MakeMeWet (4 page)

No.

Maille could see into her knee, a mental x-ray. A fragment
of bone gouged from the kneecap and three fine lines spidered out through her
kneecap, much like the nick a stone might make in a car windshield. One by one
the lines erased themselves and the nick filled in.

She gasped and went from too scared to breathe to
hyperventilating. Shaking harder than she ever had, she managed to cup her
hands around her knee as the wound closed. When she snatched the hair from her
knee, it fell away with a loud pop and hiss, the sort of sound she’d expect to
hear when twisting the cap off a new bottle of soda.

She shivered, teeth chattering. The wound on her knee was
hardly more than a scratch now. The beating pain in the bone had receded to a
stinging twinge. She couldn’t process it. She wanted a world with logical
actions and reactions.

Random magick. Reality where nothing could be counted on,
where laws of nature had no meaning, equaled insanity.

There had to be a thread of reason, one thing she could
latch on to, a key to unravel the mystery of what was happening. She set aside
the miraculous healing, choosing to focus on something closer to sanity.

The only recent memory that made sense was waking up on the
cliff and realizing she was facing death by hypothermia. Starting there, she
reasoned her way forward. Winding up on a beach naked was not a reasonable
outcome. Winding up on a beach naked with a man too beautiful to be real was a
less reasonable outcome. A beautiful man who couldn’t seem to keep his hands off
her, who could do things with his tongue that probably qualified him for a gold
medal of some sort, that pushed the current situation beyond all plausibility.

So?

A coma might be a reasonable outcome of an accident. But a
dream wasn’t a reasonable outcome of a coma.

It all made her head ache.

She rose and stared at her reflection in the full-length
mirror on the back of the bathroom door. Eyes wide, pupils dilated, skin pale
as a ghost. Was she a ghost?

Leaning in, she blew softly, moisture fogged the glass. Not
a ghost.

She put a hand to the glass, and just over her shoulder, the
mirror above the sink caught the reflection of her reflection. A chain of
similar reflections unfolded like parallel worlds.

Recursion, like the loop of a computer program replaying.
She could be stuck in a loop like that. Lost in a subconscious limbo. That
answer felt right. Safe.

Weren’t there always clues in dreams, bizarre elements so
out of place they signaled the dreamer was dreaming? Like cairns on a trail,
they could point the way back to reality. She just had to search for the
markers. They could lead her to a means to break the loop and reboot herself
back into consciousness.

And Ronin? Ronin who made her forget her name when she
looked into his eyes. Ronin the perfect man, lover, protector. He had to be the
trickster. A force for distraction, determined to keep her unaware.

Maille wiped the fog from the mirror with her sleeve. Was he
the source of the monster-in-the-shadows dread she’d picked up on when they
were making love? Could losing herself in ecstasy with Ronin mean losing her
way back to reality for good?

She pushed the bathroom door open, screeching hinges
announcing her exit. Was Ronin danger or diversion?

It didn’t matter which—if she wanted to find reality, Ronin
had to go.

He swept her up as soon as she stepped into the kitchen.

“Will you stop grabbing me up?”

“Okay.” He kept right on walking into the great room where
he’d arranged pillows and quilts on the floor in front of a crackling fire.
Where a tray with cookies and cups and a steaming pot of tea were at the ready.

He’d been busy in that little bit of time she was away. Busy
preparing more distractions.

She used her firmest tone. “Ronin, put me down. Now.”

He did. Settled her right in the middle of the romantic nest
he’d put together.

“Cookie?” He sat cross-legged beside her and offered a
plate. Fudge-striped. Her favorite.

Her stomach rumbled before she could say she wasn’t hungry.
His towel slid dangerously low. Forcing her gaze upward rather than downward to
temptations she was proving lousy at resisting, Maille met his thoughtful
stare. Saliva pooled in her mouth in response to a craving that had nothing to
do with cookies. She was going down in the black sea of dark eyes, with no one
to throw her a line.

She grabbed a cookie but got distracted watching Ronin’s
eyes close and his face go slack with pleasure as he popped one in his mouth.
He made the same sound he made when he tasted her.

