Immersed in Pleasure (2 page)

“Hello,” she said, standing in a private alcove next to the top of the central swimming pool. “I thought I would never see you again.”

“I forgot to thank you for putting out my fire,” he said, wincing at how stupid he sounded.

She ran her fingers through her hair, freeing it from its braid.

“I’m waiting,” she said, humming.

“For what?”

“For you to thank me. You said you forgot to.”

Derek shook his head.

“Right. Thank you for putting out my fire. I didn’t mean to stare at you upstairs. I’ve never seen a mermaid before.”

“I stared back,” she said simply.

“You did. Why?”

“I like your face.”

“You like my face?”

“I do. It’s pretty. But not girl pretty. Handsome-prince pretty. And you have hair that’s wavy like water. Even your eyes are water-colored, and your shirt. I probably thought you were a merman.”

Derek looked down. He wore black slacks and a black vest over his French-blue oxford shirt. A little too
GQ
for him, he wore these clothes only because Ireland liked them so much.

“I’m not a merman. But I am a prince. Derek Prince,” he said and held out his hand to her.

“Xenia.” She ignored his hand and instead leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. He shivered as her warm soft lips pressed into his cheek. “I have to go now, but you can stay if you like.”

“Go where?”

“Underwater.”

At that, Xenia took a step back and pulled her camisole off. Her skirt came off next, and she stood before him completely naked.

Derek felt his eyes go as wide as hers. Although a sight to behold, the club paled before Xenia’s naked flesh. Thin but with soft girlish curves, Xenia barely looked human to him. The silver metallic scale tattoos graced not only her feet and calves but the sides of her thighs and the edge of her hips. Her breasts, the perfect size, appeared designed to rest in the palm of his hand. A healthy red-blooded man, he couldn’t help staring at her breasts and between her legs. Completely smooth and hairless, she seemed a being of eternal youth. His body tensed at the sight of such pristine flesh so unashamedly on display.

The girl, Xenia, reached for a silver chain and fastened it around her stomach. Little silver scales hung off it and dangled around her hips. She clasped silver bracelets onto each wrist and connected them to the silver rings on her fingers. Around her forehead went a heavier silver chain like a small circlet. The body jewelry shimmered in the low light and rendered Xenia a creature of ethereal beauty.

She strode to the edge of the tall pool and dived gracefully into it. Derek ran back down the stairs and up to the side of the column. Around and around she swam, her long brown hair flowing behind her. She spun in slow graceful circles, arched under and around, and seemed to need almost no air. Derek watched her, unable to look at anything else. She swam to the edge of the column and smiled at him through the water. He pressed his hand to the glass and she laid her hand against the inside to meet his. But she pulled back quickly and swam off again.

“Ah…that little one. She may be my favorite,” said a lightly accented voice from behind him. Derek turned around and saw the man from Cirque du Nuit, the one in the Victorian suit and the ponytail, standing behind him with a cocktail in his hand.

“She’s amazing,” Derek agreed. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“
Merci.
I found her myself.”

Derek stared at the man.
Merci,
he’d said.
Found her…

“Oh, my God. You’re Kingsley Edge,” Derek said. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge into your club. She told me I should—”

The man shook his finger and tsk-tsked him in a manner that was infuriatingly French.

“I know who you are, Mr. Prince. And I know who your parents are. Consider yourself on the guest list.”

Derek followed Kingsley to the bar. They sat on stools side by side and said nothing until the bartender—a beautiful young blonde woman wearing a shimmering sea-green dress—brought them both fresh drinks.

“Ah, Urs,” Kingsley said to the bartender as he took a drink of his sidecar. “You are too good to me.”

“Nothing’s too good for our King.” She leaned up to kiss him on the cheek as Xenia had to Derek.

“So, you really are Kingsley Edge?” Derek asked. While Kingsley Edge’s clubs were famous, the man himself was infamous.

Kingsley shrugged, a small smile playing over his lips.

“It’s a living.”

“A very good one. My God, these girls are incredible.” Derek counted at least a dozen stunningly beautiful naked girls swimming about the club or lounging on large rocks with their decorated feet tucked to the side. Not even the mermaids of lore could be more spectacular than the ones right in front of him.

