Sirens of DemiMonde (HalfWorld Trilogy Book 1)

by N. Godwin

  “What part of I’m not making a deal with you are you not getting?”

  “Not a deal, only a condition for your release. It’s a big one. I have a hunch, you see.”

  “Oh, Lord.”

  “Come and dance with me first, just one dance,” he says as he offers me his outstretched palm.

  “No,” I whine, “please don’t make me touch you or smell you or--”

  “Come here, Helen,” he says pulling me to my feet. “Come and dance with the devil.”

  I want to shout I knew it! at the top of my lungs but before I can he chuckles and leans into me. “You want to learn that hip action, remember?” he taunts. “Dancing with me is the second easiest way to show you.”

  He places my hands around his firm neck and there is a hum along his flesh when he puts his arms around me and caresses my back with his hands. I almost have to stand on my tiptoes to keep my hands around his neck as he begins dancing us slowly outside the yacht and around the deck in the moonlight. As he spins us around my head falls against his chest and I breathe his intoxicating scent deeply into my lungs and try to fight off the fog that is clouding my wits.

  Being in his arms is wicked, amazing images flash in and out of my memory and mind, playing tag around and around until we are no longer anywhere I can recognize. There is a beach and moonlight and Rawly is warm and firm and he trembles beneath my touch. He moves his legs and entwines them with mine as he spins us deafly about the boat under the very stars who call out to me.

  Because he is so tall, I am stretched out my tallest and leaning too closely against him and I feel… vulnerable touching him like this, so I shift in his arms and lower my hands from around his neck. I carefully place each hand and hold on to his shoulders and stare up at him, woozy and warm and confused by his tender embrace because he seems to segue from entity to entity with each note of the hypnotic music. This moment he is vulnerable. The next moment he is Odin, he is Krishna, Apollo and the devil to boot! I realize beyond any doubt that Rawly is each and every one of them, and, even though he could be my truest enemy, I am not afraid when I am in his arms.

  “You need heels the next time,” he insists. “Your mouth is too far away.”

  He leans down over me, looking as if he might possibly kiss me, so I turn my head to the other side and rest my cheek against the skeleton of a frog imprinted on the black t-shirt, covering the most imposing and very warm chest I have ever seen-- let alone touched, belonging to the most confounding being I have ever known. He is an excellent dancer and his touch is tender and warm as he leads me by gently caressing my back, expertly disguising his lethal bite.

  “Is there anything you can’t do?” I ask as I inhale his musky scent.

  “Well, I can’t cook,” he laughs taking my left hand in his and dipping me far back, letting my hair almost touch the floor as he studies my face from above.

  “Do you really have parents?”

  He lifts me back up and runs his warm hand up my back as he looks deeply in my eyes. “Come and see for yourself.” He sweeps me backward and spins us besides the railing. His eyes are blistering, intoxicating. “Come live with me and be my love and we shall all the pleasures prove.”

  “God, you’re tall.”

  “Immense.”

  “And your hair curls over your left eye like--” I begin but can’t finish. “Do you really believe this, all this? Honestly and truly?”

  “Your hand is so small,” he marvels, “so delicate in mine.”

  “You’re a beast,” I agree, studying his enormous hand as he moves it down to my hip. “You need an Amazon for a dancing partner.”

  “All I need is you.”

  “No, you’ve got to stop saying that!” I plead, laying my cheek against his breast. “We shouldn’t touch each other like this, we shouldn’t--”

  “Feel what I’m doing,” he says as he places both his hands on my hips and pulls me closer, rocking his pelvis into me. “Shh, don’t be afraid,” he whispers. “Trust me, don’t resist me, just feel what I’m doing, feel the motion. Let your body react naturally.” He grinds against me and I relax slightly and let him move against my rigid body. “Soften your stance. Be pliable. Feel my hip action, Helen. Feel how its one solid motion as your body pushes off against mine. Feel how we move together. Tilt your pelvis into me until we are fluid. Stay attached to my rhythm. Feel me,” he whispers.

  We suddenly stop dancing and he yanks his hands quickly back by his side, his face is burning and the muscles in his arms are flexing as he balls his fists and looks down at his bare feet, breathing heavily.

  “Get a grip, commander,” I chuckle as I reach out and take his hands and put them back on my hips and force him to continue by entwining my legs in his once again.

