“S
he did not make the journey well,” Simeon said. He had taken Rhiannon to a vast pool chamber at the Pavilion, where she lay in a sumptuous bed heaped with quilts of woven lemongrass and seaweed. “I had no choice,” he went on. “The compound is understaffed now, and I needed the sprites to tend her. She fought me the whole distance and then collapsed as you see her now. They haven’t been able to revive her.”
Gideon’s heart felt like lead in his breast. With Simeon’s help, he’d just made the journey underwater to escape the watchers. It was difficult for a winged creature of the air to surrender to breathing beneath the waves. He could only imagine Rhiannon’s terror in such a situation, considering her fear of deep water. Sinking down on the bed beside her, he gathered her into his arms and rocked her gently.
Across the way, the quiet murmur of ripples lapping in the pool caught his eye, as Pio broke the surface, danced on his tail, and plunged down again, his head bobbing in and out of the water. If ever a fish could be anxious, this fish was anxious now.
“Pio is quite taken with your lady,” Simeon said. “He hasn’t left her side since I brought her here. I had her in my own guest apartments at first where Megaleen could easily spell the sprites tending her, but Pio raised such a ruckus I had to bring here, where he could monitor her progress. I have never seen my summoner so distressed. It was he who brought me, when the demon threatened her in Marius’s pool. Poor Pio, I do not know how we shall all fare when you take her away. He won’t be fit to live with, I fear, for being smitten with the arrows of love.”
Gideon smiled in spite of himself, watching the swordfish’s antics in the pool. “Be sure that he is amply rewarded,” he said. “I am in his debt.” Gazing down at Rhiannon’s still face, his smile dissolved. “Is there nothing to be done to wake her?”
“It is shock. She should rally soon. My healers have been and gone. That isn’t what worries me, Gideon.”
“What, then?”
“I was in hopes that you and your lady could stay here, beneath the waves, but her terror of it is so great, I fear it would not work, my friend. She would have to travel underwater from time to time to reach our different halls and compounds. She would never make it. Fear closes the breathing passages. It cancels the effect my breath in one’s nostrils imposes upon a body to allow them to breathe underwater temporarily. I did it to you just now without ill effect, because you did not fear. Her terror was such that she might have died if the journey had been longer. I’m sorry, my friend.”
“It is just as well,” Gideon said. “I would not bring my trouble upon you. My curse has brought enough catastrophe upon the Arcan Archipelago. The Dark Isle is gone, Vane’s volcano has erupted because of me, Marius has lost his lodge, nearly lost his forest, and we still have no idea what has become of Sy. He went off to make Marius’s rounds and hasn’t been seen since.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the faun. He is a simple sort, and though a lower form, he is immortal. He will wander back in time, or not if he finds greener pastures elsewhere.”
“No matter what, I will not put you to the hazard too,” Gideon said. “It’s here already—at your very doorstep. The watchers are swarming out there. As soon as Rhiannon is able, I will go, but I can never thank you enough for what you’ve done. She would have burned to death in that pool chamber but for you. I shan’t ever forget it, my friend.”
“Thank Pio there, not me,” Simeon said. “Why did you lock her in there in the first place?”
“I knew Ravelle was among us. He was stalking her. I feared she would wander about while I went to Marius’s aid and come to harm—that he might spirit her back to Outer Darkness. My only thought was to keep her safe. I underestimated that demon’s power. I shan’t again.”
“Please the gods you are well rid of him! Where will you go?”
“I am not quite certain. An Otherworldly voice is guiding me. It told me Rhiannon was here with you. I will listen, and decide.”
Marius was about to speak again, when Rhiannon stirred in Gideon’s arms. The Lord of the Deep surged to his feet and gripped Gideon’s shoulder. “I will leave you to your lady,” he said. “Pio will carry any message you have for me. I am only a heartbeat away, old friend. Do not hesitate…”
He left them then, in a blink, though Pio remained, keeping watch from the pool. Gideon brushed the long hair back from Rhiannon’s brow and murmured her name. But her mind was still doing battle with the sea, and she stiffened in his arms, resisting, her tiny fists beating him about the head and shoulders.
