For the Taking by Lilian Darcy Page B

however, Loucan took her words calmly.
    “I woke up early,” he said. “I always do, on the boat. There’s a king tide running this morning. It’s spectacular. I swam for over an hour, just as dawn was breaking, watching the waves crashing and foaming onto the headlands and the beaches. There’s a little island offshore, just south of Seaview.”
    “Mullaby Island. Off the end of Possum Point.” Lass knew it well.
    She’d done the same thing he’d just described many times—naked, since the mer transformation had to involve shedding her swimsuit. Loucan would have been naked in the water, too, his body sleek and powerful, his skin tanned like cinnamon-colored silk.
    “I lay out there, in the first rays of the sun,” he said. “Felt like it was next door to heaven.”
    “Today, I’d rather ride,” she stated, turning back to the feed trough she was filling. The horses stamped impatient hooves.
    Loucan was doing it deliberately, she was sure—using the power of her need for the sea to break down her defenses and remind her of everything they had in common. She was determined it wouldn’t work,and could only hope he wasn’t aware of her body’s growing need for him.
    “Got a horse for me?” he asked.
    “You ride?”
    “Not for a long while. I used to at one time.”
    “These guys are all pretty frisky,” she warned.
    There was her own chestnut gelding, Willoughby, and four more horses that she boarded on her land. She fed and watered them and kept an eye out for any problems, in return for a fee. Milo’s owner was away at the moment, and Lass was supposed to ride him occasionally. Unfortunately, he was big and young and the friskiest of the lot.
    “Try me,” Loucan said, and Lass saw the gleam in his eye.
    Her heart sank. Did she really think she could scare him off with the threat of a lively horse? His whole personality shouted the fact that he was born to command, and a horse would read and respect the signals as clearly as a human being.
    She tried one last time to put him off. “You must be hungry after all that cavorting in the ocean. You don’t want to eat?”
    “You’re bringing a picnic, I notice. I’ll wait for that.” He gestured at the backpack she wore. It had a flask of hot coffee and two thickly filled bread rolls sticking out of the top. Her brunch.
    “I’ll be pretty hungry myself soon,” she said. “There isn’t enough for two.”
    “You saddle the horses and I’ll stretch the picnic with a few more things from the kitchen. Don’t fight it, Lass,” he added in a lower tone.
    The fine hairs on her arm stood on end. “Fight what?”
    Had he read her mind? Or just her body language? She was so aware of him that her heart was pounding in her chest and her knees wobbled. He smelled cleanly of soap and seawater, and his square jaw was freshly shaved. Her fingers itched to stroke his face, to discover if his skin was as smooth there as it looked on the rest of him.
    She was determined he shouldn’t guess how strongly she responded to his presence, but this petty fighting wasn’t the way to achieve that.
    “Never mind,” she added. “Don’t answer that. Sure, pack some more food, come for a picnic and a ride. Fruit and cheese and crackers, or whatever you can find. I already have rolls and a flask of coffee and some of yesterday’s chocolate mud cake from the tearoom.”
    “Chocolate mud cake? Yep, you’re right,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
    A laugh bubbled out of her. She didn’t normally laugh so readily, and it wasn’t a particularly funny line, but somehow he did this to her. He made her laugh. He’d made her cry more than once, as well. All her emotions were extra close to the surface since they’d met, and while she could think of other reasons for why this should be so, she knew what the true reason was.
    This awakening in her body, longed for and unwanted at the same time. Frightening and seductive. Making her heart and her stomach behave strangely