Eros Island

by Lucinda Betts, Dawn Thompson

  “The centaur helped me find you,” Gar said. “I questioned his motives, too, at first, but he only wanted to free you and be rid of me so he could have Analee all to himself again.”

  “I did not know that,” she said. “I was running for my life! He is limited in the places he can go while he is the centaur; his bulk prevents him. I knew he couldn’t fit through some of the breaks in the hedge in that sector, but I could. All I could think of was escaping those deadly arrows of his.”

  “And you have escaped,” he murmured, soothing her with gentle hands. “You need never return to the Otherworld again.”

  “I cannot return without my skin,” she said.

  “Why didn’t you take it back while I was unconscious?” Gar said, fingering the sleek, soft pelt tied around his middle. “You could have done, you know, at any time.”

  “I did not want to take it back,” she mewed. “I want to stay here in your world, with you.”

  Gar crushed her close in his arms. “And so you shall,” he whispered against her brow. “But only if you are certain.”

  “I knew I wanted to the moment I first set eyes upon you,” she confessed.

  “In the swan boat,” he recalled. “I remember your touch. I’ve never forgotten it. It has haunted me ever since, little selkie.”

  “Oh, no,” she said. “We met long before the swan boat. I am the cause of all your woes. It was I who crossed you over into the Otherworld. I love the storms, and I was swimming in the sea when your galley broke apart upon the rocks. Did you not feel me nudge you? Did you not feel me keeping you afloat?”

  Gar stared into her beautiful eyes, so brimful of admiration. “I did feel…something,” he said.

  “You are so beautiful,” she purred, stroking his corded biceps. “I could not let you die in the water with the rest, so I took you home with me, but I hadn’t the power to heal you, so I left you near the dream well for my sister to mend. I didn’t want to, but if I hadn’t you would have died. But then, she would not give you back to me. She wanted to keep you for herself.”

  “Well, you have me now,” Gar said, grazing her hair with his lips. “So, you saved my life not once, but thrice, counting this now and it is yours, my little savior, for we mortals have a code that says when someone saves a life it belongs to them.” He glanced about. They were in some sort of shelter as far as he could tell. It was unfamiliar to him, lit only by fractured beams of diffused light filtering in from above. “Where is this place?” he asked her.

  “It is a cave,” Anya told him. “There are many along the Land’s End shore, and farther on along this coast, natural hollows of rock and sand carved out over time by the sea. We selkies love to play about in them and sun ourselves upon the rocks on golden days. Here, we collect the gifts of the sea. Some are very beautiful, and some are very sad. The saddest would have been your poor broken body dashed against these rocks. I could not allow it. So, here we are, alive instead! The caves flood at high tide, but we will be well away by then, my lord.”

  “You say the goddess is your sister. There is a remarkable resemblance, but how can that be so?”

  “It will be hard for you to understand, being mortal,” she responded. “We selkie are eons old. Analee was once a selkie just as I am. She seduced the gods to favor her with divinity. The price was sacrificing all in her that was innocent. She had to be divested of all feeling inherent in us in order to rise above the others and dwell in the company of the gods. All the love and gentleness, all the virtue, conscience, and soul in her was left behind in me, when she stepped out of our skin and became the Goddess of the Dream Well. We were one and the same—one entity. I am her alter ego, her other self, if you will, that she left behind when she became divine. It is why she hates me so. In me, she sees her loss. She has passion, but only the passion of lust. She is incapable of love. All such emotions are beneath her now. That was the greatest sacrifice. The price she paid to walk among the gods. It is sad, but it is a mystery of the divine that we must not question. There are many such mysteries in the Otherworld, my lord, but that is mine, and you needn’t let it trouble you. You will see the goddess no more.”

  “And you cannot return to the Otherworld,” Gar realized.

  “I do not wish to return,” Anya said with passion. “I only wish to stay with you, if you will have me…”

  Gar stared down at the exquisite creature in his arms. “You are real, aren’t you?” he murmured. “You shan’t vanish before my eyes?” Any Otherworldly entity was suspect to him now, and would be evermore.

