by Starla Night
Bella dipped her fingers beneath her waistband. “Do you want to unwrap me today?”
His red iris threads flared with inner heat.
He pinched the underwire at her chest. “Yes.”
The fabric peeled away in his hands, revealing her breasts. He chased first one globe with his wet mouth and brought her to the peak of arousal, then the other.
Her channel slickened, and her sex lips turned slippery for him.
He rubbed her through the dampening fabric. She moaned. He smiled with cocky satisfaction at her readiness.
Two could play, and she liked games. Bella gripped his rigid cock.
He closed his eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and centered on her. Touching his forehead to hers, he finally hooked his thumbs in her soft cotton and unveiled her slick pink femininity. He stroked the visible beauty and kissed her mouth deeply, thrusting his tongue in time with his strokes because he knew it drove her wild.
And it did.
She urged him to cover her. Obliging, he knelt between her legs, opening her to him, and positioned his thick cock at her ready entrance. “Do you wish to wrap me today?”
Sometimes, he still liked to wear a condom because he enjoyed the friction and heat; he said it focused his pleasure. But she also liked the slippery length of him driven deep into her, joining them for eternity.
What did she desire today?
Bella simply entwined their legs and drew his bare cock into her channel to the hilt.
He rested there, his pelvis to hers, pubic bone to pubic bone, curly hairs nestled. Hers were the same fiery red as her hair, and his were darker chestnut-mahogany. His tattoos and her freckles colored their skin in intricate patterns. Every time they made love, he affirmed everything about her. He made her feel like they belonged.
Balim nuzzled her, centering her on this moment, joined with him, his scarred chest and abdomen to her smooth one.
She smiled. He wanted what she wanted too: the joy lifting her heart that they were here, together, joined. Although there was no guarantee of the future and they had seen too much pain in the past, this moment was perfect. Happiness wrapped in sadness, bittersweet and beautiful, like a fine square of the darkest chocolate.
He lowered onto his elbows and thrust into her pleasure spot.
She arched, meeting him with slow certainty, building to the climax they both loved. Sweaty, gasping, thrusting, moaning kisses and pleasure caresses. Promises, a thousand promises. His cock stroked her channel, kindling a fire in her that only he could quench.
She gasped her peak.
He jammed his arm under her waist and lifted her to meet his cock’s thrusts, drawing out the pleasure.
She blazoned into light as the orgasm sang over her skin, endlessly delicious. He shuddered, synchronized with her soul, and burst his liquid seed deep into her soft womb.
They collapsed onto the bed beside each other, all tangled limbs and satisfaction.
He eyed her. “Bella. Are you happy here?”
“I love this house.”
His smile twitched. “That is not my question.”
Yes. She knew that. “I will be happy when the Sons of Hercules face consequences for their crimes.”
Thanks to Starr’s recording of the final call on the plague ship, their opportunity might come sooner than hoped. Dannika swore she’d met Herc. She never forgot a face or a name.
“The leader is a him,” Dannika had said in the clean, private offices of MerMatch. “Ignore the vocal distortion. I know his way of speaking from those voice patterns. Herc’s not a member of my inner circle, but I’m sure I’ve met him. Maybe he’s a friend of my father’s. Maybe I knew his sister in college. Our connection will come to me, and then we’ll have him.”
It was a happy thought in an otherwise uncertain time.
Balim could not go back to Atlantis because his return might cause unrest, and so Aya had continued his employment at the mer hospital. He also consulted with the CDC.
Doctor Kowalski worked for them as the prime researcher of Blue Ring.
Sea Opal elixir arrested the illness, and a combination of therapy, antidepressants, and a visit from Queen Elyssa had cured everyone infected in the first outbreak. Mitch had made a full recovery with the support of his loving wife and two daughters, and was now back at work in the new mer hospital with Balim. But occasionally, patients still turned up in hospital emergency rooms, and that was when Balim’s team activated.
Bella turned the question around on Balim. “Are you happy?”
