For the Taking

by Lilian Darcy

  And he could have made this journey in eight days, not ten, if he’d pulled out all the stops. Instead, he’d lingered those two times on shore, loving the way she responded to the exotic cultures of Fiji and Tahiti, deliberately delaying their journey to give her pleasure.

  Within a day of my meeting her, she’d gotten to me more than I intended, he thought, watching her. How did I let it happen, when I started out so cool and so clear about my goals?

  It was late in the day, and once more she was stretched on her stomach on the deck, no clothes in sight, lazily turning her skin to a gorgeous honey-gold. One look at her and he wanted her, and a moment later, when she stretched and rolled onto her back, lifted her head and smiled at him, it was all he could do to keep standing at the wheel.

  “Hi, Captain,” she said softly.

  His hands tightened on the curved piece of chrome and he didn’t return her smile. His anger at himself was building every moment. The time had come to get this whole thing back under his control. He checked his navigation charts and adjusted the boat’s course, noting figures for latitude and longitude that were getting closer and closer to those of Pacifica.

  Behind him, the sun had begun to drop into the ocean with a speed that told him they were near the Equator. Only in higher latitudes were sunsets a lengthy phenomenon. Tomorrow, at around eight or nine in the morning, they would arrive at the tiny, uninhabited atoll where he could, in a pinch, leave his boat in safety for several weeks. From there, an hour or two of swimming would bring them to the secret kingdom of Pacifica.

  A dozen questions jostled for prime position in his mind. Where was Joran right now? Whose side was the man claiming to be on at the moment? And how many people in Pacifica understood, as Loucan himself did, that Joran was only out for his own gain? Was it safe to tell Phoebe, Kai and Saegar to come visit, with their new partners?

  “Is anything wrong, Loucan?” Lass asked.

  “No, everything’s fine,” he lied. “Just checking our new course.” He forced himself not to look at her, and picked up his train of thought from where it left off.

  Lass hadn’t yet handed over her section of the key. Not that they’d talked about the key much. He hadn’t actually asked her for it. When he did, how complete would her trust turn out to be?

  She must realize that Kai and Phoebe and Saegar had had an easier decision when they’d given him theirs. For each of them, it wasn’t about putting the final piece in place. The seal that opened the door to the treasure of Pacifican scientific knowledge could only operate with all four pieces in place. If Lass didn’t give him her key, however, he’d have to write off half the purpose of this trip, and his claim to be the best leader for his nation would be far less strong. Unless he entrusted the decision about the key to her.

  Meanwhile, in Pacifica, anything could be happening.

  “I could get us something to nibble on before we start dinner,” she offered.

  “I’m not hungry, but have something if you want.” He made the words as casual and cool as he could.

  Her face fell. She was so sweetly easy to read. She wanted him in bed. Or maybe just a chance to kiss and talk and make each other laugh. Both of them had gotten very good at all of those things.

  Maybe he shouldn’t be so hard on himself, Loucan decided.

  He’d married her, and they’d consummated their vows. If anything could make a woman trust a man, it was that. A couple of months ago, if anyone had asked him, he’d have said he’d be open to sleeping with the unknown Thalassa for this reason alone. A pregnancy would be a convenient bonus, as well.

  Now, he had to struggle to remind himself that he was so directed, so cold-blooded. He hoped, too, that there was no baby growing inside her. He didn’t want to bind her to him or to Pacifica in that way.

  “Show me Pacifica on the map,” she said, after a moment of silence.

  “It’s not on the map,” he growled. “This is a map made by people who don’t know Pacifica exists.”

  “Okay, so show me where on the map Pacifica would be, if people knew it existed,” she said patiently.

  There was no edge to her voice, and Loucan knew he was being unreasonable. Being something he wouldn’t even say out loud in her hearing, because she had such a sweet, clean mouth and almost never cursed or swore.

  “Here,” he said. “Southeast of Hawaii.”

