“Please,” Medusa begged, her entire body trembling against Amphitrite’s. “I feel as if I’m about to fly apart.”
“Peace, love. I think I know what to do.” She reached down and caressed the handmaiden’s slender thigh, catching the light fabric of her gown and pulling it up. With exquisite delicacy she urged Medusa’s thighs open, tracing patterns on the soft, downy skin inside her legs until the back of her hand brushed against springy curls. She turned her hand over, one finger tracing over the fleshy seam there and feeling the slickness that had already gathered.
Medusa sucked in a shuddering breath, pushing up into Amphitrite’s touch. “Oh, gods. Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t, beloved. I promise.” With care Amphitrite slid her fingers deeper into the moist warmth, tracing the soft folds and curves until she felt familiar with this similar-but-different flesh. Medusa panted under her exploration, moaning as her slender hips pumped into the Nereid’s touch.
Then Amphitrite slid a single finger between the inner lips, drawing it upwards until she felt a small hooded nub. She slid a fingertip over it, and Medusa cried out, back arching in pleasure.
It was intoxicating. Feeling her own wetness grow, Amphitrite focused her caresses on the tiny nub, tracing circles around it before trapping it between two fingers and squeezing lightly. With some experimentation she found a rhythm that made the virginal handmaiden writhe and beg for more. Her own clit ached with the need to be touched, and she felt on the verge of coming simply from driving Medusa closer and closer to orgasm.
Medusa threw her head back hard and cried out, her thighs straining against Amphitrite’s wrist. Amphitrite quickly slid a finger into the handmaiden’s vagina, skirting the low edge of her maidenhead and massaging the front wall. She was rewarded when Medusa came hard, those strong little muscles rippling hard along her finger.
Sobbing for breath, the handmaiden sagged back against the soft blanket with boneless abandon. “Oh. Gaia above, that was glorious,” she panted. “Thank you, Ammie.”
Amphitrite withdrew her hand, petting the soft curls between Medusa’s thighs before snuggling up along the handmaiden’s side. “You’re quite welcome, my love,” she murmured, kissing Medusa’s shoulder. “It was a privilege to give you such pleasure.”
Medusa turned her head and kissed Amphitrite. “It was wonderful.” Her blissful gaze changed, turning ever so slightly wicked. “Now, I think it’s your turn.”
They spent the afternoon exploring each other’s bodies, fingers and mouths finding all the secret places that provided such thrilling pleasure. And when the formerly shy handmaiden settled between Medusa’s legs and bent to kiss and lick at her clit, Amphitrite was thrilled at the exquisite sensation, clutching at the blanket as she squirmed and came on Medusa’s eager tongue.
As the sun began to sink over the mountains Amphitrite finally had to beg Medusa to stop. The handmaiden curled up in her arms with a happy sigh.
“That was wonderful,” she said.
“Yes.” A smiling Amphitrite closed her eyes and relaxed into the comfort of the blanket. “Yes, it was.”
Medusa was quiet for a moment. Then, “Ammie?”
“Yes?”
“Will it be like this with Poseidon? If I become his lover?”
Amphitrite stroked Medusa’s dark brown curls. “It will be a bit different. He’ll lie with you as men do with women, and losing your maidenhead can hurt a bit the first time. But I promise you, he’s most skilled in bringing a woman pleasure. And I’ll be there with you, of course.”
Medusa nodded against her shoulder, then stilled. “My lady won’t like it.”
Amphitrite sighed. “No, she won’t. But Athena loves you like a daughter. I may be able to talk her into an arrangement that will allow you to continue serving her.”
“But you don’t know that for sure.”
“I don’t. But I’ll do anything in my power for you to continue with your vocation.”
Another nod. “Now that we’ve made love,” Medusa said in a small voice, “do I have to offer myself to Poseidon, too?”
Amphitrite hesitated. By rights she should have told Poseidon immediately about Medusa after meeting the girl. He was her agapetos just as Amphitrite was, and she knew he would love Medusa just as much as she did. The three of them would be wonderfully happy once they were together.
