Once Upon a Forbidden Desire, page 31
When the driver dropped me off, I bypassed our house and the nearby cove, following the sandy trail even farther and heading for the point of land that jutted like a talon into the sound where Lorn lived. Dropping my bag and my rain cloak on the beach, I climbed onto the cape of rock we’d sunned on last summer and looked out into the stormy waves. My tears mixed with the early spring rain as I remembered my mother’s words from this morning, the betrayal I had felt to finally realize that my worth was truly nothing more than as a trading piece to her.
I pitched my voice high, calling our wordless song to the surf the way Lorn had taught me over the years as his voice had matured and his lungs grew stronger. I hoped he would hear me and feared he wouldn’t. My voice climbed higher, louder, until it trembled and broke. But it didn’t matter because he finally surfaced, his beautiful sunshine-colored hair stark against the shadows of the great deep below him.
I knew it was childish and impulsive, but I leapt—knowing he would catch me. Knowing he would keep me warm and safe. The water was frigid, but his arms were around me instantly.
“Silly girl,” he rasped, pressing his forehead to my cheek as he propelled us to the shore with forceful thrusts of his powerful tail.
He brought me to a small inlet, sheltered from the rain by a rocky overhang, and pressed his mouth to my cheekbone as he laid me in the sand. “You taste like sad.”
“I know,” I said, scrubbing ineffectually at my tears with my soaking sleeve, wondering at the many times he’d held me like this while I cried, that he knew the taste of my tears.
He was gentle as he set to work, all business as he chafed warmth into my skin with his palm. When that failed, he started on my buttons, chuffing with frustration at the way his claws fumbled the fiddly things. I had to help him, and then he stripped my outer clothing from my shivering skin, layering it beneath me on the sand to keep me clean.
He seemed … bigger again this year, a wall of muscle as he leaned over me, fussing with the layers of wet clothing underneath me, wanting to make sure I stayed clean and protected from the rough sand. His body dwarfed mine in a way that was far more noticeable than in summers past. There was just so much of him as he leaned in close, straightening the fabric and dusting off sand. His shoulders were broader—the muscles more defined—and his face was leaner. Any traces of baby fat on his face were gone now, transformed into hard jawline and strong cheekbones. There was no trace of softness left in his eyes either. His gaze was full of concern and an intensity that made my breath catch.
He pulled his necklace off and tossed it aside—an old fishing line strung with old fishing lures and thimbles, sea glass, and shell beads as usual—and wrapped his arms around me. He held me against his chest, trying to lend me his warmth. I wanted to tell him I didn’t care about the cold—I just wanted him—but I couldn’t help enjoying the way he had me nestled so close to him. He had my head on his shoulder and my face against his collarbone, and I breathed the salt air from his skin. I’d never understood how someone who spent all his time exposed to the elements as Lorn did could have such soft skin. His warmth did feel nice. Everything felt nice, even with the cold. And necessary. After being apart from him again for so long, being tucked in tight against him—so close I could feel his heart beating—I imagined it felt like being given water after wandering in the desert.
“Sadira.”
His deeper voice made me shiver, though it was still raspy and resonant after all these years. I pressed my palm against his throat and checked for pain but found none. He covered my hand with his own and held it against his neck anyway.
“Tell me what’s wrong,” he whispered against my hair, his tone layered with concern, and my mother’s words came back to me. I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet.
Lorn lifted his hand from mine where it rested on his throat and set his fingers under my chin, tilting it up so he could look me in the eye. His gaze caught on the tear lingering on my cheek and he pressed his lips to it in an almost-kiss, tasting it. Searching for clues to my early appearance in his own way, I supposed. But as his mouth tracked another tear’s journey down my cheek, I turned my face just enough to fit my lips against his own.
He stiffened—not the response I was hoping for—and I pulled away, feeling embarrassed. But he reached out to take hold of my chin again with gentle fingers.
“Again,” he said, his eyes intent on my own.
