Prince of Passion (15 page)

The diver’s eyes rounded with terror. “Saya, I deleted the messages when I couldn’t decode them.” His words were growing garbled as the neurotoxin paralyzed his throat and tongue. “I’m sorry!”

Rynn flicked her fingers, and droplets of toxin spattered his face. “Hopefully we will do a better job than you.” She stepped back to let the physician in and directed security to search his tech again and pull up whatever ghosts they might find.

If only washing her hands could erase the guilt swamping her since it wasn’t having any effect on the tetrodotoxin.

What was wrong with her? She had sacrificed before—and killed too—to keep her place, to keep her world strong. Why now did the poison seem to spread more quickly within than without?

She cursed as she left the detention cell and strode out to the nearest deck. A handful of visitors had braved the first gusts of the storm and stood in the salty spray, marveling at the towering shapes of the clouds. She edged past them, careful to stay downwind so as not to fleck them with any stray drops of neurotoxin.

Diving for the choppy waves, she heard them exclaim, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care what they thought. The deck monitors would identify her and security would not worry they had a woman overboard.

Through the lavender churn she sank until the light faded to indigo. Her genetically altered eyes focused the scant illumination, but what remained was little more than a ghostly afterimage as her electroreception superimposed itself over her vision. Sensing the arrival of a predator, a school of tiny mackerelings sped away, their wakes a silvery-shivery wash to her eyes and skin. She chased after them a moment, letting the rush of water flow over and around her.

Farther away, she saw-felt the malac in their field, rousing as the storm quickened. A female’s shell parted, and a sparkling mushroom cloud plumed up from the fluted lips. Rynn paused, dazzled by the display. The first hint of liqueur tingled on her gill tissues, and she quickly back-paddled.

The last thing she needed was a dose of aphrodisiac.

At least the impromptu bath had calmed the tetrodotoxin. When she exhaled a long stream of bubbles, the glassy-looking spheres seemed cheerful and strangely innocent. A lie; if not for the monstrosity of her twisted genes, she would have just breathed her last.

But of course, she was a monster, so she took another breath and angled back toward the barge.

The slap of waves had gotten stronger when she popped to the surface. She dove again until she was closer to the private deck outside her suite then reached for the step to pull herself out.

A strong grip wrapped around her wrist and lifted her in one motion.

She flailed as she came to her feet. “Don’t touch me!”

Icere waited until she had steadied before he stepped back. “I saw you come up and then disappear. I thought you might be running away from me.”

She scowled. “I wasn’t running.”

His lips quirked. “Swimming away, then.”

“I didn’t see you.” Not an admission either way, she realized. “I thought I told you to stay in your suite.”

“And I said no, remember?” He lifted a towel from a deck chair and started toward her, opening the towel to enfold her.

She held out one hand, webbed fingers spread. “Don’t.”

What would he bring out in her: the neurotoxin or the aphrodisiac? She couldn’t handle more of either, not now. Even one faint shudder—pleasure or pain—would tear her apart and reveal the weakness, the need, the longing, inside her shell.

He studied her a moment then tossed the towel over her outstretched hand. “Ky said they think they’ll be able to pull some of Omel’s communications off the deleted messages you discovered.”

Which meant her daughter had also told him what Rynn had done to get that information. She directed her gaze toward the horizon as she wrapped the towel around herself and squeezed water from her hair. “I received your confirmation from the
Asphodel
. They’ll reach us at the peak of the storm hours. Will they risk making planetfall?”

He stepped to the edge of the deck, into her peripheral vision, and nodded once. “The captain isn’t a fool, but considering what we have to lose, he’ll take whatever chances necessary.”

“You must have learned that from him.”

He turned to face her. “What?”

“Taking chances. L’auraly are too premeditated to teach that.”

He crossed his arms. “Why do I think you are insulting me?”

She twisted her hair into a tight knot at her nape, using the motion to face away from him, avoiding his gaze though the tiny decorative shells in her hair tinkled against one another nervously. “Well, you do think a lot. But I suppose that’s fair, since it’s gotten you this far.”

