A Mermaid's Ransom (33 page)

She cried out into his mouth, gasping as he kept the driving rhythm, pushing her up and over that precipice, feeling his own control trembling on it. White flashing light, spiraling fire, were all in her mind, all thought driven out before the power of that climax. Just rapid images, erotic, needy, the things she wanted him to do to her, needed him to do to her. It shoved him over that same cliff. He gripped the rock, crumbling it beneath his strength as he pounded his hips against her, pushing her legs out wide, ratchetting their clutch higher up his back. Her breasts quivered with the impact, brushing his chest in tiny, rhythmic feathers of motion that made him even harder. A manta ray swam over her head, dipping its wings as it turned, sliding along Dante's back. Life moved around them, accepting them, accepting what they were doing.

In the Dark One world copulation was always public and open, as he'd told her, no different from relieving oneself. But this . . . the plethora of life around them somehow felt like a confirmation of the act, an embellishment to it, something that gave it special meaning. Made the act itself special. He hadn't acknowledged it to himself, but he did now. Being inside of her body had a different meaning to him than any other sexual experience he'd endured or inflicted on another.

She made an approving murmur in his mouth as he climaxed, holding tightly to him. In her aftermath, he saw in her mind how she took pleasure in his body, the expressions on his face as he released, the way his hands held her. How he swept everything away, making her . . . his.
His.
That was the word in her mind, an answer to the earlier question of whether she wanted this. And not because he'd made it so, overpowered her. She felt like her heart and soul were his, that she'd given them to him.
Given
.

The idea was so stunning and disturbing at once, at first he didn't feel another disturbing current running through the water, but Alexis did. Her mind froze.

Reba. She's frightened of something.

He pushed himself off her, her slick muscles releasing him with a spasm that shuddered through them both. She was already in motion, though. Alexis swam for the grate, shifting as she swam, a blur of motion and distortion that left several feathers and scales behind, suggesting it was not the most graceful turning she'd ever done. She reopened the grate latch, got them through and then into the manatees' tank. They ascended together, her wings and his normal speed making it barely a blink of time before they were surfacing. Dante made sure he broke first, however, wanting to be between her and the lip of the tank, not knowing what might be waiting for them.

Reba yelped as he exploded from the water, using one hand to catapult himself out of the tank and onto the deck, crouched over her. He glanced around, nostrils flared.

"He's gone, whatever he was. God, you guys got here fast."

Alexis emerged only a blink later, using her wings to take her halfway out of the water as well, hovering above the surface, looking around. "That's that same feeling," she said to Dante. "Like the diner. The one I told Pyel about. Can you feel it? Track it?"

"I'm not leaving you here alone, both of you unprotected."

"We need to know what it is."

"He was like you," Reba said to her. Her voice trembled a little, though she looked like she was calming down. "And he actually didn't hurt me. He scared me mostly because he came up on me unexpectedly and I was on my back like a turtle. He had wings, sort of angel-like, but not what I think of as an angel."

"Leathery-like?"

"A little." When she nodded, Alexis blanched, looking toward Dante.

Dark One?

I don't see how. They couldn't use the rift I or the witch created, and there are no other openings.
Dante frowned.
Also, Dark Ones carry the stench of fear and violence, despair. No matter its intentions, it would have killed her because it would not have been able to resist helpless prey.

"You know, it's rude to talk when people can't hear what you're saying," Reba ventured, her hands closed in tight balls against her abdomen. "Of course, no more rude than it is to practically jump on someone dripping wet and naked." She attempted to give Dante a lecherous perusal, but ended up with a quick flick before she focused hard on his face, her skin pinkening. "Much as I thought I'd like seeing a guy naked, it's a little . . . overwhelming this close. God, I really want to be in my chair. Feeling a bit like a stranded fish here."

Alexis nodded to some towels and Reba's chair by the locker room door. Dante went to them, knotting a towel around his waist. Despite the lingering air of danger and worry, Alexis knew no female would have been able to keep herself from looking. Still she was somewhat mortified that she was no more capable of resisting than Reba, who tilted her head up to watch the view upside down. Then the girl gave her a sidelong glance and mouthed,
What a fucking incredible ass.

