“Yeah, but I’m not going to last a lot longer.” He reached over and touched her again, stroking her mound and then settling on her clitoris. As he’d said, it responded as it had before. This time, the reaction was slower, less intense but definitely arousing. His finger played her softly, much as she was doing with his cock. A sweeter, more leisurely approach to orgasm. Truly wonderful in its own way.

  They lay there, simply touching each other’s most sensitive flesh and letting the excitement build. Utterly delicious. Her breath matched his… fast and shallow. Her skin heated. She’d probably flushed with arousal. Yes, she’d come again, and he’d be inside her. She’d get to feel his hardness stretching her as it demanded entrance.

  Erotic images flooded her mind, picturing him buried inside her. So big she could hardly take all of him. And suddenly, the need drove out her every thought. She whimpered as her sex grew moist and ready for him.

  He must have recognized the signs because he removed his hand and knelt on the blanket. “Let me help you up.”

  He did, guiding her upward and then turning her so she could rest on her hands and knees. Then, he urged her knees apart and took his place between them. The head of his cock pressed for entrance into her body, and she could have wept for wanting him so desperately.

  He eased himself into her slowly so she could feel the passage of each inch. Heaven, but not enough.

  “More,” she said.

  “You’re tight.” His voice came out strained.

  “More.”

  He grasped her hips and pushed into her, entering her fully. He paused as the reality of their connection passed between them. He belonged here, giving all of himself to her, and she gave back, welcoming him.

  When he moved, an entire new set of sensations washed through her. The friction of his cock against the walls of her sex, the sounds he made, the amazing sense of fullness. He still held her hips firm in his hands, holding her in place so he could continue thrusting deep into her.

  The fire started inside her again -- the body knowledge that she’d climax again. Before had been beyond belief, but she hadn’t had him with her at the end. This time, she’d experience his climax as well as her own. More magic, that she could sense his surrender and the resulting force of his orgasm. They’d soar together, sharing the ultimate.

  He moved faster now. Harder. The more he demanded, the more she gave. His breath came with gasps and moans as he approached the threshold.

  “Can’t stop,” he said. “Come for me.”

  “Yes.”

  Then, he bent and reached around her. His thrusts never stopping, he reached to her sex and found her clitoris. Gods, the feeling. Everything she’d had before and more. Her sex clenched around his, preparing for the inevitable explosion.

  He rubbed and rubbed, and she couldn’t hold back. The orgasm slammed into her, and she shouted as the convulsions started. Then, he was coming, too. He thrust violently a few times and stiffened. The ultimate. Perfection. She could almost feel him pulsing inside her as his voice joined hers. When it ended, her muscles continued to flutter around him in sweet aftershocks.

  She fell onto the blanket in a heap of satisfaction. He went with her and somehow managed to roll his body off hers. But he held her against him, spoon fashion, breathing heavily against her hair.

  The sex had ended for now, his cock already having slipped out of her as it softened. But they’d do this again, and often. As long as she stayed on this island, she could have him. She’d store away a treasure of memories, and she’d have his daughter as proof he’d been more than a dream.

  Chapter Three

  How was a guy supposed to react to having sex like that? Their first time had been outstanding, but he could partially rack that up to the dream he’d been having when Uma let herself into his bed. This last time… holy crap… he’d come with every bit of energy his body possessed. The pressure of her muscles in spasms around his cock had driven his libido into hyper drive, and the orgasm had nearly squeezed the life out of him.

  And after all that, she’d insisted he’d created magic. If he wanted to lie to himself, he’d take that remark as a compliment and walk around with his chest all puffed out. But he’d been with lots of women. He’d always made sure his partners were satisfied. Some had proclaimed him a world-class lover. None had ever come together with him the way Uma did.

  As a result, he couldn’t concentrate on anything other than her when she was around. And she was always around.

