by May Sage
Everything in him went against forcing his attention away from her, as thought she might disappear if he did, but he managed to look down eventually.
“Duh,” she'd written. “I'm mute.”
He felt a smile forming at the corner of his lips. Ok. He may not have been asleep.
First of, dreams of her didn't generally involve Seb – or clothing, come to think of it – but he'd also never had taken the liberty to invent her a personality; if he had, he would have chosen something sweet, docile. Certainly not feisty.
Damn. As if she needed anymore charms.
Her writing was messy, too – not the kind of calligraphy one might expect from a high born, gentle lady.
He realized he didn’t know her at all, on a personal level. What he knew was more relevant, though.
People showed who they were when difficulty arose and what she’d revealed took his breath away. She was brave, generous and selfless. Did anything else matter?
“No, you're not,” he replied, before checking himself.
That had come out all wrong again, and her frown did suggest she didn't like his assumptions.
“Or at least, you didn't used to be. What happened?”
She shrugged rather than giving him an answer, which was a new experience for him.
People didn't shrug off the King of Denker. Strangely, he found himself liking it; there was something boring about to being given everything on a silver platter. He was looking forward to earning her answers.
“No matter. I'm glad you found your way to us. Are you here on behalf of your brother?”
Eyes darkening, she shook her head, before reaching for her notepad. She started scribing away, giving him the opportunity to study her as her head was bowed down.
Now probably was the time to explain that he could sign, but lost in his observations, he failed to do so.
Her long neck was held gracefully and she had a thing about biting her bottom lip while she concentrated. Very distracting.
Her writing took a few minutes, so his attention was diverted towards another part of her flesh, namely, the sweetheart neckline of her royal blue dress.
Damn. There really was quite a bit to get hold of, there. He could imagine pushing the fabric asides and...
He hadn't heard the door open, but the high pitched voice effectively cut through his arousal.
“Sweetheart? Your advisors are worried about you.”
Great. Exactly what he had needed right about now.
Three sets of eyes turned to Vanessa who walked in with her two handmaidens.
She wore a skintight mini bodycon which left just about nothing of her inexistent curves to the imagination, and her makeup was camera ready: layers of foundation, blush, concealer, powders and every single shit she could have got hold off. At a party, she may have fit in, but in broad delight, it was just ridiculous, especially when she stood in the same room as Silvia, who had little more than a discreet pink blush on. The sprinkle of dusty freckles on her nose hadn't been covered, nor the little bags under her eyes and she was beautiful.
Vanessa, on the other hand, seemed fake.
“I'm fine,” he assured her. “Simply attending to an acquaintance.”
The glare she threw at Silvia was unexplainable; it was as thought she could have read his mind and knew that he would have given anything – anything at all – to have his ring on Silvia's hand, rather than hers.
Silly, thought. Well, true, but Erik hadn't done acted in a way that warranted any suspicion.
Vanessa crossed the room, offering to shake Silvia’s hand and the women exchanged a long, meaningful stare.
Soon enough, Vanessa looked down and announced her departure.
“Lovely meeting you,” she lied, before turning her heels and getting out, servants in tow.
Silvia's eyes stayed focused on her back up until she disappeared; they were cold, menacing. Then, she wiped her hands on the side of her dress and caressed the strange cat standing next to her to calm him down. He was hirsute, holding an aggressive stance.
What the hell had that all been about?
•
In her quest to do good, Silvia had been very close to grabbing hold of the woman's fake extension and shoving her face at a wall until she'd lost a few teeth. That may have been the most altruistic action she'd ever accomplished.
A freaking Melusine.
Melusines were nymphs as well as mermaid and the result of that blend was potent; there weren't many creatures who could resist their charms. They were mind controllers, manipulators, and their very first weapon laid between their legs.
The woman had smelt of a blend of spices and musks that didn't belong to her, or to her fiancée for that matter. It was a mixture of various males and females. She had sex with at least a dozen people on a regular basis.
Hell. Silvia shook her head to force her focus back in the room. What was she doing here, again? Oh yes, the ship.
She failed to recall why it mattered, though.
Quite curtly, without bothering to hand Seb's dad the request she'd written down, she got up, ready to go.
“You can't mean to leave yet?”
She could and would. Everything about the Melusine had disturbed her. She needed some fresh air. The cheap blend of sex and cosmetics had shot right through her weak stomach.
She did her best to smile down at Seb and waved a goodbye, before rushing out. The father, she barely acknowledged with a nod, without meeting his gaze.
Silvia shouldn't have resented him for falling for a sea whore, but she couldn't help feeling that he should have known better, been better.
Needless to say, that anger was unfair. There was practically no way out of a Melusine's arms, once his dick had been inside her. Stupid of him to fuck her in the first place, but he was a man. From what she knew of men, there really wasn't anything to be upset about.
Despite these logical reasoning, though, she was upset. Actually, forget about upset: fucking fuming was closer to the mark.
