“Maisie…”
“I lived in poverty my whole life. I can’t imagine my childhood any different than what it was. I mean, imagine me in a palace…”
“Maisie…” The captain swam forward until we were close. So close, I could feel the warmth of his body searing onto my skin, singeing me, yet making me tremble.
And even if he wasn’t mine, even if he had never been mine, I still longed for his touch like a two-legger beyond the deathly crush of waves craved air and sunlight. My body was hyper aware of him. I was aware of the steady breath in his chest, the way it rose and fell gently. Of the determined set of his shoulders and tilt of his chin, and the way lashes as bright as sunlight framed blue eyes, like rays against a cloudless blue sky.
His fingers skimmed across the skirts of my outfit, and I shivered, feeling his touch as if he’d laid his hand upon my bare skin.
“You shouldn’t touch me,” I breathed, the words coming out a heavy rasp. My tongue felt anchored, and it was very hard to swallow. “I-it’s not wise. Odele could come back in any moment, and she’d be furious if she saw me with you… like this…”
Captain Saber froze, and he looked down at me with hard eyes. His jaw worked almost angrily. “Is that what you think was happening?” he finally asked tightly.
It was a struggle, but I managed a weak nod. “I know what she means to you…”
“Nothing,” he growled. “Odele means nothing to me.”
His words were what I’d always longed to hear from him, and yet, I couldn’t believe the truth behind them. “That’s not true,” I argued. “You—you love her. You never stopped.”
“I never stopped, because I never truly loved her in the first place. Gods, Maisie—” He broke off to grip my skirts and pull me forward, his movements rough, but not at all painful. My body collided against his, and a moment later, his hands were on my waist, palms scorching through the material. “I don’t love her. I am in love with you.”
I stammered through the myriad of emotions that suddenly assaulted me, not quite grasping a single one of them, until I finally could. Disbelief. I grappled for it and tugged it to me impossibly close. I placed my hands on his arms, both to steady myself from the shock and to ready myself to push him away.
“No, you don’t,” I whispered.
His expression hardened. As if those hadn’t quite been the words he’d expected to come out of my mouth. “You presume to know how I feel.”
“I don’t presume. I know. You don’t love me. You can’t. What’s more, you think you love me because I look like Odele.” Even pressed close together, I could feel the sudden chasm of space stretching before us, so vast and empty, if we plunged into it, I feared we’d never come back up again. “This…” I gestured at us both with a jerk of my chin. “...it was always about Odele. You loved her for so long, that when she disappeared and I took her place, you didn’t know what to feel, or who to feel it for. I’ve always been second to her in your heart, an adversary for your affections. But she’s back, and I won’t get in the way of it.”
I started to push him away, but his hands held me tightly, pulling me back into place. As if he meant to fit me against him.
“This whole time we’ve been together, you thought it was because I was using you to replace her?” His voice sounded so betrayed, the guilt pierced through me like the tip of a spear. “On the balcony… and even after…” His fingers tightened into my waist. “I am many things, Maisie, but I am not such a cad to stoop so low.”
“You said yourself, Captain, that you thought to make me into her.”
“That was before! Before I truly knew you. Before I started loving you. If there is one thing your arrival taught me, it was what it truly means to care. To feel this, what I stupidly thought I felt before. To realize finally the line between a fantasy I created and the reality of this. I love you, Maisie, because you are smart and kind, because you listen. Because you are mischievous and exasperating, and because you make me smile. But most of all, I love you because you are wholly, entirely, and irrevocably yourself. You are not a consolation prize. You are not a replacement. Her arrival did nothing but solidify my feelings towards you. What do I have to do to prove to you that I am yours? Wholly, entirely, and irrevocably, I am yours.”
I took in a shuddering, unstable breath. My throat tightened, yet I still managed to choke out, “Captain…”
“Believe me,” he begged, pleaded. His eyes shone with the glossiness of unshed tears. And then, Captain Saber did what I never pictured him doing. His body slid down mine. He dropped at his tail. And he bowed before me. “Please,” he whispered, burying his face into my stomach. “Believe me.”
I was too stunned to reply. Captain Saber, the mer who was used to giving orders, to listening to nothing and no one but the crown, who had promised to make me beg, was bowing at my tail. Like I was royalty.
Like I was his everything.
Something inside me shattered in a maelstrom of emotion.
His grip at my waist was tight, and I could see the now rapid rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed unsteadily. His forehead was buried in my stomach, almost as if he were too afraid to look up and see a rejection he no doubt thought was coming.
I dug my fingers into his short hair, nails scraping his scalp. He trembled, his body vibrating my own.
I sighed. “I believe you,” I decided.
Slowly, he looked up, blinking at me with disbelief.
“I believe you.”
He dropped his forehead to my stomach and murmured, “Thank the gods.” His hands snaked to the back of my dress, digging into the skirts before running up my spine. He looked up at me again, and this time, his expression was so easy to read, so filled with desire that my breath caught in the back of my throat.
