The Sea Queen (The Dark Queens Book 1) (7 page)

There was also a golden chain much too long for my neck, so I wrapped it around my exposed waist. It jingled as I walked. I also found a pair of high-heeled boots.

“How in the bloody hell does Nim walk in these?” I eyed the ridiculously long length of heel—easily four inches and coming to a very narrow point at the end. But I had to admit that once I slipped them on, they made my slender ankles and softly muscled calves look fabulous.

The finishing touch was a pirate’s hat, a black thing that curled up on one side and had a cream-white sash tied around it that trailed down my spine.

“Mirror.” I snapped my fingers. Instantly the waters before me turned into a looking glass from floor to ceiling. Twirling, I checked myself out.

My ass looked perfect.

My breasts were like lovely, ripe melons.

And my face was flawless.

“Who wouldn’t want me?” I smiled, and with a kick of the strange heels I was coming to adore, I turned and made for the room.

I didn’t knock. I didn’t even utter a word. I simply opened the doors a moment later, snapped my fingers, and in an instant, Hades was undressed and chained to a four-poster bed. I’d considered using my clam bed, as I was accustomed to its softness, but there’d been no way to shackle him to it.

“Calypso!” he grunted, writhing and twisting his magnificent body, his gorgeous face red with sudden fury and shock. “What is the meaning of this?”

Bracing my feet wide, I waited for him to stop being such a grumpy ass and look at me.

He did only a moment later, and his jaw dropped.

Smirking, I let him study me as I devoured him.

He was brilliant, his body corded and tight with ropey muscle. His shapely chest rose and fell while his stomach contracted with his breath, causing his abdominals to flex and strain.

I frowned to note he was covered in slash marks from the bottom of his chin to just above the dark thatch of curls between his legs.

But I soon forgot about the scars at the sight of his lovely cock. Long and veiny, the color of his flesh reminded me of wet sand.

I couldn’t seem to stop sighing, especially once that turgid member rose to greet me.

He cleared his throat. “Calypso, release me.”

I pouted. I wanted to keep looking at him, not talking. “Hades, I mean to sex you. Why ever would I release you? You forget you are my prisoner for the next two weeks. I keep you as I want you, and I want you as you are.”

Wetting my lips, I stepped inside, and the doors slammed behind me with the rush of a sudden current. The water smelled of flowers but was now also scented with the rising thrum of our desires.

He wanted me as I wanted him.

I trailed fingers along the tops of my breasts, playing in the vee between them as though unaware of his sudden, harsh intake of breath.

~*~

Hades

One moment I’d been contemplating asking someone for food, the next I was chained to a bed and treated to a sight I’d never believed possible, not in a million years.

Calypso was staring at me as though she meant to devour me. The thought only made me feel hotter.

She was more beautiful than I could have imagined, a mixture of woman and magic. Even the fleshy side of her sparkled with light. I wanted to yank that hat off her head, toss it to the floor, and run my fingers through her soft green hair.

I should be furious with her. Never in my life had a woman treated me as she did now.

But maybe that was part of her appeal. She was unlike anything I’d ever come across before.

Letting my eyes linger at the swell of her breast, I wet my lips. “Take off your clothes, imp.”

She grinned. “That is not how this works, Dead Boy. I sex you, not the other way around.”

I narrowed my eyes. I would let her have her way with me. What red-blooded male could deny her? But I would lay ground rules.

“Tonight only. Tonight you can have your way with me. I am yours to please. But tomorrow it is my turn.”

“No. I reject that proposal.”

I lifted my brow. Temperamental goddess. “Then you do not get to play with me, Calypso. I am a god, too, and I can deny you.”

She bit her bottom lip. A lush, red bottom lip. A lip I desperately wanted to taste again.

Calypso knew I was right. I could deny her. I wouldn’t. It seemed to me that sex was not such a bad thing right now, but I had to make her believe she did not hold all the cards. I was an ancient, too, and knew that if I let her manipulate me once, the cycle would never end. That was a mistake I’d made once in my life; never again.

Pouting prettily, she stomped her foot, causing her luscious breasts to jiggle. By the gods, I could not really believe this was happening. A virgin goddess gifting me her greatest treasure.

