Benjamin glowered at him. “Not if I can help it.”
And just like that, as quickly as he appeared, he was gone. Aboard his ship and we all stood wordlessly as we watched it dive back beneath the sea. No trace left behind that a giant, cursed ship of bone was ever there.
And we were no better off than before. I still had no soul, and now the darkness in me had a name. A curse. If I could cry, I’d surely be a heap of inconsolable human flesh on the ground. Instead, my rational mind raced through the possibilities, considered all my options.
“Aye,” Freya spoke, and she looked at me with pity. “We’ll find another way, Dianna. We wullnae stop until we find yer soul and get ye home.”
“What do ye want to do now?” Finn asked.
I squared my shoulders and took in a deep breath. The weight of my swift decision solid on my chest. “I want you to kill me.”
Chapter Twelve
“Ahhg! I give up!” Finn bellowed impatiently as he shoved at my chest and sprung to his feet. “If Henry knew me lips were on yers he’d surely rip through time and take me head off!” He mauled a hand over his tousled beard. “If I dinnae break yer bloody ribs first!”
“It’s supposed to feel like that,” I told him as I sat upright and tried to hide the wince that forced from me. I could already feel the bruising taking hold where Finn’s wide and clumsy hands pushed. “You’ll literally be bringing me back to life.”
“I cannae do it!” he replied impatiently. It was the first time I’d ever seen him so uncomfortable. Like a gentle giant trying and failing to thread a needle. “Freya did a better job. She should be the one.”
Freya shifted where she sat on a hay bail with Benjamin. I wasn’t sure why he stayed and watched. He’d refused to even try practicing CPR on me after I explained how it worked.
“And she just might,” I told him, averting my eyes away from the other two. “I want you all to know what to do. It’s a group effort.” I swallowed dryly. “We’re talking about my life here.”
Finn paced frantically in the dirt and ran his fingers through his dishevelled red hair. “Ye cannae put that on me, Dianna. Helpin’ ye stay alive is one thing. Bringin’ ye back from the dead…I’m nae sure I can do it.”
“Fine,” Ben huffed and stood from where he sat. It was the first word he’d said since we began practicing. He peered down at me with a heavy sigh. “Show me.”
“Are you sure?” I asked him.
“Like you said.” Benjamin knelt beside me, his brown eyes glistening beneath his furrowed brow. “It’s your life.”
Just his mere proximity was enough to rouse the curse in the hollow of my chest. Giving an extra pulse to my heart. My skin buzzed, itching for his touch. But I stomped it down and laid back.
“Okay,” I said and adjusted my shoulders. “Once I’m gone, what’s the first thing you do?”
He thought for a second. “Check your…pulse?”
“Correct.” I lifted my hand to put two fingers right over the spot on my throat and then my wrist, showing him where to check. “Don’t start the CPR until I’m dead.” His expression flickered with pain at the mention of it. “We’ll have one shot, I don’t want to waste it. If I’m unconscious but not dead, doing CPR will bring me back, but it won’t break the curse. There needs to be no heartbeat. Understand?”
He just nodded reluctantly. His expression was blank as I watched him retreat behind those eyes I loved so much. What was happening inside that mind of his?
“Now, what do you do next?”
Ben’s lips pursed; his palms rubbed over his bent thighs. “I…can’t remember.”
I made myself as flat as possible. “Check my airways, make sure nothing is blocking it. Then tip my chin upward and open my mouth wide.” He listened intently. “Then push on my chest thirty times before pinching my nose and covering my mouth with yours. Then blow long and deep, twice.” Ben’s head bobbed as he continually nodded. “Got it?”
“I think so.”
He repeated all the steps I’d told him, only pushing on my chest gently. Maybe watching Finn butcher it made him conscious of how easily he could hurt me. The bruising already forming on my chest plate throbbed with every one of his gentle pushes. But I remained still. After the thirty compressions, he paused and looked me in the eye. As if to ask permission for what he was about to do. I gave him a stern nod.
