Authors: Joss Ware
Everywhere.
Ana’s heart was thudding with anticipation and delight as he caught her eyes again. His eyes crinkled at the corners as if he were trying to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.
The next thing she knew, he was there, next to her, on the bed. His mouth went right to one of her breasts, and he swirled his tongue around her nipple in greedy, slick circles . . . then drew it deeply into his mouth in a long, pounding rhythm that sent matching pulses of pleasure down once again to her core.
Already feeling her body gathering up, ready once again, Ana reached down between them, skimming her fingers along the hard flat belly. His skin shivered just as hers had, and when she closed her fingers around his velvety, hard length, he gave a deep, heartfelt groan. He was heavy and hot and she could fairly feel him pulsing in her hand when she gave a little squeeze. His moan vibrated against her breast, and he lifted his face.
“How about some more of that dipping, sugar?” he suggested with a crooked, tense smile. “Either that, or you’re gonna have a mess on your hands.”
She smiled and would have given him a good, quick stroke if he hadn’t pulled away. “What are you doing?” she asked when he half turned away, reaching for his pants.
He was doing something . . .
there . . .
and his hands were moving in short, sharp jerks . . . and then he turned back. “Now, where were we?”
“What—” she began to ask, but her words were swallowed by his mouth, covering hers in a hot, demanding kiss.
And then all thoughts and questions evaporated as he reached his hand between them. He gave her a quick, sleek stroke that had Ana catching her breath in pleasured shock . . . and then he guided himself just where she wanted him.
“So damned wet,” he murmured into her ear as he settled between her legs, and . . .
“Ah,”
she sighed, lifting her hips awkwardly to meet him, balancing more heavily on her good side.
“Jesus, Ana, you’re dripping for me,” he said, his voice rough and awed in her ear. “Sweet, so sweet, and slick and wet,” he said, and moved inside her . . . long and slow and
sweet
.
Oh God
.
Ana closed her eyes, finding his shoulder and pressing her mouth against its powerful breadth as he moved . . . filling her so deeply, so thickly and rhythmically . . .
He held her close, gathering her up against him as he rocked, easy and slow. And then his breath came faster and harder, his chest hot and damp against hers, their rhythm increasing. Ana pulled away from his shoulder so she could breathe, and she felt that telltale rising of pleasure gathering up, ready to explode once again.
When it happened, she cried out, and then he released a long, pent-up breath . . . and seconds later gave a low groan and one last thrust.
And then he collapsed over her, dragging her on top of him as he flopped aside. His chest was heaving as if he’d been running. She closed her eyes and sagged against him, her mind filled not only with satisfaction . . . but also with erotic, sordid images of their bodies entwined.
She closed her eyes, a smile on her face, and hardly noticed the ache in her leg.
A
bout the time the last bit of satisfaction afterglow slipped away, Fence’s eyes shot open.
Motherfucking
idiot.
Suddenly filled with trepidation, imagining his mother with her death glare, standing next to Saint Peter, he moved gingerly away from Ana. She looked all gold and warm and basking, curled up next to him on top of the blankets. Her hair cascaded into a pile of silky bronze, onto the covers and over her shoulder.
Idiot.
“Hey,” he said, easing her fully onto the bed. He couldn’t help but glance at her long legs, noticing the scars and odd texture of her skin on one of them. She fucking limped when she walked. Her foot was turned awkwardly. Even the way her thigh joined her hip was not quite right.
He broke out in a cold sweat, remembering how he’d fit himself against her, relentless and determined, and pounded away.
Sure, he’d managed to remember the fucking condom—if you could call the thing he was wearing a condom—but he’d forgotten about Ana’s handicap in his fog of lust.
And at the same time . . . Jesus, he was afraid to even ask her about it. She was awfully damn prickly about her leg.
Ana stirred as Fence peeled the condom from his now very limp dick and wadded it up to dispose of. As he slipped from the bed to find a trashcan, he heard a low laugh of surprise.
That was a good sign.
“What’s so funny?” he asked carefully, walking back to join her. She didn’t seem to be in pain. Or to have any residual injuries from his . . . enthusiasm.
You’re a big guy, Bruno Paolo. You don’t know your own strength
, his mama had warned. More than once.
“Oddly enough,” Ana said, stretching lazily and, thank God, removing his mother from the room, “this was the first time I’ve ever done that in a bed.” She arched her back, twisting her torso like a sensual feline as she looked at him.
Of course, he noticed the way her breasts shifted and slid, taunting him with jutting nipples that just begged to be kissed . . . and the smooth curve of her belly and hips . . . and the soft shine from each of her crystals. Holy motherfucker, they were mad sexy, set delicately into her skin the way they were. He noticed, too, though, that she only used one leg and set of toes to help shift her body. The other one didn’t move much at all, and when she finished her stretch, she ended up lying on her side with the injured leg on the bottom. Hidden.
Fence settled next to her. With space between them, so he could keep his head instead of reaching for her and—
Then her words sunk in, superseding his wayward thoughts.
