Gideon scowled. He knew the exquisite creature well. Many a time he’d dodged the watcher’s lightning bolts attempting to submerge himself in her willing flesh. Her flowing gown of spun spider silk with jewels of dew was fashioned with a sprinkling of tiny leaves that hid none of her charms. Her long chestnut hair was likewise decorated. Her skin, as white as marble with a greenish tinge, showed through the spider’s creation, as did her tawny upturned nipples, inviting his touch. Instead, he balled his hands into white-knuckled fists, his hooded eyes spitting fire.
“You know better than to touch my wings, Vina,” he said.
“Ahhh, but I love to watch that magnificence rise,” she crooned, sidling closer, meanwhile giving his bulging cock a cursory nod.
“Do not waste your pains,” Gideon returned. “You above all should know the futility of that. Don’t you remember what happened the last time?”
The nymph nodded. “I’m worth a try,” she purred, sidling close.
“Do
not
touch my wings!” he warned her. “I’m beginning to believe you are in league with the damnable watchers!” It might not be a bad idea to take his pleasure in the wood nymph. In all the years, he’d only had her once, and she was a skilled lover. If he did, he might just sate himself enough to keep from ravishing Rhiannon, which somehow seemed paramount. He almost laughed. He must be going mad. The sexual stream that flowed through him was always at high tide. It wouldn’t matter who he penetrated or how many. His cock was ever hard and at the ready, thanks be to the gods who had decreed his fate.
That thought was scarcely out when he realized he was surrounded. Wood nymphs converged upon him from all directions, backing him against a tall oak tree, whose branches tethered him while they fondled and caressed him. That was most excruciating of all, for the branches were rough and unyielding against his tender feathers, and his arousal was acute.
Vina opened the front of his eel skin and freed his cock. One wood nymph would have been torment enough. He counted six, two wearing spider silk, one draped in silkworms’ gauze, the others naked, or nearly so. Twelve hands were upon him, stroking penis, nipples, wings, and testes, massaging his corded thighs and ridged middle.
Gideon groaned and steeled himself against the watchers’ missiles. It didn’t matter what the wood nymphs did to him. The damnable harpies of the gods would make an end to pleasure before it began.
When the trees’ leafy branches formed a canopy overhead, Gideon laughed. “Just what good do you suppose that will do?” he said. “Just yesterday the Ancient Ones tried that. The minute I flew aloft, the watcher hurled his thunderbolt.”
“We will make it worth the price of thunderbolts,” Vina murmured, inching up the skirt of her garment.
“I did not make the rules,” Gideon said.
“And we need not abide by them,” the nymph countered.
“It matters not that I would not be enduring this if it wasn’t for the curse?” he asked her.
Vina shrugged. “We are wood nymphs, Lord of the Dark. We take our pleasures where we may, especially when they are a gift of the gods…and so generously endowed.”
“Then take, and have done!” Gideon snarled. “This is not a social visit.”
“Yesss,” she hissed. “I will take it, and when I’ve done, thanks to the curse, there will be plenty left over for my sisters.”
They covered him then, like a living quilt, lifting Vina up within his reach, until she was able to take him inside her. Gideon groaned. It was beyond his control, so many hands exploring him, so many dainty fingers playing with his skin, with his sex and his senses. Tethered as he was by the great oak’s branches, the last thing he needed then was to tear his wings. He had to get back to Rhiannon, and as traitorous as the appendages were, he needed them to fly. Besides, to move a hairsbreadth then would have brought him to climax before she’d had her fill. The only thing deterring it thus far was the pain.
As if they’d read his mind, the nymphs began stroking his wings as well. It was beyond bearing. Gideon seized Vina’s buttocks and took her deeply. She was a skilled lover, as were all the nymphs. Their prowess was legend, and few could resist it. The climax was swift and riveting, but the others were not to have their turn. The twang of a bowstring and the rush of displaced air stopped the orgy, as an arrow sliced through the foliage and struck the tree, tethering Gideon.
The thunderous racket of heavy horse’s hooves shook the forest floor as Marius pranced through the trees. He had reloaded his longbow and held it at the ready. At sight of him, the squealing wood nymphs fled deep into the forest.
