Lords of the Deep (35 page)

Miles flicked a glance at him and returned his attention to Basil. Damien could see he was struggling with his temper.

* * * *

Thoroughly awake and too angry to even attempt to go back to sleep, Angie rolled over the moment Damien strode from the room, glaring at his back until he was out of sight. She fumed for a moment then abruptly got out of the bed and followed him.

Damien’s question, which she heard far more clearly than she wanted to, stopped her in her tracks briefly. Her chest squeezed painfully. She pressed her hand to the pain, struggling to drag in a breath.

“She never was pregnant,” Miles said coldly. “I just checked the scan. She just ovulated. There’s no way in hell she was pregnant two weeks ago. The whole gods thing was a lie. What I want to know is why?”

“What I’d like to know is why the fuck you think I have to answer to you!” Basil snarled.

“Because you owe us a gods damned explanation!” Damien growled. “You owe Angie an explanation!”

Basil released an angry breath. “I did it to protect her. Galen
knew
she wasn’t one of us as soon as he examined her. We had to get her to the hospital for treatment. I wasn’t willing to take a chance on what might happen once the king knew.”

“And it didn’t occur to you that there might be a problem once she didn’t start blossoming?”

“It occurred to me that I was going to have to see to it that she did!”

“You’re a selfless bastard, aren’t you?” Damien snarled.

Basil said nothing for a long moment. “Believe what you want!” he said finally. “Maybe it wasn’t my finest hour, but I was … I wasn’t thinking any more clearly than any of the rest of you were, gods damn it! I was afraid she’d die if she didn’t get help and I didn’t like the possibilities that occurred to me once it was known she was human, not mer. I
knew
if she was pregnant with my child she would have automatic immunity. I only said it to protect her.”

“You also knew the king would never let her go if he thought she was carrying your heir,” Miles said coldly.

Basil flushed with a mixture of anger and discomfort. “I wanted to keep her here,” he muttered finally. “Don’t try any of that ‘holier than thou’ shit on me! You two wanted to keep her here as much I do.”

“The difference is, I wanted her to
choose
to stay,” Damien said tightly.

“I’ve seen how hard you’ve been working on convincing her,” Basil said dryly.

Miles’ eyes narrowed. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

“What the fuck do you think I mean?” Basil shot back at him. “And speaking of fucking ….”

Miles and Damien both bristled at him.

Angie leaned one shoulder on the doorframe, folding her arms. None of the three paid her the least attention, though. They were too busy arguing with each other.

“And, now that you’ve widely announced the fact that she’s carrying your heir, I suppose you think we’re just going to step back and let you have the field?”

“It occurred to me, yes,” Basil said tightly.

“Well, that’s just too bad!” Angie said finally. “It’s luck of the draw, isn’t it? That’s the way you play it around here?”

All three men turned to look at her with varying degrees of anger and discomfort.

Basil found his voice first. “What do you mean?”

She smiled at him slowly. “You know exactly what I mean. I choose. It’s my choice.”

Basil, Damien, and Miles all exchanged a look.

“I have an egg that needs to be fertilized, boys,” Angie said calmly, looking at Damien pointedly. “Damien first—then Miles—then you—first round. Second round—you three get to toss that one. Then, I rest. If you want to have another try, come back tomorrow.”

Basil ground his teeth angrily. “Everybody believes it’s mine.”

“Then you should be very thorough when it’s your turn,” she said, turning away and heading back to her room.

“Witch,” Basil muttered after a long moment, resisting, only by strenuous effort, the urge to grab Damien and choke the life out of him as he strode from the lab to follow her.

Damien caught up to Angie as she placed her knee on the bed to climb in. Grabbing her around the waist, he tumbled the two of them onto the bed and dragged her close for a kiss, absorbing her heat and warmth and the taste of her feverishly. “I missed this,” he murmured hoarsely when he finally had to break the kiss to suck air into his burning lungs.

Her gaze roamed over his face before her eyes met his again. “You didn’t come … after ….”

He winced. “I can’t explain it, Angie.”

“Try.”

He swallowed, looked uncomfortable, and finally burrowed his face against her throat. “I thought you were going to leave. I couldn’t …. I didn’t want to face it. It tore me up when you were hurt, scared me worse than anything ever did in my life. I kept seeing it my head, over and over—If I hadn’t stabbed the thing ….”

“Miles would be dead.”

“I know. I just kept thinking I’d done the wrong thing, that I wasn’t thinking straight or I would’ve come up with something that didn’t involve killing you instead.”

She stroked his hard cheek. “You didn’t do anything to me, Damien—in fact, you probably saved both me and Miles.”

“Basil saved you. He broke off the fight the moment you were hit—the damned thing almost took his arm off. I’m not sure he even noticed—then. He just hacked the tentacle loose from his arm and shot down to where you’d fallen. The entire thing was a nightmare.

“I stayed until I knew you were alright, but I realized by that time that I just didn’t have … I couldn’t face losing you twice.”

Angie studied him for a moment. “So you didn’t come to see me because you cared?” she asked tentatively.

He lifted his head, frowning. His lips twisted wryly. “That’s about the size of it.”

* * * *

Basil paced the lab furiously for several minutes after Damien and Miles had both left and finally stalked down the corridor to watch them with Angie with a curious mixture of rage and raging lust. He glared after the pair when they left her and started toward the airlock. “You might as well rest up! You aren’t settling a gods damned thing without me and I don’t intend to hurry!”

Angie was looking at him with a faint smile when he returned his attention to her. Feeling abruptly uneasy for no reason that he could fathom, he crossed the room to the bed and settled beside her, feeling his heart thumping so hard in his chest he had to struggle to breathe.

