by C. L. Wilson
He understood her now in ways he never had before.
It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him.
It wasn’t that she didn’t love him.
It never had been.
She was a great, vast, wild power. He was her greatest vulnerability. And that terrified her beyond all reason. She was afraid of hurting him. She was afraid of hurting others. Most of all, she was afraid of what she might do if anything ever happened to him.
He must have been staring at her too intently, because her expression turned from mild shock to genuine concern. “Dilys, you’re starting to scare me now. What’s going on?”
“This,” he said, and he crushed her to him. His head swooped down to take her mouth in a raw, passionate kiss. Her initial startled gasp gave way to hesitant confusion, then melting warmth that changed quickly to growing heat as her passion rose to match his. He groaned into her mouth and gathered her close. His hands swept down her back. His fingers curled around her buttocks and pulled her tight against him. And when her arms twined like vines around his neck and she crushed her breasts against his chest, his heart nearly burst from pounding so hard.
Magic surged inside him, as immense and forceful as that rogue wave he’d blasted out into the sea. He’d already released so much of the power that she’d shared with him. First, with that initial, wild blast that created that enormous wave, and then the power he’d expended catching up to that wave and taming it. Yet despite all that he’d used, he was still so far from being drained he could scarcely believe it.
No wonder she’d spent her whole life terrified of unleashing the magic inside her. She didn’t merely hold a strong gift. She held all the energy of the sun, all the untamed wildness of the sea. Vast, unimaginable power. And when she’d shared her grief with him, poured that power into him along with all the fear and pain and longing of her wondrous, magnificent, deeply loving and passionate soul . . .
Numahao bless him.
He tore his mouth from hers to gasp her name on a ragged inhale, then buried his face in her throat, kissing, nibbling, biting the sweet, sweet, oh-so-silky skin of her neck, the shell of her ear, the tiny, sensitive spot behind that ear that made her cry out when he laved his tongue across it. Her fingers thrust into the coils of his hair and gripped his skull.
“Dilys . . . sweet Helos, Dilys . . .”
The sound of his name on that ragged, breathless gasp filled him with satisfaction and pride. That was his name on her lips. Him she called to give her what she needed. His kiss, his touch that drove her sweetly out of her mind with pleasure.
Soaring hope and steely determination flared within him in equal measure. This was right. They were right. He was exactly what she needed, and it was well past time for him to prove it to her once and for all.
Her skirts bunched around them as she wrapped her legs around his waist. He walked them blindly to his bed, kicking toppled books out of his path as he went. When he reached his bed, he lay her down upon the downy mattress and pulled back to look at the glorious beauty of her passion-flushed face. Her eyes had gone soft and hazy, her lips plump and red. Color stained the beautiful brown skin of her cheeks. And all her silky black hair lay fanned out around her head. She looked like a mermaid lazing in a warm tidal pool, all soft and dreamy and utterly inviting.
His claws sprang from his fingertips. He dragged them down the front of her gown, slicing the fabric from neck to navel, baring the dark perfection of the beautiful skin beneath. So smooth. So silky.
He slid his hands inside the torn edges of the gown, laid his palms against her flat, warm belly and slid them up, parting the shredded gown as he went until she lay bare before him.
There was hesitance in her beautiful eyes. Worry. Shame. A little fear. The Shark had befouled her with his disgusting touch, reveling in taking intimacies that only a trusted lover should ever have claimed. He’d left no inch of her skin untouched, no part of her free of his taint. He’d made foul what should only ever be beautiful.
That could not be allowed to stand.
Dipping his head down, Dilys set out to replace every awful, humiliating, degrading memory with something new, something joyous. Her lovely breasts with their dark, taut peaks rose and fell with each shallow, panting breath, and he caressed them first with his hot, hungry gaze, then with his hands, and finally with his lips and his teeth and his tongue until her back arched up to offer him her sweet flesh.
