Seaborne (22 page)

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Authors: Katherine Irons

Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fantasy, #Chick-Lit, #Mythology

BOOK: Seaborne
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“Then I’ll get back in it. I work out, Justin. My upper body strength is probably better than yours.”
He gave a polite chuckle. “You always were the athlete of the family. So, what do you think? Shall I fax you these sonograms? The mother still hasn’t chosen a family. If we act quickly, I believe I can guarantee you—”
“No.”
“You don’t want to see the—”
“We tried. Whether it was you or me, it doesn’t matter. We couldn’t make a go of our relationship before I was paralyzed, and I’m not willing to compromise. There’s someone out there for you, Justin. It’s just not me. Honestly, I wish you well.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
She blinked back tears. There was no way to explain it to him, no way to explain it to anyone. With Morgan, she’d known real love and passion. She couldn’t settle for less. If she never saw Morgan again, she’d live on her memories. “You are who you are,” she said softly. “And I’m still me. I might be a wreck, physically, but …”
“You’re a fool, Claire.” He couldn’t hide the bitterness. “You’ll be old and sick and all alone. Richard won’t live forever, and then you’ll have nothing but your precious settlement.”
She tried to think of a come-back line, something that would deflate his ego, but in the end she said, “Good-bye, Justin,” and pushed the end button on her cell. Strangely, she had no more urge to cry, and she felt as though a weight had been lifted off her chest.
No more Justin. No more marriage of convenience … and no sweet baby to cradle in her arms in the dark hours of the night. She’d chosen her path and she’d follow it without regrets. Or at least she’d give it the old college try.
Justin threw his cell down on the nightstand so hard that it bounced off and fell onto the carpet. “Stupid bitch,” he muttered. “Damn her.” He needed her fortune more than ever. His practice was sliding downhill. His hobby was expensive, but he couldn’t stop.
“What’s wrong, honey?” The woman on the bed shoved aside her male partner and sat up. She was naked except for the red, patent-leather dog collar and an oversize copper nose ring.
“Shut up!” Justin snapped. She laughed and watched him through cat-eye contacts as he retrieved his trousers and fumbled in the left front pocket for a bottle of blue pills. He swallowed one and washed it down with Scotch. To hell with his practice and his creditors! He needed Gi-Gi and Brad and all the others.
“Get it.” He pointed to a strap-on phallus that lay abandoned on the floor.
Gi-Gi smiled and threw him a coquettish look. He wasn’t fooled. She was laughing at him. He didn’t know why he’d ordered her from the agency. She hadn’t been particularly enticing the last time they’d partied, but Brad was different, and he could only have Brad if he took Gi-Gi as well.
He glared at her as she slid down off the bed and waddled over to the pink sex toy. She was so short that she might have been a dwarf and she was grossly fat. Not a single hair gleamed on her toffee-colored body. She strapped on the apparatus, and Justin felt a surge of excitement. This was more like it.
Gi-Gi’s mouth was candy-apple red, not with lipstick, but a cartoon-style tattoo of luscious lips, and her fat tongue was pink and extremely talented.
“Dance for me,” he ordered as he poured himself three fingers of the Scotch and reached for an oyster on the half-shell. They’d been at this all afternoon, and he needed time to recover his strength. He turned up the music, some kind of polka-rap, but it had a beat and Gi-Gi’s rolls of blubber undulated with obscene skill.
He walked over to the bed, stripped back the sheet, and slapped Brad on a bare buttock. Brad rolled over, disclosing an engorged member that would have done justice to an Angus bull.
Heat seeped under Justin’s skin and his nuts contracted. Brad was a thing of beauty, six-foot-seven, a former WWF contender, and all of two hundred and fifty pounds of sheer muscle.
The scrape of a plate caught Justin’s attention and he snapped his head around to see Gi-Gi slurping one of his oysters. She laughed and tilted the shell up, letting the gray meat slide into her scarlet mouth.
“Keep dancing,” Justin said. “Did I tell you to stop?” He was feeling better now. Seeing Brad stretched out on the bed waiting for him lifted Justin’s mood. What did it matter if Claire had refused him? He’d have her money just the same. It was wasted on her. He, on the other hand, would know how to spend it. He could pay his debts and he’d never need to work again, never need to see another crazy patient.
He leaned down to nibble one of Brad’s big toes and Brad giggled, a high-pitched womanly laugh that spoiled Justin’s rising desire. “Don’t talk,” he warned. A silent Brad was much, much sexier than his voice insinuated.