His mouth flattened. His gaze drew to the locked door leading out of the bedroom. “I still have much to learn about young humans.”
She cupped his hard cheek. “Jonah likes you, and he’s interested in forming a relationship. He’s just also a typical ten-year-old boy who skipped almost an entire year of his life and has to make up for it. And preferring to snuggle under blankets is a family trait.”
“I wish to act honorably and earn his respect.”
“Maybe instead of trying to do human bonding activities, you should try mer.”
“But he is a human son. I must give him the human experience he needs to develop into a strong man.”
“You’re attentive and that’s kind. But he knows you’re not human, and he doesn’t want you to be. What merman things can you both do? That’s where you’ll make the compromise.”
Balim thought hard. “Hence the trip to the lighthouse?”
“Yes.” She jammed a hand under her head. “I thought you both enjoy the seaside—”
The doorknob jangled.
Bella dove under the covers, scrambling to hide, and then tossed sheets over calm, naked Balim. “J-Jonah?”
“Mom? The door’s locked.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Did you need something, hon?”
“You have my socks.”
She clutched the sheets higher, her heart thumping a million times a minute. “Weren’t you playing video games? Loud?”
“I beat the level, and I want to go to the lighthouse after lunch with you and Balim.”
Balim brightened and headed to the door. “Very good.”
“Stop!” she hissed. “Where are you going?”
“To let him in.”
“You’re still naked. I’m still naked. Stop it!”
“He saw us naked on the ship.”
“Yeah, but we’re not on the ship. Balim!” She jumped out of bed and wrapped the top sheet around her body.
Balim opened the door.
She stood gross and sweaty and disheveled. “Sorry. Mom decided to, uh, exercise and get in the shower, so…”
Jonah’s nose wrinkled. “Okay.”
“Right. Sorry. The socks are over here. I’ll run away to the shower.”
Jonah bobbed in, nodded to Balim, who was calmly half-dressed, and picked up the basket of socks. “Okay, Mom, but your body is normal, so don’t feel bad about it.”
She checked. “I’m sorry?”
“Balim told me.” Jonah’s bare arms still showed the marks of the many, many IVs he’d had during his treatments. He displayed them unselfconsciously. “Mermen swim naked because bodies are natural when you don’t need clothes to stay warm.”
Balim beamed. “Correct.”
“But humans do.” Bella eased toward the master bedroom shower. “And with that in mind, let’s put clean clothes on so we can enjoy our picnic.”
And so they went on their picnic and enjoyed the fresh spring afternoon in Upstate. The weather didn’t know whether its dark-bottomed clouds skiffing across the blue sky would pass over or dump rain. They scarfed snacks just in case. Jonah played cards with Bella, and then, while her back was turned, he stripped to his water socks and raced Balim into the water. Their polar bear run and Jonah’s subsequent frigid shrieking startled the other families at the park and inspired a few brave children to do the same, much to their parents’ chagrin.
Jonah’s hair was longer now. Shaggy to the point of needing a tri
m.
Once, she’d feared he’d never make it to his eleventh birthday. She’d been so angry at Chaz for abandoning Jonah a second time a decade after his first exit.
But even that difficult visit had turned out a surprising, happy result.
Upset by the vision of Chaz abandoning his other sons in a time of medical need, Caro had marched him to the local registry the next day and gotten them both swabbed. She was not a match.
Chaz was.
Surprisingly, his fears of the procedure hadn’t been completely unfounded. He’d donated and experienced a rare side effect that caused a slight limp.
The limp was expected to wear off. His celebrity status as a local businessman who’d given a little girl on the West Coast a second chance at life was not.
According to their church gazette, Chaz had joined the bone marrow registry because he “knew it was the right thing to do,” and once he’d been matched, he’d “never had a doubt in his mind that he would save that little girl’s life.” Also, “anyone who refused to test should be ashamed of themselves. Don’t call yourself a Christian or a man.”
