shivered with cold and energy and desire.
There was no one to stop him, no one to see. Anyway, he wasn‟t hurting anyone. He could do it once, once and get it over
with, and then he wouldn‟t come back for a long time. A week. He had a job now. He might not get another chance to come
back anyway.
He undid his pants, stripped off his underwear and socks.
The waves‟ chant filled his head. The cool air caressed his body. Inside him, needs twisted and stirred like eels in an
aquarium, like the monster in Alien , fighting to burst out.
He took a deep breath. It would be all right. He knew what he was doing now. He knew where he was going. Everything
would be all right once he got into the water.
Barefoot, naked, he padded over the narrow strip of hard, damp sand. His body tightened in anticipation. His mind drifted
to the slow, warm summer nights of childhood, fishing from the pier with his dad, the floodlights on the foam, the smells of
brine and bait, beer and blood, the sound of the surf and men‟s voices.
He raised his head, absorbing the stars and the murmur of the tide. He was a man now. This was his place.
He waded into the water.
Cold.
It seized his balls, locked his knees, jolted his blood. This was the worst part. Baring his chattering teeth, he slogged
forward, the waves surging from calf to thigh, from thigh to waist, grabbing at his balls, pumping through his veins. He
shuddered with tension and cold. His belly and legs trembled. Deep, deeper, almost . . .
There.
The Change ripped through him, convulsive as orgasm. His heart pounded, his lungs exploded, pain and ecstasy coursing
along his bones. So good. So hard. He let himself go, let everything go, as the spasms went on and on, milking his body. He
arched helplessly under the waves, under the water, flailed and felt the flat slap, the cool slide, of fins and tail.
He gasped, and salt flooded his mouth, pushed into his chest and choked him. He floundered, suffocating in the oxygenrich water. Oh, shit, oh, Christ, oh . . . Gills ripped from his throat, shuddered and swelled. Terror melted into triumph and
relief. All right, then. All right.
The water was in him, he was in the water, rushing, pulsing, free. Everything else forgotten.
He spiraled into the depths, and the cold clear darkness claimed him.
Morgan stalked along the broken asphalt in the dark.
He never stayed with a woman after sex. Over the centuries, he had left hundreds of lovers for spurious reasons or no
reason at all.
But he had never before left at the woman‟s insistence. Elizabeth‟s insistence.
A muscle twitched in his jaw. He‟d given her what she wanted, had he not? All he knew how to give. Yet still somehow it
had not been enough, or he would not be walking back alone to his room at the inn, pushed out of her house to accommodate
the whims of an adolescent boy.
“One night doesn’t change anything.”
But it had. She was inside him now like a virus, like a fever, an ache in his belly, a pang at his heart.
An irritable wind swirled around him. Shadows scudded across his path. Morgan glanced at the clouds threatening the
moon and realized he had allowed his foul mood to leach into the atmosphere.
His lack of control disturbed him. Weather magic was the first learned and most easily mastered of elemental powers. But
judging by the turbulent sky, those clouds would start spitting soon. He needed to cool his blood, to clear his mind, to calm the
turmoil inside him and above.
He turned left, following the track to the beach.
And nearly stumbled over some grocery bags dumped at the foot of the trail. Human litter. He almost passed it by, but a
familiar scent teased at his nostrils, tickled his attention.
Zachary?
Morgan‟s head snapped up. The boy‟s scent mingled with the weeds, lingered on the plastic.
Zachary had been here. Was here still?