by Marata Eros
She made every protective instinct he had and ones he didn't come on line. Brandon hadn't realized what it meant to be male and Druid vampire until he was faced with his biology. If she had been Druid he thought it might have been worse. But she had blood of the Mer and therefore it was just as bad. Like blood spoke to like.
He moved toward her as Ember walked in through the door he'd left ajar.
“What are you doing, Brandon?”
He turned guiltily and was overcome by the same sensation he had with Ruby but somehow different. “I'm visiting the maiden.”
“Yes, I see that. It was a successful undertaking,” Ember looked at the girl and smiled and Ruby gave a small smile in return.
Finally, another girl, Ruby thought, relieved.
“I'd like to have a chat, eh?” Ember said smoothly. Dismissing him without saying so.
Brandon narrowed his eyes on the princess, taking in her royal garb, a pale violet, playing up those large eyes, nearly black, the tinsely silver-white of her hair as it flowed to the small of her back. Brandon knew she would draw a crowd if she were around humans and was probably barely within human standards of looks as it was. Ember looked slightly less Mer than the warriors. He wondered on that.
“Fine,” Brandon agreed reluctantly, looking at Ruby again, her hands gripping the rim, the sooty lashes over deep eyes, the pale hair wet from the sleeping chamber fanning out behind her like wheat in the wind.
His dick twitched. Time to go, he thought, turning and walking out without another word.
But Brandon wasn't done, not by a long shot.
Ember said nothing, instead she gracefully moved around the room, stepping behind a stone wall and gathering a pale seafoam green floor length gown.
“I am Ember,” she told Ruby gently, handing over the garment soundlessly.
Okay, total creep factor, Ruby thought. Yet... there was something eerily familiar about the other woman. Ruby studied her and hit on something.
They looked vaguely alike.
Ruby had never met anyone with her unusual coloring. She always had the whitest blond hair, the deepest brown eyes and pale skin with the softest shell pink tint to it. Like an oyster with a pink pearl.
That is what her mother had called her when she was a little girl: her pink pearl.
“What saddens you?” Ember said in distress and Ruby shifted her eyes away, trying to veil her sadness from this stranger.
When the first tear came from Ruby's dark eyes, Ember caught it in a vial that she corked after the capture.
“What?” Ruby's tears dried on her face, she was astounded by the gesture. “Why did you do that?”
“Mermaid tears. They aid in healing,” Ember replied in such a matter of fact way that Ruby was stunned into silence.
“Really? You're what... a fish? Where's the tail?” Ruby said, half in joke, her mind working a thousand miles per hour, connecting dots that were impossible.
But becoming more probable moment by moment.
Ember was somber. “I am not a fish,” she said with clear distaste and Ruby instantly felt stupid for her callous remark.
“I am a Maiden of the Mer. A princess,” Ember said as if she had announced that a thousand times before. Maybe she had.
“Mermaid,” Ruby breathed in disbelief.
“As you are,” Ember said, her brows drawing together with Ruby's slowness.
“Oh,” Ruby said in a small voice, sliding underneath the water and closing her eyes.
That revelation had been a little more than she'd bargained for.
*
Brolach
Brolach took his punishment. The whip of ice bit into his heated flesh like small razors of incendiary heat. Dipped in the Blood of the Mer and frozen in stasis, they tore chunks out of skin that was slightly red in hue, the black ink of his blood racing from the wounds to gather like a river of oil at his feet, where it steamed on the heated brick.
The chains bit into his bound wrists without mercy and his head hung against his broad chest.
“You tasted of her... yet,” slap, crack, bite, “You. Did,” thwack, Brolach groaned when the fifth lash struck the open wound of the third, reopening it even as it tried to heal, “Not. Fuck. Her.”
“No!” Brolach yelled, gasping as the stinging coolness of the lashings laid his back open. “She was attacked by the humans. I wished to not force her...”