  Anya smiled. Taking his hand, she cupped it around her breast. His thumb grazed her nipple and she cooed in delight, writhing against him. “Does this not seem real to you?” she said. Her gaze was intoxicating. A man could get lost in the liquid depths of those beautiful eyes, in the invitation of those petal-soft lips. He was beguiled by the wide-eyed innocence in her, by the worship in those haunting selkie eyes, so sad, and yet so filled with ardor. Each gaze, each languid blink was a rhapsody, unlike anything in his wildest imaginings. Not in all his days of knightly lust and torrid passion had he ever known such pure ecstasy as he felt in this creature’s arms.

  Gar untied the sealskin about his waist and set it aside. His cock was bursting. Sliding his hand the length of her torso he reverenced every inch of her. She was without blemish; the only hair on her body crowned her head in rippling waves of coppery gold that fell over her shoulder and down her back like a gossamer cloud. She smelled of ambergris and the sea, and she opened to him like the petals of a rare flower, inviting him to peel the fragrant layers away one by one.

  “You say that you and Analee are eons old,” he murmured against her hair as he drew her closer still. “Are you saying that in all the ages that have passed you have never taken a mate?” It was hard to believe that anyone as exquisite as she had lived a solitary life.

  “All creatures mate with their bodies, especially the fay, my lord,” she said. “It is in their nature, like coming into season, like drawing breath or sleeping. It means nothing. It is the mating of the souls that matters, in this world and in the Otherworld as well, and I have never found a soul mate that could tempt me to leave my heritage and my home until you. You see, I have no powers to dazzle and tempt a mate the way Analee does. You must admit that she is hard to resist, and most men I have met have followed the path of least resistance…until you, my lord. That you denied her at the last gave me hope that I had found my soul mate and could be free of her at last.”

  Her hands flitted over his body as she spoke. There was magic in those skilled fingers that touched and stroked, gentled and fondled. His eyes had become accustomed to his surroundings. They were lying upon a bed of seaweed, a salty cloud of the sea’s dried leavings, as light as air, a marriage bed that somehow seemed sacred. Her touch was not unlike the little seal’s had been, full of awe and sweet innocence, yet charged with the power to arouse as he had never been aroused before.

  His cock was malleable in her hands, ready to burst as she ran her fingertips ever so lightly over the distended veins along its smooth surface. Pearls of pre-come glistened upon the mushroom tip as she straddled him, taking him deep. She was like layer upon layer of hot moist silk inside, as the walls of her vagina closed in upon him, threatening to suck him dry as she moved to the rhythm of his thrusts, matching his passion throb for shuddering throb. The sound of her buttocks slapping against his rock-hard thighs, mingled with the music her juices made laving him as he raised and lowered her on his shaft, played havoc with his senses. He seemed to rise above himself and enter another plane of existence. Never had he felt the searing heat of such desire. Never had his loins responded so totally, so helplessly, so primitively to the body of another. Was it lusts of the flesh? Yes. But this flesh that possessed him now was afire with brighter flames, a firestorm of ecstasy, of passion, and of love. She worshipped him. He’d glimpsed it in the wide-eyed little seal, and saw it now in full bloom in the soul of Anya, the woman. How
Mother Annis of the wells deemed him worthy, he would never know, but he vowed as his cock came to life inside this winsome, adoring creature, that he would spend the rest of his days earning the gift he’d been given.

  Cupping both breasts, he palpated her nipples erect, and a deep throaty groan escaped her as she ground her slit into his pubic hair, riding him to the rhythm of his ragged heartbeat beneath the hands she’s splayed out on his hard muscled chest. He could scarcely bear it. Fisting his hands in her hair, he brought her head down and took her lips in a fiery kiss. Her gentle purr became a throaty groan as he deepened it, caressing the little darting tongue that put him in mind of a hummingbird seeking nectar, as she explored the sensitive depths of his mouth.

