of some good times I had once, in America, hanging out with someone I liked.”

      She went still. “Don’t.”

      “Don’t what?” He kept on deftly cutting green pepper and slicing mushrooms with his big hands, while Lass set up the mixer to put together the day’s batch of scone dough. Her own hands were clumsy today, and she couldn’t seem to get the dough hook to click into its slot.

      “Don’t try and act as if we’re friends,” she said. “Don’t try to get through to me that way.”

      She dropped the metal mixing bowl and crossed the kitchen to the CD player. One press of a button brought music into the room—Susie’s favorite classic rock radio. Lass didn’t care what it was, as long as it was loud and fast and broke the illusion of intimacy.

      “Is that what you thought I was doing?” Loucan said. “Trying to get through to you?”

      “Yes. Weren’t you?”

      “I’m not a manipulative man, Thalassa. I don’t sneak my way into people’s good graces through flattery and insincerity.”

      His head was held at a proud angle, emphasizing the straight strength of his nose. His brown skin was incredibly smooth, considering he had to be forty years old by now. He was an able man in the prime of life, and Lass felt foolish at having accused him of behaving like a two-faced schoolgirl.

      She flushed and said weakly, “Don’t you?”

      “I go after what I want,” he continued. “But I do it openly. I’ve told you, we’ll talk at the end of the day, and then I’m sure things will get rocky and tense again.”

      “You got that right!”

      “I know you don’t want this to be happening. For now, if we can enjoy each other’s company, is that a sin?”

      “I’ll…I’ll get back to you on that,” she told him awkwardly. Lifting the lid of the big flour bin, she would gladly have crawled inside.

      A moment later, the driving, upbeat rhythm and lyrics of a song on the radio threw her back into gear at last. This was familiar. It was what she did every day, and if she didn’t get through the routine by ten or close after…

      Loucan needed her to tell him what to do from time to time, but apart from that she ignored him. She and Susie and Megan usually chatted a bit. Light stuff about local events and the doings of the women’s extended family.

      Susie and Megan always did most of the talking, while Lass asked just enough questions to keep the flow going. It was one of the things she liked about the two sisters—the easy flow of their chatter. Since she didn’t have to give away much of herself, it kept her feeling safe. Loucan wasn’t nearly such a restful presence.

      “What time do you usually get your first arrivals?” he asked at around quarter after ten. The clock above the old stone fireplace was ticking loudly, and the scones had just come out of the oven.

      “About now.”

      “I’ll wait tables while you take care of things in here. Is that okay?”

      “Yes.”

      If anybody ever showed up. She had been counting on a steady summer crowd today. Like the music, it would add a distance between the two of them that she increasingly needed. It would be ironic if this turned out to be one of their rare days when, for no reason that they could ever predict or discern, almost nobody came.

      She hated her awareness of Loucan. Tried to tell herself that it was purely self-defense, but deep down, she knew it was much more.

      Loucan was mer.

      Lass hadn’t seen a merman in twenty-five years, and she’d been just a child then. Over the past fifteen years of her adult life, she had never allowed herself to fall for a land-dwelling man. That one clumsy attempt at a relationship during her college years had quickly convinced her that Cyria was right on this issue. Physically, she and Gordon had never gotten beyond a few unsatisfying kisses.

      But Loucan was mer.

      That had to be the reason she was feeling like this.

      She was so conscious of exactly where he was in the big kitchen. So conscious of her own body—of its lush curves, of its weight and shape and the way it moved, of the sensitivity of her skin.

      In the days following one of her guilty trips to the ocean, she was always more sensitized, always yearned for…for something. For years this something had been quite nameless and out of reach. Painfully, frustratingly so. But suddenly now she understood.

      She wanted a man’s touch.

      She wanted the sensations of lovemaking that she’d only imagined and read about, never experienced. Cyria had told her it must not happen, not with a land-dwelling man. She’d always implied that one day, in the future, when King Okeana came for them and everything was safe, there would then be someone for Lass to give her heart to—someone in Pacifica. Unconsciously, she’d believed that, waited for that.

      And Loucan was mer.

      Mer, and the son of her father’s enemy. It was because of Galen and the escalating violence that her father had secretly sent all four of his children away, each with a different guardian, and each to a different part of the world. It was because of Galen that her mother had died.

      The hair on Lass’s arms and on the back of her neck stood on end, and her stomach began to churn.

      What am I thinking? she wondered. What kind of a trick is my body playing on me? I can’t start wanting him. I still don’t know why he’s really here. This instinct to trust him could all be coming from…from this physical frustration. Because he’s mer, and I want—I want… Oh lord, Cyria was wrong to tell me to live my life like this!

      Chapter Three

      “So is it often like that?” Loucan asked.

      “No, thank goodness.” Lass combed her hand through her hair several times. The gesture was jerky, as if she still expected her fingers to get tangled in the long, living strands that had recently reached to her thighs. As if she couldn’t get used to the change.

      She looked tired, and Loucan wasn’t surprised. It was nearly six-thirty. The kitchen was squeaky clean and the chairs were stacked on the tables. He’d just vacuumed the gallery floor, while Lass was still mopping the tearoom.

      They hadn’t had a single customer until noon, when three cars had pulled in within two minutes of each other. After that, it hadn’t stopped all day. Lass had shuttled back and forth between cash desk, kitchen and gallery, while Loucan had waited tables and washed dishes. He’d also sold two of the seascapes and a big and very ugly vase. He hadn’t told her about that yet, actually.

      He remedied the oversight, and Lass’s opalescent green eyes widened.

      “You sold that? The big—? The green—? With the knobbly things?”

      “Yep. That’s the one.”

      “Good grief, I thought I’d never get rid of that.” Her relief broke a little of the simmering tension between them—a tension they’d managed to put on hold since noon.

      She leaned on the mop handle. Her hands shook a little and she seemed