Justin picked up a bottle of scented oil and began to massage it into one of Brad’s size-fifteen feet. Justin wasn’t about to allow Claire to spoil his party, not one iota. He had paid five thousand dollars for an afternoon of fun, and he meant to enjoy every minute of it.
Morgan tried to picture Claire’s glowing face as they’d stared out over the inland sea. Her lips had been parted, her eyes wide with wonder. If he willed it hard enough, he could remember her sweet scent.
How brave she’d been … how accepting of worlds and creatures that she’d never seen or imagined. His father was wrong when he said that humans were lesser beings, stupid, and uncaring. Morgan had never known a more sensitive woman or one who took such pleasure in making love.
He loved her. As impossible as it seemed, it was true. She was everything to him, more than father, mother, brothers, sisters. If he couldn’t have her as his own, he didn’t care if he spent eternity locked in this black tomb. Being parted from Claire brought a pain as sharp as raw coral slicing through living flesh.
He’d tried to keep track of passing time, but it was impossible. He might have been here hours or weeks. There was no light, no sound but the beating of his own heart. How he longed to reach through the walls to take his brothers’ hands. As bad as it was for him, he couldn’t imagine the pain Alexandros must be feeling.
Alex was wild, even for an Atlantean. He’d been high-spirited and fearless since he was a child, but even Alex had a weakness. He was afraid of being confined in a dark place. In the darkest corners of the ocean there were always glimpses of florescent creatures and endless freedom.
This dark prison was blacker than the greatest depth, blacker than a moonless night on the Sargasso Sea. Here the coral pressed so tightly around them that it was difficult to flex a muscle, let alone move a finger or a toe. Morgan’s dearest brother, who at eight had faced a hungry hammerhead shark armed only with his wits and bare hands, had sobbed and wept when he’d accidently locked himself into a small pantry beneath the kitchens.
Orion would survive. He was strong and bold, but the thought of Alexandros’s suffering tore at Morgan’s heartstrings. He had brought this terror to his brother and he couldn’t regret it. For Claire … For Claire, he would do anything. She was his weakness, and he needed her with every fiber of his being.
The coral pressed around him so tightly that he could barely breathe. The water here was dank and fetid; it burned his skin like acid. A man imprisoned here for life would surely go mad. Or, if he retained his sanity, he would die for lack of open ocean and salt spray and hope.
“Claire!” he screamed wordlessly. “Claire!”
There was no answer. There could be no answer. Tears gathered in his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.
Was she well? Did she believe that he’d abandoned her? What if her father had taken her away from Seaborne? What if he went to her and asked her to become his wife and she refused him?
What if she only existed in his dream, and that dream had faded away with the rising sun?
CHAPTER 22
S
ome hours later, in Poseidon’s bedchamber at the palace, Halimeda grew weary of the entertainment and waved away the mermaid and naiad dancers, the sensual performers, and musicians. “His Majesty wishes to be alone with me,” she pronounced. “Inform the guards that if we are disturbed, it will be their heads that roll.”
Poseidon laughed, drained the last drops of wine and set the empty chalice beside his bed. He wasn’t nearly as stupid as Halimeda believed him to be. He knew her faults very well, but she amused him. For a king, a man of great and varied needs, a truly wicked woman every few centuries was a delight. And this minor wife of his never failed to keep him intrigued.
Some called Halimeda a sorceress. Who knew? They might be right. But he had no fear of witches. So long as she didn’t attempt to harm him or his, he didn’t care what mischief she brewed up in her lair.
Short of his experiences on his five-hundredth birthday with a particularly talented mermaid and intoxicating substances, no other woman had led him such a merry chase, blending both pain and ultimate sexual gratification, in more than a thousand years. Had Caddoc shown half of her ambition and imagination, he would have showered the boy with signs of his favor. Sadly, he didn’t.
Halimeda had it fixed in her mind that by desire or magic, she could convince him to overturn the secession and make Caddoc his heir. It was as likely to happen as it was that he, the high king of Atlantis, would leave the sea, become an air breather, and take up cabbage farming in the Australian desert.
He was Poseidon. He could neither be bribed nor tricked, and no amount of fawning or coaxing would ever make him advance Caddoc’s career. His oldest son was a petty, small-minded youth without the barest qualifications to be a prince, let alone king, other than courage. And even his reported recklessness in battle was suspect. Whether Caddoc’s supposed bravery was truly an attribute of character or proof of his stupidity, Poseidon wasn’t certain.
Neither the youth nor his mother had any affection for him, beyond what material goods and powers he could give them, and neither had a scrap of honor. It was just as well. Considering what a disappointment Morgan had turned out to be, had Caddoc been a better candidate, he, Poseidon, might have been at pains to choose between him and Orion as next in line to the throne.
