The Sea King

  She should have known better. Dilys Merimydion wasn’t a lethal mercenary feared the world over because he gave his opponents time to regroup and shore up their defenses. When he discovered a weakness, he went for it full bore. With heavy artillery.

  And Dilys Merimydion was very, very heavy artillery.

  He rose from the fjord like some magnificent god of the sea, stepping through the frothing, white deluge of Snowbeard Falls as if it were a veil of falling flower petals, his sleek, dark, powerfully muscled body unbowed by the pounding weight of water that would have crushed another man. His gaze locked on hers, and with slow, deliberate, fluid movements, he climbed up the wet, black rocks tumbled at the base of the falls, pausing to crouch on the large boulder at the top of the pile like some majestic jungle predator preening in the sun.

  The effect was . . . spectacular. If she hadn’t desired him beyond all reason before, this moment would have done the trick.

  Water streamed down him in rivulets, sliding over satiny skin, drawing her longing, ravenous gaze down the length of his sculpted body. The folds of his wet shuma clung to him like a second skin, all but transparent, molded to the heavy, rippling muscle of his thighs, the scandalous bulge between his legs that beneath her hot, hungry gaze began to pulse and grow, lifting the damp length of his shuma.

  “Keep looking like you want to eat me up, moa halea, and I’ll let you.” His voice was a hard, rough rumble.

  The throaty sound scraped across her senses, but it was the other, underlying tone that made every hair on her body stand on end. Not so much a sound as a deep vibration tuned precisely to every erogenous zone in her body. It rippled across her skin as he spoke and made her nipples clench into hard, painful points. Heat pooled in the suddenly swollen, throbbing folds between her legs. Her body began to shake with fine tremors.

  Halla help her. This was another kind of Calbernan enthrallment. An erotic Persuasion. It had to be. Men couldn’t bring a woman to the brink of shattering ecstasy with a just few words spoken in a throaty voice. No matter how deep, velvety, and darkly seductive that voice might be.

  Not that Gabriella had ever allowed herself close enough to any man she found attractive to know what shattering ecstasy felt like, of course, but Khamsin had been a font of information these last months. Determined that her sisters would not go into marriage ignorant and unprepared, Kham had told the Seasons exactly what went on in the marriage bed, what their future husbands would expect, and—equally as important, in her opinion—what they had a right to expect from their future husbands in return. The conversation had been accompanied by plenty of wide eyes, gasps, and giggling, but plenty of avid interest, too. Spring had even taken notes.

  In any event, this shivery, hot, shaking, tight, her-whole-body-was-about-to-explode feeling seemed very similar to the shattering ecstasy Khamsin had described. One more word from Dilys, and Gabriella feared she might tumble over the brink.

  The side folds of Dilys Merimydion’s bright white-and-blue shuma parted. One long, muscular leg slid forward with fluid grace, clearing the surface of the boulder and stepping lightly on the damp flagstones of the grotto floor. Every move was like a sensual dance, slow, deliberate, seductive. He crossed the short distance between them and came to stand before her, so close she could practically feel the warmth emanating from his skin.

  She knew she should flee. This man was dangerous to her. The wild sexual attraction was only the tip of the iceberg. If she let him close—if she acted on the feelings he roused—she would fall so hard, so fast, there would be no coming back. No hope to save herself. She tried to make herself turn and run, but her trembling body seemed deaf to the commands of her brain.

  Afraid she would not be able to resist again if she fell into that sunlit sea once more and heard that voice commanding her to claim him, she dragged her gaze down, away from his eyes, and fixed it on his mouth. But then, all she could do was think, My gods, what a beautiful mouth! and remember the many scandalous ways Khamsin had said a loving husband could put his mouth to use.

  “S-stop this r-right now,” she stammered.

  “Stop what?” His head bent.

  “You know w-what.” His nearness overwhelmed her. “Stop trying to s-seduce me.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” The words feathered across her cheek like kisses, trailing a warm path towards her mouth.

  She swallowed hard. Her heart was slamming against her chest. “You know it is.”

