Free Ocean's Touch by Denise Townsend

the table together, a last mug of coffee steaming in both of their hands.
    “Now, as I can feel you’re fit to bursting, ask me anything you like, Mer.”
    “Where do you live?” she blurted out the question that had been on her tongue throughout breakfast.
    He laughed. “I’ve told you, basically. You know where I live.”
    Meredith frowned. “No, I don’t.”
    “The sea,” he said, his voice strong and reasonable, just as he’d said everything that day. Despite the fact that what he was currently saying was insane.
    “What do you mean, ‘the sea’?“ she asked, trying to remain equally reasonable. “Like…a boat?”
    “No, not a boat.”
    “Then what, Dylan. A house on the sea, like mine?”
    “No, lass. You ken the truth. I live in the sea proper.”
    “You can’t live in the sea. That’s ridiculous,” she said, drawing away from him and clutching her coffee like she was considering using the mug as a weapon.
    Dylan sighed. Mortals , he thought. He’d seen it a hundred times. He could do something obviously “impossible” by human standards, and still they’d find a way to convince themselves it hadn’t happened, or had been something else entirely.
    Why can’t they just believe? he wondered, shaking his head. Although seeing Meredith straighten her spine even more at his obvious resignation made him remember why he adored humans so much.
    Instead of answering her, he stood. Meredith, in turn, got an even better grip on her coffee cup.
    She watched as he untied her apron, folding it rather messily before laying it on the island behind him. And then he…changed.
    Instead of the large, handsome man he’d been, he was still large, maybe even more handsome…but definitely not a normal man.
    Not a human , Meredith realized, nearly spilling her coffee when her death grip on her mug loosened from surprise.
    This Dylan was still man-shaped—long, muscular legs, the same thick cock she’d enjoyed last night, an equally well-muscled chest. But this Dylan’s hair—instead of curly and brown—flowed up from his head in a dark, iron-gray crown, as if he were floating underwater even now. His eyes, too, had gone from normal, human brown to entirely jet-black. Their inky weight surveyed her from a face that was Dylan’s, but not—his features gone fierce and fey—his chin slightly more pointed, his cheekbones more arched, his lips slightly fuller and an alluring shade of cherry red.
    “What are you?” she breathed. Meredith knew she should be frightened, but she felt nothing more than the same mixture of kindness and curiosity flowing off the being that she’d always felt flowing off Dylan. Indeed, he felt like Dylan, even though he looked like Dylan-gone-manga.
    “A selkie,” he said simply.
    “But they’re…” she said, trailing off as she realized how ridiculous it would be to think this fierce being in front of her could change into a seal, of all things.
    Instead of laughing at her, all Dylan did was twitch his shoulders, throwing forward his sealskin cloak before giving her a cheeky wink.
    “You’re really…?” she asked, unable to finish her question.
    “Aye, lass. Would you like to see?”
    She gulped. Did she want to see? Here, in Teddy’s kitchen, that had never seen anything more magical than an ice sculpture carved off site by someone else?
    “Yes,” Meredith said eventually.
    He smiled at her, pulling his cloak up and around him until only his face peeped through. Then he drew it tighter still till, with an audible pop and a shivering of the air, Dylan was gone.
    And where his feet had been lay a huge, sweet-faced seal, lying on his back and arching his spine to stare forward at her with his enormous black eyes.
    Meredith stood, mute and staring, for a few seconds before she finally took a few tentative steps forward. The seal blinked at her lazily, and she could have sworn it was grinning.
    When she stood next to Dylan’s seal, she lowered herself down into a crouch,