Hidden Depths (3 page)

He closed his eyes and shuddered when she pushed all three into him.

He loved it. That was clear from the way his spine arched and his expression grew dreamy. The fact that he’d wanted to hide how much he craved this sweetened her victory. She began to move her fingers inside of him.

The look on his face grew truly beatific.

“I’m fucking you,” she whispered, some demon genius taking control of her vocal chords. “I’m fucking you like a man.”

“Oh God!” he cried.

Suddenly, he was fucking her twice as hard, really slamming into her, as wild and desperate as if the only way to save both their souls was by coming in the next ten seconds. Maybe the rubber band did make it more difficult to ejaculate.

He seemed like he was reaching for it hard and couldn’t quite get there. The twisting of his facial muscles pushed more of her buttons than needed it. She started to go, and finally he did as well. She moved her fingers faster and was rewarded by a ragged shout of pleasure.

The shout was only the beginning. His ejaculation gushed heat inside her as he strained to hold as deep as he could. She felt herself clamp around him, and that made them both come harder. The orgasm felt like pleasure was stabbing through her womb - no subtlety to it, just a hard-core explosion of sexual nerves.

Olivia made a sound like she was sobbing. Maybe she was. Even though he’d come, James had started thrusting again, taking advantage before his cock softened. Helpless to stop her sex from reacting, she went over a second time.

Half a dozen jabs more, and it was all over.

“Jesus,” she gasped as he sagged down on her. She felt like a hurricane had blown through her, one that swept everything before it with a storm surge of ecstasy. When she tugged her fingers from James’s body, her hand and arm were shaking. He shivered, and she wasn’t certain it was with pleasure. “God, James.

Did I hurt you?”

He moaned, his sweaty face turning back and forth across the crook of her neck. “You -” He stopped for air. “You did that perfectly.” How did he know? Had he been finger fucked before? She’d been singularly inexperienced when they met in college, but she’d heard young men sometimes experimented, just like young women did. Maybe he hadn’t been fucked by
fingers
. Maybe he was comparing what she’d done to something else entirely.

She pressed her lips to his temple, unable - or, she guessed, unwilling - to ask him to clarify. Did she want to hear his answer?

He lifted his head and smiled softly down at her. For a second, she drank him in. He was never so beautiful as when he’d just climaxed. His eyes were brighter, his sensitive mouth relaxed. His thick dark lashes blinked lazily.

“Olivia,” he said as if she’d done something to amuse him.

“What?” she asked him defensively.

“You’re organizing your thoughts again. Trying to force everything, immediately, to make a sense you’re comfortable with.”

“It’s what I do.”

He kissed her lips so gently her mouth might have been the holy grail.

“Whatever you want to know, I’ll tell you. Just let it be until tomorrow.” She searched his sleepy eyes. He seemed a little rueful, but not afraid.

Whatever he was going to tell her, it wasn’t too terrible. The tension that had taken hold of her ribcage eased.

“All right,” she surrendered. “Go ahead and enjoy your post-coital nap.” As he laid his cheek against her breast in his favorite spot, she felt him grinning.

CHAPTER TWO

One month earlier

HIS
Majesty, Lobodon Vitul was dying.

The ruler of the wereseals lay in his sumptuous chamber in his enchanted palace beneath the sea. Heavy embroidered curtains - some blue, some green with eel-like silver patterns - were drawn across porthole windows that overlooked the innermost courtyard. A single candle burned within a pierced metal lantern, the star-shaped holder dangling from the painted ceiling many meters above his bed.

They had electricity in Oceana, powered quite reliably by the ceaseless currents around them. The golden flame was simply the only illumination the king’s failing eyes could bear.

“Not ... long now,” he said with a rasping laugh to his son.

Anso, the crown prince, sat on a cushioned stool beside him and took his hand. The king’s carved cedar bed - which normally was set in the floor - had been propped on stands to spare the ancient court physician from having to stoop to treat him. Ironically, the dying king was decades younger than the old doctor, far younger than the age their race should have anticipated living to. His disease was one that ran in families, noble lines in particular. Lobodon knew exactly what to expect from it. Because he did, and because he’d never liked being lied to, Anso didn’t contradict his words.

