Lord of the Deep (18 page)

Simeon groaned as she approached his groin with the soft, fragrant soap. Leaning on his elbows now, he watched through shuttered eyes as her deft fingers came closer and closer to his cock, and its thick veined shaft reached for her touch. There was no use to prolong the agony, no need to hold back. He would allow himself the sheer pleasure of coming under her touch, of watching his seed spill out of him. The little sorceress would make him hard again in a heartbeat.

“Soap my balls,” he murmured.

Her tiny soft hands caressing his testicles made him go rigid. His breath caught as his pelvis jerked forward and his cock began to pulse, spewing his come into the water. Thrilled by Meg’s gasp as it spurted out of him, Simeon ground out a guttural groan that echoed through the little subterranean chamber and reverberated off the walls and vaulted coral ceiling, resonating through his body. She had made him come without touching his cock, and he fell back upon the quilt, his arm flung over his eyes, relishing every last moment of his release.

She was touching his throbbing shaft now, squeezing soothing water from the sponge over it. Simeon lay very still while she ministered to him, while she soaped his penis from its thick root to the mushroom tip turned purple where the blood had rushed to it, pumping him dry. She had scarcely begun her ministrations, when it began to grow hard again, just like he knew it would.

“I want to show you so much,” he said. “So many ways to give you pleasure. Stroke it, Megaleen…Bring it to life for you….”

Her touch worked like magic. The merest caress, the finest butterfly stroke of her fingers, brought him to thick hardness. Inching to the edge of the pool, Simeon lifted her onto his lap, guided her legs around his waist, and entered her in one silken thrust. Her whole body convulsed around him, taking him deeper as he cupped her buttocks and pounded into her—quick, pistoning thrusts that literally took her breath away, snatching it from her nostrils on a long, ragged groan. It seemed to bubble up from the very depths of her soul as she clung to him and gripped his cock with her labia, holding him to the promise of pleasures. But it was she who was pleasuring him now, in mindless oblivion, her eyes a joy to behold, dilated with the darkness of her passion

He could bear no more. He felt her release when he came. It made his orgasm more intense as their juices mingled, as he filled her with the hot, quick spurts of his seed.

His seed
…All at once Vega’s words ghosted across his mind. Was it already too late? Had he planted his selkie seed in her mortal womb? He shook those thoughts free—shut out his brother’s augur. He would not hear it—not now, with her body fused to his in perfect bliss. He tightened his grip upon her greedily and beat back those thoughts. His lips found hers, and he took them in a fiery kiss that threatened to arouse him again.

Still inside her, he eased her into the pool. He would take her one more time in the water that fueled his sexual prowess before they slept. One more release, one more little death, for it was like death to part from her even for a second. Her eyes staring but not seeing, glazed over with desire, and he fed on it, bringing them both to the brink with slow, circular revolutions.

She was loving him fiercely, as if it was their last, clinging to him—pouring out all her pent-up passions as if her very life depended upon it, but that would not do. The heady scent of night lilies rose in his nostrils, reminding him. This, he would make last. This was the bath she would remember above all others for the rest of her life if it were the last thing he did.

V
ega approached the Waterwitch’s cave while Simeon was occupied with Meg. This was to be one conversation he did not want overheard. The woman’s parlor was empty, and he parted the vine curtain and stepped into the inner sanctum. It, too, was vacant, but then it almost always was unless the Waterwitch was summoned. Vega hummed the mantra that would resonate through the water in the pool and bring her, and waited.

There was a brief moment when he almost left with his questions unanswered. What did it matter now anyway? It didn’t to him, but this wasn’t about him, and when the Waterwitch’s hideous fish head broke the surface of the water in the pool it was too late in any case.

She stepped out of the pool, and in a blink, her fish head disappeared, revealing her human countenance, her face old and wrinkled with a nimbus of silver gray hair fanned out wide about her. She was naked but for the shimmering green scales that covered her youthful body except for her breasts and the hairless V between her thighs which protruded like an obscene invitation the way she flaunted it. Vega shuddered. She had the power to shapeshift into many forms. He was not liking this one.