Halimeda clapped her hands, and the lights in the chamber dimmed. Strains of mating whale songs filtered through the thick draperies, sounds that always stirred Poseidon’s loins. He had always been larger than life, and he felt a great kinship with the leviathans of the deep. They too were highly sexual and sensitive creatures with vast wisdom and a sense of both mystery and sadness about them.
Poseidon breathed deeply, waiting, anticipating what was about to happen. She came to him, thick, black hair loose around her shoulders, and clad only in filmy purple veils, her woman’s mound and her shapely breasts tinted red to accentuate her sex. She smelled of jasmine and oysters, and he found the scents alluring beyond belief.
“What would you have of me, husband?” she purred as she rubbed her cleft suggestively with two slender fingers. Halimeda plucked the hairs from her body so that she was smooth and bare all over except for the tattoo of an thin black octopus that sprang from her navel and stretched one tentacle down to vanish between her woman’s folds.
He drew in a deep breath and brushed the hair out of her face so that he could see her eyes. Dark as ink, dark as Melqart’s heart, full of secrets that Poseidon longed to uncover, but suspected he never would.
“You know what I want,” he answered. Halimeda always knew what he wanted—she was a woman who understood a man’s needs. It was one thing about her that never failed to please him.
Laughing, she dropped to her knees and began to caress his inner thighs. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, shuddering as her hot mouth pressed against his flesh and her tongue flicked against his sensitive scales. He caught handfuls of her hair and pressed her head against his groin.
With teeth and tongue she moved from thigh to staff, teasing him to full arousal, before opening her red mouth and taking him in. He was a big man, heavily endowed, but she could swallow more of his length than any Atlantean woman. He groaned and writhed with pleasure.
She made small, urgent whimpers as she suckled him. He could feel the pressure building, and fought it to prolong the delicious torture. Then, with a cry, he ejaculated, pumping his hot seed down her throat. And as he came, he felt her sharp teeth bite into his flesh. Once again the pleasure mixed with hurt, and she laughed as he threw her down upon the polished stone floor.
Pinning both wrists, he flung himself on top of her, feeling his virility build again. It was always thus with Halimeda. Lust fed lust, and he felt himself swelling again. He parted her thighs with his knees and drove his cock into her, hammering until she screamed, and he felt the gush of his release.
He bit her mouth, her throat, her breasts, drawing blood but not biting deep enough to cause actual harm. She struck out at him, clawing him with her nails, gouging him with her teeth, but it was all part of the game they played together. Later, others would join them, willing females or males, and he would taste unfamiliar joys.
This was not the sort of ribald evening he could plan when Korinna was present. She was as eager a partner as any red-blooded Atlantean female, and was willing to try almost anything, but she preferred that they not include others in their lovemaking.
He catered to her whims because he did love her. She was dearer to him than any of the others, perhaps even dearer than his first wife, Morgan’s dead mother. Korinna had an innate dignity which befitted a high queen, and he had no doubt that she cared for him, not because he was king, but in spite of it. What he could not tolerate was Korinna’s inability to accept his word as law. She was too stubborn to suit him, and thought nothing of going behind his back to get what she wanted.
Korinna wasn’t selfish or vain or grasping. She was a good mother and a faithful wife, so far as he knew. And she understood that as Poseidon, he couldn’t be satisfied with a limited number of wives, mistresses, and passing sweets. Other than her unreasonable dislike of Halimeda, she showed no jealousy of his other women.
However, this matter of Morgan and the humans was beyond his ability to forgive and forget. Korinna had been caught aiding Morgan and the twins, as well as attempting to hide the changling. He’d had to punish her as an example. The high queen must be beyond reproach, and it made him look foolish if he couldn’t control her.
As he tumbled Halimeda in the big bed and called for more wine, he gave a few final thoughts to his high queen. He would bring her home from Crete in a few days. After all, she was breeding again, and he didn’t want her to worry herself until she became ill. He would have to remember to ask the royal jeweler to fashion something special. Gifting Korinna with a new emerald necklace or ruby bracelet would go a long way toward smoothing over this tiff.
He and Halimeda had finished the wine and enjoyed another romp amid the piled cushions, this time with her facedown, and him on top. It was one of his favorite positions, and she had a lovely ass. As he caught his breath and caressed those round globes, two stunning women entered the room from the private stairway.