The article had made Bella’s eyes roll so many times, she’d nearly gotten dizzy. But she would roll her eyes a hundred thousand times more if even one more child was saved from leukemia by a pompous, arrogant man. To that little girl, Chaz was a hero.
And for Bella, that was the true happy ending.
Now, she packed up the picnic supplies, a protective eye watching over her child.
Jonah hadn’t needed Chaz then, and he didn’t need him now. He had her. Now he was laughing, shrieking in the frigid waves, seizing what life offered. And, when he got too deep, he had Balim’s helping hands to guide him safely back to shore.
She wrapped Jonah in a thick towel she’d packed in the minivan just in case. He shivered under the thick weave and struggled in his dry clothes. On the way home, she stopped at a drive-through and bought hot chocolates.
Balim eyed his. Although they felt safe here, his iridescent red tattoos were still identifiable, and they knew someday that this utopia would end.
She sipped his chocolate, waited a moment, and swallowed. “Look, no Rotenone.”
His mouth tugged into a smile. “You have a line of chocolate on your lips.”
She licked it away and tilted her chin to follow it with a kiss. He tasted of cocoa with cinnamon. Yummy.
This was the life she’d wanted. Trips to the local beach, stopping to savor the cocoa, and watching movies on the couch while her son struggled to keep his eyes open and her husband passed out, mouth open, snoring through the end credits.
She rested her hand across her belly.
There were more consequences than just sensation when she’d decided not to wear condoms. Another child could get sick. Be targeted by the Sons of Hercules. Bella could live in fear and grief.
Or she could cling to hope. Accept the gifts of happiness while not blinding herself to a multifaceted reality.
She had so, so much happiness.
Sadness existed. It was a sand kernel inside the pearl of her blessings. She and Balim had a long road to free the mer from the tyrannical hold of the All-Council and to make the surface safe for them from the Sons of Hercules. But so long as she drew breath, Bella would walk that road.
And when she could no longer draw breath, she’d dive in the water and breathe there.
Bella turned off the movie and roused the boys for bed, kissed Jonah good night, brushed her teeth, and joined Balim under the covers of her newly made bed. He nodded off again; he worked long hours in the hospital, and weekends were his time to catch up. She closed her eyes beside her husband, near her son, in the house with the extra bedroom for a child that might grow into a son or a daughter.
She chose happiness.
She chose strength.
She chose love.
Queen Bella, double agent to expose the Sons of Hercules and protect Atlantis, dreamed of how her new family would change the world.
Pelan’s Bride
For the first time in a very long time, the weight on Pelan’s chest eased and the will-draining exhaustion faded. He started to wake up.
He expanded his chest with a big stretch, groaning, as all the little muscles and bones in his body dropped into place where they belonged.
Tinkling peace of the Life Tree clinked in the cavity behind his heart, telling him that he was underwater and back in Atlantis.
Had he fallen asleep on duty? That was just Pelan’s luck. He had been the warrior carefully patrolling Sireno when elite warlord Torun had snuck in the first ever modern bride, and during the War for Atlantis Pelan had sped straight into the path of a megalodon. Now he was asleep on duty.
Life really seemed out to get him most of the time.
He released the stretch and his thumbs brushed over his sternum. An unnatural hole met his fingers where his flesh had melted away.
His stomach lurched.
He struggled to blink open his eyes. Had a predator attacked while he slept? Wouldn’t that be just his luck? He was always—
Memories popped in his brain.
He’d met his soul mate, the uncompromisingly brilliant Nora, and she’d drunk his elixir. Finally, things had been looking up. Until, while leaving the coffee shop, he’d been shot by terrorists.
Nora had helped him survive that day but then she’d pulled away. Or he had. Something was wrong with him, clearly, to drive away his own soul mate. Healing had slowed. He’d developed ulcers that ate his strength and pitted his body, paining and disfiguring him. On top of that, he’d been plagued with the knowledge that he’d made a mistake.
Of course he had.