He was probably as starved as she was. And while it was
ridiculous to worry that a figment of her imagination was hungry, the gnawing
emptiness and lightheadedness she felt might subside if she appeased her
subconscious and ate the offering. She’d make Ronin leave after that. Really
she would.

He filled a teacup and offered it to her. Steam fragrant
with cinnamon tickled her nose. Hot and strong, the liquid seared her tongue.
Unsweetened and no milk, just the way she liked it. Of course he would know
what she liked.

“I tidied up a little, found some packaged cookies and tea
in the cupboard. I hope you don’t mind. I wanted to make you comfortable.”

“You didn’t need to go to all that trouble.”

“Trouble? Heating tea and feeding you your own cookies?” His
lilt rolled lazily off each vowel. “You’ve gone to far more bother for me.” He
slid one finger along the edge of her robe, flipped it back to reveal her knee
before she thought to stop him.

His breath caught. The bruise was gone. The oozing wound now
the small scrape she had insisted it was earlier.

He inched back. She didn’t blame him.

“The ice worked like magic,” she said. “I washed it. It
really is just a scratch.”

“So it is.” He pulled the edge of silk back in place. He
didn’t say anything more and she didn’t know what to say.

The room was just dark enough that she could see out the
ceiling-to-floor windows in the corner. Moonlight shone on the rippling black
of the ocean. In the lengthening silence, the distant boom of water on rocks
seemed to count off minutes like a clock ticking down to something important.

“I found a comb in the bedroom,” Ronin said, picking up a
towel from the coffee table and producing a comb and a bottle of detangling
spray from between the folds.

She put a hand to her hair, realizing she must look a wreck.
Hair snarled, huge wet patches staining her robe. She reached for the comb but
he pulled back and held it behind him with one hand, crooking a finger at her.
Her noisy swallow earned a grin from him.

“I want to comb your hair for you. You’ve hair like mine.
Believe me, I know how hard it is to get the tangles out, especially high up
the back.”

Maille waited a beat, knowing it was a bad idea.

He repositioned himself just behind her, moved in so his
bent knees were on either side of her. Her breath caught when he lifted her
hair. Heat moved from his fingertips into her skin when his thumbs traced the
line of her spine. He had a unique scent of sea and spice that made her want to
bury her nose in his hair when he leaned in to murmur, “Your robe is wet and
your skin is like ice. Let’s slip this thing off, love.”

The words came to her slow and soft, as if they had traveled
a great distance, but his lips were right there against her ear when he said
it. She drew a deep breath to clear her head as he drew the robe down her
shoulders, ran heated palms over her shoulder blades. Her mental fog thickened.
She could only tip her head back and moan aloud.

“Feel better?” he asked, his tone as sensuous and hot as his
touch.

“Better? Moan, sigh, whimper. Oh, yeah, keep doing that.”

He chuckled. “Pace yourself. We’re just getting started.”

He draped a towel over her shoulders to shield her skin from
her wet hair. But there was no shield in place for the soaking going on between
her legs. She wanted him so bad it hurt.

He sprayed detangler and worked it through her tresses. Each
gentle tug triggered a clench deep in her pussy. Fingertips kneading her scalp
had her breasts tightening and her nipples burning for attention.

Tea sloshed from her cup, ran over her fingers and dripped
on her thigh. She put the cup down, tugged the robe back in place with unsteady
hands. She meant to tell Ronin something. Something important they were
supposed to get straight.

What…fuck…if he would just slide those hot fingers of his
inside her for a minute.

Doing that wouldn’t help her think straight. Her right hand
wandered, caressed his calf. Up. Back down. Up again.

His muscles tensed at her touch. She shouldn’t touch. It
would only lead to another sexual dead end. She couldn’t resist. Whenever she
was close to him, priorities got jumbled. The need to touch outranked the need
to breathe.

Maybe that was true for Ronin too. He was holding his
breath.

He grabbed the comb, set the teeth to her hair. It went
gliding through her tresses in a controlled downstroke. No ripping at the
snarls or accidental yanks. He combed hair like he fucked, with calculated
skill. Once she made the connection between fucking and combing, she felt every
stroke between her legs.