Seizing her wrists, he shook her gently. “It is I, Gideon!” he said. “Don’t! You are safe, Rhiannon!”
But she continued to pummel him with her fists. “I begged you not to lock me in that chamber!” she shrilled.
Gideon had no defense. He let her work out her anger until she collapsed sobbing in his arms, her wet face against his breast. She was naked beneath the quilts, and he reached for the warmth of her, for the soft roundness of her breasts, strumming her nipples erect, sliding his hands over her belly and thighs like a man possessed. He could hardly believe he held her, for he truly feared he’d lost her, hardly believe she was responding to his caresses as vehemently as she had pummeled him. It set off a charge of sexual energy that built to a ravenous explosion of unstoppable lust. His need was inexhaustible.
Tossing the quilts aside, he tore off his eel-skin suit and raised her to her feet, pulling her into a steamy embrace of sensual skin-to-skin exploration. He was touching her as if it was for the first time, and the last time, his fingers seeking every orifice, every crevice. It was as if he was trying to memorize every pore in that satiny skin.
Her hands on his body were driving him mad. They flew over his naked skin, riding the sexual stream that flowed between them, making them one in body, mind, and spirit. It was a fiery orgasm of the soul, a throbbing that tugged at the very center of their beings, a riveting battery of little deaths that built until they’d been plunged into a state of carnal oblivion. Then, nothing else mattered but the moment that had run away with their passion, nothing entered their minds, not their surroundings, their issues—their future, hanging by a tenuous thread, for there was no future except in each other’s arms.
The facet of desperation that ignited Gideon’s passion lifted him out of himself. It was as if he were floating above the chamber looking down upon what they were doing to each other. He could see and feel her need, like a palpable aura surrounding her. She was malleable in his hands, and ready for the riveting climax her abandon promised. There was only one way to do such a coupling justice, and that was in the pool, the way they had made love when he took her virginity, the way for him it would always be as if he were taking her virtue for the first time.
Just thinking about it, his wings unfurled halfway. His eyes, dilated with desire, focused upon her face, blushed like the dewy petals of a rose in the rushlight glow. Scooping her up in a tender embrace as though he feared she’d break, he carried her toward the pool, but her posture clenched and she resisted, squirming in his arms.
“No!” she cried. “Not in the water…Gideon, no!”
He shook her gently. “There is nothing to fear,” he said. “We have this brief time together before we make a decision that will change our lives as we know them forever, Rhiannon. I want to love you as I loved you the very first time. There are no demons in this pool…only ghosts of the past—our past. I want to raise those ghosts to chase the other specters that are haunting you.”
“Please,” she sobbed. “I beg you not! I will see that demon in the water until I die!”
“That is why I must,” Gideon argued. “Haven’t you heard me? I will not let Ravelle steal this from us. There will be water where we go, and you
will
make love in it with me, just as you will in the air. These are our pleasures. I’ve been robbed of everything else. I will not let evil rob us of these as well.”
With no more said, he jumped into the fragrant steamy water with her in his arms and set her on her feet. No sooner had he done so then Pio broke the surface, his intent plain as he rubbed his long, iridescent body of shimmering blue scales against Rhiannon’s shoulder, his sword a definite threat to Gideon, who burst into laughter in spite of himself and the inveterate need that cursed him.
“You have made a conquest, my love,” he said, stroking the swordfish’s sleek skin. “Now tell him to go away, because I am about to do things to you that will make that fine blue skin of his blush pink….”
Gripping the globes of her buttocks, he lifted her, guiding her legs around his waist, and opened her nether lips. “Hold on to me, Rhiannon,” he murmured, pushing past her folds one by one, savoring each pleasure moan that marked the petal-like contours of her sex.
