Three Rings (The Fairytail Saga) (2 page)

‘Dumb question.’ He repeated to her motionless figure.

Outside, the rain stopped as the pressure within him abated.

⁓

Two Weeks Later

‘You feel so amazing in my arms,’ Lincoln whispered to Ivyanne, rolling onto his side and running his hand down the softly sculpted lines of her bicep, nuzzling his nose against hers, inhaling her fragrance until the oxygen in his lungs carried traces of frangipanis, coconut and sun-warmed linen. Beneath them, her waterbed wobbled, and he gripped her more tightly, unable to bear a single gap between her body and his.

He could never get close enough to Ivyanne, especially at moments like this when she was dry and her hair billowed between them, tangling around his arms, tickling his cheek.

‘How amazing?’ Ivyanne asked, and her arm slipped over his waist, pulling him to the curve of her body. Her hand on his bare lower back was so hot that he groaned, feeling himself harden as his firm limbs crashed into her soft ones. ‘Show me what I do to you.’

Lincoln was caught off-guard by this demand. ‘But...the rules….?’

Ivyanne smiled wickedly. ‘Sneaking around is what we do, Link,’ her fingers slipped beneath the waistband of his shorts, glancing off the top curve of his rump and making the firm flesh tingle in expectation. She leaned forward and rested her lips against the underside of his chin, staring up at him through gold-tipped lashes that made the green of her eyes more arresting by contrast. Her lips didn’t break contact with her skin as she mumbled: ‘And no one’s home….’

Lincoln wasn’t going to wait for a starter gun to back up the waving of the white flag. He ducked his head to scoop up her mouth with his own, his growing erection twitching as her mouth parted and welcomed him in with a lazy swirl of her sweet tongue. Ivyanne sighed, the sound traveling through him, and he rolled, needing to press himself into her, to take the edge of his ache. Her thighs opened, making room for him to sink into the depression she’d created and he gasped in her kiss, his hands lifting to catch hers and pin them above her head. He wanted to kiss her all over, her neck, her clavicle, the exposed tops of her breasts, and he wanted her stretched out beneath him so that every inch was open to his mouth.

‘I want you!’ He rasped into her mouth. ‘Now!’

But he must have misjudged the stability of the bed because his body kept rolling and suddenly, he was falling towards her bedroom floor, landing with a violent impact that sent a jar through him, startling him back to his senses. The warmth of Ivyanne’s body was gone, but he was lying face-first in boiling hot sand instead.

Sand?
He thought, incredulous and disgusted, pushing up and spitting out a mouthful of grains. It didn’t help. It was on his tongue and lips and teeth-not to mention his entire front. Through his damp shorts, his erection was pressing into the soft, unbearably warm surface, burning him.

‘Ahh!’ He spat again and looked up to Ivyanne, wanting to know how her bed had ended up on the beach-but instead of looking into his lover’s eyes, he found himself squinting up at a hammock through the glare of midday sun. It was empty and swinging violently. And somewhere nearby, the sound of laughter was mingling with the gentle slap of low tide against the shore of Bracken Island.

That laugh cleared a path through his disorientation as he sensed imminent
embarrassment
. After only four short weeks-Lincoln knew Tristan Grey’s throaty chuckle well, and it was almost always directed at Lincoln. He turned around, wiping sand from his mouth, to see Tristan holding a volleyball to his chest and grinning at him, while Saraya looked on from a few feet away, arms still poised to catch the ball, face alight with amusement and shock-also at Lincoln’s expense. They were almost exactly as they’d been after they had returned from their morning swim. They’d opted for volleyball, but exhausted from work, Lincoln had gone for a nap.

And they’d probably heard his every moan.

‘I’m going to go out on a limb here Link, and suggest that maybe the hammock just wants to be friends?’ Tristan asked, with a smirk.

‘You’re so funny!’ Lincoln shot back, mortified, dusting himself off.

‘And hung too.’ Tristan added, not missing a beat. ‘The hammock probably wouldn’t have bucked me off so quickly.’

‘Sex dreams…’ Saraya said softly. ‘I’ve been there.’ She looked at Tristan. ‘And you were there with me once or twice.’

