by Starla Night
Soren grunted. His respect for her sounded even prouder. “Few warriors learn these symbols. Kadir studied. Elders know them.”
“Adviser Creo made this map,” Gailen offered helpfully. “Back before he turned evil.”
She traced the familiar symbols. “This ‘X’ and backward curved ‘P’ means ‘House.’ This flag with a tiny ‘O’ beside it is ‘Tree’ and these four symbols that look like different forms of ‘Y’ and another tiny ‘O’ means ‘Temple.’ A ‘tree temple’ is the Life Tree. These flat plains over here have the marking of ‘Z’ - triangle - ‘W’ stands for ‘Field’. I’m guessing these are the borders of your land.”
“Were.” Soren thumped the map symbols. “We gave up the sherds field. Too isolated and attractive for raiders.”
They looked at her with awe. Soren, with pride.
So she proved her worth. And rather than looking at her like a freak or monster, these warriors were impressed.
Finally, she had found something she could do. Something useful. Something she could control.
“I can read the symbols like this on the engineering schematics at the ruin.”
Soren disagreed. “You cannot.”
Oh, come on. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Give me one reason.”
“If we get attacked you cannot swim to safety.”
“That’s why I have two guards.”
Faier and Ciran both swelled with conviction.
Soren sobered. “They would give their lives for you. Do not ask them so recklessly. You should at least make your fins and control your power.”
It was frustrating. But Soren had a point.
He was trying to reason with her rather than just getting hurt and demanding she obey, as he had done at the beginning. He was changing for her.
Not enough. But it was a step.
One she couldn’t fault him with.
Balim rubbed his fingers over the symbols the same as she had done. “I will watch for these symbols and transcribe them for you to review.”
“Seeing them in context is the best.” But she wasn’t going to push it any more. She gestured at Soren with irritation. “So you want me to sit around and tend a garden while you figure out how to raise an ancient ruin and fend off a monster?”
He started to answer.
“Of course not! Silly Aya.” Elyssa kicked to her side. “You have to make your fins. Come to the Life Tree with me. We’ll practice.”
Her fins were another frustration. She still didn’t know which muscle to flex. All of them? None?
Ciran and Faier discussed who would go with Iyen to plan patrols and who would stay to guard her. Elyssa headed to the tunnel and waited.
Soren turned on her. His dark gaze captured her wandering thoughts until there was only him.
“This could be our last meeting. Will you not choose me for your husband now?”
Her heart throbbed hard in her chest.
No one was promised tomorrow.
She lost her senses in Soren’s dark hair. His intimate gaze. The firm line of his mouth. They all called to her.
And that was dangerous.
She would face the danger if only he would give the pieces of himself she needed to trust.
Aya lifted her chin. “When you care enough to mean that, I’ll consider it.”
“I mean it.”
He was so powerful, so magnificent, and so gorgeous. Her heart throbbed again. She wanted to say yes. She would have him.
But she wouldn’t have him. She would never have him. Like the ancient languages major. When they were together, the bed never felt so empty.
She might be filled with Soren’s love now. But if she gave her heart to him this way, they would end up the same. Neither satisfied. Both still hungry for something the other person would never, could never give.
He was tempting enough she almost chose the life of heartbreaking emptiness.
Instead, she reached out and placed her palm on his chest. “Would an honorable warrior say that?”
He jolted like her question contained electricity. His gaze flew over her face, her body. A war seemed to be waged inside. He grabbed her hand.
She started to apologize.
His other hand locked around her neck and dragged her to his powerful kiss.
Chapter Twenty
Passion exploded between them like liquid fire.
Aya chased the dangerous anise flavor, coating her tongue in Soren’s sweet liqueur.
He stroked her mouth rhythmically, surging and conquering her. Their naked flesh rubbed together, hot and slick. She wrapped her arms around his massive shoulders and her legs around his hard core.
He was the smartest, most powerful, strongest male she knew. If he yielded to her right now, she would give him everything.
He groaned and pulled back. His pupils dilated and his control seemed dangerously close to the snapping point. “Marry me.”
She was just as hard-headed. “The truth first.”
His intent gaze dropped to her lips. His wide palms spanned her shoulder blades and cupped her buttocks, pressing her against his taut abdomen. Desire warred with a more fragile emotion. The same one that tripped her up.
Fear.
He edged into agony. Whatever he had to tell her, he was so certain it would end their relationship he already felt the loss.
“Fine.” She pulled back and turned to Elyssa…
…and discovered they were alone. The others had cleared out of the castle, leaving her and Soren to make out or fight. Which was very nice of them.
The look on Soren’s face said he would use this sudden alone time for fighting.
Her heart broke.
She pushed away and swam to the room where they’d been planning. Aya padded across it on her human feet. Maybe she could use it somehow to practice her fins.
Soren followed her. “You do not really want me.”
“You don’t want to be honest with me.”
“I am honest.”
“Lies by omission are still lies.”
He frowned so hard his eyebrows threatened to slide off his face. “No. The truth is, you will never want to be my bride.”
