Sex and the Psychic Witch (11 page)

“Isn’t this gorgeous?” Harmony marveled at the stalagmites and stalactites. “Talk about your phallic symbols. Oh look, that one’s bent. Do you think this is the center of the earth?”

“That was some tumble,” King said. “Did you land on your head?”

She grinned. “It was energizing, like taking an icy water slide straight to—”

“Never-Get-Out Land?”

Chapter Twenty-one

KING put an arm around her to keep her warm, but her shiver ran straight through him. “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said, “but we can’t leave the same way we came.”

“It’s so beautiful; it’s worth falling down an icy rabbit hole for. Like a cathedral, but more spiritual, don’t you think? Mother Earth at her finest. The colors of the chemicals in the limestone deposits are amazing, but look at that.”

She went to a tall, jagged, concave surface on one wall. “Good Goddess, these jags are amethyst crystals. Did you ever see anything so gorgeous?”

King took a handful off the floor. “Look, broken crystals. Some of them are good-sized.”

“I collect crystals. These are powerful.” Harmony put loose crystals in her pockets. “Amethysts have a vibrational frequency that protects its wearers from external negative energy. Can you think of anything better to carry around in the castle? Oh, and the crystals you
find
are more powerful than the ones you buy.”

King touched the wall of crystals and closed his eyes. “I feel the power.”

“Mock all you want. I know what I’m talking about. These will help slow Gussie down. They should also come in handy when we figure out how to send her on her way.”

“We can do that?”

“We came biking to talk about getting rid of her. Maybe the Goddess sent us down here for a reason.”

“So we could freeze our asses off?”

“It’s bright over at that end, but it’s also cloudy, or steamy.” Harmony shivered.

King unzipped his hoodie. “You can’t tell at first glance, but I think there’s an underground pool over there.”

She accepted his hoodie, held it together in the front like a cape, and collected amethysts for his pockets. “Is the steam rising from the water because it’s like a hot bath? Or is that a mirage? Think we could warm up and swim toward the light? Does this feel like a near-death experience? Suppose we died. Who picks priceless gems off the ground on earth?” She shivered again. “If we are on earth, are we stealing?”

He put an arm around her. “We’re alive, and I own the island. They’re my amethysts. Take all you want.”

“Whew. Good. Let’s go for a swim and get warm.”

“Don’t plan on the water being too
warm
.” He went to the pool. “Steam simply means the water’s warmer than the air. Now take off your clothes.”

“I beg your pardon, but I’m too blooming cold already, thanks, especially if that isn’t a
hot
spa.”

“I can’t believe you’re being prudish, after last night.”

“I’m not. I just don’t feature being rescued naked.”

“If we
can’t
get out by following the light, we’ll be glad to have dry clothes to put on when we get back.”

Harmony perked up. “And if there
is
a way out, we can come back for our clothes before we take it, right?”

“Whatever you say.” First, he wanted her naked in the hopefully warm water. He was primed thinking about it. Hell, finding their way out could wait. He wanted to find his way inside in the worst way, especially now that he knew how hot she was. He’d bet he could have her willing and begging in two seconds.

“Begging? You blooming wish. I can’t believe you want to play
before
we look for an escape route.”

“Did I say that out loud?”

She gave him two silent eye blinks. “Sure you did.”

King thought she looked the way she had when he asked her what she was doing at the castle . . . before she came up with the vintage clothing story . . . that turned out to be true.

“Don’t you remember saying it out loud? How could I have answered you, if you didn’t?”

“Good point. Really? I said that out loud?”

“Um-hmm.”

“You can’t tell what I’m thinking? Never mind. Of course you can’t. Let’s swim. Warm water sex sure beats freezing to death and getting calcium slimed.”

“You’re one horny package of testosterone, Hurricane Boy.”

“Look who’s talking, Orgasmatron. Like you
don’t
have a major case of bungee-jumping hormones.”

“Are you suggesting that we interconnect our hyperactive hormones to warm up and indulge our come-hither pheromones at the same time?”

“Pheromones! That’s what this is.” King sighed in relief, so much relief, he knew she’d caught on.

“Sex for sport,” she said, “and I’m on your team, right?”

Again with the mind reading? But nah; he hadn’t thought about that since he tried to throw her out the first day . . . after which she happened to mention being a cheerleading team player looking for the big
O
. Weird. “You know, don’t you, that even if we don’t get out of here on our own, someone will eventually find us, right?”

“Because Gussie’s wailing will drive them crazy if they don’t?”

“Precisely. And she’s worse now that she knows you. I never heard her wail as loud as she does when you leave the castle.”

