Hidden Depths (8 page)

“I think my husband secretly likes men.” The instant the words were out, she wanted to take them back. She shouldn’t be blurting out their private business.

Her captor’s smile deepened. “Luckily, my friend Ty won’t object.”

“What do you want with us?” her sanity finally permitted her to demand.

“Who the hell are you?”

Her captor’s face sobered. “I am His Majesty, King Anso the First of Oceana, and you are my mate in blood. I’m sorry not to take more time to explain, but your husband’s shouts may have attracted attention. I think we’d best get this show on the road.”

He had amazing diction for a kidnapper.

What show
? she thought belatedly.
And what road
?

The second question was answered when King Anso - if that really was his name - began striding into the water’s edge.

“No!” she cried, this at last awakening fear in her. Olivia liked
gazing
at the ocean. The roughness of the surf always frightened her.

Her captor’s steps faltered but didn’t stop. “No?”

“I’m afraid of the waves.”

He did stop then, the choppy water splashing up his naked thighs, spraying her just a bit. She realized he was hard. As her weight had shifted, the silky tip of his cock bumped her bare bottom. Lord he was huge, like, porn star huge - an observation that filled her with a very inappropriate curiosity. She squirmed over an assortment of mortifying responses. Maybe worst of all, she couldn’t look away from his beautiful blue eyes. She knew her own gaze was pleading. Some part of her wanted
him
to forgive her phobia.

“I love to swim,” she clarified stupidly. “I just have nightmares about drowning in the ocean.”

His eyes flared with the strange glow she’d noticed earlier. “You’re with me now. You never have to be afraid of the sea again.”

* * *

Anso was amazed his mate had barely struggled - and also reassured. On some level, she must know what he was to her, and her instincts calmed her body.

Holding her in his arms was extraordinary. It was as if, unbeknownst to him, his life had been in pieces until that moment, and she’d drawn the fragments into a whole. He loved that her eyes kept coming back to his, even loved the confused pucker between her dark red brows.

“Tell me your name,” he said.

“Olivia,” she murmured dazedly.

“Olivia,” he repeated, thinking it beautiful. “We’re almost at the depth where I can’t hold you above the breakers. I need to kiss you now.” Her mouth fell open, so he took it.

A groan ripped from him at his first taste of her. This was a woman’s mouth.

This was
his
woman’s mouth. He pushed his tongue into it gently. Oh she was soft - petite and succulent. His mouth watered.

She didn’t know it, but her fate was sealed the second she swallowed.

“Mmph,” she said, perhaps a teensy bit protesting.

Anso changed angles and went deeper.

As he did, she started kissing him back. Her response was tentative but miraculous to him. Maybe his hormones hit her. Maybe she simply couldn’t resist the lure of her bloodmate. All he knew for certain was that his prick clanged between his legs, ringing for him to attend a life or death appointment. He swung her around to face him, her cushy naked body pressing his full on.

She liked that too. They moaned down each other’s throats. Olivia kissed him harder.

A wave crashed over their heads without her noticing. Anso dove them under the next together, smoothly submerging them. Olivia didn’t stiffen, perhaps because she was busy winding her arms and legs around him.

Fuck
, he thought, wanting to do precisely that more than he’d have thought possible. His hand dragged down her back to clamp over her little ass. This squashed his near-bursting length into her soft belly. The pressure almost made him come, the stab of pleasure through his groin intense.

Fortunately for his pride, the next wave’s under-torque spun them around like kids rolling down a hill. Olivia struggled and pushed back from his mouth, then realized she was still breathing.

The expressions that crossed her pretty face were comical.

“Wha -” The last land air from her lungs came out in a stream of bubbles.

Holding her firmly with one arm, Anso stroked her cheek with his other hand.

The red waves of her hair spread out in the currents like a portrait of Temptation.

He knew then she’d always be his siren.

“You’re breathing water now,” he explained. “It’s a gift our nobles can share with other races.”

“What the fuck race are you?”

He understood her impulse to curse. “I am King Anso the First, ruler of the wereseals.”

“Wereseals.”

“Yes.”

