Streaking through the depths with her as he had done before, Simeon scattered the still lingering seals and fish as he plowed through their ranks. Meg had lost consciousness, and he didn’t break the rhythm of his strokes until they’d surged through the heaving breast of the bay.
They surfaced off the coast of the Isle of Mists. The moon had disappeared behind a cloud bank, though the misty drizzle had stopped. Cool, rainwashed air rushed up Simeon’s nostrils. Wet and sweet, it bore a marked difference to the scent of the sea he’d come from.
Please the gods, let her be breathing
, he begged the deities of the deep, meanwhile carrying her through the creaming froth of surf and silt, fine shells, and pebbles toward shore. Staggering up onto the hard-packed sand, he dropped to his knees and laid Meg down where they would be sheltered in lee of a jutting dune, well hidden from prying eyes. He dropped down beside her. Her kirtle had been left behind. He scarcely gave that a passing thought. Frantically, he felt for a pulse. It was there, albeit weak, and he gathered her against his hard-muscled chest and shook her until she coughed and sputtered and spat out seawater.
Relief overwhelmed him, and he crushed her close, rocking her in his arms, burying his hand in the fine-textured silk of her hair, inhaling its honeysuckle fragrance. After a moment, Meg stopped coughing and drew a deep ragged breath. Now that he knew she would be all right, he started to rise. He needed to get back to the sea and deal with the consorts who had nearly killed her. That could not wait. Besides, it wasn’t safe for him alone, without the other selkies when he resisted on the Isle of Mists. Their presence had always earned the respect of the shamans. Alone, without the protection of his sealskin, he was vulnerable—especially considering his association with Meg. Where was Gideon now? The dark lord had always been an enigma but never more so than at this moment in his conspicuous absence.
“No!” Meg cried, seizing his wrist. “Don’t leave me…I will never see you again!”
“You will,” he said. “All that is past…But I cannot linger here alone. It isn’t safe for either of us.”
She seized his arm with both hands. He was aroused just by the sight of her lying there naked, her slick wet skin gleaming in the faint moon glow, her tawny nipples peeking through spirals of her wet, tousled hair. Simeon glanced about. All was still. The strand was vacant. It was still hours before first light. He hesitated, licking his lips in anticipation of his secret fantasy becoming a reality there to the gentle sighing of the waves lapping at the shore on that narrow stretch of mystical beach.
He reached to soothe his rock-hard shaft, but it would not be soothed. Instead, it leapt to life, its thick bulk throbbing, aching—demanding. Soothing became stroking. Meg’s hand reached to take it from him, and it responded to her touch. It was more than he could bear, and he sank to his knees and gathered her into his arms.
But first, his fantasy.
He would fulfill the dream he’d dreamt waking and sleeping since he’d first set eyes upon the little witch of the Isle of Mists. It had become a palpable desire to savor all of her juices since he’d tasted her honey sweetness. This he could not experience to perfection under water, though he had taken a tantalizing taste that first night. To do justice to his appetite, it needed to be done at the palace, which was what he’d intended earlier, or on dry land, where nothing could dilute her succulence.
It began with a kiss.
His first taste was slow and deep, his tongue entwined with hers in a ritual that brought deep moans up from the depths of her throat, vibrating through his body. Building a little pillow in the damp sand beneath her, Simeon lifted her hips to rest upon it and bent her knees, spreading her legs wide. He’d done this in his mind over and over. Now, it was real, and his excitement threatened to relieve him too soon. That would not do. Calling the consorts’ attack to mind sufficed to stall his anxious cock, and he began blazing a fiery trail down the length of her body, from her swollen breasts to the shadowy hollow of her navel to the pubic curls between her thighs.
Parting her nether lips, he exposed her erect nub and sucked it until she cried out, holding his head against her parts, and leaned into his motion as she undulated against the rhythm of his lips and tongue. Simeon raised her hips higher and entered her with his tongue, stabbing in and out as if it were a cock, moving from the hard, moist bud he’d brought erect to the soft throbbing flesh deep inside her, laving her vulva, lapping at the luscious juice of her release, drinking his fill of her honey sweetness with each climactic shudder.
It was beyond his wildest imaginings. She was his. He had drunk her essence, savored the nectar of her release. This was one of the mysteries of the mortal race, one of the curiosities of those that lived above the waves, that had intrigued the creatures of the deep since time out of mind, and he had embraced it. There was no way he could leave her now or ever. He had drunk of the very elixir of her life.
His sex was bursting, his need painful. Cupping the globes of her buttocks, he lifted her to him and buried his cock deep inside her. Clinging to him, Meg called his name as he thrust himself again and again, deep pistoning thrusts that filled her with the warm rush of his seed. It was a rush so heavy she could not contain it and some overflowed and spilled out of her onto the sand.