“So, half-breed,” she said, sauntering toward the dais. “What brings you to Elna’s cave, eh? You have not crossed my threshold in eons.” She made no move to cover her nakedness with the robe draped over the back of her chair, but sat in the chair, flaunting her exquisite body.

He sketched a bow and set his tribute, a small sack of pearls, on a low table alongside. “Venerable one,” he began, “I seek some truths.”

“What truths might those be?” she said sweetly. She knew full well what truths had brought him there, but he would play her game. That was expected.

“I wish to know something of my lineage,” he said as casually as he could manage, with her private parts demanding his attention.

“After all this time?” she scoffed. “Why?”

“Does that matter?”

She shrugged. “I suppose not,” she said, “but I am curious…do tell.”

“I wish to know of my mortal mother, Glenda.”

“Ah, so,” she crooned. “A true martyr was Glenda—gave you up for your father to raise. She had no choice really. Selkie half-breed bastards don’t last long on the mainland. They get clubbed to death—or worse. She did you a kindness. Half-breed selkie skins are even more in demand than the common variety, but you already know that.”

“Yes, yes, I know that,” Vega said. “You are the only one alive who knew her well enough to answer my questions. Was she a full-blooded mortal or a half-breed herself?”

“No, she was full blooded,” the woman said. “Why do you ask?”

Vega shrugged. “Just curious. What became of her…Where did she go?”

“That was a long time ago, half-breed. Time has forgotten those particulars.”

“To be sure,” Vega sallied, “but you have not, old one. You were there, and you know. Now you will tell me.”

“Oh, so masterful we are…so youthful…so virile.” She got out of the chair with a sinuous motion and sauntered toward him, stopping to open the sack and appraise his bribe along the way. “That which you wish to know comes at a price above these piddling geegaws,” she said, letting the pearls slip through her webbed fingers back into the sack.

“It comes too dear if you expect me to cock a leg over you to get it,” Vega said through a wry chuckle. “You dream!”

“You could do worse, or not at all,” she chortled. “Like now, with the consorts you play with banished to the barrier beach.” She changed again, and her wrinkled face became comely, her skin as smooth and white as alabaster, and her hair long, black, and shining like a raven’s wing in the rush light glow. “Who milks that cock I see bulging there now, eh? You do, I’ll wager, young lordling.” She slid her hands over her body seductively. “How can that rough palm of yours be better than this?”

“I know what you really are,” Vega said, sidestepping her advance. “Your witch’s glamour cannot disguise what lies beneath.”

“I am all things to all men, half-breed,” she purred. “There is great power to be had for a few brief moments in me. What harm to relieve yourself in this body?” She nodded toward his groin. “Take it out and let me see,” she said. “It looks about to burst out of that eel skin suit it is so anxious. Why not let it burst in me, eh? I will not disappoint you.”

She floated closer, her fingers tweaking her nipples to hardness. One hand slid the length of her exquisite body to her exposed slit, and she began to rub herself. “You are tight against the seam,” she observed, gesturing toward the bulk straining the crotch of his eel skin. “I’ll make a bargain with you. Take that out and let me watch you get yourself off, and I will tell you what you need to know.”

Her use of the words “need to know,” rather than “want to know” told him she knew exactly why he had come. She had the answer he sought, and she was right. His cock was bursting and had been since the consorts were banished and naught but the old sea creatures were left to run the palace.

Selkies had no modesty, they often mated in public, and he was half selkie, so that was not an issue. But he was also possessed of human genes, and the mere thought of exposing himself before the odious crone, much less relieving himself in front of her, brought bile to his throat. Shapeshifters were unpredictable during sex. She may be beautiful now, but he had seen her hideous side, and he hesitated.

“Very well, if you like,” he said at last, “but tell me first.”

