Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel

by Joey W. Hill

  “She was at a party, got a little drunk, and danced on a table in a short skirt. These three guys, they flirted with her, pulled her into a backroom and then took turns on her. Strangled her to near unconsciousness when she tried to scream for help, used her underwear as a gag. Tossed her into a dumpster out back when they were done. She was nearly unconscious then.”

  They’d written “slut” across her breasts in permanent marker.

  He glanced up as his hand was lifted, Medusa now gripping it with both of her own, her expression compassionate. “I’m very sorry. It is clear how much you cared about her. You avenged her, I am certain. Yes?”

  He knew there were laws and a trial system in the Athenian society of her time, but due to her circumstances, as well as how long she’d been living outside of that society, he wasn’t surprised by her pointed question or the dark urgency behind it.

  “Yeah. I did.” There was as much chance of those bodies being found as those she’d crumbled and dropped into the sea. Maybe that was another reason they understood one another so well.

  “Good. You told her?”

  “Yeah.” Dru had tried to kill herself several months after the rape, and that was when he’d made the decision to go after them. He’d come to her, held her hand, limp and pale in the padded hospital restraints. He’d leaned forward, spoken in her ear. Tears had rolled from her eyes. It hadn’t been enough to heal the emotional scars, but it had been one less thing to prey on her mind. They were gone. They were abolished from her world.

  “Is she well now?”

  He liked that she’d asked, that she seemed genuinely interested in the wellbeing of a woman she’d never met.

  “She lives in this little town in Colorado with a friend of hers. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone else. She teaches kindergarten…young children. She hasn’t had a relationship since, but it’s only been a few years, so I hope eventually she’ll get there. Meet some nice local townie who will love her, treat her well, and help her find her way back to herself when it comes to love, if that makes sense. The way you have, all on your own.”

  She looked at him, surprised, and he inclined his head. “Except for that one time when we were sparring—and we both know that was just an unusual combination of factors—your reaction to a threat is to fight. And if you retreat, it’s strategic, not mindless flight. You found this place, made it a home for yourself and staked your claim. Everyone on those nearby islands knows you’re here and, though they try to come for you far too often, goddamn them, they come in numbers now because they know you won’t go down easy.”

  “Is that not contrary to how you described me? Submissive?”

  He chuckled. “Some of the scariest women I know are submissives. It takes a lot of guts to maintain a service personality in the real world, to care about and take care of others while not backing down in front of the shit this world can dish out. When they get the chance to submit, part of it is their way of letting go of all that for a little while, recharging the batteries to fight the fight another day.”

  He noted the little lift to her chin as she looked away from him. There was a light in her eyes he liked. Tilting her head, she looked at him from beneath her lashes.

  “Will you show me more of…that side of yourself?”

  “I sure will. Right now.” He leaned in, bringing his lips close, but when she turned more toward him, he met her gaze instead of closing the distance. “Lie on your back. I’m in the mood to taste your cunt, out here under the bright sky, in front of any gods who care to watch and be envious of my view.”

  That uncertain moistening of lips he loved came, and she eased back. He glanced at her hands, folded tensely on her leg. “Take a guess at where I want those. After you use them to pull your skirt up. Serve me my meal.”

  Her fingers curled in the fabric and slowly inched it up to her waist, exposing her bare mons and the treasure between her loosely closed legs. Lifting her arms, she rested them on the grass on either side of her head, arching her body in a beautiful way.

  “Legs open. Shoulder width.” Christ, he could barely breathe himself. He hadn’t expected her to get it so soon, or to get it at all, yet here she was, actively seeking it. But why should he be surprised? As Maddock said, she’d taken to service in the Goddess’s temple so strongly because of her nature, and this was a need that hadn’t been met in so long. He’d predicted it himself, but before something became real, there was a fine line between hope and prediction.