Bit by bit, inch by inch, he laved every morsel of her flesh with loving caresses, adoration, devoted care, wiping out even the smallest echo of a memory of what the Shark had done to her. And with each stroke of his fingers, every sensual, dragging lave of his lips, his tongue, he gave her back a hot, tingling flare of the magic she had given him. She clutched his shoulders, her nails digging deep, and his name fell from her lips with breathless urgency.
“Dilys!” She squirmed against him, her hips rocking against the hard length of his sex in blatant demand. “Come into me now. I need you inside me.”
There was Compulsion in her voice. He had ripped her gown down to the hem and sliced through the folds of his linen gudo before he managed to shake off the Command he wasn’t yet ready to obey.
“Don’t speak,” he growled. He rose up to kiss her again, deeply and thoroughly, while one palm rubbed the sweet, softly-furred mound of her sex until her parted legs began to tremble with the first of what he intended to be many orgasms.
“Dilys!” She clutched at his hips, trying to drag him closer. “I need you n—” Her voice broke off and her eyes flew open, wide with sudden fear, as he clamped a hand over her lips. They had gagged her. They had Silenced her Voice. He eased his grip, but didn’t remove his hand. He would take that memory and remake it as well.
“No,” he told her. “This is me, and you know I will never hurt you, and I will never take what you do not give. This”—he tapped his fingers against her lips—“is just a reminder, moa kiri. I want to give you what you need in my own way, at my own pace, without you Commanding me to rush when I want to go slow. I promise, you will enjoy it. Will you do that for me?”
Eyes wide over his silencing hand, she nodded slowly.
“Good girl.” To reward her, he replaced his hand with his mouth, and while kissing her deeply, pressed a thumb to her clitoris and pulsed a throb of hot magic through his hand. Her eyes went even wider, and her body arched as if electrified, shaking furiously as the next orgasm crashed over her. Her teeth clenched tight as her muffled scream of pleasure tore from her throat.
He kissed his way down her body again, giving every inch of her body the same, agonizingly thorough attention, pulsing hot, tingling flashes of magic as he went. For the next hour, he tormented her with slow, languorous pleasure, working his way down to her toes and back up, then turning her over to do the same again. She cried out again and again, and her nails ripped him bloody more than once. But even when she was sobbing and crying and pleading for release, she didn’t Command him to hurry.
That deserved another reward. He drew her up on her hands and knees and kissed every inch of her sweetly rounded buttocks while one hand teased her dangling breasts and the other drove first one finger, then two, then three inside her quaking body, sending pulse after pulse of energy through his fingertips with each thrust until she shrieked in mindless pleasure and collapsed into shuddering unconsciousness on the bed.
As she began to rouse, he at last brought his mouth to her core. Her flesh was steaming, the soft black curls and delicate folds drenched with honeyed moisture. He waited for her eyes to flutter open. Her head lifted slightly, then fell back as if the effort was too much.
“Dilys,” she moaned, “please. No more.” Her voice was hoarse from her cries, and the low, husky rasp tightened everything inside him.
His own body was hard as a rock. His sex was so engorged, it was a wonder the tightly stretched skin hadn’t burst. He had long ago passed the point of pain.
When he finally allowed himself to enter her, he knew he wouldn’t last long, but this wasn’t about him. This was all about and for her.
She had poured herself into him—all of herself, holding nothing back—giving him her grief, her fear, her fury, her lust for vengeance, her pain. And he was giving her back every pleasure he could think of. More pleasure than she’d ever known before. More than she thought herself capable of taking. And he wasn’t done yet.
“Yes,” he murmured, his breath a hot fan against her most sensitive flesh. “More.” And with a wicked smile, he lowered his mouth and feasted until, screaming, she came again.