They were back to that.
Her body craved him. Possibly because he rejected her so hard. She had never been satisfied with things that came easy. She took them for granted, the way she had with Elyssa’s friendship. She ought to have ditched her cold, mean, loveless mother years ago and entered psychotherapy to learn how to achieve warm, healthy, viable relationships.
So, yes, she wanted Soren more now than she had on that flat rock next to the trench. What did she have to do to prove it? Seduce him?
Hmm.
The water around them already felt hotter, sweeter, more sensual. His anise flavoring teased her tongue and she craved a taste.
In all of her other relationships, she never made the first moves. Even the dead languages major invited her out first and stuck his tongue down her throat in the back seat of his friend’s Beamer. And here, in the water, although she forgot because everybody else also was, she and Soren were already naked.
His swallow sounded loud in the small, hot room. “Aya?”
She pivoted to him. His eyes were dark black with awareness. She touched his ankles, skimmed her hands up the gorgeous, hard, rippling muscles, and moved between his knees.
“Aya. What are you doing?”
She looked up at his fearless face. This was the man she chose. She chose him. His beauty, his terror, his arrogance, his protection. Whether he wanted her or not. This was her man.
“Nothing.” She pressed a kiss to the center of his chest, the place where he could see her light, but where she could only see the looping of his accomplishments, recorded in the shape of so many tattoos.
He rumbled dangerous pleasure. “It is not nothing.”
“I’m finishing what we keep starting.” She kissed down his divots and muscles. His flavor filled her mouth, and need tingled
in her feminine places. She clasped his hard, thick shaft and licked the tip. Her hot center clenched.
He groaned and gripped the ledge.
Yes. That was how she needed him. The throbbing ache in her own body demanded it. She bobbed her mouth over his mushroom cock head and licked the long length of him. Her hand stroked his shaft. Her center ached. She gripped her mons to control the need, and touching herself made it spiral even higher. She moaned.
“You cannot do this.” He gritted his teeth. His eyes grew black with hunger. “I must not release.”
She needed him to.
Her hand pumped him while her other hand ensured her dual pleasure. He stared at her with such naked wanting.
She chose him. She chose him. She chose him.
He groaned, clenched, and exploded.
His hot male sauce filled her mouth. She grabbed him with both hands to keep him contained. After all, maybe he was right to worry about pregnancy.
He spent his load and gasped. Her mouth remained around his girth. She pulled back and then she had a mouthful.
This might be the only piece of him she got to keep. She swallowed.
It was salty and creamy and slightly anise-flavored. Like him. It warmed her belly in some indefinable way.
He stared at her blackly.
The day he wanted her to carry his children would come. He would spread her legs and fill her with his thick length and take her to the edge of orgasm and beyond. She imagined the hard, slippery, solid inches of him filling her. She touched her aching, unsatisfied bud. Her lower body throbbed with need.
“You are unsatisfied now,” he said.
“You could do something about that.” She closed her eyes and concentrated on chasing the good feelings he had evoked. It was not hard. She reached out to squeeze his masculine length.
Her knuckles bumped against his face.
She opened her eyes. He was studying the way she slid her fingers across her aching bud.
Full of desire, he also looked uncertain, as if he no longer knew what was right or wrong. “Is this, then, my duty?”
Having a hot male between her legs, kneading her trembling thighs, was definitely good. “It’s polite to reciprocate.”
He nudged her hand away, parted her sex lips with his large, reverent fingers, and latched onto her eager bud.
Pleasure streaked to her center. “Soren.”
He stroked her with his tongue and teased her with his lips. How did he do this? The intensity with which he pursued her orgasm arched her back and slammed the hot, delicious, shivering rainbow of sparkling wonderfulness. She gave in all at once. Fireworks burst in her brain. This one was even better than what he had given her before. It now officially took the spot for best sex of her entire life, and she still hadn’t gotten his gorgeous cock in her.
He kissed her belly and rested his chin against her belly button. “In Dragao Azul, I was the one assigned to return Elan’s bride to the surface. My elders said if I performed this duty honorably, I would be promoted to First Lieutenant and would receive Dragao Azul’s next bride for my own.”
Aya stilled. This was the story. Soren’s dishonor.
“So you disobeyed their orders?” she said, pushing aside the warm, yummy haze and focusing.
“I obeyed them.”
“You completed your assignment?”
“Yes.” He withdrew and rested his back against the wall, his legs extended in front of him. “The covenant requires a bride to be returned to the surface as soon as she has produced a young fry. Elan’s bride wished to remain.”
Aya rose and straightened, sitting straight up with her weight on her legs Japanese-style. It was easy, being virtually weightless underwater.
“Where was Elan?”
“With his newborn young fry. It is rare for a new father to return his bride to the surface. The newborn madness overtakes them.”
“Newborn madness?” Aya repeated.
“Where a father refuses to return his bride to the surface and intends to keep her with him forever. It wears off within a few days.”