“You do not trust me,” she returned, answering her own question. “Your mortal side is strong in you. Selkies are far more trusting, which is why if he is not very careful, the Lord of the Deep will meet his end at the hands of one he’s put his trust in now.”

Here was an interesting tidbit. Vega lingered over it but only briefly. She was advancing on him. “Stay back, old one,” he warned her. “I may not be a trusting sort, but I am trustworthy. Now my question…while you perform for
me
…to get me in the mood.”

She nodded toward his crotch. “That there looks to be enough in the mood to me.”

“Yes, well, I am the best judge of that. Touch yourself some more, and tell your tale.” He nodded toward the pearl sack on the table. “You can be assured that I shall give you everything you are worth. You have my word….”

She began whirling about, performing a strange dance ritual, jiggling her full breasts and flaunting her sex. How beautiful she was, how graceful, with her slender spine arched back as she swirled. But then all fish were graceful, he kept reminding himself, and she was one hideous, whiskered, snaggle-toothed barracuda in her true incarnation.

“What you seek to know won’t help you, half-breed,” she said. “It is all in the past—buried in the dust of time.”

“Tell it anyway. Where did my mother go after she abandoned me? How did she die?”

The Waterwitch slid a long silk scarf from her chair on the dais and snaked it between her legs, teasing her slit with it as she danced. Her gyrations were making him hot, thanks to his selkie side, but that would have to wait.

“She went to the Isle of Mists, young lordling—”

“Do not call me that!” he snarled. “I am not in line for the throne.”

She laughed. “You do not have any idea what you are in line for, but I will not vex you, half-breed.”

“Continue! Why the Isle of Mists?”

“Your father paid a tidy sum to the shamans to allow her to enter the nunnery there.”

“Nunnery? What nunnery? I know of the training house for priestesses, where the shamans prepare virgins to enter the temple on Shamans’ Mount, but I know of no nunnery.”

“It still exists,” said the witch, “if you know where to find it.” She winked and danced closer, grazing him with her perfect breasts as she circled him, undulating seductively as she teased her nipples and played with the scarf between her legs.

“Where?” Vega persisted. He had to keep reminding himself that she was naught but sorceress glamour. She was closing in on him—touching him. When she seized the bulk of his cock, he leapt back. “This was not part of the bargain!” he snapped at her.

She shrugged. “No, but it tells me you are ready to come. I have done my work, but you have not done yours….”

Vega seized her by the throat and jerked her to a standstill. “Oh yes, I have,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “You foul, odious creature, I told you I would give you everything you are worth, which I will do—or snap this pretty neck. The choice is yours. Now, tell your tale! Where is this nunnery? My patience ebbs low.”

“In the…mists,” the Waterwitch ground out.

“I gathered as much.” He shook her roughly. “Where in the mists?”

“Take care, half-breed, you do not know the consequence of harming me! You risk the wrath of the gods!”

“That doesn’t matter any more. The nunnery!”

“You will need a charm.” She said gripping his hands clamped around her throat. “T-take one of the crystals in that jar in the table; their magic is universal. Cast it into the mist on the north side of the Isle at the midnight hour, and it will appear to you. You’ll never enter otherwise. You’ll need the magic. No men—mortal or otherwise—can breech the mists that guard the nunnery; not even you, bastard of the deep.”

He put her from him and hesitated over the jar before taking one of the geodes glistening inside and tucking it away inside his eel skin.

“But it will do you no good,” she said. Tugging her transparent robe over her nakedness, she sank into her counsel chair on the dais. “The sisters you will find there now do not know the tale entire.”

“But you do, and you had best tell it quickly!”

“There is nothing to tell,” the Waterwitch snapped. “Like Megaleen, Glenda could not become a priestess; she was no longer a virgin. The shamans would have paid dearly for her if she still had her virtue, for she was very beautiful. She would have become a sacrifice or one of the shaman’s whores but for your father, who paid a virtual king’s ransom to have her shut up in the nunnery, where she would be safe. That is your tale. Pay, like you agreed, and be gone.”

