Aria: A Reverse Fairy Tale Romance Series (The Happily Never After Series Book 3)

by Plum Pascal

  Gods, it’s all so complicated! I can’t think of what the future will bring. I won’t have a future if I don’t leave Sen trapped in these caves.

  I make my way along the walls by feel, noting as I do that they’re no longer just craggy stone, the way I remember them. Stringy plant life has taken root in the deep stone cracks that run the length of the place. Any plant life has to be hardy to keep alive at these depths. I just wish they weren’t impeding my progress such as they are. It’s hard to tell one direction from the other in the gloom.

  My heart hammers hard against my ribs when I hear Sen enter the caves behind me.

  Calm down. You’ll find your way out. The exit should be around...

  I grope in the darkness, almost certain I’ve found the right place. The curve here is almost ninety-degrees, cut sharp as glass. I’ve bruised my ribs on it several times over the years. Sure enough, thick stone jabs into me now as I reach for the rip, ready to wriggle my tail out the narrow exit...

  I find the pockmarked surface of a boulder where my exit should be.

  For a second, I’m too stunned to summon much beyond mild confusion.

  This can’t be right! I’ve been in these caves a number of times. This is the exit point! Has something fallen on it or...?

  Then the ugly truth hits me with the force of a charging bull shark.

  The exit has been blocked. By Sen.

  I’ve played straight into his hands.

  My insides feel like they’re withering to nothing as I turn, too late, to find him already behind me.

  He lets out a soft note, unusually melodic for a merman of his size, and the caves are suddenly alight. Bioluminescent plant life clings to every spare crack, casting neon splashes of color throughout the caves. It’s so reminiscent of Opeia’s tunnels, it leaves me muddled for a fraction of a second. Warm familiarity battles with the pressing terror of the coming violence. Ultimately, terror wins out and I back futilely against the boulder, pushing against it with all my might. It doesn’t budge.

  Sen lets out a rolling chuckle and the sound is so filthy, I feel my glans try to draw up and into myself. Anything to get further away from this disgusting creature. I can’t believe my father’s thuggish yes-man has managed to dupe me so thoroughly.

  “I have to say, I didn’t expect you to be daft enough to try this again,” Sen says, running his blade idly along the wall.

  The rasp raises gooseflesh along every inch of my skin. The blade gouges a furrow into the walls, and will push through my flesh as easily as the thick butter spread I encountered in the world above.

  I try to summon magic into my palm. I’ve never been exceptional at witchery, like Aunt Opeia. I’m a warrior, like Bastion, but even in that regard, I’m nothing special. My only real talent seems to be staying alive, and even that looks like it’s about to fail me.

  The corridor is barely big enough for someone of Sen’s proportions to squeeze through; there’s no way I’m going to be able to get past him. I can’t flee, and he’s so damn big that fighting him will be useless. The second he gets me in position, I’m literally and metaphorically fucked.

  My only plan is conceived in despair and nurtured by fear. I have to keep Sen busy, but I’m unwilling to just lay down and play cold fish while he fucks me. So I’ll fight, if only to retrieve the only thing I really want. I need his blade. One well-placed thrust upward, and I think I can reach his heart or, failing that, my own.

  Sen continues to glide forward, the arrogant, lascivious smirk on his face making my stomach turn. He continues his little monologue as if I’m hanging on every word that dribbles out of his gob.

  “Triton almost had my tail flayed when I lost you in the caves,” he says. “So, I prepared this nice setup.” He pauses for a moment and looks me up and down. “I like you like that, backed up against the rock face.” He runs a hand through his hair, swapping color for color as he does. “Shall I make my hair yellow, like your pathetic little lickspittle, Bastion? Or do you prefer dark, like those pathetic humans who’ve been mooning over you as you made your way past our borders?”

  I dislike both colors intensely. I don’t want to be thinking about any of the men I love while Sen draws ever nearer, his glans protruding grotesquely toward me.

  The others have no idea I’m here. And that thought causes me to panic because all I have right now is myself. And that’s a fight I won’t win.

  I coil my body tight and prepare to launch myself at Sen in my last futile gambit to fight him and get away.

