Lord of the Deep (25 page)

Meg stiffened in his arms. “Seth said there were crabs in the tidal pools!” she said.

Simeon laughed. “There are,” he said. “But they are
my
crabs; my loyal subjects. You forget who I am.”

The pool wasn’t far. It was small and shallow, edged with shells and smooth stones on three sides, with a flat slanted boulder on the fourth. Simeon set Meg down on the edge of it, stripped naked, and sank into the cool salt water. Crouching in front of her, he examined her feet.

“Some of these cuts are deep,” he observed, bathing them gently. The water was cool, but not cold, and she wiggled her toes in it as he examined them for pieces of glass. He found none. His hands inched higher, stroking her ankles, then her slender calves. Her skin was like silk beneath the thin muslin kirtle; it was all that stood between them. Fumbling with it, his elbow grazed her marketing bag at the edge of the pool and it slipped into the water. Simeon dove down, and came up holding the coral coffer that held the phallus.

“What is this?” he said, lifting it out of the little chest. “Where did you get it?”

“S-Seth said you modeled for that,” she murmured. “Did you, Simeon?”

He didn’t know whether to laugh or scold her. Turning it to and fro in his hand, he admired its magnificence, recalling when he’d posed for the carver who had created it. “A very long time ago,” he mused. “It was one of the artifacts stolen in one of the raids centuries ago. Did you enjoy it?” How could he be jealous of himself? But he was. He had to be going mad. She had finally driven him stark-staring insane! Jealous of his own effigy! He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Well, no matter, you’ll have need of it no more!” he said, tossing it into the pool, coffer and all.

Seizing her about the waist, he stripped off her mantle, pulled her onto his lap, and plunged into her in one swift trust. Raising the kirtle over her head, he cast it aside. Overwhelmed by unstoppable passion, he let his hands rove over her body frantically, as if he were memorizing every inch of her. They palmed her breasts, and his thumbs scraped her erect nipples until she groaned. They seized the perfect rounds of her buttocks as he surged out of the water and backed her against the boulder, his cock moving inside her—growing—reaching—touching the very core of her being.

Guiding her legs around his waist, he pounded into her, crying out as she rotated her hips to take him deeper still. Her buttocks clenched beneath his grip as the walls of her vagina gripped his shaft. Her hands threaded through his long dark hair, pulling his head down until their lips met, until their tongues merged and their pleasure-moans resonated in his body—in the hot blood thrumming in his veins—in the very marrow of his bones. They felt as if they were melting.

Their first release was wild and fast, his head thrown back, her hands fisted in his hair, the rush of his seed and the wetness of her release spilling over in her. It was like coming in hot silk, for her sex gripped him still, barely giving him a chance to go flaccid before he hardened again. This did not happened to him except in her arms. Selkie prowess was legend. They were the most sexually charged creatures of the deep. But never in his life had he gown hard again in rapid succession after coming, except in Megaleen.

“Never, ever, leave me again,” he gritted out through a dry sob as he plunged her back into the water. Moving in and out of her, he let the soothing salt water rush in with his cock and rush out with his seed—let it lave her quim, the tender, engorged walls of her nether lips and the rock-hard nub—as he spiraled deeper, bringing her to the brink once more.

It was still low tide, and the water rose only to his waist when standing. Easing her back until her torso floated in the water, he raised her legs high and gripped her taut bottom again. He was deep into her, touching regions he had never touched before—touching her where she was still virgin, for he knew every inch of her parts. It was dark and mysterious so deep inside her, and it filled him with drenching fire as he watched her hooded eyes glaze in mindless bliss and her lips part, though she didn’t speak. For a breathless moment, he let her float there while he ground his pelvis into her, into the fascinating pubic curls that hid her tiny erection as they scraped against the thick, hard root of his cock. How beautiful she was with her long golden mane fanned out wide about her in the water like a siren of the deep. The ripples followed the contours of her curves, like an hourglass, exposing her breasts, following the narrow shape of her waist, welling in her navel, then exposing her belly.

Simeon’s breath was coming short. The gentle sounds of the water lapping at her mound, and the sucking sounds his cock was making pumping in and out of her, had driven him to the brink again. Watching his purple-veined shaft spiral in and out of her as he rotated his hips was more than he could bear.

“Hold on to me…” he murmured. Lowering her legs, he raised her up guiding them around his waist again as she clasped him fast, and sank back into the water with her. Kneeling on the soft silt bottom, he swooped down to take one hard rosebud nipple in his mouth, then the other, then her lips. Seizing her buttocks, he pistoned into her, drowning in the guttural resonance of her release, in the totality of his own orgasm pumping a stream of pearly come into her and into the water.