“Really?” he said, wondering suddenly where and with whom she actually
had
had sex. And never in a bed? She certainly didn’t seem inhibited, but until now he hadn’t given it much thought because—as he’d told more than one bed partner—the only thing that mattered was here and now.
. . . Of course, that was usually when his partner wanted to know about
his
history. Which, he’d learned, wasn’t a good thing to get into.
“Yeah,” she said. “And it was also my first time out of water.”
“Are you shitting me?” Did that mean this was her first dry hump?
Heh.
“No,” she said. “It’s a lot warmer and drier outside the ocean.”
Fence couldn’t help it. “I don’t know, sugar, it was pretty crazy wet where I was.” Then before he got too caught up in that image again, he sobered, restraining his wayward thoughts. “Did I hurt you?”
To his unabashed delight, her attention drifted to his dick, which couldn’t help but begin to stir under her regard. “Um . . . no,” she said. “I could push a baby out there . . . I think I can handle
that
.”
His cock twitched again, ready to take her up on it.
“I meant . . . your leg,” he ventured. “I was a little rough, I think. I . . . uh . . . wasn’t really thinking about it.”
“Really? You were thinking about other things?” she asked, her eyes all wide and innocent in that way he’d come to learn was dangerous. “Counting sheep perhaps? Or the stripes on the wallpaper?”
He chuckled. “Well, I can’t deny that I haven’t done that in the past . . . sometimes a guy has to, uh, hold things back for the lady. But,” his voice dropped, “not in this case. Not with you. If I was countin’ anything, sugar, I was countin’ the number of times you groaned and moaned and cried out.”
Even in the faulty light he could see a tinge of pink coloring her cheeks. “Was I loud? I didn’t know . . . we . . . uh, underwater, we can’t make much noise. We don’t really talk.”
He was fascinated in spite of himself. “Don’t be embarrassed, sugar. It’s a compliment to hear you making noise. Then a guy knows he’s doing things your way.”
She laid a hand over the center of his chest, right over the breastbone, and his heart begin to thunder. “I liked hearing you talk to me . . . saying those things,” she said, looking not at him, but at her fingers.
“Is that so?” he asked, leaning into her hand, feeling the entire palm imprint itself on his skin. He ducked his head and found her lips, tasting them gently and slowly, savoring their fullness and warmth. “Well, I got lots more where that came from.”
She smiled against his mouth. “I don’t find that the least bit surprising.”
He eased back, aware that things had already begun to awaken down south, but needing to take care of other business first. “Ana, you have to tell me straight—did I hurt your leg?”
“Not really,” she said, and hot shame rushed through him.
Not really?
Idiot, idiot,
idiot.
She must have noticed his stricken expression, for she explained. “I mean, not any more than any other bump or getting my hair caught, or skin pinched, or whatever. You know, the normal stuff that happens.” She smiled slyly. “Like when I bit you.”
And the shame was gone. Just like that. “You bit me?” He swore his heart stopped beating, then began again with greater force.
Definitely a live one.
“You didn’t notice?” she said, still with that sly smile. Her eyes danced with delight. “Right here.” She traced his shoulder, swirling her finger around in a little circle over a place that might have been a bit more tender than any other part of his body. Except the wood suddenly raging between his legs.
Down boy
.
First things first.
“Okay,” he said, trying to keep focused. “So give me a little guidance here. I want to make sure I don’t hurt you, so I need to know what your limitations are. Okay, Ana?” He held his breath.
The sexy smile eased and a shadow flickered in her eyes. “I know it’s frightening to look at—”
“I don’t think that at—”
“—but it really doesn’t hurt that much,” she finished. “Most of the time.”
He shifted up on one elbow and wished her bad leg wasn’t hidden by the bunched-up blankets so he could show her he didn’t care what it looked like. “How did it happen?”
His dick sagged in disappointment at the change of subject, and Ana’s expression turned just as unenthusiastic.
“I’d rather—”
“Tell me,” he pressed, to the dismay of his hormones.
Chill, easy rider.
“I’ll tell you if you tell me your secret,” she said at last.
His body went cold. “I don’t have any secrets,” he said, wishing he’d have listened to his hormones instead. “What you see is what you get.” Even his signature seductive chuckle didn’t sound right to his ears. His shield was slipping.
“You certainly do,” she replied. “I want to know how you came to be called Fence, and what your parents named you.”
Relief poured through him, but he pretended to think on it. “Well, I suppose I could be convinced to give that up. As long as you make a lot of noise the next time.”
“What makes you think there’s going to be a next time?” she retorted. But that coy smile was back and she’d shifted just enough so her left nipple was hardly a breath away from his bicep. Pretty, rosy, and begging to be kissed.
He could have gone that route—she’d certainly opened the door, and he had this thing about opportunity—but something stopped him. He found he wanted to know more about her than just what made her cry out and groan and sigh.
“Tell me what happened, Ana. I really want to know.”
She shifted, and the next thing he knew she’d flipped the edge of the coverlet and blankets up to cover her bare hips. “My father and I were escaping from the upper city of Atlantis and my leg got caught in one of the gates as it came down.” She said it quickly and simply, as if explaining that the sky was blue.