  I don’t get a chance to spring away, before Sen opens his mouth to speak again, but he jerks forward instead, his eyes going wide. At the same time, dark, oily blood gouts from his throat, and I stare dumbly at the metal hook that protrudes from his neck. Sen tries to jerk his head down to look at what’s speared him, but he can’t force his chin down more than a half-inch before it knocks into the metal. A shocked gurgle gets trapped in his throat, but that’s the only sound he can make.

  With a harsh grunt, someone yanks the metal through Sen’s neck. It comes loose after the second labored tug, taking a gobbet of flesh the size of an orange from his throat. More dark blood billows into the water, rolling toward the ceiling of the cave like a putrid cloud. Sen’s hands clutch at his throat, trying in vain to staunch the flow.

  I can see it in Sen’s eyes when he realizes he’s a dead man. He draws himself up to his full height, summoning every ounce of spite his frame has to offer, and then spins, trailing more thick blood through the water as he shoves the tip of his blade through his attacker.

  It hits one of the large mechanical suits the humans wear. With horror, I realize the human inside is Andric. My breathless shriek of denial is the last thing Sen hears as his eyes close and he loses the battle against the hook in his neck. But I’m no longer concerned with him. Instead, I bat his sagging body out of my way with one powerful stroke of my tail as I swim over to Andric.

  Bubbles stream out of the suit, every precious one of them stealing the air Andric needs to survive. I have to do something—and quickly, before he suffocates to death. I tear at the hole Sen made in the metal for a futile second or two, trying in vain to rend it apart. The materials are too sturdy, even with my siren’s constitution to aid me.

  “Hatches,” Andric pants, expending more of his precious air. His face is screwed up in pain, but he’s not screaming. Maybe we’ve gotten lucky and Sen hasn’t stuck him somewhere vital.

  “What did you say, Andric?” I ask, confused and growing more and more panicked.

  “The... suit. It has hatches… Comes apart in pieces. You have to undo… the hatches. They look like... little wheels.”

  I scan the suit and see what he means. At regular intervals, the suit has small, barely noticeable hatches that might be mistaken, from a distance, for those human contraptions called buttons. There are a series of them around his headpiece. I seize on the first and lock eyes with Andric.

  “I need to take this off,” I tell him soberly. “I need the suit off in order to heal you.”

  “I’ll drown,” he pants.

  “You won’t.”

  “How?”

  I shake my head. “I have a plan, but it’ll be risky.” I pause for a moment as I search his eyes with my own. “Do you trust me, Andric?”

  He doesn’t even blink before answering. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  Then, I began unscrewing the first hatch.

  FIFTEEN

  ANDRIC

  My lungs burn with the effort of holding in the last of my air. One lungful of the wintery black water and I’m a dead man.

  I have to trust that Aria has a plan, but damn, it’s difficult with the pressure building hard and fast between my eyes. The skin of my chest feels stretched tight like cloth on a loom and I fear I’ll tear myself apart at this rate. Aria is unfastening the hatches as quickly as her shaking fingers will allow, but I’m afraid it’s not going to be enough. I think I understand her idea, in princip
le. The suit is heavy, and it slows me down. She’s faster than I am, even without it, and unencumbered, she can drag me to the surface.

  What I don’t have time or energy to point out is that re-pressurizing the suit would be the safest course. We’re probably past that now though, even if she could grasp the science of the suit within the next ten seconds.

  Whatever the case, it won’t be enough. I’ve expended the last of my air instructing her where the hatches are located. Even if she tears me free of the suit in the next thirty seconds, it won’t be enough to save me. I will have swallowed half the sea by the time she hauls my limp body to the surface.

  Finally, she undoes the last hatch on my helmet. Icy water sloshes into my suit at once, waterlogging me further. My limbs feel like they’ve been frozen stiff, and I have to shut my eyes against the oncoming sea water. My face stings as the salt rubs in a million cuts I didn’t know I’d sustained.

  It’s going to hurt like Avernus when the sea water finally reaches the gash in my side. The hulking merman that cornered Aria tried his best to carve my flank off. Even if I can somehow stop the bleeding and find a healer in the next minute or two, the wound will scar badly. Not that I’d care—I’d much rather be alive.

