Betina Krahn (29 page)

The water lapped and surged around them, adding to the myriad sensations drenching her awareness. She felt herself being propelled along a now-familiar spiral of tension and delight. Giving herself over to it, she met his thrusts and responded to his voracious kisses with all the passion in her. And as she felt that spiral tighten and strained against him, she felt his hands clamping on her shoulders and heard his groan of release. Moments later, she joined him, contracting around him, holding him tightly, feeling the fabric of her inner being tearing, opening, welcoming a part of him that would never again reside anywhere but in her heart.

He found a submerged rock nearby and sat down, holding
her astride his lap, sheltering her against him as they both recovered. He stroked her hair and she ran her hands up and down his sides. With her ear pressed against his chest, she heard him swallow and clear his throat. He was trying to work up the nerve to say something, she realized and she sat up and stroked his face.

“Perhaps we should not have done this here. I mean, without a proper bed or…” He lowered his gaze to her bare breasts, which were half covered with water, and reacted strongly to the erotic sight. She felt that reaction in the place where their bodies were still joined and smiled.

“My adorable Professor Prude. Where better for a mermaid to make love than in the water?” The smile in her voice brought his gaze up. “I’m sure Prospero and Ariel and the others heartily approved.”

His jaw dropped, he sat up straight, and looked at the water of the cove in horror. “Oh, my God—you don’t think they were watching, do you?”

CELESTE LAUGHED, SLID
from his lap, and pulled him to his feet.

“They don’t sleep at night,” he recalled, “and their hearing is probably phenomenal under water.” His eyes widened and he braced, refusing to budge until she answered. “You don’t really believe they …?”

“You’ve watched
their
mating rituals for days now,” she said teasingly. “Don’t you think turnabout is fair play?”

He sputtered and even in the moonlight she could see his face reddening. With a wicked chuckle, she plunged into the water and began to swim for the beach. “Wait!” he called, then pushed off after her.

They raced toward the shallows of the beach and Titus caught her by the foot just before she popped out of the water. He dragged her back, causing her to inhale water and come up coughing. He stopped instantly, coming up out of the water to see if she was hurt and she took advantage of his concern to jerk one of his feet from beneath him while giving his shoulders a powerful shove. Then he was the one coughing and flailing.

“Why, you—” Clearing his face, he bounded after her through the water, and she laughed and dived under the surface to get away. His revenge thwarted by darkness, he
stalked back and forth in the water, searching the surface for a glimpse of an elbow or heel. “Cele-este,” he called in a conciliatory tone, but with a far from conciliatory glint in his eye. “Celeste … sweetness … where are you?” He waded out into chest-deep water and braced with his feet apart, planted firmly in the sandy bottom. Hearing what he would have sworn was the sound of a splash behind him, he whirled, but saw nothing. “Come, come, Celeste. Don’t be a naughty mermaid.”

He felt something brush against his leg and smiled, getting ready to pounce. Whirling, he plunged his arms into the water to grab her and came up empty-handed. She was swift and agile under water, he knew, but determination counted for a great deal. Especially when one of them was under water and had to come up to breathe. All he had to do was wait.

Then he felt it: something sliding up the back of his leg. He stiffened and the hair prickled on the back of his neck. It was her, of course, he thought, suppressing a shiver. Playing mermaid games. Fresh heat surged in his loins and his eyes widened. Damned effective mermaid games. The feeling ceased and he held his breath, waiting—hoping—for it to return.

A minute later, something trailed up the inside of his other leg and it was all he could do to stand still. Chills raced up his thighs and gooseflesh appeared on his arms and shoulders. This time he couldn’t stop the shiver or the sensual lightning that flashed through his body. That mesmerizing touch continued up and up, to his most sensitive area, and he held his breath as it circled him slowly and withdrew. Heartbeats later it returned … gliding along the inside surface of both legs at once … as if something were sliding between them. He closed his eyes and groaned with erotic delight. A second later—no more than that, he was sure—he heard a laugh from some distance away. He opened his eyes to see Celeste’s head sticking up out of the water.

“How did you get over there?” he called, his smile dying
as he realized it wasn’t likely she could have gone so far, so fast, under water. And if she had been over there, then what had … He froze, concentrating on the lower half of him and realizing that there was only one other possibility. A
dolphin?
Good Lord—he’d been goosed by a dolphin?

Frantically, he searched the waves for any hint of an ovoid head or a bottle-shaped nose. It was too dark to see well and when he looked up, Celeste had disappeared again. Stiffening, he stalked backward toward the beach, scanning the water frantically as he went. Then he felt a brush against his leg and halted, opening his hands wide, intending to grab whatever it was. When it came again, tickling the inner surface of his calf, he made a grab and felt hair sliding through his fingers. Silky hair that he knew in the light of day would be the color of golden wheat.

Relief poured through him and, grinning, he walked slowly back out into deeper water to spread his legs again. This time when he felt that erotic tickle up the inside of his thigh, he slid a hand down his side and found the water filled with silky hair. She was drawing her hair between his legs, past his … Then he felt the rest of her gliding sinuously against the sensitive skin of his inner thighs. His arousal returned instantly. He closed his eyes and heard her surface in front of him. There was a small sound from the surface closing, and he felt her again, swimming between his legs, caressing him, teasing him. This time when she swam back through she came up against his front, rubbing against his body, heightening his arousal. When he opened his eyes she was there, her arms gliding around him, her eyes shining in the moonlight.

He pulled her against him and growled. “You had me worried for a minute. I was afraid Prospero had taken a rather peculiar fancy to me.”

She laughed softly. “That’s not beyond the pale of possibility. But, if he does, he’ll have to deal with one very annoyed mermaid.”