He’d meant what he said, though. He was in no rush—and he was, at the same time. He studied her face. “I want you to touch me like you did them,” he murmured hoarsely, intending it as a command. Somehow, it didn’t seem to come out that way.

She shifted down the bed until her face was level with his. Lifting a hand, she skimmed it lightly all the way down his body from his upper chest to his groin, following the contours. “Like this?”

His throat closed as if a hand was squeezing it. He swallowed with an effort. “Yes,” he said in a croaking voice.

She leaned closer and he felt the tickle of her lips as she nibbled light kisses across his chest. “And this?” she murmured against his skin.

The hum of her voice was almost as tortuous as the light skating motions of her hands and her lips—almost as enthralling. “Angie,” he murmured huskily, uncertain himself whether it was praise, a demand for more, or a warning that he had a precarious grip on his patience.

It was sheer torture to lie still while she explored him, the most wonderful torture he’d ever felt in his life. When he reached the point where he thought he’d go insane, or spill his seed without ever having entered her, he rose abruptly and pushed her to her back, touching and tasting her skin as he’d watch Miles and Damien do until he hadn’t been able to close his eyes without thinking about doing it himself, without contemplating murder and mayhem if that was what it took to get her for himself. He discovered it was more wonderful even than he’d imagined.

He found himself murmuring her name in a litany, like a prayer, reverently. He could worship her forever, he thought, lifting his head finally and slipping up her body to taste her lips and mouth—the delicacy he’d saved for last.

Almost last, he amended, savoring the taste of her as he felt his cock searching.

She spread her legs for him.

A red haze clouded his mind. He’d wanted to make love to her like this more than he could ever remember wanting anything, face to face, so that he could watch her face when his flesh entered her, when he thrust into her tight channel and gave her pleasure.

He’d enjoyed watching the pleasure on her face when Damien and Miles made love to her, but he wanted to see her pleasure in his body, his touch.

He wanted his seed to flourish in her belly, wanted to watch her belly round with his child.

“I love you, Angie,” he groaned against her throat as his body shot his seed into her.

Epilogue

Angie lifted her head from the microscope, blinking her eyes to get them to adjust. “What?”

Basil grinned at her from the floor where he’d been playing with the baby. “I said he pooped. He needs a change.”

Angie gave him a look. “And I suppose that means you can’t handle it?”

He made a face. “Gods, Angie! You don’t expect me to, do you?”

Angie shook her head and got off her stool, holding her hands out imperiously for her son. “Damien and Miles have both been initiated. I don’t know why you think you shouldn’t. He’s
your
son.”

“Yes, but … Angie, love! I’m a prince!”

“So?” she threw over her shoulder as she left her lab and headed to the nursery.

“Bad boy!” she scolded Andrian when he gave her a ‘golden shower’ the minute she tried to pull his diaper off and then grinned at her, displaying his new teeth. She was never going to get the knack of this diaper changing, she thought with a touch of wry amusement. “That wasn’t a compliment, young man!”

He tilted his head, looking at her quizzically, and she chuckled. “You’re just like your father! Always expecting to charm your way out of everything.”

“I usually do.” His father slipped up behind her, coasting his hand over the slight rounding of her stomach. “This should’ve been mine,” he murmured against her neck.

“Luck of the draw,” she said teasingly.

“Yes, but my draw’s better than Damien’s.”

“Odd, but Damien thinks his is better than yours … and Miles is convinced he’s the best.”

“Science geek,” Basil muttered.

Angie elbowed him in the ribs. “I’m a science geek.”

“I love science geeks,” Basil assured her promptly, nibbling at her ear lobe.

“I’ll tell Miles,” Angie retorted with amusement.

“Science geeks with pretty little cats like this,” Basil elaborated, stroking his finger lightly along her cleft.

Angie shivered, pausing in the act of changing the baby. “You’re wasting your time. It’s Damien’s night … unless you just want to get me primed for him?”

Basil removed his hand with a growl. “I could always beat the crap out of him and claim the night myself.”

“Except that that might attract attention we don’t want,” Angie said pointedly, reminding him that he was the one that had been the most worried that their activities might have an unhealthy effect on the mer traditions—specifically the breeding. Fastening the baby’s diaper, she lifted him for a flurry of kisses and then handed him to his father.

Basil studied her broodingly as she left him and headed back to her lab. He followed her after a moment. “They’ll figure it out eventually,” he said pointedly. “None of us have been to the gathering three years running. That’s bound to make tongues wag and arouse curiosity.”

Angie glanced at him. “I thought Galen, Justin, and Rasmus had decided to go?”

He looked uncomfortable for a moment and then grinned. “They had this lame idea that it would be the best way to circumvent talk we didn’t want, but they got worried you’d be pissed off about it … and then they decided it was ‘unmanly’ to worry about it … so they stayed home but didn’t tell you.”

Angie turned to stare at him frowningly, but finally shook her head. “I’ll never understand the male ego,” she muttered.

Basil’s eyes warmed as he watched her. “You might if you studied
your
males a little more.”

Angie waved a hand at him as if he was an annoying insect but didn’t lift her head. “Gods, Basil! I get fucked six ways from Sunday seven days out of every month! Isn’t that enough ‘study’?”

Basil sidled up behind her again, juggling the baby on one arm. His cock found her cleft and tried to burrow under her. “Loved six ways from Sunday,” he disputed, “I only get loved one day out of every month.”

Angie wiggled on the ‘rod’ trying to worm it’s way under her to reach its goal. “Men! Never satisfied!”

Basil chuckled. “I am, love—once a month. Twice a month would be better.” He nuzzled her ear. “I love you.”

Angie lifted a hand and patted him a little absently on the cheek. “Mmmhmm.”

“Angie,” Basil growled.