“I’m sure they’ll find us eventually. But I’m freezing now.”

“Let’s warm up in the water, shall we? Wait,” he said as she was about to ditch his hoodie. “Let’s take it slow, undress each other.”

“In different circumstances, I could learn to appreciate your unwavering sexual focus, but I’m freezing here. I don’t know, Paxton, for somebody with a steel rod shoved up his—”

“Will you quit that? The rod’s gone, already. You extracted it the day you told me it was there. Haven’t you figured that out yet? Great guns! I never thought of you as a slow learner.”

“I’m not the only slow learner here. It took you two blooming passes last night to find the spot I most wanted you to touch.”

“That’s called foreplay, sunshine. Get used to it. I’m the ranking commander when it comes to taking it slow.”

“Jelly legs,” she warned, falling against him.

“Jelly legs?” He encircled her with both arms, pulled her close, and she rested her cheek against his chest.

“Yep,” she said looking up. “It’s a sexual response of the female skeletal system. When a man does or says something that shoots straight to our . . . our—”

“Hormones?”

“Yeah, those. The bones in our legs turn to jelly.”

King didn’t want to let go of her to take her clothes off—how twisted was he? If that wasn’t insane, he didn’t know what was. Oh, yeah, now he remembered. His magnetic attraction to hot little miss sexy pants with attitude. But when he unzipped her hoodie and found the bold black message on her white tee, Orgasm Donor, he embraced insanity.

As a matter of fact, his willing recipient of her as-yet-to-be-donated orgasm sat up and begged. Who’s insane now? Not me. “That shirt says you had an ulterior motive for dragging me out here.”

“Yeah, and your dick’s really upset about that.” She cupped him.

“We’re supposed to talk about how to handle Gussie,” he said, gritting his teeth.

“We will . . . eventually . . . afterward.”

“As long as I wasn’t lured into a sexual trap for no good reason.”

“Hah. If I had suggested a sexual trap, you would have raced me here.”

“Okay, you got me. I’m a sucker for a sexy lady in need of a good—”

“Orgasm recipient?”

His eye crinkles cut deep. “First,” he said, sliding her shorts down her legs and kissing her lemon lace panties, a sight to feed any man’s lurid imagination, “let’s get these clothes off you.”

“Hey, I’m calling for some equal opportunity freezing here. I go bare-assed, you go bare-assed!” She unzipped his slacks and removed them along with his control, sliding them down his legs, her cheek grazing his boner, her peppermint hair tickling his thighs, making him ready to . . . “No fair, you’re instigating preforeplay foreplay, and I’m the commander, here. Stop taking the lead.”

Ignoring him, Harmony parted her lips and put the slightest pressure on his boner with her nibbling mouth, nothing between his blow pop and her lips but a pair of black silk briefs.

She looked up. “You
really
want me to stop?”

“Hell no! Lose the briefs.”

“In a minute.” She slid her hands up the backs of his thighs, beneath his briefs to cup a bun in each hand, and even as she gently stroked his bandaged butt cheek, his big boy danced while she watched in fascination, up close and personal. Then she palmed her way around toward his happy place, and he about came when she cupped his balls in one hand and grasped his dick with the other.

“Does your man brain wanna come out and play?”

Like he wanted to take his next breath. He’d admit it; his man brain was doing his thinking for him.

She removed her hands from beneath his briefs, and he groaned; then she pulled them down and caught them on his dick.

“Long, thick, and ready to rumble,” Harmony said, assessing him from all angles and seeming to like what she saw. “I can finally say it with all honesty. You da King! Hail to da King!”

His dick caught the chill in the air, almost embarrassing him by trying to go into hibernation. “Great guns, it’s cold.” He pulled off his shoes and socks and dipped a foot in the water. “Our prayers have been answered. It’s a hot spring! I’m going in first to make sure there’s nothing hiding beneath the surface.”

“Yikes. Like snakes?”

“Like a calcified bottom with hard pointy tops that hurt. If there were snakes, they’d be boiled.”

“Oh good.” She took off her cork-heeled shoes and stood shivering at the edge: a blonde goddess in lemon lace, and all his . . . to play with . . . for a while . . . He needed to remember that she was only his to slake his lust with and to help slake hers. How did he get so lucky? He devoured the sight of her while he lowered himself into the water to scout around.

“It’s safe,” he said, surfacing a few minutes later. “Come on in, but slide in slow and easy. That’s my girl, and tread water, because there are stalagmites down there.”

“How can that be?”

“They formed before the hot spring trickled its way in here.”

She floated beside him, sighing in appreciation. “This is heaven.”

