“Pretty poetic for a straitlaced brass ass.” Aiden slapped him on the back. “Are you converting, King?”
“To what? Witchcraft?”
“No,” Aiden said. “Humanity. Are you growing a heart?”
King nodded toward the girls, up to their beautiful asses in water. “She wants me to.”
“Fancy that,” Aiden said. “Can’t imagine why.”
“Didn’t you pay your penance yet, King?” Morgan asked. “About time you got a life, don’t you think?”
“Son of a bitch. That’s the third time I’ve heard that this week.”
“I rest my case.” Morgan leaned out the window. “Third time’s the charm.”
“Let’s mosey on out there and sit on the beach,” Aiden suggested.
“Who are you, Doc Holliday? Mosey?” King shook his head.
“Oh come on,” Aiden said. “You know you want to go down there as much as I do.”
“I don’t know,” Morgan admitted. “You know the witch everybody else thinks is the gentle and quiet Pollyanna?”
“The one you call a bitch,” Aiden said.
“Yeah, her. She looks me in the eye, and I shut down.”
“Sexually?” King asked.
Morgan blew out a breath. “I’d probably be better off. No, my brain shuts down and I stand there dumb as a rock. And my cock, well, that’s like a rock, too.”
Aiden looked confused. “How can she scare you, if you don’t believe in the paranormal?”
“It’s not the witch that scares me, but damned if I know what does. She’s the most mysterious of the three, don’t you think?”
“Maybe,” King said. “But Harmony’s the most open. Too open, I think. Scary open.”
“’Cause you could fall in, huh?” Aiden kept an eye on the girls. “Storm, she’s the rebel. I could really get into rebels.”
Morgan elbowed him. “Cut the crap. You already have.”
“I wish.” Aiden paled. “Did you forget about the islands?”
Morgan shook his head. “That was more than a year ago. You turning celibate on us now?”
“He’s right,” King said. “You gotta let the beast out of his cage. You won’t find a woman more open to adventure than Storm.”
Aiden nodded. “I’ve been thinking along the same lines lately.”
“Think harder,” Morgan said.
Aiden winced. “Couldn’t get any harder.”
The girls’ laughter caught their attention, the sound sluicing over King like cool air on a warm day, except that it raised his body temperature instead of cooling it.
Morgan did a double take and gave his full attention to the scene on the beach. “Guys, Harmony’s waving us down. Let’s go.”
Chapter Forty
KING stood there alone, for some time after Aiden and Morgan left to go down to the beach and ogle the mermaids, and he wondered how long he could keep the construction on the castle going so as to keep Harmony around.
If construction stayed on target, he’d lose her.
If it took too long, he’d lose his buyer.
If he sold the place, he’d break his daughter’s heart.
He closed the window and latched the shutters. If the mermaids were witches, real witches, and if they did get Gussie the hell out, Harmony would have no more reason to stay. Talk about a case of good news/bad news.
Ten minutes later, like perverts fresh out of peep school, King and his friends sat in the sand beside the girls’ lace robes and watched like drooling goobers as the sexpots frolicked in the water.
“They do look like mermaids,” Aiden said.
Morgan laughed. “Aiden, you got a little drool on your shirt.”
“Come on in,” Storm called.
Aiden cupped his hand around his mouth. “What?”
“Join us . . . in the water.”
Aiden shot to his feet.
King threw a handful of sand at his horn-dog ass. “Hey, Rover, try not to sit up and beg.”
Morgan grabbed Aiden’s shirttail. “You’re not gonna let them see how eager you are.”
“The hell I’m not.” Aiden slipped off his shirt, ran and dove in, pants and all.
Storm screamed when he came up beside her and pushed her under; then she shot out of the water and returned the compliment. They swam away from the pack, around an outcropping of rocks to the left, and into a world of their own.
“I always admired Aiden’s up-for-anything-attitude,” King said.