Slowly and with trembling fingers, he pinched my nose and lowered his mouth to mine. His other hand gingerly held my chin, and his fingers caressed my cheek, sending a wave of goosebumps scouring down my body. Immediately, the curse wailed inside of me, clawing at my organs, screaming through my limbs. My body went stiff while I fought to contain it, but Benjamin felt the change and when the tip of my tongue touched his, he ripped himself away.
Shame filled me like warm liquid and the curse relished in it. My eyes went wide as I sat up. “Ben, I–”
He raised his hand and shook his head. “No, don’t. It’s…” he seemed suddenly aware of two sets of eyes watching us from behind his back. He took a calming breath. “I think I got it.”
I pressed my lips together, unable to even look at Finn and Freya as I stood and collected myself. “That’s, uh, enough for today, anyway.” I brushed the dust and dirt from my pants while Freya’s glare burned into the side of my face. I didn’t dare look at either of them, just turned toward the tavern where we were staying. “I need a drink.”
***
Hours later, I paced around my room where I’d stowed myself away. A half-empty bottle of rum in hand. I wasn’t fit to be around anyone, not with a wild tempestuous curse seething just under the surface of my skin, waiting for a way out. Ben seemed to be the main trigger and if I could manage to keep a healthy distance between us until I broke the curse, then maybe, just maybe, our friendship could survive this.
A knock at the door gave me a startle, and I hesitated.
“Dianna, it’s me,” Freya’s voice sounded from the other side.
I unlatched the chain lock and twisted the knob, not bothering to even open the door for her. She could let herself in. But I immediately sighed in disappointment at my own self. That was petty. I opened it a crack, and she poked her lovely, freckled face inside.
“May I come in?”
I gestured toward a chair. “Please, do.” I put the bottle of rum to my lips and drank heavily as she placed herself in the center of my room.
When I looked at her, she gave me a stony expression and an arched brow. “Plan to drink yerself t’death?”
I shrugged and set the bottle down with a bit too much force. “It’s one way to do it.” When the silence carried on too long, I let out an impatient moan and slumped into the seat she didn’t take. “Come to talk me out of my plan?”
Freya crossed her arms over the faded blue linen dress she wore. “Quite the opposite, actually. I cannae wait fer ye to break this bloody curse.”
“Is that so?” I had no idea why I was being so cold with her. Freya and I started off as friends when we first arrived in Scotland. But the journey across the Atlantic, the tension we tossed back and forth over Benjamin…we were different people now. “Hoping to get rid of me so soon?”
Freya tilted her head to the side. “Nae, I just want ye to stop toying with Benjamin’s heart.”
I averted my gaze. “Ben’s a big boy.”
“Aye,” she replied tiredly. “A man. A man who’s so blindly in love with ye it’s killin’ him.” Anger rose in my gut and my knee bobbed up and down impatiently. “But he could love me. In time. If…if ye let him.”
I guffaw practically choked me. “Let him?”
“Ye have t’let him go, Dianna,” she reasoned calmly. “Tell him there’s no chance, it’ll never happen. He can never have ye and he should move on.”
“I don’t need to do that,” I seethed through clenched teeth. “Ben knows where I stand, where we stand as friends. He knows Henry is my soulmate.”
She stood over me fro
m a few feet away and chewed at the inside of her lip. “Aye, but now he thinks yer goin’ t’give up tryin’ to get back to yer soulmate.” My eyes narrowed at her accusatory tone. “He thinks…there’s a chance fer him now.”
“Get out,” I said in a clipped tone and glowered up at her from my chair.
She waited a beat then turned on her heel and reached for the door. I swiped the rum from the table and tossed my head back as I put it to my lips and drank until I heard the latch fall into place and I was alone again.
Alone and empty of everything except the liquor that burned in my belly. With nothing but time and the expanse of my room before me, I wandered about. Noting the hand-carved details of the woodwork. The log embedded in the wall above the fireplace used to display half-burned candlesticks and brass trinkets like a clock and empty picture frames. The uneven and burnt wood floor, worn and shiny in places where years of past guests occupied the room. The window was open and blew a cool early evening breeze inside, making the thin cream-colored draperies billow softly. It had everything required to be a room, but it wasn’t a home. I suddenly and oddly felt akin to it. A body, a person. Yet, empty inside.