“That’s right, run, my beauties!” the centaur shouted after them. “As well you ought! You overstep your bounds!” He pranced close and yanked his arrow out of the oak tree. “And you!” he thundered at the tree. “Stop your puling! Your bark is thick enough to bear my arrow without harm. You have forgotten who rules here, I think. I shall deal with you later. High time your branches were pruned.”
Gideon ordered himself and strode away from the tree. “Do not fault him,” he said. “The wood nymphs are quite irresistible, and ’tis my fault in any case. If I hadn’t stopped to pay homage—”
“He tethered you while you were paying homage?” Marius interrupted him. He turned to the tree. “Mica’s toenails! I ought to cut you down!” he seethed.
Gideon had rarely seen his friend and fellow guardian in a rage. Marius, Lord of the Forest, was rarely in a good humor at the dark of the moon, when he took the form of the centaur, but this was different. Marius’s eyes were glowing iridescent green. This was not a good sign. Even the magpie, always close enough to the forest lord to qualify as his familiar, kept his distance, opting for an upper branch in a nearby pine instead of its customary perch on the centaur’s back.
“Leave him,” Gideon said, gesturing toward the chastised tree. “No harm has been done. I cannot stay. We need to talk.”
“Come,” Marius said, leading him out of the wood toward a little clearing, where his lodge stood at the edge of the forest.
No sooner had they cleared the shelter of the trees than the watcher’s lightning bolt seared down pitching Gideon over in the meadow. Stunned, the dark lord righted himself and raised his fist toward the hovering creature.
“I will not be held responsible for being
ambushed
!” he railed.
Muttering a string of blasphemies, Marius raised his longbow, taking dead aim upon the watcher who had struck Gideon down, for there were more than one aloft.
Staggering to his feet, Gideon arrested Marius’s arm, but Marius shook himself free. “Eeee
nough
!” he trumpeted, letting loose the arrow. It hit its mark, for Marius rarely missed his target, and Gideon groaned. What would be the punishment for
this
?
The watcher the centaur shot shrieked, then spiraled off, his companions with him. “They have no jurisdiction here!” Marius shouted, loud enough for the watchers to hear. “This is
my
isle, and I will have no truck with harpy watchers of the gods! My quiver is full—moon dark or no. They come here again, and they will all carry my arrows back to Mica in their bony arses!”
“There will be reprisals,” Gideon said dourly. “I’m sorry, my friend.”
“Reprisals?” Marius seethed. “You have not begun to see reprisals! When a man cannot have guests to his home without them being set upon by sex-obsessed wood nymphs, it is time for reprisals!” He brandished his longbow, shaking it toward the sky in a white-knuckled fist. “He who seeks refuge here has sanctuary!” he thundered. “I, too, have the favor of powerful gods. Zaar, god of land masses, protects this isle.”
“And I have brought discord down upon it,” Gideon regretted. “Let me state my business and be away before those damnable creatures return. Something is amiss. They rarely come in pairs or larger numbers. I counted three. Something untoward is happening here; I feel it.”
Marius nodded, waiting.
“A female washed up on my shore in the storm,” Gideon began. “She cannot stay on the Dark Isle, but she is in danger from one of the crewmen on her ship. From her description, I believe it to be the very one we brought up from your beach. I would have a word with him.”
“He is gone,” Marius said. “He left on the supply ferry from the mainland at dawn.”
“Did he tell you his name?”
“He called himself Rolf.”
“Mica’s beard!”
“He’s the one?” Marius queried. “If I’d known…”
“Did he say where he was going…anything at all?”
Marius shook his head. “He wanted to know if anyone else had come ashore. When he learned that no one had, he became anxious to leave. I did not see him go myself. While bringing the supplies up from the beach, Sy, my faun, watched him board the ferry.”
Gideon unfurled his wings. “I have to go,” he said. “Rhiannon must leave the Dark Isle, and my conscience will not let me turn her out if she is not safe.”
“‘Rhiannon’…she is named for a powerful goddess of lore. Is she like?”
“How would I know? I do not follow the legends of Otherworldly deities. She is too tempting, and I could hardly keep her hidden in that cave, though, Mica forgive me, if I asked her to, she would stay.”
