Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  Spiraling up, Medusa landed on an outcropping of rock at the highest point of the island. From here she could see miles of ocean, white clouds and endless sky. Between the distant land formations, the occasional ship appeared, headed out to destinations she could guess but never know. Unless they had nefarious purposes toward her, they gave her island a wide berth. Except for the infrequent curiosity seekers, usually young men daring themselves to be brave.

  Mostly.

  She didn’t want to think about that memory, but it flashed through her mind anyway. That particular boat of young people had been as youthful as she’d been when all this had befallen her.

  She’d stayed hidden when they made shore. As John Pierce had discovered, finding her camouflaged home was not an easy task, and reaching it required an arduous, slow climb or wings. She hadn’t driven off this group right away as she should have, because she’d longed to hear human voices. Laughter. Flying down close enough to eavesdrop, she’d learned they had snuck away from home, daring one another to stay overnight on “Medusa’s Island.”

  They stayed on the beach, except for a brief exploration that revealed one of the waterfalls to them. They’d swam and played in the deep pool until dinner, and returned to the beach to make a fire.

  The young men sought to impress their lady friends with their daring, but they had no desire to hunt anything on the island but what lay beneath the girls’ clothing. She could tell from their dress and mannerisms the males were from the aristocracy, whereas the girls were from the serving class or poorer families. The girls had flirted and occasional kisses had been exchanged. It was a display of youthful innocence and first love, things she’d once understood better.

  She overstayed her welcome. As darkness fell, they started telling scary stories to tease one another. Stories about her. Her monstrous features, her bloodthirsty cruelty. When she’d had enough, she left them, flying silently back to her home and spending the night watching them well out of hearing range. She would have done better to watch them like the moving pictures John Pierce had described. The early ones, with no sound.

  The next morning, right before sunrise, she noticed one girl leave the campsite while the others still slept. Medusa tracked her to the waterfall. The girl was not there for another bath, though. Taking out three pretty colored stones, she put them on a flat rock. Kneeling, she spoke in a clear, earnest voice.

  “Great Athena, blessings upon you and upon your faithful servant, Medusa. I pray she has found peace and release from your curse here, for she only wished to serve you. I believe she serves and loves you still. It was not her crime, so I pray she is punished no more.”

  “Glykeria, what are you doing?”

  The girl looked up and smiled at a young man who’d followed her to the clearing. “Praying to Athena and leaving a gift for Medusa. See, I painted a blessing on each stone.”

  He frowned. “Your devotion to Athena is good, but your first responsibility under her law is to me, your intended husband.”

  Glykeria rose to her feet, her expression open and kind. “You are a desirable man, Kev. Many women wish to be with you. I wish to serve Athena, as one of her temple priestesses.”

  “You have to be a virgin to do that.”

  “I am.” She lifted her chin proudly. “Your touch is pleasant, and I enjoy our kisses, but if you respect my devotion to the Goddess, you will honor that.”

  “If you were truly devoted to her, you would honor my rule as your husband and your father’s command that we marry. Your family is poor but your name is good. A good marriage will honor your family.” Drawing her away from the rock with a firm hand, he gestured to an expanse of lush grass. “Take off your clothes. You will be no virgin when you leave this island. It is my right.”

  “It is not your right.” She pulled away, then bit back a cry as he seized her arm and slapped her face. She put her hand to the red print, her eyes widening. “Kev. What is the matter with you?”

  “I did not hit you hard. It was merely a chastising. But I can make it worse.”

  When she tried to bolt around him, he caught her again. This time he tore her tunic down to her waist and pushed her to her hands and knees on the rock. Glykeria fought, but she was no match for him.

  “Stop…struggling,” he said between gritted teeth. “You’ll understand eventually. Don’t make me hurt you worse than necessary. It’s for the best.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He spun, and his wide-eyed, choked-on-his-own-surprise look was his final, fixed expression.

  Medusa watched the effect take place with a countenance that reflected the stone he became. His obvious excitement from forcing the girl was captured as well, but she’d strike that part off and grind it to dust. She would do the same to the rest of him or drop the pieces into the sea. She did not want any part of him to remain on her island.

  She knew she shouldn’t have done it. She should have driven them away last night. But the girl’s cries were an echo of her own. No matter the passage of the years, that terrible, life-altering memory could be brought back to life in a hateful heartbeat. This time it had taken nothing more than one girl’s forlorn plea to Stop.

  This was why she destroyed anyone who breached her shore. Just like the memory, the rage was always there waiting, and never seemed to lessen in its intensity.

  A distressed wail snapped her out of her head. Quickly she averted her face, lifting her gaze to the trees as the girl scrambled to her feet, pulling the pieces of her dress back over her breasts. “Kev…oh no. My lady, no. I beg you.”

  Glykeria was against her legs, her hands on Medusa’s thighs. It was the first time in many years she’d felt the touch of another who intended her no harm.

  “He was wrong, but please, turn him back.”

  “His choice was made.” As hers had been. “Return to your home.”

  “But his family is powerful, and mine is not. He…oh no.” The girl pressed her forehead against Medusa’s knee. “I’m so sorry. You saved me for Athena, but I didn’t want… I never want to hurt anyone.”