“I admire it so much, I’m going in, too.” Morgan walked into the water, removing his shirt and tossing it toward shore, but it drifted out to sea.
King chuckled.
Morgan gravitated toward Destiny, despite his dumb-as-a-rock fear, and the two of them treaded water as they talked and left Harmony to her own devices.
King felt like a loser until she swam his way. Maybe she’d walk out of the receding sea like a nymph, lure him to the tower, and ravage him. A pretty scary thought when you figure where the toy room and parlor car got them.
Harmony stood in the water, her perfect body glistening from the sea, her sun-kissed hair riding her shoulders and partially covering one breast. One. The other, a testament to perfection, with its wide, dark aureoles, became the focus of his heated attention.
With his blood running south and his heart in his dry mouth, King stood and shed every stitch while she watched. He used his cane to walk into the water, and when he got deep enough to swim, he threw the cane to the sand with a better pitch than Morgan. He wouldn’t need it later. Harmony would help him walk back to the beach.
As he swam toward her, she backed away, leading him like a siren toward the right and away from Destiny and Morgan.
When he got close enough to touch her, his mermaid dove into the water and disappeared.
Like a goddess, she rose to stand beside kissing rock, of all places, waiting for him until she disappeared behind it.
The space between kissing rock and the next outgrowth formed a small entry into an area that had always reminded him of a private lagoon. There he found Harmony floating toward the mouth of the magick water cave—or so he’d dubbed it as a kid—a seductive mermaid awaiting, no, inviting ravishment. Or was she waiting to lure him to some dark, underwater doom?
She tossed back her hair, revealing her glistening breasts, her nipples pebbled with dew and arousal. The salacious sea licked at the triangle of blonde curls between her legs, washing away the sand as if preparing her for his invasion, while she looked as if she felt every pleasurable sea stroke.
Harmony—the goddess of magick who’d invaded his life and invited him with sultry looks to invade her body.
When he reached her, King hovered over her, his legs floating while he held himself over her, skimming her with his body, her hair making slick waves in the wet sand beneath her head. His ready rod probed at her flowering center.
The sun warming his back, his heart beating like a drum, he slipped into her hot, slick core. She arched to pull him deeper, and he buried himself to the hilt.
He stopped to appreciate the amazing experience of her pulsing around him, milking him with her greedy muscles, a feminine magick he’d never experienced or never took the time to notice and savor until Harmony.
Every pulse of her womb shot darts of pleasure to every remote region of his body, even his heart. At the insight, King nearly pulled out, but he couldn’t tear himself away. Couldn’t bear the shock of separation.
Again she arched, their eyes meeting, her look pleading. And after he pulled back, almost, almost all the way, he buried himself again, deep and hard, and she smiled, closed her eyes, and sighed.
He tried to make peace with the degree of heightened sexual energy this woman provoked, his every nerve ending scraped raw, but she wrapped her legs around him and claimed him, and there was no more thinking for him. Then she clawed her fingernails down his back, branding him, enlarging his
rod, expanding his capacity for pleasure and his awareness of the woman who inspired it.
Sex for sport no longer seemed enough.
The hellcat drew in her claws and cupped his balls, easy—praise be—but unmerciful in her frenzy to give and receive pleasure. When she stroked him deep at his root, she made him thicker and heavier, but he stubbornly clung to rising pleasure.
She bit his nipple, and he snapped.
Unable to stay the course, he rode her mercilessly, while she wanted harder, deeper, faster. She said she wanted pleasure to lift them from the sea and carry them so close to the sun they’d burn . . . and, by God, it did!
He buried his shout in their kiss and swallowed hers whole.
A series of tiny tremors, small waves of ecstasy, remnants of quiet rapture and unquiet satisfaction, stayed with him as King lay entwined with his mermaid, the water lapping lower along their torsos, causing a pleasant stir against his sensitive nerve endings. He rinsed her mound with seawater, and dusted the sand from his hands before he found her center, stroked her, and raised her up again, and when she took his comatose rod in her hand, and rinsed him of sand as well, he rose like Lazarus from the dead, and they did the dance again.