“So keep her!” Marius trumpeted.
“That is easier said than done, old friend,” said Gideon. Marius was accustomed to taking what he wanted, and keeping what he’d taken. The Lord of the Forest would not understand conscience. He was Lord of Fertility, a creature of the land and all its bounty, ruler of the wood nymphs, guardian of the Ancient Ones, and he had control of his urges. He had no watchers monitoring his every move. He was ruler of his domain. “It is only a matter of time before the watchers discover her,” Gideon went on. “This one is different, Marius. I have not felt thus since I fell into darkness. The gods have also cursed me with a conscience. It is best that she go now, before the attachment becomes something…more, something I could not bear to lose.”
“Women! Curse of the gods!”
Gideon smiled. “You only say that because you have not found your soul mate,” he said.
“Perhaps so,” the centaur conceded, “but I know one thing, my horny friend, if I ever do, I will not let her go for any price, least of all
conscience.
”
R
hiannon had bathed all traces of her outing away. She had folded the mulberry homespun kirtle neatly and placed it on a curved bench in her appointed chamber. It had grown late, and Gideon hadn’t returned. She saw no reason to sleep in the fine kirtle with so many other garments at her disposal. She chose instead a gossamer gauze night shift she’d unearthed from the wardrobe, so fine it looked as if silkworms had spun it, and crawled beneath the feather comforters on the fine raised bed.
It wasn’t long before she drifted off to sleep. At first, it was deep and untroubled, but it wasn’t long before her guilt at having disobeyed Gideon’s condition bled into her slumber, bringing dreams. They were fearsome, frightening visions. Oddly, she could not make out what was happening in them, only the nagging splinter of ill boding and unease that always comes with guilt. That it had bled into her dreams was telling.
Rush lights in their hanging lanterns were suspended from chains beside the bed. She hadn’t extinguished them. The flickering, fat-soaked rushes gave off a glow that colored the darkness behind her closed eyes a rich golden hue. It was comforting somehow, until a shadow fell across her dulling the warmth to dusk.
Rhiannon’s eyes snapped open to Gideon standing over her and gazing down, his wings half unfurled. How handsome he was in the soft golden light, with it playing upon his silver-white feathers and slick eel skin. It picked out warmer lights in the dark hair combed by the wind, waving about his broad brow and earlobes.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said. “I see you’ve bathed again….”
Rhiannon stretched like a cat and sat upright. There was nothing in his demeanor that suggested anger, though she took no comfort in it. Her enigmatic host was as changeable as the wind, and could, no doubt, be just as deadly. She would not draw an easy breath until she’d observed him longer. He was aroused, but that had never prompted anger. He was always aroused.
“What hour is it?” she asked him.
“Nearly dusk,” he said. “I’ve prepared us some food in my chamber. As I’ve said, I do not entertain here, and my own rooms are more…comfortable for me. Will you join me?”
Rhiannon climbed out of the bed and reached for her kirtle, meaning to slip it on over what she was wearing, since the gauze shift was as thin as a moonbeam.
His quick hand arrested her. “Leave it,” he said. “That frock will neither spare you nor deter me. I already know what lies beneath.” Rhiannon hesitated. “Come,” he urged. “We need to talk.”
Rhiannon’s heart was thumping in her breast. Could he see it moving the gossamer gauze that barely covered her charms? He must be able. The shift was trembling visibly, and his eyes were feasting upon her upturned breasts and tawny nipples straining against the gauze.
She feared the lecture to come. Was it a good sign that he hadn’t come charging into her chamber roaring like a lion because he’d caught her out? Or did he have some other punishment in mind? She couldn’t tell by looking at him. His dark, silvery eyes were hooded with desire gazing down at her, and arousal had heightened his male essence. It ghosted all around her in the close confines of the cave. She could feel—almost see—his body heat rippling through the air around her, and in the guiding pressure of his massive hand against the small of her back as they turned the corner that led to his chamber.
Yes. Her suppositions were correct. She recognized the room at once, with its strangely carved alcove. Now she could see how well it was designed to accommodate his massive wings. And then there was the elevated chair, like the one in the anteroom next to the pool chamber. These things almost didn’t need an explanation now, though she would ask him just the same.