Lucas strode around to the front of Brolach, grasping his chin, slicked with sweat. “Did I not tell you to find the females of demon blood?” He nodded for Brolach, adding, “Instead you eat her cunt like a dessert?” he asked with scorn. “And she be of Mer Blood? You could have fucked her senseless and her water would have put out the fire of your cock and neatly gotten her with child? What were you thinking?” Lucas asked, disgusted with his right hand demon. He would never have thought Brolach capable of any softness toward females.
“The treaty,” Brolach argued in a voice breathy with agony.
“For a half-breed of Mer and Demon both? You should have died fucking her,” Lucas said, hanging the whip filled with gore on its peg on the stone wall, heat coming off it in waves.
“Those Mers and their water pussies... succulent. They are guaranteed producers of offspring. How is it that you were able to resist your demonic nature? Jesus!” Lucas said in emphasis and instantly screamed in agony, clasping his head and falling in a writhing pile on the floor that glowed red from the heat.
Brolach allowed a small smile at his leader's painful lapse.
It did not affect Brolach in the same way. For he held a secret. It had been easy before this mission. Now it threatened to be revealed. With or without his consent.
Ruby was not the only one of mixed blood.
And his was the very worst of combinations. If discovered, he would be put to death.
So Brolach endured the torture. Better that than the alternative.
Yet the soul he did possess yearned for the innocent female he had held but briefly.
A jewel amongst women: Ruby. A gem meant to be his.
Brolach vowed she would be his again.
A demon never broke a promise once made.
Hell would freeze over before that.
His small smile turned into a grin as blood trickled out of Lucas' pointed ears and his horns grew in response to his agony.
A lesson learnt: do not call upon the Almighty if you hail from the pits of Hades.
*
Ruby rebels
Ruby was fully awake now, and although usually reticent by nature she was pissed as hell. Few knew it, but a rebellious and passionate personality roiled underneath the surface of the shell of neutrality she wore like a mask.
She fumed at the female while her ridiculous gown flowed around her bare feet.
“I understand you're telling me I'm some kind of mermaid...” Ruby paused, it sounded stupid beyond words. She plowed forward anyway. “And that there's this huge supernatural super-secret world and I've just found myself in the middle of it all.
“You did not 'find yourself',” Ember tried for tranquility but Ruby would have none of it.
She nodded her head vigorously. “Oh yes, I've just moved here, got myself a low life job where I can't be found...”
“Why would you wish not to be found?” Ember asked logically.
My father, Ruby thought, her palms dampening. “Because, I like my anonymity.” Ruby said and it sounded false even to her own ears. Dammit, she was a crappy liar, always had been.
“Anyway,” Ruby said, clenching and drying her hands on the fragile gown she wore, the silk material crushed under her fingertips.
“I'm really sorry you guys are like, going extinct and that there are a bunch of... uh, demons and vampires and stuff. But this is not my problem. I just want to go away and be left alone.”
Except for Brolach, Ruby thought, remembering that tongue on her lips, pumping into her virgin hole. Moisture pooled where it should have been absent and she pr
essed her legs together, pantiless, her arousal moistening her thighs. She could've died. At least Ember didn't seem to know. She literally melted for Brolach.
Had melted, she corrected.
Nevermind, she thought, casting her eyes at the floor. She was trapped in goddamned Waterworld with big ass men that she was supposed to breed with.
Ruby hadn't volunteered for this role.
It was okay, Ruby was hell on wheels at getting the hell out of dodge. Merfolk or not, she was determined. Ruby would leave this place and they weren't going to find her again.
Ember smiled. Putting her hand out she indicated that Ruby should take it. “We have prepared a great feast in your honor. You are to meet the eligible Warriors of the Mer.”
Ruby was interested despite herself. “What... only Warriors?”
Ember stopped. “Regular Males of the Mer do not get their pick of a maiden,” she chastised softly.
Well la-dee-dah, Ruby thought. “That ought to cause some hard feelings,” Ruby stated the obvious.
