Eros Island

by Lucinda Betts, Dawn Thompson

  For the first time since I’d met Chiron, the iron taste of fear filled my mouth. “Oh please, Chiron,” I pleaded. “Just stop. Don’t jump.”

  But he did.

  The power of his haunches collecting beneath him rippled through his body, and I closed my eyes. For a moment, we flew through the air like a pair of hawks—or more like a hawk with a mouse caught in its beak. And we landed with a thud so close to Lycurgus I could see the red veins in his eyes.

  And then I jerked my body with all my strength. He fought my release hard, gripping me with bruising fingers. But I had the strength born of desperation.

  I landed with a thud in the dust at Lycurgus’s feet, and the quake stopped.

  The Lapith King jerked me to my feet, sword following Chiron as he loped a wide circle around us. “That abducting murderer must be stopped,” Lycurgus said.

  But he didn’t attack Chiron as the centaur galloped back toward us, his long tail flowing behind him. He attacked me—with his lips.

  Lycurgus brutally pulled my face toward his and kissed me. In the few private moments we’d shared before now, he’d been formal. He’d never behaved thus.

  But now—but now spider legs of fear crept up my spine. His touch was not at all like I’d imagined. He pressed hard and he demanded. I tried to yield, but my mouth refused to obey.

  “She’s mine, centaur!” Lycurgus shouted, ripping his lips from mine.

  I tried to step back, but his grip on my waist kept me at his side.

  “I belong to no one, King Lycurgus,” I said. “And should you win the Mother Rite, you will belong to me.”

  I thought he was going to slap me, but instead he kissed me again. Cruel lips pressed against mine, and he sucked hard. His lips pushed against my tender flesh so insistently I tasted blood.

  Then Lycurgus bent and flicked his cold tongue over my bared nipple, which hardened despite myself.

  His hand made to grab my other breast then, but Lycurgus came face-to-face with Kleio’s opened mouth, his loud hiss, and he pushed me away. Many folk are cautious around serpents, but the Lapith king jumped back, keeping a cruel grip on my arm.

  I wiped his saliva from my breast. “What are you doing?”

  But his eyes were tracking the centaur and I understood—he baited Chiron with his actions.

  Chiron deliberately sheathed his sword, and he pulled his bow from his shoulders. His eyes, locked on Lycurgus, were calculating variables all archers needed: the speed and direction of the wind, distance.

  “If you miss, centaur,” Lycurgus said. “You’ll hit the Princess.” His voice didn’t waver.

  “I never miss,” Chiron said.

  I heard Chiron’s arrow leave its bow just as I heard the earth’s fissure tear in my direction. The ground started shaking, shredding beneath my feet.

  Suddenly solid ground fell away and Lycurgus’s grip on my arm was gone. Flailing frantically, I fell into a hole as dark as the underworld. My feet sought purchase to no avail; my knees scraped along earth and stone. But my fingers found hold, sinking desperately into the ground above my head. The strength of my ten fingertips held my entire weight. Gasping for breath, I tried to pull myself up, but dirt crumbled into my face, between my bare breasts.

  “Lycurgus!” I shouted, fighting a growing panic. “I’m down here!”

  Nothing.

  More dirt fell into my face; the loamy scent filled my nose.

  “Lycurgus!” I tried again. “Please help me!”

  Still nothing.

  And then the heat of his hand grasped my forearm. Relief washed through me, and nothing ever felt so good. Whatever evil I’d thought of him, I vowed to erase from my mind.

  He pulled, and my feet found the side of the fissure. In a moment, my face met the sunlight, blinding me after the jet-black hole.

  “Thank you,” I said, throwing my arms around him and closing my eyes against the bright sunshine. I kissed him then. He deserved at least that much from his future queen. His lips covered mine. Giving myself to the moment, I collapsed in his arms, yielding to the warmth of his mouth.

  The liquid glide of his tongue sent my mind spiraling. He awakened a hunger in me I hadn’t imagined in all our meetings concerning the Mother Rite and the unification of his lands with mine.

  And the brutal cruelty was gone—along with the threat from Lord Chiron.

  With my hand in his, he ran my palm over his chest. The intimacy of the moment made breathing difficult. As he showed me exactly what he wanted, my fingers drank in the muscled planes of his pectorals and his abdomen, the tightly muscled curve of his waist, the thick sinews of his arms.