Alexis tried for a stern look, but failed and sighed instead. Dante returned and lifted Reba back into her chair. "Reba, you said he didn't hurt you. Did you feel anything when you saw him? Did he say anything?"

"He asked, 'Where is the evil?' He looked me over, like he had radar to tell I wasn't a threat. I told him I didn't know about any evil. He said he could smell it, so I said the place had just closed for the night, and maybe evil had taken off with the visitors, but left some of its stench behind. So he left same way he arrived. Poof, he was gone."

Alexis moved to the deck, shifting back to her human form and knotting a towel around her bare body. "You're something else, Reba."

"Don't I know it." She managed a tired grin. "But 'Where is the evil'? Talk about melodrama. What do you think that's about?"

Alexis met Dante's eyes. He nodded. "I suspect whatever it is, it is looking for me."

Twenty-six

NOTHING in the parking lot indicated who their strange visitor might have been. All she knew was it wasn't the same energy as the vampire, so it wasn't likely another unsanctioned vampire attack. Still, Alexis sent a message to her father and David, so they could ask the Legion to scout the area. They waited until Reba's mother picked her up, then headed for Lex's home.

While she kept her senses tuned all the way there and found nothing, she was relieved when she shut the door of her town house and had them both safely ensconced inside. While Dante was showering off the tank's salt water at her suggestion, she pushed aside her weariness to practice some old hearth magic. Sprinkling salt at the window and doorjambs, she murmured a Protection Spell. It might not stop anything capable of attacking Dante, but it would serve as an additional security alarm, buying precious seconds. For the first time in a long time, she even removed the key from the outside pot.

Now that the incident was over, she found herself getting irritated about it. As if getting him used to his new environment wasn't challenging enough, every time she turned around they were being attacked by vampires or Goddess-knew-what. Still, it wasn't like she was used to life being predictable.

As she made herself a dinner with choice tidbits she knew Dante would like to sample, she listened to him in the shower with the hint of a smile. Earlier thumping had suggested he was investigating her cabinets, making her hope he wasn't dismantling all her toiletries. If he mashed her lipstick tubes putting the caps back on, she was going to consider child locks. Regardless, he was now in the water flow, if the sounds of bottles opening and closing were any indication. She had lavender- and jasmine-scented hair and body products in there, and it amused her to think of him emerging smelling like a combination of the two flowers.

Putting on some romantic piano music, she lit candles and resolved to shrug off her worries. A vampire didn't walk out of a hell dimension after sixty years, go to a couple scenic spots, learn how to use a shower and do hunky-dory, happily-ever-after. There was no manual for this. They had to keep going the direction they were going and see what happened. Taking a page out of Reba's book, she'd give herself permission to celebrate the small things, because there might not be as much to celebrate as they faced harder challenges.

Would he ever be able to share tenderness with her? Laughter? Those were things she'd always expected to find with the male to whom she gave her heart, but he had little of those things to offer himself, let alone anyone else.

When she looked up to see Dante standing in the doorway, watching her set the table, she gave a half laugh. "You're too good at that."

He didn't smile. "This male you wanted. What other traits did you want him to have?"

"I don't think it really works that way with love. You can imagine, but where you end up may be somewhere different. It doesn't mean anything."

He shook his head. "That is not the question I asked. I can reach for it in your mind, but I'd rather you tell me. I am not the person you would have picked for yourself, Alexis, or that your family or your friends would have picked for you. They want you to have . . .
love
. I've heard this word in your mind, theirs . . . I saw your father display it toward you when he held you and your mother, when we returned. Love. You love him, your mother . . . many others. It is an easy thing for you, like sunshine."

She gripped the fork instead of putting it on the napkin, needing the illusion of employment. "You'll learn about it in time. You've only been here a few days."

"Alexis," he said softly.

She shook her head, closing her eyes. "Please don't say it."

"Not saying it does not change the truth. If I can ever understand this feeling, it is likely to be years before I learn enough of it to love another the way you do, or those around you. From what I see, trust is a large part of this feeling. Understanding. Regard. I have fought for my life, for everything that I am, every day of my life. And I have lost, often. These kind and soft things you experience every day are as foreign and suspicious to me as my world was to you."

