Free Waterlocked: An Elemental World Novella by Elizabeth Hunter

more.”
    “Ursa minor. Andromeda.”
    “I wasn’t talking about stars, woman.”
    “Haha. You have a one track mind. There’s Perseus.”
    Terry smiled. “You know them all, don’t you?”
    “Yes. And all the stories that go with them. The stars don’t change much. It’s the same sky I saw when I was a human. Odd, really. Everything else changes.” She’d been subdued since he’d risen that night, purposefully keeping their conversations light. They were approaching their home in Spain with every passing night, and Terry hoped he would have enough time.
    “Did you ever go to school?”
    She shook her head with a frown. “Not as a human. Later of course. Much later. I studied at the Sorbonne shortly before we met. Do you remember? I’d been in Paris. It was because of the university.”
    He laughed. “Why?”
    She shrugged, looking strangely bashful. “Just because I could, I suppose. Ioan thought I was silly, too. But I liked it. Liked being around all the girls who were so young. So alive. It reminded me of… the past, I suppose. I haven’t been that young or naive in so long.”
    “Wise.” He reached over, tracing a finger along the arch of her eyebrow. “My wife is wise. I prefer that to naive.”
    “Terry…”
    It was working. Slowly but surely, the water was sloughing off the rocky wall she’d built around her heart. He tried not to be impatient.
    “Do you remember the first time you kissed me?”
    “Right after you’d taken London? Isn’t that the first time you kissed me ?”
    “You kissed me back. You were exactly what I needed to see that night. Pulled me back from the edge, I think.”
    “You were so angry.”
    He reached over and picked up her hand, weaving their fingers together. “Angry, yes. Grieving. A bit mad with grief, I think. I lost Francis and my brother in the same night.”
    Gemma’s thumb stroked the back of his hand. This was the piece of them that no one else saw. The little moments they’d shared for years that had made him fall in love with her. She was a caretaker at heart, his Gemma. She had a need to care for others that few understood. If she had to bash heads and kill to do it… well, that just made her an excellent vampire.
    “You thinking about your brother?”
    She gave a sharp nod and he pulled her closer, silently begging to let him give her comfort. He had that night. The night they had killed her brother’s murderers she’d come to him, full of rage and grief. He’d loved her as she’d needed it. Wild and fierce to remind herself she was alive. Then slow and quiet, to remind himself that she was safe. That she was his.
    “Terry?” Her words were muffled against his chest.
    “Hmm?”
    “Do you—” She hesitated. “Do you love me?”
    He let out a slow breath, cursing his luck. He wouldn’t lie to her. He couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them.
    “Fuck.”
    “Do you?”
    “Yes.”

Chapter Six

    He loved her.
    Terry loved her.
    He didn’t sound happy about it, but then she could hardly blame him. She hadn’t planned for this.
    She had never planned for Terry. In her centuries of life, he was the one person Gemma had never managed to fit into any box. The one who had never behaved as she predicted. A more infuriating, stubborn, arrogant partner she couldn’t have found in all the world. And he loved her.
    His voice was rough when he finally spoke. “Listen, Gem—”
    “I’m horribly afraid of the ocean.” She lay in his arms, frozen by her admission. “I know it’s not rational, but when I’m on land, everything makes sense. In the ocean, nothing does.”
    He paused for a moment, then said softly, “You know it can’t hurt you.”
    “I do know that. Rationally, I know that. It’s not logical. Father thinks I had an accident when I was human. There’s much about my human years I simply don’t remember. But I remember the earth. From the first night I woke, I remember feeling it beneath me. The life. The