  Aria’s fingers wind into my hair and she jerks my neck to the side. A thrill of mixed anticipation and dread pulses through me. It’s almost like those old wives’ tales that my nursemaids used to tell me about the monsters at the edge of the Enchanted Forests—the blood drinkers. I half expect Aria to show her teeth and take a bite. Instead, she buries her face in my neck and presses a searing kiss to my throat.

  The heat of her mouth shouldn’t register at this depth, in this deluge of cold, but for almost half a minute it’s all I can feel. The soft, generous fullness of her lips pressed against me. Everywhere our skin touches, I warm until I feel somewhat human again. My limbs unlock and I’m able to move them awkwardly around her shoulders, holding her to me.

  The ache of my chest eases a little and I wonder if this is the end. It’s a good way to go, all things considered. Rescuing and being kissed by a fair maiden who is meant to be my wife, before I drift off into that infinite night. Black spots, somehow thicker and more ominous than the water around us, begin to burst in my vision and I slump sideways, barely catching myself on a rock shelf.

  “Breathe, Andric,” Aria murmurs against my throat. “Breathe, or you’re going to pass out.”

  At my searching, incredulous look, she rolls her pale eyes skyward with a small smile. “Do you trust me or not?”

  I shudder, brace myself, and then suck in a deep breath through my nose, expecting the salt to burn all the way down. It doesn’t.

  Relief is instantaneous, my body flooding with elation so potent, it saps the pain of every injury I’ve sustained. I feel a little punch drunk, basking in this new glorious knowledge.

  I don’t know how it’s possible, but I can breathe underwater!

  Then the reason why dawns on me: Aria has marked me as her own, pressing her claim into my flesh the same as she’d done to Hook. Forget the rings, ceremony, and empty words of a marriage ceremony—Aria has marked me as hers in a real, tangible way I never dared hope for. Before I can stop myself, I’ve freed a hand from its clumsy mechanical prison and cupped her face, drawing her as close as I can manage with the rest of the suit in the way.

  Our lips come together in a sweet, almost longing kiss. It feels so bloody good when our lips touch. Is this what it’s like for mated mercouples? Is this the reason Hook can’t keep his hands off her for more than a few minutes? I’d thought it was just his nature, being a pirate and a notorious scoundrel. But if this is what it’s like to be mated to a siren, I will never cast aspersions on him again. How could someone not want to touch her, to feel her, to possess her?

  Aria is the first to draw back, though I can tell she’s as unhappy by the loss of our contact as I am. I’m already straining toward her again. She stops me, placing a gentle hand on the exterior of my suit. I still beneath her touch, though I could press the issue.

  “You’re injured,” she reminds me gently. “The only reason your wound isn’t incapacitating you with pain is this cold. We need to treat you now, before we surface again.”

  “How?” I ask with a frown.

  Aria pulls her lip between her teeth. It’s always been damn distracting but now, with her claim on my skin, the need to touch her is nearly overwhelming.

  “I’ll need to sear the wound closed.”

  “Sear it?”

  She nods. “I know how. Aunt Opeia showed me a spell that works on battlefield amputations, but it will… hurt. I can keep your mind occupied while I do it, though. Turn the pain into... something else.”

  “Okay.”

  “How opposed are you to illusions?”

  I want to retort that I’m a prince and a warrior and that pain is not something I fear. But sometimes we do things not for the sake of our own pride, but to spare others pain in our stead. If I grit my teeth through the coming spellwork and fail to hold in my screams, I’ll worry Aria. She’s still a tender soul, even after all that’s been done to her. So, I swallow my pride and give her a lazy grin instead.

  “I’m happy to be subject to whatever illusions you wish to show me, Aria.”

  Relief shows plain on her face for an instant. Then, the illusions begin.

  In an instant, she’s her human self again, bare as she was that night on the cliffs. Still a thing of incredible beauty, though this time she appears less fragile. Her eyes are half-lidded, the set of her mouth almost sultry as she advances on me.

