The Deepest Ocean (Eden Series) (16 page)

Darok released her and reached for her braid, which had fallen over her shoulder. The ribbon tying the end came off, and he drew his fingers through the mass of her hair, letting it fan over her shoulders and fall across her breasts.

“You’re beautiful, Yerena.” His voice was hoarse. “And wet.” He claimed her other breast, fondling it with his palm before his thumb rubbed the nipple. “I’ll make you wetter.”

That time she didn’t gasp when he pulled her forward, when he sucked on her. She groaned instead, and Darok made a rougher, lower sound that vibrated up from his throat into her skin.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear to be still any more. A restless need gathered between her thighs, and she pulled away from him just enough to rise up and push down. He splayed one hand against her buttocks, squeezing the smooth flesh, but he didn’t move with her as she had expected he would. His slickened length sliding in and out of her brought all her nerves together in that one part of her, tying them so tight she couldn’t bear it, but a speculative gleam lit up Darok’s eyes and she noticed it a moment too late.

“Let’s see you come.” He slipped his free hand between her thighs, his thumb pressing against the sensitive point there.

Yerena cried out, jerking helplessly with the force of her pleasure. Spasm after spasm racked her, and she couldn’t recover from one, couldn’t suck in enough breath to scream again before the next brutal clenching wave swept over her. Darok’s hands went to her hips, holding her for him as he thrust up hard to fill her, wringing the last shudders of release from her as he climaxed, emptying himself deep within her.

Her muscles turned to water, Yerena slumped forward across his chest, her eyes closed. She was vaguely aware of how graceless she must look, not to mention messy—she’d never gotten so sweaty and rumpled during sex before—but she felt so good that she couldn’t bring herself to care.

He feels good too
. Her cheek rested on his shoulder, and she heard his heartbeat slowly returning to normal. That was the time to get up, get dressed and get out, as her mentor had put it. What was the point of loitering at the table once the last dish was eaten?

Hoping she wouldn’t be debriefed regarding that particular assignment, she rubbed her face against his shoulder and raised her head. His eyes were closed, his breathing slow. She pushed an unruly lock of hair away from the scar on his temple, but he didn’t give any sign he had noticed her touch.

Her body sprawled across Darok’s felt better than any blanket. She was warm and damp as an armful of roses heavy with dew, and he grinned to himself. Who said he was the odd one out in a family of artistes? Obviously the right circumstances turned him into a poet.

“Darok?” Yerena said.

“Mm.”

“Are you going to sleep?”

He opened one eye. “I was thinking about it. Why?”

“Because you said I’d be fucked all night, but you’re falling asleep? I’d say I feel stiffed, except—”

Darok laughed and rolled her over on her back. The narrowness of the bunk didn’t favor such a maneuver and Yerena clutched at him tightly, not that he minded. “I can’t believe I took orders from you in my own cabin,” he said, though he knew exactly why he’d done so—it had been unexpectedly erotic to have her take charge, undress him, ride him as he’d wanted to ride her, and still did. “Don’t push your luck any further.”

She started to retort, and he kissed her, slowly and hungrily, drawing her tongue deep into his mouth. Her fingers caught in his hair, traced a circle on the nape of his neck. A sharp shiver that felt both hot and icy ran through his skin, and in the back of his mind, he wondered how she always managed to do that. His cock hardened inside her and he moaned into her mouth, wanting her all over again.

He lifted his head. Her breath came in gasps that turned to a whimper when he nipped her throat and found the sensitive flesh nestled behind her collarbone. Smooth perfect skin except for the tattoo and the scar he remembered even if he couldn’t see it. Propping himself up on an elbow, he reached out and found the back of her left arm, tracing the ridge there, like a seam in satin.

Yerena touched the scar that twisted its way down his side. “Yours is bigger.”

“That’s what they all say.”