He had dressed a table with an exquisite cloth of linen embroidered in white work, and set it with fine china and silver. The fare was hearty, but simple, consisting of a marvelously fragrant soup, poached fish, and cucumber chutney, and an aromatic green vegetable unfamiliar to her that resembled seaweed. There was also a bowl of roasted beach plums and a crock of honey mead that had a sweet nutty flavor. He motioned her to sit, then served them both and took his own seat in the elevated chair, setting his plate upon a tall pedestal table beside it.
“Forgive my distance,” he said. “My wings make sitting in an ordinary chair most uncomfortable—impossible, really, without cramping.”
Rhiannon tasted the fish. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was until her taste buds reacted to the delicious food, and a soft moan escaped her lips.
Gideon smiled. “Simeon, Lord of the Deep, keeps me well supplied with fish,” he said around a mouthful.
Rhiannon ate in silence, wishing he would get to the lecture and have done. She was uneasy, not knowing how to handle the situation. Each moment that passed was a lost opportunity for her to confess what she had done and would count against her when he got around to the real reason for their little talk here in his sleeping chamber.
She nodded toward the hollowed-out niche in the rocky wall. “This is where you sleep?” she asked.
He nodded. “Considering their…sensitivity, I cannot lie upon my back, and I can only lie face down for very short intervals. The weight of the wings would smother me otherwise, not to mention the weight they would impose upon my body. The alcove was a viable solution. The one I had in my keep was much grander, but this one suffices quite well. I have been sleeping thus since my ‘fall,’ as it were.”
“And how did you sleep before you fell from grace?” Rhiannon asked.
He smiled sadly. “You put it so…diplomatically,” he said. “I was flung out of the Paradise of the gods, exiled to the Arcan Archipelago, and given this slag heap of desolation and death to tend for all eternity. My wings used to retract when I did not have need of them, sometimes partially and sometimes completely. Then, I was like any other man in the eyes of others. It was this gift that allowed me to walk among humans as one of them on occasion. On one of these outings, I met a human woman. We fell in love. This is my punishment.”
“These clothes I’m wearing, and the rest, they were hers?”
“No,” he said. “The clothing—everything you see here, furniture, carpet, even the plate you eat from—were washed ashore after storms not unlike the one that has just passed. It is so with all the isles.”
Rhiannon hesitated. He had become thoughtful suddenly. She was reluctant to probe him deeper, but she might not get another opportunity. After a moment, she spoke on an audible breath.
“How is it that you are not with her?” she finally asked him.
“If we had wed, I would have been cast out and become mortal as she was. I would have lived with her and died when my time came just as all mortals die. I would no longer be…immortal, as I am now.”
“What happened?”
“She died,” he said. “You mortals are fragile…susceptible to all manner of disease that we are not. A fever took her, and the gods punished me for erring, with immortality and a constant state of arousal that rarely reaches climax without emptiness and pain. They took away all privileges of my wings and made them a constant reminder of my error, and a perpetual torture, for the slightest touch wreaks havoc in my loins….”
There was more, Rhiannon was certain, but she did not probe him further. It was clearly a subject that pained him, and she was anxious to get to the real issue of this invitation.
“You said we needed to talk,” she said warily, glad that she still had food on her plate to focus upon. Fearing the lecture, she did not want to make eye contact with him.
He clouded suddenly. “I was not altogether honest with you earlier,” he said.
What was this? She stared at him, her fork suspended.
“During the storm, I helped Marius, Lord of the Green, save a seaman who had washed up upon his Forest Isle. When you spoke of the crewman Rolf, he fit the description of that seaman. I wanted to be certain before discussing it further with you, so I went there straightaway this morning….”
So that was why he didn’t want her to leave the cave, in case Rolf should find her in his absence. “So that is why you—”
“Let me finish,” he interrupted her. “I was right. It was Rolf, but I was too late. He had left the Forest Isle on the morning ferry. I was…detained there a while, and when I reached the mainland, the ferryman had already gone out again. I wasn’t able to find your crewman anywhere in the immediate area. The ferry will not arrive here again for a sennight. I will go again in the morning and speak with the ferryman before he makes his rounds. If it is safe, I will take you to the mainland, or wherever you wish to go. If it is not, I will see you to somewhere that you will be safe until I can sort this out. You cannot stay here, Rhiannon. It is not safe for either of us if you do.”