  His mouth hovered over hers, so close his lips brushed against hers when he spoke. “If you want me to stop, you have only to Command me . . . Sirena.”

  She opened her mouth to tell him to stop, but the words caught in her throat when his palm came up to cup her cheek. Her skin burned where he touched it.

  “No more lies, Gabriella,” he murmured. “Give me the truth. What do you fear so much, that you would run so hard from what you want?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking abou—”

  The press of his mouth against hers cut off her lie and swallowed it down, stealing it from her lips. He curled one arm around her waist and pulled her close, tightening his embrace until the full length of her body was pressed against him. His other hand tunneled through her hair, fingers curling around her skull, holding her fast. All the while, his mouth moved upon hers. Soft as silk, hot as fire. As relentless as the sea.

  Just when her knees were about to buckle, he ended the kiss and pulled back.

  “I told you the price you’d pay for each lie,” he said. “Try again, moa kiri. And this time, tell me true.”

  She thought his voice sounded a little strained, but it was hard to tell. Her brain was swimming in dizzied circles and she was having trouble putting two thoughts together. Summoning the mental coherence necessary to analyze his state was utterly beyond her.

  “I don’t know what you’re—”

  He kissed her again, cutting off her lie earlier this time. The dizzied circles in her brain became a whirlpool. His lips parted hers, his tongue licked inside her mouth and stroked her tongue. Gods, he tasted like chocolate and whipped cream and caramel cookies and honeyed fruits . . . every luscious, delectable dish she’d ever savored that had left her craving more.

  She almost wept in protest when he pulled back a second time.

  “Try once more,” he told her. His voice was definitely rough this time.

  “I don’t—”

  She barely got out two words before his lips found hers a third time. It was too much. Her quavering knees buckled. She fell against his tall, hard body, helpless to refuse him any longer, helpless to deny her own desires. Her arms lifted to encircle his neck. Her fingers thrust into the silky ropes of his hair, gripping tight. She took a deep, ragged breath, then shuddered as the intoxicating taste, scent, sight, touch, and sound of him invaded and overwhelmed every one of her senses. She closed her eyes to block at least one of those senses, but that only heightened the others.

  The hand at her waist slid lower. He cupped her buttocks and lifted her with effortless strength. Her feet left the ground. He pressed her hard against him, holding the secret vee of her sex against the hard, hot shaft of his. Sliding her up and down until a terrible, delicious tension twined tight inside her.

  She shuddered again and arched in his arms, tearing her lips from his to cry out against the tempest of his kiss, the mad, wild sensations he roused in her body.

  Her head fell back, and she moaned as his lips kissed a trail of fire down her throat. How was it possible that something as mundane as a neck could be so sensitive? But hers was—at least to him. He did something near her ear that made her shudder and clutch his shoulders, digging her nails into his flesh.

  “What are you doing to me?” she gasped.

  “No more than you are doing to me,” he muttered against the pulse in her throat. His lips dipped down to the plump curves of her breasts. His teeth nipped at flesh no man had ever touched. Teasing the skin bared by her gown’s neckline, teasing
more that the rich fabric still shielded. “You want me, Gabriella. Do not make of yourself a liar by trying to deny it.”

  “I’m not lying,” she insisted. “I—” Her voice broke off as he whirled around, crossed the short distance to one of the grotto’s stone benches, and laid her down on the hard surface.

  To free both his hands, she realized a dazed moment later as he straddled the bench and leaned over her, letting his hands roam as his mouth returned to cover hers. He kissed her into moaning bonelessness then sat back and guided her hands to his body.

  “You are lying, and there is no need. You are not alone in this. Touch me, moa kiri. Can you not see—can you not feel—what you do to me?” He dragged her hands across the hard ripples of flesh that cobbled his abdomen, up to the bulging pectoral muscles, and pressed her palms over his pounding heart. “Feel how fast my heart beats. That is for you and no other. I did not understand it myself until you Called me to your side, but now it all makes perfect sense.”