His flexed chest heaving, Simeon floated with her in the water of the little tidal pool until the waves of their release subsided and their bodies became their own again. Dawn was breaking over the pool, which was ghostly pink in the morning mist. The first breath of a breeze sighing over the Isle foretold a fine day ahead. Simeon scarcely noticed. He had his Megaleen in his arms naked, but for the amulet, the rainbow-tinted black pearl on a silver strand resting in the perfect hollow of her slender throat. It had given them their future—their length of days—their immortality, and he was bursting with plans for their future.

When the crabs came with the turn of the tide, swimming all around them, climbing on the boulder, on the shells and smooth white pebbles, Meg squealed in fright. But Simeon only laughed as he hummed the mantra that sent them scurrying to the edge of the pool like spectators in an arena.

Sagging against him in relief, Meg breathed a ragged sigh. “What did you say to them?” she said.

Simeon smiled. “I introduced them to my Lady of the Deep,” he said, “Princess of the Waves. See how they genuflect before you? No creature of the sea will ever harm you, once word spreads that you are my mate, and these are just the ambassadors to do the honors.”

Surging to his feet, he pulled Meg up alongside him, aroused again as he watched the water trickle down her body in little rivulets, bouncing off her hard, taut nipples and welling in her navel. He watched it drizzle down over her pubic mound, darkening her curls, and drip like pink diamonds over her smooth, flushed thighs, returning to the pool. How very beautiful she was with the first rays of dawn gilding her skin and frosting her long golden hair with copper lights.

He stooped and kissed her softly on the lips, then on the breasts, and finally on the perfect V of golden curls between her thighs before returning to her lips again. “Come, my princess,” he said, as the crabs scurried away to form a vacant swath at the edge of the pool for them to climb out. “It is time to go home….”

M
eg squirmed as Simeon probed the cuts on her feet again. He’d removed her dove-gray kirtle and set her down in the middle of his elevated bed. She had finally come home. She could scarcely believe it. There was no other home for her except in Simeon’s arms. How could she ever have imagined she could live without him? But she would have, if it meant his immortality, just as he would have given that immortality up for love of her. They were soul mates.

“Am I hurting you?” Simeon said, frowning. How mysterious he seemed when he frowned. Knit brows over those almond-shaped selkie eyes gave him a smoldering, Otherworldly look that thrilled her to the core.

Meg giggled. “No,” she said, “it tickles!”

Simeon straightened up and peeled off his eel skin. The sultry look faded from his face and an evocative lopsided smile twisted his lips. It melted her heart. He so rarely smiled.

All at once he was lying beside her, his hard-muscled body naked against her, his hands roving over her body lazily. This was no unstoppable coupling. It was tantalizing and slow. It took her breath away.

“There is so much more I want to show you,” he murmured, toying with her nipple, “so many ways to pleasure you.”

Meg threaded her fingers through his hair and brought his head down until their lips met. He drew her against him as he deepened the kiss, and her heart leapt, pounding against his rock-hard chest. When their lips parted, she followed the contours of his broad shoulders and the firm, ridged hardness of his middle with her fingertips. Inching lower in his arms, she took his nipple in her mouth and laved it slowly, reveling in his sharp intake of breath, in his clenched posture, in the thick hot bulk of his erection trembling against her thigh. Her hand moved toward it, detecting the pebbled layer of gooseflesh her caress had spread over his skin.

Meg slid lower still, but instead of taking his penis in her hand, she closed her lips around the ridged head and took it into her mouth. Simeon eased himself onto his back and groaned as she took him deep into her in a spiraling motion, swirling her tongue over his hard hot flesh, flicking it over the silken tip ever so lightly, gliding it back down toward the thick root, only to slow the pace the minute he reached for more. She would make it last. He had taught her well.

His hands fast in the back of her hair held her head in place as she sucked him, her lips moving up and down along his thick veined shaft. He rotated his hips, holding her down on it as it grew longer still. Meg thought of that first night, watching his consort Alexia take his penis into her mouth as the surf slammed into them on the shore. Oddly, there was no jealousy. That part of his life was over. He was hers now, but the sight of him thus in her mind’s eye, with his sex exposed to the creaming surf—to his consort’s eager mouth—sent pincers of searing fire to pluck at her loins, making her so hot she began to tremble.

The surges, like drenching fire, attacking the epicenter of her sex would not be stilled, and she began to touch herself, probing her slit with her fingers, gliding them the length of her fissure to spread her wetness. Her aching breasts scraped against his taut muscled thighs, her nipples grown hard boring into him. She began writhing against the pressure of her fingertips entering her—feeling for the hardening nub that would trigger her release. She moved her fingers lower, then higher, until her pubic curls were drenched in her wetness, and she groaned as thick drops of pre-come salted her tongue.

