Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  “Aside from that, there’s the plain old awesome factor.”

  “The awesome factor?”

  “Being able to fly like that has to be incredible, exhilarating. Swooping like a bird all by yourself.”

  “Yes.” He heard the smile in her voice. “At first I was terrified, because I’d get a few feet in the air and would turn or twist the wrong way and send myself plummeting. I broke some bones, but found they healed in a matter of several days, some less. So I realized the spell had given me greater healing ability, which in turn made me more confident about learning to fly. I did most of my experimenting once I was here, where I had time to figure it out on my own. Before that, most my energy went toward hiding from people who were far too close to the places where I found temporary refuge.”

  He expected those first days had been difficult beyond description. Especially as the follow-up to what had caused the curse initially. Get raped, then immediately transformed into something else. Wake up and go on the run to find a safe place. She’d had to deal with so much on her own. Hell, instead of feeling dismayed by her reluctance to trust him, he should be focusing on what a miracle it was she was talking to him at all.

  He echoed the promise he’d made to her to himself. He wouldn’t do anything to lose her trust. He wanted her to feel like she could let her shields down enough to “hang out” together like this, try out his company. Learn that he could be a friend, as well as lover. And maybe Master.

  He had all the time in the world. He could walk along the beach and “look” at shells with her for a full day without tiring of it. Since she hadn’t found an excuse to leave his company, citing the need to wash her snakes or something like that, his company was still being rated better than nothing. Good thing they were on an unpopulated island, because he’d never been known for his charming social skills.

  Women liked him because of his looks and the John Wayne thing that made them feel safe. Then there was the Dom thing. It was close enough to the surface that a woman with even the slightest touch of submissive orientation or spice-it-up fantasies would feel its pull. That combo had caused him occasional trouble in ops. Drug dealers got touchy when their girlfriends or wives gravitated toward another man.

  But now there was only one woman whose response mattered.

  Leaving the rock, he knelt in the sand close enough to the shoreline that it was damp and easily packable.

  “I’m taking off the blindfold, but keeping my back to you, my lady.”

  She said nothing, but she didn’t object, so he did that and began to build his sculpture, feeling her attention as she remained sitting on the rock. He started with hips, torso and breasts, and spread out to wings, flying hair and twining snakes. He was no artist, but he showed her as closely as possible how he saw her, adding shells to her wings for decoration. However, instead of legs, he created a serpentine curved tail that began at the swell of the hips.

  “What is that?” She slid off the rock and came up behind him.

  “There’s a story that describes you without wings, but with a snake’s tail.”

  “That would have made it very difficult to be upright.”

  “Well, Hollywood makes anything possible.” When he explained what that meant before she needed to ask, he incited initial disbelief and a barrage of fascinated questions that drew her away from her contemplation of her troubled past.

  “Moving pictures,” she said thoughtfully. “Like a play.”

  “Well, yes, but they’re not where you can touch them. They’re on a screen.” He held up his hands and formed a box with them, through which she could look at the sky. “Like that. They’re also able to film all sorts of special effects that you couldn’t do on a stage. Like big explosions and creatures of myth and fantasy. Women with snake tails who can move upright without effort.”

  “Learning to balance with the wings was difficult enough,” she said. “Having a human body and wings is not as graceful as having a bird shape and wings.”

  “Well, much as I like birds, I’m glad you have a woman’s shape.” He was still squatting next to the sculpture and he swept his gaze meaningfully over it, the swell of hip and breast.

  “Men think of little else.”

  “No, we think of lots else. We just keep that thought firmly pinned in the front at all times, because it motivates most of the foolish things we do.”

  “That I believe. My breasts are not that large.”

  “Sorry about that.” He made a show of sculpting them down while enjoying a full caress of the curves. Then he framed them with both hands. “Better?”

  “Miscreant.” She snorted at him, punctuating it with a yawn. It reminded him it was getting late, the moon high in the sky. Living without electricity meant she likely woke and went to bed with the sun. Plus he had no idea how much she’d exerted herself today, keeping track of him and tending to her own needs.

  “Why don’t we head back up the beach? Time to get some sleep, right?”

  “All right.”

  He donned the mask again. As they walked back toward his camp, they were close enough he brushed against her. She eased away, but it wasn’t a startled jerk. One of the snakes slithered over his shoulder, making a sibilant noise as it passed close to his ear.

  “You have a lot of snakes. More than these, I mean.”

  “Yes. They seem to be called to me. Wherever I have stayed, within a few days, the population becomes far more evident. But they never seem to be too many, thankfully. Else they’d overwhelm the other animals on the island.”

  “Can you talk to them the same way? Is that how you manage to get them to guard your garden and your nest?”

  “Somewhat. I don’t really have the same communication with them I have with my five snakes, but they seem to understand what I need and act upon it for my wellbeing. They will take fruit from my garden, but never too much. They will alert me if they see an arrival on the island they don’t think I’ve seen. I’ve never been sure if they are sending me those impressions through my snakes or directly to me.”

