Page 34 of Cruel Tides (Queen of Tridents #2)

34

Claira

“Y ou shouldn’t be here,” I gasped as a desperate hand slid around my neck, cradling it away from the discomfort of the stony wall behind me. “How will you get—?”

“ Claira ,” Leander cut me off with a groan. His face strained with emotion as he set his forehead against mine. “When I heard those words…” Tousled hair swept over my forehead, his head slightly shaking. “Do you know how long I’ve been in love with you?”

What?

The timbre of his voice was so raw, so heady it had me shivering in my bindings. A briny lump formed in my throat, but I forced it down with a hard gulp. “You don’t have to say it just because I said it, you know.”

An insufferable smirk formed on his lips, but when he laughed, it was a harsh, tortured sound. “Do you know,” he repeated, pressing close enough for his lips to brush over mine, “how long I’ve loved you, Claira?”

Dumbfounded, I glanced up at the intense eyes before me, lids heavy and pupils blown from staring through darkness. But the tenderness, the determination there… It was like finding me captured, imprisoned, and bound was of no consequence to him. That none of it mattered, not while I was in his arms and we were together.

“How long you’ve loved me?” That was such a jarring thought.

Did I even want to know how long? Was it when he’d realized my touch could break his curse? When my voice called to him, or when I’d curled up next to him in his sorry excuse for a bed? I swallowed hard before saying carefully, “I don’t know, Lee. How long?”

Then I guarded my heart. It hurt to admit, but I knew lust could be easily confused with all sorts of feelings, and with the magic of the thrall running between us, the love he thought he felt was probably just—

“Twelve years ago,” he started, and a confident hand slipped through the weave of seaweed to skim over the sensitive spot where my scales formed at my waist, “A cowardly, pain-in-the-ass merfry fell hopelessly in love with a tiny mermaid who couldn’t stand him.”

My throat went tighter than the surrounding bindings. I nearly choked on my words. “But we were just kids. How could you—?”

“ Fuck , Claira, how could I not?” A hard jaw nuzzled under my chin, and Leander was suddenly streaming water across my neck, burying into me, breathing me in.

“I was such a cowardly little shit back then,” he rumbled, his lips pulling over me, tasting, teasing at the tender column of my neck. “You were all I thought about every morning, during every guard meeting, in my bed chambers after the feast horns. You drove me fucking crazy, Claira, and I did everything I could think of to get you to look my way.”

A whimper slid up my throat as his fingers wound in my hair, easing my head back against the stone to give his mouth more room to graze. A cunning tongue traced over my earlobe, and when he spoke again, his voice had reduced to a strained growl in my ear. “Then when they told me you were dead… Even as a merfry, I knew that was it.”

His body pressed in, and there was no escaping the flood of heated kisses that fell against my neck. A deep hum rippled over my skin as the arm around my waist slid lower still until a broad palm was toying with the swell of my ass, the comforting pressure of his weight against me overpowering the tension of the threads holding me down. “I knew there would never be anyone else. That I’d never want anyone else. It was just you. Fuck, it has always been you, Claira.”

I didn’t know what to say. The way his words filled the holes in my heart was too much, too perfect. He’d said everything I’d ever wanted to hear, but those same words also burned like a hot poker to my insides, singeing me, destroying me.

Didn’t he understand? The cecaelia thought I’d slaughtered one of their brethren. They’d want justice. They wouldn’t let me leave here alive.

“Lee,” I choked out, my head rolling back on the stones in a fruitless attempt to escape the maddening thrum of salty breath against my neck. But his perfect lips dipped lower, tracing over my collarbone in a way that made my eyelids heavy and little feverish prickles shoot down my tail. I could barely form a coherent thought. “This… this is it for me. But you, you can still—”

“Close your eyes,” he ordered gruffly, and the hand in my hair left just long enough for him to drag his palm over the stony surface of the prison wall. Eyes closed, I could feel a tingle of magic wash over my face as he coaxed the barnacles behind me to light. “I’ll get you out of here, but first, I need to see you.”

My eyes opened again, and I winced as the magic drained from my sight. Leander had been beautiful even in monochrome, but in the soft glow of the barnacles, he was breathtaking. The light washing over him painted a picture of taut skin and rigid muscle, with every smooth plane and rough edge gilded in warm glints of gold. I wanted to dip into him, to have him cover every inch of me with his lustrous skin, his perfection, but bound as I was, all I could do was stare in awe.