  He made a tiny crescent on the chart with his thumbnail, and she leaned closer to look at the spot. She smelled like ice cream and sunscreen and salt, and the bare arm that brushed against him was hot from the sun and dewy-soft from the moisturizing cream she’d applied. The little detail of her nakedness was hard to ignore, under the circumstances, but he did his best.

  “And right now, we’re here.” He made another mark on the chart, only this time his thumbnail slipped and instead of a tiny indentation, there was a hole. He swore under his breath—again—and tried to smooth down the triangular tear with little success.

  “That’s close,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  “Tomorrow morning, we’ll leave the boat,” he answered. “We’ll reach Pacifica by lunchtime, swimming the last twenty miles across the coral reefs.”

  He caught her sharp intake of breath, and remembered that she and her mother had been swimming the reefs together when Wailele was killed. Hardening his heart, he pretended not to notice that Lass was fighting the memory, and didn’t give her the support she probably wanted. She was strong enough. She would handle it.

  “I think I’m getting burned,” she said, after another interval of silence. “I’m going to get dressed.”

  “Lass…” Her name slipped out without him wanting it to.

  “Mmm?”

  “Never mind.”

  With a tiny shrug and an even smaller smile, she disappeared below deck. When she came back a few minutes later, she was dressed in light cotton pants and one of those snug-fitting T-shirts that left him in no doubt as to what her body did to him.

  “Now can you talk?” she said immediately. “Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.”

  “That you distract me incredibly when you’re naked? I didn’t think you needed me to tell you that again.”

  Her face tightened, and her voice was deceptively calm and sweet. “I just asked you, Loucan, not to pretend. Something’s changed. When you looked at the navigational chart and saw how close we were to Pacifica. Even before that.” Her voice grew husky, but she fought her tears, won the battle and went on. “Something…just changed.”

  How much was he prepared to hurt her? Loucan wondered. When was he prepared to hurt her? Now, deliberately, when at least she’d have the chance to get over it with some privacy? Or later, in Pacifica, when he wouldn’t have to tell her anything? She would discover all on her own just how little time he had for her when there were more important concerns that took precedence.

  The second choice might save him an awkward scene, but at the same time it would leave Lass even more vulnerable.

  Now. It had to be now.

  He at least owed her that, after the way they’d spent the past nine days. It rocked him to discover how attuned they had become to each other’s words and moods. She’d picked up on the subtle signs of his changing focus, and he had no trouble now seeing her wind her emotions in tighter and tighter coils.

  “Nothing’s changed,” he said, as cool as he could be. “The honeymoon’s over, that’s all. When we reach Pacifica, you’ll have a certain part to play as my new bride. Public appearances, in which it’s vital for us to show our united commitment to peace. But in private, I won’t have much time for you. Not the way we’ve had on the boat.”

  “I wasn’t expecting that you would! Or that I would!”

  “I’m not just talking about time. I’m talking about emotional focus. This marriage was a political strategy, but I think we’re both in danger of forgetting that.”

  “Oh, so you’re actually reminding me not to do anything silly like fall in love with
you?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Isn’t it a little arrogant of you to assume that such a reminder is necessary?”

  “Arrogance is a fault I’ve been accused of before.”

  “I’ll bet it is!” Her control broke like a dam across a flooded river, and her anger gushed out in full spate. It was a magnificent sight, though Loucan didn’t want to dwell on the fact. “And you think you’re in control enough to keep your body’s needs separate from the involvement of your heart, but I’m not?” she said.

  “No, Lass, I—”

  “Oh, right, right! I get it!” She huffed out an indignant laugh. “You’re so fabulous in bed that any woman—especially a virgin—who gets a taste of your performance is going to be your love-slave for life. Good one, Loucan!” Her sarcastic praise bit hard. “I guess it goes with the territory. A man who is arrogant enough to believe that he can lead an entire nation out of twenty-five years of sporadic, destructive war is going to have no trouble believing every woman he meets is secretly pining for him.”

