Kissed by the Wave: A Forbidden Realm Novel

by Serena Gilley

  They never did let him go to her. The fire was like nothing they’d seen before. It raced through the building, devouring everything. The roof collapsed, the walls caved in. The responders could do little but stand with him and watch. In the end, nothing was left of that first Sandstrom Industries building but a pile of unidentifiable ash.

  He didn’t even have Judith’s body to bury.

  After that, work had been the only thing that mattered to him. He would be the man Judith wanted. Nothing stood in the way of advancing his company. He built Sandstrom into a world leader in the energy field, and he tried not to care about anything.

  When it all got to be too much, he went out on his boat. He felt safe there; he could breathe there. The air was fresh and cool, the water would never let fire take anything from him. And hell, the moonlight on the waves was a great way to get women hot and in the mood. He could distract himself with them for hours. Water was always good for that.

  Now, unfortunately, the water seemed to be keeping him from the only thing he’d truly wanted in years. Aliya. He ached for her in every way possible.

  How could she be nothing more than a fantasy? He couldn’t have imagined her, what she’d done to him last night. And his response to what she’d done…he sure as hell hadn’t imagined that.

  He wasn’t imagining his response now. He wished she were here to put out the fire burning inside him right now. The way she had taken him into her mouth, the way she looked at him with those huge, innocent eyes…he wished he could live all those moments with her again, over and over.

  He wanted her, there was no doubt about it. He wanted her in a way that was more real than anything he’d ever felt. She had to be out there, waiting for him. Somewhere. Why was he here when Aliya was out there?

  “Mr. Sandstrom?”

  It was his secretary. She’d said something from inside the office but he hadn’t been paying attention. She followed him out onto the balcony. Damn. It was as if he’d forgotten she’d even existed. Not a good thing, considering that on more than one occasion she’d been the one he’d taken out on his boat.

  “Everything all right today?” she asked him.

  “It’s fine, Miranda. I’m just…distracted.”

  “Anything I can do about that?”

  He knew what she meant. Her eyes, her voice, the sway in her hips as she approached him, told him exactly what she meant by her words. She would be happy to help with his distraction. She was pretty good at it, too, as he recalled.

  She liked their occasional trysting and she never expected anything more. Maybe she had demons of her own and he helped chase them away, just as she did for him. Maybe she felt sorry for him and did what she did out of pity. Or maybe she just liked screwing the boss. It never crossed his mind to ask why, he just knew she was a hot lay when he needed it.

  He needed it right now, too. They’d never done it here at the office, but maybe that’s just what he needed. He could take her on his desk, or right here in a chair, or up against the cold marble wall. He could lose himself like he did on the boat. Then maybe he’d forget about mermaids, he could come back to reality, and he could finally think straight.

  But no. One look at Miranda’s willing smile and he knew it just wouldn’t work. He didn’t want her.

  His cock still throbbed, but it was not Miranda’s touch that could soothe him. He was aching for Aliya. He needed her lips and her hands. His skin itched to rub up against her, feel that velvet-soft sensation of her snaking around him, touching him, exploring him as if he were the only man in the world.

  That’s what he needed. She had loved him with a part of her he’d never encountered. She knew nothing of business, his widely acclaimed success, his net worth, or his car. She only wanted to put her hands on him, to give him what he wanted, to know him any way that she could.

  That’s what he wanted. And of course that was insane. Mermaids weren’t real. He needed some water, all right—to throw in his face and bring back his sanity.

  “Thanks, Miranda, but I’m okay,” he said finally. “Why don’t you head down to engineering and see if you can remind the guys there I’m still waiting on that report for the new geothermal project.”

  She didn’t even look disappointed. All she did was shrug. “All right, if that’s what you need.”

  “It is. Thanks.”

  Her bright red stilettos clicked on the marble as she headed back into his office. It wasn’t all he needed. Not by a mile. But he wasn’t quite lunatic enough yet to send his secretary off hunting mermaids.