But just as I was looking over him, he was taking me in, his eyes roaming over each arm held firmly above my head, each knot of seaweed digging into my flesh, down the line and curves of my bra, until a gaze soaked heavy with desire settled low on my belly. Fingertips bit into my waist as he rasped like a tortured man. “Fuck, Claira, you’re so swollen.”

Before I could process that thought, Leander shifted, and that hand that was always running through his hair was running a line over the slit of my tail.

No one had ever touched me there, and when he brushed over that delicate, unexplored part of me, it was like the ocean had whipped into a whirlpool. His fingers connected again, and I gasped out, watching him slowly, tenderly edge into the dip between my folds.

Poseidon’s balls , I was engorged. My scales had peaked and split, revealing the smooth skin of my tail’s center, and Leander seemed to know just where to stroke to make blood pool there all the more.

But how could I not be aroused? Having him on my neck was a dizzying type of torture I could see myself seeking more of. That is, if fate hadn’t doomed me to perish in an underwater prison.

He dipped deep into the crease again, and when a finger skimmed over that sensitive flesh, every part of me strained against my bindings.

“Can you feel that?” he growled at my ear like part of him was feeling pleasure from it, too. My cheeks heated past boiling as I gritted back a moan, and a cocky chuckle told me he had his answer.

“Just… just because I can’t move my—my…” The words broke off into another moan as the rough pad of his thumb slipped high, finding some delicate spot hidden in my slit that made the muscles in my tail twist, jerking against the seaweed. Holy —

If I hadn’t been held down, my tail might have actually moved.

Leander must have noticed as well, because his thumb stopped right on that pleasure point, his eyes trailing down to the edge of my tail.

“Lee, please,” I gasped, straining against the bindings to feel more of the wonderful rolling pressure his thumb had just offered. I needed more, I needed him to move it. I was going crazy , I—

“What have they tied you up in?” His free hand went to rip the seaweed away, but no matter how he yanked at it, the strands held strong. His muscles flexed as he strained, and I could see the sparks of anger lighting inside him. “Fuck. I thought it was just laminaria at first, but…”

A frown set over me as I jutted my hips, pathetically trying to get more of that wonderful new sensation, but his thumb edged away. No, no, no! Then it slipped free from my folds, his mind too distracted by my bindings to continue.

Maybe it was him, or the rush of adrenaline from being captured, or the vulnerability of being held against the prison wall, but desire had set my body alight, and I needed him to either stoke the fires or extinguish the flames. Anything to quell this burning ache. “They’re magic, Lee. Now, please .”

“Magic?” He inspected the knots, running a hand over every bend, testing its integrity, while my belly twisted into knots of its own. If I was going to die, I wanted more of this bliss first. More of him—everything he could give me—and I’d give him everything I could in return.

“Leander!” I cried out, nearly delirious, and his eyes flicked right to me in surprise.

“Fuck, Claira, I’m sorry.” The anger in his voice smoothed away as his palm cupped me, but the contact did little to soothe my ache, and I whimpered until a low growl answered my pleas.

“Mmh, Claira. Seeing you open up like this, so needy…”

Fingers dipped down suddenly, scissoring in me, coaxing me open, and I watched hunger darken his gaze as he inspected the pale flesh hidden inside. “Presenting yourself to me. Fuck .”

Presenting myself ? Delightful tingles trickled through my tail at that thought, causing the swollen flesh there to throb. Yes, I felt so open, so needy , as he’d said. There was an emptiness inside me, and my instincts were screaming at me, knowing he could fill it.

My lips parted to tell him just that, but before I could speak, a deep hum of appreciation rumbled against me, and he pressed in closer. “That’s it. Open wide for me.”

He spread me even further, and I felt my stomach twist as he gave a little growl that told me he was pleased with what he saw. Maddening pleasure shocked through me as he teased a few featherlight strokes over the sensitive flesh inside. “Good girl. You need me to take care of you, don’t you?”

I was breathless. All his charms, his teasing… It was like it had all been practice for this moment. So he could know just how to push me, which beautiful words to whisper in my ear to get the reaction he wanted.