  “No one with a pure heart ever does.” She’d been this girl, so long ago. This girl would never be that girl again, after today.

  “Go home, but go immediately to Athena’s temple. Tell the head priestess Medusa has sent you to her care. Tell her what was done here and why. Leave nothing out. Tell her if there are any repercussions against you or your family, my wings will bring justice to those responsible, as swiftly as my eyes can turn them to stone.”

  She did not care to subject the girl to the care of one like Berenike, but she knew the temple had far more priestesses like Klotho. It was the best she could do for her, regardless.

  “Go. Leave my island now.” She could bear the girl’s touch no longer, even as she wanted it to continue forever.

  Glykeria fled, crying. That was the end of it, her and her friends departing the island within minutes.

  Soon after that, from later marauders, she heard the rumor that a new talisman was sometimes being carried by women. It was a replica of her monstrous face, intended to protect them from harm, because she was seen as a champion of women. Another twist to the legend that made it even harder to separate truth from fiction. She was an avenging angel for the innocent, who would bathe herself in blood and surround herself with pillars of stone to handle the burning pain of her own rage.

  That last part might be true, at least. Coming back to the present, Medusa remembered the blessed stones the girl had brought. For all she knew, they remained at the waterfall still. She would go look. Wind and rain had probably moved them off the flat rock, and dropped them into the pool. Or birds had seen the sparkle and pecked at them, accomplishing the same end. But they had been placed in a shallow depression of a larger rock when the girl prayed, so it was possible they were still there.

  Anything to dissuade her from what she really wanted to do today, and that was to go find John Pierce and pursue the confusing feelings he roused in he
r. With his large hands and strong body. Those very distracting shorts with the fabric that indecently molded the part of his body that had been so…aroused.

  But it wasn’t his physical appeal that disturbed her the most. As she flew toward the falls, she thought of the way he’d spoken to her. “Then come back here.” He’d delivered the command with unsettling authority. It had brought her a strong longing to do as he said.

  Yet why would she feel that way, when Kev commanding Glykeria to remove her clothes with similar imperiousness brought her mindless rage?

  If she could believe John Pierce, his command was intended to draw her closer to her own desires and will, muddled as they might be. Kev’s command had served only his own, and intended to destroy Glykeria’s will at the same time.

  As Medusa glided in for a landing at the waterfall spot, she realized it was inhabited. In the next breath, her desire to look for the stones was derailed by a much stronger emotion.

  Dropping into the trees, she crept forward, folding her wings tightly against her back and shoulders so they didn’t disturb the undergrowth.

  His senses were noticeably sharp about her proximity, but she thought he wouldn’t notice her this time. Not right away. First, he was standing under the waterfall, where his hearing would be occluded by the rushing noise. Second, he had one strong arm braced against a jutting finger of rock while his other hand was wrapped around his cock. He was stroking, pleasuring himself. Water sluiced over his muscles, the hair on his chest and legs gleaming. Muscles in his buttocks and limbs flexed as he pushed himself into his grip.

  A quick dart of her glance showed he’d removed the blindfold for his bathing, but he had his eyes closed. She wouldn’t look at his face again, though. She would take no unnecessary chances. She kept her eyes lowered, though she would love to continue gazing upon his face, absorbing the tautness of his jaw muscles, showing his concentration on the building response of his body. Was that why sex and violence so often crossed lines into one another’s realms? The passion that drove both was so easily connected, as he’d suggested.

  She remembered the expressions on the faces of the priestesses as they pleasured one another, and she saw the same in his face. Crossing the rocks on nimble feet, she drew closer, her body low to the ground. Obeying a compulsion she didn’t care to examine, she sank to her knees a foot away from him on the slick rock, her gaze transfixed on his body from the chest downward. The spray of the waterfall misted her, droplets that bounced off his shoulders pattering on her.

  She liked his powerful, broad upper torso, the way his wide chest matched his shoulders. Her people valued elegance, not the rough, bulky forms of barbarian races, but she’d been away from them too long to be influenced by anything but her own mind. She wanted to mold her fingers over his shoulders and biceps and feel the strength in the hills and valleys. His fingers would curve when she reached his wrists to tangle and stroke with hers. He didn’t seem to mind her talons. He didn’t mind her wings or snakes. She’d forgotten herself somewhat when kissing him, but he hadn’t seemed to mind her tongue, if he’d noticed its split form.

  She’d accused him of having unnatural preferences, but she didn’t believe that. She didn’t want to believe it.

  Her gaze returned to his abdomen, the constriction of the layers of muscle in response to his quickened breath, the movement of his hand, and his full body reaction to the stimulation.

  His cock was thick and rigid. When his thumb passed over the slit she saw a glimpse of pearlescent response before the water took it away. She wondered if he was thinking of her, of how he growled at her to come back down to him, and somehow she knew he was. As she’d noticed, he liked restraining her wrists with his hands, subtle and not-so-subtle hints of that desire to claim her. Yet he seemed equally determined to draw a matching desire from her to be claimed before acting on it.

