changed around them . . .
She sucked in her breath, gripping the stem of her wineglass. “Ben was there when it mattered. Zack is still adjusting to his
loss. He doesn‟t need another disruption or another disappointment in his life. He doesn‟t need you.”
“What of your needs?” Morgan asked. “This cannot be the life you envisioned for yourself.”
She gulped her wine to dispel the faint bitterness in her mouth. “My life is none of your business.”
“Look around you. You cannot be satisfied with this place.” His gaze flickered over the bar‟s clientele, his lip curling. “By
these people.”
She set her glass down with a snap. “I have work I love and children who need me. What do you have?”
He looked back at her, his eyes dark. Menacing. Sexual. “I can have whatever I want whenever I want it. Can you say the
same?”
His face was so cold, his body throwing off heat. Despite herself, she was shaken and attracted, her own body warming and
softening in response.
She must be out of her mind.
“You mean the waitress,” she said in a thin attempt at scorn.
“I mean sex.” His deep voice taunted her, plucking at her nerve endings. She trembled like a violin to the pull of the bow,
raw and roused, angry and achingly alive.
And that was absolutely unacceptable. She was not his instrument or his tool. He would not get to her child through her. Or
the lure of . . .
“Sex,” she repeated slowly, drawing the word out, testing it, tasting it in her mouth.
She felt the force of his attention, full-blown and intense. She smiled and slipped her foot from its shoe. “I can have sex
with whomever I want.”
With her bare foot, she touched his ankle, traced a line up his calf to his knee. His chest rose with one rapid breath, but he
did not move, did not shake his gaze from hers. Her heart pattered wildly.
In control, she reminded herself.
She pressed her arch to his thigh. His leg was hard as iron, his thigh heavy with muscle. She meant to turn him on. To turn
on him. But she was caught up in her sensual exploration, swept away by a quick surge of need, as riveted by this journey into
new territory as he.
She moistened her lips, her toes casting higher. His eyes blazed. He was . . . Oh, God, he was there, hot and hard under her
foot. Her toes curled.
“Whenever I want,” she said huskily.
His face was harsh. Focused. “My room is upstairs.”
His invitation jolted her. Temptation—to go with the flow, to follow the current of desire—tugged deep in her belly. Oh,
she wanted to. She wanted him.
Dropping her foot from his lap, she forced it into her shoe. She slid from the booth and stood looking down on him.
“But that‟s the difference between us.” She was amazed her voice could sound so cool, so steady, when she was boiling
and shaking inside. “I don‟t take something just because I want it,” she said and walked out.
5
PERHAPS THE SEA LORD WAS RIGHT, MORGAN mused as he strolled down the inn steps late the next morning.
Perhaps there was some magic on World‟s End.
Trees framed the view, the long green lawn falling away to a crescent of beach bordered by sea and stone.
It felt good to be away from the tensions on Sanctuary, from the sweaty labor of hauling rocks and the frustration of
wrangling his work crew from the water. The children of the sea were hunters, not builders. They did not make or mine, plow
or spin. Sanctuary had been furnished with the plunder of centuries, Viking gold and Spanish iron, French silks and Italian
pottery. All gone now, all lost beneath the waves from which they had been recovered. Two days of hot meals and hot
showers, soft linens and uninterrupted sleep had given Morgan a newfound appreciation for human comforts and surroundings.
His mind was clear, his body alert, his spirits lighter than they had been in months. Years.
He squinted against the sun sparkling on the blue water below, free as the gulls soaring against the pale sky.