Ember lifted a shoulder dismissively. “I do not know. But for over one hundred years we have had insufficient maidens to breed outside the circle of the warriors.”
Holy shit, Ruby thought, they're desperate for chicks and I'm a breeding messiah. It was a motivator. She'd get the Prom Queen of the Mer ceremony over with and get her ass out of there.
*
Con
Desmond was beginning to see why Constantine could not be easily assimilated within the different groups.
He tried to reason with Constantine. “Listen to me,” he commanded and a surly Con looked at him.
“We had to take you out. We couldn't compromise the girl and you had bled my sister half to death...” Desmond shrugged his shoulders.
Constantine wanted to rip his head off and shit down his throat.
Instead, he made a stab at calm. “I procured the girl. For you, yes?” Con asked in a reasonable imitation of calm. His old vampire Faction leader would have kept his distance. Desmond was not yet that wise.
Desmond's brows drew together. “Well yes, you handled that splendidly.”
Good fuck, this Mer was a queer, Con thought in frustration.
“Okay...” Con scrubbed his face, a strand of inky hair falling between his shoulder blades. “So I should have been in charge of the fem... Maiden.” Con put his heavy hands on his hips. His head was no longer sore where Madden had clocked him. Constantine's blood-letting of Ember had seen to the healing of the bludgeon by Madden.
He'd pay. Con was all about touching another male's dick...
If he was tearing it off to throw it like a horseshoe. That made a ghost of a smile appear on Con's face and Desmond gave it an uneasy glance.
“Not exactly,” Desmond held up a finger. “Madden didn't understand your intent.”
Constantine understood his intent: He'd meant to fuck the girl.
Why. Didn't. They. Get. That?
“You can't just fuck a barely conscious maiden, Con,” Desmond said as if he was admonishing a small child.
Why the fuck couldn't he? Perhaps they got it more than he supposed.
“She is special--”
“She is demon,” Con said, thinking that was a terrific new development. He'd never fucked a demon female. The mere thought of it made him salivate.
Reading his expression, Desmond sighed. “You are not Mer enough to qualify, my friend. It is the proven Warriors of the Mer that shall partake of her flesh and bear their children.” Desmond said in the smuggest voice Con had ever heard.
“She will be used by the warriors. Then,” he spread his palms away from his body, “whoever the lucky father is may take her as mate.”
Constantine was stunned. He had misunderstood the Sirens. They were not a gentle people as he had been led to believe when he petitioned for entry.
They were conquerors. He thought this smacked of Faction.
Constantine had a thought. “What of Ember?”
Desmond's eyes sparkled. “There are some ceremonies that are better left untold.”
Constantine blinked slowly.
It was the last slow thing he did.
His talons were out and slicing through the gills of his adopted leader before he realized he had moved.
Desmond lay at Constantine's feet, wheezing through gills that no longer aided his breathing, or his life.
Too quick for you to wake the Mother, eh? Constantine thought with a sense of accomplishment. I was a bad choice for the Mer, after all, Constantine mused.
Constantine did not have a moral compass. But his Druid blood led him at present.
Con was all about being in the moment.
He moved away from the dying prince of the Mer without a backward glance.
He had just signed his own sister's future mass assault. Kier had saved her from the Faction so she could be fucked by her own guard?
Con thought not.
Constantine was a bastard... yet he was a bastard when it suited him.
CHAPTER 8
subterfuge
“Where is Desmond?” Ember asked a room devoid of anything but the Mer guard.
Where are the other merpeople? Ruby wondered uneasily. She looked around where low pillows had been flung about in all the corners of the room. She hadn't survived this long without some low-lying intuition kicking in by default. It flared to life in that moment, alarm bells of warning clanging in her mind.
“Ember... I don't like this,” Ruby said, moving backward.
“Nonsense, Desmond will arrive posthaste and we will enjoy the best the sea can provide.” Ember's deep chocolate eyes, tinged with red regarded her with unshakable resolve.