I trembled at the thought.

She sidled close to my side, close enough that she was now leaning over me and trailing a finger down my left rib cage. It was all I could do to clamp down on my moan. I was so hard I felt I might burst.

The drought had been long, far too long for me.

“Hades,” she whispered as she circled one of my nipples.

I bucked under her touch, clenching my teeth, determined not to let her see just how desperate I was now becoming.

“You know you want to play.”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I thought of Aphrodite’s words. Calypso was more ancient even than the Titans. She was a primordial, which actually made her older than me. But she’d not been human long, so it might be possible to use her newfound enthusiasm to my advantage.

“You wish to know sex? True sex? Correct?”

Her finger stopped moving, and a cold, calculating look moved through her sea-blue eyes. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I am not without knowledge. You do to me as you wish this night, and tomorrow I show you more of the carnal arts.”

“Only tomorrow?”

I grinned. She was naïve but smart. “No, not only tomorrow. We take turns. Whatever you wish from me on your nights, I will do. Likewise, whatever I wish from you on my nights, you will do.”

She hissed, clamping her hand to my neck in a punishing grip. The waters between us swirled and raged, causing her hair to lash my eyes.

“Do you play me for a fool, Hades!”

I remained as I was, even though I had the power to make her release me with naught but a thought. For too long I’d been cold, dead inside, and Calypso was like a spark to my soul. An ember I’d not thought I had anymore was suddenly flaring to life. She excited my passions, but she needed to agree to my terms on this. On that I would not budge.

“Tell me, Sea, why did you save me this day?” I asked her calmly.

Immediately the rage lessened and the waters cooled. My tempestuous captor was living up to her name.

She shrugged. “I wished to know you, Hades.”

“Sexually?” I lifted a brow.

She paused for a moment, long enough that I noticed. Was she wishing for more than mere sex? I’d never even considered that a possibility, but her words quickly brushed off my thoughts.

“Of course. You’re a beautiful male specimen. I wish to shed this baggage.” She pointed between her legs. “You will do.”

“You speak so strangely, my dear.”

She laughed. “Am I your dear already? Oh my, I guess my feminine wiles are much more powerful than I’d imagined.”

I stared deep into her eyes, entranced by the hypnotic sway of her figure, the way the water literally seemed to breathe in her. If she only knew.

“Parley.”

I frowned. “What?”

“I concede, you fool. Do not ask me to release you from this prison. And if I say no to sex, you must stop, but if I like your suggestion, then
arrrrr
,” she twitched her lips and pumped her arm, “I’ll do it.”

“What was that?” I shook my head.

Giving me wide eyes, as though I were too stupid to live, she brushed a hand down her voluptuous body. “I’m a pirate. I am being a pirate. Is this not obvious, Hades?”

I laughed.

For a moment I thought perhaps I shouldn’t have when an angry light flashed like twin bolts through her eyes, but soon the anger turned to something else entirely.

Humming beneath her breath, she palmed both her hands to my chest and raked delicately.

The fire of desire lit through me like a powder keg ready to burst. I sucked in air like a bellows and hissed.

“Are you ready for sex now or what?” She bent over me, her teeth nipping at my earlobe.

“Good gods,” I groaned. “No foreplay. No sweet nothings, no—”

Gripping my shaft tight in her hands, she fisted me. I expected her not to have a clue what to do with me, as she was untried. A virgin mother, she’d never lain with another soul, but she did not at all act like a novice.

Calypso had obviously studied well.

“No,” she snipped. Then, standing, she released me, and I wanted to beg her to pump me again.

Reaching between her legs, she ripped at a hole in the stockings and, with a wicked glint in her eyes, straddled my hips, her hot center resting just at the throbbing tip of me.

“Bloody hell,” I groaned when she sank down on me.

I’d expected flowery, girly nonsense, weeping and whimpering, and a woman who had no idea what to do.

Calypso sank down on me deep, clenching me in her tight, wet channel, and I could only grunt as the light from her body reflected off the walls like a giant prism.