“Are you saying I should do less thinking and more feeling?”

A shiver went down her spine, though she couldn’t blame the balmy wind. He was using that l’auralyo tone with her: deep and rumbling. “I’m not saying anything.”

“Good. Because this conversation is done.”

She should have known better than to turn her back on him. He spun her by the elbow directly into his arms, and his mouth came down on hers with fierce directness.

She opened to him and tangled her tongue with his. She shouldn’t have, but his chest—bared by the open V of his tunic—was so warm under her hands, and his thighs pressed to hers in a blatant reminder of what less talking and more feeling could give her. Her knees weakened so she swayed into him. The nudge of his heavy cock roused an answering wetness at her core. If he reached down he would find her ready, wanting…

But she’d already taken enough from him. She was the one who should know better.

She wrenched away though the pain of letting him go made her moan. “Don’t,” she gasped. “The toxin is still in my skin.”

“Then it’s just as well I learned from a mercenary sheership captain how to take risks.” He reached for her again.

She stumbled back a step. “Icere. We can’t do this.”

“We already did.”

And an ocean of neurotoxin wouldn’t let her forget it. “Your friends are on their way, and we have a universe to save.”

“You’d be surprised how often that comes up.”

“Not for me.”

“Get used to it.”

“I don’t want to.” She took a breath. “I don’t want this.”

That stopped him. His eyes churned with more ferocity than anything the storms outside could imagine. “You wanted it before.”

“That was one night, on a deserted tropical island, who wouldn’t have?”

“I meant you wanted me to kiss you just now.”

Oh, she
had
wanted, and she felt it still in the swollen heat of her lips. She swallowed, trying to clear her throat for the denial she had to voice. “A passing fancy.”

He lifted one brow. “The last l’auralyo was a passing fancy?”

The haughty disbelief in his voice might have made her laugh, except for the underlying note of despair. But his friends were coming to retrieve him, and she would be a besotted fool to think she, in this backwater world, had any real hold over him.

She tightened her hands into fists until the tender, abused webbing protested the strain. “I had my taste.”

As soon as she said
taste
, she knew she was doomed.

He licked his lips. Her gaze fastened on his mouth. And before the next heartbeat, they were locked in a mad embrace.

He stripped the towel from her and her shift as well, and the fabric fell with a soggy thud. She yanked the tunic down to his elbows to splay her hands over his shoulders. Her skin tingled, not from toxin or liqueur or the wild violet spray flying off the tops of the waves, but from the reckless thrill of his nearness.

Shrugging out of the confining material, he growled against her mouth, “Is this the taste you wanted?”

Salt. Hot flesh. Angry male. Her senses swam in him, diving deeper.

They tumbled back onto one of the deck chairs, only the forgiving yield of the woven straps breaking their fall. She landed on top, straddling him, and realized as he bucked his hips that he’d managed to shed the loose shorts he’d worn with the tunic.

She gasped at the thrust of his rampant cock against her sex. Already slicked with sea-spray and her own juices, he slid inside her. What had happened to her virginal l’auralyo?

With the first lunge, he found the sweet spot inside her, and she arched her back in shock as a climax pierced her, seeming to impale her from cunt to heart to throat as his name spilled from her lips.

But he did not let her down yet. He moved again, provoking the need inside her to ever-higher level, as the triple moons incited the tides. When she would have collapsed on his chest he braced his hands on her shoulders, holding her aloft while his facile tongue wrought havoc on her distended nipples.

The craving for him ricocheted through her with each suckling pull until she clutched at his arms, her senses reeling, her soul flying, like the lust-maddened malac launched itself from the waves.

Eventually she would crash. It was inevitable. But until then… Oh, until then she would soar!

With deft acrobatics, he spun on the deck chair and rolled so that she was under him. Instead of finally letting her world descend, he drove her higher. Each thrust of his hips caressed her swollen tissues with delicious friction until she threw her head back and cried out.

He set his teeth at the pulse in the side of her throat, the unrelenting bite of a mate claiming. She felt her blood pound against his mouth, and she came for the third time, convulsing around him. She threw her arms around him, her mouth and fluttering gills gasping and awash in the musky scent of him as the skies opened above him.

