Authors: Eve Langlais
But that wasn’t enough. Who cared if he’d explored parts of her body already? He needed to reacquaint himself by tasting it. Those nipples, surely they weren’t as wonderful as he recalled.
His lips latched around a protruding bud, and she gasped. Oh my, they proved even more splendid than he remembered. He spent a few minutes teasing those responsive buds, torturing them with his mouth and teeth until they stood tight and erect.
She moaned a protest when his lips left them to move downward, over the ridge of her belly down to the bared splendor of her mound. He kissed the skin there, a surge of pleasure making him growl when she shuddered.
This close to her sex, the aroma of her arousal was unmistakable. Fragrant.
Delicious…
He didn’t just want a taste. He
needed
it.
Her legs spread wide, and he dove on her offering, lashing his tongue against the velvety folds of her sex, tasting the sweetness.
And then the sweetness was taken from him!
“Bring it back!” he complained.
“I intend to,” she replied. “Once you get on your back.”
To emphasize her wish, she flipped him then straddled him, in reverse. It didn’t take a genius to know what she intended.
As her lips found the head of his swollen cock, she lowered her sex to his face.
Was there anything more spectacular than a woman who believed in a 69? The only problem was her obvious enjoyment of his shaft made it hard to concentrate.
Lick her sweet clit. Swirl his tongue around it.
Gasp as she bobbed her head low on his cock. Groan as she suctioned it hard.
Stab his tongue within her silken folds, taste her cream, feel her muscles squeezing, look for something to hug.
Arch the hips as she nipped the tip of him then dig his fingers into her ass checks and worry her clit between his lips as she licked him with slow decadence.
A few times he thought he’d come, and she knew it, too. She’d stop and simply blow on his wet skin. He did the same to her. When her body grew too tense, he stopped, watched her quivering, and then said fuck it and dove back on.
He wanted to make her come. More than once if he could. So when he felt her tension coiling, he didn’t stop, even as she lost her rhythm on his cock.
He didn’t relent, even as she whimpered and her body tensed.
He continued to lap as she cried out his name, “Dex,” in one long, drawn-out syllable.
The waves of her pleasure vibrated on his tongue, which stabbed within her channel. But he didn’t enjoy it for long.
Valaska wasn’t one to let the man take the lead, not when she wanted more. She pulled her still-pulsing sex from his lips and, in one smooth motion, impaled herself on his cock.
He yelled. He also bucked, but she was firmly seated in a reverse cowgirl.
His hands found her waist, not that she needed help or guidance. She bounced perfectly fine on his throbbing dick all on her own, each thrust in and out drawing his sac tighter and tighter.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” He couldn’t help chanting as the pleasure grew more and more intense.
He wasn’t going to be able to hold on much longer. She moved faster, slamming up and down on him, her buttocks cushioned by his groin, his cock sheathing so deep.
The pulse of her climax squeezed his shaft superbly tight. So tight. Oh fuck. He couldn’t help himself.
He came, the heat of his seed shooting and her channel fisting him and drawing every ounce of pleasure it could wring.
It took forever to come down from the high, or so it felt as his heart beat rapidly and his eyes refused to open, even as she collapsed beside him.
But his arms still worked enough to draw her close to his side, close enough that he could place a kiss on her forehead and wistfully think,
I wish we could stay like this forever.
Except, apparently, he said it, didn’t think it, and while Valaska said, “This is nice,” someone else joined the conversation with a gurgled, “Glerg. Blerg. Harg!”
“Don’t waste what you kill. There’s a recipe for everything.” A quote from Cannibal Carol’s best-selling cookbook.
Explosive sex was no excuse for not paying attention to her surroundings. In her defense, though, Valaska never expected an enemy to come from the crystal pond they’d swum in.
Water dripping from their slimy and mottled green skin, a pair of ugly beasts leered at Valaska and Adexios. Humanoid in shape, but amphibious in appearance, with bulbous eyes, flat noses with only two holes to mark it, and webbed hands. They kind of reminded her of frogs, but a tad more dangerous than the hopping, delicious-when-deep-fried kind.
The duo, baring pointed teeth, wore loincloths on their hips and held spears with wicked pointed tips.
Having sprung to her feet, with her sword in hand of course—as if she ever let it stray far from reach—she bent her knees into a half-crouch to face the pair.
Only two foes? She wouldn’t even break a sweat—unlike the workout Dex had given her body. Her geeky lover sure knew how to play her body and leave her panting. She couldn’t help but cast a glance his way and noted he was scrounging through his pack.