  Thank the gods and goddesses, she’d gravitated toward it as soon as she could halfway trust him. But he reminded himself of that trust factor, how fragile and new it was, and used that caution to guide his next actions.

  She’d worn his ribbons in her hair today. They’d rippled in the wind as they sat together, and they drew his attention. Untying them, he slid them from around her tresses and the snakes. He put a couple in his pocket so the sometimes gusty breezes wouldn’t take them away. Using the one he had in both hands, he looped it around her neck. He didn’t tie it; merely threaded the silken strap around her throat, watching as her eyes reflected her arousal and her chin lifted to experience more of the pressure. Her snakes had coiled around her there before, but he doubted she’d had the same reaction to their hold.

  Loosening the ribbon, he trailed it down her bare midriff, over the gathered fabric of her short skirt. He tucked that more securely under the belt so it would stay clear of his playing field, and let the ribbon drift over her hip bones, her mound, the cleft between, her sweet clit. She shuddered at the sensation.

  He tied the ribbon high on her right thigh, working it in the crease between it and her outer labia, and extended his hand. “Give me your left hand.”

  He used the remainder of the ribbon around her thigh to tie another loose cuff around her wrist, testing the knot to make sure it wouldn’t slip with pressure. He did the left thigh and right wrist the same way. Guiding her knees up into a bent position, he used the final two ribbons to secure her ankles to the thigh straps, so her knees would stay bent and legs open.

  They were ribbons. She was strong enough to break them if she pulled hard enough, but he’d kept a close eye on her reaction. She looked unsettled, but other reactions were helping to balance that. He leaned over her.

  “If you get uncomfortable, you just say so. All right, snake-girl?”

  “And if I am?”

  His gaze gleamed. “I’ll figure out if it’s the right kind of discomfort and act accordingly.”

  She swallowed. “John…”

  He touched her face. “It’s me,” he said. “It doesn’t ever stop being me and you, you understand? No matter where this takes us or how it feels.”

  She held his gaze a long moment. Nodded. He slid back, running his palms along her straight shins. She had a new drawing on the right leg today; a soot-colored tree, the branches winding around her leg and marked with blue inked blooms. He brushed his mouth over her artwork, then adjusted so he was kneeling and resting on his heels. It put him in a better position to cup his hands underneath her buttocks, and lift her lower body to his mouth.

  At his first touch, she made a strangled cry. He licked slow circles over her, tasting, suckling, playing his tongue over her clit. She shuddered in her bonds, jerked, and he kept his eye on the slack he’d left, making sure he was right and the knots he’d tied would keep the bonds from slipping. He had his knife if he needed to get her out of them quickly, but he hoped that wouldn’t be the case since she liked the ribbons.

  He could get her more, yeah, but he’d given her these first. She was wearing them today, a pointed decision that made him want to claim her for his own all the more. Hell, he already had in a way, hadn’t he? When he decided to come here. When he took her body. When he took the wounds she inflicted upon him, twice now. She’d acknowledged his claim. Even if she hadn’t fully acquiesced to it yet, she hadn’t shut him down, either.

  He ran his thumb through her slick folds, and dropped h
is touch lower, massaging her rim as he returned to oral pleasuring. That sent another jolt through her, her body rocking up more eagerly against him. Stretching out, he settled down to do some serious pussy eating. Her first climax sent a convulsion through his cock, and he pressed it harder into the ground. Later. It would be even better later.

  He blew on her ruffled folds, suckling the dew off of them. He did lazy swirls around her clit as she jerked from aftershocks. He worked a slick finger into her rear entry, playing there as he teased her pussy with his tongue, relishing the tightness of the post-climactic tissues. Tried not to think about how that would feel on his cock.

  It was time to take this another way. He released her from the ribbons, uncrossing her arms but lifting them over her head again. “Knees bent, feet flat,” he ordered.