I approached him slowly, trying to gauge his response, listening to his unsteady breaths. When I hesitated, he leaned forward eagerly, pressing his mouth against mine. Our first real kiss was a trembling thing made entirely of hope and desperation. Gentle lips and light touches. Soft presses and encouraging tugging. My eyes drifted shut of their own accord and I focused on the delicious caress of his silken lips against my own. The warm, masculine smell of him in my nose. The smoothness of his skin as I dragged the pads of my fingers from his throat down over his collar bone.
Lorn shivered and pressed closer to me. His hand drifted from my chin to the front of my throat, his claws making their presence known with sharp pricks against the sides of my neck. Down to my shoulder, and my upper arm. Brushing his knuckles up my stomach as he deepened our kiss. Caressing. Petting.
I parted my lips to taste the seam of his mouth and was met with the unexpected hot slide of his tongue. Startling and intriguing all at once. I couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped. His mouth and tongue moved against mine, gently sucking like he was sipping me, and I began to feel hot all over. My undershirt was confining and I clawed at the buttons on the front, pulling it off so I could feel his skin against my nipples. My breasts were heavy and aching as I pressed them against his chest, my heart beating faster as he closed me in against him. I felt breathless and nearly dizzy as my body shifted against his, needing. I was the one to break away for air but he didn’t stop kissing me, moving to my jaw and then my neck. He trailed his fingers up my belly, gently caressing the underside of my breast as he sucked the tender spot below my ear. I felt him smile against the side of my neck when I whimpered, before he finally pressed his hand against my breast, giving it the weight that it needed. Stroking and coddling my flesh with his palm.
He kissed his way down my neck to my breasts and I laid my face against his pale hair, threading my fingers through it and trailing them along the quills that held it back behind his pointed ears. He rubbed his lips against my nipple, licking and suckling me into his hot mouth, toying and savoring as if he’d been dreaming of this his entire life. The warm, gentle tugging sensation flooded me with satisfaction and pleasure. He was so careful with his sharp teeth that I never felt them once.
I scratched my fingernails along his scalp as he sucked, and he groaned, his eyes drifting shut, hips shifting and twitching as I amped up the massaging action with my hands. I was fascinated to feel a slippery wetness begin to coat his groin as he grunted and pressed his pelvis against me.
There was a slit in his groin that I’d always been curious about but had never outright asked about. Normally it was shut tight—a barely visible line in his scales—but now it sat atop a noticeable bulge and gaped open slightly, looking more like a fold of skin with wetness gathering in it. Curious, I trailed my hand down his side to his hip, noting his roughened breaths and how his hip twitched again when I touched him. My need to know more about this part of him, this reaction, was intense.
I’d asked him one time, when we were much younger, about general mer anatomy. He’d laughingly explained that their “male parts” were on the inside, “where they’re supposed to be.”
“May I touch you here?” I asked.
There was only silence and his panted breaths. When I lifted my eyes to meet his, I was met with his intense gaze locked on my face and his expression full of hot desire. Lorn gave me a small nod and inched his lower half closer to me.
I splayed my hand against his pelvis, sliding it forward until I could reach his slit with the pad of my thumb and dipping it inside to explore. The fluid was thick and slippery, so that my skin glided through his opening. His own skin was slick inside and delicate like the inside of my cheek. A hard nub shifted, moving inside of him—what must be the wet tip of his cock—and I stroked it gently, drawing a ragged gasp from him.
His abdominal muscles tensed, his shoulders heaving, and his eyelids fluttered and lowered like they were heavy. He dropped his head back into the sand and groaned as I slid my fingers into him, massaging the sensitive hardness that was quickly beginning to protrude from the fold of skin.
It had a crimson-colored head that was vaguely arrow shaped, which faded into a pale pink shaft that stood in stark contrast to the blueish-silver scales of his tail and fins. His shaft slowly emerged from his body the more I rubbed him and was nearly the length of my hand, glistening with wetness and leaking more fluid from the tip. A network of thick veins stood out along the sides as they roped their way up his member, and he was far warmer here than the surrounding skin and scales.
