Captive of the Deep (6 page)

“Lick my juice,” she gasped. His wide tongue slid over her slit. “Ah, yes, like that. Lick it clean. Make sure you get all of it.” At that, his tongue slithered inside her sex. She convulsed against him. He began to lightly his touch and she dug her hands into his hair. “Don’t stop. Lick it. Get it all. Use your fingers to make sure.”

A hand lifted from her thigh only to find her pussy. He thrust into her, wiggling around inside her as he sucked and licked. The rough texture of a wayward pearl rolled pressed between her ass cheeks. His chin must have bumped it because his hand slid down to push it away. She thrust up, forcing the wet finger to slip next to the tight rosette of her ass. She bucked at the stimulus. He took it for more invite than she intended and enthusiastically thrust a finger into her ass. The digit wiggled, moving like it has in her pussy. She felt him trying to force a second one in to join the first, but the tight squeeze prevented such a maneuver. His nose pushed up against her clit as his tongue fucked her pussy. It felt so good. She grabbed her neglected breasts and squeezed the nipples through the material.

Her climax came in hard waves. When he didn’t stop lapping her, she was forced to push his head back. He gave her a meaningful look. “But you are still moist.”

“Oh, trust me. That’s a good thing. I’m supposed to get wet like that. You did very well.”

Her heart hammered. His finger slipped from her ass and she closed her eyes, moaning in pleasure. She felt his weight shift and assumed he was getting up. Then, suddenly, she felt the thick tip of his cock along her thigh. She opened her eyes to see him coming over her. His face looked determined.

With a hard push, he thrust into her, filling her to completion. His hips moved with a frenzy, building the sensations once more. She gasped, crying out as it was almost too much pleasure. He jerked, coming inside her. Seconds later he was collapsed against her, pinning her down with his body. The weight felt comforting and she didn’t push him away. She would have been too weak to try anyway.

.

* * * * *

“I cannot give you children.”

Lyra blinked in momentary confusion, looking across the bed to where her lover lay on his back. She hadn’t asked about children. “All right.”

“I thought maybe you would wonder about such a thing, being as we are,” he glanced at the bed, not finishing.

“Bumpin’ uglies?” she supplied, only to laugh as his anticipated confusion.
 
It was strange how everyone spoke the same language—magically, she supposed for lack of any better explanation—but sarcasm and sayings caused confusion. “Getting our freak on? Doin’ the horizontal hula?”

“No, I speak of us being lovers,” he clarified.

Lyra laughed. “My mistake.”

“I thought you should know about the children. Aidan tells me this is a concern surface women have with their lovers.” He closed his eyes and she took the opportunity to study his face.

“Were you in an accident? Or sick when you were a child?” she asked.

“In Ataran, the odds of you conceiving a child are poor,” he answered, not opening his eyes. “Should you conceive, it’s highly unlikely you will carry the child to its birth and even less likely that it will live beyond that point. It is part of our curse.”

 
Lyra didn’t know how to answer, but she did feel disappointment. She had never really thought of children, had always assumed that there would be time, someday, with someone. And, if she didn’t have children, her brothers would eventually. The family bloodline would continue. They would have giant Christmas celebrations and Thanksgivings, surrounded by the next generation. But that was before the shipwreck.

“I’m tired,” she said, turning around to put her back to him. She closed her eyes tight, refusing to cry yet again.

Lyra left Rigel asleep in his room. She didn’t imagine that, after the day she had given him, he would be awake for many more hours. The palace was quite in the late hour, the halls dim and cast with the stillness only a sleeping residence could give off. She wandered the halls, not seeing anyone as she absently examined the décor.

Not knowing where she was going and assuming that if she strayed too far someone would stop her and turn her around, she ventured down yet another passageway. The hall narrowed and curved, heading downward on an incline. She frowned in concern, but did not stop her progress. The bright colors of the palace faded into what could only be described as the gray melancholy of a medieval dungeon. This was not a part of the palace the king would want her seeing. So, to her thinking, it was all the more reason for her to go. What secrets were the Merr people hiding beneath their shiny surface?

A loud, screeching noise resounded from the distance. She jumped in alarm, pulling back against the wall as if it could hide her. She listened, waiting. The screech sounded again, but no one came to investigate the sound. Her heart beat at a fast pace, as she inched further downward.
 
Fear gripped her limbs and fluttered in her stomach.

She came to a door and heard people scrambling inside. Metal scraped. The screeching grew louder, followed by a series of loud thuds.

“We’re losing it!” a man yelled.

“Stop it! Don’t let it loose!” a woman answered.

“It’s not going to make it. The injection’s not working,” yet another male exclaimed. “There is nothing we can do but get out of his way until he’s dead.”

“We can’t leave him,” the woman protested. “Not like this.”

“Don’t let him touch you. They’re not Merr anymore,” a third man said. “They didn’t make the transformation into human form. We’ve done all we could. We should concentrate on a new formula for the others.”

“They didn’t sign up for this,” the woman insisted. “We have to try.”

“One more word and I’ll have you removed from the project.” Again, the first voice. The man in charge perhaps?

The screeching became more insistent. Lyra hazarded a peek into the narrow slit of a window to see what they were talking about. A nearly translucent creature thrashed against iron chains and bars. If not for the watery look of his skin, she would have guessed the creature was half merman, half human. Were they trying to turn it back into human? She’d heard people refer to the “curse” of being under the ocean. Were they experimenting on the poor guy? Did Rigel know about this? It wasn’t like anyone stopped her from coming down into the prison. Surely he had to know. The whole palace probably knew.

