Tidal Rush by Anna Kensing

Author:Anna Kensing [Kensing, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781959268000
Publisher: Kensing Books

Chapter 11

Celeste looked at Captain Fitzgerald. He couldn’t possibly be serious. She tapped her pen on the cover of the Annals, letting the rhythmic pattern tick along with the implications of what he was asking.

She’d been surrounded by half a dozen octopian women, who knew what was happening to her and helped her through it, caressing her with their hands and arms, the full multitude of them, reassuring her with the telepathic connection she’d always almost had with the cephalopods she’d studied, but which burst into kaleidoscopic full bloom the night she shifted for the first time.

She almost pitied Elliot for having to go through it alone. Except for his stepbrother, who seemed surprisingly open-minded, for a sailor. But then, he’d been that way since the day she met him, hadn’t he? He’d not dismissed her work the way most townsmen did. He’d even gone with her to see Eleanor, the ruby octopus she’d kept in an observation tank on the outskirts of Port Townsend. Captain Fitzgerald had shown more interest in her work than Elliot ever had.

And yet. “Why?” she asked. Why would he want to become like them?

She couldn’t read anything on his impassive face, covered with that bushy beard. She waited while his eyes darted around the room, glancing out the windows, toward the fireplace, at the ceiling, anywhere but at her. Finally, he met her gaze.

“For Elliot.”

She looked at him for a few seconds, then let her focus drift toward Elliot. Distance made the connection weaker, but she knew him. Better than he thought she did, in fact. He was easy to find, especially since the supermoon had just past last night. The connection was always strongest in conjunction with the supermoon.

He was at home, in his study, a chessboard before him, though his attention was barely on it. Another man was seated across from him. A friend, and a new one at that. Celeste could feel the camaraderie between them; the man had helped Elliot somehow, and recently.

But Elliot’s thoughts, the single-minded fool that he was, were entirely bent toward Captain Fitzgerald. Longing and love, mixed with tamped-down desire and barely suppressed arousal. Well, she certainly understood that. The morning after the supermoon was always a mix of relief and readiness to sink again under the pull of the tides in the blood.

She felt it thrumming through her own veins this morning.

There was something else in Elliot’s mind, though, overriding the love and lust. Fear and worry and an abiding sense of loss mixed with resolve, as if he’d given up the one thing that he wanted most in the world. Goodness, how had the poor dear survived last night? Had he stayed out of the water?

He’d not taken advantage of the man playing chess with him, despite his bronzed and sturdy appeal.

Celeste narrowed her eyes at Captain Fitzgerald, tapping her pen on the table again while she sifted through Elliot’s conflicting emotions. She didn’t know the captain well, but the one thing she was certain about him was his commitment to Elliot.

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