Nothing slow, just a mind-shattering bliss that came and went as fast as a jet through the sky. A minute later, she fell back to catch her breath. “That was some itch, Paxton, or was it an urge?”
“More than that,” he admitted, against his better judgment.
“Ah, well, good sex then, if a bit sandy now and again.”
“A notch better than sex, I think.”
Harmony raised her head. “Not lust? It couldn’t have been lust. That’s rather intimate. Scary intimate,”
she added. “Your words.”
“I might have a problem,” he said.
She rolled to her side to face him and give him her full attention, eyes bright, her head in her hand. “Do tell.”
“I think it might’ve been passion.”
“Whoa. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that you feel a partner-focused short-term-commitment type passion . . . for me?”
“Well, I don’t feel it for your sisters, and you are three peas from the same pod—”
“Technically no. We’re not. See the first pod split, and I grew in one half. Then the other half split, but didn’t separate, so Des and Storm grew in the other half.”
“That would explain why I’m not attracted to them,” King said. “They are different. Maybe it was just an itch.”
Harmony rose like a furious sea nymph and kicked wet sand in his face! “Thickheaded dumb-ass jerk!
Scratch your own itch from now on!”
Chapter Forty-one
HARMONY had never moved as fast through the water as she did to get away from King. On the beach, she snatched her robe and put it on while she ran to the castle.
King called to her from a distance, but she didn’t look back. Let him crawl out of the water. He deserved to crawl.
“Fool.” When they were mak—yes, making love, or getting as close as she’d ever gotten—the idiot had lowered his wall long enough to taste passion, which terrified the starch out of him. So he backed off, the jerk. Not that she could read him like she used to, but she knew him better now, and he was running scared . . . on the inside.
Fine, go. Run till you’re alone and lonely. It won’t matter. You’ll always want me. And that wasn’t magick speaking; it was fact. He didn’t know it yet, but she, unfortunately, did.
After she dressed, she went to the kitchen, where everyone was eating a quiet supper—too quiet—except for Jake, who rattled on about the educational video he’d watched before his nap. His rendition of the playmate song not only broke the ice, it melted everyone at the table, especially King, who beamed with pride.
“Tell us about the bonfire,” Reggie said.
“Our ancestors built bonfires on midsummer’s eve to honor the light of fire, and we’ll build ours like theirs. Bonfires are rare these days because most people don’t have a private beach, so we’re lucky and grateful to King for lending us his. To help celebrate, after supper, anybody who wants can come with us
to gather wood to burn. It’s part of the fun, but we take only dry branches off the ground. We never hurt a tree.”
After a heavily frosted brownie, Jake dragged Reggie to the door. “This is so much fun,” he said, though he hadn’t started yet, but he stopped to look beyond his mother. “Grampa? Hurry up. We gotta go get branches.”
“Grumpy Grampa,” Harmony said as he passed.
Within the hour, Harmony placed her branches on the growing pile and stood where she and King had escaped the parlor car, now back in the shed for Aiden to rebuild. Hard to believe, looking at King now, all hard and detached, that they’d been so close, in mind and heart, in this very spot.
She welcomed the joking revelers as they added branches to the pile. “My sisters and I have never had the opportunity to share this holiday with anyone,” she said, “and the camaraderie is wonderful. Thank you, Morgan. Aiden. Jake, that’s such an impressive bundle of wood, I’m gonna ask you to hold some protective blue balloons during the ritual tomorrow. You carried as much wood as a man just now.”
“I can carry balloons . . . but I’m only a boy, not a man.”
“Nearly three going on sixty, right?”
“No.” He giggled. “I’m not sixty. Grampa is sixty.”
King pulled the boy against his good leg. “I’m thirty-seven, you little terror. Can you say, ‘My grampa is young, and handsome , and thirty-seven’?”
