“Ah, yes,” she said uneasily. “I’ve come for the Jewel of So Sur…ah, madam.”
The woman smiled, revealing bright white teeth. “I am the Keeper of the Jewel.”
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” Cressida told her simply. “I just want the jewel. I’m going to use it to buy my freedom.”
The Keeper arched an eyebrow. “You think the jewel is simply a bauble?”
“Well…” Cressida blushed. “I suppose so. I was told there might be some magic to the whole thing, but I’m…not exactly educated in such things.”
“The Jewel of So Sur will grant you freedom,” the Keeper said, nodding. “If you are worthy of it.”
The woman’s accent was strange, unlike any Cressida had ever heard before. She put special emphasis on her esses, though they weren’t quite as pronounced as they had been when she had first departed the cavern.
“I think I’m worthy,” Cressida said.
“We shall see,” the Keeper replied. She indicated the pool. “Please enter.”
Cressida hesitated. “The…water? Why?”
The Keeper tilted her head, and Cressida got the impression this was a sign of impatience. She explained, “The waters come from the island itself, are a hot spring born of her. The island has guarded the Jewel for centuries. The island will decide if you are worthy or not.”
Cressida took a step toward the pool and then stopped. “And what if I’m not?”
The Keeper smiled again, but this time it was less like a smile and more like a baring of fangs. “You have risked your life to get this far. Are you so concerned with it now?”
Cressida swallowed against a knot in her throat, but she supposed the woman was right. She desperately wished that Kelly was here with her, though. Or Reza. She wished they were both with her now. That had always been the plan. But if this was the final test, or at least one of the final tests, then she had to try. It wouldn’t do her any good to turn around and go traipsing back through the jungle empty-handed. Perhaps even if she failed, Kelly still stood a chance.
With thoughts of Kelly and Reza swirling through her mind, she stepped over the edge of the pool and sank into the water fully dressed. It was deeper than she’d imagined, and she ended up submerged to her chin. The light still swirled somewhere beneath her feet, but she could not determine its origin even standing atop it.
She looked up at the Keeper, squinting through the light to see the woman’s silhouette.
“You must go fully beneath the surface,” the Keeper said. “And stay below as long as you can stand it.”
Cressida nodded, hauling in a deep breath, and bent her knees, drawing her head down into the water. Once there, she waved her arms a little to keep her below the surface, and, unable to resist her curiosity, she opened her eyes. To her surprise, there was a small opening at the bottom of the pool, and it was through this opening that the light poured. Not only poured, but now that Cressida was in the midst of it, she realized that it was pulsing, like a heartbeat. She sank further, til her knees hit the bottom of the pool, and tried to look into the little cave beyond, to see if the light’s source was readily apparent. An underwater lantern of some kind? She’d heard of bugs that would glow in darkness.
As soon as she leaned towards it, however, a great gust began to spin the waters of the pool. She tried to propel herself back to the surface but it caught her like a riptide, dragging her in a circle and then right through the little opening and into the core of the light itself. She opened her mouth to scream, instinctively, and only earned herself a lungful of water. As she choked and flailed, darkness overtook her, and she tumbled end over end into the cave, through the light, into nothing.
Chapter 8
Kelly came awake groggily, once he understood through his mottled dreamscape that he was being shaken. He lifted his head, blinking, and waved Cort off, who backed up from him to stand beside Fat Tom, still in his bear skin, huge head lowered, beady eyes blinking worriedly.
“What is it?” Kelly demanded, sitting up, lifting his hands to rub the sleep from his eyes.
“We can’t find Cressida, Cap’n,” Cort said, frowning. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Kelly felt a pang of panic in his heart. He got to his feet. “Gone where? What do you mean gone? She was here with me only…only a moment ago…”
“Not anymore,” Cort said gravely. “Tom tracked her into the jungle and then lost the scent.”
“How could you lose her scent?” Kelly snapped.
The big bear whined low reply.