  My body curved toward his. I longed to press into him until his skin couldn’t be discerned from mine. I longed to lay claim to him—all of him. After this kiss, I knew I’d never look at another man.

  When I finally opened my eyes, I saw him. His eyes were closed, and his face was turned toward the sun as if he savored the pleasure of the moment. Then he opened his eyes, and I saw—not lidded green eyes but smoky gray.

  “Chiron!” I stepped back, horrified.

  Then I slapped him. Hard.

  He blinked, stunned. Then his gray eyes narrowed, erasing the dreamy quality of his expression.

  I was…sorry to see it gone.

  “You are a cold woman, Princess Akantha,” he said. “But we must go to the Sacred Glade—now more than ever.”

  I stepped back from him, reaching for the blade at my ankle. But my foot found the lip of the fissure, and I stumbled.

  His arm caught me, and he whipped me onto his back. “Hold on or fall to your death,” he said. Then he bounded over first one fissure, then another. My knees clamped his sides, but when he landed, my face knocked into the back of his head, making my teeth click together hard.

  “By the Mother herself, Chiron,” I said. “I’m coming to truly loathe you.”

  “Hold hard to my waist, and you won’t bounce,” he said.

  And I wondered if his words referred to horsemanship or some other sport.

  3

  H is body pounded beneath my thighs as he galloped over the grassy plains. Chiron ran so fast that rocks and trees passed in a blur. With my hands around the hard muscles of his waist, I held tight, grateful that his quiver of arrows kept my bared breasts from pressing against him.

  Something about him made me very aware of my sexuality.

  “Chiron,” I shouted over the wind rushing over my face. “I won’t try to escape. Please, slow yourself.” A bull-leaper could have jumped from the speeding beast, but I’d trained as a priestess, not a tumbler.

  “We’ve no time,” he said. “Not if we’re to return to Knossos for the Mother Rite—and we must hold the tourney as planned.”

  “Why?” I said archly. “To save the world?”

  “Yes.”

  Of course, I thought with exasperation.

  But my mind churned. How could Chiron be correct? Lycurgus was not Earth Shaker. I’d known him my entire life, had fostered in his palace.

  Still I had to agree with Chiron on one point—the earthquakes seemed peculiar. Every time one might suit Lycurgus, a tremor would appear.

  Coincidence. It could be.

  Chiron’s gait became choppy and I looked up. A thick veil of mist rose from the grass before us, and Chiron slowed to a trot, then a walk.

  “We’re here,” he said. But I didn’t release his waist.

  “I don’t—” I knew the Sacred Glade, but I didn’t recognize this place, not with the fog.

  “You must go into the mist alone,” he said.

  “This is strange magic.” I swallowed as he helped me from his broad back. “The Mother’s power is so thick.”

  “Today is her day, and she’s requested you.”

  I looked at him, his intelligent gray eyes and strong jaw. “I don’t understand,” I said. “How did she request me?”

  “Through Pholus’s augury.”

  As a priestess, I knew—P
holus was renowned for her ability to scry the Mother’s desires, but the Glade made my skin creep. Tendrils of fog formed long, silvery fingers, fingers that curled around each other. They crooked and they beckoned.

  “And if I go in there,” I asked, “I’ll return before the tourney?” If I go in there, I’ll live?

  “You’re to leave your weapons and take only your asp,” Chiron said. The concerned expression on his face didn’t comfort me. “I’ll hold them for you.”

  “No, I’m keeping my daggers.”

  “Unless you have the Tears of Eternity, blood cannot be spilled in the Glade, not on the solstice.”

  “The Tears,” I scoffed. “Would you go anywhere unarmed?” But by the look of his rippling muscles, I realized Chiron was never defenseless.

  “Even a drop of spilled blood robs the Mother of power on her day.” He held out his hand for my daggers.

  I looked south, toward my palace. “What if we simply go home, forgo the trip to the Glade?”

  “I’ve never heard Princess Akantha described as a coward,” he challenged with an impudent expression lighting his stormy eyes. “Perhaps folk won’t believe me when I tell them.”