I wanted to grab her waist, wanted to pin her down and slam into her, but she held me prisoner and rode me like a woman possessed.

She never undressed, never did more than grunt and wiggle her hips, taking me in slow and deep, and I thought I would die from the pleasure.

I closed my eyes for a second, lost to the swirling madness of the moment, to the heady scent of our bonding. When next I opened them, she was staring at me not with the innocence of an untried maiden but with eyes now dripping with revelation.

“Oh, Hades,” she moaned and trembled violently, the quaking of her inner muscles milking an orgasm from me.

“Calypso!” I roared my release.

Chapter 6

Calypso

Thoroughly spent, I patted his chest and, with one final wiggle of my hips, bounced off him.

I felt I could fly.

I wanted to have more sex, truth be told. But he was giving me an odd look I wasn’t sure I liked.

“Well, that’ll do, I suppose.” With a flick of my fingers, I released him from his shackles. “You may go now. Take any room in the temple and sleep well, Death Boy.”

He frowned, glancing down at his now clothed body. The dark pants were a little more snug between his legs than was usual. And the top button of his black silk shirt was opened wide enough to give me a tantalizing peek at the hollow of his throat.

By the gods, the man was sexy.

“That’s it?” he snapped, riffling fingers through his hair.

At first I thought he might have been angry with me, but then he tipped his head back and laughed, the sound of it reaching toward the rafters and shaking the very foundation of coral my temple rested upon.

My lips twitched, rather liking the sound of it.

“Of course that’s it. Did you expect sweet nothings from me? My dear boy, I am not that kind of girl.”

Eyes like purest obsidian gleamed back at me. “I should feel used, Calypso.”

I sighed, making sure my breasts heaved for dramatic effect. His eyes zeroed in on the sight with a quickness that branded my very flesh with hot pricklings of need.

My stomach swirled. I wanted to rip his pants off him and do it again. I loved sex. It’d been most enjoyable.

But I would not sate my newfound desire with him again tonight. Relationships were complicated and messy, tragic things doomed to fail. Except, of course, for Nim and Sircco. I’d see anyone hanged if they tried to interfere with those two.

They, however, were the exception to the rule. I’d done the whole engagement thing with Seidy, who I affectionately referred to as Psycho when he wasn’t looking. No thank you.

Even Dite with her passion for her twisted male slept around. I’m sure Hephy would, too, if anyone would have him, that was.

Standing, I suffered a very odd and strange emotion. Nothing and no one cowed me, ever. But when the massive wall of muscle and beauty that was Hades stood toe to toe with me, I felt suddenly small and delicate.

It was the strangest sensation, this desire I suddenly had to lean into his chest and rest my cheek upon him and maybe listen to his heart beat.

Surely the sound of it would be like
A Night on Bald Mountain
by Mussorgsky: menacing and brooding and macabrely wonderful.

But I did none of those things. I locked my eyes with his. “If you mean to intimidate me, Reaper, you’ve got another think coming.”

His brow twitched, and then he drew his knuckle down my cheek. Just a small, feathery touch, but it burned straight through me and made me shiver.

“You fascinate me, Thalassa.”

I sucked in a breath. I hadn’t been called by that name in ages, since before the dawn of man. It was my true birth name.

Swallowing hard, for once I had no words to say, and I watched hungrily as he turned and strode from my room.

I wanted to chase after him. Wanted to call him back and demand he tell me why he’d said that name. But goddesses did not beg.

Glaring at my now open bedroom door, I debated whether it was a good idea to release the tsunami of violence I barely kept in check within me.

But then I thought of Nim’s precious sea snail garden and swallowed my urge. She would not thank me for destroying her yearly crop.

But there was one way I could assuage my sudden thirst for destruction. Closing my eyes, I channeled all my confusion and rage into two cognizant thoughts.

“Apollo and Jeffery.”

Cackling to myself, I gathered the waters of the deep, filling them with all the filth of litter legger fools had selfishly dropped into them, and shot them out like twin harpoons.

In my head I saw Jeffery sputter as a rolling wave snatched him up, keeping him under as he struggled mightily to escape the very sudden and quite unexpected (oops) riptide.