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He'd hovered until Iassured him I was fine. Now he stayed near Maury like a surgical nurse ready to hand him whatever esoteric piece of equipment he needed.
Jeremy sat behind his desk watching the show, fingers steepled, an amused smile on his face. He'd shown polite heat in his eyes when I first took my dress off and stripped to the lingerie, but after that he'd just tried to keep from laughing at Maury Klein's total lack of heat. Jeremy had complimented me on the amazing contrast between the perfect white of my skin and the blackness of the lingerie. You're always supposed to say something nice the first time you see someone in a state of undress.
Roane Finn was sitting on the corner of Jeremy's desk, feet kicking in the air in a soft unconscious movement, as he, too, enjoyed the show. He didn't have to compliment me. He'd seen me naked last night and many nights before that. His eyes are the first things you notice about him, huge, liquid brown orbs that dominate his face like the moon dominates the night sky. Then it's a toss-up whether you notice his dark auburn hair, and the way it clings to his face, rolls down the back of his collar, or his lips, which are a perfect red-tinged pouting bow. You'd think he used lipstick to get the color, but he doesn't. It's all natural. His skin looks white, but it isn't really, or not pure white. It's as if someone took my own pale complexion and added a drop of the red-brown of his hair. When he wears brown or other autumn colors, his skin seems to darken.
He was my height exactly, and it made him appear delicate at first glance, but the body that showed under the black clothing he'd donned for tonight looked firm and muscular. I knew for a fact that he wasn't just strong. He was limber. I also knew that there were burn scars along his back and shoulders, like white calluses on the smooth silk of his body. The scars had been caused when a fisherman burned his sealskin. Roane was a selkie, one of the seal people. Once he'd been able to don his sealskin and become a seal, then slip the skin and be human, or rather human form. Then a fisherman had found his skin and burned it. The skin was not just a magical device for shape-shifting. It wasn't even just part of Roane. The skin was as much him as his eyes or his hair. Roane is the only seal person I've ever heard of that survived the destruction of his other self. He survived but he could never again change form. He was doomed to be forever land-bound, forever denied the other half of his world.
Sometimes at night I'd find the bed empty. If we were at my apartment, he'd be gazing out the window at nothing.
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