She rolled her eyes, then moved her hand to his shoulder and raked her nails down to the small of his back. Breath hissed out between Darok’s teeth, and he retaliated fast, withdrawing from her, moving off the bunk and coming to his feet in one smooth movement, pulling her legs with him as he did so. Before she could do more than gasp, he pushed her thighs open and went to his knees between them. Bracing her legs apart with his elbows so she couldn’t move, he leaned forward and pressed his face between her thighs.

A small strangled sound escaped her throat as his mouth fastened on her. She was hot and musky and liquid with need, a need for him that aroused him even more. He grazed her sensitized flesh with his teeth and blew teasingly on her. Her hips bucked. Darok moved his forearm across them to press her down and hold her open for him to lick and taste and suck.

“Darok!” Her voice was a raw whisper, shaking. “Now, please, now—”

He entered her with his tongue that time, as deep as he could, and her flesh tightened around him. She made no sound other than a wrenching sob that was nowhere near enough for him. He pulled away and rose as the hazel eyes were opening in disbelief, and when her legs closed around him to pull him back, he went with her and sank hilt-deep into hot convulsing flesh.

She cried out then. Darok’s blood roared in his ears. The position gave him more leverage and he braced himself above her to drive deep and hard, again and again, stretching her release out further, watching her writhe and jerk beneath him. He said her name, groaned it, and she pulled his head down to her, muffling the desperate sounds with her mouth until she clenched around him for the last time and he let go, shuddering violently with pleasure.

He collapsed on top of her and buried his face in her hair. It felt like satin too, thick dark sheaves he could sink into as he dissolved, because at that moment he felt utterly boneless, drained and sated. He had no idea if
Daystrider
was moving, becalmed or at the bottom of the ocean, and he didn’t care. For that moment, there was nothing beyond him and Yerena and what they had done together.

Her breasts felt both firm and yielding against his chest and the beat of her heart started to slow. Suddenly aware that he was resting his whole weight on her, he shifted to one side and turned his head just enough to press a kiss to her ear. Her hand relaxed its tight grip on his hair and slid down to his arm, palm to muscle in a long slow stroke.

“Want more?” he said against her ear.

“No. Thank you. Perhaps later.”

He chuckled as he raised his head. “My pleasure,” he said, but all amusement left him when he saw the scrapes on the insides of her thighs. He didn’t mind leaving a mark on her, but only when he’d intended to do so. “Damn, I’m sorry. I should have shaved.”

“I’ve had worse,” she said, and he raised his brows. “From the shark, that is.”

Darok felt even less pleased. It was one thing for some stranger in Seawatch to get on the wrong side of the monsters they tried to tame. It was quite another for a woman he cared about to be hurt, especially when he imagined how easy it would be for sawlike rows of teeth to snap shut on her in a single moment of wildness. But she was so fond of the beast that he knew better than to say anything of the sort.

“I’ll be more careful next time.” He lay down between her and the wall, turning on his side so there was more room.

“I’d ask what makes you so sure there’ll be a next time, but knowing you, that would be all the excuse you need to tumble me again.”

“I don’t need an excuse.” Slipping an arm around her waist, he drew her closer. Sleep wasn’t possible when he planned to be on the deck before midnight, but at least for the moment he could relax. Her body felt molded to fit against his.

“Tell me something,” he said. “Does Seawatch have any operatives who control whales? It would be so easy to deal with those galleys if you could just call up a greatwhale and have it ram them with its head.”

“I’m sure it would,” Yerena said dryly. “But how big a training pool do you think one of those would need? Besides, even if we killed a female greatwhale and brought its baby back to Whetstone alive, what would we feed it? Shark pups eat meat right after they’re born, but whale calves don’t.”

So much for that plan. Darok despised Seawatch, but he had to admit those were good reasons for working with sharks. He hadn’t considered what a difference eating habits would make.

“You’d also have to hope the baby didn’t grow up remembering what you did to its mother,” he said. “But there are smaller whales.”

“I know.” Yerena looked down at her fingers splayed against his chest. “Seawatch tried using those once, but the experiment didn’t end well.”