“But why?” she persisted. “Who is to know? I don’t understand.” This was not at all what she expected. Could it be that he didn’t see her outside earlier after all? Had she been steeled against a lecture that wasn’t coming? If so, she would have rather had a lecture than
this.
An ache had started inside at the mere thought of leaving him. By the look on his face, he felt it too. There was a mutual attraction between them that went beyond mere lust; there had been from the start. Was he trying to deny it?
“You do not need to know why,” he said. “You do not have to understand. You just need to do as I ask…for both our sakes.”
Exasperating female wouldn’t let it go. Suppose she was right. Suppose they both could live together on the isle. Suppose the watchers couldn’t reach him in the cave. They had never done it before, but he had never hidden a woman there before either. It would require a test.
He climbed down from the elevated chair, and returned his empty plate to the table. Rhiannon had finished eating also, and Gideon took a succulent roasted plum from the bowl and raised it to her lips.
“Taste,” he said. “I have removed the pits.”
He watched Rhiannon’s sensuous lips close around the skin of the plum and suck out some of the pulp. Raising what remained to his mouth, he finished it, licking the sticky juice from his fingers. Some traces remained on Rhiannon’s lips, and he wiped them away with his fingers and licked them clean.
“More?” he said, taking another plum from the bowl.
Rhiannon nodded, and he offered a second plum. Juice squirted out, when she bit into the shiny black skin of the fruit and began sucking on the translucent pulp inside. In one swift motion, he raised her to her feet, seized her in his arms, and covered her mouth with his own, sucking the sweet juice from her lips, drawing them into his mouth. Pulling back, he gazed deep into her eyes; they were glazed with arousal.
“You know what will happen if you stay,” he murmured.
Rhiannon nodded. “I don’t want to go. I don’t know where to go. I don’t want to leave here…to leave you.”
Gideon stared. “You see the life I must lead. You cannot hope to remain here indefinitely. There are dangers…”
“So you keep saying,” she said as his words trailed off. “But you won’t tell me what dangers, Gideon.”
“I am not permitted a…consort. It is not allowed,” he said. Now was not the moment to tell all and have her run screaming from the cave before he’d had a chance to test his theory. What had already happened between them was no criteria. The gods always let him suffer—for that is what it was—foreplay before meting out their justice. If he could have actual sex with her here without a lightning strike from the watchers, there might just be hope. It was consensual, that was obvious from the start, and he had told her the truth…just not the truth entire. “There will be reprisals that may extend to you,” he said.
“What kind of ‘reprisals’”?” she asked him. Would she never leave things lie?
“The gods do not like being disobeyed, Rhiannon. Look what they’ve done to me already! Their retribution is far reaching. I would hate to have their wrath visited upon you over a moment’s pleasure. I never should have taken advantage of you in that pool. I meant what happened to warn you away. It would be best if you go.”
“You didn’t take advantage of me, Gideon. I believe the gods led me here apurpose. And what if they didn’t? It isn’t as if they will strike us dead.”
Gideon’s breath caught at that. She was so beautiful. Why did she have to gaze at him like that? If the test worked, could he keep her? It wasn’t as though anyone knew she was there. No one but Marius knew, and the Lord of the Forest would never betray him.
Scooping her up in his arms, he strode out of the chamber and down the corridor. “Trust me,” he said. “There will be less pain in the water…”
He set her down on the edge of the pool and stripped off his eel skin, while she discarded the night shift. How golden she was in the nimbus of torchlight flickering over the chamber. He stood transfixed watching her dive into the misty water, watching her surface, rivulets running over her body, over her firm, up-tilted breasts and tawny nipples, over her narrow waist and belly before she disappeared beneath the surface again.
Gideon laid a lemongrass towel at the edge of the pool, then sliding into the water, he reached her in seconds and seized her much as he had the first time, skin to naked skin. She was like silk in his arms as he molded her to the contours of his body, his hard cock leaning heavily against her belly. The touch of her tiny hands caressing his body was sheer ecstasy without the feel of them caressing his wings, for she avoided them.