But a tiny voice at the back of her mind had spoken up, reminding her of Poseidon’s assorted paramours over the centuries, including her own brother Nerites. Was it so wrong that she wanted Medusa to herself, at least for a little while?
It won’t hurt Poseidon to wait. She kissed the girl’s brow, breathing in the scent of her hair. “No. You don’t have to do anything until you’re ready.”
Medusa let out a long, soft sigh. “If he’s as wonderful to lie with as you say, I think I’ll enjoy it. I just need a bit more time.”
The Nereid pulled her closer. “Take all the time you need, my love,” she said softly.
****
Amphitrite stared at the barrier islands off the coast of Olympic Beach, wine forgotten. Should I have asked her to meet him that night? If I had, would everything have been different?
She had been wrestling with her guilt for millennia, second-guessing her actions. Even if she had brought Medusa home, would she have been able to persuade a randy Poseidon to keep his hands off their agapetos until Medusa was ready to accept him? Was it concern for Medusa that had held her tongue, or selfishness? Or a combination of both?
In the end, it hadn’t mattered.
She turned and the wineglass slipped from her hand, shattering on the floor of the balcony. Glancing down at the mess, Amphitrite prodded a shard with her big toe. It pierced her skin for a microsecond before her ichor rushed to the wound and healed it without so much as a scar.
She wished she could heal the ache in her heart as easily.
Chapter Six
After a restless night in the palace, Poseidon harnessed Skylla and Sthenios the next morning and headed to Olympic Cove. On the way he kept scanning the waters for any sign of ilkothelloi or any others of Thetis’s minions. Either they had been warned to give him a wide berth or Aphros and his tritons were doing a thorough job of killing the foul beasts.
He parked the chariot next to Bythos’s coral grove before swimming to shore. Pausing in the shadow of the small pier to dry off and change into a polo shirt, linen slacks and loafers, he headed to Griffin’s cottage. A knock on the back door summoned a bleary human.
Poseidon took in the grey tint of Griffin’s skin and the redness in his eyes. “I take it this isn’t a good time?”
A faint smile appeared. “Had a bad night. Don’t think I’m up for sailing today, sorry.”
“Quite all right.” The mortal’s aura was almost leached grey, chilling him. “Have you had anything to eat yet?”
Griffin went blank for a long moment. “Um, no,” he finally said. “That’s probably stupid of me, yeah? Considering I can eat any bloody thing I want for brekkie now.” He scratched his silvery stubble. “I think I have oatmeal. And maybe some toast.”
Poseidon recognized the mortal foods—bland, but tolerable for an ill person. “Would I be overreaching myself if I offered to cook?”
Griffin blinked at that. “No, that’s fine. I’m more than a bit shaky this morning—probably burn down the place if I tried to make anything.”
Poseidon followed the mortal into the kitchen, worried by the boniness of Griffin’s shoulders. The room was quite clean, but he suspected that was because Griffin hadn’t been cooking in there. Or eating. “Why don’t you take a seat and I’ll see what I can find,” he said.
Griffin nodded as if it hurt his head to move and dropped into one of the chairs at the kitchen table. “I think I’d be happy with some toast.”
Toast. It’s simply browning slices of bread, yes?
As it turned out, toast was somewhat more difficult than Poseidon had anticipated. It took G
riffin pointing out something called a breadbox before he realized the long, vaguely rectangular and ridiculously soft loaves inside were bread. He’d thought they were some kind of cake.
At least they were already sliced, which was helpful. But the meager cutlery drawer offered nothing of the right size and length for impaling the slices in order to hold them over a fire. Also, there was the issue of creating a fire in the first place. Poseidon narrowed his eyes at the stovetop, trying to remember how Aphros had generated flames on the blasted thing.
“You don’t cook much, do you?” Griffin said, sounding amused now.
“No,” he said, still studying the stovetop.
“Yeah, well, it scares me how you’re looking at the hob. Why don’t you try putting those slices in the toaster?”
As it turned out, modern technology had solved the toast issue by creating a device into which one could slot two pieces of bread. It would then heat both sides of the bread evenly, even popping them up when done.