  I sighed. “You can’t goad me into anything, Lord Centaur.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “If you give me your word the Mother Goddess herself requested my presence, I’ll go.”

  “I give you my word.” The teasing glint was gone.

  Resigned, I unbuckled my quiver and unhooked my ankle straps. Then I noticed the fingers of fog had coalesced, almost solidified.

  And fear danced through me.

  “Wish me fortune.”

  For a moment, I thought he’d kiss me. But he didn’t.

  Praise the Mother.

  I walked toward the Glade without looking back. I didn’t want to see warmth or…anything, not on the face of the beast who brought havoc to my life.

  Striding boldly into a wall of curling fingers would take more courage than I had, although I’d have admitted that to no one. So I closed my eyes and touched my asp, who twisted without apparent concern about my neck and breasts. I took a deep breath—and ran.

  I’d thought the long gray digits menacing. I’d thought hands would grab at my ankles and trip me, or shred my clothing. I’d thought they’d yank me hard and snag my wrists.

  But the fingers of fog had other interests.

  Gently they guided me to a thick bed of moss, and there, they bade me to rest. They lay me down and pressed my eyelids closed. When I tried to open them, they pushed with quiet insistence. Stay closed, they said, and I obeyed.

  The enforced blindness brought an unexpected comfort. In the purple blackness behind my eyes, silvery stars danced. Strange visions of wide gray eyes flickered just beyond reach.

  The misty tendrils were surprisingly warm as they massaged away the ache of my wild ride on Chiron’s back. They kneaded deep into my thighs, unlocking tension, forcing me to relax. The arch of my foot received the same attention, as did my calves and hands.

  A fog hand wrapped around my wrist and pulled, using muscle-soothing pressure. At the same time, another tendril captured my other wrist; both my hands were above my head. Fingers worked away knots in my arms even as another hand grabbed an ankle and stretched that firmly. My legs were spread, and I couldn’t close them.

  An ethereal lethargy filled me, and I felt as languorous as an Egyptian pharaoh ministered to by slaves. If I let my imagination run free, graceful fingers would feed me honeyed figs while other fingers would rub oil into my skin. I knew the fingers weren’t corporeal, that if I could actually open my eyes I’d see no man taking advantage where he shouldn’t. Instead, I’d see the Mother’s magic, and so I capitulated to the feeling. The Mother had requested my presence, after all.

  As if waiting for my surrender, the fingers reached under my chiton, toward that softest part of my inner thigh. Other fingers started on my stomach, exploring and tantalizing. Still more fingers ran the length of my neck. Fingers lit across the inside of my thigh, barely touching. I remained still, afraid if I breathed the fingers of delight would desert me.

  The ghostly tendrils remained, stroking. Hands lifted my hair and arranged it over my breasts. In my imagination I saw the long dark sheaths of it obscuring my nipples just enough to tantalize—to tantalize Chiron.

  No, I wasn’t worthy of that thought. I didn’t know what kind of mischief the Centaur King was stirring, but his insistence on ruining a perfectly planned alliance made him dangerous. I tried to imagine Lycurgus’s hands, his mouth instead, but the Glade’s magic stole rational thought.

  Fog fingers captured each of my nipples in a light pinch, and liquid heat flooded between my thighs. They pinched both nipples unrelentingly hard; they lifted my breasts and let them fall naturally. Wraithlike palms covered every inch of me—my breasts and nipples, my neck, my stomach.

  Fingers looped through my hair and around my breasts. Small caresses stroked my neck, that tender spot behind my ear. Then they traced their way down to my breasts as other fingers parted my thighs.

  The exhilarating sensation of those ghostly tendrils left me quivering. The heat between my legs, the silky river, craved relief. Under those fluttering fingers, I lost myself, blossoming, opening.

  I wanted more.

  I shifted my legs apart. “Please,” I murmured. “Please.” And I couldn’t help it. Chiron’s face appeared before me, his sensual lips, the lean lines of his cheekbones. I could almost imagine him—

  Then fingers gave that release—sliding completely between my thighs. Fingers glided over my slippery nub, and I writhed in pleasure. Behind my closed eyes, myriad stars burst across a night sky in an extravagant show of beauty. The sensation electrified me to my core, and my body arched with the pleasure of it.