  Circling her waist with his massive hands, Gar raised and lowered her on his shaft again, watching it ride in and out of her, slick with her juices. When she cupped his face with both her hands, his hips jerked forward. No one had ever done this to him before. It was magical. Turning his head to the side, he captured her thumb with his lips and sucked it into his mouth, laving it with his tongue as he took her deeper still.

  Anya’s climax was riveting, wave upon wave of involuntary contractions that gripped his cock relentlessly. He massaged her hard distended clitoris with his thumb as she came, and the breath left her lungs in a steady stream, a guttural rush, a living rapture as she rode him in mindless oblivion. She surrendered to it, her head thrust back until her long hair dusted his thighs, triggering a release in Gar like no other. He had felt such before in the arms of the goddess, but never like this. Anya had the same sexual skills as her sister, but the emotional charge that went with them was like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was as if his bones were melting from the inside out as she milked him dry of every drop of his seed.

  At first, Gar thought the little cave had begun to darken around them because of the starry pinpoints of white light exploding behind his heavy eyelids. The orgasm had nearly drained his consciousness. But no, the light was fading. He could have sworn it was just past dawn when he woke in her arms there earlier.

  “It grows late,” he said. Withdrawing himself, he took her in his arms. “We should be mindful of the tide.”

  Anya smiled. Rising, she took his hand and pulled him up alongside her. Raising her head, she sniffed the air. “Do you smell it?” she asked, her eyes alight with inner fire. How she glowed with the blush of lovemaking upon her, rouging her cheeks, glistening upon her moist skin. For that was what they had been doing…making love.

  She took a deeper breath. “Don’t you smell it?” she prompted.

  Gar likewise sniffed the air, taking deep breaths. “Something burns,” he said, hesitating. “Not peat, but something similar, I think…what?”

  “It is the Samhain fires,” she said, taking his hand. “Come…”

  “But that was before, in the Otherworld,” Gar said, holding back.

  Anya smiled her winsome smile. “There is no such thing as time in the Otherworld, remember?” she said. “It is a parallel world, not a simultaneous one.”

  “But we have no clothes!” he protested.

  Anya giggled. “Believe me, none will notice,” she said. “These are drunk with much wine and just as naked as we are, and there are many costumes that have washed up on shore from the shipwreck for us to choose from later.”

  Still Gar hesitated, trying to grasp the reality of benighted time. In that split second, Anya let his hand go, snatched the sealskin up from the floor of the cave, and ran out through the narrow opening in the rocks to the strand beyond, where indeed the Samhain bonfires had been lit. She was heading straight for the nearest fire.

  Moving upon long, corded legs like pumping pistons, Gar sprinted after her. He reached her as she was about to throw the sealskin into the flames and seized her wrist.

  “Are you sure, Anya?” he panted. “If you burn that…”

  “I am sure,” she said, her moist eyes catching red-gold glints that matched her hair from the flames. “As long as it exists, it will stand between us. Deep down, you will never believe that I stay of my own free will, and I will never be able to convince you otherwise. Once the fire consumes the sealskin, I am yours, Gar Trivelyan. Help me, my lord, it grows heavy!”

  Gar took hold of the sealskin and together they tossed it into the bonfire flames. A shower of shooting sparks rose up toward the full moon that had risen over Land’s End to mark the Samhain feast. All around them revelers were dancing to the plaintive strains of flute and lyre, their voices raised in song.

  Taking Gar’s hand again, Anya raised it to her lips. “Come, my lord,” she said, as they joined the dance. “Rejoice, my love, this is our wedding day!

  THUNDERSTRUCK

  Devyn Quinn

  1

  T he statue of Herakles stood like a monolith, the epitome of divine masculinity and extraordinary sexual prowess.

  Her masterpiece. Perfect in every way.

  Danicia Ryan smiled, feeling the corners of her mouth move in an upward arc for the first time in months. The marble god reminded her of a mountain. Massive, immovable. A challenge to be conquered.

  Mountains were made to be moved. Reaching out, her palms skimmed the ridges of his rippling stomach. A sizzle immediately traveled between her skin and the marble, bringing her hormones to life. And marble created to be shaped into the form the artist desires.