“Incredible, yes. In many ways,” Kingsley agreed. “My mermaids are my pride and joy. I went to Japan ten years ago and met a geisha. Such a woman I’d never seen before. How she talked and teased and entertained us all. I recall thinking the world needed more women like that—beautiful, mysterious, untouchable.”

“Untouchable?” Derek asked. He glanced at Xenia, who continued to swim languid graceful arcs in the transparent column.

“Oui,”
Kingsley said. “Untouchable…untouched. This is no gentlemen’s club or brothel. If you’re here for a lap dance, you’re in the wrong place. All my mermaids are virgins.”

Derek nearly spat his drink out.

“Virgins?”

“
Bien sûr.
Those who come here wish to see something truly unusual, something magical or mythical. Beautiful women, naked, exquisite and all virginal.”

“Even Xenia?” Derek asked.

“Even she.”

“But she must be in her twenties, right?”

“She is. She started here at age eighteen and has been a mermaid three years now. I saw in the paper a little article about a girl who’d broken a record for holding her breath underwater. I met her the next week, and she’s been here ever since.”

“But that’s crazy,” Derek protested. “Why would women this gorgeous choose—”

“If I offered you an extraordinary sum of money to go a year without sex, would you do it?”

Derek stared at Kingsley and burst into laughter.

“So it’s the opposite of prostitution here?”

“I pay them to
not
have sex. As long as they stay intact, they can work very few hours, meet the wealthiest and most powerful men in the world, and leave whenever they wish. Most depart after a year or two with a rich boyfriend, a very large bank account or both. Many, like Xenia, stay longer.”

Just then a redheaded mermaid slid off her rock and divded back into the water.

“Come back, Alanna,” the man at the table called after her. “Please?”

“No, go away,” the girl, Alanna, said when she surfaced. “I don’t like your tie. It’s ugly.”

Kingsley chuckled softly at the scene.

“Mermaids,” he said to Derek, “have cold hearts. To win the heart of one takes much perseverance.”

Shaking his head, Derek could only gaze around him in awe. He understood it all now. Beautiful virginal women who were trained to be unimpressed by the wealth and power that surrounded them…no wonder this club attracted such a high-caliber clientele. Seducing a stripper was child’s play. But netting a virginal mermaid? Now,
that
was a feat.

“But how do you know they’re virgins?” Derek asked. “Can’t they sneak out and do whatever they want?”

“We have ways of knowing.” Kingsley took another sip of his drink.

“What ways?” Derek studied him out of the corner of his eye.

Kingsley merely swirled the ice in his cocktail.

“Land is grand, Mr. Prince, but wetter is better. Some days, it is good to be the King.”

At that, Kingsley strode off and sat next to someone Derek recognized as the top prosecutor in the state of New York. Glancing up, he saw Xenia swimming to the top of the column of water. Derek headed up the stairs again and found her just as she pulled herself from the water.

“You stayed,” she said, smiling as she stood naked and dripping in front of him. She didn’t reach for one of the dozens of towels stacked nearby. Nothing in her posture or manner seemed remotely seductive. Although everything in him longed to lick the water off her extraordinary curves, she appeared almost unaware of her naked body and the effect it had on him.

“I did stay. But I have to go now. Can I see you again?”

“If you come back you can see me again. If you don’t come back you can’t.”

“Then I’ll come back. I’ll definitely come back.”

“But go away now,” she said as she started to walk off. “I like your face enough I want to know how it feels to miss it.”

Grinning ear to ear, Derek nodded. He never knew getting dismissed could feel so good.

He returned to Cirque du Nuit and found Ireland long gone. But he had told her he’d see her at her place and even if she couldn’t keep a promise, he could.

He reached Ireland’s apartment by eleven o’clock. Knocking on the door, he half hoped she wouldn’t answer. For a month now he’d been putting off the big “this isn’t working” talk. They weren’t exclusive. Whenever he started to consider it, she’d shift into bitch overdrive and all thoughts of happily ever after would go screaming out the window.

Ireland answered the door wearing only a white shirt—one of his—and wet hair. She always took a long hot shower when angry. Not a good sign.

“Can’t believe you showed up.” She stepped back to let him in.