“Ummm.” He seemed satisfied with that. “It’s good to
know I enjoy your stalwart protection as well as your … your …”

“Love” was the first word that came to her mind, and she just managed to keep it from coming to her lips as well. Shocked, she looked up into his angular face and light eyes and finally put a proper name to the powerful combination of passion and emotion that had been growing in her since the day they met. Love. The thought staggered her. She was in love with Titus Thorne.

“Adoration?” she supplied weakly. “Admiration? Affection? Passion?”

“I’m crazy about you, too.” He dipped his head to kiss her. “I don’t know when I’ve ever been this … happy.” He looked as if the word startled him. “Happy.” He smiled as he turned it over in his mind. He was
happy
. He couldn’t recall being “happy” in years.

“We make a good team, Professor Thorne,” she said, rubbing her cheek against his bare chest. “Who would have thought when you came here that we’d end up in such a perfect
collaboration?”

“Is that what we’re doing?” he asked. “Collaborating?”

“
Tsk
. You academics.” She wagged her head. “Pay attention, Professor … this may come in handy someday. What we’re doing right now is
making love
. It is a process by which a male and a female of the human species—”

He put a hand over her mouth to silence her. “Just show me, sweetness. I have it on very good authority that experience is the best teacher.”

“There, I’m afraid I have to differ.”

“Oh? Recanting your own theory, Miss Ashton?”

“I’ve researched the topic thoroughly and discovered that experience is the
second-best
teacher.”

“And the first is …”he prompted.

“Mermaids.”

As their kisses deepened, she wrapped her legs around his and he braced and bent slightly to support them both. Then they kissed and caressed until the heat of their bodies threatened
to evaporate the water in the cove. They joined a second time, buoyed by the water, cloaked in the darkness, urged on by the rhythms of the sea surging around their bodies and in their veins. It was a long and luxuriant exploration of each sensation and nuance of loving. When they reached their climax of pleasure, the wind and the water seemed to sigh approval.

For a while afterward, they floated together on their backs, hands joined, looking up at the stars. But as passion’s heat drained, a chill slowly crept in and they had to leave the water. He dried her with his shirt, but when she would have dried him with her gown, he protested and gave her his shirt instead. She wiped the water from his body, then let him dry what he could of her hair. She slipped her nightgown back over her head and he slid his drawers and trousers on, then together they spread her robe on the sand and lay down on it.

Wrapped in each other’s arms and in the lingering glow of passion wisely spent, they drifted to sleep.

H
OW LONG THEY
slept, neither had any way of knowing. But it wasn’t long enough. It was the sound that first aroused Titus. He pushed up onto one elbow to look around, a bit disoriented at first, and saw a wavering line of yellow lights moving down the side of the cliff. Sitting up, he squinted against the darkness and rubbed his eyes to clear his vision.

“Celeste.” He gave her shoulder a nudge. “Celeste, look.” He pointed as she sat up and she too rubbed her eyes and squinted.

“What on earth?” The lights were bobbing and moving down the face of the cliff and she detected a droning of some sort. “That’s the path up to the field on the point, where the standing stones are,” she said, rolling up onto her knees.

He pushed to his feet and stood watching intently. “Torches,” he announced. “It’s people carrying torches and …” His eyes widened as the figures carrying those
torches materialized from the dark. They seemed to be dressed all in white. “And singing.”

Celeste watched the procession down the cliff path with tension collecting in her stomach. Torches … people in white … singing … coming from the field of standing stones. She groaned audibly and stood up, beside him. “It’s Nana and the Atlantean Society.”

He took her hand and pulled her toward the edge of the water, where they could get a better view.

“What in blazes are they doing out here in the dead of night, running around with torches?” He paused to listen. “And
drums?”

“Coming from the field on the top of the point, they must have been—” She stopped. She didn’t want to imagine it, much less say it. They had been performing a ceremony. And from the fact that they were headed for the beach, she guessed just what sort of ceremony they had been conducting.

“Good Lord,” Titus said as they neared, “they’re all wearing bedsheets.”

“Chitons, actually,” she said limply. “And the ‘bedsheets’ wrapped around them are himations, borrowed from the dress of the ancient Greeks.”

By the time they arrived at the center of the beach, the full horror of it had descended on Celeste. They were dressed in their Atlantean garb and carried torches and two “standards” on poles … one a stylized dolphin figure and the other the twelve-sided orb Titus had helped them assemble. They were singing of the glories of Atlantis and the wonders of the sea in sundry wavery keys, accompanied by the haberdasher, Daniel Tucker, pounding a drum and Anabelle Feather clanging away on a set of thumb cymbals.

Lady Sophia led the group, bearing rings of flowers in each hand. She was wearing a golden circlet and a huge gold necklace made of leaping dolphins. Behind her came Miss Penelope and the Reverend Altarbright jointly carrying a large garland of flowers.

“Greetings, my children,” Nana said in her best “high priestess” tone, raising both hands and the rings of flowers she held in a beatific salute.

“Nana, what on earth are you doing down here at this time of night … dressed like that?”

The old lady’s reply was a knowing smile and a pointed look at Celeste’s own clothing. Celeste felt her face reddening under the group’s scrutiny and was suddenly aware of the fact that she stood in the circle of Titus’s naked arms, against his naked chest, wearing only a thin nightdress.

“We are here, dear children, to bless and consecrate the union you have entered into this night. For, according to the prophecies of the ancients, your joining—the union of the Man of Earth and the Woman of Sea—is the event the world has waited for in toil and travail. From your union, a new era has just been born upon the earth … an era of promise and understanding … an age of restoration and hope.”