“How simple,” Poseidon said, plucking the toast from the device and depositing them on a plate, then bringing it to the table with a flourish. “There. Toast.”
Griffin was biting his lips, a pale bloom of color chasing away the grey tinge in his cheeks. “Er, yeah. That is most definitely toast,” he said. “But maybe we could have some butter on it?”
“Oh.” Poseidon turned and stared at the kitchen. Butter. The yellow fatty salty stuff. Rather tasty, I suppose, but it’s not a patch on good olive oil. Where does Aphros keep it, anyway?
“In the refrigerator. That big rectangular box in the corner,” Griffin said with a laughing snort.
Poseidon gave him an austere look. “I knew that.”
“Of course. And I’m sure you always look at a kitchen like you’re trying to defuse a nuclear bomb.”
The god turned up the heat in his glare. “If you’d rather I leave—”
“Oh, no, not at all. This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in months,” Griffin said, waving at him. “I can’t wait to watch you mash the tea. I bet we can use it for deck stain.”
Poseidon swallowed. He hadn’t thought that far. “Ah. Yes. Er…”
Still laughing, Griffin levered himself to his feet. “That’s what I thought. Right. Stand aside and watch the master at work.”
Five minutes later two mugs of perfectly brewed tea were on the kitchen table, along with more toast, butter, jam, and a bowl of raspberries that Griffin was popping into his mouth one by one. “God, I love raspberries,” he said after he’d swallowed. “Forgot I had them. Best damned fruit on the planet.”
“Bah,” Poseidon said amiably. “Figs. Now that’s a proper fruit.”
“Figs? Maybe if you’re corked up and need something to help you shit,” Griffin retorted. “Whereas raspberries are obviously God’s own fruit. They’re perfectly balanced between sweet and tart, they have that lovely pop between your teeth when you bite into them, and you can eat them off a woman’s nipples. Try doing that with a bloody fig.”
“Oh, there are much more interesting place to put figs, I assure you,” Poseidon said.
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
The sea god tamped down the urge to offer a live demonstration. “We’ll simply have to agree to disagree, then,” he said, taking a sip of his tea.
“Yeah.” Griffin chewed thoughtfully on a piece of toast. “So, now that we have the comedy portion out of the way, are we going to talk about what happened yesterday?”
For a panicked moment Poseidon thought that Griffin was talking about his attempted kiss. “What do you mean?”
“That thing you speared?” Griffin prompted. “The one that looked like a zombie mated with a shark? Did you ever call the sheriff about it?”
Poseidon considered lying and saying that he’d talked to Sheriff Connors about the ilkothella. But Griffin was just bullheaded enough to call and check on his story. “No, I didn’t?”
“Didn’t think so.” Griffin gave him a penetrating look. “Do I need to call the Coast Guard, Dunn?”
Poseidon focused on tearing a piece of toast into shreds. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t. I don’t think they’d believe you, especially as you don’t have any proof. Plus it would implicate me, and I don’t wish to be hauled up on charges of murder.”
“Murder.” The mortal leaned back in his chair, rubbing his upper lip. “That charge only applies to killing people, Dunn, not animals. Which makes me think you know more than you’re saying right now.” He sighed. “Look, will you just please tell me what’s going on?”
Perhaps it was time to do that, at least in part. “First, you need to understand that my company performs a variety of specialized marine actions,” Poseidon said. “Remediation of polluted areas, reclamation of sunken property, underwater search and rescue. We can go where officials can’t, or won’t.”
Griffin’s eyebrows rose slowly. “Black ops type of stuff?”
“In a manner of speaking. I’ll be quite honest with you—I’m exceedingly rich. I don’t know how to cook because I have da—people to do that for me. My wealth gives me the great luxury of doing what I choose to do. And I choose to protect the ocean as best I can against the degradation of mankind.”
“Oh, great.” The mortal shook his head. “You’re Batman.”
Poseidon recognized the reference. “It’s a fair analogy. Although my majordomo doesn’t look anything like Alfred.”
“Fine. So what do you know about that thing that attacked us?”