“Why not?”

“Privileged information.” She unwound his arm from her waist without meeting his eyes again. “I should go back to my cabin and get ready.”

Slipping off the bunk, she got to her feet and bent to pick up her clothes. For the first time that night her back was to him, and the marks across it stood out in pale crisscrossing lines. Whip scars, stark against the skin he’d touched and caressed.

He drew his breath in and sat up. “Who did that to you?”

Yerena straightened and turned quickly, but it was far too late. Darok’s brows were drawn together, and there was no softness at all in the look he gave her, which meant he wasn’t going to like hearing that it was none of his concern.

The scars hadn’t mattered when she had bedded other trainees or Seawatch operatives, because they all knew how she’d earned a whipping. As a result, she’d forgotten that she had something best covered up in front of a stranger. She tried to think how to reply, and of course the silence was answer enough for him.

“Seawatch,” he said, as he would have said
leprosy.

“It was my fault.”

He made a curt, contemptuous sound. “I’m sure. What did you do to deserve it?”

Yerena pulled her drawers on. While she didn’t want to be naked with him any longer, she tried to answer his question with the obedience her training had instilled in her. Perhaps hearing the whole story would make him hate Seawatch a little less. It could hardly make him despise Seawatch any more.

“I was caught playing.” She picked up her shift.

“Playing?” Darok’s frown grew deeper. “With yourself, you mean?”

“Don’t be stupid.” Yerena spoke without thinking and only realized how rude she had been when she heard her own voice, but Darok didn’t look mortally insulted so she went on. “No one in Seawatch would beat me for
that
.”

The furrow between his brows smoothed itself out at once. “Playing with the shark.”

She nodded and slipped the shift over her head, feeling a little less vulnerable with something on.

“How on Eden could you play with the white death?”

She almost smiled at that, at the memories it brought back. “The largest training pool in Whetstone has a plain steel plank stretching across it. Once I went to that pool when none of my instructors were there. No one was there, actually, but after a while the shark swam in.”

Most of the training pools were open to the sea at one end, partly because Whetstone didn’t have the space to keep any sharks except the youngest juveniles confined and partly because sharks didn’t take too well to confinement anyway. The games she had played would never have been possible with an older shark, but neither of them had been particularly adult at the time.

“We didn’t have any specific training scheduled, so I decided to do something else. I stood at one end of the plank and thought,
Race
.”

“You mean you ran?” Darok looked stunned. “Across a pool with a shark in it, over a plank?”

“The shark wouldn’t have hurt me.” Yerena wondered how many times she would have to tell him that before he believed it. “Yes, I ran. And it took off with one flick of its tail. It always reached the other end before I did.” Sometimes she’d had the impression it had thoroughly enjoyed winning those races, but she always reminded herself not to treat it like a person.

“So you got caught racing?”

“No, I got caught playing fetch.”

“You played fetch? With a shark?”

That time she did smile; he was so stunned by what had been, for her, completely unremarkable. “I taught it to jump over the plank as well, but my instructors didn’t mind that so much.” At least leaping was a useful skill, whereas they hadn’t seen much use in racing or in throwing a length of half-petrified wood into the water to be retrieved.

“So it brought back what you threw?” Darok still sounded incredulous.

“Until it got bored.” Yerena pulled her blouse over her head and tied the collar closed. The shark hadn’t seemed to like retrieving as much as racing, so she hadn’t done it too often. And, of course, she hadn’t done it at all after she’d been caught.

“How old were you at the time?”

“Ten.”

His jaw set and the look in his eyes hardened, but he didn’t say anything further, much to her relief. She was thankful he hadn’t asked for any details. While she didn’t care whether there were marks on her body, the punishment had been meted out in front of everyone in Whetstone, everyone from the newest trainee up through the ranks. The pain had faded from her memory, but the humiliation never would. “You can’t say you weren’t warned,” her mentor had told her after she had recovered. “If we wanted you to play silly games, we would have given you a puppy.”