Tristan snorted. ‘Just twice?’

‘Okay maybe more.’

Lincoln didn’t want to hear another word. Fuming, he stomped down to the waters edge to wash himself off-and cool himself down. Because embarrassed or not, his body was still throbbing in memory of a touch he’d yet to know.

One more day,
Lincoln reminded himself as he knelt in the small breaking waves.
He’ll go back to Sydney, and Ivyanne will stay with me. And the countdown from fantasy to reality will begin.

⁓

A few minutes after Saraya had excused herself to go shower off, Tristan decided to follow, curious to see what Ivyanne had been up to in his absence, wondering if he should tell her about Lincoln’s most recent humiliation, or if she’d see it as flattery and giggle adoringly, as though she’d forgotten that she was possibly carrying a child that
Tristan
had sired. Which was sort of how she came across every damn day.
For two weeks they’d been living on Bracken together, Lincoln as a protégé merman, Tristan as a paranoid cling-on. And the only thing Tristan knew for sure after so many hours of studying the girl he‘d fallen for, was that Lincoln Grey had her favor. Her sentimentality towards the newly turned merman was sickeningly obvious. Her eyes followed his movements, her laugh punctuated his words. Where she edged away from Tristan and refused to hold his gaze for longer than a heartbeat, she constantly angled herself towards Link like a flower to the sun. In addition to that, she had this ridiculous compulsion to protect him. She was constantly chastising Tristan for any remark that could possibly hurt poor Link’s feelings, and refused to let him out of her sight for more than a few hours. She swam with Link, taking his training into her own hands, but had yet to put her toe in the water in Tristan’s presence, and followed Lincoln dutifully back to The Seaview for every shift, even though the jig was up when it came to her moonlighting as a human now.

But the bar was short-handed with Adele gone, and so Ivyanne had picked up the slack, leaving Tristan at home with Saraya and the queen, fielding e-mails about Ardhi, Lincoln and himself, and wallowing in self-pity spawned by rejection.

And now Tristan had to leave. He’d put off work too long, and
LoveSun
was beginning to suffer because of it, not to mention poor Sven, who’d been attempting to pick up Tristan’s slack and failing miserably. He hoped to go to Sydney for only a few days and try to get ahead, but his L.A office needed micromanaging too, and it was only a matter of time before he’d have to leave the continent to deal with that-a thought that made something dark inside him nibble on something paranoid.

Tristan tried to shake the gloom off, raking his fingers through his curls, frustrated with himself for the descent in his typically optimistic attitude. Being in love, especially with someone who didn’t love him back enough to grant him peace of mind-
sucked
.

‘I thought finding this island might be tough, but then I just decided to follow the scent of testosterone.’ A voice purred from behind Tristan, giving him cause to pause at the foot of the steps leading up to the porch. ‘And Lo and behold-it leads me right to a Loveridge.’

Tristan grabbed the bannister and glanced back, his mer instincts filling his body with tension at having been caught off-guard. And when he saw the statuesque blond poised on the sand behind him, smirking with her full lips, his attitude took a fresh drop, one which resonated with the sinking of his heart. She was neither a human nor an enemy, and yet her presence filled him with dread.

‘Lux.’ He said shortly, and she almost smiled in response, as aware of his discomfort, and the trouble she could cause for him as he was. Her violet eyes had always been colored with provocation, but that day, it was of a different nature. Lux had reasons to dislike him, but she’d never indulged in Ardhi’s petty grudge before-her sunny disposition naturally rebelled against any kind of emotional negativity. In fact, she’d been as drawn to him as any other woman was, even though her ‘godson’ had despised him.

But that had changed. The shift was almost imperceptible-or would have been to anyone who wasn’t as in tune with women’s emotions as Tristan was. Maybe it was the stiffness in her gait, or the way her eyes flicked over him with a shade of derision that had only been meant in jest before then, but she was pissed, and he was apparently the reason why.

He sighed. ‘Do I want to know why you’re here?’

Ardhi’s godmother wrung out her rose-gold hair, and cocked her head, her expression managing to be coquetry despite the tension around her mouth as she regarded him. Water dripped from her, making the thin sarong plastered to her ample curves transparent. She
wanted
him to look-Lux lived for open admiration- but he stubbornly kept his eyes locked on hers while he awaited her answer.