I opened my mouth to fire something back, anything—preferably witty—but his thumb nestled high, turning my breath ragged before I could think of a damned thing. His chuckle deepened as his thumb started rolling, swirling over that sensitive bit of flesh, and nothing else mattered.

How… how could something so foreign, so new to me, feel so right, so natural?

My touch might have broken curses, but Leander’s touch ignited every inch of me, awakened every nerve. It was a magic that set me alight as effortlessly as if I were a barnacle under the sure weight of his palm.

“Then we’ll get you out of here, okay, beautiful?” His rough voice was in my ear, his lips finding my neck again, whispering more sweet words, drawing out more pleasure with each unhurried stroke. “Just relax—that’s my girl. Let me take care of you first.”

Oh, I had never been more relaxed, more boneless, than when this delicious pressure and those steady, disciplined circles were drawing over me while my pretty boy prince murmured little praises in my ear.

Something hard slid against my stomach, but as soon as I gasped, his heated whisper was in my ear, rough but soothing. “ Shhh , beautiful, it’s all right. It’s just me.”

My eyes fluttered open, and when they focused down, I saw a snaking length of pale flesh jutting through the rich gold scales of Leander’s tail. I’d never even noticed the groove there before, but seeing it fully open, scales pulled tight, a thickly headed rod of flesh angling up out of it, made me wonder how he ever had room in his tail to conceal it. “ Leander, ” I gasped.

He chuckled deeply, flexing it against me like my reaction had satisfied him. Then the smooth head of his prick replaced the fingers at my slit, drawing across me, nosing into my folds before I could even catch my breath.

“There you go, beautiful.” The low hum of his voice was a darkly sweet melody in my ear. “Just like that.”

His hips started rolling, his length spreading my scales much further than his fingers had, and I wanted nothing more than to wrap myself around him, to claw at his shoulders, to tangle my fingers in his hair. Anything to make sure he kept sinking in and out of me.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?”

“ Fuck ,” was all I could manage, and he let out a strained bark of laughter against my neck. It did feel good. Intensely good. It was freaking incredible how he’d primed that little fleshy bit inside of me to the perfect swell for his cock to draw against it with each smooth thrust of his hips. Belly to belly, he drove in deeper, his lips finding mine, his hands fixing on my hips as incredible heat built over every place we connected.

My tail felt livelier than ever. The rush was going to my head, making me extraordinarily dizzy, as if my lungs were working harder by the second just to draw in breath around the insistent press of his lips. And when he ground out in me, chest rumbling, tongue broadening strokes over mine, I broke out of our kiss with a silent shriek.

“Lee!” I gasped, wiggling every bit of myself I could to get his attention. “Lee, stop !”

He pulled right out of me with an excruciating grunt, his face straining, his chest heaving wildly. “Did I… Did I hurt you?”

The air was growing thinner by the second. I recognized the sensation, the strange pull of the trident’s magic. He had to hide before the cecaelia discovered he was here. “They’re coming back. You have to go.”

“ Fuck, fuck, fuck, ” he cursed, a rough palm running over his swollen, unsatiated dick. A furious growl ripped through him as he yanked his hand away to rake over the barnacles, extinguishing them with a hurried swipe. “Don’t worry, Claira. I’ll get you out of here. I’ll find a way.” One feverish kiss, and he was off me, disappearing into the darkness with a pop that left me all alone.

Magic settled over my vision, but by the time my surroundings came back into view, Leander had already hidden himself away.

Black mist pooled down the narrow corridor, and I swallowed hard, trying to stave off the tempestuous mixture of lust and fear churning inside me. I watched the dark mist spread lazily across the dungeon floor, a blight in search of its next victim, and set my chin high just as the first tentacle unfurled from the darkness.

The metallic tips of the trident emerged next, and I drew tight fists, straining against the seaweed secured around my wrists. This was it. My executioner had come.

Magic smoke billowed off the dark points in thin streams, and I ground my teeth, preparing for the worst.

It was frightening how soundlessly the wielder moved now that he wasn’t knocking his trident over the rocks as he went. Had he meant to slink in here without me knowing? Too bad the vile magic seeping from his trident had given him away.