Crushing her in his arms, Simeon held her against him without speaking, his heart hammering against hers for some time before his breathing became normal and his spent shaft relaxed inside her.
“Y-you will not leave me?” she begged him. “Say you will not leave me, Simeon…
Swear it!
”
“I will never leave you,” he murmured against her hair. “But I must return to my realm before first light. There are things I must do there before I can resolve what faces us.”
“The solstice is only two days off,” she said. “They will come for me! They will make me—”
“Sh,” he soothed, holding her close. “I know, Megaleen. We celebrate it below as well. You must trust me. We will be well away by the time the ceremonies begin.” He rose to his feet and pulled her up alongside him, taking her face in his hands. “I want you to go now, back to the cottage, before someone sees you like this. Meet me here, in this cove, tomorrow night at midnight. All will be well….”
Simeon took her lips in a steamy kiss that left her sagging against him before he put her from him gently but firmly. “Now go,” he said. “Let me do what I must do. Until midnight tomorrow…”
M
eg followed the lean, muscular figure of the Lord of the Deep with her eyes until he disappeared beneath the waves. Would she ever see him again? She had to believe she would. All at once she was cold. She hadn’t felt the chill in the air while she was in Simeon’s arms, despite the misty dampness. She shuddered. He had robbed the warmth from her body as well as her soul. She was naught but an empty shell without him.
Hugging herself, she rubbed her arms to prompt circulation. Where had her mulberry gauze kirtle gone? She had no recollection of when she’d parted from it. Simeon was right about one thing: she needed to sneak back into the cottage before Aunt Adelia discovered her missing. It would not do to be caught out naked on the beach again in the dead of night two days before the solstice.
As cold as she was, Meg couldn’t return covered with sand and sticky with the selkie’s seed. Padding to the water’s edge, she scooped up some seaweed stretched out like a ribbon along the surf and bathed her thighs and mons area with it. Plunging deeper, she submerged her body to wash away the sand, then ducked her head below the waves. She broke the surface facing the sea, letting the water cascade over her sore body, which ached from the ecstasy of Simeon’s embrace. How good the saltwater felt sluicing over her hot skin, cooling the fever his hands, his lips, his dynamic body had ignited in every pore. Taking a deep breath, she plunged again and rose, sliding her hands down the length of her body, over the swell of her aching breasts and taut hard nipples, down the length of her torso, and over the V of pubic curls between her thighs. Reaching back, she soothed the globes of her behind, then brought her hands around in front again retracing their path to the slender arch of her neck. Lacing her fingers through her long, sun-painted hair grown dark in the water, Meg spun toward the shore, only to freeze where she stood, treading the sandy bottom underfoot, submerged to the waist, buoyed by the swells. She uttered a stifled cry, her eyes flung wide toward Adelia standing at the water’s edge, arms folded across her sagging breasts. Meg gasped again: the woman gripped a long willow switch in her hand.
“So, niece, you are found out,” Adelia seethed, the willow branch making a formidable whirring sound slicing through the air as she slapped it against her open palm. “Get out of that water! You’ve had your last midnight swim.”
Simeon dove straight for the tunnel that led to the palace. Surging out of the water, he streaked through the chambers one by one, but they were vacant. There was no sign of the selkie females in seal or human form. All was still. Not even the annoying silt roses twittered. Exasperated, the selkie lord sought out Vega. He found him sorting eel skins in the servants’ quarters where they were stored.
“Leave that,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“I’m trying to make you a new eel skin, Simeon,” Vega said, his speech more familiar now that they were alone. “You’re down to your last one. You have got to stop leaving them about.”
“Where are the consorts?”
Vega shrugged. “I haven’t seen them since the latest melee,” he said. “You really need to do something with that lot before serious harm is done. This last nearly
was
the last. I have never seen Alexia in such a rage. I cleaned up the mess in your apartments, but I won’t do it again. I’ll let the purists club me first. There was seal scum in the corridors, on the bedstead—on the ceiling vault. I wash my hands of it!”
“You shan’t have to worry over that after tomorrow,” Simeon said. “We’re leaving.”
Vega staggered back from his chore, eel skin in hand. “Leaving? Leaving for where?”
“I’m taking up residence at the Pavilion…for now. I will need you with me.”
“
The Pavilion?
” Vega said, slack-jawed. “That outpost hasn’t been inhabited in eons. Father deemed it uninhabitable long before he passed. It’s too far from the Isles to frequent them.”
“That, Vega, is exactly what I want,” Simeon said. “We need to be ready to leave by midnight tomorrow.”