  I rock against him again and he in turn rocks his hips against mine, and we do it again because I got it; I understand the motion, the fluid rhythm of this damnable motion until I’m convinced I could take him down, because judging by his response there is power in this motion. He is putty in my hands.

  “Uh,” he whispers closing his eyes. “We need to stop.”

  “Do it to me again,” I say. “I want to feel it again.”

  “Helen!” he whispers desperately in my ear.

  I close my eyes and try only to feel and master the motion of a takedown, but Rawly’s face is too close and he smells wonderful and his eyes are wild and hooded and his hands are pulling me into him, as we dance provocatively entwined into an even more intense sensation. I open my eyes. He is staring at me as he bends his knees and dances us down lower to the ground.

  “You’re blushing,” he whispers. “And your heart is beating so rapidly,” he says as he places my hand over his heart. I can feel myself grow weaker with every metered pound of his heart. “Feel my heart, Helen. Feel the heart you own.”

  “Rawly,” I whisper, leaning my face against his shirt and inhaling again. I can’t seem to stop myself as we move to the melody of the words both spoken and unspoken, and I think about stopping the night.

  Rawly’s insanity is both profound and touching, but his magic is real. “What spell are you casting?” I gasp unable to raise my head off his warm chest. “How are you doing this to me? How?” He doesn’t answer me.

  “You bit my butt!” I say and force myself to move my head away from his solid breast so I can study his eyes as he grinds us down low to the ground again. “Why would you do something like that? It’s not…normal.”

  “It tasted good,” he tells me with a slow smile.

  “You really are the devil?” I ask just to make certain.

  We stop dancing. His eyes are burning as he bends his face down to mine. I instinctively turn my face away because this cannot happen. I can’t allow it to happen or else all hell will break loose! Something bad, something terrible and irreversible will happen, and I know this fact for certain.

  Rawly swears under his breath then gently takes the back of my neck, forcing me to look up at him. He slowly lowers his face down to mine again and this time I can’t turn away but lean into him and inhale greedily. Just before our lips touch, I cautiously raise my hand up to his face. He trembles as I trace his mouth with my fingers; I tremble trying to will myself to stop. Our lips almost touch behind my finger and I realize I have no power against his magic now. I lower my hand and reach up to welcome his mouth.

  Just before our lips touch, a shrill alarm on his hip begins to bleep loudly. As I startled from the sound, I lean back and suddenly, thankfully come to my senses just in the knick of time! His alarm shrills again, this time louder, more urgent.

  “Are you fucking kidding me!” he moans as he reluctantly drops my face and reaches for the gadget on his belt. He studies it closely for only a moment. “What? We’re not here for this! Goddamn it!” he says before I can warn him not to say those words because they are bad luck.

  He pushes away from me and runs toward the stairs, and for some reason I am compelled to follow him up to the cont
rol room. When I arrive he is already punching another code into one of the keyboards furiously while he cusses to someone on his phone, then hangs up. He turns the yacht deftly about then heads full throttle towards our new destination. He motions for me to come and sit behind the wheel.

  “Keep your hand on the wheel. Just keep us headed due south and straight ahead until I get back,” he orders. “And do try not to hit anything.”

  I steer the boat into the night, straight ahead. I steer and try not to think. I steer for ten minutes or more. I can hear him rummaging around below me, talking to different people, and I try not to think about what almost happened. I steer and wonder what kissing the devil would do to someone’s soul? Then I wonder what it would mean to the devil if you kissed him; if I had kissed him? I steer and wonder where in the hell I am headed?

  When Rawly finally comes back up to the control room, I can see from the corner of my eye that he is dressed in camouflage. He walks up behind my chair and bends and looks over my shoulder.

  “Here, turn us at a thirty degree angle,” he tells me as he scans the horizon. “Good just keep this pace.”

  I watch silently as the bay zooms by us and notice we are entering back into his lagoon. He takes the wheel from my hand and slows us down in the no-wake zone, not saying a word, and I foolishly think the danger has passed. We are silent for a long time before my curiosity gets the better of me.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Bullshit drills. I can’t tell you any more. Believe me, I would if I could.”

  “Is it dangerous?” I ask as he pulls up alongside his dock.

  “No, just something unexpected I can’t ignore. The timing just sucks.”

  “So it’s an easy drill?