Alexis looked up then, for she felt a sharp and piercing emotion from him, like a fatal stake through the chest. The comparison chilled her. He met her gaze. "It is possible that Mina and your father are right. After all these years, it may have taken too long to get here. The only place I truly belong may be the place I most abhor."

Distractedly, she realized he did smell faintly of the jasmine shampoo she had, but she was more concerned about the aching reaction she'd now identified.
Resignation.
Goddess, was he really thinking he should go
back
? What the hell had happened in that shower?

"No."
She slapped down the fork and faced him, her hands clenching into fists. "That isn't true. This is your world. I wish . . . Damn it, Mina, my father . . . all of you. You just need to give it time. When people get out of prison, they talk about how freedom is scary at first. Sometimes they want to run back to their jail cell, to the familiar. You are not a coward," she said fiercely. "You can do this. I will help."

"At what cost to yourself?" He straightened from the doorway and came to her. "I've seen enough of this world already to know you shouldn't give up all you are to someone who can promise you nothing."

"That's my choice."

"No. It's my choice. That, out of everything else, is the most clear. In thirty days, I could destroy all that you are and leave you a shell."

"I'm not that fragile."

"I think you are far more fragile than you are willing to accept, when it comes to your heart."

It might be a moot point, if I've already given my heart to you. And angels only give their hearts once.

"You are only half angel." He turned away from her, glanced at the table. "What are you having for dinner?"

She stared at him. To her ears, he'd just proven his point, that it might take decades for him to love someone, or at the very least, not slice her heart to ribbons when she offered it to him on a platter. But she couldn't be struck down by his words, not when they were merely a weapon guarding his real feelings on the matter. Just as she sometimes forgot he could hear her thoughts, he'd apparently forgotten that, while his emotions were hard for her to decipher, some things were as clear as lighthouse beacons.

On top of the vampire attack and the mystery of what else was hounding his heels, she wouldn't tolerate him turning on himself. He damn sure wasn't going to go back to that Dark One world. Her father, Mina, even Dante himself, would have to walk over her feathered, finned, pink skinned, multispecies dead body to do it.

When his head swung around to give her a sharp look, she pivoted on her heel, marching out of the kitchen to the living area. "Let's try some dancing before dinner. I've lost my appetite."

"You are angry."

"What gave it away?" She went to the music player, punched in a playlist of ballads at the tempo she wanted and turned to face him. He was wearing jeans and a white dress shirt that he'd not yet buttoned. His chest still had a bead of water here and there. Every girl's idea of a poster pinup, no denying it, but it was more than that.

She'd let herself get distracted by Mina's talk of sexual dominants. While there was no doubt he was one of those, what if the compulsion that made him claim her was simply a different version of what she felt toward him? It was a physical deception, the way a woman's anatomy yielded, men's equipped to invade. The truth of it was a stronger magic, such that when the two were locked together, she was just as capable of holding him in her body as he was of taking hers.

"You're absolutely right," she said, as his eyes narrowed. Lifting her chin, she stripped off her overshirt, revealing the thin tank she wore under it, no bra, so her breasts moved generously under the thin fabric, the nipples prominent, dark smudges. She moved toward him. "You don't match my catalog list of what I wanted in a guy, not in the slightest. Steady, gentle, loving. Tender and playful, with an easy laugh and a love of animals, children, anything weaker than him that might need his help. He'd have a kiss that makes my knees weak, just a little, and I'd look forward to his touch."

Stopping in front of him, she met his gaze in bold challenge. "I wouldn't crave it like water, and his kiss wouldn't drown me. He wouldn't be immersed in violence and death, pain and loneliness. I wouldn't be absolutely certain there's an unbreakable line connecting us, and that's all that's keeping him from disappearing forever into desolation. You don't choose who you love, Dante. Love chooses you."

"So should I be grateful for your pity?" His lip curled.

"There's a difference between compassion and pity." She gripped his hand, guided it around her waist, and laid her other one on his shoulder with firm intent, a determined dancing posture. "What about you? You'd let me go, just like that? It would be okay with you if I found another guy, one who'd touch my breasts"--she brushed them over his bare chest with deliberate provocation--"fuck me, make me scream out with pleasure when he put his tongue--"

Dante let out a warning growl, fire growing in his eyes, and she slid her thigh across his groin. "In my cunt," she said precisely, "so wet for him that I'd beg for his cock, hold his hair and tug him closer, grind myself against his face."