He curled an arm around her, so they skimmed the surface together, his boner returning to a formidable size as she teased it with her knees, on and off, almost by accident.

“If you think this is heaven,” he whispered in her ear. “
Join
me for the real thing.”

Chapter Twenty-two

HARMONY shivered in anticipation as King guided them to a corner of the hot spring, hooked his elbows on the calcified edge of nature’s spa, and drew her between his legs. Her anchor. Her target. No, she must be the target, because King wielded the dart. Big, thick and long, his dart.

She wound her arms around his neck, her legs around his hips, and before she could put him where she wanted him, he stole her focus by kissing her. Oh, yeah. Foreplay. She forgot. This was new to her, this spicy male musk permeating her senses; hot, talented lips grazing her ear, melting her, slow nibbling at her nape, fine-tuning her sensual receptors and causing a slow rise in her heartbeat.

He tasted of salt and sweat. Man and sex. More like romance than lust, but more than romance. She could fall for this man. This was more than sex for sport, this prelude to enduring pleasure, except that King’s version became a pleasure all its own. Ultimate foreplay.

He held her hips away from his, controlled her movement in the hot, licking spring, so only the tip of his shaft touched her, stroked her, wherever, however he wanted, depending on how he moved her. She flowered and opened to await his pleasure. She ran as hot as the spring, and yet he continued skimming her surfaces until her every nerve ending stood at attention, and the slightest abrasion, like his whiskers at the crown of her breasts, made her want him more. How much higher could she rise before she climaxed without him?

He looked up from his attention to her saluting nipple. “Do you have any idea how beautiful and luscious you are? Can you know what you do to me? I can’t believe I tried to turn you away.” He lifted her hand. “I don’t care where you got the ring,” he said, stroking it. “It made me see you in a different light.” He laved her nipple, scattering shock waves, like mini orgasms, that she could hardly bear, yet rode with wonder. “Last night was probably the best sex I’ve ever had, and I didn’t even have you,” he admitted.

She kissed him then, because she didn’t want him to see her tears. The best sex. Less than lust. Something mystical, no doubt, but not romantic. Certainly not love. They’d only known each other for a few days, after all.

He kissed her inadvertent tears, whispered his concern, pulled her toward and away from him letting his shaft slip the slightest bit in, then out as fast. A new experience, always to remember. Never to have with another. It wasn’t possible.

Pay attention to the signs. Words to live by. But she’d missed the biggest sign of all: sex for sport—a warning she’d ignored. And yet that’s all she’d ever wanted . . . until King.

She took him in, and he stopped controlling her. At his entry, her sharp burst of pleasure took her by surprise. His thickness and length stretched her, amazing, wondrous. He touched new pleasure points, deeper points, yet he raised her up. Rapture, and he’d barely entered her.

They moaned into each other’s mouths.

Yes, he was the king or commander. Whatever. She’d never had a lover like him. Not that she’d had many, but last night had been better than all four.

Their presence in this Goddess cathedral was more than serendipity. It was synchronicity, the earth and all its elements in alignment so she could be here with King, lost to the world, but more alive than ever. Here, she found her true self. Mating with King. She could do that. She didn’t need him to return any sentiment. Knowing how she felt, however premature, was enough.

The hot water added to their buoyant play, as they rode in harmony, her climax close, so close . . . yet he kept pushing it away, making her reach. He rode her hard. Someone screamed. Her. Him? Both of them. Over the edge in a rush down the far side of a rainbow they went, then over the falls into the sea, until they bobbed and drifted.

Heat pooled between her legs. A loss. He’d left her. Empty. She whimpered, and he consoled her. Nothing would be as beautiful as the experience they’d left behind. But when she opened her eyes, she saw beauty in his whiskey gaze. Concern. Caring. Honest and true. No walls. Vulnerable. Open to being cared for.

His vulnerability wouldn’t last, but she’d cherish the moment. She kissed him and drew the nectar of the Goddess from his lips, abundance, joy. Entwining her shaky limbs with his, she drifted toward sleep, her cheek against his chest, his chin on her head, him cradling her as she floated free, warmed by the water that surrounded them like babes in the womb.

“Harmony, darling, wake up.” Prince Charmy kissed her awake.

She opened her eyes. “Oh, it’s you.”

“Who did you expect?”

“Prince Charmy. He called me his darling in my dream. Couldn’t have been you.” She read King’s confusion. “It’s a fairy-tale dream I’ve carried around forever. My sisters make fun of me.”

“What? I’m not good enough to be your prince?”

“Good? You’re spectacular. But I never thought of Charmy in the sexual sense.”