Rain poured down her throat and she swallowed, letting its salt-tinged warmth fill her as he soon would. Soon…

She cracked one dazed eye to stare up at him.

He looked down, his face set in brutal lines as he held himself back. The lines of qva’avaq raged in his skin, the pulses of silver magnified by the crystalline rain.

He drew back infinitesimally, and she tightened in preparation for his plunge.

But he withdrew another breath.

“Come back,” she murmured.

“For yet another taste?” He slipped out of her arms and then from her body.

The luscious suction made her arch again and reach for him, but he evaded her touch.

She levered up onto one elbow to stare at him. “Icere?”

He stood, his cock pointing her way like an accusation, hard as stone. “I would not want to overstay my welcome.”

The yearning ache deep inside made her voice crack. “What are you talking about?”

“Perhaps I misunderstood. You seemed done with me.”

She fixed her incensed glare on his engorged flesh. “You do not seem done at all.”

“But it is not about me. A l’auralyo has no desires of his own.”

She surged upright. “Obviously that’s a lie.”

“What, this?” He touched himself. “Another passing fancy.”

When his fingers wrapped around his shaft, a jolt went through her like the thrash of the storm all around them. Her gaze locked on his wrist. “What is that? What are you wearing?”

“Nothing.” He straightened, every muscle in his gorgeously naked body flexing. “Only my key crystal.”

A thrill of panic went through her. Why would he flaunt his key for all the world to see? The crystalline chain resonated with the qva’avaq threaded through him; whoever held it would essentially hold a piece of him. “You can’t have that on you. It makes you too tempting a target.”

He looked down at her, water beading on the hard edge of his clenched jaw. “Not so tempting apparently.”

She shook her head, but she couldn’t seem to look away from the crystal that shone through the rain, undimmed. “You said your sister had decided the rest of you wouldn’t have your key crystals. I thought your key was on the
Asphodel
.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t have it on me. I said we decided we couldn’t bid them out because it was too risky.” He shrugged. “I suppose I am not the risk-taker you thought.”

The shine mesmerized her. “You have to hide it again, before someone sees it and makes the connection.”

“It doesn’t matter. No one will know what it is. But maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t have it on me.” He held it out to her.

She froze. The fine links swayed at the nudge of the wind, glittering in the rain, and her fingers twitched to stroke the fine, smooth carving. She tightened her hands into fists, and a faint slick of nervous sweat—or was it tetrodotoxin?—softened her palms. “Why are you doing this?”

“You don’t want it?” He sighed, and despite the rasp of the wind, she heard the echo from the crystal in his hand. The note was infinitely sad. “Then the legend truly does end with me. And I will belong to no one.”

He cocked his arm and hurled the bracelet out into the ocean.

“No!” The breath felt torn from her, even her gills flaring in distress, as if he’d wrenched the air from her chest and flung it with the key. She jolted toward the edge of the dock. “You can’t just throw away what you are.”

“And yet I did exactly that.” He caught her arm. “Leave it to the malac. May they grind it into their essence for all the pleasure it gave me.”

She wrenched free. He was strong, and the fickle wind had added distance to his throw, but her gaze locked on the spot where the faintest splash had marked the waves.

“Not all stones sink,” he said with grim satisfaction. “But most do. At least now, some part of me will always have a place to belong.”

Shock went through her, like the wyvern’s violet fire, the violent combustion of water and the rubidium that held sheerships to their paths between the stars. And in a burst of clarity, she knew she’d sacrificed enough to these oceans.

She dove into the crashing waves.

She’d always had an excellent sense of direction, only strengthened by the instincts of her inhuman genetics. Still, she found the bracelet with unnerving ease.

Although the loop of crystalline chain was slowly descending, the roughened chop of the waters, even this deep, had kept it afloat. She circled, suddenly reluctant.

It seemed to call to her through the stormy murk, as shining below as it had been above the waves. Her enhanced senses, triggered by her immersion, pinged the crystal, and a signal came back to the electroreceptors in her skin, at once calming and enticing.