  Uma was sitting on the bed, thumbing through some of Nate’s books about Galapagos while Mark searched Nate’s computer for any clue as to what might have happened to him. Mostly, the files were videos Nate had made of the wildlife here, with a few still pictures added into the mix.

  The last entry in his journal had been brief but full of excitement. He claimed to have gotten a look at the creature he’d been hoping to discover. “Nate claimed to have found a new creature. He said he’d made a video of it, but I can’t find one.”

  “Maybe he was wrong.”

  “But what if he was right?”

  “Without the video, we can’t tell, can we?”

  “He just seemed so certain.”

  She shrugged. It should have been a convincing gesture. “Whatever he thought he saw was either a sea lion or one of the fur seals.”

  “You’re sure about that?”

  “Nothing else it could be.”

  Nate had been pretty excited about his new species, and he’d stopped writing pretty much anything at one point. Mark turned a page to discover there hadn’t been an entry at all for several days.

  And nothing at all about a naked woman showing up out of nowhere. But if that had happened to Mark, it could have happened to Nate. Would Nate enter that in his journal? Not if he planned to share his journal with anyone, certainly. It would make him sound like a raving lunatic.

  So, what did that make Mark? He set the journal aside and turned around to face Uma. He had no reason to believe she had anything to do with Nate’s disappearance, but he had no other explanation. At the very least, he ought to figure out who she really was, because, fact -- the way to a man’s heart wasn’t through his stomach. It was how good she could make his cock feel. And he’d never before had sex like he had with this woman. Twice now.

  “Have you been to this island before?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know anyone who has?”

  “I don’t know which islands all my friends have visited,” she answered. Kind of evasive.

  “Who are your friends?” he asked.

  She put the book aside. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “Wouldn’t it be more reasonable for me to have asked you them before?” he said. “It can’t be normal around here for naked women to show up out of nowhere.”

  “You don’t know what’s normal around here, do you?” She got up, went to him, and sat in his lap. “You’re the cynic, remember?”

  “The realist,” he corrected.

  She was trying to seduce him so he’d stop questioning her. And her butt was way too close to his cock to keep him rational. But he wasn’t horny this exact minute. Damn it all, he had to have some control when she got near.

  “This place is magical,” she said.

  “Bullshit.”

  She laughed. “All right. Tell me about the place you come from.”

  “Manhattan.”

  “Ah, the big city,” she said. “I’ve seen it in movies. It’s also magical.”

  “It’s real,” he said. “It’s gritty and in-your-face no-nonsense.”

  She ran her arms around his neck. “You would never see a naked woman appear in New York City?”

  She had him there. If you hung around Manhattan long enough, you’d see just about anything.

  “I thought so,” she said. “If a woman showed up where you live and wanted to have sex, you wouldn’t ask her a bunch of questions.”

  Also true. He hadn’t started a conversation with her when she’d first appeared. But he’d been asleep and aroused to the point where he’d come one way or another. What else could he do but fuck her?

  “All right, all right,” he said. “So, you’ve never been here before.”

  “No.”

  “And you’ve never met Nate Adams.”

  This time she hesitated for a split second. “No.”

  A lie? Had she met Nate somewhere else? He took her chin in his hand and made her look him in the eyes. “I want you to tell me the truth. If we have any kind of relationship at all, we have to be honest with each other.”

  “Maybe we don’t have a relationship.” Her expression gave nothing away as if she’d simply stated a fact. A woman ought to care about the person she gave her virginity to. Even a New Yorker would.

  “So, we’re just sport-fucking?” he said.

  She tensed. She didn’t like that idea -- that they meant nothing to each other. Frankly, it didn’t sit well with his heart, either. What in hell was he going to do if he developed deeper feelings for her?

  “I guess you could call it that,” she said after a moment. She didn’t sound entirely pleased.

  “You would tell me if you knew something about Nate’s disappearance, wouldn’t you?” he asked.

  “I have nothing to say on the subject.”