Does he have a spray to fight frogs in there, too?
It wouldn’t surprise her at this point.
The slight distraction as she pondered Dex’s many surprising levels didn’t mean she missed the spear jabbing at her. Since she wasn’t really into bodily piercings, she leaned her body sideways, letting the pointed tip slide harmlessly past her.
Before the frogman could retract his lunge, with a twirl of her blade, she sliced through his pole.
The pointed tip hit the sand, and the creature made an angry sound. “Horgblar!”
“I think you pissed him off,” Dex remarked from behind her.
“Good.”
Her now spearless opponent’s slimy companion lunged next, and his pointed weapon met the same fate to much gargling and burbling curses in frog-tongue.
The green duo tossed the remains of their spears to the ground and dropped into a half-crouch.
Awesome, they weren’t done playing. She grinned. “Bring it, slimeballs.”
Except they didn’t make a move to tackle her, as expected.
She didn’t need Dex’s shouted, “Watch out for their tongues,” to know she should not let the extremely long and forked pink appendages touch her skin.
“Bad froggies,” she taunted. “Trying to give me tongue on our first date.”
One tongue met the same fate as a spear while the second narrowly missed her.
“Miss me. Miss me. Now you gotta kiss me. Not!”
Practically busting a bulbous eye in rage, the frogman shot his tongue back at her, but before she could sever it, Dex was there, shaking a powder on it.
As the second frogman sucked back in its slimy appendage, it warbled and hopped, even more upset than his tongueless companion.
Valaska had to ask, “What did you do to it?”
“Cayenne pepper. I still had a shaker of it in my bag. I like my food spicy.”
While she preferred her food dead. Then again, when a few quick slices left the frogmen on the ground, green heaps of rancid flesh, she decided that perhaps now was not the time to try that recipe Carol had told her about that suggested wrapping amphibious legs in leaves and roasting them over some hot coals.
Wiping her sword clean, she kept an eye on the water.
Surprise me once, shame on me. Surprise me twice and I’ll have to go on a killing spree so word doesn’t get back to my tribe.
As Dex dressed, he felt a need to talk. “Do you think there’s more of them around?”
“I hope so.” While short-lived, the giant froggies had provided entertainment.
Then again, so did Dex. What an adept lover he proved to be. And an even better companion. Valaska was used to fighting battles on her own, constantly proving herself and fighting to stay alive in a cutthroat world where it was every woman for herself.
Yet Dex, while not a classic warrior, kept coming to her aid.
She knew her Amazon sisters would mock and shame her for allowing it, but…well…Valaska kind of thought it was cute. She’d never had someone come to her aid before. Especially not a man.
A man who had dressed, even though they needed to go for a swim.
“Should we head back to the beach?” he asked as he hefted his pack on his back.
“The beach has nothing for us. I say we find out where these creatures came from.”
“There might be more of them.”
She smiled. “We should be so lucky.”
He might have sighed, but he did so with a smile. “Since I wouldn’t want you to accuse me of being a gentleman, do you want to lead the way?”
Did she ever! She’d begun to wade into the water, sword in one hand, when Dex cleared his throat.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?”
He held up her damp clothes.
“Does my nakedness bother you, Dex?”
“Very much. I can’t think straight when you’re flashing that much flesh.”
She grinned. “Good. Stay close and try not to lose sight of me. I have a feeling we’re going to have to go for a little swim.”
“Don’t worry,” he muttered. “I can’t seem to take my eyes off your ass.”
Being a warrior didn’t mean she didn’t feel a spurt of warmth at his words.
She walked as far as she could into the pool of water. She could easily tell that the creatures hadn’t come from the sandy beach edges, but there, at the far end of the pond, a heap of black stone rimmed it. Kicking toward that rock, once she reached it, she treaded water for a moment while she checked it out.
Nothing above the water line gave any clue. The rock façade extended fairly high, but she didn’t see any crevices large enough for something to hide in.
Given frogs were aquatic creatures, a search underwater seemed in order.
A deep breath to fill her lungs and then she dove under the water for a closer peek. The black stone extended down, far down, deeper than expected. She followed the stony wall, sword in hand, just in case. And a good thing, too.
A green head poked from a dark shadow in the stone, close to the bottom.
As it rotated to peer upward, a jab of her sword downward impaled the frogman before he spotted her. Instant death meant he didn’t thrash. She used her sword to pull him out and let his body float away. She then kicked back to the surface.
“I found a tunnel.”