  “You haven’t—”

  “And since I’ve been very open about wanting you, I must be totally desperate. It couldn’t possibly be that there was something very magic and important about acknowledging my female desires after so long. Because let me tell you something. You don’t know me or understand me nearly as well as you think you do, King Loucan! I am so angry with you!”

  Without giving him a chance to reply, she whirled around and vanished into the cabin.

  “That went well,” Loucan muttered.

  His hands were gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles had turned a sickly green. The back of his neck felt ready to snap with tension. He was willing to bet that she’d never had an outburst like that in her life. For a woman who’d kept her emotions so cool and controlled for so long, it was pretty impressive.

  Impressive enough to raise some serious questions.

  Most importantly, did she mean it? She was such a unique combination of strength and vulnerability, and he didn’t know which quality he’d just witnessed. Her vulnerability? Was lashing out simply a way of hiding how much he’d hurt her? Or had he just seen proof of her strength? Maybe she was right. Maybe it was pure arrogance to suggest that her sensual response to him would bring with it an emotional involvement too deep for him to match.

  Loucan couldn’t remember when he’d last been this uncertain about something so important.

  Below deck, Lass was talking to the mirror.

  “So, Lass Morgan, is this a learning curve, or a descent down a very slippery slope?”

  Thirty-three years old, and she’d never lashed out at anyone this way before.

  It felt… She paused to consider.

  Embarrassing? No. Sad? Absolutely not.

  It felt fabulous. She was tingling all over, hot-cheeked, alive, angry at Loucan and extremely pleased that she’d told him so.

  But people got angry at the ones they loved. Was she in love with him?

  How could she know? She had no way to make comparisons. It would have been very easy to let herself float along in a cloud of rapture. Loucan could make all the decisions and all the moves. Loucan was strong, brave, intelligent, trustworthy. Loucan did wonderful things to her body, and sheltered her in his arms afterward as if she were a lost lamb. At his side, she need never think or struggle or work or doubt again.

  “But Cyria didn’t raise you that way,” she told the pink-cheeked, glittery-eyed Lass in the mirror.

  For all Cyria’s faults, she’d never encouraged Lass to be weak or dependent on anyone. It wasn’t something Lass intended to experience now.

  Going to the boat’s small galley, she tossed some garlic and fresh shrimp in a pan with melted butter, found the last packet of pasta in one of the storage hatches beneath the bench seats and put a pot of water on to boil. Although they’d added to their food supplies with fresh treats from the sea, their stocks were getting low.

  “Pacifica.” Lass tried the word on her tongue. “Tomorrow we’ll be in Pacifica.”

  It didn’t seem possible. Pacifica was hardly a real place to her anymore. Instead, it was a combination of random memories like snatches of film, some of them wonderful, others disturbing. She would have remembered more, she was sure, if the most nightmarish memory of all hadn’t haunted her so much. For twenty-five years, she hadn’t wanted to remember Pacifica in any way.

  Now, for the first time, she tried to bring the images back.

  The palace. There was a palace, only her own royal clan were not the only people who lived there. In her memory, it resembled a luxurious shopping mall, with a warren of concourses and atriums, hundreds of suites of rooms and miraculous displays of color and light.

  And there were gardens, weren’t there? Farm gardens, which still grew some of the earth-dependent foods that the ancient Pacificans had prized. She had the idea that those foods were getting rarer, that this was part of the old knowledge that her father had kept under his own control and hidden away. Did it really make sense to treat knowledge as a commodity? Or as a weapon? Wouldn’t it ease tensions between the different factions if it could be available to everyone?

  Caves. She remembered caves, too—some of them as luxuriously fitted as wealthy homes on land, others more primitive, and distant from the central palace.