Silvia was halfway down the hall, almost at the entrance, when she heard the steps trailing her, and felt a presence. She could tell someone was talking to her, but distinguishing words was beyond her abilities right now; her mind wouldn't focus on anything, save for getting out.
By the time she'd reached the bridge, a hand grabbed hold of her wrist and pulled her back; she fell head first into a solid form.
A disturbingly agreeable solid form.
The man was a full head taller than her – a feat – and his sunkissed frame was incredibly taunt. Yummy. It was just yummy.
But underneath it all, she soon smelt it, the disgusting blend she'd run from. His Melusine. Her mind didn't even have to invade his to visualize images from their latest encounter.
His tan flesh – hard, veined, curved upward – had entered the pastel flesh between the creature's butt cheeks over and over, and he'd never looked away from her rosette, not even to take in her expression; he’d worn a condom, which was a indubitable proof of his sound mind. Sexually transmissible diseases were extremely rare in the old continent, since Ferren had come up with their vaccines, but if anyone could carry something nasty, it would be a Melusine.
“Erik!” the Melusine had screamed, and he'd come along with her.
Cheated. Silvia felt cheated. Nevermind the fact that there was no reason why she should.
With everything in her, wind and water melded into a ball of energy stronger than anything she'd ever felt, she pushed him away. When her vision cleared out from the luminous jet that had somehow come out of her hands, he was on a floor, some distance away, back inside the palace, on the other side of the great hall.
Good.
She saw him painstakingly get to his feet; reassured that she hadn't caused much damage, she grabbed her skirt, tied it high on her thighs and ran.
•
“So she's wanted for questioning?”
“No.”
Her attack might have earned any
one else a one way ticket to jail, but it was Silvia, end of the subject. If questioned, he'd come up with some bullshit about her immunity as a foreign dignitary.
“She freaked out, big time. Something about Vanessa set her off. I need to know what happened.”
Freaking out was inaccurate. As well as shocked, she’d seemed utterly repulsed, disgusted.
Silvia's reaction did suggest that she had something against his fiancée.
“Let me get the story straight. The women saw each other and panicked. You ran after one – the one you're not going to marry – and something – something binding, and blue, came out of her hand, pushing you twenty meters back. Now we're looking for her, but we aren't arresting her?”
“It wasn't meant to hurt me. It even cushioned my fall, Ludwig.”
What it had been, he had no bloody clue. No amount of research had helped over the last thirteen hours.
“Damn. You've got it bad.”
He wouldn't – couldn't – admit to it, but Ludwig didn't need a confession.
“Alright. Let's find the Witch and hopefully, get rid of your future wife in the process.”
Erik nodded, while thinking that actually, it was exactly the other way around.
He needed to get rid of the Witch who'd enchanted the castle, and find his future wife.
There, it was said. He wanted Silvia Undine, for keeps. Seeing her in the flesh had confirmed the idea which had brewed at the back of his mind for over three years.
God, how he wanted her.
It had only lasted the fraction of a second until she'd physically and emotionally shut him off, putting as much distance as possible between his body her hers, but having her in his arms had been incomparable. It had started strange chain reactions that shot straight to his mind, his dick and perhaps also to his heart.
Fuck. What the hell had that been about, and when could he feel it again?
“It's also about finding out what she wants,” he lied. “She came with a request, according to Seb. We don't need the sister of Alenia's King to be displeased with us.”
The excuse sounded perfectly valid, logical and reasonable. Too bad Ludwig didn't believe a word of it.
Chapter 9: Beach house
Calming the erratic beat of her heart took a while, her skin crawled for longer yet; then, there was nothing left, save for the anger.
Silvia was fully aware that her anger wasn't in any way justified, but she was furious all the same; strangely, not at the Melusine, who was only doing what nature had shaped her into, but at Sebastian's dad; Erik, his slut had called him when he’d fucked her ass.
She knew he couldn't have helped it, knew it had absolutely nothing to do with her, but the fact that he'd fallen for a Melusine's song was unexpected, disappointing and – yes – painful, too.
Gradually regaining hold of her senses, she decided to let it go. It wasn't her problem. She was going to stay away, never mind that the palace was supposed to be able to help. There was a very simple way to get exactly what she want without setting foot there again: buying a ship of her own.
The result of her queries was disappointing; it seemed that most people did wish to hold on to their boats, in these parts; there apparently wasn't one used ship for sale in the entire capital. That meant buying new.
Silvia could afford it, the trust fund wouldn't suffer very much, but up until then, she hadn't had any need or reason to touch it; using cash meant that she would have been completely intractable. The moment she entered the Universal Bank and withdrew half a mil in golden marks, finding her whereabouts became a piece of cake.
Yet three weeks had passed since the withdrawal, and there was no sign of an Alenian official in the entire city. Dane and Sandro weren't even looking for her.
She tried to convince herself that it was good news.