The streams of magic reduced to a trickle as he approached my little nook of the dungeon, and by the time the mist cleared, a striking gaze was on me.

Even with my magic vision, I could tell the color of his eyes. White. The contrast was jarring, twin sunbursts in a world of ink and charcoal, bright enough that my eyes strained to focus back on them.

Dark eyebrows pulled close, furrowing a smooth alabaster forehead as he edged closer.

“You can see me,” he said carefully. It wasn’t a question.

I flinched against my fetters, not only because I’d let him figure me out so fast, but because his voice was as unexpectedly dark and smoky as the mist that seeped from the trident he held at his side. I kept my chin high, my body unmoving except for each labored heave of my chest.

Water swept long strands of jet-black hair away from his face as he brushed even closer, the movement drawing my eyes up the sharp angle of his high cheekbones, over his long, dark lashes, across his thoughtfully clenched forehead.

An exceptionally lithe torso dared to slip past the metal door, and a cloud of tentacles rolled in after, curling and spreading with all the unpredictability of an oncoming storm. Each tendril moved in seamless grace underneath him, twirling and bending, but those striking white eyes seemed to concentrate only on me.

He was a stranger to me, but there was something so significant about how he carried himself. There was an air of importance in him that had me wondering who or what he could be.

And then he was so close that I could barely breathe.

His gaze slid down my body, carefully soaking up every obvious detail of my desire—my parted lips, the flush of my skin, the heaving swell of my breasts—until embarrassment flared hot against my cheeks.

Oh, the way he looked at me, his lips twitching as his eyes raked over the lines of seaweed that bound me… He knew exactly how I was feeling, what I needed. That thought sent my blush spreading down, igniting the spot where I could still feel the phantom weight of Leander’s lips caressing my neck.

A studying gaze veered toward my needy slit, the flesh there still gaped and yearning to be filled, and I sucked in a salty breath as the crease between his eyebrows tightened.

“Careful.” That smoky voice again. Just one word had the hairs on my neck prickling. A dark curiosity settled over him as one of his tentacles crept up, idly plucking at a strand of seaweed that stretched low across my belly. “One might think you like being bound.”

I couldn’t tell whether it was my realization of the truth that he’d spoken or the tight movement of the band across my bare skin that caused me to tremor, but I whimpered as another strand plucked, vibrating dangerously close to my engorged slit.

The trident tapped on the bindings above me, and I startled, my head tilting just as he leaned in. His pale lips cocked. “I can add more if you’d like, little captive.”

The dark promise in his voice left me completely disoriented and gasping for what to say. “I—” I stuttered, but it came out as more of a whine than an answer.

“No?” Knuckles tightened over the trident, and misty strands of seaweed materialized on the stones underneath us. I strained against my bindings as the ribbons reared up, reaching for me, slithering through the water like charmed snakes, but the dark strands still connected, sliding over my belly, teasing up between my breasts, dancing, spreading, forcing me to bear down on my tongue to keep from crying out.

“This isn’t what you want?” He let out a dark chuckle of amusement. “Well, all right.”

The trident sliced three quick slashes above me, sending the entire weave plunging from the ceiling. I gasped as I fell from the wall, but a chest, solid and smooth as marble, was there to catch me. Tentacles wrapped over my arms, plucking me up off him and easing me down to the seafloor. Thankful that their firm presence didn’t linger, I watched, stunned, as the magic of the seaweed ropes dissolved into stringy black globs in the water.

It made no sense. Was he letting me go?

I wrapped my arms around my torso, trembling at the thought of somehow making it out of this prison and back to the others alive.

But why would he free me?

It was strange. His tentacles were so gentle compared to the squeezing hold of the brute who’d thrown me in here. His actions, his eyes, his magic… Nothing about him made any sense to me at all. Shaking my head, I turned all my questions up at him. “What are you?”

The cecaelia’s expression remained unreadable while he studied me, and seconds, then minutes seemed to pass by in contemplative silence. I was already convinced he wouldn’t answer when his lips parted slowly, carefully, like he wasn’t sure if he should even be answering at all. “A sea wizard.”

That… was not what I was expecting.

“A sea… wizard ,” I repeated, feeling oddly bewildered by the answer he’d taken so long to construct. I’d heard of witches and slugs and cucumbers, but sea wizards?