  He half wished he were crazy enough to go do it himself.

  * * *

  “So, Aliya,” a twinkling little voice above her asked. “What have you been up to?”

  Aliya didn’t answer right away. She blinked up into the midday sunlight and tried to read the Wish Fairy’s pink expression, but the glare was too bright. Usually Aliya enjoyed her visits with Raea, but today something seemed different. She hoped she could not guess what.

  “Just the usual, Raea,” Aliya answered her lightly.

  But Raea’s eager fluttering said she didn’t believe it.

  “Come on. You can tell me.”

  “Tell you what? I found a fishing boat with the net tangled in its motor, so I corrected that this morning.” Aliya shrugged, water lapping at her shoulders here in this secluded cove where she had gone to be alone with her thoughts.

  “And that’s all you’ve done?” Raea questioned.

  “Pretty much. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Really? So, it’s perfectly usual for you to go swimming around down there with one of those humans?”

  Aliya frowned. Raea knew about that? She couldn’t. Could she?

  “Oh yes, I know about that.” Raea laughed, swooping annoyingly overhead and dipping her pink toes into the water.

  Aliya sent up a little fountain of lake water. But Raea just fluttered her wings dry and grinned.

  “Now, be nice, little fish. I’m not telling anyone what you were doing last night, so your secret’s safe with me.”

  Aliya flashed her tail angrily. She should have known making friends with a fairy—the driest air creature imaginable—would be troublesome. This was all she needed, Raea and her busybody ways informing everyone from mermaid to dryad what Aliya had done last night. With a human.

  Oh, and what she had done! At the merest memory of his body, his taste, his raging emotions…it brought a wave of sensation to her skin. She sank deeper into the water so Raea might not notice the heated flush that crept over her body.

  “I swim with humans occasionally, I admit it,” she said as casually as she could manage. “The clumsy creatures are practically helpless underwater and of course we don’t need anyone having an accident, drawing all sorts of attention out here.”

  And it was perfectly true. Everyone knew a living human would come out into the lake, pass the time for a while, then simply go home to the dry without so much as a thought about mermaids. It was a fact of life that had kept the underwater world alive and well for centuries.

  On the other hand, a drowned human would bring all manner of boats and humans in funny suits and silly breathing apparatuses. Whole societies of merpeople had been uprooted and forced to scatter barely one jump ahead of humans in terrifying rubber masks, searching for one of their own. They would come in droves, their unnatural costumes spewing mind-numbing bubbles out in all directions. Their ships were loud and left slicks of poison in their wakes. It was bad when humans went missing on the lake.

  “It’s part of my job to help humans every now and then, to keep them out of our hair,” she said, playing with a shimmering school of minnows who happened by.

  “It looked like more than just your hair that human was getting into last night,” Raea quipped.

  “I couldn’t very well let him drown, could I? I…I think he was drunk.”

  “Drunk on mermaid, if you ask me.”

  “I don’t care what it looked like to
you. I was helping him. Nothing more.”

  Raea giggled. “Oh, don’t be so nervous. I’m just teasing.”

  “That’s not a very nice way to tease. If anyone should hear you…”

  “Relax,” Raea went on. “You’re not in any trouble. You have caused quite a commotion, though.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Raea flitted back and forth above her. Sheer fairy wings whizzed in the air and stirred up the water. “I don’t know everything you did with that sex-crazed human, but he’s been monopolizing my day.”

  “What?”

  “Oh yes! Maybe you didn’t expect him to remember you, dearie, but I’ve got some news.” Raea paused for dramatic effect and shook her shimmery pink hair. “You’re all he can think about.”

  “What?”

  Raea dipped so low Aliya had to back off from the drying effect of those wings.

  “He’s been wishing for you.”

  It took a moment to sink in.

  “He’s been what?!”