With a disgruntled moan, I threw myself onto the bed and let all my tired, achy muscles relax. My finger hooked through the handle on the bottle of rum and it dangled off the side as I stared up at the bottom of the canopy that covered the four-poster bed. Freya’s words moved to the forefront of my mind and I rolled them over and over. Considered every syllable. But I kept circling back to the same conclusion.
She was right.
And I wondered then, what a life with Ben would be like. He was handsome and loyal. Kind and strong. I’d once told him that in another time they surely would have been together. And here I was…stranded in another time, lost with no way back to the man I truly loved. Even as I considered it, the thoughts felt wrong in my mind.
I knew it was the curse that evoked that behaviour from me. But part of me couldn’t help but wonder if I could have fought harder to stomp it down. When it wanted to wake up, I practically stepped aside and let it. Every time. Guilt couldn't tug at my emotions, but it still rattled in my rational mind. Rum swirled in my veins, hot and sweet, and I set the jug on the floor before rolling over to conjure up memories of Henry to fend off thoughts of anything else.
First, I pulled him into my mind’s eye. Shaped him and highlighted all the features of his existence. Every scar, every blade of golden hair, the way the light could never penetrate those black eyes as they touched my soul.
My soul…
My eyelids became heavy with the threat of sleep, but I fought it. I couldn’t face a nightmare. Not after the nightmare I’d lived all day. I grappled to hold on to the memories of Henry. My sweet pirate king. I let my eyes close, but only to better envision his hands on my body, caressing every sensitive spot as they held me tenderly. I brought my fingertips to my lips as I imagined his mouth there, kissing me and stealing the breath right from my lungs. Desire and yearning filled me, pushing back the confusion I felt emanating from the curse that lived there. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? I asked it silently. This is what you feed on.
Reality slowly melted away as I sunk into a dream. Completely helplessly against the throes of sleep. But I was pleasantly surprised to find no nightmare in sight. No darkness filling the corners of that empty room. Instead, I laid on a sunny beach while hot rays soaked into my skin. Above me, a figure moved and blocked the sun, his hair dangling around his shadowed face and tickling my skin.
Henry…
A rush of warm goosebumps coated my body at the touch of his hand on my inner thigh beneath the light sundress I wore. He spread my legs and lowered himself, nestling comfortably and placing my slender, trembling limbs around his torso. One hand held my face, rubbed my cheek, and traced the lines of my open and waiting mouth as a fiery breath poured from it.
His other hand slipped between us where our centers met, and my back arched with the force of a gasp that buckled my entire body. Henry’s fingers moved like waves, leading us both into a sensual rhythm. His mouth was on mine, preventing any cries of pleasure, and I raked my fingers through his long hair.
Impossibly long…
Every time my thoughts strayed, the confines of the dream pulled me back into the moment and I let myself become consumed by the man who had me caged to the sand with his body.
An unfamiliar shape…
It was hard to turn my head through the fog that filled it, and Henry’s powerful grip on my jaw firmed, holding me there and forcing me to look at his shadowed face while his mouth continued to dance against mine. While somewhere in the back of my mind shouted distantly for me to wake up, I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t leave behind this feeling of…being alive. My desire for him ran hot and only intensified with every encompassing kiss until I could hardly stand it.
I stole a breath and whispered through heavy panting, “I want you.”
His hand that remained between my legs tore down my undergarments and as he thrust himself inside of me, the sun moved to reveal his face. Only…it wasn’t him.
“Ben!” I cried as our bodies moved in unison against the sand.
Every wave of his hips sent me reeling with bliss, and I threw my head back as he buried himself deep inside. Moans of both pleasure and guilt poured from me and filled the hot air around us. His quickened breaths and deep moans of carnality blanketed me, and I let myself become consumed by him until I felt the climax of release building up inside. Every thrust became harder and quickened to the point of breaking, and the dream shattered around me like glass as we came together.