I had the strangest urge to taste it, so I leaned forward to give it a small lick. Lorn gave a wordless shout, digging his claws viciously into the sand beside him as his abdomen tensed, forcing several more inches of the wide base to surge out of the fold. When he collapsed back against the sand I gave him another lick, letting my tongue linger so I could take in the subtle taste of him. He flung the sand from his fist and pressed his hand against his forehead like he was trying to keep his brains from falling out.
I loved seeing his pleasure, getting to be the one to spark this in him. I wished I could see this side of him every day. Wanting to see more, push him a little farther, I drew my tongue firmly up his shaft. He squirmed underneath me and his dick curled against my mouth as if it had a mind of its own. When I got to the tip, I wrapped my mouth around the glans and sucked, rubbing the underside of his arrow-shaped head with my tongue as I did.
He gasped and moaned, reaching forward again and scoring deep furrows in the sand beside him with his claws as he writhed under my touch. Sounds of his pleasure as I sucked him and massaged the swelling mound around his slit sent hot need coiling deep inside me. I felt like I should shush him, because what if someone heard us? But his moaned shouts every time I sucked him made me so hot, I decided I didn’t care. I looked up at his face and very nearly smiled around his cock at just how undone he appeared. His eyes were feverish and hot, his cheeks stained pink, jaw slack as he lay panting on the sand, his gills clamped hard against his neck as he sucked air.
I gave him a few seconds to recover, and when I licked him again his member flexed in my hand. It seemed he could control it like an extra limb. Giving him a firmer squeeze made his breath catch, and it pulled back slightly into his body only for him to force it back out into my waiting fist with a flick of his hips. It had a new coating of slick fluid, slipping through my fingers with ease. I rubbed the base with a tighter grip to add a bit of friction, and that’s when his composure broke.
Lorn surged over me, flipping me onto my back, the fevered heat in his eyes giving his expression a feral cast as he pressed me down into my clothing. His hips were heavy as they pressed into mine, and though he braced himself to keep from crushing me, my heart raced at the weight of him and how good it felt holding me down. Covering me with his larger body, his heat blanketing me in the cooler evening air, he pressed his plush lips against mine, muttering against my mouth. “Sadira, what are you doing to me?”
“I just need you.” My own voice was breathless under the weight of him, and I was distracted by the nudging I felt between my legs, against my underwear. I wrapped my arms around his back, careful of the ridge of spines and fins protruding down the middle.
“You need me,” he repeated. “And this will take away your sad?” He pressed another kiss against my mouth, and the nudging between my legs grew firmer and more insistent.
I choked on my answer, nodding frantically as I wrapped my legs around his tail, his fins tickling the inside of my thighs. For now, yes, it was taking away my sadness. I just wanted to be comforted by him, to be lost in this moment with him, and not reminded of my problems.
I reached for my underwear, getting my thumb under the side, and struggled to get them off, trapped as I was between Lorn and the sand. Suddenly his fingers were beside mine, claws tearing through the fabric as if it were wet parchment. As soon as they were off, his skin and scales were pressed against my own skin. His wetness coated me between my legs, adding to my own slick arousal.
He settled in against me, nibbling at the side of my neck as his hard shaft poked and prodded between my legs. It laved at my opening, alternating between rubbing gently at my entrance and giving firmer pressure as the wet glans slid up my slit to circle my sensitive clit at the top. He licked and sucked gently at the skin on the side of my neck, where my own gills would be if I had them. The heavy weight of him was delicious, and combined with his attentions at my neck and his slick member moving, prodding, against the nerves at my opening, I felt like I couldn’t get enough air inside of me. Or enough of him inside of me.
I was so overwhelmed at the sensations, all I could do was bite down gently on his shoulder and hang on. I clung to him, digging my fingers into the muscles of his back and wrapping my legs tighter around his waist, driving my heels into his backside. I needed to press him more firmly into my body, but it wasn’t enough. “Lorn.” It came out sounding bossy.
“Hm?” He ground his heavy pelvis down against my clit, making me cry out with the pleasure of it.