  Still holding one hand to his heart, he dragged the other to his face. “Do not fear this,” he said and pressed a kiss into her palm. “Do not fear me.” Then one by one, holding her slitted gaze the whole time, he took each of her fingers into his mouth, surrounding them with damp heat, stroking them with his tongue in a darkly sensual caress and voicing a stirring vow after each one.

  “I will never hurt you,” he promised after releasing her pinkie finger. “I will never betray you.” Her damp ring finger trembled against his lips. “I will stand between you and all danger.” The caress of her middle finger made her breath come in shallow pants. “I will devote myself to your happiness.” Her index finger was next, followed by her thumb. “Whatever you need, whatever you desire, I will provide.” Pulling her thumb free of his mouth, he nuzzled the soft skin of her palm and licked down the soft skin of her inner wrist. “For I am yours, before all others, Gabriella Aretta Rosadora Liliana Elaine Coruscate.”

  With her gaze locked to his, he said, “Claim what is thine.” His lips closed over her Rose, and his tongue swept across the mark’s red, slightly raised surface.

  It was as if he’d touched her body with a whip of fire. Her Rose flared hot. Her body clenched, back arching. Lightning shot through her veins, traveling in an instant from the Rose on her wrist to her breasts and her groin. She shuddered violently, wracked with waves of intense pleasure that built and built to a terrible, ferocious, burning ache.

  Dilys stared down at the Siren writhing before him on the stone bench of the grotto. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, with her rich, dark, Summerlander skin dewed by the mist from the falls, flushed from the passion that left her trembling uncontrollably in his arms. Her eyes, blue as the sky and deep as the sea, were wide and dilated, brilliant against the lush, midnight frame of her thick, curling lashes. Her full, lush lips were open as she panted for breath.

  His fingers slid into her hair. Such soft, silky, jet-black hair. Like waves of ink curling in the ocean’s current. His hands curved around her neck, slid up to cup the sweetly rounded contours of her skull.

  The small, sweet tip of her pink tongue swept out between her parted lips, dampening the plump flesh, making it glisten. “Dilys, I-I—”

  The sound of his name falling from those sweet lips made his blood go hot and his body grow rigid with desire. She hadn’t Called his true Name, not the one that would claim him, but that didn’t matter. The sound of his worldly name spoken in her husky, desire-thickened voice was like eating arras leaf—one of Mystral’s strongest aphrodisiacs—straight from the tree. He pulled her legs up over his thighs and yanked her groin tight against his. His mouth dove down, claiming those glistening lips in an abrupt, fierce kiss that was all wild hunger and shocking dominance.

  From earliest childhood, Calbernan boys were taught to sail, to fight, and to use the sea to protect Calberna and the women in it so that one day, they could amass sufficient gold and glory to claim a liana of their own.

  But there was another skill—one unrelated to war and wealth—that every Calbernan male pursued upon reaching manhood. Ililium. The study and mastery of the sensual arts.

  Every Calbernan male who bore the ulumi-lia—the blue tattoo on their right cheekbone that proclaimed them worthy of a liana of their own—had not only won sufficient gold and glory to honor his chosen bride, he also had mastered every possible way to drown that bride in carnal pleasure, and bring her time and time again to the heights of rapture.

  Calbernan males who bore the ulumi-lia were masters of the sea, masters of war, and masters of the sensual arts.

  And yet now, with Summer Coruscate in his arms and the taste of her on his lips, every seductive skill he’d ever learned evaporated from his mind, leaving only the instinctive need to feed his ravening hunger for her. He wanted her naked, in his arms, skin to skin, his body sliding into her. The sweet, hot friction of sex. Claiming and being claimed. Body and soul becoming one, binding the two halves of them together for all time.

  His head slanted. His mouth opened, forcing her lips apart as well. His tongue swept into her mouth, tangled with hers. Invaded. Laid claim to. She tasted of sunlight and honey and hot, elemental magic. She burned him. Scorched his soul.

  He bit at her beautiful, full lips, with light, raking nips of his teeth that made the tender flesh swell and warm against him. Instead of pulling away, she matched every needy bite, every thrust of his tongue, every hungry, demanding growl, with her own passionate responses. Her slender palms slid up the bare skin of his chest, over his broad shoulders, arms clinging tight. Her nails dug into the flesh of his back, raked at him. The sting of pain—proof of her own unleashed passion—only enflamed him more.