  Such thoughts were dangerous to her sanity.

  Was he imagining how she would have touched him last night? It was all she’d thought about before falling into a fitful sleep, and she was thinking of it vividly now. She wanted to know how he was imagining her, how he was seeing her in his mind, which at present was the only way he could see her. Did he see all her aberrations when he imagined that, or did he make them disappear so he could fantasize about touching her without those things? Could she blame him if he did, since she’d imagined it herself, coming to him as she’d once been.

  But another part of her didn’t feel that way. Because he didn’t make her feel like a monster. He thought she was beautiful.

  His movements and breath quickened. Her gaze stayed latched on the movements of his hand, the increased rigor of his body. The ripples of muscle reminded her of water coming into shore, fluidly smooth, irresistible, able to knock her off her feet.

  She stretched out her hand to touch his thigh without thought of consequence. Before she could recall herself and draw back, he shifted. Her hand brushed his leg.

  As he started, she knew his involuntary reflex would be to open his eyes. Ducking her head, she scrambled backwards, averting her face in a panic. As she did, she inadvertently kicked out, pushing against him. With an oath, he overbalanced and lost his footing. She gasped, worried he might hit his head on rock on his tumble, but he made a clean and hefty kerploosh as he landed in the pool. He toppled with the grace and impact of a solid tree.

  She dashed back into the tree line above him.

  “Son of a bitch.”

  When he surfaced, he looked disgruntled but uninjured, and she couldn’t help herself. She stifled a giggle. The absurdity of the whole incident, his surprise and grumpy curse, amused her.

  His head swiveled around, but she saw he’d closed his eyes while pinpointing her location with his other senses. For some reason, the gesture pained her, despite knowing he showed such caution out of necessity and to ease the bite of her worries. His lips curved ruefully, his irritation disappearing in the expression. It was genuine, not a mask for annoyance. He was good-natured, not one to get his ego easily bruised. She liked that.

  “Snuck up on me there, snake-girl.”

  “I merely came here to look for something. I didn’t expect to have company.” And certainly not doing what he’d been doing.

  “Did you find it?”

  “I…I have not yet had a chance to look.”

  His expression broadened into a knowing grin, making her fingers tighten against the tree’s branches to balance her.

  “Something distract you?” he asked with deceptive casualness.

  She managed a sniff that could be heard over the falls. “You once again overestimate your appeal, John Pierce.”

  “I’m just imagining how close you were and what you were thinking.” He floated lazily, using his arms to butterfly through the water. “Want to know what I was thinking about while I was doing that?”

  Yes. But she shouldn’t say that. “Yes,” she said.

  The smile disappeared. “Would you mind bringing me the blindfold? I’m turned around here and don’t want to spook you if I open my eyes.”

  She hadn’t seen him disoriented yet, but she was willing to go along with the small deception. She landed on the rock, her wing tips scraping it as he stroked in that direction. Picking up the blindfold where he’d left it on top of his small pile of clothing, she dropped to her haunches at the rock’s edge. He folded his arms on it, resting his chin on them.

  “You know,” he said, “If you put on the blindfold or just closed your eyes, I could look at you. See what I was imagining in my head.”

  The idea was so startling, it almost sent her fleeing the rock, but she held her ground. Daring herself, she reached out and stroked his wet hair from his temple. It was like silk between her fingertips. Her talon slid along his skull, his jaw. When he lifted his head, trusting her enough to let the wicked edge glide along his throat, the pumping artery, a strange thickness almost took away her voice.

  “Your imaginings would bring you more pleasure t
han the reality,” she said. “That is always the way of it.”

  “You said that to me in a dream, my lady. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.”

  He’d said things to her in her dreams, too. Far more than she’d told him, since she kept resisting the idea it was the same man. Too disconcerting.

  She tied the blindfold around his eyes securely. As she figured out the intriguing lacing in the back that molded the mask to his face, she smoothed her fingers over it, following those planes. He didn’t try to stop her, though she could feel his dissatisfaction. But not impatience. He’d not yet been impatient with her.

  Lifting his hand, he closed it around her wrist. “Come in the water with me.”

  She drew back. “Or you could come dry out in the sun on the rocks. And…finish what you started. While telling me…your imaginings.”

  The words charged the air between them, dissipating his dissatisfaction and replacing it with an anticipatory heat.

  “You liked watching that?” he said, low.

  “I did.” It served no purpose to deny it, for the truth might bring her the pleasure of watching his release.

  “Would you like to be the one to finish me?” He’d let her go the second she’d drawn back, but now he found her hand again, meeting palm to palm. “Wrap your pretty fingers around me, control when and how I release?”

  Yes and no. She couldn’t explain her mixed feelings on it. She wanted to touch him while he was in the throes of such self-inflicted passion, no matter what fictional Medusa he might be imagining. No matter the twinge beneath her breastbone at the disparaging thought.

  “If you show me how. Maybe. Maybe not.”

  Her experience of a man’s passion had been in taking. Her pleas to stop had only excited Ukrit, as Glykeria’s had Kev’s. The thought brought the fear back.