My fingers loosened in his hair, sliding down to his face to cup his cheeks. I made sure he could read my own expression just as clearly. The desire mirrored there, the desire that had suddenly raked through me without restraint.
“Say it again,” I whispered a hoarse demand.
“I love you.”
I crashed my lips down onto his. The force of it was as strong and bright as a bolt of lightning. Sensations splintered through me, tearing me apart in fragments. I gasped against his mouth as his hands tore at the back of my dress, demanding, pleading.
I pulled him closer, our bodies melding together, and finally it felt like they belonged, like we belonged. It was warmth, it was the clash of a storm.
His arms snaked around my waist, and in one strong, deft move, he was lifting me up through the water, and twirling around, all while keeping his lips locked tightly against mine. He only broke away for a moment, and that was to place me softly against the cushions of the bed.
His body loomed over mine, though not in an intimidating stance. He looked desperate, elated. When the soft tendrils of anemones climbed up the side of the bed to caress his scales, he pushed them away with impatience before bending down, and kissing me once more.
Hotly. Thoroughly.
I felt this second kiss straight down to my core. I felt it to the very tips of my fins, and I couldn’t help but to curl them under him, and relish in the sensation of his own tail curling around mine, keeping me pinned to the bed.
Then he was pulling away from me. My lips gave a cry of protest that quickly turned to a moan as his mouth traveled down the length of my neck, to the pulse at my throat, to my collarbone, stopping just above the valley of my breasts.
“I love you,” he murmured against my skin.
I shuddered in his arms.
He must have liked my response, because I felt his lips pull into a smile against my skin. “I love you,” he whispered again. The words became a reassurance as much as the molten heat of lava that had me trembling for more with each passing breath.
“I love you.”
His fingers hooked to the insides of my bodice.
“I love you.”
He pressed ferve
nt kisses down the valley of my decolletage as he yanked the dress down.
“I love you.”
He admired the corset pushing my breasts up to his view for merely a moment. Hooking his fingers into the material, he gave a sharp tug, pulling a breast free to his ministrations, to his tongue. The first rasp of teeth had me crying out, pressed the back of my hand against my mouth and biting down on the skin to avoid making too much noise.
The sensation was over all too quickly. The captain—Tiberius, he was Tiberius now—pulled me up so we were sitting, facing each other. He didn’t give me much of a moment to take him in before he turned me around, so that my back was to him. Still, I nearly jumped out of my skin when his fingers touched my shoulders. Smooth movements slipped the sleeves of the gown down. He bent forward and pressed a kiss where his fingers had been.
The next thing I knew, he was making quick work of divesting me of the dress and shift, slipping the top down to my waist; I had to work to slip it from my tail. Then his fingers were at my back, unlacing the corset. Instant relief found me, helping me breathe again. His fingers were quick with the lacings, yet it still felt like there was leagues left of the ribbon to unhinge.
I cursed Odele and her frivolity.
After odious waiting, the corset was finally free, and I tugged it off hurriedly, discarding it off to the side and turning to face him, fingers already pushing aside his lapels. He chuckled slightly, but helped me remove his jacket. When we reached the immaculate tunic underneath, I tugged it upwards, yanking it off his body.
Until there was nothing between us at all.
His eyes flared to life at the sight of me, and my cheeks flushed at the sudden exposure, at the way his gaze raked over me. I wanted to cross my arms over my chest. I hadn’t ever really felt this exposed before. The lights in the room were bright, and every bit of me was on display. From the flush over my pink skin, to the pathetic flapping of my torn fin.
“I love you.” Tiberius tore my insecurities away with those three words.
Yes, it wouldn’t do good to let my insecurities best me now. After all, I wasn’t the only one with a scar. We reached for each other at the same moment. My fingers went to his hips, touching the rigid scar raised over immaculate, unblemished skin. His own hands grabbed me by the shoulders, his tight grip easing to slide down the contours of my body.
He left no part of me untouched. Fingers slid up and down my spine, across my shoulder blades and back to my collarbone, down my breasts where he paused to torture my nipples to peaks. I arched into his ministrations, gasping at the sensations he pulled from me, slowly and thoroughly. Like he meant to savor every single inch of me. No matter how imperfect or impossible.
And I meant to give back to him in equal measure.
I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, pulling myself closer to the warmth of his body, sliding myself down until I felt the rigid hardness against my core. It slid against me, slick and hard, pressing against that spot of sensitivity that had me tearing my mouth from his and gasping, groaning. Wanting more.
“Please,” I whispered against the crook of his neck. I was drunk on my own desire, in a way that felt impossible.
Tiberius’s fingers slid up the arch of my neck, where he took my chin. Gripping it lightly, he tipped my face up so that I was staring into the radiance of his eyes. “We’ve only just started.” He looked amused, but no less affected than I was.
“I know,” I groaned. “But… I need…” I couldn’t quite say what I needed. Not when he knew. Not without my face brightening to an array of colors.
“Then let me look at you.” His grip on my chin tightened, thumb pressing circles around my cheek. A move that was comforting, and arousing at once. “I want to watch you while I enter you. I want to see you come.”