I was beginning to feel my insides flutter and contract, and the emptiness felt like a strange ache. “Lorn,” I begged, shifting underneath him, searching desperately for more contact. Needing more than this. “You’re teasing me on purpose.”
His low laugh against my neck confirmed it.
“I need you inside of me.”
He pulled back so he could see my face and pressed his hips against me more firmly. I squeezed my thighs against his hips, drawing another chuckle from him that turned into a groan as his cock probed deeper at my opening. Now it was his turn to watch my slack-jawed expression with a fierce and curious one of his own. His eyes were locked eagerly on my face as I felt his rounded glans searching, thrusting into me as he sheathed himself inside of me, aided by the slick fluids coating the sides of his cock and my own dripping need.
His entire body tensed with the effort of trying to enter me slowly, and I could tell from the rough way his breath trembled out of him that it cost him. There was a sharp pinch of pain as he plunged deeper and the flared base of his cock stretched my opening wide, but when he flinched at my gasp and started to retreat, I grabbed the back of his neck and held him tighter. I pulled him against me. “Stay.”
He obeyed, and we lay there wrapped within each other for a long moment while he panted ragged breaths against my cheek. I felt an overwhelming sense of completeness with him inside me, a rightness in this intimacy that I’d been craving and never knew.
After a long moment where my body started to relax, I felt him stirring slowly within me, his cock shifting and curling, petting me from the inside, though his pelvis was still pressed against mine as tightly as it could be. He pressed a gentle kiss against the side of my face and there was something almost painful in his sweetness, in how much I needed him. Him. All of him. I was so tired of having my time with him rationed. Cut short. Limited.
His long shaft shifted its curled stroking to the sensitive front wall of my pelvis, a movement that had me seeing stars and my body locking up. I moaned against his gills. He growled in response and pressed even closer, his entire chest thrumming as he did, the sound primal and possessive, making more wetness drip from where we were joined. He surged against me, thrusting and grinding, rolling his hips as my body clenched and arched against him, needing and desperate. He filled me eagerly, throbbing and pulsing inside of me until I was jerking against him, crying out and clutching him tighter. He rode me hard, pushing me deeper into my orgasm until his shoulders were heaving and he began to climax with me, hissing and growling, his face pulled taut in hot lust, the most beautiful and masculine thing I’d ever seen.
Lorn collapsed on top of me, panting and completely spent. He came to his senses slowly and rolled to his side with me gathered against him. “Mine,” he whispered quietly into my hair. And in that moment, at least, I was.
We lay still for a long while as we heaved for breath. Eventually, regretfully, his abdomen tensed, and he disengaged from my body, his shaft slowly returning to his body as his fold closed up around it. He threaded his fingers through my hair and brushed his thumb against the tip of my ear, not feeling the need to say any more.
“My parents are trying to tell me I have to take an arranged marriage,” I mumbled into the silence.
Lorn’s claws paused in my hair. “What is this?” he asked, not understanding.
I tried to think of how to explain it. “An arranged marriage … sometimes it works out,” I started, “but sometimes it’s like a forced bond … like what the sirens try to do when they enchant you.”
His hands tightened on me so quickly that I felt the sharp prick of his claws on my scalp and side. A long, low hiss tumbled out of him, making my skin prickle. Before today I’d only ever heard him make that noise when he was roughhousing with his friends and it got out of hand. I was contemplating the structural differences his mouth must have to be able to make such a sound when he shocked me with a question.
“Can you marriage me?”
Emotion hit me like a wrecking ball. Elation, longing, hope, confusion, despair, all at once.
“Marriage you?” I asked his chest. “Are you asking me to marry you? Do you know what you’re asking, Lorn?” I pulled back to look at his face and found it full of concern and frantic intensity like I’d never seen it before.
“Yes.” His jaw was set.
I waited for a beat, but he gave no elaboration. My heart felt full to bursting, but I tried to squash it down. “But … how? How would that work? I can’t breathe underwater. As much as I desperately want to be, as much as I’ve always wanted to be, I can’t be part of your world.” The truth of what I was saying gutted me like a sharp knife. I’d never had to admit such a thing to myself, let alone out loud.