  “Hmm.” Testing a theory, he put out his hand, palm up. A second later an oblong head rested in it briefly, explored his fingers and then disappeared. He smiled. “They’re not unfriendly.”

  “Only to those whom I deem a threat. You have large hands.”

  “Paws, my friends call them,” he agreed. “I noticed markings on your claws. What’s that about?”

  “The spell. The words reinforce the magic upon me.”

  “One day, if you’ll allow it, you should let Maddock take a look at them. He knows a lot about magic and science, and where the two overlap.”

  “Why?” She stopped. “So he can steal the magic I have? Or use my curse for his own purpose?”

  “To help you, my lady.” He kept walking and speaking in a casual tone. “If you wish the magic to be reversed. If you don’t want to turn someone into stone merely by looking at them.”

  “It is the way I protect myself.” She’d quickened her pace to rejoin him. Her tone was still suspicious, but less so than when she’d made similar accusations the day before.

  “People can protect themselves a lot of ways. I meant no harm by suggesting it.”

  “You speak of things about which you know very little.”

  “True. But anytime you want to share, I’m happy to listen. And I’m not asking for information to use against you.”

  “There is no way to prove that to me.”

  “Sure there is. By you giving me more information and me not using it against you.”

  She made a strangled noise that he suspected was somewhere between a snort and a huff of exasperation. “You think this is a game, John Pierce.”

  “No.” Now he did stop and face her. He couldn’t look her in the eye, but he could show her how serious he was with his tone of voice and the rock hard set of his jaw. “I know it’s not. What you told me earlier? I’m glad you told me, but it fills me with an anger I can’t describe, that
someone would do that to you. If I could have appeared to you before it happened and stop it, I would have. Even if that left you with no need or desire for me in your life.”

  Though the idea left him with a hollow feeling, he meant it. While thankfully fate had had its own plan, he never would have wished such a fate upon her.

  “So you think I have allowed you to remain here because I have need of you.”

  “Or you feel sorry for me and think I have need of you. Poor crazy bastard who lost his mind to his job and is now chasing myths through time portals. You’re kind-hearted that way.”

  She chuckled. “You are a foolish man, John Pierce.” Then she sighed. “I wish there was a way to trust you. If I could…”

  “Hey. I get it.” He reached out, accurately gauging where he might find a curl of that abundant hair alongside her delicate face. He stroked it back and took his hand away before she could get antsy. “But that’s what I want you to understand. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not going to betray your trust. We’ve got nothing but time.” He extended his palm. “How about you trust me enough to hold your hand the few hundred yards we have left to get to camp?”

  This time the pause wasn’t as long. When she laid her hand in his, he closed his fingers over hers. She lifted their linked hands, apparently considering them, and how her claws curved over his knuckles.

  She didn’t speak further, but they walked the rest of the way like that, his elbow brushing her arm and her wing, which she had folded along her back. He had so many questions about her wings, snakes and life, but he was trying hard to pay attention to what was going on in those emotional energy readings around her. As Maddock would say: “Why do I give you tools if you won’t use them?”

  JP’s reading was that she had all she could handle right now. She’d offered him a glimpse of her truths, trusting him with that much. It was enough. Telling her about his mother and some of the decisions he’d made because of his childhood hadn’t been a cakewalk. They could both use a break.

  When they reached his lean-to, she didn’t leave, another victory. He offered her some of the coconut sugar pudding he’d made. After they ate that, he stretched out on his mat. She stayed on the other side of his shelter, not coming closer. He didn’t encourage her to do so, instead bringing up more topics of casual conversation in the hopes she’d continue to stay. Sleep here with him under the stars.

  She told him how the Greeks spent a day swimming at the beach, and he learned that body surfing and love of the ocean had been around since ancient times. No big surprise there, but she painted a pretty picture of it, all the priestesses in the water, splashing and laughing. He told her about surf boarding, and a field of brightly colored umbrellas at a crowded Daytona Beach.

  As he spoke, she moved closer. She stretched out next to him on the mat where he was lying on his back, looking up at the stars. Her head was close enough she could almost put her head on his biceps, since he had his hands stacked behind his head, elbows bent. When he pointed out a constellation he knew, she shifted and closed that distance.

  The snakes were still. Sometimes he could feel their life signs when they lay against his chest or biceps. Even though he’d worked with snakes, he hadn’t thought about feeling their heartbeat or breath until now.

  “So as you said, I am a story,” she said slowly. “In your world, I am not real. I am a tale. A…myth?”

  “Yes. Myth, fairy tale, folklore. It’s Maddock who realized you exist, that the most enduring stories pull from alternative dimensions. They’re part of a flow of energy deep in the subconscious, no less real than our own day-to-day lives. When a person like me feels a particularly strong pull toward a story, it’s because we’re somehow connected to it. We sense that reality more vividly than most.”

  It wasn’t a serious break from reality caused by PTSD or being undercover so long he’d lost his marbles. That had been his initial, pretty traumatizing belief. Maddock had convinced him otherwise, pointing out facts that supported it. Like how he’d always felt that Medusa was real, ever since his mother read him the story.

  “So if I am very certain a beast never seen before exists, it does?”

