For the Taking by Lilian Darcy Page A

shook more violently than ever, so Loucan held her closer, stroked her bare back and kissed the top of her head, as if she were still the child she’d once been. “Oh, Lass,” he said, “and you’ve kept this shut away.”
    “I didn’t think I could say the words. There’s been no one to say them to, Loucan.” Her voice cracked. “No one. Cyria would never let me talk about it.”
    Lass began to cry wildly, and Loucan held her quite still in the water, flicking his tail every few seconds to keep them afloat. He knew she needed this, and that he shouldn’t hurry it. She could cry for hours if that would help her to release the pent-up grief and fear.
    But it was disturbing to discover how much he needed it, too—the touch of her skin against his, the chance to give her something instead of being constantly on the lookout for opportunities to take.
    The giving wasn’t much, just a little human warmth and comfort, a listening ear. As she’d said, there had been no one, until now. The taking, on the other hand, was enormous. He knew that his arrival in her life had taken away her whole safe, carefully created littleworld. Although it had to happen, he wished he had more to offer her in return.
    Maybe he did, he finally decided, when her long storm of tears at last began to quiet. Maybe the best and most obvious thing was right here and already happening.
    If he kept her in his arms and kissed her again.
    “Lass,” he whispered. “Lass…”
    He began to stroke the wet hair back from her face. Her breathing was still jerky against his chest, and her shoulders were shaking. He caressed them until she relaxed, then used his fingers to smooth the stress lines from her forehead and from around her brilliant green eyes.
    Only when she was completely calm did he narrow the gap between his mouth and hers. At the first brush of his lips, she gasped, pushed her hands against his chest and tried to swim away, but he wrapped his arms more tightly around her and held her back. Their moving tails collided, and Loucan felt the hard shape of the gold bangle on her wrist, as well. He hoped it was waterproof. She’d obviously forgotten all about it.
    “Don’t fight, Lass,” he said. “Let me hold you for a little longer. Let me. We both want this.”
    She shook her head, pressed her lips tightly together, then said, “That’s not enough.”
    “It is for now. I can’t think beyond it. I can’t think of anything else at all.”

Chapter Six

    L oucan’s mouth touched Lass’s again before he had finished speaking.
    His lips were cold and wet and salty, like hers, but it took only a moment for their kiss to grow warm and sweet. Lass closed her eyes. At first, she hardly dared to do so, afraid that the memory of her mother’s death would ambush her once again.
    But it didn’t, and maybe the touch of Loucan’s mouth and the feel of his body against hers was the only thing in the world that could have kept the nightmare vision at bay.
    “Loucan…” His name made the most delicious pouting, kissable shape in her mouth, so she said it again, and he sighed something back to her that she didn’t catch.
    She parted her lips to taste him more deeply, and felt the slow dance of his tongue against hers. Thrills of sensation ran through her like showers of sparks, and she began to follow the slow, graceful ripples ofhis tail with her own movements so that they became a dance, too.
    Not a chaste dance, either. He could touch her intimately. She could feel his arousal. In calmer, warmer waters, they could have joined together fully as merman and mermaid.
    And, oh, she wanted that!
    Or her body did. Every inch of her skin was on fire, and deeper inside she was aching. When he touched her breasts, gently at first and then with increasing possession and pleasure, she arched back and gripped his hips with her hands convulsively, unconsciously pulling him closer. He went still, then shuddered and began to kiss her even more