  Still pulsing with delight, I drifted in a dreamy haze. Haphazard images flickered through my mind’s eye. Lycurgus’s heavy-lidded gaze split by a lightning bolt and overlaid by a cold midnight eye, something feline. In my mind, my asp arched in alarm at the cat’s eye.

  The baying of hounds filtered through my vision, urgent. The scent of danger permeated my languor, and I bolted upright, crushing the bed of ferns beneath me. The foggy day had melted into darkness.

  Something feral approached. Without my daggers, without my bow, I fled, seeking the way out of the Sacred Glade.

  The white light of the full moon bathed me, lighting the path as I fled. With swift feet I raced, hoping I traveled south. The baying pharaoh hounds sounded closer, leading their master toward me. I needed my weapons. I needed Chiron.

  Then I heard an owl’s piping hoot. I froze, and the hair on my neck crept—the Mother Goddess. The realization that She’d wakened me filled me with fear.

  “Hello?” I called. My voice wavered and that angered me. I was the Mother’s priestess. Who was I to fear her? “Chiron?” My voice was stronger.

  And then my heart began to pound in earnest, despite my bravado. The dogs’ cries were closer, and the robe I’d been clutching had disappeared, as had my clothing—I was in the spiritworld.

  The full fat moon on the horizon illuminated the fog rising from the hot ground. I breathed deeply. The sweet scent of the Albizia blossoms filled the air. It made me wish for…something. A memory of his kiss laced through my veins. Chiron. His hands. His lips. Fear and eager anticipation filled my heart in equal measure.

  The light directly in front of me shimmered. Something was coming. Someone.

  A beast? Chiron?

  No, a man walked toward me—not a centaur. I was sure of this, although only his silhouette was visible in the opalescent moonlight.

  The man—whoever he was—was gorgeous: tapered waist, thick arms, broad shoulders. His stomach muscles rippled in the foggy moonlight. I caught a quick glimpse of his profile, an aristocratic nose and a strong jaw. Could it be possible? Could this man be as striking as Chiron?

  No. Few men could be. Not even Lycurgus.
/>   He walked toward me, hesitant, like he looked for something—or someone. He stopped and turned, giving me a glimpse of his muscular thighs. He had brawny thighs, completely human, what Chiron’s would have looked like if—

  But it didn’t matter.

  Primed by the foggy tendrils, liquid flame coursed through my veins. I walked toward him, naked and unafraid.

  He didn’t say a word. Instead he wrapped his arms around me and held me like I was the only thing standing between him and oblivion.

  We stood like that for a heartbeat. Maybe two. I knew he couldn’t be real, but questions remained unasked. The darkness pulsed with magic, and words would’ve broken the night spell. Neither of us spoke, not with our voices.

  Instead, I tilted my face toward his and saw love, love adorned with desire. When he bent to kiss me, I didn’t question it. This was a dream—not real. The real Chiron had hooves and a tail. This Chiron didn’t.

  The lips of my dream Chiron rested gently, almost chastely, against mine, and the feeling was so exquisite I could barely breathe. I wanted him to kiss me. I feared its power, but I wanted his kiss like I’d never wanted anything.

  And then slowly, a time-standing-still sort of slow, he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth. I remained still as a startled doe. He ran his tongue over that lip, nibbled it gently. My heart pounded with the excitement, and that liquid flame licked at my core.

  Stillness was no longer an option for me. Something fiercer replaced the frightened deer in my heart. My tongue sought his, not with desperation but with eagerness. I flicked, wanting, and when my tongue crashed into his, a small moan escaped me. I’d hunted this sensation; in my heart I’d tracked him to this spot. Now that I had him…

  I wasn’t going to let him go.

  Our tongues tangled with a beauty belonging to the spiritworld. The stars pulsed in the sky nearly as brightly as campfires while the tip of his tongue dancing over mine left me crazy with desire. Even when I closed my eyes I could see the oddly bright stars and the glowing moonlight. And when I closed my eyes, it seemed that only he existed. In my world there was only his mouth and his tongue, his arms—his love.

  My arms twined behind his neck, pulling him closer to me. He sucked my lips, first one, then the other. He sucked my tongue, breathing my breath until I had no choice but to yield to him, to give him everything he’d ever wanted—to give him everything I’d ever wanted.