He couldn’t help a little laugh. “Well, now, sugar, that just creates a lot more questions than it answers. You know that, don’t you?”
She nodded. “I suppose I should start at the beginning.”
“That’s where my mama always started her stories.”
“Your mama sounds like a smart woman.”
His eyes stung suddenly and his throat felt raw. “She was.”
Ana looked at him searchingly. “I loved my mother too. She was an Atlantean, as you know, and she married my father against the wishes of her parents and the Atlantean Guild.”
“The Atlantean Guild is . . . ?”
“The governing body of Atlantis and the Atlanteans. They didn’t want the genetic pool or bloodline sullied by mere mortal blood. They feel they’re much superior in many ways to those who live on land. But Mamya and Dad met once when he was fishing—he loved the ocean too—and his boat capsized. She saved him, dragged him onshore, and . . . What?”
“That sounds like a Disney movie. Did your mom have red hair and purple seashells over her—”
Ana laughed, and he felt the whole damn world shift . . . or something. Her eyes lit up, her face beamed, her beautiful mouth curved with mirth, her head tipped back so her hair tumbled down in a tawny-colored fall.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.
“No, my mother wasn’t Ariel,” she said. “But I have to be honest, once Dad and I got away from Atlantis and settled on land, while I was recovering from my accident, I watched that DVD way too many times. It made me feel a little better, thinking of my parents loving each other enough to brave their respective worlds in order to be together.”
“She got sick?”
“Yes. We knew she wasn’t going to make it . . . her crystals were starting to flicker and fade. And when that happens . . .” Ana shrugged, but he could see the grief in her eyes. “Dad—he’s really an amazing scientist—tried to find a way to reanimate her crystals, to wake them up and get them working again.”
“Yours don’t glow all the time,” Fence said suddenly. “Does that mean—” He stopped, aware that his whole body had just gone cold.
But Ana shook her head. “Mine, you know, mine are different . . . so they don’t always glow like those of a pure Atlantean because of that. Anyway, my dad did a lot of experiments with other crystals, trying to figure out what the secret was to their energy . . . their life. But in the end he couldn’t save her. Mamya’s crystals died, and so did she.”
“I’m sorry, sugar. I can’t imagine what it was like, losing your mama at that age. It’s terrible at any time, but at thirteen . . . just becoming a woman . . .” He felt grief swelling up inside him again. He’d been thirty when he lost his mother—and everyone else in his life. He loved his whole family, and Lenny too . . . but it was her loss that he felt the most.
“I really miss her. We were very close. And . . . Mamya was different from the others. She didn’t really fit with them—maybe it was because she loved my dad, who wasn’t an Atlantean. She didn’t share the same prejudices that her people did, probably because she’d gotten to know a normal human. Or maybe that’s why she was able to love my dad—because she didn’t have the prejudice. Most Atlanteans have a sort of condescension toward land-livers—because they can’t exist in the water the way the Atlanteans can. But in reality, it’s the Atlanteans who are restricted, who are, in some ways, weaker than people like you. They’re tethered to their watery world and can’t leave the ocean for more than a few hours at a time. I think . . . I really think that the reason the Atlanteans hate land-livers is because they envy them their freedom. And I suspect there might even be a deep-rooted fear too. There aren’t that many Atlanteans either. Only a few thousand. And I think they’re afraid that if the humans find out about them, they’ll destroy them.”
“Just like the Atlanteans did to the land-livers?” Fence said grimly.
Ana’s expression tightened. “It was beyond reprehensible what they did to the world. I remember hearing the stories when I was younger . . . but they were told as if it were a heroic thing, raising the new city up from the ocean. They didn’t tell us about the mass destruction that happened here, or the hoards of people who were killed.”
“Selective history,” Fence murmured, thinking of the way the colonization of North America had been taught in schools, often glossing over the resulting genocide of Native Americans. “Happens all the time.”
Ana continued, “But Mamya knew . . . and she and Dad made sure I understood the truth. That’s why . . . that’s one of the reasons Dad and I didn’t want to stay after she died, and be a part of them. I’d like to forget that aspect of my history. But Mamya and Dad had to live in Atlantis because of her crystals and being tied to the water and its power—even though I think they would have rather not. Though she’d been raised to think and believe that land-livers were lesser beings, crude and simple compared to the Atlanteans, I know my mother realized otherwise.”
“You said you had to escape. You had to break out of Atlantis?”
“Yes. Rather convenient how they changed their mind about Mamya and Dad’s marriage once I came along. You see, I was the only living child of an Atlantean and a regular human—and possibly the only one ever . . . although I think there were two other biracial couples when I left. The Guild wanted to keep me there for obvious reasons—to keep their existence secret, but also to see how I grew up and lived. Dad implanted the crystals in me when I was just a baby.”
“I couldn’t help but notice that your decorations are a lot less gaudy and overdone than your friend who washed up on the beach. He had enough crystals to rival Elvis Presley.” He wondered fleetingly if she even understood the reference.