I woke with a startle and bolted upright, my hands instantly grappling at my chest, desperate to hold on to reality for fear of dipping back into the dream. How could my mind conjure such a thing? I trembled all over, despite the fact that I was covered in sweat.
Henry…I buried my face in my hands and, for the first time in months, my eyes filled with tears. Who was this person I was becoming? What kind of wife, partner, soulmate was I to let myself fall victim to my own inexcusable desires? The tears gave way to a dam of locked-up emotions and cleared the way for a second of rational thinking. That wasn’t my desire. Making love to Benjamin was never something I would ever dream up. Which meant…
It wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare, after all. Visions and senses that the curse drummed up in my head. Blatantly showing me what it wanted, and how far it was willing to go to get it. And, in that moment, I realized just what kind of curse the sirens planted inside of me. A living darkness that would never stop until it shaved away my will, cut down my ability to feel until I was an empty vessel for it to animate. It wanted me to destroy myself, so there was nothing left to go back to.
Clever girl.
Foolish girl.
She knows.
She’s ours now. There is no escape.
The whispers of the sea Fae overlapped with each word and rang in my ears, causing my head to spin as a cold inky sensation spilled from my heart and reached out through my limbs, filling every pore. Every finger. Every crack of my being. I had no choice but to let it consume me, and my body went stiff as it slammed back onto the bed. Darkness touched the edges of my vision, slowly pressing in until I couldn’t see anything, and I plunged into an abyss.
Chapter Thirteen – Benjamin
Just as my thoughts of the day, my dreams at night were of her. Of Dianna. Try as I might, I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t stop the images and the desires that floated around freely in my mind. I rolled over in the darkness of my quarters in the brothel after a sound in the hallway roused me from sleep. I didn’t open my eyes for fear I wouldn’t be able to sink back into the bliss of a dream, one where she and I were together. The only place we’d ever be together like that.
But another sound, the creaking of the floor near the foot of my bed, pulled my drowsy consciousness to the surface, and I opened my eyes to see what was there. In the pitch black of the
room, I saw nothing. But I knew, could sense, something was there. I waited and stared at the furs draped over the foot of the bed, at the small patch of white moonlight that cut across it from a sliver in the draperies. A lump moved under the blankets, heading for my feet, and I tensed when a delicate hand brushed the naked skin of my legs.
Was this a dream?
I reached under and pulled back the bedding to reveal a face clouded in shadow, but I’d know the shape of her anywhere and my heart banged in my chest.
“Dianna?” I whispered, not believing my eyes.
Her voice moaned in the darkness as she crawled up my body and only when the warm skin of hers touched my bare chest did I realize she was naked. I gripped her arms and pushed her off as I sat upright.
“Christ, Dianna.” My voice hitched. Her hands continued to paw at me, her loose black curls tickling my warm skin. “What are you doing?”
“I want you.” Her voice was low and in my ear. The same lips I stared at from afar each day. Under the sheets, her legs parted, and she shifted to straddle me. “And I know you want me.”
“Woah!” My mind and body slammed together with separate wants, and I gripped her hips to slip out from beneath her. But she squeezed me like a vice. “Jesus…”
“Benjamin,” her oddly musical voice purred in the night and her presence enamoured me in place. I was afraid to touch her, for fear of crossing a line she so clearly wanted to make disappear. Was she sleepwalking? A perfect finger trailed down my chest. “Don’t you want me?”
I brought my hands to her neck and my giant mitts engulfed the whole area; her face relaxed into the touch. Her mouth covered my thumb, sending almost painful goosebumps up my spine. “Of course, I want you,” I told her and gritted my teeth against the urge to take her right there. “But…Henry.”
She shook her head and shifted to secure the grip her legs had around my waist as we sat up together. “Is in another time, in a place I’ll never go back to.”
The Cursed Sea Page 10