“
Wereseals
.”

Her disbelief frayed his patience. “Yes.”

She narrowed her sunny blue eyes at him. If he hadn’t been holding her too close to do it, he suspected she’d have crossed her arms. “I’m dreaming.”

“You’re not.”

“Then I’m drugged.”

“Maybe a little, but not the way you mean.” He wrapped both arms behind her waist, gratified by the way she once again forgot to struggle. “We’re bloodmates.

Our bodies can’t help calling to each other. That’s how I tracked you so far from my home.”

“I’m married.”

“I know.” He tried to sound calm. “I’m very sorry about that.” He’d have been more upset if her calves hadn’t been sliding restlessly behind his, as if even in the midst of this argument, her body longed to open itself to him.

He fought the groan that wanted to rise in his chest.

“What do you want with me?” she asked.

He wished he had more experience with females. Perhaps there was a more romantic, or at least a smoother way to put this.

“I want to mate you. Need to, actually. You’re the best possible mother for my children. And I’d like to make you my queen.”

This last declaration didn’t impress her. Olivia rolled her eyes. “What if I refuse?”

Since her knees had crept to his waist, he didn’t take offense. “Refusing is no longer an option.”

“Look, buddy -”

“Try releasing me if you doubt my words.”

She tried, she truly did, but she could no more let go of him than he could have let go of her. The more she tried to resist, the more her hands slid over him, her touch-hunger impossible to fight. The craving for skin-to-skin contact was a defensive mechanism. Her body wouldn’t allow her to do something so against its basic interests as putting distance between them.

“Oh God,” she gasped, the pain of longing twisting her face.

Anso took pity on them both and cupped one of her sharp-tipped breasts. A quiver ran down her body as she arched to him and whimpered. Anso understood how she felt. Her velvet skin seemed to bespell his palm. As he caressed the curve, sculpting it in his hold, the scent of her arousal filtered strongly into the saltwater. She blinked when he rubbed his thumb across her nipple.

“Oh God,” she repeated.

Her hand was slithering around his hipbone, heading straight for his cock.

Anso stopped it reluctantly. “We need to leave. We’ll be safer once we reach the tunnel. I’ll take care of you then.”

“Take care of me?” she asked faintly.

He looked deeply into her eyes, his own glowing brightly enough to illuminate tiny motes in the water between their faces. “I’m going to penetrate you. I’m going to spill my seed in your pussy and make you come. Then I’m probably going to do it a lot more times.”

Her mouth fell open in amazement, her cheeks turning raspberry.

“Climb onto my back,” he ordered before he succumbed to his painful need to kiss her again. “If I hold you like this much longer, I’m going to make love to you here and now.”

She jerked and moved behind him a bit more quickly than he could be grateful for. Annoyed, though he told himself it was for the best, he reached back to coax her legs around his waist once more. They clamped on him tightly, but she didn’t grind her pussy against his back.

Never mind that
, he thought. He knew the desire to rub herself over him would drive her crazy soon. The crazier she got, the easier she’d be to take once they reached the protected tunnel under the sea floor. Force was something he never wanted to resort to. To his relief, she wrapped her arms around his chest without being told, leaving his arms free to swim. Her cheek she tucked close against his neck, her soft breasts flattened against his skin. When she wriggled just a little, as if her nipples were itching, his mood brightened.

No doubt it was childish, but he also appreciated her not asking where her husband and the others had swum off to.

* * *

At first, Olivia tried to keep track of where they went. She was always the navigator on family road trips. Sadly, there were no street signs or K-Marts to serve as landmarks. When they veered away from the shoreline, the terrain became even less decipherable.

It didn’t help that the man whose back she clung to was incredibly distracting.

His immense erection thrust up from his groin above where her calves were crossed. She kept wanting to stroke it, to see if it really was the best part of him to touch. He kept steering her hand away before it got there. Olivia wasn’t sure she could stand being put off much longer.

The frustration in her body grew by insane degrees, until her pussy felt like it was on fire. Helpless not to, she rocked her pelvis against his glutes, which were conveniently tight and hard.