And then, at last, he slammed his rock-hard sex into her body with a single, powerful thrust. He groaned at the furiously tight grip of her body as he pulled back to thrust again. He went deep—ah, goddess! So deep—and she was so hot and wet and so farking tight, and his sex was like a raw, exposed nerve rubbing against her. Pain and pleasure shot through him in equal measure. His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her rounded hips. His muscles strained, the tendons in his neck standing out like ropes, as he drew back and thrust a third time. Her body clamped hard around his. She screamed. His control shattered.
Gripping her hips, he came in a fury of wild, staccato thrusts, filling her with his seed and his magic. Emptying himself until he had nothing left to give her. And then he collapsed beside her on the bed, pulled her into his arms, and they both fell into exhausted slumber.
Chapter 25
Gabriella woke numerous times in throughout the rest of the day and the night, pulled from sleep by dreams of loss and grief that made her magic flare and tears dampen her face. Each time, Dilys held her in his arms and took away her pain, giving her pleasure after ecstatic pleasure in return until at last, as dawn broke over the ocean, she woke to find her cheeks wet with grief for the loss of her sisters but no corresponding hint of dangerous magic.
He held her as the storm of tears rained down, then tenderly sipped the salty wetness from her face.
“I love you,” he told her softly. “I am so sorry I was not able to save your sisters. I would give my life to bring them back to you. You know this.”
Tear-reddened blue eyes regarded him through spiky black lashes. “I know. You aren’t to blame for what happened. You did everything you possibly could.”
“I did,” he agreed. “But I still failed you. My death is yours, should you wish it.”
It took several seconds for his words to register, and when they did, she rose on one elbow to glare at him. “Don’t be ridiculous! You know how I feel about that barbaric custom. Even if I blamed you for not being able to save my sisters—which I don’t—I would never want that. And I’ll thank you not to even suggest such a thing to me ever again.” Clearly irritated, she rolled away from him and sat up, dragging the sheet up over her breasts and tucking it beneath her arms to hold it in place.
He rolled to one side and slid a hand across the bed. Reaching the sheet she’d pulled up around herself, he gave it a tug. She tried to hold on, but he was persistent and kept tugging until the sheet slipped down to bare her beautiful breasts.
“If that is your Command, then so shall I obey,” he vowed. Lust turned his voice thick and throaty. It didn’t matter that he’d just spent the better part of the last fourteen hours claiming her body over and over and over again. All he had to do was look at her, and he wanted her again.
He came upon all fours and slowly stalked across the short distance of the bed until he could reach her nipples with his mouth. He licked them intently, loving the way they beaded on his tongue.
“I will never again offer you my death,” he said, rising up on his knees to claim her mouth, and trailing heat and magic in his wake, “if you claim me as your akua, and bind me to you for all times.”
“Dilys . . .” She pulled back, frowning at him, and pushed him away so she could scoot back. She leaned against the headboard and dragged a pillow across her lap and another across her breasts. “You are not going to seduce me into doing what you want. Not about this. It’s too dangerous.”
He scowled a little, but his irritation had less to do with her stubborn refusal to marry him than it did with her determination to hide her body from him. “No, it isn’t too dangerous,” he told her. “As we proved yesterday beyond a doubt.”
“Proved?” She gaped at him then gave a harsh bark of laughter. “The only thing we proved is that I nearly killed you!”
“You’re wrong, Gabriella. That may be how your oulani mind sees things, but it isn’t remotely what happened.”
“Oh, really?”
“Tey, really. I failed you. I couldn’t save Spring or Autumn.”
“I don’t blame you for that.”
“I know you don’t. That’s the point, don’t you see? Given my inability to protect the ones you love, you had no cause to trust me with your pain. Yet you did. You trusted me to bear your grief, even though I failed your sisters and I failed you.”
“And you think me sharing my grief with you somehow proves I’m supposed to claim you for all times with some sort of Calbernan woo woo?”
“Tey, it does. Because whether you want to admit it or not, the Siren in you has already decided that I am strong enough to be your mate.”
