Love in Fantasy (Skeleton Key) (21 page)

She sucks in a huge lungful of air repeatedly, spitting out water and shivering in the cold. A blanket falls in her lap and she looks up into angry green pools. “I’m not sure if you’re crazy or truly talented at playing the damsel in distress, but either way, keep your ass planted right in that spot while I take us back to the ship.” He sits on a bench and shakes the water out of his hair before picking up the oars. Her teeth start to chatter, and he gives her a sharp look. “Cover up before you freeze to death,” he growls.

Amidst all of this, she’s wondering why he hasn’t mentioned anything about the small detail of, oh yeah, she’s part fish. Bending her knees, she wraps the blanket around her shoulders and is about to close it when she realizes she is, in fact, staring at real knees. Human knees. Cold and tired, she decides not to dwell on it.
Go with the flow, Shelby
.

It takes almost an hour for him to row them to a large, old-fashioned, pirate ship. Nothing about this night is going to surprise her anymore, so she simply sighs and takes Phoenix’s hand when he lends it to help her stand. Then, he unceremoniously tosses her over his shoulder and starts climbing up the ladder to the ship deck.

Once they are on the relatively solid ground, he sets her down and closes the blanket tightly around her, glaring at every man who looks their way. He scoops her up, into his arms this time, and takes her to the captain’s quarters and lays her on the bed. Standing back, hands on his hips, he scrutinizes her with a fierce scowl. She squirms under his hot stare and, now that she is inconveniently without a fin, she feels her pussy flood with arousal.

Her eyes stray to his . . . are those, breeches? Hmmm, they certainly make the bulge of what must be an enormous cock, hard and ready to go, a lot more obvious. Then again, “conveniently” seems like a much better choice of word at this very moment. He growls, and her eyes fly back up to meet his, the green almost glowing with the fire burning in them. “If you don’t stop looking at me like that, you’re going to find yourself fucked into next week, sugar.”

She opens her mouth to deny it staring, then remembers her lack of voice. She mentally shrugs it as a lie anyway. In this instant, she makes a rare, bold decision. This is clearly a dream, or high, or alternate universe, but whatever it is, she’s going to make the best of it. Doing her best to give him a sultry look, she tosses the blanket away and lies out on the bed like an offering.

Phoenix’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and his jaw drops, but he’s also breathing erratically, his pulse pounding so hard she can see it in his neck. “You don’t know what you’re asking for, sugar. I suggest you get under those covers and try to get some rest.”

She starts to argue with him, tell him she knows exactly what she wants, but there is no sound. Ugh! This mute thing sucks! Next time she watches
The Little Mermaid
, she’ll have a little more empathy for Ariel. Her only recourse is to show him then. Scooting to the edge of the bed, she palms his cock through his pants, smiling smugly when he hisses and his hips thrust into her hand.

Fifteen seconds later, she’s flat on her back, naked, covered by the sexiest man she’s ever met, and being kissed like she’s the answer to world hunger. After about ten minutes of making out like teenagers, he raises his head and stares down at her, his face full of wonder.

“Who are you?” he muses aloud, knowing he won’t be able to get an actual answer. “I feel as though I’ve known you for my whole life. Longer than that even.” He kisses her again, a long, slow, drugging kiss. “You know I’m going to take you now, right?” he asks, probing her face with his eyes. She nods and lifts her hips to let him know she’s completely amenable to this plan. He stills her by pressing her into the bed, still serious and brooding. “Let me be very clear, sugar. I’m going to take you and then you are going to be mine.
Mine.”
He emphasizes the last word through a clamped jaw. At this point, she’d give him whatever the hell he wants if he would simply follow up all these words with some freaking action!

His mouth slams down over hers and she sighs in relief, even as her heart rate picks up, and walls of her pussy spasm in anticipation. Despite how subtle the tensing of her muscles are, he must notice because he groans and grinds his erection into the V of her thighs, where he’s resting his weight. She moans in response, and he nips at her lip before journeying down to lap and suck on her nipples, a little bite here and there, too. She writhes beneath him as he tortures her until she is so worked up, if she were able to talk, she’d be screaming and cussing him out, demanding he let her come. As it is though, she has no other choice but to take what he gives her. It’s a win either way, really.

He moves down even further and Shelby feels the need to recant her earlier thought about not being eaten. Her voice suddenly has reappearance, allowing her to scream her opinion right before she comes violently, her body rocking with hard shudders. She’s still in an orgasm induced coma when Phoenix returns to the bed, and she realizes he’d gotten up and stripped naked.

“No turning back now, sugar,” he growls. “You’re mine and when I’ve fucked you so full of come that you are carrying my baby, everyone else will know it.”

There is no time for her to even process what he says, much less respond to it, before he drives inside, his cock stretching her pussy from its size. She sucks in a breath at the pain of losing her virginity and he freezes. “Damn it, sugar. I’m so sorry, I should have asked if this as your first time.” His voice is as thick with apology as it with lust, but he manages to give her a sheepish grin. “It’s not like you could have told me on your own.” Shifting a centimeter to test the fit, he raises his brows at her. “Still hurt?”