“And she lived there at the nunnery until she died?” Vega persisted.

“Died?” she said. “She lives there still. What? All these years she is but a stone’s throw away…And you did not know it?” She threw her head back in a burst of coarse laughter.

“Who was to tell me, old woman? Simeon wouldn’t know—he came after me—and my father and stepmother have been dead since I’m little more than a child. I’d say the telling of that tale was up to you, keeper of the Scroll of Arcan Rite! It is you who have failed me. How is it possible that she still lives?”

The Waterwitch shrugged. “Some magic of the holy women at the nunnery, for all I know,” she said. “Many mortals who are shut up in that ‘holy’ tomb live long lives, as long as they do not leave the protection of its walls. It is a jumping-off place to the gods, but not
my
gods. I am not welcomed there, with or without a charm. Not that I would court their company, the sanctimonious old harpies.”

“How can you be so certain Glenda still lives?”

Again she shrugged. “I keep the Sacred Scroll, do I not? If she were dead, I would know of it. Her page is still unwritten, bastard of the deep.”

“You evil old cow! You should have told me all this eons ago!”

“I owe you no explanations. If it was so important, you should have asked it of me eons ago, fool! Now sweeten that tribute and be gone!” she snarled. “I no longer care for this game.”

Vega strolled to the table and gathered all the pearls, tossing them to appraise their weight—two dozen in all. Lifting a flawed one of lesser value from the rest, he laid it on the table and tucked the pouch containing the rest inside his suit.

“Here! What is that?” she shrilled.

“More than you are worth, you crone,” he seethed, stalking from the sanctum, “and at that you have been overpaid.”

Shrieking like a banshee, the Waterwitch left the counsel chair with force enough to tip it over, dancing to a different rhythm now, a rhythm of her rage. Having reached the vine curtain, Vega glanced behind in time to see the hideous fish that was the woman’s true form splash into the pool and disappear beneath the ripples.

Livid, having learned what he’d hoped and feared, Vega plunged into the water on the far side of the cave and swam in no particular direction. He needed to think. He needed to sort out what the Waterwitch had just told him. It was true enough. There was no question. He’d seen it in her clenched posture, in her shocked demeanor. Why hadn’t he questioned before? He couldn’t reproach himself for that. Because his mother was mortal, he had always assumed she’d died as mortals die. If she had not, then there had to be a way for Meg to live on also, but he dared not give her hope of that unless it had been proven. That meant going to the nunnery to see Glenda for himself.

Those thoughts changed his course and drove him toward the Isle of Mists. For the first time in his long, lonely life, Vega would not be at Simeon’s beck and call. He would not be there to ready Elicorn and accompany them to the Pavilion. This was more important.

“Something is wrong I tell you!” Simeon said, pacing the floor in his master bedchamber. “It isn’t like Vega to fail me he has never done so before. He was to have been here with Elicorn at the noon hour. The sun is already descending. Even if we leave at once, we will not reach the Pavilion before full dark. It is too great a distance.”

Meg was relieved. The Pavilion was the last place she wanted to go. It was too isolated and unfamiliar. She could never escape from there, for that is what she had made up her mind to do. If the tincture worked, she could easily reach the Isle of Mists. Despite what Simeon said, there were places on the Isle where she would be safe, at least for now. Besides, she longed to know if her aunt and uncle had weathered the selkie storm. This she could do from a distance, but she needed to know—especially what had become of her uncle Olwyn, who had always been kind to her even if her aunt had not. Despite all that had gone before, they were still her flesh and blood.

Her heart was breaking at the thought of leaving Simeon, but it was the only way. She could not allow him to give up his immortality for her. Neither could she bear to wither and die while he stayed young and virile. She would never be able to stand the look of disgust in his eyes as she aged and could no longer match the power of his passion. It was better to break clean now, to give him back to his own kind, while she still possessed the courage to let him go.