  “Take the suit off,” she purrs, leaning in so our lips are a fraction of an inch from touching. Her mouth slides like silk over mine when she speaks, and she tugs on one of the hatches for emphasis.

  That’s all it takes. The gentle prompting sets me in motion, twisting each of the hatches violently until the suit falls to pieces at my feet. I kick it away so she has room to step closer, to put her body to mine. There’s still the wetsuit to contend with, but it can be removed quickly.

  Aria smiles approvingly and hooks one calf around mine, pressing all her long, lean frame into me. It’s like fireworks exploding everywhere we touch. I try to turn and catch her lips when she presses them to my cheek and then to the corner of my jaw. She laughs then, a rich sound that belongs to a more lascivious creature than the unassuming Aria.

  I know it’s an illusion, yet it doesn’t feel like one—it’s difficult to convince my brain that she’s simply weaving an artificial web about me, playing with my senses. It’s near impossible to argue with my mind, which tells me there’s a very warm, very willing woman pressed to my front, rubbing herself, cat-like, against my thigh. I’m already hard, and she’s barely touched me.

  She continues her slow exploration with her mouth, yanking the fastenings of the wetsuit off in her haste to bare more of my skin. She trails hot kisses and hard nips of her teeth down one pectoral, down the line of my abdomen, and then further down until she reaches my straining cock.

  “Do you want me to touch you here?” she asks with a knowing smile.

  “Yes,” I croak.

  Gods, taking the illusion is probably the best choice I’ve ever made. Even knowing this isn’t truly happening, it’s still so… amazing.

  Aria makes a little humming noise in the back of her throat and then slowly draws my length out into the open. I almost expect the thing to draw back from the cold but, as before, anywhere she touches me feels warm. No, not just warm—burning. Burning with the need to be inside her.

  She studies the thick head of my cock for an appreciative second before flicking out her delicate pink tongue to taste it. Then, she guides the length of me as far inside her mouth as I can go.

  I almost cum then and there.

  The electric sensation of her mouth on me for even an instant sends my need into overdrive. She’s going to kill me, she’s going to suck my lifeforce right out of my cock—and I’m not
going to regret a damn second of it.

  I don’t know how she manages to convey her amusement around a mouthful of cock, but I get the impression she’s grinning up at me. Then she wraps her lips around me, sucking hard, traveling the length of me twice before she lets up the pressure to twirl that magnificent tongue around the head. Her mouth may be the single most glorious thing I’ve ever felt, but I want more.

  “Stop,” I pant. “I don’t want to cum yet, Aria, I want...”

  She draws her head back, her lips slightly swollen and distractingly shiny from her efforts. She smirks at me. “More?” she guesses.

  “Yes.”

  “What exactly is it you want?”

  “You. Your body. I want to feel the inside of you.”

  She smiles lasciviously. “How do you want me? Below you? On top of you? Do you want to take me from behind?”

  Gods, the thought of her riding me has my balls tightening in anticipation. “On top. Please.”

  She moves on top of me, as agile as a lemur, and anchors herself around my neck, her long legs locking around my waist with vise-like strength. I couldn’t shake her even if I wanted to. Not that I want her anywhere else, at the moment. I’ll cut off a finger before I let her go now. I push my face into her hair, bucking upward into the heat that lay between her legs, sheathing myself inside that sweet, hot channel in one languid stroke.

  She shudders, stills for a moment, and then lets out a soft moan that tickles my ear. “Fuck me,” she groans. “Oh, Andric, please...”

  Hard to argue with a request like that.

  I thrust into her again, guiding her hips up and off my cock before slamming myself home again. She meets me stroke for stroke, quickly finding her rhythm. She traces her pleasure into my back, arching into every thrust with a soft cry. Her eyes flutter closed, head lolling back as I fill her, guiding her toward climax. I only get a second’s warning before her hips buck. Then, she’s squeezing me tight, her body going taut and tipping me over the edge with her as well.

  When I come down from the high, I realize, with a sense of loss, that Aria is no longer in my arms. She’s standing a few feet away, wholly siren once more. She watches me and her hand traces soft circles into a point on her tail.