  He clamped her body to his as if by the sheer force of his embrace he could crawl inside her soul and anchor himself there for eternity.

  His sex was hard, heavy, the skin stretched near to bursting. Each brush of the soft fabric of his shuma all but destroyed him, sensitizing the tip of his sex until he feared he might come right then, just from a kiss.

  She squirmed, her dangling legs moving restlessly, and the motion nearly sent him to his knees.

  “Moa kiri . . . moa myerial myerinas . . . put your legs around me.” His voice came out choked, rasping. Each word forced through a throat so tight he could scarcely breathe, let alone speak.

  She obeyed without a word, legs sliding around his waist, ankles clamping tight in the small of his back. Her grip was hard, fierce, and his mind went up in flames thinking about all the other ways and parts of him she could clasp so tightly.

  His sex was wedged between her fully open thighs, blocked from the gates of Halla by his shuma and the much-too-plentiful layers of her full skirts. Need and hunger pounded through him. He had to get inside her. The need was ferocious, overwhelming. A primal instinct immutably etched into every cell of his body. The same sort of primitive, relentless, mate-or-die dictate that drove so many creatures of the sea.

  She whimpered and sobbed against him, arching her back, hips undulating in an instinctive rhythm that drove him even wilder for her. Her plump breasts strained against the confines of her bodice.

  “I need to see you,” he rasped. Without thought, his battle claws snicked out, sliced through the ties at the front of her bodice. Fabric parted. Her breasts spilled free. Beautiful, lush, firm globes, silky skin like chocolate cream, topped by dark, tightly beaded nipples. Numahao bless him. She was exquisite. More perfect than he’d ever dreamed a woman could be. Everything about her seemed to have been fashioned specifically to drive him wild.

  He reached for her, filled his palms with her breasts. “You are so beautiful, moa kiri. So soft, sweet . . .”

  With a short, choked cry, she grabbed his wrists, tried to pull his hands away.

  He caught her hands, tangled her fingers in his. “No, Gabriella, please. Let me see you. Let me touch you.” Gently, inexorably, he drew her hands out to her sides and dipped down to capture one straining nipple in
his mouth. She gave a sharp cry and arched up against him.

  As she did so, the fiery hot Summer Rose on her inner right wrist slid across the pale golden trident on his left.

  It was like being struck by lightning.

  He reared back, roaring, every muscle trembling. Her body arched, rising up from the bench as if tied to him by invisible strings. A cry ripped from her throat. Her bright blue eyes flashed purest gold.

  Dilys had sailed through his share of hurricanes—some so violent the waves alone would have sent any other vessel to the bottom of the sea. He’d felt the sting of rain. The punch of wind so strong even a Calbernan could not stand against it. The electric crack of lightning that sizzled through the air and raised every hair on his body. Relentless forty-foot waves slapping at his ship like a child batting at a toy in his bath.

  That raw, unbridled power was nothing compared to the force that drove through him now.

  It roared through his veins, turning blood to molten lava, making him quake with deep, racking tremors. His sex went hard as stone, stretched near to bursting. Need became punishing agony, a hunger so fierce it was a living, writhing thing inside him. Had he not been straddling the bench, the enormity of what he felt would have driven him to his knees.

  With a cry of surrender, he fell upon her, suckling her beautiful breasts, reaching for her tangled skirts. Trying to fight through the layers of bunched, blue fabric. Hating them. Needing to feel her skin, naked flesh to naked flesh.

  “Sweet Helos!” Gabriella clutched Dilys’s head to her chest, awash in indescribable sensation. The shocking pleasure that had engulfed her when he’d laid his hands—his mouth—on her bare breasts was nothing compared to the inferno of need that consumed her now. Her arms and legs clung to him like vines. Her hips were rocking against him in a desperate rhythm. She needed. Ached. Burned. Hungered, ravenously, beyond all reason. Only Dilys Merimydion could give her what she craved.