His words sent a thrill fragmenting through me, a thrill that was followed by the vicious gasp that tore from my throat as he thrusted into me in one. Delicious. Move.
He began to thrust. Not the hurried, angry thrusts like our time on the balcony. This was different. It was slow and torturous. It was a promise, a question and an answer. He slid out, the tip of him teasing my entrance before going back in, taking me to the hilt. I felt him deep inside me, pulsating and large.
My eyelids fluttered closed.
Just like that, the sensations stopped.
“Don’t,” he ordered. My eyes opened. There was chastisement in his gaze, and my cheeks flushed in question. “Don’t close your eyes,” he said. “I want to see you, and I want you to see me.” He moved against me slowly, his length pulling a cry from me. “That’s it,” he praised. “I want to see every glorious inch of you. I want to hear your cries and smile knowing I elicited them.”
Oh. My.
My face flushed, but I found myself biting my lip with nerves.
This was most definitely different from before. It was more passionate. It wasn’t just some tryst in the shadowed corners of the balcony. Now that I thought about it, at the time, he hadn’t looked at me, not like this. And he hadn’t savored me, either.
And I wanted to savor this.
Him.
I bent down and kissed his lips. When I pulled away, he was smiling.
And then he thrust.
A slow movement of his hips against mine, he held me, his hands sliding over my body, leaving no inch unexplored. I touched him back with equal fervor, until my hands finally settled on his shoulders, nails digging into his skin.
All the while we stared. I couldn’t break away. His gaze was captivating, hypnotizing. He kept me locked there, watching the flare of blue as he moved against me. I bit my lip in an ineffectual attempt to keep from crying out, but it did not work.
Eventually, the gasps and moans poured from me. I threw my head back as I felt the pressure build deep inside me. My eyes closed involuntarily and…
He stopped his movements.
The sensation faded.
I groaned, opened my eyes. “Open your eyes, Maisie,” he smirked. “I want to see you.”
So I did. Even as he rode me through that vicious rogue wave with his slow, sensuous movements, and I screamed as tremors racked through my body, even as he followed the wave after me, pumping in and shuddering against me, we did not look away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Odele
WHEN HAD palace life become so boring?
To be honest, it had always been boring. Such a vast place, and I was hardly ever allowed out of it. I’d never visited anywhere beyond the confines of my own kingdom. Being closed in had led me to the royal library in the first place, a place that, against my better nature, had become my sought after sanctuary.
But even now, I couldn’t seem to bring myself to venture there. I’d read and listened to everything, so it didn’t sound appealing.
I sighed, a long suffering sound that was unbidden, and unattractive. I was just so bored. This was why I didn’t want the responsibility of being Queen. To be shut in the kingdom of Thalassar forever?
I think not.
There were places I wanted to see before I withered away and died an old mer. Sights I’d only heard about but could never dream of.
The kraken sculpture and libraries in the kingdom of Brague.
The lush forestation of Kappur.
The vicious Great Dragon of Draconi—even if I did despise the Lizard Prince, I could still have a fondness for the sights of his kingdom.
The vast abyss of Ventlaer.
The orca breeding grounds in Iol.
Even to the dangerous waters of the Uncharted, where vicious, ugly and savage mer dwelled. Where mer were rumored to have ventured and never come back alive.
As “future Queen” I was to be locked in a prison of propriety in Thalassarin standards. To never see what I wanted, when I wanted, how I wanted.
I’d die before I let that happen. I’d die before I became Queen. Odalaea would be put on that throne, if it were the last thing I did. Then, I’d finally be free to do as I
wished, plunge into the royal coffers, take money and travel. Take money and live richly, anywhere but in this suffocating palace, with it’s terrible decor, and even worse memories…
“Princess!”
Speaking of…
I tried not to cringe as I turned and found Percival, my step-mother’s sluggy looking advisor, swim hurriedly towards me. It was too late now to pretend as if I hadn’t seen him, though I suppose I could have. I despised the mer, and it was all too obvious he despised me as well, if the way he was glaring at me with disapproval was of any indication.
“Princess, a word.” He stopped before me, appearing slightly out of breath, though composing in his posture.
He disgusted me down to my very core.
“Say your word and be done with it then, as I have a great many things to see to,” I snapped impatiently.
Percival looked at me, appearing to be taken aback momentarily at my words. “I—”
“Really. You have the usage of merely one word and you decide to say ‘I’? How incredibly wasteful.” I looked him over. “And yet so incredibly you.”
He emitted a shocked gasp. “Princess!” Oh, how he sounded perfectly scandalized.
How perfect. Now I could leave.
I started to swim away, and the sleazy mer did something I’d make sure he’d regret later.
He grabbed my arm.
“We must prepare you for the wedding ceremony. You must be schooled on etiquette and customs of both Thalassar and Draconi!”
I yanked my arm away, keeping the perfect demeanor of composure. He would see nothing but the perfect picture of immaculately. Beneath my facade, I was seething, feeling his touch on my arm long after his fingers had vacated the spot, like a burn, or a brand.
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