  Not a real answer. More like avoiding the question. She definitely had some information on the subject but wasn’t willing to share it. “Why don’t you go back to your book? I want to look at a few more of Nate’s videos.”

  “Sure.” She got up and went to the door to the hut. “I think I’ll take a swim instead.”

  Then, she left. He hadn’t meant the suggestion she get out of his lap as a rejection, but it amounted to that, anyway. Why not? If she wouldn’t be honest with him about his friend, there was probably no point to their relationship, whatever it was.

  * * *

  It was just as well that Mark had banished Uma from his lap. She couldn’t have sat there and lied to him much longer. Plus, she needed some time in the ocean as her seal-self to clear her mind. She swam through warm currents, the water so soothing. Other creatures ignored her, the iguanas diving to the rocks to eat the algae there, sea turtles surfacing to breathe from time to time. This was her home as much as the land was. If she didn’t swim but only stayed as a human with her human mate, she lost her perspective.

  She’d come here to conceive a child, nothing more. The term “sport-fucking” shouldn’t have felt so shallow, so belittling to her real purpose, but it wasn’t entirely inaccurate. She mated for pleasure and to create a child. The sex had nothing to do with a real relationship with the man. Besides, he was probably a sport-fucker at home, surrounded by the glamorous women of New York. Women she could never resemble.

  He was a creature of the city. He rejected the idea of magic, even when he created it with his body. He was so unlike his friend, who had loved his mate enough to track her down to the Sisterhood. Nate had cared so much about Ara, he’d risked death at the tip of a selkie spear to win her. Mark only wanted to find his friend and coworker. He had no interest in a relationship with a strange woman who’d crawled into his bed.

  At least she’d learned this about Mark before her foolish heart got involved. That decided, she dove downward, scattering a group of spotted rays. They fluttered around her like underwater butterflies. She shouldn’t disturb them for her own entertainment, but they’d regroup. Then she rolled onto her back and swam staring up at the surface of the water above her.

  Eventually, she surfaced, swam to Mark’s island, and climbed up onto the beach. She lay for a while, basking in the sun as boobies flew overhead. One landed not far away and stuck out his blue foot in an attempt to attract a female still flying overhead. All creatures mated, so she needn’t feel ashamed of what she was doing with Mark. It was just nature.

  After a bit, she shed her seal skin and hid it where she had before. She’d stashed Mark’s shirt there. So she shook the sand from it and put it on.

  Mark wasn’t in the hut, but she found him at the other beach, down by the water’s edge. He’d raised his hand to shield his eyes and stared out over the gentle waves. Uma went to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  He jumped, his feet almost lifting off the ground. Then, he turned to face her. “Where in hell have you been?”

  “I told you I was going for a swim.”

  “That was an hour ago for Chrissake.” He gripped her upper arms. “You scared the shit out of me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d worry.”

  “Not worry?” His eyes were wide, and his hair was all mixed up, as if he’d been running his fingers through it. “Were you in the water all this time?”

  “That’s where you normally swim.”

  He did run his fingers through his hair. Odd that she’d never noticed how perfect it usually was. “This isn’t funny, Uma.”

  “I’m not laughing.” She was beginning to wonder, though, why he was so upset. Could he really care that he couldn’t find her? This didn’t seem to be about sex.

  “I don’t know what’s out there.” Mark gestured toward the water. “There could be sharks.”

  “There are. Mostly small ones.” She hadn’t noticed any just now. Most were harmless against anything her size. Selkies learned at a young age how to avoid the dangerous ones. Still, it was cute that he’d worried.

  “Mostly?” he repeated.

  She touched his cheek. “I can take care of myself in the water. You didn’t have to worry.”

  “You were gone for a whole hour,” he said. “Nobody swims for a whole hour.”

  “Don’t you?” Humans could be strange, but surely, they loved to swim. Everyone did.

  “Don’t I what?”

  “Swim.”