A low hum rolled through his chest, bringing with it a cloud of mist that puffed up from the tips of his trident. “You doubt?”

Of course, I knew he had magic, but that was because all tridents held magic, right? Even so, I couldn’t help but flinch at his display.

“Sorry, it’s just… I’ve never heard of a sea wizard.” I blinked up at him, not sure what to think. He’d bound me, teased me, then freed me from my confines, but surely he wasn’t actually going to let me go. Was he?

He shifted nearer, his tentacles closing around me like they might swallow me up underneath them, and my body went rigid, all too aware of his proximity.

“You now know what I am, but I am more interested in you, little captive,” he said clinically, and a narrow tentacle stroked over the frills at the end of my tail. “And this.”

“My tail?” I choked out, and he leaned ever closer, as if he was preparing to reach out and feel for himself to see if it was real.

A round of laughter reverberated through the dungeon, and he slunk back with a quick jerk, his spine going as rigid and straight as his trident in an instant. Chest heaving, he smoothed back his hair like he was trying to compose himself. “But it seems we’ve run out of time.” Black hair swept around him as he turned back to the corridor. “I hope you enjoyed being caught up in my strings as much as I enjoyed seeing you in them, little captive,” he murmured. “It has been a delight.”

Strings ? Could that make him the shadow puppet the soldiers had referred to?

“Wait,” I gasped. Was he leaving? Magic smoke was already spilling down around him. Just as I thought he was going to vanish, unexpected ropes of seaweed reared up from that magic mist, catching one of my wrists and then the other, joining them together behind my back, and boy, did I feel foolish for ever thinking he might let me go.

But before he disappeared into the darkness, he looked back at me, just a quick glance, and it was enough to spark a memory.

White eyes, black hair, carrying a trident…

I still didn’t know him, but I knew of him.

“A shadow!” I called out, because the prattling of the cecaelia was getting closer, and I knew he would disappear at any moment.

A dark eyebrow rose, and the mist stalled, pooling around the seafloor as he turned back to regard me. “What do you—?”

“The answer to your riddle,” I bit back. “What follows each boat, each bird, each fish, each net. It glides across the ocean floor but never gets wet. It’s a shadow, you fucking creep .”

The mist all but evaporated as he swept in front of me, a firm hand seizing my chin and tilting it back until our vision connected. “I’ve been called many things, little captive, but this… this is a first.”

I couldn’t tell if it was anger or amusement that had his eyes going so wide, transforming the angles of his face into the vision of a shadowy sea demon. I glared straight back, pretending to be unshaken, because hell, I was going to die either way. But not before I told him what a scumbag he was.

“It’s true. Offering gifts to children in exchange for playing games, solving riddles? You’re disgusting,” I spat. The desire I’d felt only moments ago melted away as rage simmered through me, my ache quickly forgotten.

“Children love riddles,” he snapped back, leaning in, clearly affronted. “They amuse them.”

“ So what? ” I growled. What kind of defense was that? “Only a creep would speak to a child like that!”

Mist kicked up in a flurry of magic that sucked the oxygen right out of me, and I gasped, choking on water too thin to satisfy my lungs.

“A shadow,” he snapped. “That is correct, so I suppose I owe you a gift? ” Teeth bared, he lifted his heavy trident, and dark magic exploded through the dungeon. Something brushed behind my back just as the mist condensed, forming into a sheet of magic that wrapped around him, swallowing him up in darkness.

Body already gone, his deep, smoky voice was the last part of him to vanish. “Just remember, little captive, that not everything is what it seems.”

Three cecaelia were knocking down the corridor, and I couldn’t keep myself from trembling. Not because of the smug look on their faces, nor my impending demise, but because of what his tentacle had passed into my bound hands.

So he’d had a gift planned after all.

I felt dirty—sickened.

The spiraled ridges of a shell pressed between my palms, and all I could think of was a little merfry and how proud she was of her seashell collection.

“The Rook has called for your trial,” a feminine voice mused, and my skin crawled as rough tentacles fastened around me.

The largest of the cecaelia barked a laugh. “Trial? Now that’s a good one!” His fat nose scrunched as he leaned in, smirking down at me. “What she means to say is, ‘It’s time for your execution.’”