  She was staring up at him, eyes glistening, face flushed, lips swollen as if she’d been biting on them. He leaned down and kissed her, a deep, all-encompassing kiss. When she started to twine her arms around his neck, he made a noise close to a growl. She immediately dropped them back over her head, which sent lightning through his cock. Did a sub ever really understand how she could turn the Master into a slave? Probably not, because that was part of the sweetness, how she’d get so lost in her own responses she wouldn’t calculate his.

  He unlaced her top, spreading it on the ground to see her breasts, the tight pink nipples. He ran his tongue over them, nipped and squeezed, and she moaned his name.

  “If you lift your feet, or take your knuckles from the ground, I stop,” he said. “As long as you stay open to me, I keep going. Understand?”

  She nodded, her gaze fixed on him. Some part of her was so still, though, he paused and touched her face. “With me, sweetheart? Speak to me.”

  She shook her head, but one hand trembled. He took it, placed it on his face, his throat, against his chest. She latched onto the T-shirt, pulling on it, and he took it off. Her fingers splayed over his chest, her gaze coming back to him. She still hadn’t spoken, but something had settled.

  “You need me inside you?”

  Another hard nod, her lips pressed tight together. She was a non-verbal sub, so caught up in her head, she couldn’t find words. That was okay.

  “All right. But I want to make you come one more time with my mouth. I love taking you up that way.”

  She let out a breathy sound that was part protest, part anticipation. He slid down her body again, kissing the lengths of her beautiful thighs, her quivering midriff, and buried his face between her legs once more. It took time to build her up again, because the tissues were more sensitive, but he was a patient Dom. He also relished her squirming attempts not to move her feet or hands as he’d commanded. He looked up her body more than once, watching the way her breasts quivered and lifted, the arch of her throat. As he’d suspected, the snakes were somehow charmed by sexual arousal into a kind of languorous state, so they were spread out like her hair, barely moving as her hands and arms twitched over them across the ground.

  “Goddess…John…”

  Yeah, there she was. She was starting that climb again, and he put a hundred percent effort into it. When she went over, that was when he was going to replace his mouth with his cock and tumble over that cliff himself.

  He savored her scent, her taste, the way her thighs brushed his ears as she tried so hard not to lift her feet. It intensified the sensation, so when she came this time, her screams were in danger of leaving her hoarse. She was nonverbal in words, but in climax, not in the least. He loved it.

  He stood up over her, opening the shorts, dropping them and kicking them away. Her needy gaze was upon him, covering every inch of him looming over her. A quick flash of fear, but then it was gone as something switched in her brain. He knew what it was when she mouthed the words he’d given her, safe words that meant safety, not stop.

  Me and you. Just me and you.

  “That’s right.” Kneeling between her legs, he guided them onto his hips, giving her tactile permission to raise them. He stayed on his knees as he lifted her onto him and pushed into her body. She was a wonder to look upon, her arms over her head, the snakes and black hair spread out around her in a fantastical halo. He brought himself down on her and her legs coiled around his back as he braced himself with an arm and began to thrust, his gaze within inches of hers.

  She kept her arms where they were, though her hands turned, those lethal claws digging furrows in the earth as he brought her to another release. He wanted to feel her muscles clench and ripple around him, pulling his release from him in one hard, convulsive stream that would have him calling out to her.

  “Put your arms around me, Medusa.”

  Gratitude suffused her features. The expression made him want to give her the world, even more than he already did with every breath. Her arms wrapped around him. She didn’t mark him as she had before, for she was on the downward side of her climax, but he still savored how tightly she held him, the way she buried her face in his throat and chest as he came, as he gave himself to her as she’d given herself to him.

  “Perfect,” he whispered against her. “You’re perfect in every way.”

  Always before, she’d avoided the compliment, dismissed it, or asked him not to say such words, for they bounced against her history, her inner torment, and came out as a mockery, not praise. This time he felt the words break through the walls inside her, past the indomitable fighter who’d been so strong through everything she’d endured. His words found the woman with hopes and dreams and, beyond that, the wounded soul who’d yearned to reclaim what she’d lost.