“He thinks it’s some sort of devilry,” Cort said. “Says the jungle led him about in circles for a while, brought him right back here. I checked too, Cap’n. No sign of her.”
Kelly turned in a circle, looking from his men to the river, to the knot of the jungle, back to his men, back to the river. He didn’t know what to do. Even if he was willing to give Cressida up and carry on the treasure hunt, he knew he couldn’t actually obtain it without a human. There had to be a human. She was as much a key to the jewel as the map had been, as Reza had been, and Kelly was lost without her. In more ways than just this.
“We have to find her,” he said, looking again at Cort and Fat Tom. “We have to backtrack, see if she’s just gotten herself lost somehow. We have to find her.”
“This place is bewitched, Cap’n,” Cort whispered miserably.
“You’re bewitched, you damned fool!” Kelly growled. “Stop acting like a whipped boy and start acting like the bear you are. We will find her or the treasure is lost to us completely! You go with Tom, go back to the Stone Leap and work your way here to the river again. I’ll go forward up the river and see if she came out somewhere else. We meet back here in two hours.”
Cort hung his head. “Aye, Cap’n.”
As the two moved despondently off, Kelly grasped his sword belt and slung it into place, marching towards the jungle and the line of wilderness that kissed the riverside. He pushed through the network of vines and fronds, shoving flowering petals out of the way, more or less plowing into the landscape.
“Cress!” he shouted, his voice echoing. “Cressida, where are you!”
He heard his own words spiral out, bouncing around and up against the canopy. No reply came, so he pushed deeper, calling out for her all the while.
“Cressida! I’m going to tar and feather you, woman!”
Nothing. Tempted though he was to shift and see if he could sniff her out, his movements would be much encumbered in his bear skin, and Fat Tom had said the jungle had consternated his nose, anyway. Not much of an advantage. So he remained in his man skin, pushing and shoving and smacking the jungle out of the way, slogging, always with the river at his back, as he bellowed for his lost lady pirate.
“Cressida! Cressida! Cress—”
He’d not been calling her name for more than three-quarters of an hour when suddenly he couldn’t breathe. He reached up to his throat and found that a vine had wrapped its way all around his neck. The image flashed through his mind of poor Harry being hauled underground by that massive tree, and Kelly flailed, drawing his rapier. But before he could lay its blade upon the nearest tree, he heard a sound.
“Ssssss.”
It wasn’t a tree that had him by the throat. It was a fucking snake.
He lifted the rapier, twisting, choking, trying to find the snake’s head to cut it off, only to realize, as he looked up, that he was surrounded by snakes. They hung down from the tree limbs, their yellow eyes gazing hungrily, excitedly at him, and as he gasped for breath he heard them hiss at him, all of them, a chorus of desirous-sounding Ssssssssss.
His vision blurred, began to blot and blacken, and that resounding, all-encompassing sound was the last he recognized before he plummeted into the darkness of unconsciousness.
Chapter 9
Reza had discarded his clothes at some point, shifting into his tiger skin to hunt through the tall grass at the village per
imeter, trying to find a moment when Sajja would be alone. If he could only get him to see, to understand, that what he’d been through in his years since leaving the island had changed him. He had no desire to rule, or to take back what Sajja had claimed. He wanted a peaceful life with his tribe, with his sister, with…
If not with Cressida, then at least a woman of his own choosing. That could not have been too much to ask. Not after the horrors he’d already lived through.
But after his encounter in the pool with Prija, it seemed the whole village knew that he had fled from her advances, and there were half a dozen guards now around Sajja’s hut at all times. Just as many around Kamala and Chaiya’s since he’d gone running from there only an hour ago. He did not, he was realizing with speed, have much choice left. Either he could turn himself over to be forcibly wed to Prija, or he could turn himself over to fight Chaiya to the death. And Reza was not, after so many years a captive, so arrogant that he thought defeating Chaiya would be easy.