“What of the consorts? It is too far for them to travel back and forth. Why, I doubt they could make it there at all!”
“I’m counting upon it! The consorts are over.”
“Are you mad, Simeon? There will be slaughter done!”
“Oh aye, and I shall be the one to do it if they dare oppose me. What went on here earlier will not be repeated.”
“What went on here occurred because you brought an outsider into the deep—a
mortal
. What could you expect? You have never done that before. You have always confined your mortal dalliances to land trysts.”
“This is…different.”
“Oh now, you can’t mean to take the chit with you?” Vega blurted, realization having struck. Simeon would have laughed at his brother’s sagging jaw and arched brow if it wasn’t such a serious matter. “Y-you
do!
” Vega breathed. “Do you not have enough consorts to keep you sated and more patiently waiting to have their turn? Well, you don’t need me for this mad ramble. I’m quite comfortable right here at the palace. Think of all the fun I’ll have placating the consorts after you’ve gone. That Risa is a comely little sea cow. I wouldn’t mind her lips around my cock. When did you say you were leaving, ‘my lord?’”
Simeon arched his winged eyebrow and gave Vega a withering look. His brother had crossed the line again. “This wouldn’t be a subtle attempt to change my mind, would it, Vega?” he said. “Because if it is, you waste your breath. I have taken Megaleen’s virtue. Two days hence, she is to yield it to the shaman priest in her rite of initiation to become priestess of the Isle of Mists. When he discovers she is no longer a virgin, she will be sacrificed to the gods instead. I cannot leave her to such a fate, and I cannot bring her here among the consorts. You saw the outcome of that. What other choice have I?”
“Certainly not the Pavilion,” Vega said. “It has surely gone to ruin. And if you think to take me along to put it to rights, think again. I am your valet, your horse master, your protector, and your friend—not to mention your brother, though that is best left to speculation in the minds of the masses before we start an insurrection. Nowhere in the long list of my duties do I find the word ‘slave’ mentioned anywhere. Besides, you waste your time. Judging from your last misadventure, your Megaleen could not live long beneath the waves.”
“You saw that then?”
“I see everything that concerns you, Simeon; that is my function.”
“You might have intervened.”
Vega uttered a wry chuckle. “What? And risk castration or worse at the mercy of those vicious cows? The fog of love has addled your brain.”
“When the consorts attacked, fear broke the spell,” Simeon said. “That can be remedied. Spells can be countered….”
“And you fancy yourself the sage to take that on, do you? The Pavilion, indeed! You need reining in now and then. I’d hoped you’d see reason. Evidently not. Now you think fleeing to that godforsaken outpost is going to spare you the consorts’ wrath? Not that lot, Simeon. You dream.”
“I do not need your lecture; I need your help. Who will tend my sealskin? I can hardly entrust it to Megaleen.”
Again Vega laughed. He swept his arm wide. “And for the likes of that—a woman you cannot trust—you give up all this!” he marveled.
“You overrate ‘all this,’” Simeon seethed, avoiding the first part of the question. “I have known something in Megaleen’s arms that I have known in no others’. You call it ‘love.’ I do not know. Whatever it is, I have not ever known it before, and now that I have tasted it, I do not want to live without it, Vega. She makes my cock sing. She brings me to life in ways I never imagined possible. I have drunk her essence. Hah! You scoff at the Pavilion. I would take her to the ends of the world—to the Netherworld itself—if needs must to keep her.”
Vega gave it thought. “I never would have expected…this,” he mused.
“I tried to do the right thing. I took her back to the Isle. I thought in time she would forget…But then Gideon intervened, the gods rot him!”
“The gods have already dealt with Gideon. He has fallen, but he is still what he was, at least in part, despite that he is outcast with his lesson learned too late. I pity him his lonely existence. I cannot imagine it. And you cannot fault him in this. You would have reached this mad decision without his interference. He is not your enemy.”
Vega was right, of course. He was always right, and Simeon heaved a sigh. “I need you at the Pavilion, old friend,” he said.
“There will be sprites and sirens aplenty to stroke your vanity and your cock, I assure you.”
“It’s not my cock that worries me, Simeon. Yours, on the other hand…”
“Never you mind about me. Make ready. I collect Megaleen on the Isle of Mists at midnight.”
It was cold and dark in the bait shack, where Adelia had locked Meg while she went to the cottage to fetch her a fresh kirtle. Why didn’t her aunt just take her back to her loft chamber? What was the purpose of barring her inside the smelly little shack naked, in the dark…in the cold? Adelia hadn’t used the willow switch, except to prod Meg along, but the threat still lingered. Adelia wasn’t a cruel woman, just a difficult one. Meg was counting on past performances to prevail, but there was no set precedent for being caught out naked in the dead of night cavorting in the water.