Each repetition was a stripping of defenses, an unwrapping
that had her feeling as if she’d been unzipped and all her secrets bared. That
he could see her worst and didn’t care.

She shook her head. He dropped the comb. She put her hands
over her face. What was in that tea?

“You okay, Maille?”

“I don’t know. I feel a little woozy. Drunk.”

“Ah. It’s me. Has to be. I have that effect on women.”

She laughed and turned. Was about to hit him with a witty
retort, but… Those eyes of his were so deep and dark. That stare, so intense.
Her lips plastered themselves to his instead. They tumbled back into the quilts
and pillows.

The plate of cookies lodged under her shoulder. He swatted
it away as he settled over her.

His breath against her neck, the heat of his thigh parting
hers, the maddening sizzle of his cock, thick and ready against her thigh—all
the things she’d been craving right where she wanted them. It was then she
remembered the important thing.

She couldn’t have sex with him. He had to go.

His finger slid between her pussy lips. “Ah, Maille mine,
you’re so wet and tight.”

Maybe it was the Irish accent, but his voice had a sexy
timbre that delivered every syllable with a trancelike quality. Her pussy
clenched at the sound of it, wept at the beauty of it.

He was magnificent. The planes and angles of his face,
chiseled. Lips firm. His hair dark and springy, a wild tumble that would take
time to tame. Maille tried to keep her hands in his hair. Hold him back. The
problem was the rest of her body really wanted him to have his head. Put either
of his heads wherever he liked.

“Maille, let go. Relax.”

“I want to.” She rubbed her pussy against his thigh even as
her hands tightened in a death lock on his hair.

He pried one hand free and then the other, dragging them
above her head.

“No. I can’t touch you if you do that.”

“You’re not touching, love, you’re plucking me bald.”

“I need to touch you.” She wriggled and turned her head
restlessly from side to side, caught between frustrated and frightened.

“Here, then.” He eased his weight back. “Turn over on your
belly, sweet.” He let her hands free. “That’s my girl.”

She pushed up to hands and knees, thinking… Thinking
something important. Something she should do. Something—

Ronin enveloped her, and the thought broke apart on a
keening moan as the head of his cock nuzzled the lips of her pussy.

“You can touch what you like now,” he said. He wasn’t
waiting for permission, rolling a nipple between two fingers. His other hand
cupped her pussy.

Exquisite sensations zapped through her, shredding her
breath. She was losing track of what parts of him were where. When she opened her
eyes she was facing the fireplace, with Ronin kneeling behind her. Flames
wrapped around logs and a sharp pop tossed sparks in an upward spiral.

“That’s me,” she said. “That’s what you do to me.”

Ronin buried his face in her hair. Desire vibrated off him
like heat waves off asphalt on a desert road. “Hmm? What?”

“We can’t,” she panted, trying to convince herself. “You
can’t stay.”

His voice sounded as drugged as hers. “You want me to leave?
You’re sure about that?”

“Um…”

His finger moved inside her. Heat pooled in her belly. He
stirred it, sent it rippling out through her limbs. Seared her from the inside
out.

“Tell me to go, Maille. You don’t want this—just tell me to
go.” He wasn’t playing fair.

She whimpered. “No.”

He pulled out the finger, pressed the head of his cock to
her opening. Her pussy tightened, slickened.

He nipped her ear. She tried to push herself on him. At
first he leaned back, but then he pressed her hand to his cock.

“Touch me now. Put it where you want it, love.”

His erection, sticky with her juices, slid over her palm.
Her pussy quivered when she pushed down over the head. They gasped in unison.

“Easy,” he said. “Give yourself time.”

She gulped. Putting both palms on the floor, she prepared to
push back and take them the rest of the way.

Something banged on the porch, rattled at the door. Maille
drove back onto Ronin’s cock at the precise moment the door flew open and hit
the wall.

“Fuck,” Ronin snarled.

Maille wished they could.