Possible, perhaps. But certainly not easy. And shedding blood as his first act after returning to the tribe made Reza feel slightly queasy. He’d wanted to feel like he’d come home, not gone back to war. The tiger in his heart, however, wanted to rip Chaiya limb from limb, and it was that beast through which he now moved, heaving low growls into the grass as he paced from one end of the perimeter to the other, watching. Hunting.
But even the tiger’s heart was elsewhere in the jungle. Even the tiger wanted to abandon the village to go off after Cressida. The tiger too wanted to pin her down and feel her writhe. A love for that woman was something their conjoined heart shared deeply.
Movement on the perimeter brought Reza’s thoughts back to the present and he sank low, his belly to the grass, watching as a row of guards walked by. They didn’t seem to notice him, though they whacked at the high grass with their spears to shake any vermin loose. A wild bird took flight, a rabbit scooting off, but Reza remained still. Once all the smaller animals were fled, he knew, they would shift into their tiger forms and sniff him out, with no additional scents to muddle through. He had to move.
And then a sound behind had his ears swiveling. He cursed himself; he’d been too preoccupied with the guards, he hadn’t been listening or scenting the jungle at his back. Too late, he realized, even as he lifted his head to turn around and saw the tiger lunge for him.
A great scrabble of claws and fangs erupted, Reza lifting his paws to meet the other tiger’s pounce. They rolled, hissing and roaring, and his opponent dug his claws into Reza’s side, holding on though he thrashed and tore this way and that to dislodge him. The pain burned right into his ribs, but he didn’t give in. He knew it was Chaiya from the distinctive brindle of his stripes. If he wanted his blood fight here and now, Reza would give it to him.
Even as he marshaled his strength, ducking a chomp of Chaiya’s jaws, though, he heard screams. He managed to lift his head, vision blurring, but through the rage and blood of the moment, he espied Kamala, being held back by the perimeter guards, screaming and crying, reaching for him.
“Stop!” she was pleading. “Please stop this! Chaiya, stop! Reza!”
Her anguish was too much for him. He considered letting go, letting the tiger fight and die for them both, but that was cowardly and unfair. With a howl, he bent his head, curling in on himself, and in a gust of wind he’d summoned back his manflesh, fur receding to dark skin and scars, blood and the wounds along his sides that Chaiya had already inflicted.
“I relent,” he gasped as he felt Chaiya’s fangs on his throat.
They didn’t pierce the flesh, but he felt the strength in the bite all the same, the intent.
Kamala was writhing, pushing to be let free, and one of the guards lost his grip on her. She came careening through the high grass and smacked Chaiya right on his massive head.
“Let go!” she shrieked. “Let go of him right now. You heard him! He relents!”
She hit the tiger again and with a warning growl, Chaiya released Reza’s throat, backing up and shaking his head as though to clear it after her abuse.
Kamala collapsed upon Reza, and he did his best to get an arm around her, still weak from the fight. She was weeping. Her arms came around him instead and she held on, her body a protective shield as the guards closed in. Reza knew she might have saved him from this fight, but not the next one. He watched Chaiya back up, his golden tiger eyes flashing hungrily. The next one would be an end for one of them. And Reza wished at last, completely and with agonizing clarity, that he had gone with Cressida and never stayed here at all. This place was not the freedom his memory had told him it would be. He was trapped and captive and enslaved perhaps as much as he had ever been away from it.
Chapter 10
In darkness, Cressida had the strangest sensation of warmth. She knew, almost immediately, that she must have been dreaming. A kind of lucid dreaming, perhaps, but her last memory was of being sucked underwater into light, and so either she was dreaming or she was dead. She preferred dreaming, and so aligned her hopes with that thought.
Then she felt something else, something other than the warmth. A hand in the darkness, sliding up her thigh, and it was in that moment that she realized too that she was naked. Panic seized her heart and she reached to push the hand away.
“Shh, Cress.” That was Kelly’s voice. “It’s all right, it’s me. I need you.”