“No.” Jake giggled and hid his face against King’s leg, until he peeked at Harmony.
She turned his little chin. “Repeat after me. My grampa is young, and dense, and thirty-seven.”
Jake nodded. “My grampa is young, and dense, and thirty-seven.”
King tickled him. “Her version, you remember?”
Reggie lifted her son so he could hug King, and she ruffled both their heads. “Dense the both of you,” she said. “Hey, Harmony, I understand dancing around a bonfire, but what’s with the dawn ritual?”
Harmony sat in the sand, and everyone but King did the same. “A midsummer ritual is perfect for protective magick,” Harmony said. “We’re hoping to cleanse, purify, bless, and protect the castle, replace its negative energy with positive, and send Gussie on her peaceful way. This is a sun holiday, so I’m asking the light of the sun to master Gussie’s darkness.”
Reggie didn’t look convinced. “Suppose Gussie goes nuts first? Couldn’t she send your altar flying before you start, like the mural scaffolding?”
“We’ve been cleansing the negativity in the castle, room by room, in preparation, so there should be enough positive energy for us to get started. And the ritual circle is a sacred place, so Gussie won’t be able to break in. We’ll wear protective garlands of herbs and flowers. A powerful herb against negativity is chase devil, known to you as Saint-John’s-wort.”
Harmony didn’t want to scare King with the belief that young women would find their significant others at midsummer festivals.
“Hey, Sis, I know this is serious stuff, but you forgot the best part.”
“Storm, I don’t think—”
“Get this, Reggie,” Storm said. “The moon at midsummer is called the honey moon. Unmarried women wearing herb garlands during the festivities expect to find lovers or husbands.”
“Cool,” Reggie said, but King stood more rigid, his free hand clenched, his eyes broody.
As if the sun matched his mood, dusk descended with Harmony’s hopes, and they all went inside.
King’s body language said he thought she was trying to trap him, though she knew he was more afraid of his own feelings.
Didn’t matter. She didn’t need him. She didn’t need anybody.
“You know what?” King said, when they got inside and he saw the Oak King table. “This is nuts. I’m takin
g Reggie and Jake to Boston for the next couple of days.”
“Why?” Harmony and her sisters asked.
“To protect them—”
“And yourself,” Harmony said.
“Right.” He ushered Reggie and Jake toward the great hall door and turned back to her. “Stay, have
your ceremony, then go.”
Harmony recovered from her shock and followed them.
“Let’s go, Reggie. Get in the helicopter.”
“But, Dad, we need to pack our things. And I wanna stay.”
“We’re going. We’ll get everything we need in Boston.”
Reggie sighed, and King got her and Jake settled before he went around the helicopter to get in, but he looked back at Harmony, and their eyes met and held.
She raised her chin so he wouldn’t see how much she hurt. “You protect them from me,” she said, “and I’ll protect them from Gussie.”
He gave her a half nod and got in the chopper. By the time it lifted off, she turned to find Aiden, Morgan, and her sisters behind her.
Destiny took her arm. “Maybe we shouldn’t go through with the ritual. I mean, he doesn’t care. We could go home and let him keep Gussie.”
Harmony stopped. “Listen to that demented cry. If it were just King, I’d go,” she said, “I’m mad enough.
But Reggie and Jake love this place. It’s their first real home. We need to try and reclaim it for them.”
“That’s sporting of you,” Aiden said. “King doesn’t deserve you.”
“No, he doesn’t.” But she’d belong to him forever, whether he wanted her to or not.
Storm took her other arm. “Sending Gussie to a place of peace, and away from here, is your psychic mandate, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I believe that bringing peace to Paxton Castle is the reason I was directed here.”
“You realize that you may never see King again,” Storm said.
Harmony laid her head on the rebel’s shoulder. “I don’t believe I will.”
They sat on the beach, Destiny holding one of her hands and Storm holding the other. “You can’t read him like you used to, can you?” Storm asked.
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