Reality, or whatever this was, had lousy timing. It came
knocking at the door with all the subtlety of the morning alarm. Brash and
blaring, stealing away a dream she wasn’t ready to give up. Unlike an alarm
clock, this wakeup call didn’t come with a snooze button. It was too big to
pick up and hurl out the window. This reality demanded they stop or deal with
dangerous consequences.

A palomino stallion filled the doorway. His coat gleamed
like gold fire. A sleek foreleg pawed. The crack of hoof against floor sharp
and commanding.

Bizarre signposts back to reality didn’t come any more
obvious than this.

Ronin leapt off her, grabbing the fire poker from the stand
on the hearth as he stepped over her.

Maille scrambled to her feet. “No, Ronin,” she said,
positioning herself between him and the wild-eyed beast, pressing her palm
against Ronin’s chest when he tried to push past her. “No,” she said again.

The stallion tossed his head, nostrils quivering as she
moved close. Ronin caught her shoulder, fingers clamping down. Her body
quivered with longing, even now.

Reality could be stranger than fantasy. There might be a
logical reason for a horse in the living room. The logic escaped her.

The stallion’s blue-eyed gaze bored into her. The eye color
rare but not unheard of in the breed. His stare communicated intelligence, as
if he expected her to understand something important.

“Maille—”

She put a finger to her lips, and fortunately, it was enough
to silence Ronin, if you overlooked the heavy sigh that followed his
acquiescence. He let go of her shoulder too. As if he, like their four-legged
visitor, knew Maille was the one to handle the situation.

Cautiously she stepped over the pillows and quilts, padding
barefoot across the hardwood to meet the intruder. Animals in need of
assistance might not be the norm in every house, but it had always been the
norm in this one. The golden stallion lowered his head and pressed his muzzle
against her chest, just above her heart.

She cupped his chin gently, lifted his head, ran a hand
along the powerful curve of his neck. The creamy locks of his mane fell over
her fingers. He sniffed at her nose and she exhaled softly into his nostrils.
His ears flicked forward and back, he bumped her chest lightly, as if trying to
impress upon her the urgency of his summons. He seemed calm enough, now, to
mount.

“I have to go with him, Ronin.”

She didn’t wait for Ronin’s answer, following as the
stallion backed out the door and swung around on the porch. She managed to
grasp his mane and pull herself onto his back by pushing against the porch
railing with her feet. Not the graceful Hollywood-style leap she might have
wished. Maille’s effort was more akin to a crab scrabbling its way up a dune.
Add to that she was naked again, she didn’t want to linger over the thought of
how she must look from Ronin’s view. Given her state of undress, her mount
proved magically comfortable—his hide silky soft and broad back comfortably
padded.

Once settled, Maille looked over her shoulder at Ronin. The
stallion shifted and pranced under her, impatient to be off. She clutched at
his mane to stay astride. “I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

If she would be back. Where she was going.

“Don’t wait for me, Ronin. Just bank the fire before you
go.”

The stallion leapt from the porch as soon as she faced
forward.

Before Ronin could bolt after Maille, a pulsing vortex,
blacker than the deepest part of the ocean, formed between him and the door. It
beat the air and washed over his skin. Icy fingers pressed him back through the
door.

Crouching again, his fingers tightened on the poker. Not
that it would be any defense against the shifting, formless thing in front of
him.

Laughter rattled his eardrums. That mixture of mirth and
menace could only be
Her
.

Swirling black liquid that matched the black of her heart
should have been clue enough to this second visitor’s identity. Mere was paying
a visit.

In front of him the liquid expanded, took the form of a
silhouette and then the shape of a Goddess so physically beautiful it was no
wonder there was no beauty left to grace her spirit.

Her smile disappeared. A lift of her eyebrow slammed Ronin
to his knees while his cock rose, forced into a painfully engorged salute to
the mistress of his fate. She paced in front of him. Sleek. So tall, that were
he not on his knees, she would still tower over him.

“Really, why do I bother with you?” She tossed silver-blue
locks that coiled like a river of fat snakes down her back. Her skin gleamed in
the firelight—polished obsidian. He was sure her heart was made of the same.