‘I expected to hear how glad you are to see me…’ She drawled, rolling her ‘r’s’ in her lovely, lilting voice as she flicked her hair back over her shoulder and straightened. ‘Apparently, I was wrong.’

‘I’ll be real glad to see you,’ Tristan said slowly. ‘As soon as I know you’re glad to see me too-and not here to take up Ardhi’s cause where he left off.’

‘His cause?’ She asked, walking closer, all rolling hips and thrusted bust. Her larger frame and rounded curves made her stand out from the other mermaids, a reflection of her decadent, sinful nature, and she flaunted this as an advantage. Which it was. The woman
was
sex. What common ground she’d had with straight-laced Ardhi all those years still eluded Tristan. He supposed it was a case of opposites attracting, or just sentimentality on both their parts. Tristan wasn’t sure of the details, but he did know that when she’d been first turned in her late teens, Ardhi’s parents had employed Lux to take care of their son while they established their businesses. And even after he’d grown, they’d remained close.

‘Thanks to you, Ardhi hadn’t spoken to me in six months.’ Lux said slowly, sadly. ‘If he had a cause beyond marrying Ivyanne, it was news to me. I’m neither here to take it up, or enlighten the princess about what we got up to last February, if
that’s
what’s snaking you.’ She paused at the foot of the steps, frowning. ‘I just came to pay my respects to the Kayu-Api’s, and Ivyanne. They weren’t at their house, so here I am.’

Tristan stared at her, weighing her words. ‘What do you mean,
‘Thanks to me?”
He asked, confused. ‘I recall being the prey, not the predator Lux. Not to mention the one who woke up in an empty bed.’

Lux smiled. ‘True.’ She shrugged. ‘What can I say? I rarely perform the same act twice, especially when the audience was so satisfied the first time.’

Tristan felt an uncharacteristic blush heat his cheeks as he tried not to remember how thoroughly he’d enjoyed Lux’s attentions, or how thrown he’d been to wake up abandoned for the first time in his life. ‘So….?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not ashamed of anything I do, Tristan, but according to Ardhi,
you
ought to have been the exception to that rule.’ She crossed her arms across her chest, as though the memory of his disapproval was making her feel self-conscious to be so near Tristan, while wearing so little. ‘He was still giving me the silent treatment when he died.’

Tristan winced in empathy, then looked towards the house, turning her words over in his head, before looking back at her. ‘So you’re not going to tell her?’

Lux sighed. ‘No. And if you’re worried that he did-and my presence here will stir that up for her-then
don’t
be. He was ashamed of what I did, and saw it as a failure on his part. That someone who loved him, could betray him with someone he hated.’ She made a face. ‘He wouldn’t have told a soul, and if keeping this between us honors that, then it’s a favor I’ll do for
him
, not for you.’ She poked him in the chest. ‘You, however, should fess up, if you’re looking to marry this girl.’

‘I will. And plan to.’ Tristan said quickly. ‘But I’m leaving tonight for a few days, and I don’t want to put a bad taste in her mouth first. I can’t afford it, not with-’

‘Me around? Looking to tear your tentacles off her like the toxic jellyfish you are?’

Tristan closed his eyes in reflex to Lincoln’s voice, giving himself a mental ass-kicking. He’d completely forgotten about Lincoln wandering up the beach behind him! How much had Link heard? What was he going to do with what he
had
? Words failed him. He couldn’t even open his eyes, terrified of the glee he’d see on Lincoln’s smug face when he did.

‘Well
hello
….’

Tristan’s eyes popped open, and he found himself staring at Lux’s profile, astonished by the shift in her demeanor. The remorseful, slightly venomous tone had leaked out of her voice, and those violet eyes were sparkling as they swept Lincoln over thoroughly.

‘Aren’t you just
exquisite
?’ She continued, stepping into Lincoln’s space. ‘You must be the boy my Ardhi died for. The one the princess was ready to sell us out for.’ Her plump hand inched out, sliding down Lincoln’s arm. ‘I didn’t get it before, but now...
damn
. Can
I
waitress for you?’