  Lass drained the cooked pasta and tossed it with the shrimp and garlic sauce, then went up to Loucan on deck. She was tempted to stand there, far away from him, with her arms folded and a dagger-sharp look on her face, but she overcame such a petty reaction and moved close.

  “I’ve cooked dinner.” She touched her hand briefly to his forearm as she spoke, and felt the sun’s heat on his skin, and the fine golden silk of sun-bleached hair. “Pasta and the last of the shrimp we caught this morning. Can you come below and eat? Because I have some questions.”

  He flashed her a sharp glance, in which she was sure she detected a glint of curiosity and respect. Damn straight, he should respect her! He could be curious, too, if he liked. There was nothing mysterious about this.

  “About Pacifica,” she added. “I want to know what it’s like there now.”

  He nodded. “Yes. You’re right. You need to, don’t you?”

  “I should have asked you days ago.” But even so recently, she hadn’t had the courage. Now, suddenly, she did. And she had an announcement to make, as well. She wasn’t going to give Loucan the key, until she’d thought more about how the archives in her father’s secret chamber should be used.

  Loucan held Lass’s hand as they crossed the coral reefs.

  For the first ten or fifteen miles, they were stunningly beautiful, an unbroken, shimmering mass of color and movement. Lit by the strong rays of the tropical sun, the water was a pure, translucent aquamarine. It was like swimming through liquid gemstones.

  At first, Lass found it impossible to believe that this paradise was the setting for the nightmare that had haunted her for twenty-five years, but then they reached a place where the color and composition of the rocks changed, and there were several barren stretches where the coral had been destroyed.

  With her heart beating faster, Lass turned to Loucan and asked, “What happened here? It’s so ugly!”

  Only when she’d said it did she realize that she hadn’t spoken any words. She’d signed to him. It was the way the mer communicated underwater. She hadn’t thought about it in twenty-five years, but now, when she needed it, and as her memories were activated by the growing familiarity of what she saw, it had come back.

  “The fighting,” Loucan signed to her in reply. “The guerilla elements of both factions have adapted the mer technology for creating energy out of phosphorus. They use it for explosives now.”

  Last night, he’d told her about the sporadic outbursts of fighting. It resembled what she’d read and seen on the news about the troubles in Ireland, with each side taking revenge against the other side’s violence until many people lost sight of the origina
l grievance.

  Last night, he had also entrusted her with all four sections of Okeana’s key.

  “You’re right. You must be the one to break the seal,” he’d told her. “With me beside you. Until the right moment comes, no one will know you’re in possession of the key. Few people in Pacifica even know it exists, or understand the value of what your father locked away.”

  “Joran does.”

  “Yes, unfortunately. Hide it in your bag of belongings when we leave the boat, and find a secret place for it once we’ve housed you safely in Pacifica. We’ll both know the right moment, I think, when we must go together to unlock the seal.”

  Lass hadn’t been fully compliant on this point. She’d left two parts of the key on Loucan’s boat. The others she carried in the woven sea-grass bag that trailed beside her in the water as they swam.

  A little farther on, Lass recognized the place, just ahead, where the reef ended and the water suddenly became much deeper. Almost home. There was a back entrance to the vast labyrinth of the air-filled palace just near here, with rooms where the mer would rest while they shed their tails. This was where, as a child, she would often begin to think of something to eat, and toys and stories and bed.

  Now, as then, she might be less than a day away from seeing Saegar and the twins. A radio message they’d received last night on Loucan’s boat communicated that they were on another boat heading here from Hawaii.

  Her anticipation crowded out bad memories as the familiar stretches of coral passed beneath her. I’ve done it, she realized. I’ve swum across the reefs without panicking and falling apart. I’ve rediscovered the beauty of it, instead of the terror. This was where I first learned to love beauty. My mother taught me, and it has stayed with me despite everything that happened after. Her death wasn’t the only legacy I took when I left Pacifica. When I see the beauty of the mountains behind my house, or the perfect shape of a ceramic bowl, it comes from what she taught me.