"You don't talk like this, think like this."

"I don't belong to you, you just implied it. So you don't tell me what to do, how to think. Who to love or fuck."

"Stop it." But he didn't move. If anything, his hands tightened on her waist, pulling her closer. "Or I'll--"

"What? Spank me?" She turned lithely in his arms, rubbed her backside in one provocative stroke against his cock, which she found was getting satisfyingly hard. She pushed all thoughts out of her mind except one. She imagined a man that wasn't Dante. Instead it was a man with golden hair and seafoam eyes pushing her back on her bed, taking her clothes off, murmuring to her in a sexy accent as she trembled in his arms, wanting to be his forever, surrounded by his love and care. Dante's snarl cut through the thought, his hand clamping on her throat hard enough to constrict air, his hand at her waist stilling her so she was held tightly against his pelvis. In one move, he swept the table free of her settings, all of it hitting the floor with a hard clatter, a shattering of glass. Pushing her face down on the surface, he curved his lean, powerful body over hers. She'd been wearing a loose, faded pair of jeans, and he did not undo them. He simply ripped them down the back so they fell limply to the floor, and he dispatched the panties the same way, a rough tear that jerked against her skin, leaving her exposed to the air. The tank became tatters next, making her gasp as he left her completely naked and exposed, vulnerable as he held her to the table with one hand on the back of the neck. She could feel his fury, his possessive rage provoked, and it made her tremble, but that wasn't her only reaction.

"You think you can give me up and I won't be with someone else?" she pushed harder. "You'll be some generous martyr and do without me, or pretend I don't matter? I can feel your feelings before you even know you have them. You don't share, Dante, and you don't give things up. You're a selfish bastard who will keep what's his, because you can't bear to lose another single fucking thing in a life that's been full of losing."

One more word, and you will be very sorry you pushed me this way.

Closing her eyes, she imagined her blond lover in vivid detail. The curve of his jaw, a little unshaven, because she did like that stubble, something Dante didn't have. Strong hands, cupping her breasts, making her hum with pleasure as his thumbs teased the nipples, making her arch up toward his mouth . . .

She was ready for physical retaliation, but she hadn't expected a mental invasion. Dark fire swirled into her thoughts, and her golden-haired lover burned up in ash, replaced by a different lover who stepped out of that fire, gazed down upon her with flame eyes, dark hair and a mouth meant for carnal sins. She wanted to reach up to him, and realized she couldn't, for her bed had been replaced by a metal frame onto which she'd been stretched and bound, unable to move, though she could feel the trickle of response between her legs as his gaze covered every inch of her with intense heat.
You will have nowhere to run from me, not in your mind or heart, or soul. I am there, because it is all mine.

She swallowed, feeling an unexpected frisson of fear, for as certain parts of her automatically tried to shut down, he was there, deep inside, where every trace of disappointment, betrayal or loss were kept, some in various stages of healing or transforming from active thought into a softer remembrance. Every insecurity she had about him or herself, it was all there, and he was turning those stones over, examining each one. Then he went even deeper, to childhood nightmares. Now she
was
frightened. There was no sense of the world she'd been in. There was just this, a place of her and him, and fire. It was not the Dark One world or her own. It was a place of Dante's making, a prison to which he could take her anytime he chose, using the strong binding of that third mark.

While he was plundering her soul, he started on the outside as well. He began on her feet first, licking, biting, nuzzling, working with excruciating slowness up her ankles, her calves. Sweat beaded on her body as the flames closed in. The only thing keeping her from being burned alive was his command that kept those dancing tongues of fire just outside the frame. But he took one in his hand, passed it close to her body, dropped it on her flesh for a bare second of searing heat before he swallowed it with his mouth, then brought the heat and wetness of his tongue to her flesh.

She writhed and moaned. She called out his name and begged. He was ruthless with the pain and pleasure both, alternating them. He bit her, taking samples of her blood high on her thigh, at her ankle, then licked and suckled and kissed her flesh, sometimes so hard that left marks as well.