  “Oh yes. I’ve been unable to hear other summons, his wish is so strong. From sun up this morning, wish wish wish wish.”

  This was bad! Oh, this was sooooo bad. Devin hadn’t forgotten her! She thought that he would—they usually did. Humans counted all things they couldn’t explain as pure error or imagination. When she’d read Devin’s thoughts, he clearly thought that’s all that she was. They had enjoyed each other and he had lost some of his emptiness. But he still thought her merely a dream, just part of his imagination, didn’t he?

  She’d watched him leave, sail his boat back to the dry. Everyone knew once the humans were back on the dry, once the moonlight was gone and they were back to their mundane lives, all dreams faded away. She’d expected him to forget her. But could it be true? Did he remember?

  “But I saw him leave. I was sure he’d gone back to the dry…”

  Raea nodded. “He did. That’s what’s so odd about it. He went back to the city, sent his clueless companion home, and headed off to work this morning—he’s pretty important there, you know—but all day long he’s been wishing.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh yeah. I don’t get many calls quite so powerful as his, let me tell you.”

  Aliya understood. Raea knew about wishing.

  The delicate balance of all creatures who shared the planet had to be maintained, of course, and often the best way to accomplish that was to keep the humans satisfied. Give them what they needed, and just a little bit more to keep them busy. Grant wishes.

  They were odd creatures, these humans, and grew restless. The fairies were integral in keeping humans in their proper places, keeping them from ruining things for everyone else.

  But Devin was wishing…for her! That was dreadful. He should have forgotten her, but he did not. Now what was to be done?

  Of course Raea couldn’t grant his wish. It would upset the balance, disrupt the course of nature, reveal the Forbidden Realm. It simply couldn’t be.

  But if his wish was as strong as Raea had said, then things could get ugly. He could draw attention—he could begin to search out things he had no business searching for. He could put himself in danger. He could call up the Old Revenge. And it would be all Aliya’s fault. How awful.

  She never meant for this to happen. Never in three lifetimes would she have wished the Old Revenge on Devin! Never had she suspected she could be the cause of it. What was to happen to him? Already he had not forgotten her—that in itself was disturbing. But if he were as obsessed as Raea indicated, that could only mean things were worse than she imagined.

  Was it possible that, without ever meaning to, she had visited him with that ancient curse? In former times it had been used against humans whose persistent interference posed a threat to the Forbidden Realm, but no one had required it in ages. Still, everyone knew it was there. In the days when humans and magical beings still vied for supremacy in the world this form of revenge had been used; the Old Revenge, it was called. A human who refused to simply forget his encounter with magic, who would fall into obsession and could not go back to the mundane, could be judged a true threat. He would fall under the Old Revenge and meet a terrible end.

  He would be driven mad; he would give up his life and…No, she couldn’t even think it. That was something from years gone by, when humans were first invading the seas and merpeople hadn’t yet learned to manage them. Some of the defense tactics used then were barbaric. She really, really could not have brought that on Devin, could she?

  Then again, she knew what she’d done to him. She’d felt what he felt, she’d ridden the waves of passion that rolled inside him. She’d felt those holes of aching emptiness fill as she’d wrapped him in her arms and poured her soul into him. Yes, if she would be honest with herself the answer was obvious.

  She had loved him, and in so doing she could quite possibly have made him love her. The realization dawned on her as both pain and ecstasy. Devin the human might love her.

  But for a man to love a mermaid was to bring his certain death!

  Chapter Seven

  Raea hovered over the mermaid. Aliya sank deeper into the water as her expression showed worry. The poor little fish creature certainly was taking this to heart. Well, no sense letting her friend suffer any longer than she needed to.

  “Hey, get back up here where I can talk to you,” she admonished.

  “Oh Raea!” Aliya moaned, like a cold shift in the wind. “Do you know what I’ve done?”

  “No, as a matter of fact, but I’ve been wondering about it all day. Some of the things that guy keeps wishing for just don’t seem logistically possible, if you don’t mind my saying. I mean, you are a fish, right? At least, certain parts of you.”