“We call them ilkothelloi—it’s Greek for storm wolves. They’re mutated creatures that are both quite feral and surprisingly fragile, which is why they dissolve when killed. They’ve emerged from the Gulf of Mexico over the last three years and have been sighted as far east as the Bahamas. My son Aphros is in charge of a team that hunts them down.”
“Yeah, but what are they?”
Poseidon considered how his mate would react to the truth. The worst case scenario had Griffin running to the mortal authorities with a story about an unknown marine remediation company that hunted down zombie-like creatures. The likelihood of anyone believing him was … low.
And in a best case scenario Griffin would soon learn about his past and his future with Poseidon, as well as the dangers that came along with it. He decided it was worth the risk.
Rubbing his hands free of toast crumbs, Poseidon stood. “Have you ever seen a mermaid?” he asked. “A real one?”
****
Griffin wondered if Dunn expected him to laugh at the question, or ask him if he’d been indulging in recreational herbs and spices.
Keeping his expression neutral, he said, “As a matter of fact, I have.”
As he suspected, the other man’s eyebrows went up at that. “You have?”
“Yeah, once. Never told anyone because I didn’t have proof and didn’t want to be chucked into the loony bin.”
Now a faint smile crossed Dunn’s face, and he leaned closer. “Where was this, if I may ask?”
“On a dive off the coast of Penzance about a year ago.” Griffin could still recall the encounter clear as day. “We were doing a survey of the local marine environment, taking samples of algae and microorganisms. The other divers and I were fairly well spread out along the zone, so I was by myself when this dolphin swam up to me. It had a fishing line wrapped around its body that was cutting into the right flipper and it obviously needed help. I figured if I could get it to stay still long enough I could cut the line and get it unwrapped.
“So I pulled out my knife to start cutting the line. Suddenly I’m knocked sideways by something small but heavy as hell. At first I thought it was a dolphin calf trying to protect its mother, until I got a good look at it. I almost bit through my respirator. It was a little—” He frowned. “I guess you could call her a little girl mermaid. A mergirl? Anyway, she looked like maybe she was five or six from the waist up, with long hair and big pale eyes. I remember those because she had her arms arou
nd the dolphin’s neck and was glaring at me like she wanted to kill me. But from the waist down she was all fish, with scales and a pretty little fluke at the end. It couldn’t have been a fake tail, either—she was flexing it in ways you can’t do with a pair of human legs.”
Griffin smiled at the memory. “The dolphin nudged her away, just like you’d see a sheepdog do with a sheep, and came back to me. Luckily I’d hung onto the knife, so I started cutting the line as fast as I could, hoping like hell that she wouldn’t go after me again because I didn’t want to cut the dolphin accidentally. Once I’d pulled everything free the dolphin squeaked something, flipped over and swam off with the kid in tow. I didn’t have a camera or anything so I didn’t have any proof, and frankly I wasn’t absolutely sure that I wasn’t hallucinating. I’d already started having the headaches, and a week later I was diagnosed with the tumor. At the time, I thought it explained what I’d seen.”
He felt a certain sense of relief when Dunn nodded. “But deep down, you knew the truth,” the other man said.
“Yeah. I’d seen a real-life mermaid. And until this moment I thought I was going to take it to my grave.” The exhaustion he’d felt since he woke up that morning receded in the wake of his vindication. “These ilkothelloi, you’re saying they’re mermaids?”
Dunn’s expression turned grim. “Monstrous ones, yes. They’ve been poisoned, turned into feral versions of themselves. My sons and I are trying to track down the source of the poison and eradicate it before more mermaids fall prey to it.”
“Jesus.” Griffin had a horrible image of his little mergirl’s skin rotting, mouth stretched to hold gnashing shark’s teeth. “How did you find out about them, anyway?”
The other man hesitated for a moment. “That is a very long and complicated story, and will require something stronger than tea in the telling. Why don’t we have dinner tonight and I’ll tell it to you then?”
Griffin felt a sudden urge to throttle the big man. “You expect me to wait until tonight? For fuck’s sake, Dunn, you can’t leave me hanging like that!”
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