“No,” she manages to croak out. “Feels. . .” She can’t get out any more words but she bucks her hips up in answer.

His grins become a smile filled with dark, passionate promises. They fuck hard, knocking the headboard against the wall (this is a huge accomplishment, considering the bed is bolted to the floor) before coming together, shouting their release. Eventually, they collapse in an exhausted, but satisfied heap.

Phoenix rolls to his back, taking her with him so she lies atop him, their bodies still connected. “Shelby?” he whispers out of the blue.

She swiftly rises up, supporting herself with her elbows on his chest. “Yes,” she confirms, her voice stronger and less scratchy. “How do you know that?”

He shrugs and brushes a lock of her hair behind her ear. “I don’t know. But, since I first saw you in the water, I’ve known two things. You were made to be mine, and I was instantly, irrevocably in love with you. Learning your name was just a perk.”

Shelby’s heart practically grows wings and takes flight. “You love me?” Her voice is strong and fully restored.

“More than I thought it was possible to love another person, sugar,” he murmurs, love shining in the emerald green depths of his eyes.

“Me too,” she whispers.

Phoenix comes awake with a start and falls off the chair he’s sitting in. He looks around in a daze, wondering where the hell he’s at. It slowly starts to trickle back; the white walls, ugly maroon carpet, and the smell of the ocean. He’s at Shelby’s lab. After he left her, he realized he couldn’t leave her here alone this late at night, so he took a seat in sitting area directly across from the door to her room.

Taking a gander at his watch, he sees it’s just past four in the morning. Fuck! He hoped she hadn’t slipped out and left him sleeping. It wasn’t safe for her to be walking out to her car alone in the darkness. He rubs the sleep from his eyes and gets to his feet, wincing when he feels the stiffness in his groin. His dreams about Shelby were erotic as fuck. But more than that, they made him admit what he’d been denying.

Finally, on his feet and fully awake, he rushes over to the door and tries to open it. It’s locked, but some of his tension releases when he sees Shelby through the window, asleep at her lab table. He starts knocking urgently, but not too hard, afraid to scare her awake.

After a couple of minutes, she stirs and sits up, looking adorably mussed and disoriented. He knocks a little harder to draw her attention his way, then points down to the door handle. Shelby slowly climbs off the stool, roots around in her purse before pulling out a set of keys and pads over to the door. She unlocks it, and he opens it in such a rush, she goes hurtling into his arms.

“Ooph!” she grunts as the wind gets knocked out of her.

“Sorry, sugar,” he says gently. “I was a little over anxious.” Her head lifts and that’s when he sees the dried tear stains on her enchanting face. His heart starts to hurt, afraid he knows why she was crying. “You’ve been crying,” he states with a regretful sigh.

“I thought you—we—that there was something—” He kisses her, effectively silencing her explanation. He was right, she’d been crying because he hurt her. Now he needed to fix it, and he would do it by being honest with her and himself.

“Shelby, when I first saw you last night, you knocked me on my proverbial ass. Did you know that?” he asks with a crooked smile. She shakes her head and watches him warily. “There were two things which hit me like a ton of bricks.”

“Two things?” she repeats, her eyes growing.

He nods. “Two things. One, you were made to be mine and two—”

“You were instantly, irrevocably in love with me,” she finishes for him.

They stare at each other in shock. She breaks the spell with a shrug, dismissing the weirdness of the moment. “You still left. Why are you here now?”

He tentatively sets his lips on hers, pleased when she doesn’t retreat and lets him kiss her. Breaking apart, he drops his eyes to the ground awkwardly. “I left because I was being a selfish fucking coward, sugar,” he admits. “I thought if I didn’t have you in the first place, it would make it easier to give you up. It took an instant for me to fall for you, an hour for me to act like a jackass and fuck it up, and about two minutes for me to realize I was wrong.”

“So, what happens now?” she frets. It’s clear he doing a shit job of explaining.

“Now, I make plans to be with you, wherever you go, whenever you go, whatever it takes. I’ll be with you.”

It feels as tough a cache of rocks lifts off his chest when her face breaks into a smile. “If you had asked, I would have told you I was mostly content to stay here and work. I want to be with you, to start a family, and have stability. I would still like to go out on a project, perhaps once a year, for no longer than a month. My thought was, maybe you and our children could go with me. Spend one month of every year traveling and discovering the world together.”

Phoenix is staring at Shelby in fascination, his heart about to explode with love. “Sugar,” he breathes, “you’re fucking brilliant!”

How about that, Mr. Doubting Mustafa?

T
he bell over the door jingles as I enter a small jewelry store downtown. The young, blonde clerk looks up and smiles with a blush. “Where can I find Sabrina?” I ask curtly, looking for Pippa’s sister. She points to a hallway, and I nod my thanks before heading in that direction.