  Aliya was clearly not listening to her. Her gaze was a hundred miles away and her words came out hushed. “But he…I thought…oh, what exactly is he wishing for, Raea?”

  Raea didn’t bother to hide the smile that crept over her face. Ah, Aliya was such a sweetheart, so eager to be helpful. She might be so willing that she could help Raea win a certain bet with a Summer Fairy. Yeah, this was going to work out just fine. For all of them.

  “He’s wishing for things that I know you haven’t done with him!” Raea laughed. “But that’s just the point. Even if I thought it might be a good idea—and it’s not—there’s no way I can grant his earthy wishes.”

  Aliya nodded, her head dipping into the water. “I know. But what am I to do? You know what they say can happen!”

  “You can’t seriously believe all those stories about the Old Revenge? Is that what you’re worried about?”

  “Of course I believe them; every mermaid does. We don’t dare doubt it! Maybe you don’t know, but long, long ago humans used to come out here and hunt us! The men thought we were like their women, I suppose, but…Oh, the stories sound just horrible!”

  “So the Old Revenge was created to protect you.”

  “Protect us, yes, but also to punish the humans. It was intended they suffer.”

  “Then you’ll just have to explain to your council—or whatever you call your head merfolk—that he doesn’t need punishing. Tell them not to engage the Old Revenge on him.”

  “It won’t matter. No one engages it; it engages on its own. When a human believes we are real, when he develops an obsession that will bring him to hunt for us, the Old Revenge engages itself. It just happens.”

  “What? Without Fairy Dust? I don’t think that’s even possible.”

  “What if it is? I should never have…but I didn’t think that he would…and it seemed so…”

  “Okay, now just paddle back up to the surface and calm down,” Raea coaxed. “I don’t think we need to let our handsome victim suffer his way to a watery grave.”

  “But they say that’s what happens! We become their obsession; they no longer want to live. The Old Revenge will take over and he’ll think of nothing but his obsession. He’ll give up his life on the land and come out here to
find me! But the Old Revenge makes him blind to us. I could be right there with him and he’d never know it! He’ll search and he’ll search without eating or drinking, until he breathes his last breath. Oh Raea, he’ll die in the lake, and it’s all my fault.”

  Raea risked touching her friend’s wet hair. She didn’t really like wetness, but she liked Aliya. Odd creature to make her friend, but they’d known each other so many years now she couldn’t even recall what had first brought them together. Well, maybe she could do a good deed for her friend today.

  “He won’t have to die. Now pop back up into the nice, dry air and let me finish. I have a proposition.”

  Aliya’s pale green eyes widened and she hoisted herself higher out of the water. “A proposition?”

  “Yes. I don’t usually go outside my boundaries, you know, but I’m not altogether powerless in the wish department.”

  Hope washed over Aliya’s face and Raea was glad she could offer something positive.

  “What is the best way—the only way—to cure a man’s obsession?” she asked the bobbing mermaid.

  Aliya shrugged. “I didn’t know you could.”

  “Of course you can. I see humans do it all the time.”

  “Then how?”

  “By giving it to him.”

  “What?”

  “Give the man his obsession, and almost immediately he will lose interest in it and start wanting something else.”

  Aliya blinked at her, confused. Raea would have to go ahead and spell it out.

  “If I give you to him—for one day—the obsession will be broken. He will go back to his life on the land and think nothing more of you. You will go back to your life here in the water and not have to worry about him. Everything will be just like it was, and no one will die. How does that sound?”

  A bright smile lit up the mermaid’s pale, translucent skin. She was really quite pretty, for a mermaid, and for just a second there Raea could maybe understand what this Devin guy saw in her. Aside from the fact that half of her was a fish. That still seemed a bit unnatural, but Raea had been granting wishes long enough to know humans had a lot of kinky fantasies.