While her actions soothing herself were innocent enough, and quite therapeutic, they could have easily been construed as sexual in origin to one of Adelia’s strict sensibilities. Did she know? It was highly likely, considering her aunt’s extrasensory powers, though Meg prayed against it while she waited and listened to the squishing sound the horseshoe crabs were making traveling in their sandy compartments in the dark.
Meg wasn’t given long to wonder. The rasp of the wooden bar being raised on the shed door outside brought her to her feet as Adelia entered with a rush candle in one hand, an indigo kirtle looped over her arm, and the willow switch at the ready. The old woman’s expression was unreadable except for the fury flaming in her eyes. That hadn’t changed since Adelia confronted her on the strand. Meg took a step forward, reaching for the kirtle.
“Not so fast, niece,” the old woman barked, spreading the gown out on the chopping block. “Climb up, Megaleen.”
“On
that?
Why?” Meg asked warily, casting a sidelong glance at the cleavers in their brackets on the wall that glinted in the rush candle flame.
Adelia flashed a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Because I said to,” she returned. Setting the rushlight down on a stool nearby, she whipped the willow switch out from under the crook of her arm and swiped it across Meg’s bare bottom. “Climb up and lie down. Do it
now!
” she charged.
“W-what do you mean to do?” Meg asked, hitching herself up on the edge of the block. Her bottom smarted from the switch, and she climbed gingerly, a close eye upon the willow, which carved threatening circles in the dank, oppressive air.
“Lie
down!
” Adelia demanded, slapping her own open palm with the willow. “Or do I have to fetch a eunuch from the temple to hold you down?”
Cold chills walked the length of Meg’s spine. There was no mistaking Adelia’s demeanor now. Her aunt was seething with blind passion, and her wrinkled hand gripping the willow switch trembled with rage. It did not bode well.
A swipe across her breasts with the willow and Meg leaned back. Adelia had always been a fierce taskmistress, but this was frightening. Meg barely fit on the butcher block with her knees bent. Her terror could be tasted, like bile, when her aunt pried her thighs apart with the branch and thrust her hand between them.
Meg fought back, shoving Adelia’s hand away, which earned her another stripe, this time on the soft tender flesh on the inside of her thigh. It stung so much her eyes began to water, and she cried out, but to no avail.
“Open your legs!” Adelia shrilled, raising the switch again. “What sort of fool do you take me for? You reek of come. I smelled it all over you the last time I found you naked in the water. What? You think a plunge in that brine out there will kill the stink of it? Harlot! Whore! You’ve been running with the selkies!”
Meg needed both her hands to fend off her aunt’s blows to her head, and though she kicked and screamed and flailed at Adelia, it was no use. The woman was very strong. Seizing the rushlight, Adelia held it high and parted Meg’s nether lips.
“You are ruined!” she screamed, probing Meg’s vagina cruelly. “Spoiled!”
Meg slapped her aunt’s hand away and leapt off the chopping block, clutching her kirtle about her and wriggling into it. “I do not want to hurt you, aunt, but I will strike you if you touch me thus again! You have no right!”
“I have every right!” Adelia shrilled, pounding the block with her fist. “You are my charge and my blood. The future we planned would have saved you. What are we to do now, eh? Whatever possessed you to flaunt your piddling gifts to impress the gentry in the first place? Foolish chit! You cannot go back to the mainland now. Your accusers will kill you. That we took you in has spared you, for they fear us, but your salvation comes at a price. You must become a priestess, and to do so you must be a virgin. Well, my girl, you are no virgin now. You have been spoiled by a selkie seducer. I hope it was worth it, Megaleen, because it is the last you will get. What will I tell your Uncle Olwyn? He has spent the tribute the shamans gave for you. You are bought and paid for, and their coin has bought them damaged goods.”
“Aunt…I didn’t—”
“Can you grow a new virgin skin by Midsummer’s Eve?” Adelia railed. “Can you restore yourself as you once were? Can you possibly hope to dupe the shaman, feigning innocence? You have destroyed the only thing that could have saved you! What do you think will happen to Olwyn and me for this, hm? You cannot stay here anymore now, either. Foolish chit, you have doomed us all! Well? Explain yourself!”
Meg chewed her lower lip. How could she explain the passion that had obsessed her? How could she confide that even now her body throbbed for the Lord of the Deep? Her sex ached for him. Her heart quickened at the thought of him. Her fissure moistened just remembering his anxious bulk moving between her thighs, and she stiffened, reliving the pressure of his tongue laving, scraping across her hardened bud, riveting her with waves of wet, icy fire—even now, her flesh still stinging from the stripes Adelia’s willow branch had left behind.