  “I don’t see why not. What beast have you imagined?”

  “It was a creature like a horse, but different. So full of light, she glows even at night, like moonlight. She bears a single spiral horn, which looks like a seashell, and her eyes are the blue of the sea. Her coat is the white of clouds, and her golden mane is softer than any silk I ever felt. I would dream of her sometimes, before…I left the temple. Then the dreams stopped coming.”

  Miracle of miracles, she laid her hand on his chest, considerately above the stapled wounds. She propped her head on her hand as he casually curved his arm around her shoulders, above the joining point of her wings.

  “There was a scholar who visited Klotho who spoke of wild asses in India who had a horn like this creature, but his drawings did not look like her, and in my dream she calls herself a unicorn, not an ass.” She paused. “I miss dreaming of her.”

  He wouldn’t tell her why the dream had stopped. He couldn’t bear to tell her a unicorn was only drawn to a maid’s purity. But he couldn’t tell her about a unicorn without getting into those sticky waters. So he diverted the subject into similar but less painful areas.

  “I’ve heard tales of another amazing creature. A woman with thick ropes of hair the color of sand down her back, all the way to her ankles. She has skin like the copper of your small snake, and she, too, has a bond with them. She carries them in a pouch on her waist and is known for her fierceness, her wisdom, her protective nature and generosity to her people. She has a mask she dons to scare away any who threaten them. She is revered.”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s you. Another story of you, from another culture and people. We have lots of scholars who analyze our history and try to parse fact from fiction, where they’ve meshed, overlapped or been rewritten by conquering peoples. It’s believed the Greek story of your existence was a derivation of her story, when the Greeks invaded the African tribes and tried to stamp out their view with their own. That’s one theory.”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  He traced the curve of her shoulder. Skin that begged to be touched, lean muscle, elegant bones. “Not sure. Hindsight is usually skewed vision, where we imagine the author had a purpose other than writing an interesting story. Ovid, the one who wrote your story for the Greeks, may have taken pieces of the Libyan story and created something he thought his audience would like better. Or he tapped into your true story in his creative consciousness.”

  She shifted so her lips innocently brushed his T-shirt. He felt the impact in his all-too-aware flesh beneath the cloth. He knew she was looking at him, and her fingertips proved it, gliding over his cheek, his lips. They firmed with the need to move, to kiss her fingertips, to kiss her everywhere.

  “Do you know the ancient Romans invented names for different kisses?” He closed his fingers around her wrist and touched his lips to her knuckles. “There was an osculum, a publicly appropriate kiss.”

  She got very still. He adjusted to his hip, moving slow but deliberately. He wasn’t backing away from this. Touching her chin to find her face, he slid his fingertips along her cheek. “I’m going to lean in and just touch my lips to the corner of your mouth, less than a blink.”

  He tipped her head up to mark that spot, putting his mouth against it. God, when he felt the quiver go through her body, he wanted to taste her with teeth and tongue, but he kept it casual. A brief and yet lingering contact, a delicate balance. “That’s a basium,” he said, clearing his voice. “A lip-to-lip kiss, but still light. Perhaps not chaste, but not so passionate as to incur disapproval from anyone watching.”

  That slight tension through her body remained, but her fingers and talons curled against his chest spoke a different message. He eased back. “They had names for other kisses as well,” he said.

  �
�Oh, really?”

  He heard the wry humor, her acknowledgment of his cleverness. The other quality he heard—intrigue—invoked a tempting anticipation.

  “Really.” Humming a little under his breath, he distracted himself by thinking about the night sky wheeling above him. He’d like to take off his blindfold and see it. While he could promise her he wouldn’t forget and look at her, he doubted she’d go for it. What was gratifying about her vehemence was the proof—he hoped—that she liked having him around. She didn’t want to risk the contacts not working. Or she didn’t like losing the tactical advantage, a more morose thought.

  “Well? Tell me another,” she said at last, with impatience.

  “Tell you, or show you, my lady?”

  Her grip pricked his chest, telling him her tension had increased.

  “Only what you wish,” he reminded her. “Nothing more.”

  Her wings rustled, one brushing him as she sat up. She flattened her palm on his chest, so he expected she was gazing down at him. Part of why he’d like to remove the blindfold was to gaze at the night sky at the same time she did, a sharing of vision. But a deeper connection of spirit surpassed sight, a melding of all the senses at the source, in the mind itself. He felt some of that between them through her touch.

  “Tell me,” she said at last. “And I will show you.”

  She’d managed to surprise him, in a very satisfying way.

  “It’s a saviolum. A passionate kiss, placed on the lips. A taking of the lips, if you will.”

  The world stopped on the head of a pin for him as she bent toward him. Her abdomen brushed his, her breasts sliding along his chest. Her breath was on his face. Sweet, like clove honey flavored with mint.

  Her mouth was so close to his own he could inhale her breath and he did, his lips parted when she touched them. When an involuntary quiver ran through his muscles, she startled like a cat, twitching away from him. He stopped himself from reaching for her and kept his hands laced behind his head, waiting her out. Seeing if she’d dare to take more.