But now a healing sense of peace flowed into him. Someone was talking. And that talking was like a soothing river of kindness filling his terrified heart.
“…everything with be okay, Pelan. I’m here. I know that might not mean anything to you because I’m not exactly the type of woman a man goes for, although I hope you’ll disagree, but do know that I’m here and I’m not going anywhere, not until you open your eyes, not until you feel a hundred percent better and tell me in your own words that you want me to go…”
No, he definitely didn’t want her to go. He knew her. She was his. And she was not Nora. Who…?
His eyes cracked open.
Warm brown eyes fixed on him attentively, filling him with secure happiness. Roxanne. The hospital coordinator had kept him company for hours in the darkest nights when he’d desperately needed someone. “I was a caregiver so I understand,” she’d said, and he’d relaxed into her experience, letting her kind words carry him away into pleasant dreams.
Now, her brows lightened and her chest glowed like sunshine on an inviting park bench. Crinkly brown hair spread around her like a wild halo. And her voice, which had called to him time and again in the hospital tank on the surface, lilted a soothing, sweet tone that once more pushed away the nightmares and filled him with hope.
“You might have heard that you got something called Crab-Cut Disease, which is a flesh-eating bacteria, and then it got worse, but you’ll feel better to know it’s improving and you should bounce back to perfect health. Here, you need a refresh of the salve. My mother had cellulitis which is basically the same thing and I only wish we would have had your merman healing back when I treated her. I hope you don’t mind if I talk while I do it.”
She matter-of-factly spread healing salve on his worst injuries, not flinching away for even a second at the pits of damage.
His second fear — that she would find him too horrible to look at — eased. She did not sound at all disgusted.
She went on to describe her mother’s illnesses and how she’d spent hours upon hours devoted to repaying the woman who’d given her life, education, ambition, and love.
“…and some people asked me, ‘how could you give up your whole life taking care of a sick woman?’ like I didn’t get anything out of it myself. Sure, I didn’t travel or meet with
friends or fill my retirement, but she was my best friend in the whole world in addition to my mother so all the rest of that didn’t matter for an instant; and I knew it was only a matter of time before I’d get all those other opportunities, and if good men disappeared after I hit my thirties then they weren’t really good men, were they? No one ever had an answer for me about that…”
Pelan closed his eyes. Every fiber of his being relaxed. He was safe. Roxanne was here.
Her tone changed, regret pushing him awake. “Sorry.” Her cheer faded. “I might not be who you’re hoping to see.”
Oh. He opened his eyes. She sounded so pained and he was panged with a sudden worry that she would not look past his disfiguring weakness. “You—”
“I know you’re expecting Nora. I’m not her. She went on a journey, but we’re expecting her back I guess, so all’s not lost.”
“You talk—”
“Oh, no.” Her soul dimmed, chilling him like a touch of frost. She put away the salve and fluttered her hands. “I talk too much. I’ll stop talking. I talk too much.”
He caught her wrist. “Do not—”
“Don’t talk? I know, I’m sorry. Everyone says it’s one of my worst personality traits, talking too fast and filling up all the space like I’m some shaken up bottle of soda and absolutely everything comes spilling out. I do intend to work on it. Just take a deep breath and stop.”
“No.”
“I’m so sorry. Look. I’m stopping. Right now.”
“Please. Do not be sad.”
“Oh! No, yes, that’s another personality trait I have. It’s a reason I knew when I joined the staff that I would never end up as a merman’s bride no matter how much I wanted to be. I’m not upbeat all the time like Nora. I’m actually Debbie Downer especially when I’m looking over reports.”
He clasped her hands in both of his, drawing her kind brown eyes to focus on him. “You are you.”
Her lips quirked. “Well, I suppose that’s true. For better or worse.”
“Better.”
“Oh, I know. What’s the point of complaining about my shortcomings if I don’t put in any effort to improve them? I promise you, now that I’m here in this wonderful undersea city in this whole new transformed mermaid body, I’ll try to be better. I really—”