  With broad shoulders, narrow hips, and well-muscled thighs, the Greek god appeared strong enough to throw down a skyscraper. Posed in defiance of heaven and earth, his head was thrown back, a tangle of windblown hair whipping his face and shoulders. Legs parted, his left arm lifted toward the sky, fingers half-clenched as if reaching up to grab bolts of lightning. His right reached out, hand open, fingers spread, reaching for the lover just out of his reach. Veins bulged over rippling muscles, giving a heightened sense of realism to his straining naked figure.

  Dani’s hands continued to explore, touching every hard curve of his sinewy torso. The marble glowed with an unearthly, almost iridescent sheen.

  Excitement mingled with attraction filled her. “I created you.” A tremor went through her. Sensations of sexual arousal left every nerve raw and exposed. The flood of emotions threatened to turn her limbs to liquid. “You belong to me.”

  Outside, thunder from the night’s squall rolled across the earth. Somehow she had the feeling mighty Zeus approved the hard-given birth of his greatest son. She could easily imagine the power of the furious rainstorm stirring under the surface of the stone beneath her hands—born not only of the earth, but of sky and heaven, too.

  Filled to the brim with accomplishment, she drew a shuddering breath. She’d created a work that would span not just decades, but centuries. When she’d first seen this piece as a solid block of marble, she couldn’t imagine this day would ever arrive. Yet time and her diligence had paid off.

  Herakles was finished.

  Dani shifted her weight, trying to ease the ache building deep inside. Sensually, slowly, her fingers moved over his form. Her palms explored his bare chest, moving down the column of his abdomen, then lower, toward the penis nestled in a shock of delicately wrought curls. The fullness in his cock hinted of arousal. One could almost imagine the beat of a pulse under his pale faux flesh.

  Stroking a hand over one smooth thigh, Dani laid her cheek against his broad chest, between his flat male nipples. Nipples so perfectly formed that she could barely restrain herself from tracing one hard nub with her tongue. She closed her eyes. A sudden mental picture flashed across her mind’s screen. Easy to envision powerful hands catching her, dragging her against a straining erection.

  Desire surged through her like a rising wave. Heat trickled between her thighs. Heavy awareness pulsed though her veins, an enchanting accompaniment to the steady throb emanating throughout the stone. She felt as if her whole body were attuned to some mysterious frequency issuing from inside the statue. Sensual awareness pulsed thickly around her. The sensations
sent blood pounding through her temples.

  It felt right they were together. Natural.

  Muscles weakening, her heart fluttered. All rational thoughts fled. Chills of desire raised the fine hairs at the back of her neck. The erotic sensation traveled through her stomach, straight to her clit. A liquid trickle followed the delicious twinge of need. The thought of an erect cock made her mouth go bone dry.

  She pressed harder against the stone, taut nipples compacting against masculine solidity. Wanton need enveloped her, intensifying the sweetest of pains. She closed her eyes, submerging herself in the sensations. Her thighs pressed against his, a desperate attempt to alleviate the ache. A needy moan escaped her lips.

  “God, yes…”

  A voice tinged with just the slightest hint of an English accent broke in from behind. “Have I caught you at an inconvenient time?”

  Reality set in, shattering her fantasy. The images of two naked bodies locked in rapturous joy fled. “Damn it.”

  Dani regretfully untangled herself from the strong figure. Taking a deep breath, she abandoned the wide platform the statue stood on, navigating down the small set of steps propped against the wide base.

  Jack Wilde, her longtime friend and patron, stood at the threshold of her studio. “Okay for me to come in?” His eyebrows rose in a devilish tilt. “Or would you two like to be alone?”

  Aw, shit. Busted as a desperate pervert.

  Shaking with unfulfilled sexual energy, Dani forced a smile. She’d been so engrossed up in wanting her dream god to make love to her that she wasn’t thinking clearly at all. “You’ve snuck up on me, Jack. I wasn’t expecting you until Monday.”