  “Baby, the only easy day was yesterday,” he says with a wink as he turns off the engines, jumps from his seat and bolts downstairs.

  By the time I can follow him down, he has already tied off the boat. He steps over to the stern and unlocks something on the deck then removes a panel from the floorboard. I watch as he pulls out various equipment then drapes himself in a few other things I don’t recognize.

  “More new toys to field test.”

  “Rawly, I--” I try to say but the words won’t come.

  Overhead a helicopter comes into view and hovers over the heliport just beyond the dock. Rawly is checking his phone messages again but something makes him turn and look over at me.

  “Interesting night. Not exactly the outcome I’d envisioned,” he says as I stare straight ahead. “Here,” he offers shaking the keys to his giant hummer at me. “He drives much easier than he looks. Trust me,” he says with a broad grin. “This is the code to the Hubris. Lock up when you leave. But, Helen, do me a big favor and sleep here tonight. It would give me perverse pleasure to think of you sleeping naked in between my sheets.” His expression turns playful. “And should you desire to simulate my presence again, please turn on the camera behind the headboard first, won’t you?”

  I watch as the helicopter lands and Rawly picks up his gear. “You’re not coming back,” I say.

  “Are you trying to jinx me?” he laughs.

  “You’ve jinxed yourself with all this craziness! You’ve only made Him mad. Trust me.”

  Rawly touches my cheek then turns and bounds off the yacht. I watch as he runs down the dock in the direction of the helicopter waiting to take him to God knows where.

  “Rawly!” I shout over its noise. Something in my voice makes him stop and turn around to look at me. “Please be careful!” I shout as I hug my arms into me, rubbing them against the sudden chill.

  He drops his gear on the ground and begins walking back toward me. I watch when his walk turns into a run and it takes him only moments before he jumps back on board and advances toward me.

  I catch my breath when he gathers me in his arms and pulls me off my feet, placing firm hands behind my neck and butt as he sighs and pulls me up to meet his mouth. I cry out when his warm lips finds mine. I begin to tremble as I open my mouth and greet his tongue hungrily, wrapping my arms around his neck and clinging to him, tasting him, feeling and ingesting him, in that one moment not caring about gods and consequences. His taste is intoxicating, overwhelming.

  Rawly is kissing me in a wild rhythm; fast rapid thrusts while his hands caress my head, my neck, and my butt. He kisses me harder, faster until I am struggling to breathe.

  Images dance around us and my head is spinning when I see spots before my eyes. I push back, trying to breathe as every SEAL on board the helicopter break out whistling and yelling and clapping. As our cheeks fall together we both gasp.

  “Rawly, I—I—be careful!” is all I can say.

  “Nothing could keep me away from you, Helen, not even death!” he swears and buries his face in my neck. As he bites me softly he begins to chuckle. “Helen, my love, you had better be prepared, because the next time I see you I’m going to--”

  “No you’re not! God, you are so corrupt!”

  “To the bone,” he laughs as he lifts me higher and reaches impatiently for my mouth again.

  I am breathless when he sets me back down on unsteady feet. In less than three seconds, Rawly bounds off the yacht. He lands on his feet then arches his back and shakes his fists to the moon.

  “Hooyah!” he shouts like a madman.

  “Hooyah!” the men onboard the copter shouts back.

  I don’t take my eyes off Rawly as he straightens up and grabs his gear from the ground. I watch as he boards the waiting helicopter. I watch as the men slap him on his back.

  We stare at one another as the chopper takes off. I watch until his face is only a blur on my horizon. I feel a slow burn creeping over me, and I step out from view of the night sky.

  If you enjoyed reading Sirens of DemiMonde, please consider leaving a review.

  If you’re enjoying the HalfWorld Trilogy, Book II, Hubris will be releasing soon and Book III, Captured Angel , scheduled for released June 11th .

  Visit ngodwinwriter.com for updates, or signup for her newsletter at for announcements.

  About the Author

  N. GODWIN

  Writer, Seeker & Storyteller.

  No one starts out a professional Writer; we start out as children forbidden to ever again tell a scary or sad story around the campfire because we make everyone cry, or we're the odd student who'd rather write a Greek tragedy for classical lit instead of a boring essay... Until one dark and stormy night, we realize we have to sit down and tell the stories of all the voices in our heads waiting to get out and welcome you to their world.