“Told you I would. I’m even early.”

Derek entered and sat on her couch. He hated how attractive she looked with her hair down and wet. Apparently he’d acquired a wet-hair fetish in only one evening.

Ireland exhaled heavily as she came to stand in front of him.

“Derek, I’m sorry. It was wrong of me to be so late and not call. Forgive me?”

Derek shook his head and groaned. He hated these conversations.

“Ireland, you’re smart and beautiful and—” He discovered he’d already run out of compliments. “That’s fantastic. But all you and I ever do is fuck or fight. If we’re not doing one, we’re doing the other.”

“So?”

“So that’s hardly a relationship. Look—” he began and she stopped him with a finger over his lips.

“So…” she said as she sat on his lap, a knee on either side of his thighs, “I’m done fighting.”

“Ireland, not tonight. We have to talk—”

“No, we don’t.”

Ireland raised her hand and unbuttoned the top button of her shirt.

“Don’t, Ireland.”

“Why?” She unbuttoned her shirt all the way to the bottom and let it slide off her arms and slip to the floor. She dipped her head and kissed his neck, his earlobe.

Against his will, Derek’s body began to respond to her expert touch. She brought her breasts to his face and Derek suckled lightly on her nipples as she reached down and freed him from his pants. As he kissed her breasts hungrily, she rose up and pushed him inside her.

“Ireland, stop,” he said as he tore his mouth from her body.

“Stop what? Stop this?” She moved her hips forward, taking him even deeper into her. Rocking against him, Ireland unbuttoned his vest and shirt and pushed them back. Running her hands down his strong chest, she pressed her hands into the hard flat plane of his stomach. Derek took a deep breath and hated himself for letting her have such power over him. Ireland used sex as a weapon. She wielded it like a trained assassin.

Leaning in close, Ireland let her hair tickle his bare shoulders.

The touch of her wet hair on his skin proved too much for him. He ordered her up and bent her over the back of the couch. Gripping her shoulders, he brutally drove into her. Her hips bucked frantically against his. She loved it rough, but tonight his force was for his benefit, not hers. With bitter, angry thrusts he slammed into her as she panted his name. He pushed into her so deep she flinched. All the water in the ocean couldn’t put out the fire in his blood tonight.

Under him Ireland groaned and gasped. Derek suspected half of Ireland’s vocal pleasure constituted mere theatrics designed to keep him ensnared to her. Her orgasm seemed louder than usual and out of spite, Derek came silently and pulled out of her as soon as he’d finished.

“See?” Ireland grabbed her shirt off the floor. “We’re good together.”

Angry with himself for letting her win again, Derek shoved his shirt back into his pants.

“We’re only good together when we’re in bed.”

“That was the couch,” she said with an arrogant toss of her hair.

“And it wasn’t good. It might have felt good, but it wasn’t good.”

“Derek, what’s your problem? You’re hot and rich. So am I. You said yourself you weren’t planning on ever getting married again. God knows I don’t want a husband and a bunch of screaming brats around puking on my carpet and throwing cereal in my Porsche. We’re right for each other. We make sense.”

“We make nothing.” Derek hastily buttoned his vest. He hated who he turned into around Ireland. “We don’t even make love. I feel nothing with you. Tonight this girl kissed me on the cheek, and I felt more from that than I did five minutes ago when I was rammed up in you.”

“What are you saying?” For a moment Ireland seemed almost human.

What was he saying? In those few brief moments with Xenia, he’d laughed, mostly at himself. He’d felt like an idiot, like a teenager, like a man on a mission—things he never felt with Ireland, things he never even felt with his ex-wife. “I’m sorry, Ireland. I want more.”

The tiny moment of humanity had been an act. All the way to the door Ireland pelted him with insults and profanities. Derek didn’t respond. He merely walked out, found his car and headed to his own apartment. On his way there he tried to think of Ireland, but his mind went back to Xenia. Derek Prince—son of the deputy mayor of New York, partner in his own law firm by age thirty, and now he couldn’t stop grinning at the thought of seeing a twenty-one-year-old virgin who worked as a mermaid in a nightclub. Mark and Christian would die laughing if he told them. Then and there he decided he would keep it to himself.