  “Of course I do,” he said. “At my gym.”

  She could only stare at him. “Gyms in New York have places to swim?”

  “Surely, you must have heard of swimming pools.”

  “Yes, but… they’re just holes in the ground,” she said. “With lanes… roped off. Is that all you do?”

  “I lift weights. Sometimes I play basketball.”

  Those were probably all fine. They certainly kept his body in good shape. But they wouldn’t teach him the joys of swimming with the rest of nature. “Let’s go swimming together.”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “No, really.” She took his face in her hands. “Let me show you the ocean and all the animals. It’s --”

  “Don’t say it’s magical.”

  “It is.” She pressed her lips to his for a second. “I’ll teach you about magic, no matter how hard you fight it.”

  “Uma --”

  She kissed him again. “Did your friend have any snorkels?”

  “I don’t know. Probably.”

  “Let’s go find them and go for a swim.”

  * * *

  The woman could make him crazy. She appeared out of nowhere. She wouldn’t answer questions. She’d probably lied to him. Then, she disappeared for an entire hour and returned to startle him out of his shoes. Now, she had him in the water, wearing one of Nate’s snorkels. Luckily, he figured out how to use it pretty quickly, and now he could see what went on underwater clearly. Even a hard-boiled New Yorker had to admit the scene was pretty spectacular.

  And damned if she didn’t swim like a fish. Nude. She sliced through the water as if her body had been designed to do exactly that. She could hold her breath long enough to dive deep. He could only follow a few yards down before he had to surface for air. After he’d done that a few times, she stuck to shallower water, but even here there was so much to see.

  She scooped something up in her hand and held it out toward him. Long arms stretched out from its body. An octopus. With her free hand, she signaled for them to surface. When they got there, she still had the creature in her hand, sitting, obviously not afraid, on her palm. In fact, it wrapped a couple of its arms around her wrist as if to hang on.

  “See?” she said.

  “You’re not going to try telling me that thing is beautiful, I hope,” he said. “And don’t even try magical.”

  She laughed. “If you ever saw what an octopus can do, you’d believe in magic.”

  “Can it breathe air?”

  “When he wants, he’ll go back into the water.”

  Apparently, that wasn’t this immediate moment, because it extended more of its legs and touched her upper arm. She let the animal do whatever it wanted, as if she did that sort of thing every day. Finally, it released her and dropped back into the water with a plop, and she laughed, a sound of unadulterated joy.

  Then, she threw her arms around his shoulders, bringing her body against his. Their heads went underwater briefly, and when they resurfaced, she was laughing again.

  “I think I’m done treading water,” he said. “How about we go back in?”

  “Sure.” She took off swimming toward the shore. They hadn’t gone too far out, so she got there quickly. He followed, and soon they were standing in chest-deep water together. This time when she wrapped herself around him, they didn’t sink.

  Because she wasn’t wearing any clothing, the hard points of her nipples pressed into his chest, and her pelvis rubbed against his pelvis. Even in her innocence, she had to realize the effect that pressure would have on his body. In no time at all, he’d become halfway erect. So, he kissed her to let her know where this contact was headed.

  She seemed fine with that because she responded, even parting her lips in invitation. Still, he waited to see what she’d do, and sure enough, the tip of her tongue emerged to stroke the inside of his lips. The kiss was hot beyond belief, and he tilted his head to take it deeper. With a sigh of pleasure, she continued to explore his mouth, her breath mingling with his.

  He could have taken her back to the hut, to the bed. But they could also fuck right here with the fish looking on. The octopus could find them and watch. Who cared? His cock needed to be inside her, and he could make her just as needy as he was.

  * * *

  She floated in his arms now -- the near weightlessness a benefit of sex in water. He’d never done this in an ocean before, but that had appeal. With his arousal growing and Uma so eager for his kisses, the scenery suddenly got a lot prettier. Enough sex like this, and he might get to like the weird creatures that inhabited the place.