The tallest, with golden hair and skin, Poseidon recognized as a voluptuous Valkyrie noblewoman from the cold waters off Norway. Her companion, who hailed from the Bay of Bengal, was slender as a reed with a river of black hair that fell straight to her ankles. Her satin skin was so dark as to be blue-black, and her eyes and gills glowed with an inner fire.
The golden girl carried a short leather whip, but it was the second with the great, liquid eyes that promised the most delight. Her nails were long and curling, like talons, and her small white teeth came to sharp points. Rumors were that she carried the blood of one of the old gods and possessed unique powers.
Halimeda clapped again and the lights extinguished. With the darkness came the haunting odor of a strange perfume that mingled with the scents of females in heat. Poseidon roared a welcome and opened his arms to the newcomers. It would take the stamina of a king to satisfy these three, but this was one sport at which he had never failed.
Sometime in the night, the Valkyrie wandered off and the Indian beauty curled up to sleep at his feet and morphed into a river otter, leaving only Halimeda to amuse him. Poseidon was tired himself, but he would have cut off his own arm rather than admit it. “Bring me something to eat,” he commanded. “Even a king needs food to keep up his strength after pleasuring so many females.”
“I have your favorite wine from Cyprus,” she said. “Thin and sweet, spiced as you like it.” She waved toward a curtained alcove. “Come!”
Immediately, a five-foot blue octopus swam into the room, a golden bowl of pickled Chilean eels nestled in purple seaweed from the Russian Arctic waters, more raw oysters, and a jar of wine clutched in his suction-covered tentacles.
“Your wine,” she said as Poseidon reclined against the bolster and nibbled a small black eel.
“You know I hate to drink alone,” he reminded her.
Inclining her head, she found her goblet from where it had rolled under a table and took some for herself. The octopus lingered near her, sliding over one shoulder and coiling its tentacles around her arm. “I’ll only have a little,” she said, ignoring the creature. “Last time we shared a bottle, it gave me a migraine. You must have Cyprian blood.”
“Where have you been for the last millennium, wench?” he teased. “Haven’t you heard? Poseidon is the god of the sea. The spirits haven’t been distilled that would bother me.”
“Of course.” She chuckled.
He waved a hand at the octopus. “Away with you. How can you bear the things always touching you?”
Halimeda motioned and the creature glided away.
“I don’t know why you love them so,” he said as he permitted her to feed him, bite by bite. “I don’t like the way they stare at me. They never blink.”
“Ah, my lord, but they make the best servants because they never talk, and above all I require discretion in those who serve me.”
“You require a great deal for one not born to the palace.”
“It’s true, Majesty. I was not born a princess. But you yourself chose me from the pool of concubines and made my brother and father lords of the realm.”
He laughed. “Because they were useful to me, as you are. Do not ever change, Halimeda. I like you just as you are.”
“Thank you, Highness. My only wish is to do your bidding.” She brushed her hair back from her eyes and peered up at him through thick dark lashes.
He sighed with contentment. The dish were perfect, the vinegar tasted sharp, the eels just old enough so that they crunched between his teeth but the meat was still tender. He yawned. “Even the wine has a bite to it.”
“Isn’t that the way you like everything?” she asked as she refilled his cup, licking her upper lip mischievously. “Spicy enough to die for?”
The light hurt his eyes. Morgan suppressed a groan and stretched, trying to work the kinks out of his cramped muscles. “Is it time?” he asked. He’d been surprised when the coral vault was opened. He had lost track of the days, and his mind seemed dull. “Are the twenty-one days up?”
One of the two guards grunted. Morgan didn’t recognize either of them. They weren’t Atlanteans. Most prison attendants were drawn from the pool of hybrids; they were
Turklins
, a cross between early European Neanderthals and a hard-shelled reptile that had gone extinct during the last ice age
Turklins were taller than Atlanteans, heavily muscled, and bore a tough, ridged shell on their backs, chests, arms, and legs. The fibrous covering was harder than bone and acted as a natural armor. Most Turklins were born in the Black Sea and were known for skill with weapons, taciturn personalities, and ability to go for weeks without sleep or food. Round hairless heads, snubbed, almost nonexistent noses, and small round eyes made the Turklins unattractive in the opinion of the more highly advanced humanoids.
It was said that the species kept their females at home in caves, and that they were amphibians like their turtlelike ancestors. The males enlisted as mercenaries or prison guards for five-year terms of service, and they were invaluable in positions where they could follow orders and not have to do any original thinking. Morgan had known some Turklins, but never any that he felt a real companionship for. If he were high king, he’d not employ them, as they had a tendency toward cruelty and seemed to have no code of honor among themselves.

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