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She was already nearing his mouth, but before she could say whatever unthinkable thing she was going to say, he closed the distance. Oh, Goddess. The sea had brought strength back to her physical body in a miraculous matter of minutes, though as he'd sensed, her spirit was still recuperating from its near separation. But the passion she gave him now overrode it, that mortal reaction when the body brushed too closely to death. The desire to connect. To live and create something more than itself.
It pulled an answering response from him, which shouldn't surprise him, because she'd roused desire from him the first time he'd touched her, sinking down into the Abyss. But now it surged forth on a wave of frustration and despair so strong he knew he couldn't inflict the violence of it upon her.
He forced it back to focus on her. Maybe he could make this moment even more than what she expected. Maybe he could use her pleasure as a powerful magic of its own, to create and convey to her a credible semblance of what he might have once been able to give to her. And if he did it right, maybe she wouldn't realize the magic all came from her. As it had from the beginning.
Goddess knew, she deserved something from him, with all he'd put her through.
Maneuvering them to the edge of the spring, their mouths still joined, he broke the contact only to lift her up onto a flat rock shelf. He kept most of her tail immersed, since his knowledge of mermaid biology told him her sensitive scales were the primary conductors of the healing effect of the ocean waters. He'd brought their pack and now searched through it as she watched curiously. He chose several of her shells, two small round ones and one oblong angel wing she'd had wrapped in tissue to protect its more fragile structure. Knowing her odd sense of humor now, he suspected she'd deliberately chosen it for the journey.
As he took them out, he placed them on the shallow platform of her belly to hold them, increasing her amusement.
"What are you doing, my lord?"
"Giving you something to think about other than mermen," he said.
While she quirked a brow at him, the shells dipped in a slight movement, revealing the quiver of response running under her skin. It made his own blood heat. But again he tamped it down.
"I've told you about the Privy Man," he said, moving the shells again, this time placing the two small round ones on her breasts, one fitting over each nipple snugly enough to stay there, letting her sensitive tips feel the texture of the shell inside. "Tell me something I might not know about."
She studied him, her eyes growing brighter with arousal. He wanted to watch it grow and consume her, confirm for him that not just her body but her soul had a firm hold on life again.
"You've lived so long, my lord. I can't imagine . . ."
"Try," he said quietly, picking up the angel wing, caressing her stomach with his fingers.
"There's an underwater cave near Mexico," she said at last. "It tunnels from the ocean beneath a riverbed. There are rock formations in that cave over a million years old. They crumble if you touch them, so you have to swim slowly. In places the water is a brilliant crystal blue."
As she remembered, her eyes seemed to become more vibrant as well. Jonah watched her face, studying it so hard, trying to find the secret of it, why it'd had the ability to hold him in such close proximity from the first, seeking something he didn't want to give, but still couldn't tear himself away from. "At one time, there were openings in the riverbed, to the surface. The tribes of Mayans that lived along the river area used to dive down and leave pottery, as gifts to the Goddess Ix Chel. I found them there, huge mounds of pots beneath the water. The stalactites and mites are like columns in a temple."
She settled her head back on a rise of rock, careful not to dislodge the shells. As she did, her breasts tilted upward. When his gaze followed their movement, a flush of response heated her throat. He was grateful for the cooler water, helping keep his body motionless, bound by her voice.
"Deeper in, I found a statue of Her, as tall as two of you. She's sitting cross-legged, and when I went to Her base, I couldn't help but touch Her, just a tiny part of Her foot so I wouldn't do much damage. But She was solid, didn't crumble at all. As if being in the water all this time only enhanced Her strength. And so"--her breath drew in as his fingers glided up her stomach, between her breasts--"I curled up in Her lap, which was this perfect curve for my body, and I slept. Oddly, it felt like my gift to Her, keeping Her company that way. My lord ..."
"Be still, little one. You've traveled far in the sea, haven't you?" His finger traveled left, followed the curve of her breast, his eyes stilling on her face in that way that made Anna's tongue feel like it didn't work properly. "The first time we met, you told me your family was used to your absences. You've spent much time alone."