“I think whatever happened yesterday must have scrambled your brains.” She threw the pillows aside and jumped out of the bed, stalking across the cabin to snatch up the white robe the men had made her. “Do you even remember what happened?” she demanded as she thrust her arms into the sleeves and tied the belt around her waist. “I lost control of my power completely. I nearly killed us all!”
“But you didn’t!” He jumped out of the bed and followed her, not bothering to cover his nudity. He caught her shoulders and spun her around to face him. “Look around you, moa leia. Are we dead? Has the ship sunk? Did any of us receive so much as a splinter yesterday because of your grief? No! Because you gave me your pain and let me bear it for you. And it worked. As I told you it would.”
Her eyebrows shot up towards her hairline. “It only worked because you shoved me away before I could kill you, then dove through a glass window to get away from me and started a farking tsunami in the middle of the ocean!”
He blushed. He couldn’t help it. “Tey, well, I admit I could have handled things better, but in my defense, you are the first Siren whose pain I’ve ever tried to ease. I wasn’t properly prepared for the enormity of your grief, and then you started trying to soothe me. I should never have snapped at you and pushed you away the way I did. It’s just that I was barely holding what you gave me, then you kept giving me more. It was too much.”
“You think I’m upset because you snapped at me?”
“You had every right to be.”
“I’m upset because you keep refusing to accept the truth. It’s too dangerous for me to love anyone.”
“Nonsense. Besides, you already love me. Refusing to claim me won’t change that.”
She trembled a little and took a wobbly step back, as if she’d just been thrown off balance. Her mouth opened, then shut, and her wounded blue eyes stabbed him to his heart before she turned away to gather her composure.
“No,” she admitted, “it won’t. I will always be a danger to others if anything ever happens to you, but I don’t have to endanger you by staying close. You’re safer without me. The only one who doesn’t see that is you.”
She admitted to loving him, yet in the same breath continued to reject him. Was there ever a woman so stubborn and hardheaded? Feeling exasperated, Dilys didn’t know whether to shake her or kiss her. In the end, he did both. Grabbing her shoulders, he gave her a firm shake. “Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate, has anyone ever told you that you talk complete shoto?”
Her outraged gasp gave him the perfect opening to plunder her mouth. Pulling her close, he swooped down to claim her lips. She struggled against him, beating at him with her fists, but he was physically much stronger than she was.
He held with effortless ease and kept kissing her until she stopped fighting him and started to kiss him back.
“I don’t want to hear any more about how I’d be safer or better off without you,” he told her when he finally lifted his mouth. “You are not and will never be a danger to me. What you are, moa kiri, is the woman I love, the woman I cannot live without, the woman I want to stand beside for the rest of my life.”
“Then you’re an idiot with no regard for your own life.” She regarded him unhappily. “You may have managed to keep me from hurting anyone this time, but what happens when I get bad news and we’re not on a ship in the middle of the ocean?” she countered. “What happens if we’re somewhere you can’t conveniently expel the excess power I give to you? What if we’re in city or a palace or a schoolroom? What then?”
He stifled a sigh and reminded himself that her stubborn single-mindedness was precisely the trait that had enabled her to keep her magic under control despite not having a proper network to aid her. “Gabriella, my love, you are a Siren, and I should have prepared for that before trying to lessen your terrible grief. I didn’t, and that fault is mine. I will not make that mistake again.”
“What do you mean?”
“I underestimated the true strength of your power. I thought that I alone would be all you need—that I could provide for you as I have for my mother numerous times over the years. But you weren’t born to power a single Calbernan, even if he is your mate. You were born with strength enough to power us all.”
“That’s precisely my point!” she cried. “I’m the forest fire, and you’re standing there with a glass of water saying you can put me out. But you can’t!”
He arched his brows. “Considering that I’ve spent the better part of last fourteen hours proving that I can, in fact, light your fire and put it out over and over again, I’m vaguely insulted by that remark.”
“Aargh!” She clenched her fists and gave a strangled scream. “For Halla’s sake! Would you please be serious!”