•
That was it. The last tick-tick had done it. Erik rushed to his feet, grabbed the freaking clock and threw it at the open window with an unrestrained battle cry. Then, he returned behind his desk, calmly sat down, before smiling down at his advisors. There. All better now.
One might say his temper had gone on the rather short side of the scale, recently.
He'd gone through a wide range of feelings while looking for the women of his life over the last few years.
Annoyance, with Ariena. When The Woman – as he'd then called her – had been impossible to find, it had been a restless desperation, and it had often brought a certain level of depression.
Now he was just pissed off.
None of Ludwig's spies had managed to get a location on Silvia, he'd even dispatched some all the way to the Alenian royal castle, in vain. She hadn't left Denker, Erik was certain of it: he’d shamelessly abused his power to check the financial and they did suggest that she'd planned to stay quite a while.
Where was she? In none of the elegant hotels, the renown residences, the touristic neighborhoods. Royal visits were the talk of towns for days on end, normally, but no one knew of the princess's presence.
Which meant that she was hiding. From what? Erik had to think of the worst case scenario; Alenia was an ally of Atlentis, after all. Was she linked to the presence of the mermen at his border in a way he hadn't thought, before? Were they working for her?
“We need to get the wedding...”
Erik adjourned the meeting before Jerden finished that particular sentence. They were not talking about any wedding, especially not his.
“Sir, it would be good for...”
“I said enough.”
He didn't raise his voice, but the look he threw him might have been enough, because Jerden swallowed his saliva before relenting, bowing his head respectfully.
Wound up tighter than a dead bolt, Erik walked straight down to town, heading for Seb's school; he called his kid out of his class, feeling slightly guilty when the child came out rather worried.
“Dad?”
“We're going to the beach.”
There just wasn't anything else for it.
They could have headed straight to the seafront but Erik wasn't in the mood for socializing, so he drove them down to their summer house, a small dwelling which wouldn't have been considered overly luxurious if it hadn't been for the fact that the entire beach belonged to them.
He thought about going to the creek, first, but today wasn't about a little refreshing walk with his feet in the water. He needed to get rid of the bundle of energy which had bought him close to murdering each member of his staff within the last few days; he had to swim hard, fast, and for a very long stretch of time. Given a choice, a fuck might have done instead, but that wasn't exactly an option, so instead, he worked on his stroke.
Seb indulged him, leisurely swimming alongside him instead of buggering off as he might have been tempted to do any other day. His company and the exercise were soothing, progressively working the tension out of his limbs; his mind was as preoccupied – yet again pondering over everything attached to Silvia Undine – but at least, he didn't feel like he was going to explode right this minute.
Erik was turning towards Seb, to ask if they should head back, when he saw the creature.
It wasn't unusual or unexpected to spot the occasional rarer mercreature at Hencliff; the ocean was deserted for miles, and the old races favored quiet areas, but never had he encountered the like of that thing.
The monster seemed made of a sort of sheer, almost immaterial cloud; it had a serpentine shape paired with pointed ears, feet, little arms and more remarkably, what seemed to be wings; they looked frail, such as a ladybird’s.
Erik wasn’t fooled.
Dragon. It was a dragon. A small one, and a very beautiful one, but nonetheless, the very last creature any parent wants near his eight-year-old son.
Erik pushed Seb behind him and reached for the dragon's head; he was already regretting his own resolve, but he couldn't afford to take any chances, he had to act before the creature decided that using waterfire was a good idea.
Erik tuned out Seb's protests, his hands had just reached the silken scales of the strangely unsuspecting creature who hadn't pulled away from him when, for the second time this month, he was frozen, jolted, thrown back and put on his ass by a blueish mist.
The very worst thing was that it somehow made him smile.
He'd been pushed as far as the sandy beach, over a mile away. If it hadn't been for the fact that, yet again, the aggressive blast of water and air seemed to cushion his fall, each and every one of his bone would have been broken in the process.
Although they'd both been far, his son and Silvia had swam all the way back to the beach by the time he made it to his feet, somewhat shakily.
Seb was amused, more than worries, as for Silvia, the one word to describe her right now was glorious; and gloriously naked. The only thing on her skin was the long wet mane plastered to her curves. In her obvious fury, she didn't seem to care about – or notice – the fact that she was entirely exposed. Attempting to prevent himself from staring – at her large, firm breast, the curve of her slight waste, the delicious hips and her fucking smooth pussy – was physically painful.
He managed. Mostly.
The dragon wrapped itself around her arm, his head rested on her shoulder; his tail took upon itself to curls around her hips, making her somehow more decent, and strangely, sexier.
Silvia walked straight to Erik and, as thought the magical blast hadn't been eloquent enough, pushed him back as hard as she could.
Yeah, well, that was a fail. There was no denying that she could kick ass, with her weird magical stuns, but her puny little arms weren't about to actually make him budge. To placate her, he held his smirk back as much as humanly possible, and took a voluntary step back.