“Glad,” his father said, confusing him. “About marrying your mother. In spite of ... how it ended for her. At least I ... brought new blood into the line for you.” Anso’s throat choked tight. His mother had killed herself on his fifteenth birthday, within an hour of his naming ceremony as official heir to the throne. He wasn’t sure why she’d waited that long. For as long as he could remember, she’d been desperately unhappy.

“She tried,” his father said, his cold hand giving Anso’s a feeble squeeze.

“She loved us as well as she could. She just missed her home Outside too much.” By
Outside
, he meant outside the borders of the Pocket, the fae-created cross-dimensional territory that was not quite mundane nor purely magical. The Pocket began at a modestly sized city called Resurrection on the eastern seaboard of North America. Once past land, it dove through a corridor under the ocean floor, then rose and spread out again to host the cities of the Atlantic League - the foremost of which was their own.

Anso had traveled to Resurrection and also to Manhattan, New York. Both metropolises were too dry for his taste, though people claimed the weather was better in summer. He’d been an adult when he took the journey and not a child.

Nonetheless, he remembered feeling more hurt than he’d been prepared for.

Oceana was more beautiful in every way than either landlubbing city. Moreover, Oceana had given his mother him.

Evidently, neither of those things had been enough to inspire Denise Vitul to go on living.

As there was little point in bringing any of this up, Anso pressed his forehead to his father’s shoulder, hiding the tears Lobodon probably knew were there anyway. “I always knew you loved me, Dad.”

His father let out a sigh. Anso sensed him gathering his reserves and sat up to face whatever he wished to say. Recognizing this, his father gave him the slanting half-smile Anso had seen so many times in his own mirror. “I’m proud of you, son. You’re going to make a fine ruler. I know you’ll do what you must for your people.”

“Father -”

“You
will
.” He nodded in emphasis and warning, then settled deeper into the bolster and closed his eyes. “Probably don’t even need me to tell you to. It’s ... the blessing and ... curse of the Vitul line ... that our instincts are strong. Like salmon.” He laughed again breathlessly. “You’ll be ... driven to it soon enough.” As he spoke, his respiration had grown labored, seams of pain deepening in his face. Anso laid his hand on his father’s heart, willing his own warmth to him.

“I’ll call Pinni. He’ll give you something to help you rest.”

“Call ... the Magus too. Like to ... make my peace.” All shapechangers were magical beings, though few had the ability to perform spells. The wereseals were fortunate their coalition of city nations had been adopted by a faction of the fae, who transported the cities whole from their shared native land. Back in Faerie, the cities of the seals had been in danger of falling into magical anarchy, a condition that had spelled the end to other civilizations there. Here in the Pocket, the energy that powered all magic was both less potent and more stable. The rules by which it functioned one day were almost certain to apply the next.

Without the fae, life on the seafloor could not have been sustained at this level of sophistication, the drawback being that wereseals were now dependent on a race who did what they did for their own reasons. That knowledge might not be comfortable, but it couldn’t be changed.

Anso bent to kiss his Father’s brow. “I’ll get them both,” he said.

Naturally, the physician and the spiritual leader were waiting in the antechamber. All Lobodon’s advisers and relatives had gathered for his death vigil. The pair Lobodon requested were his closest friends, their loyalty proven many times during his reign. Anso was glad for that. He knew his father didn’t want his son at his side right now. He was in too much pain for his pride to welcome that.

“He’s asking for the pair of you,” Anso said.

They went in without questions, their expressions calm, their gazes meeting his with quiet understanding. As a pureblood faerie, the Magus’s age was difficult to pin down. Pinni, the old physician, was an elf and consequently lower on the magical prestige scale. His kind often chose medicine or technology as careers, not being as standoffish as pure fae. Pinni gave Anso’s shoulder a gentle rub as he passed. The gesture was enough to fill Anso’s eyes with tears.

To his dismay, his cousin Ellice ran forward at this sign of his emotions. She was a pretty woman - tall and strong, with the dark gold hair and deep blue eyes the Vitul family was famed for. She and Anso had grown up together, had shared their first shifts into seal form. Anso couldn’t count how many times they’d played naked in the surf off some pristine beach. In all that time, Ellice hadn’t done him a single cruelty. Never laughed when he was embarrassed. Never failed to sympathize when he was sad. She’d lost her mother too, when she was only ten. Nonetheless, since they’d reached adulthood, Anso found he couldn’t be comfortable with her.