“And company, I see,” Dex remarked as the corpse floated to the surface several feet away.
“Ready to go find some more?”
“Does insanity run in my family?”
She blinked at him. “Doesn’t it run in everyone’s?”
He laughed. “Go. I’ll follow.”
How she enjoyed the fact that he didn’t attempt to change her mind with stupid questions like, “How long is the tunnel?”, “How will we breathe?”, or “What if there’s more enemies?”
Nope. Instead, he leaned close and brushed his lips against hers with a whispered, “Go get ’em!”
Sigh. If she wasn’t careful, she might just fall in love with the guy.
Gasp.
Wouldn’t that horrify her Amazon sisters? Funny, how she wasn’t repulsed by the idea.
Taking a deep breath, she dove back down and headed right for the tunnel. She went in, sword point first, just in case there was someone in the way. There wasn’t. A shame, then again, given the tunnel wasn’t all that wide, it was probably a good thing.
Adrenaline coursed through her veins, her senses alive with anticipation. In the pitch-black, it wasn’t exactly easy to see. The enemy could be right ahead of her, and she wouldn’t see them.
But darkness wasn’t the only thing she had to contend with. The tunnel wasn’t short. She kicked for what seemed like forever. Kicked so long her lungs burned and she wondered how Dex fared.
I hope he doesn’t drown.
It surprised her to realize she would be sad if he died. She rather liked having him around.
Just when she thought her lungs might burst, she noted a faint light ahead. Fluttering her feet even harder, she shot toward the illumination, the last of her breath emerging in bubbles that tickled her face. Air loomed straight ahead. She gave herself one last burst of speed and broke the surface of the water to find herself in a cave.
But not just any cave. A really big cave that held quite a few more of the frogmen. And they were waiting for her and Dex.
No sooner had his head appeared beside hers than tongues shot out from numerous directions. More than she could handle while treading water. Dammit!
Sproing.
The tips of a few tongues hit her flesh, leaving the most unpleasant sensation.
Argh. I’ve been slimed.
The thing that vexed her most, though, as she sank in the water, succumbing to their poisoned saliva, was the fact that she’d been taken down by frogs. The shame of it.
“It is up to you what to wear under your ferryman official robe, but keep in mind, the Styx has strong breezes.” Charon’s unofficial advice to newbies.
Waking naked on a chilly surface, exposed to anyone looking, Adexios really wished for his robe. Probably for the first time ever. Having gotten used to the coverage, and privacy, afforded by it, he found his recent forays into nudity quite troubling.
Unless he was naked with Valaska. Then he quite enjoyed it. However, his companion—whom more and more he was thinking of as his lover, and dare he hope something more?—wasn’t close by, or at least not close enough to be touching him or emitting that vibe he always felt when she was near.
Where is she?
Given he didn’t know the situation, other than the fact that he was kind of chilly—again on account of the whole naked thing!—he didn’t move a muscle. But he did crack an eye a slit.
What he saw didn’t reassure.
Bars. Thick ones, too. The solid metal rods were spaced just wide enough to maybe slide his hand through. He rolled his head just slightly, as if moving in his sleep. This gave him a view of the top of his cage, made of the same metal. He froze as he listened, wondering if anyone had noted his motion.
He heard the lapping of water and the occasional guttural gurgle of what he assumed were the frogmen who’d caught him.
At least the poison on their tongues wasn’t fatal. Merely a narcotic to put them to sleep. Of interest also was the fact that they hadn’t immediately killed them.
What do they want?
He doubted he could just ask, and even if he did, it was doubtful he’d understand them.
A lull in the garbled conversation by the creatures enabled him to hear a soft snore. He recognized that noise.
Valaska was here! And alive, but apparently still sleeping.
Either she’d received a bigger dose of the sleeping slime or he had a stronger immunity to it.
Knowing she was out cold meant he delayed letting anyone know he was awake. No point in confronting their captors until he had her help.
Some men might find themselves intimidated by a strong woman, but Adexios had grown up with one. He had total respect for a female who could stand her ground and protect herself.
Adexios’ mom didn’t need his dad to fight her battles. She could handle herself. But that didn’t mean she didn’t enjoy having a man in her life. It just meant his mom and dad had a relationship that worked on a different level than other couples.
I’d like to see if we could make it as a couple.
But first they needed to get out of this dilemma. He was counting on her to have a plan.