The walls of her vagina, swollen with arousal, gripped his penis fiercely, just as her legs gripped his waist. Her terror of the water was like a separate entity then. He could feel it in her clenched muscles, in her runaway heartbeat hammering against his pectorals, and in her sweet breath coming short as it puffed against his skin. This was not an abandon to carnal lust, it was sheer fright, the very thing that needed to be purged.
Determined to gain back what had been lost from their lovemaking, he raised her legs to rest against his chest and eased her back in the water, his hands splayed out underneath her buttocks, supporting her as he took her deeply.
“Relax and float in the water,” he said. “Surrender to me, Rhiannon, like you did that first time in my pool. Open to me and let me make you come….”
It was no idle request, for she had steeled herself so well her vagina had clamped shut so tightly around his penis he was afraid to move for fear of hurting her. She’d become as brittle as glass, and he feared she’d shatter if he moved inside her the way his throbbing member demanded of him.
“Stretch your arms out in the water and let them float on the surface,” he charged. “I have you completely. You will not sink. You must trust me, Rhiannon. There is nothing to fear”—he chuckled—“your little friend here will skewer me through with that deadly sword of his if I fail you.” She did as he bade her, and he began to sway gently inside her, a close eye upon her pubic mound, upon his penis moving in and out of her, for it was low tide and her mons area was at the level of the water. It laved them as he took her, the tiny ripples his ardor created touching just the right spot to drive her mad. But still she resisted, and when he changed his rhythm, she lost what balance she’d gained and her arms flew around his neck, raising her out of the water, causing crystalline droplets to rain down into the pool from her hair and naked skin.
“There is nothing to fear,” he soothed. “Lay back, Rhiannon. You are frightening Pio. He thinks I’m hurting you, and I have no desire to have that sword of his make a eunuch of me.”
It was not said in jest. The summoner had begun to swim around them in frantic circles, his sword coming nearer with each nervous revolution. But for the demands of the curse, Gideon would have been hard put to maintain an erection. Nevertheless, his cock was bursting. Watching it glide in and out of Rhiannon’s sex past the silken pubic curls in slow, spiraling thrusts had him on the brink of climax. But he wanted to prolong the ecstasy until he was absolutely certain she’d lost her fear of the water.
Pio wasn’t making Gideon’s task any easier, and he shot the swordfish a withering look, but the summoner gave as good as he got with a display that brooked no interference. Narrowing his circles, the great fish began slapping and thrashing about in the water, with little regard as to where he flung his tail, which more than once slapped Gideon’s buttocks none too gently.
Gideon had been put on notice—called out by a
fish
. If the situation wasn’t so grave, he would have blurted out a hearty guffaw. As it was, he was not amused, and he gave Pio a scathing mental message to the effect that it had been far too long since he’d had a tasty swordfish steak, which sharply curtailed the summoner’s antics.
That was the charm. When Gideon looked back to Rhiannon again after delivering his warning, she giggled, and dawn broke over his soul.
“Oh, Gideon,” she tittered, “you should see your face!”
He didn’t speak. His massive wings unfurled halfway at the sound of her musical laughter. Gathering her into his arms, he set her on her feet and rushed her against the smooth side of the pool. Tears blurred her image as he crushed her close, murmuring her name as he took her deeply. Groaning himself, he swallowed her pleasure moans as her hips jerked forward, and she reached for him, grinding her sex against him until the tip of his engorged penis nudged her womb.
Lifting her into his arms, he guided her legs around his waist and staggered back from the wall of the pool, his shaft deep inside her. “Don’t be afraid,” he murmured against her hair. “Hold on to me…I want us to come together….”
Before she could answer, he plunged into deeper water with her, his groans echoing in the steamy air, ringing in his ears as the water laved his wings, taking him beyond the point of no return.
Grinding the root of his shaft into her clitoris, he took her and took her as she leaned into his embrace. Her climax was riveting. He could feel the orgasmic contractions rush through her as the walls of her vagina gripped him, milking him, draining him of every drop as the ejaculate rushed out of him. It overflowed her tight sex, swollen from arousal that had made her tighter still, leaving a hot, pearly trail in the water as he came.