It was a dream. It was just a dream. The sound of Kelly’s voice soothed some of the panic, and then his hands were on her again, rough but familiar, both of them now coasting up her thighs to her hips. She sensed the weight of him above her, and then felt his lips, light at first on her shoulder, moving along her throat.
“I need you too,” she whispered, sitting up to meet him, to find his face with her hands so she could kiss him in this velvet darkness.
He pulled her close and suddenly she throbbed for him, as their tongues met, and she could feel him growing hard between her thighs. She wrapped her legs around him, pressing against him, and he groaned.
“I need you with me always,” he insisted.
“Kelly, please,” she begged, arching a little against him, sinking her fingers into his hair. “You will always have me, I promise.”
Even as she said it, he pushed himself inside her. She squeezed her legs around him, swallowing a moan, and thrust her hips to bring him ever deeper in, the length of him filling her as deliciously as it always had. He withdrew and drove into her again, and she tilted her head back, fingernails digging into his arms.
And then she realized she felt…another pair of hands upon her skin.
Another strong chest behind her. Hands reaching around her, between her and Kelly to cup her ample breasts and gently knead, a soft, accented voice at her ear.
“I need you too,” Reza said.
Kelly continued to drive himself in and out of her, seemingly unaware of Reza now at her back. Maybe he couldn’t see him in all this darkness; Cressida herself couldn’t see either of them. Maybe he couldn’t hear him either.
“I need you,” Cressida replied, letting herself lean back against Reza. She felt tears sting her eyes, though even as they wet her cheeks she couldn’t contain another gasp, and then another moan as Kelly increased his pace. “Oh god, I need you…”
One of Reza’s hands left her breast and slid down, over the apex of her belly, slipping between her thighs to that electric nub within her sex, stroking her in time with Kelly’s rhythmic thrusting. Cressida arched against Reza, one hand gripping Kelly’s shoulder, and found herself riding both Kelly’s cock and Reza’s hand at once, hurtling headlong towards an orgasm she could already feel building like a scream in her throat.
“Tell me you’ll be mine always,” both men said at once.
Delirious with pleasure, Cressida didn’t understand. “What?” she panted.
“Tell me you’ll be mine always,” they both said again.
“I… I…Oh my god…!”<
br />
She bucked, the climax ripping through her, and she did scream. Pain and pleasure at once so intense it was frightening, and intoxicating, and she screamed both of their names, crying out into the darkness around her.
“I need you both!”
The sound of a snarl tore her out of her ecstasy. She couldn’t tell which one it had come from, but a growl answered it, and then she did scream as she felt fangs sink into her shoulder on one side, and a second set sink into her throat on the other. The fangs tore, pain lancing all through her, and she screamed and cried and flailed about in the darkness, unable to grab onto either of them, desperate to hold on to both of them.
Cressida came awake with a start, eyes widening, and realized she was still underwater. With a panicked kick at the floor of the pool, she pushed herself up, breaking through the surface to suck in a powerful breath. Her lungs constricted and she began to cough, collapsing over the side of the pool and trembling. She shoved the wet sheets of hair from her eyes, and there was the Keeper standing just where she’d been before, on the other side of the pool.
But the light that had been spiraling up through the water had gone out, and Cressida felt the cold and the dark, and she felt alone. But she gripped the edge of the pool and slung a leg over the side, hauling herself out of the water as the Keeper watched her, dark eyes glimmering with what Cressida thought, with a spark of dread, was interest.
“Well,” she coughed, voice hoarse. “Am I worthy?”
The Keeper smiled, but this smile was gentler. “Yes.”
Cressida blinked through the water still dripping into her eyes from her hair. She struggled to sit up, but knew she was too weak to stand. “I am?”
The woman nodded. “However, it cannot be you alone who claims the jewel. You are a human. You are in love with two alpha males.”
Cressida flushed. Had the Keeper woman been watching that…not exactly horrible dream she’d been having in the water?
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