Ruby counted twelve warriors, one she recognized instantly, Madden, she remembered.
As if on cue, Madden stepped forward, taking both of Ember's hands. “It is best that your brother is not here, Ember.”
Ember's face was comical in its confusion. “What say you, Madden?”
Madden gave a slightly sad look then stated, “He can not partake in the ceremony with his own sister, so it is not worth his presence.”
Ember snatched her hands away from Madden's much larger grip. “What do you mean, Madden? Speak plainly.” Her eyes searched his and he sighed, his eyes moving briefly to Ruby's.
Oh shit, Ruby thought, connecting every oracle in the universe, her thoughts coming to the conclusion before Fish Guy could speak it.
“You are to be bred like any Maiden, Ember,” Madden said, then added, like this made everything All. Better, “I will be your first so that when the others have their turn you will have begun with someone who is familiar.”
Ember made a choked sound low in her throat. The Mother came and Ember's eyes lit like a fire, the deep brown receding and flames taking up where there had been none a moment before.
Rough hands grabbed Ruby and she screamed.
She had gone from the frying pan to the fire; to be raped by her own people.
A singular thought came like a prayer.
A plea for mercy.
Brolach, Ruby's mind screamed in impassioned terror.
*
Lucas
Lucas drove his barbed cock into the demon female beneath him, her moist snatch sucking his length inside where his dangerous fleshy tip pierced the entrance of her womb, latching inside it like a key turning in a lock. He swept his hips backward as she grunted in arousal tinged with pain.
Just how he liked it.
He made Brolach watch as he hammered the hissing and steaming female beneath him. It was a fine punishment he delivered like a plump cherry atop a cake. Brolach had thought himself so clever.
But Lucas knew his secret. His softness for females.
Yes, Brolach loved to bury his prick in the softness of a female. Yet... he did not wish to cause pain.
Lucas loved the pain, it was part and parcel of his sensual satisfaction. The act was not complete without the bitter bite of agony chasing the tail
of orgasm.
He drove so hard inside the female that she cried out for him to stop. That tight womb that had so readily accepted his barbed appendage at the end of his dick now fought the battering it gave her.
“No,” she begged, “it's too sharp.” Steam rose in languid swirls rose off flesh that was the most desirable color for a demon female, a true and deep scarlet. She was lovely.
Lucas fucked her hole until that womb opened for his prick.
“Ah!” she shouted, coming around her pain and the forced entry into her deep cavity.
“Stop!” Brolach shouted from his bird's eye view above the pair, shackled with ice manacles made of the sea. They melted as he steamed slowly against them but it was a timed thing. It would not be fast enough to assist the female.
Not that Brolach could. He had watched countless times as Lucas took the best demon breeders, forcing them to submit underneath him while he speared their twats with his mace of a dick.
“She heals, Brolach,” Lucas said in a slide of flesh that brought her juices and the small amount of black blood that was a telltale sign of his treatment.
Lucas drove hard and the female tried to close her legs as he lifted her hips higher with his hands and spread her like a flayed fish. Jerking his cock out of her, he pressed his mouth against her pulsating and wet pussy, sucking both her lips deeply into the scorching brimstone of his mouth.
“Ooh!” she said in a cooing yell upon feeling his burning mouth on her abused pussy. “Stop... it burns, Lucas!” she said hoarsely, writhing and jerking to try and get away from his seeking mouth.
Male demons were the strongest of the supernaturals and he easily held the small red demon against his mouth.
Her eyes widened when she saw his tail rise, the phallus at its tip ready for exploration.
“No,” she said, begging, “please no, Lucas.”
“Oh yes, my demon breeder,” he said between plunging his forked tongue inside her wet channel. She screamed when the tail's tip found the tight bud of her ass. It wormed inside that first inch, the natural lubricant coming out of the pinpoint pores that covered its surface guaranteeing a slick entry.