Simeon groaned. He was watching her touch herself, watching her lips glide up and down his shaft while she stroked herself, watching her tongue peek out as she sucked him, laving the thick, distended veins, from the ridged mushroom tip of his penis to the thick bulk of its root. His thighs clenched. His shaft jerked to full arousal—harder—thicker—more urgent. She tried to hold off his climax, but the opposite happened. Groaning again, he arched himself against her, holding her still, squeezing his hands through her hair as he released.

His hot, salty come rushed into her, the head of his penis so far back in her throat it danced against her palate as she swallowed. Licking him clean, she swallowed again and again. Still he was hard enough to penetrate her.

All at once, his strong hands circled her waist and she felt herself lifted. Spreading her legs, he lowered her onto his erection until he filled her. It slid in easily enough on their combined juices, but he didn’t move once he filled her. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he kneaded them, forcing her aching nipples through his fingers, lightly grazing them. Everything below his waist remained still.

“Do not move…” he panted, the deep burr of arousal in his voice running her through like a javelin. “Feel how it grows inside you….”

Meg stayed perfectly still. Her breath caught as inside her his penis began to swell to its fullness. It stretched the walls of her vagina as it grew, touching the virgin place he’d claimed for his own. The groan that left his parched throat then was guttural and primitive. It was a cross between the sound of a barking seal and that of a roaring lion. His pelvis reared against her, and he bit down on his handsome lower lip until he’d bruised it, and he shut his eyes.

“Ride the waves, Megaleen,” he murmured huskily. “
Ride the storm.
…”

Meg knew what he wanted. Digging her knees into his sides as if she were riding Elicorn, she rode him, taking him deeper with each bounce, her quim gripping him, squeezing him, milking him of every last drop of his seed rushing into her in strong, pulsing spurts, his contractions triggering her release as she ground her tiny pulsing erection into the base of his shaft.

Crying out as the orgasm riveted her, Meg reeled back in time to the night she had indeed ridden the storm, to the lightning dancing on the water all around them, charging the phosphorescence in the water and in the spindrift crashing over them—fusing their bodies—joining their souls. It had just happened again, and she shut her eyes as he rolled her over, still joined, and gathered her into his arms.

Simeon didn’t speak. His eyes, still hooded with the blindness of passion, gazed down on her as he took first her lips in a volatile kiss that took her breath away, and then her nipples, still flushed and tingling as he licked them to tall hardness again. She groaned as the laving of his tongue over first one puckered bud and then the other tugged deep inside her groin. White hot ripples, like those that spread when a pebble breaks the surface of the water, radiated out wide inside her. He had grown hard again. It was going to be a long, passionate night.

All was still in the palace, where Vega lay curled in his cubicle in the arms of the young vivacious selkie, Risa. He should be on guard, since the elder retainers, though plentiful and for the most part invisible, were not trusted with guard duty, but Pio was keeping watch. There really wasn’t much need for security in Simeon’s domain anymore. Once in a great while some young selkie buck would flex his muscle in a vain attempt to usurp the Lord of the Deep, but such insurrections were far between and swiftly quelled. Even the elders in their senility could manage that. Simeon was loved and respected. All creatures of the deep swore fealty to their Lord. He was Prince of the Arcan waters. There hadn’t been an invasion from the other side of the continent in eons. And the ever faithful Pio was unsurpassed in his vigilance and devotion.

Vega sighed. Risa always shifted his mortal sex drive into selkie madness—even before they’d become lovers. This was the worst part of being a half-breed. He never quite knew who he was. Selkie or mortal? Right now with the blood on fire in his veins, unable to get his fill of her, he was pure selkie. He had watched her from afar for so long, knowing it was unlikely he would ever claim her as consort. She had belonged to Simeon. All female selkies belonged to Simeon before they were exiled—all clamoring for the favors of the Lord of the Deep. Somehow, Risa wanted
him
instead—was pining for him, just as he had been secretly longing for her. They had only mated once before Simeon had exiled the consorts. Gazing down at her beautiful face so peaceful and pale, he could scarcely believe he held her in his arms.

Her long, dark hair was twined around his arm like a tether, and her pale skin was flushed with the bloom of recent release. His cock was still swollen from the frenzy of her mouth sucking him, from the ecstasy of her silken tongue laving him, and from the sheer rapture of her skilled hand pumping him dry. And that was only the first time!

Yes, he was selkie—pure, seductive, lecherous selkie to the core—and his cock was on fire for more of her, when Simeon’s footfalls vibrating through the corridors reached him. Vega met him in his sitting room, where they wouldn’t be disturbed.

“You’ve found her?” Vega said. He could read it in his brother’s face, but there was something else there, too, something he couldn’t read…something that raised his hackles.