It didn’t take a genius to predict that, when she woke, she’d be peeved. And possibly deranged, given the drug the frogs secreted not only had a sleeping agent but a slightly hallucinogenic one as well. At least that was his theory, given Adexios could have sworn that, when he turned his head back to the side, a blurry squint showed him another cage with someone shoved inside. Not just any someone either if he recognized the trademark green dress. Only some really good drugs could make him think Mother Nature was also a prisoner.
Impossible, of course. As if anything like the frogmen, or anyone for that matter, could ever trap Gaia.
“Adexios, is that you?” the figment of his imagination asked.
Don’t reply.
Only crazy people talked to imaginary prisoners.
However, even if she didn’t exist, not replying seemed so rude. And yeah, he didn’t care if Lucifer didn’t like his obsession with manners. It was a bad habit of his.
“Yes, it’s me,” he slurred. Not completely cleared of the sleeping drug apparently. What a pity they’d stripped him of his bag—and clothes!—before shoving him in the cage. He could have used a caffeinated energy drink right about now.
“Your father is looking for you.”
“He is?” Probably because his mum had threatened something vile if he didn’t. Dad’s parenting skills were in line with the survival of the fittest motto. For example, Charon had tossed Adexios into the Styx when he was a small child in order to force him to learn how to swim and evade sea monsters. “Move your skinny little butt. He’s right on your tail” proved great incentive to kick his feet as fast as he could for the ladder.
Adexios only learned many years later that the beast was in cahoots with his dad and never planned to eat him at all. Such happy memories.
He blinked back to the present, as Gaia started talking again.
“Of course Charon is searching, as is Lucifer, and they’ve even got Neptune helping, too. I was also on that mission until I got caught,” she said with a pout.
As his body worked to expel the drugs, his senses sharpened, as did his eyesight—especially once he realized the lump under his head was his glasses. Adexios squashed them on his nose.
No longer myopic, he peered at Gaia and found himself shocked by her appearance. The Mother Nature he knew was a vibrant woman in her forties. Full-figured, with shining hair, sparkling eyes, clear skin, always impeccably dressed and smelling of flowers.
The woman in the cage alongside him was anything but.
The brown hair hung in dull hanks around a face gray with pallor. Dark rings circled her eyes, and the green gown she wore was stained and wrinkled.
“What happened to you?” he asked, realizing that she was not a hallucination. Someone had actually managed to capture Gaia.
Lucifer won’t be happy.
“I told you, I was caught.” And she sounded quite miffed about it.
“By who?” Who other than Lucifer or another powerful deity had the strength to capture Mother Nature herself?
“It was partially my fault. I wanted to impress the boys, so I accidentally threw myself at Nemo when he attacked our ship.”
“Nemo? As in
the
Captain Nemo? I thought he was just a character in a book.”
“We all did. Wrong,” she said with a buzzer noise. “Apparently he exists, and he’s got a powerful ally aiding him. He came prepared because he had some kind of needle filled with a drug capable of making me pass out.” Her tone relayed her incredulity.
He understood the feeling. “A drug that worked on you? But that’s impossible.”
“That’s what I would have said, too, until it happened. When I woke, I was here, in this cage.” She cast a baleful glare at the bars surrounding her, yet she didn’t touch them. She remained huddled in the center, knees hugged to her chest.
“Can’t you get out?” If anyone had the magic to make shit happen, it was Gaia.
“I’ve tried. But whoever planned this did their homework. They managed to find my weakness.”
“You have a weakness?” Other than Lucifer, who, with his arrogance and cheesy sexual innuendos, had managed to snag the most eligible bachelorette on all the known planes of existence.
“Yes, even I have a weakness. All deities do, even omnipotent ones like myself.”
“What is it?” What could bind Gaia?
Her lip curled. “Humanity’s pollution. The unnatural decay of manmade products, artificially created smog emitted by all those factories and vehicles, and, deadliest of all, radioactive waste. These bars”—she waved a hand at them—“are made of irradiated metal. Just touching them burns me.” She held out her hands, and he winced at the red blisters scoring her palms.
“You can’t use your magic to escape?”
“I am impotent. Unable to draw upon my well of green energy, unable to even heal myself.” How morose she sounded. So defeated.
“Surely Lucifer will come save you?”
She arched a brow. “Lucifer? Really? Have you met the demon? Or heard his views on heroism?”
Adexios blushed. “Yeah. I’ve heard it. So I guess a rescue by him is out of the question. If you don’t mind me backtracking to Captain Nemo, do you have any idea why he wants us as prisoners?”