“Well, there’ll be no happily ever after for you without sex, Orgasmatron. Time to upgrade the fairy tale.”

“True enough. Look at us making love in nature’s sacred place. I’m living a fairy tale, after all.”

“Not for much longer. The air’s getting cooler, if that’s possible. Time to swim out and see if there’s an escape route to be had before the sun goes down, or we’re gonna have a long, cold night.”

“You’re aces at warm-ups,” she said. “We’ll make our own heat.”

His laugh lines triple crinkled this time. She pushed off his chest and swam away. “King Paxton. I think you
do
know how to smile.”

“Great guns, sunshine, don’t tell anyone, especially not Aiden or Morgan, or my hard-ass rep will never recover.”

King’s walls remained down, Harmony realized, as they swam the serpentine spring toward a wide, round opening in a cliff, like a window to the sea. They held to its granite edge to look down on a suicide ledge of thorny rock, warm water sluicing past them over their hands, roaring down the side of the cliff into the sea a hundred feet below.

“Is that a dolphin?” she asked. “Never mind. It can’t be.”

“Yes it can. I saw dolphins around the island when I was a kid. Not long ago, a Newburyport whale watch tour had more than a hundred Atlantic dolphins playing around their boat.”

Harmony pulled herself up on the edge of the opening to see if she could find more.

“Hey,” King said, “you have a mermaid tattoo at the base of your spine.”

Harmony slid back into the water. “Really? Who knew?”

“I’ve never seen a mermaid on a woman. Men yes, all the time. That’s natural, but not on women. What gives?”

“Mia is a symbol of the Goddess and of female sexuality. The mermaid is a water spirit capable of utilizing the energy of the sea.”

“You named her, like you named your dolphin vibrators. Why does that turn me on?”

“Everything turns you on.”

“Everything about
you
,” he said, but she read his regret for the disclosure. “Pretend I’m a sea captain,” he said to distract her, “and take me down.”

“To the sea in ships? That’s a myth. Mermaids don’t lure men to their deaths. Men go willingly, too stupid to realize that if they follow a mermaid into the ocean, they can’t breathe. Mermaids have saved many a man from his death.”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Harmony shrugged. “No man has ever seen Mia. I thought of her as . . . a rite of passage, except, well, I planned to share her with someone special.”

“I’m special.”

“But you’re not the
one
.”

“The one? Oh, ‘the
one
.’ ” King put some water distance between them. “No. No, I’m not. That’s a beautiful waterfall,” he said, scared spitless. “I’ve seen it from my boat.”

“What kind of boat?” she asked, changing the subject so he wouldn’t have a coronary.

“You never ask the expected question. My boat’s a beauty, a ninety-foot wooden schooner called
The Sea Horse
.”

“You’re kidding? I love sailing, and I love sea horses. I have a sea horse tattoo.”

He swam closer. “Seriously? Where?”

“That’s for you to find out.”

He put his arm around her shoulder. “Do you want to know if we can get out of here or not?”

She shrugged. “I know we can’t.”

“How do you know?”

“Your body language. You’re being protective. We’re sunk, you’ll pardon the pun, and Mia had nothing to do with it.”

“Mia is not under suspicion, but we are up the hot springs without a paddle.”

“At least it’s not a swamp of eternal stink, and we won’t go hungry. We have bananas.”

“If they’re not mush, they’re black by now. I dropped them on the way down.”

“I know. They arrived before you did, and I rescued them. Frozen bananas are awesome, especially with chocolate sauce . . . like sex.
Hot
fudge sounds especially good right now.” She shivered.

“Here, let’s get away from the cool sea breeze and swim underwater to get warm on our way to lunch.”

Beneath the green blue surface, they kissed and teased, frolicked and chased, and Harmony felt like a mermaid, cavorting with ‘the
one
’ fate intended for her. Wow, she
was
a sucker for a fairy tale.

Pulling her attention from King and futile fairy tales, she looked down to see the white caps of the stalagmites below them. So the spring was a relatively new addition to the cavern. She surfaced, sluicing water from her face and hair from her eyes. “What about the source of the spring?” she asked as King surfaced. “Maybe we could find our way out that way.”

“The source has to be somewhere beneath the cavern floor beyond the spot where we made love,” he said.

The roar of the falls was nothing to the sound of her heart roaring in her ears. He said they’d made love. He misspoke, of course, but, wow, he didn’t catch himself. The poor man needed rescuing in more than the usual way.

“I’ll bet I can’t find a banana as big as your pecker,” she said, diving beneath the surface to race him back to the cavern.