His unease stemmed from more than spending time close to a female. The prince was used to handling that. All noblemen learned to. Male wereseals had strong sexual drives. Females did too, of course, but it was the males’

responsibility to ensure they didn’t father pups indiscriminately. Among a closed society like theirs, the perils of inbreeding couldn’t have been realer. The means to prevent pregnancy existed, but given the potency of wereseal semen, it couldn’t be counted on. While a commoner might be allowed to slip up, noble males refrained from sex with women until marriage. Even then, they only married those whose blood the mages tested first for weakness.

The temptation this resulted in could be overwhelming. They were men, they had urges. To be forbidden to satisfy them only increased their power - a fact Ellice wasn’t as sensitive to as she should have been. Anso’s lack of romantic feelings for her hardly mattered to his desires. She was fruit of the secret tree. She had breasts. And a pussy. And a bottom so much lusher than a man’s. She shouldn’t have made a habit of touching him.

“Anso!” she cried now, catching his face between graceful hands. “Dear, dear cousin. How sorry I am for you!”

He took her wrists to pull her touch away, which somehow resulted in her tangling their fingers together. “I’m fine, Ellice. We knew this was coming.”

“Of course we did, but still ...” She leaned closer, speaking so only he could hear. “If there’s anything I can do to make you feel better.
Anything.
I know how close you and your father were.”

Are
, he thought.
How close we are
.

“Anso,” interrupted a welcome voice. Anso’s best friend Tykon Otari had just stuck his head around the antechamber’s dark paneled door. He grimaced as the room’s inhabitants turned to look. “Sorry to interrupt. Need to steal the prince away for a few.”

“
Ty
,” Ellice said in the gently scolding tone she used a lot on his friend. More than once she’d warned Anso against spending so much time with an Otari. As noble families went, they weren’t the most prestigious. “Anso needs to be with his family now.”

Ty shrugged at her, his face impassive. “Guard business. I’m afraid it can’t wait.”

Anso disentangled himself from Ellice as carefully as he could. “It’s all right.

I could do with a distraction.”

He moved away before Ellice could pet his sleeve. She said something behind him, but he was too focused on his relief at getting out of there.

“
Thank you
,” he said the moment the door was shut behind them.

Ty chuckled under his breath. “Thought I might have picked up a silent distress call.”

He might not have been joking. Tykon did sometimes intuit what he was thinking. Anso’s best friend was very intelligent, a trait Ellice didn’t value as highly as Anso did. It was true Ty wasn’t as kind as Ellice. He had a temper and spoke thoughtlessly now and then. He’d slept with a lot of men besides Anso, but the prince had long since gotten over being hurt by that. Males their age had sex together out of necessity. They weren’t meant to form heart attachments. Ty was a good friend - not perfect but as dear to him as a brother.

Anso felt more at ease walking down the hall in his company than he’d have felt if he were alone. They followed the march of electrum-rimmed porthole windows that provided ever changing underwater views into the courtyard. Like the city around it, the royal palace was octagonal. As rulers, the Vituls commanded its central ring. Beyond that ring, each noble family had a wedge-shaped portion where members lived. They had their own coral gardens, their own decorative fisheries, but the courtyard Anso’s father nurtured was best of all.

The sound of bubbles rising through the sunlit waters was a balm to his wound up nerves.

“How is your father?” Ty asked as they reached the final turning to Anso’s rooms.

Anso shoved his hands into his pockets, not wanting his friend to see how they shook. “Close to the end, I think. I’m not certain he’ll last the night.” Ty stopped and turned to him. “Do you want to go back? You know I made up that bit about needing you for guard business.”

“I know.” Anso smiled at Ty, their faces perfectly level. Ty was as muscular as Anso and just as tall. He was better looking, Anso thought, with shining sand-colored hair and thick-lashed yellow eyes. His skin, which always looked like he’d been sunning, bore a barely visible pattern of darker spots - as if his bloodline ran back to leopard seals. Like Lobodon’s illness, the coloration was a symptom of inbreeding. Fortunately, the Otaris didn’t suffer from health problems.