  She wept again, but he kissed away every tear.

  Chapter Fifteen

  They took a nap at the top of the world, her nestled in his arms, her snakes sunning in loose coils on his shoulders and her head. He chided himself for not bringing any food, because he could have stayed here the whole day. Even with the building sun, the breezes off the water kept the temperature pleasant.

  But when her stomach growled in response to his, he knew there was no help for it. And there was no reason they couldn’t come back. There was nothing but time for them. He’d spent his life going from one operation to another, and the last several years had been spent preparing for this. It was odd to realize he might have days, months and possibly even years of nothing but enjoying each day with her. Some might consider such an existence boring, but he wasn’t one of them. He knew first hand why “may you lead an interesting life” was a Chinese curse.

  She landed them on the patio more smoothly, since they were dealing with lighter winds and headed downward. During their untethering, he took his time freeing her from the rope harness, running his fingers over the light red marks upon her. She’d returned the ribbons to her hair, and he trailed his touch over the satin.

  “I’m glad you wore them,” he said. “So what sounds good for lunch?”

  “I have some bread and goat cheese. And fruit. If you look over there, under the flat rock, you’ll find the cheese. But I can get it.”

  “Much as I love having a beautiful woman serve me, let me do it. I want to learn where things are around here, so I can pull my weight.”

  He moved past her bed to the small area she used for food preparation, and discovered she’d created a cooler area much as he had, digging into the ground and lining it with boards to protect the cheese. The crusty bread was on her small table, covered by cloth, with the fruit neatly arranged next to it.

  “I usually only gather what I need for a day or two, so it’s as fresh as possible. But—”

  John’s head shot up as she strangled on the last word. He bolted into motion even before he fully digested what he was seeing, since her immediate peril was obvious. She was stumbling backwards toward the edge of the patio, with what looked like a rope looped over her throat. The rope ends disappeared into the air above either shoulder, but the tension on it made it clear someone was on the other side of a portal, pulling. But there wasn’t supposed to be a
fucking portal here, in this spot.

  The snakes were striking at her assailant. Their bodies partially disappeared, then reappeared when they drew back to strike again.

  As JP charged toward her, Medusa’s eyes locked with his, bright with fear and the pain of betrayal. Her lips caught on a one-word cry. “Why…”

  Christ, she thought he was behind this? He yelled in alarm and fury as her heel caught on the ledge and she went over, flailing, her wings no help to her with that rope holding her. He expected to see her disappear through whatever rift her attacker was using to strangle or capture her. But something didn’t work.

  He felt the snap of the energy as the portal fizzled out and closed, severing the rope. Her screams, the sickening, repetitive thuds of her falling body, the clatter of loose rock bouncing down the cliff side, were sounds he never wanted to hear again. Seizing the coils of rope they’d left over a chair, he secured one of them to the load bearing post in the middle of her home and rushed to the patio edge. He leaned out with his heart in his throat.

  She was there, thank God. The broken rope had fallen upon her, an end trailing over the ledge where she’d landed. The flat rock was so narrow, it was a miracle she’d remained there instead of continuing her violent descent. She was unconscious, and he saw blood.

  “Son of a bitch. I’m coming, Medusa. Just hold on.” He forced himself to verify the rope could bear both their weights coming back, and made the fastest harness he’d ever tied. It wouldn’t do her any good if he fell to his death.

  But after that, he moved as swiftly as he’d ever moved. He kept replaying it in his head. What the fuck had happened? What was Maddock playing at? He was going to rip the wizard’s head off.

  No, this wasn’t Maddock. He trusted the guy with his life. Something worse was happening. Someone had hacked the portal and found another opening that Maddock hadn’t mapped. He’d said he hadn’t had time to research them all yet, but as long as they had a good selection of them for exit and entry, finding all of them wasn’t necessary. No one else knew how to traverse them.