Silver tattoos of stars and crescent moons decorated her
naked body. On her forehead, a crescent moon turned on its back as if it were a
boat and three teardrops poised just beneath. Fitting, given that everything
Mere did ended in tears.

“I hear your thoughts, little man. Best you control them
before you discover there are fates worse than the one you endure.”

Ronin emptied his mind and bowed his head.

“Incompetent as ever, you are. Or maybe worse. You can’t
even manage to fuck a woman satisfactorily.” She tossed her hair again and
glared. “That used to be your only redeeming quality.”

Ronin, teeth clamped around his tongue, tried desperately to
think of something besides Mere’s taunts. Maille, on the beach astride that
rogue stallion, did the trick.

Of course Mere was behind it. He couldn’t stop himself from
pointing that out. “As if that stallion showing up to carry her off wasn’t your
doing. Is this a new way you’ve found to torment me, then?”

“Shut up. You only reinforce my opinion of you every time
you open your mouth. As if there is anything I could do to you that you didn’t
deserve tenfold.”

“I’ve paid for my sins. Paid and will keep paying into
eternity. What is enough? What will ever be enough for you, Mere?”

“You tell me, Ronin. You, so proud of your prowess with your
dick. Plowing every young girl silly enough to be charmed by empty words and
easy smiles. No thought for broken hearts, ruined futures. And when time came
to reap what you had sown, did you face your guilt like a man?”

“I was young and foolish too. I didn’t think. It shouldn’t
have taken Deidre throwing herself from a cliff to make me think.”

“And you still call throwing yourself off to escape the
guilt thinking? One sin is as great as the other. You haven’t changed. Haven’t
learned yet. Be quiet so I can think of a way to sort this mess that’s found
you now.”

His head came up. Mere hadn’t done this? If she’d hit him
with one of her thunderbolts he couldn’t have been more stunned. He wasn’t
certain how he knew. Couldn’t guess who was powerful enough or stupid enough to
fuck with Mere. But someone had gotten the upper hand with the Goddess.

With a flick of fingertips and a shower of sparks, she
slammed him to the floor and sent him skidding to the other side of the room on
his back. “Another word. Another thought from you without my leave and I’ll hit
you so hard you’ll think that Taser you got zapped with on your last visit
ashore was a pleasant little tingle.”

Ronin crawled back—it not being permitted to stand in Mere’s
presence—and knelt close enough to deny fear but at a distance respectable
enough not to get him fried alive. Much as he might have liked to tell Mere
what he thought of her, to take on the worst she could throw at him, he
couldn’t risk it with Maille at Mere’s mercy too.

Mere’s mercy? Mere had no mercy.

He managed not to flinch when a silver lightning bolt
whizzed by. Ronin bowed his head.

Mere strutted closer, so close he could smell the musky
perfume of her cunt. Like a drug in his blood, craving rose. He fought it with
an image of Maille, of her face in the firelight, those huge, sad eyes. He kept
his eyes on Mere’s feet, one tattooed with a pentagram, the other with a
crescent moon.

“Not that I owe a little worm an explanation, but the
stallion, Trey, isn’t one of mine. Occasionally, magic chooses its own course,
a path none of us intended. For instance, you aren’t worthy to lick that girl’s
feet. Yet, her tears summoned you and there is nothing any of us can do about
that.”

Mere grabbed his hair, yanked his head back and stared hard,
her mind slicing into his like a knife. He gritted his teeth and refused,
poured every ounce of will he had into not closing his eyes. That she released
her hold and whirled away before he broke stunned him again. Had the Goddess
just blinked?

“Don’t flatter yourself, my little sea slug.”

“What then? Why are you here?”

She put her hand on her hip, ran a cutting glance from his
face to his cock.

“No!” He shot to his feet. “No, you can’t send me back.”

She had hands on both hips now, stalked him with predatory jiggle
of breasts. Goddess help him, he couldn’t look away.

“I can’t what?” she hissed.

He dropped back to his knees. Not in fear. No. He needed to
appease her enough to negotiate.

“The magick has been wrought, Goddess. Her tears called me.
I’m here at her bidding.”

“Do you think me stupid?”

“No, Goddess.”