“Christ,” he said after a minute of this treatment. “We’re almost there. Just hold on a bit longer.”

Olivia ground her teeth together. If this was a dream, shouldn’t she be allowed to come? She rubbed her mouth across his shoulder, searching out his pointed nipples with roaming hands. He moaned when she found the little projections and rubbed them. His body writhed so extravagantly in her hold that his swimming momentarily lost its astonishing momentum.

“O-livia,” he growled.

Something about him saying her name, as if they knew each other, shocked her into stopping. He shuddered when she did.

“Thank you,” he panted.

Was it panting when you were underwater?

He hadn’t been lying about them being close to their goal. The tunnel turned out to be a giant hatch set into the side of a rocky trench in the ocean floor.

Though the entry was sheltered, Olivia didn’t understand how it could fail to be noticed. They weren’t that far from the coast, and the sunlit surface of the water was still visible above them. That sparkle grew more distant as Anso allowed their combined weight to sink down in front of the immense door.

He must have sensed the tension this spurred in her. He rubbed one of the arms she’d wrapped tightly around him. “The hatch is cloaked by magic. You can see it because you’re with me. We’ll be perfectly safe inside.” Of course the tunnel was cloaked by magic. What else could have done the trick? Anso checked a cryptic readout beside a control panel. That wasn’t magic.

That was a computer.

“The others have gone in already,” he said.

The others meaning James. The reminder of her husband’s existence should have done a better job of subduing her hormones. Her ability to think was overwhelmed by Anso’s promise to take care of her in there. Anso punched a code into the panel, his fingers fumbling as if he were rattled by all this too.

At last, he hit the right sequence of numbers. A smaller door swung open within the larger one. Anso pushed away from the panel and swam them both through it. Lights lit the huge space inside, long twinkly lines of brightness that curved away into the distance. The walls of the tunnel were gray but not concrete.

She thought they might be high tech ceramic tile. The tiles looked wet, which of course they were. They glistered as if they contained mica. Though the passage was currently empty, it was large enough to accommodate multiple lanes of car traffic.

James and the others were nowhere in sight.

Anso’s lungs went in and out faster. Olivia became aware that the small door had shut behind them. As closely as she clung to her captor’s back, she couldn’t help but hear him swallow.

“Olivia,” he said, sounding strained as he gave her forearm another rub. “You and I both know this is going to happen. Our bodies have decided that for us. If you prefer, however, there’s a maintenance room for staff farther down. We could go there and be more comfortable.”

If Olivia waited another second, she was going to combust. She ran her hand down his rippling abs and took hold of his swollen cock, which was even silkier than she expected. As its unbelievable texture registered on the greedy nerves of one palm, she cupped and squeezed his ball sac with the other.

The back of Anso’s head hit her shoulder, his neck and spine arching as she stroked. His hand slapped over hers to drag her grip to his tip.

“Oh Lord.” He pushed it downward and up again. “Don’t do that. I
have
to come inside you.”

Before she could point out
he
was moving her hand, he wrenched around in her arms. Since Olivia was somewhat reluctant to let go of what she held, he probably hurt himself as he turned.

She wasn’t sure that mattered to him.

Anso kissed her, and she kissed him back, both their tongues immediately dueling. His groan of pleasure-pain was thrilling, and the octopus-like quality of his arms. She thought she’d seen him move fast before, but when he suddenly swam her into the tunnel wall, his velocity stunned her.

“Yes,” she groaned, loving that now she was braced for him to shove against her. Her hand reclaimed the prodigy he’d squashed between their bellies. God, it was like her hand was in love with touching him. She pushed the pad of her thumb around his meltingly smooth crest. His precum must have been thicker than most men’s. It didn’t dissipate in the saltwater. She rubbed it back and forth until it coated him.

“God,” he said and shoved two long fingers inside of her.

Her mouth formed an
O
, but no sound came out. His fingers stroked her, gently, deeply, and it felt so good she forgot how much she wanted to play with his big penis.

“I’m sorry,” he said harshly next to her ear. “I want this to be enjoyable for you, but I’ve never had a woman before.”