Perhaps this is the real reason humans were brought down. They were test subjects for genetic experiments. The whole population clearly wanted out of the water and they were using humans to do it. Who else was down here? Her brothers? Her father? Or did they want more Merr to populate the underwater world? Rigel said they couldn’t have children. Were they trying to turn humans into Merr and back again?

Almost desperate, she ran to the next door and peeked in. A translucent figure lay on a low bed, unmoving. He didn’t look familiar. She hurried to the next one and the next, finding them both empty.

After her search revealed nothing more, she went back to the first door. The creature was convulsing on the floor while his captors watched in silence. It didn’t take a genius to figure out the genetic experiment was dying.

Lyra couldn’t let them know she’d seen what they were doing, and yet she couldn’t pull away. The creature shook harder. It’s skin seeming to melt off its translucent body. It pooled around it on the floor like water melting off an ice cube.

 
Shaking, she backed away from the door before running several paces back up to the beautiful section of the palace. She kept glancing over her shoulder as she rushed through the halls in search of something familiar.

* * * * *

Rigel awoke with a smile on his face. It remained intact while he crawled out of bed and slipped on clean clothes. Hope filled him. He knew what Lyra said about being his lover and nothing more, but he couldn’t imagine that the pleasure they felt in each others’ arms could be easily dismissed. Surely she would change her mind, would warm up to the idea of an eternity with him.

His optimism lasted while he searched his home, but as he looked for the third time into the shower to see if she was hiding in there, his hope turned to worry. She was nowhere to be found. His eyes turned to the door. It wasn’t like he locked it. Lyra wasn’t a prisoner, yet she had never left his home without his escort before.

Though he knew he should not worry, he could not help it. Where had she gone? Why?

He thought of her outside the city walls. She had run there before. No one would stop her. What if she tried to go to the forest and the Olympians captured her? The surface wasn’t the only danger the Merr faced. The Olympians, as they called themselves after the gods of Mt. Olympus, didn’t want the humans brought to Ataran for they looked at the Merr curse as a blessing. They believed themselves to be goddesses below the waves, blessed with immortality and power. Before the caves leading into the abyss were sealed and all were allowed to roam the ocean freely, the Olympians had been caught luring humans to their deaths for sick pleasure. It had been a rough time for the Merr people. Loyalties had been divided. Some to this day still blamed the Olympians for the Merr curse lasting so long without reprieve. There were those, who still believed that one day Poseidon would come down and forgive them, lifting them up into the sunlight once more. Rigel liked to believe the latter.

If not the forest, what if she headed north toward the mountains? There was no threat of Olympians in the mountains, but the terrain was rough. She could get lost or hurt.

Rigel didn’t think, just acted. Once the fear took hold, he couldn’t reason. If she was his wife, he’d be able to sense her in ways a lover couldn’t. He would hear her thoughts and feel her presence. But she wasn’t his wife and when he reached his senses out to her, nothing answered the call.

* * * * *

Lyra pressed her back against the palace wall, listening as the sound of footsteps faded. The cool, hard tiles slid as she inched along. The hall looked familiar, but then that was because it looked like the other halls she’d gone through. As silence resumed, she pushed away from the wall and continued on until she found herself at the doorway to a rectangular room. Long tables stretched over the length, dominating the floor. They were unattended.

Lyra couldn’t resist. An eclectic collection of human artifacts were laid out in an orderly, yet cluttered, fashion. They spanned the ages, from anchors to hooks, to coins dating from antiquity. The barnacled pieces of a shipwreck were set on the floor in the corner, as if pushed away for later cataloging.

She walked around the table. There was an old pocket watch with a broken chain and clouded face next to the tarnished silver handle of a lady’s brush. A hardened glove with delicate buttons wore a large ruby ring.
 
There were pieces of yellowed silk, chipped vases, a Greek bust, rusted navigational tools, pewter silverware, pieces of a crystal chandelier, and sections of armor.

Growing up in a family of fishermen and sailors, she knew a lot about shipwrecks and lore of the sea. These looked like the recovered items of a shipwreck. On impulse, she reached to touch the watch. The once smooth surface felt grainy.

 
“Oh, hello, my lady,” a man said. “I did not know to expect you this morning, or else I would have been here to greet you.”

Lyra stiffened, quickly withdrawing her hand from the table.

The man was slighter than the other Merr in stature, with short brown hair and kind brown eyes. He wore loose wool pants and a shorter wool shirt. “I did not mean to startle you. Of course, I am pleased that you have come. I have been asking Rigel to allow you to visit. We have so many questions for you.”

“Allow me to visit?” she repeated, unable to help her frown. “I need his permission?”

“They really aren’t that good at explain things, are they?” he said, more to himself. Then, as he came closer, he added, “I’ve been here for so long I have forgotten that you might not know everything we take for granted, though if truth be told, I’ve been relearning quite a bit with you new ladies in residence. When I said he allowed you to visit, it’s not that he gives you permission, per se, more like he… allows it?”

“Is that a question or a restatement of the fact that I’m a prisoner and you’re trying to soften the blow?” Inside she hardened. Lyra thought of the poor transparent creature imprisoned in the palace dungeons. Was that her fate? They had referred to it being once Merr, but what did that mean, really? She needed to learn more.

“The fact that he is considered your guardian means he is in charge of you until you decide to marry. Lord Rigel will take care of you and it is up to him to approve those seeking your hand. Only then will they be allowed to court you. But, don’t worry, you get used to some of the antiquated ways of thinking. He pulled you out of the water, so he is in charge of you. Kind of like that old belief, if you save someone’s life, that life becomes your responsibility. And the person saved is in debt to the one who saved them.”