She turned away again, spat in the fire and it went out.
Only the shimmer cast by an oil lamp on the kitchen counter lit the room now,
outlining twisted, elongated shadows.

Her power pulsed like a heartbeat in the darkness.

“Goddess, forgive my simple mind. Who does the stallion
belong to?”

“I don’t know.”

He tried to process that. More astonishing than the fact she
didn’t know was the fact she admitted as much.

“He’s enchanted. A kelpie, is he not?”

Her rage was cooling. She sounded tired when she responded,
“He’s like a kelpie. But not a true kelpie. More like Maille.”

“Like Maille? She’s not mortal? Is that how…” That must be
it. She was immune to his magick. She had superhuman power. Power beyond mortal
magick.

“Ronin, is there a brain in your head at all, or did all
your thinking power land at the end of your dick?”

“But—”

“If she were immune to magick would either of you be here?”

“But how is it possible she resists me? No human mortal—”

“Oh, she’s mortal. Mortal doesn’t equal powerless, but…
Well, either she will tell you the rest as she learns it, or you’ll figure that
part out yourself should you grow a brain or heart in time.”

“I don’t understand. There’s no time to figure out or
discover secrets. She’s gone. You’re here. I assume you’re here to send me back
to the sea.”

“Would that I could. Would that I could. But, as you said, I
can’t undo the magick I wrought when I cast the first selkie into the sea.
Given your bumbling and Maille’s stubbornness, it looks like you will be free
in a few hours. You’ve no idea the trouble this will cause.”

“Sorry, Goddess.” He didn’t dare risk a visual collision
with those lush breasts or the scalpel-like dissection of her gaze, so he
returned his attention to her feet. “Forgive my ignorance, but I don’t
understand how my freedom is anyone’s but yours to control.”

“Idiot.” Another silver bolt whizzed past his head.
“Maille’s not immune, but she has the inner strength to resist you. She has the
power to break the curse. And since you can’t seem to manage the simple task of
bringing her to orgasm, you could be the first selkie ever to break the chains
that tie him to the sea.”

Freedom? He slammed the door shut on the thought. Didn’t
trust it. Or Mere. He’d been certain the talk of curse breaking had been
wishful thinking on the part of eternally damned selkies.

Mere reopened the door. Insisted he face temptation.
“Imagine, no more crawling on your belly. Even after all this time your pride
chafes when you crawl.”

Aye, it did. She had him by the emotional balls and she
wasn’t done twisting.

“Don’t be thinking you’ll step into a new life with the
woman who saved you. You’ll go back in time, pick up right where you left off.
We’ll see how long it takes you to prove me right about you.”

“And Maille, what will happen to her? She’ll be with Trey?”

“Maille will go on with her life without a memory of you. I
suspect Trey hopes to step in and deliver where you have failed. Don’t let it
go to your head, but there is chemistry between you and Maille, a connection
that unleashes her power.”

“You said she was mortal.”

“Mortal doesn’t mean powerless, Ronin. She may not walk in
the realm of Goddesses, but enchanted blood flows in her veins.
But
, if
you don’t fulfill your duty, her heart will remain locked, and the power within
will wither there. There’s a price for freedom, Ronin. Remember that. Will you
let Maille pay?”

She left him then, snapping her fingers and setting off an
explosion of darkness that knocked him flat and blinded his senses.

* * * * *

Rather than riding off into reality, the stallion galloped
briefly through breaking waves before swerving into the cover of dunes and
doubling back. When he stopped, no amount of urging interested him in moving
forward or back to where he’d found her.

Maille slid from his back.

He nudged her toward a path, vegetation trampled right up to
a narrow opening between dunes. Maille already knew what she’d find there.

She backed away, the stallion cut her off, gave her a firmer
bump.

“It’s not a good idea. The mare, take me to her. She needs
help more.”

He pressed close, his chest against her back, his head
dipped over her shoulder. She wasn’t fooled by his low nicker.

“You’re not going to charm me into this.” She ducked under
his head and crept around him. Careful not to startle him as she inched away
toward open sand. He snorted, stamped, neighed. She kept going.