The shocking part was where it wore off. There was a reason King Kadir had founded Atlantis on the principle that brides didn’t have to be forced to the surface after they produced a merman’s offspring.
Aya held her poker face. “Go on.”
His brows darkened and his lips pulled back into a battle grimace. “If she had known how to operate her fins and capture her queen power, we would not have been able to contain her. Or, if she had been rested since the birth—”
“Are you saying a group of warriors attacked a woman right after she gave birth?”
“In Dragao Azul, brides have always wanted to return immediately. Some do not wish to look at or hold their young fry. Like my mother.”
Aya could think of a few possible reasons for that.
“When I received charge of Elan’s bride, she had injured several warriors and was trussed tightly to prevent her from damaging anyone more.” His face clenched like a fist. “We took turns dragging her to the surface.”
“We?”
“I and the other two warriors in the barracks that night. Dosan and Uvim. Good warriors. Young, but hardened. The whole journey, they said not a word. She spoke enough to fill the ocean with her anger.”
Yes, Aya could guess about that. If her own newborn baby were ripped out of her arms and then she was bound and dragged for the surface, but her mouth — well, chest — was left free, she would have quite a few things to say.
“I…” His chin wrinkled. He cleared his throat and rubbed his chin. “I did not conduct myself well. I ignored her injuries and her pain. She was a bride who had brought a young fry into our city. I did not honor her the way I should.”
Aya waited.
His chest expanded. He got ahold of himself and removed his hand. His eyes were rimmed black with agony.
“Some of her words upset the warriors, so when we reached the surface and put her on the shore, I told them not to worry. Once she reacclimated to the air world, she would forget us and our ways.”
Surely that went over well. “And?”
“She cursed us.” His expression turned haunted yet noble. Reciting the words. “She said our brides were purchased with blood. The sacred covenant was unnatural. She would go back to Dragao Azul and steal our children. Where was our honor? Such honorable warriors trussing a bride and dumping her on the beach like a dead animal.” He twitched.
Her heart hurt.
He was in so much agony from this one event. Insulting a person he should have venerated.
In a warrior culture, males lived and died by respect. Honor meant everything to them. For Soren, disrespecting a person was a crime. His agony was as intense as Aya’s when she realized how her submersible was going to be used against the city by Blake. And Soren had gone just as crazy as she had once she made the realization. She’d set up her family company for destruction. Soren had raised an army and founded a city that shook the very foundation of mer culture.
Aya’s anger at the company had cooled. Maybe it was because her life had totally changed as a mermaid. The things that had seemed so important once weren’t. She hoped Elyssa’s lawsuit was successful and that the people responsible faced justice.
Soren’s regret, though, was as raw as the day he had made his mistake.
She curled her hands in her lap. Was it best to rub his arm or hug him? She didn’t comfort people. Ever. And she hadn’t been the recipient of much comfort either.
Well, except from Elyssa.
Oh. What would Elyssa do? Aya uncurled her hands and rubbed her palms on her thighs, psyching herself up for it. “That sounds difficult to hear.”
His brows lifted. They were past the hard part for him and now onto the summary. “She was right. Where was the honor in this battle? I had been serving the wrong elders blindly, blackening my soul with every fight, and this was the nadir. I returned the other escort warriors to Dragao Azul, and I lef
t.”
“I’m very sorry.”
“Now you see.” He tipped his head back and rested it against the curved wall. His gaze reached hers, letting go of hope, lighter from his sadness. “What I have done to another male’s bride. You will never want to be mine.”
She bit her lip. “No. I don’t see that, actually.”
He blinked. His sad smile froze.
“I don’t see that at all.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Aya didn’t see how insulting a new mother, then fighting against the city and elders who had raised him, betrayed the founding principles of an honorable warrior.
“I left Dragao Azul,” Soren emphasized. “The worst betrayal is a warrior disobeying his elders, shunning his king, and abandoning his own city. It is even worse than cowardice.”
“Yes, I get that part.” Aya rubbed her hands on her thighs again. She regarded him seriously. Not with the sadness he feared. Not with the horror and disgust he most worried about. “To summarize, you completed an assignment that caused you a grave moral injury, so you left Dragao Azul and founded Atlantis.”
Ah, that is how she misunderstood. “I was not injured. The bride—”
“Yes, you were.”
“No. The bride was already bound when I escorted her, and she was too exhausted to attack us when we removed the harness on the beach.”
Vivid details assaulted him. The scent of blood on the salty water. The paleness of her face as she cursed him. And later, back in the king’s castle, the way Elan had cried greasy tears and crumpled to the floor. Elan would forget, the Dragao Azul elders promised, as they handed Soren his promotion to First Lieutenant. His bride would too.
But he knew the truth. His promotion, his future bride, everything was purchased with her blood. I will never forget. Neither would Soren.
“I received no physical injury during that assignment,” he said.
“Not a physical injury, a moral injury,” Aya leaned forward and pressed her palm against his chest. “That bride made you realize your actions were not in alignment with your beliefs. You’re still suffering from it.”