“Yes,” Simeon said. “Where the deuce is Pio? I knew you’d be abed with Risa, but Pio should be keeping watch.”

“He is…
was
. I summoned him myself.”

“Well, he isn’t there now. There is no one on duty out there.”

“Settle down, Simeon,” Vega said. “All is well here. What? Do you have news of invasion?”

Simeon shook his head and began to pace the length of the carpet. “I felt a turbulence returning. Something isn’t…right.”

“Nonsense! Everything is finally ‘right.’ Where is Megaleen?”

“Asleep in my bed. She is exhausted. Her feet were cut on the broken glass when Gideon broke through the solarium at the training hall.”

“Did you give her the amulet?”

“Yes.”

From Simeon’s expression, Vega knew he needn’t ask his next question, though he would nonetheless. “Glenda…” he said. It was still hard for him to think of her as his mother since he’d never known her. “Is she…?”

“Dead,” Simeon concluded for him.

Vega nodded. “But…to sacrifice her immortality…!”

“Imagine her lonely existence shut up in that nunnery,” Simeon said. “Father has been gone for eons. She was ready for the afterlife.”

Vega nodded. “Which only goes to prove what I’ve said all along: Selkies ought have no truck with love. It is not in their nature. My mortal logic tells me that. Father succumbed to love, and it was his undoing. Take care, Simeon, that you do not make his mistake.”

“I fear it is already too late for that, my brother,” Simeon said on a sigh. “I do love her. It is not a comfortable thing, I will admit, and I can only pity father being in love with
two
women. But there’s nothing for it. You can rest assured your mother’s sacrifice will not be in vain.”

“So! What now?” Vega said buoyantly. The subject needed changing. He was beginning to feel a little of Simeon’s trepidation. Instinct was strong in both halves of his makeup, and it was screaming in both now.

“That all needs to be sorted out,” Simeon said. “The tincture works, and Megaleen has the amulet. It only remains to decide where she wishes to spend her time. If she is content to spend all her days below the waves with me, so be it. If she needs to maintain some of her mortal existence, that, too, can be arranged. I do not think she would want to do that on the Isle of Mists after so much unpleasantness has occurred there. I haven’t discussed it with her yet—there hasn’t been time—but if that is the case, there are several isles protected by merfolk, where she could visit as needs must if it would make her more comfortable—at least until she adapts to her new life as Princess of the Waves. I could spend time there with her. I need a place in the mortal world to languish in my selkie incarnation, just as I used to do on the Isle of Mists.”

Vega nodded. “Well then, will you want the mating ceremony to introduce her as your lady?”

Simeon nodded. “My subjects will expect a grand celebration. I was thinking we could hold it at the Pavilion. Muriel and the sirens have gone through a great deal of trouble making it livable. It would be a nice reward for their efforts. You know, I’ve been toying with the idea of living there.”

“So…you mean to abandon the palace, then?”

Simeon stared. “Abandon?” he said. “I mean to give it to you…for you and Risa. Yes, I’ll visit…spend time here on occasion, but I mean it to be yours.”

“
Mine?
” Vega said, vaulting out of the chair. It was the last thing he expected. “And who will take on your valet duties?”

Simeon laughed. “I’ll find someone. Such duties are beneath you, in any case. If you want consorts, you will have to choose among the new spawn. The others will remain in exile, Vega. From what I understand, Alexia has found a mate among the mermen, as have some of the others. They are quite content as they are, and so they shall stay.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

“Pio, on the other hand, goes with me, but he will have to do better. I don’t know what ails him lately. He usually dogs me like a shadow. It isn’t like him to leave his post or shirk his duties. But I will deal with that.”

“When will you want to leave for the Pavilion?”

“Tomorrow,” Simeon said. “Once I find Pio, I will send him on ahead to alert the sirens that they need to make ready. They will need a few days, and that will give me time to introduce Megaleen to some of her subjects.”

“Then you’d best be about it. You will want your sealskin.”

“Yes,” Simeon said. “It has been far too long since I’ve put on the sealskin. I’m beginning to feel the effects of abstinence. That may be the reason for my unrest…I just don’t know. Where are you keeping it?”

“In my bedchamber, in the teakwood chest, where I’ve always kept it,” Vega said.

“I won’t disturb Risa,” Simeon said. “Fetch it for me. I’ll have a turn above the waves while Megaleen sleeps. Then you can mind it for me till morning.”

Vega left him and moved through the rest of his apartments. A fugitive wind was blowing through the chambers, stirring the hanging aquatic vine curtains at the archways. It was cold and damp whispering down his neck like icy fingers. He shuddered, thinking of Simeon’s unease. He was nearly ready to give credence to the lore of premonition.