Gaia shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I haven’t seen Nemo since I woke in this cage, and those frogmen aren’t very talkative. How did you end up here? Last we heard, you were camping in the wilds, except the wilds got flooded, and no one could find you.”
His turn to shrug. “We found ourselves afloat on the new sea. However, someone wasn’t crazy about us being there and called some krakens. During the course of the battle, we got paralyzed, and the next thing we knew, we found ourselves on the shore of an island on the mortal side.”
“So we are on the Earth plane. I wondered about that. These creatures holding us prisoner are unlike anything I’ve ever encountered either on Earth or in Hell.”
“If you’ve never seen them before either, where did they come from?”
“If I were to hazard a guess, wherever this Nemo fellow sprang out of. In other words, another plane.”
Adexios’ mind churned and slid puzzle-like facts together, looking for answers. “Do you think this has to do with whatever came out of that rip a little while back?”
“Probably. There is no such thing as coincidence. Although whoever is moving against us has yet to show their face or announce their intentions.”
“Speaking of intentions, I don’t know about you, but I’m really not keen on sticking around in this cage and seeing what they have planned.”
“You have a plan for escape?” Gaia asked, her eyes lighting with a bit of the green spirit she was known for.
“I do now.”
While he and Gaia spoke, his guise of sleep forgotten, he’d taken stock of their surroundings. The cages holding them prisoner hung from the rocky ceiling of the cavern, over top a watery channel.
While the cave itself proved fairly large, at least two or three dozen feet tall and even longer in length, most of the floor was submerged in water. What wasn’t submerged was a strip of sand where the frogmen converged, talking amongst themselves, ignoring their prisoners.
Adexios already knew there was a passage from the jungle pond to the cave, but given he could spot daylight at the far end of the cave, and the briny scent, it didn’t take a brilliant mind like his to deduce there was a passage leading in from the sea.
Or should he say a front door for a curious sea monster with a crush on a certain ferryman?
A familiar eyeball on a purple stalk rose from the water, unseen by the frogmen huddled on the far shore.
Pressing his face against the bars he held, Adexios whispered, “Hey there, gorgeous.”
“Wh-a-a-a?” slurred Valaska.
The fact that she replied startled him. He peeked over at Valaska and saw her peering at him with one bleary eye.
“About time you woke up,” he teased. “You were about to miss the action as I save your naked ass.”
“Saaaave?” She struggled to her knees, only to stop as both her eyes popped open to glare at her cage. “Are those bars?”
“We were captured by the frogmen.”
Valaska collapsed on the floor of her prison. “Ugh. The shame. The horror.”
While his Amazon lover lamented their fate, while also elucidating the various ways she planned to cook their captors, Adexios concentrated on a certain creature that hovered nearby.
“Hey, pretty eye,” he whispered. “You found me. Such a smart sea monster.”
The orb bobbed and blinked in obvious pleasure.
“I’ll bet you’d like more chocolate.”
Big waggle of the stalk.
“What a shame those nasty froggies took my knapsack with its stash,” Adexios said with a deep sigh. “Why they’re probably eating the last of that yummy chocolate now.”
The eyeball pivoted to glare at the frogmen, who burbled and gurgled, oblivious to everything going on.
“If only I could get my backpack from them, I’d be so grateful.”
Plop.
The giant orb slipped under the water.
“Do you think it will work?” Gaia asked.
Judging by the screams as tentacles whipped from the water and dragged the frogmen to a watery, possibly crunchy, death, “I’d say we’re better off than we were a minute ago.”
In no time at all, the cave was quiet. Even Valaska stopped bitching long enough to peek through her bars and mutter, “I hate to say it, but that sea monster is really starting to grow on me.”
“I wonder how she’d like moving into the Styx. I always wanted a pet,” Adexios muttered as he stroked the moist skin of the eyeball’s stalk. “Given what a good companion you’re turning out to be, we should think of giving you a name, too.”
“I vote for Tentacles-Off-My-Man.” Valaska was back to glaring.
My man?
Adexios hoped they mistook his shiver for one of cold and not pleasure.
“Her name is She-Who-Eats-Exquisitely-Tasty-Screamers,” Gaia supplied. At Adexios’ look, she shrugged. “Before I began dating Lucifer, I might have spent a few decades seeing a certain sea god. I got to know a few different aquatic languages.”
“Hello, Sweets,” Adexios said, having shortened her name to the first letter. “You don’t mind if I call you that, do you?”
An eyelid batted, and Valaska groaned. “Give me a fucking break. Stop flirting with the thing and tell it to get your bag, would you? I hate cages.”