"No." She shook her head, her fingers curling at her sides, trying to obey his command to remain still even as feelings spiraled wildly inside her, all coiling in toward that single touch. "Even that day. Ix Chel was with me. Then there are whales . . . stingrays . . . fish and sea life of every description. Even the cranky blennies."
"But no one who can do this . . ." And the small shells were moving, a slight elevation, like the movement of a hidden creature beneath as her nipple tightened, lengthened, responding to him.
"If you were in your human form, I'd put this one"--he passed a hand over the angel wing shell still resting on her stomach--"over that sensitive flesh between your legs, just over the wet opening to your cunt. I'd watch the way you'd react to the barest of pressures there."
She could imagine it vividly. Like when on the shore of her own familiar ocean, how she placed the sole of her foot on the wet sand, waiting for that first tiny lick of foam . . . that barest of touches . . .
Like when he'd first placed her in this water. The soul holding the moment, overwhelming the body's base need for mere survival. Giving the mind a powerful lesson in the importance of stillness, of savoring the overwhelming flood of significance of what that one touch, one feeling, meant. Even if the next moment took it away.
"Can anyone else do that to you, little one?"
"Well . . ."
He stopped, his gaze shifting to her, hot and possessive in a way that arrowed heat straight to her cleft, swelling her tissues such that it was as if the shell compressed her in fact. She let out a little moan.
"No, my lord. Definitely not." But when he looked at her like that, like he considered her exclusively his, it did such marvelous and terrible things to her soul, shredding it. Tearing open the thin membrane holding the joy of new life, but all her vital, fragile organs as well, a jumble of agony and pleasure at once, just as new life would face.
She slid back down into the water, beneath it, sending the shells floating. When Jonah bent, she reached for him. She let just her face come out of the water, the reach of her arms, bringing him down enough he could taste her wet lips. Then she drew him down until he sank below the surface, lying upon her. Her mouth gave his human body air, as a mermaid could do, making it possible for him to breathe, even as his heart pounded up behind his ears and his cock got deliciously harder.
As she pressed her breasts against him, Jonah felt the smooth line of her stomach against his, the artful layering of scales in a vee down her lower abdomen, making him think of what was hidden there. But for the moment, there was just the incredibly intense pleasure of her mouth.
Maybe the battle had given him the same reminder of the fragility of life as the dehydration had to her, stimulating them both. Or maybe that magic he wanted her to conjure was affecting him as well. Regardless, he was hyperaware of her fingers pressing into his shoulders, flexing into the muscle. The arch of her body, the line of her ribs he now followed with his fingers, like ripples in the sand left by tides. It made him think of her pixie wings, which appeared shaped by the water, and he wondered if the sea, the spiral of Her, was within Anna, such that when she opened herself like this, all the sensual mystery of the ocean's turbulent waters engulfed him and that was why he couldn't seem to ho
ld on to any cynical resolve. Selfish bastard that he was, had he started this for her pleasure, or his comfort?
Does it matter?
He didn't know if that soft whisper came from her mind, unconsciously responding to his conflict, or something far larger he wasn't prepared to face.
They were surfacing. He trapped her between his body and one of the larger rocks that shaped the spring's banks. He briefly noted there were carvings on the rocks, more protections, but it also reminded him of the dragon fossilized in the first cave, where Anna had brought him to save his life. A life he'd cared little about saving.
While he didn't see much value in it still, with her teasing about the mermen, he found himself thinking about who would take care of her. Make sure all that beauty and gentle but miraculously enduring passion for life was never diminished. She was only twenty years old, and he was as ancient as history. Yet there was something so precious in her, something that almost gave his life meaning. And, with the wisdom he couldn't deny, he knew not just his own. Whatever it was, he could only equate it to the quality of the Goddess Herself. If Anna wasn't alive, existing, then life as a whole would be less, for everyone. And wasn't it the height of irony that she'd said almost the same thing about him?
Such things add up in the subconscious of the world, my lord.
