Chapter 20

chapter 20

Lizzie

I don’t exactly intend to use sex as a distraction, but I can’t seem to stop shaking. The bath cleans the salt from my skin, but it also reminds me how close I came to losing everything. The water shakes with my little tremors, giving lie to my determination to be fine. I can still feel the press of the depths against my skin, eager to rush in the moment I lost my last bit of oxygen and my instinctive desire to breathe took over. Can still feel the way the kelpie tensed and twisted against me, its magic holding me helpless. I underestimated the water horse. All my strength, all my cunning, and I was as helpless as a civilian.

If Maeve hadn’t come after me, it would be feasting on my flesh right now.

“Lizzie.” Even the sight of Maeve, naked and glorious, isn’t quite enough to push back the feeling that’s shaking me down to my bones. Fear. It’s been so long since I’ve felt it that I hardly know its flavor.

No, that’s a lie. For far too long, fear was my bread and butter. It was the only nourishment I was allowed. My mother cleaved to the belief that if she overwhelmed me and Wolf through most of our youth, we would never feel it again. That, at worst, we would become immune, and at best, we would be bosom friends, able to twist it to our will. It’s certainly not true for my brother, but I’d mistakenly thought it was the truth for me. Wrong.

“How do you stand it?” I don’t mean to speak, to expose my quivering heart, but the words come all the same. “Down there. Where there’s nothing to see but blue and black. Where anything could be coming for you.”

Maeve’s expression softens. If I see pity in her eyes, I will flee the room, but there’s only a deep understanding. “It still scares me sometimes. But I don’t look at the depths as something that finite. It can be multiple things at once. I was taught as a child to respect the sea, and that respect and no small amount of fear reside in me today.” She moves closer and takes my hand, holding it between two of hers. “But fear isn’t the only thing down there. There’s freedom. Beneath the surface, there’s nothing constraining me, nothing holding me back. I can fight and twist and play and hunt to my heart’s content.”

“I don’t understand,” I whisper. My teeth try to close around the words, my mother’s training nearly overwhelming. Never admit weakness. Never give anyone something that they could use against you. But this woman isn’t anyone. She’s Maeve, and there’s something about her that makes me feel safe in a way I don’t completely understand. In a way that has nothing to do with physicality and everything to do with my heart. It’s because of that beacon of safety that I confess my deepest sin. “I thought I was going to die. I was terrified. I stopped thinking strategically—I stopped thinking at all. I was panicking.”

“Lizzie,” she breathes. In the next moment, she’s sliding into the tub, wrapping her arms around me, and pulling me close. The water that previously felt almost hostile morphs into something warm and welcoming. Because she’s there with me.

I’m falling apart. I don’t understand what’s happening to me, only that I’m increasingly worried that it might not be reversible. I tell myself to get out of the bath and put on my clothes and go terrorize the crew so I feel more like myself. But I don’t do any of that. I cling to Maeve and bury my face in the curve of her neck.

She holds me until the shakes work their way from my body. She doesn’t speak. She just strokes a hand down my spine and hums a haunting melody that burrows into my brain and slowly unwinds the fear sinking its claws into me. It still takes far too long before I’m able to draw a full breath.

“They say drowning is the sweetest way to die.”

I jolt. “That’s a horrible fucking thing to say.”

“Is it?” She allows me to ease back and there’s no amusement on her face. Only an aching seriousness that makes me want to kiss her.

But I can’t let that absurd statement stand. “There’s no good way to die, Maeve. Only good ways to kill so you’re the one to walk away from the fight.”

She shrugs freckled shoulders. “All living creatures die eventually. Some just take longer than others. There’s peace in knowing that.”

I stare. “The idea of dying doesn’t feel like peace. It feels like failure.”

“It’s understandable that you feel that way. You’re one of the most alive people I’ve ever met, for all that you hide it behind a wall of ice.” She smiles softly. “I’m still not certain if my mother lied to me about drowning, or if it’s just something that people say because we live in a realm ruled by the sea. She claims that it’s like giving in to the inevitable, to the tide, to the elements. The sea feeds us, and eventually we’ll feed it right back.”

I understand what she’s saying in an abstract sort of way. I can rationalize the poetic justice of it, the circular rhythm to life. But it’s abhorrent to me. Vampires don’t live forever, but no one’s ever been able to determine if that’s because we’re incapable of it or just because we’re too busy killing each other off. It doesn’t matter, because living forever is still the goal. It’s what we strive for, the ultimate endgame. What Maeve is talking about might feel peaceful to her, but it makes me want to scream my defiance to the universe. “There is nothing peaceful about being drowned and eaten by a water horse.”

Her brows draw together, a line appearing between them. “I am absolutely not suggesting that you should have given up and breathed in water. I wasn’t going to let you die, Lizzie.”

That, more than anything, gives me something besides drowning to focus on. I look at her with new eyes. I’ve seen her in her seal form for several days now, but I think a part of me still associated her with the helpless little seals back in my realm who are playthings for larger predators.

There was nothing helpless about her in that fight. She was violent grace incarnate, easily dodging the attacks from the water horse, managing to free me, and then snapping its neck in the space of minutes. If we hadn’t been yards below the surface with the pressure closing in around me, I would’ve wished for the fight to go on longer just to witness her beauty. “You were amazing.”

She blushes in a way that has nothing to do with the temperature of the bathwater. The rosy glow creeps up her chest and takes up residence in her round cheeks. “I couldn’t let it take you. I wasn’t thinking. I just reacted.”

Really, there’s nothing to do but kiss her. I frame her face in my hands and brush my lips against hers. The first time aboard the Serpent’s Cry was a frantic flurry of hands and mouths and bodies. Desire pent up for far too long, spiced with no small amount of fear.

This is different.

She sighs into my mouth and I guide her back against the side of the tub. It’s the most natural thing in the world to press my thigh to her pussy and cup her hips, urging her to grind against me. I want to feel her come apart, I want the abandon of her orgasm and to know that I’m the cause of it. I need her surrender more than I need my next breath.

Maybe drowning really is the sweetest way to die.

With that in mind, I kiss my way down her chest, taking the time to lavish her breasts with all the attention they deserve. Her fingers are in my hair, but Maeve makes no move to guide me. It’s as if she knows that I need this. But then, she always seems to know what I need almost before I do. I draw in a slow breath and then descend below the surface of the water, nipping and kissing her stomach and then settling between her thighs. A short time ago, the pressure of air in my lungs, knowing that my next breath was not assured, was a nightmare. Now it’s something significantly more dreamlike.

Thisis how I reclaim myself. By claiming her.

Even with the bathwater all around us, she still tastes like the sea. I lick her, enjoying the way that her thighs tense on either side of my head. Our first time together may have been a frenzy, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t paying attention. I know exactly what gets my little selkie off.

I give it to her now. I press two fingers into her and focus on her clit, using the flat of my tongue to stroke her just the way she desires. Who needs breath? This isn’t terrifying. This is a choice I’m making, one I will happily make again and again. She’ll come before my breath runs out. I’ll make sure of it.

It doesn’t take long. Maeve moves against me in long, graceful motions, grinding against my tongue as she chases her pleasure with the same fervor that I do. The only thing I mourn is that I don’t hear her cry as she comes. I certainly feel it, her pussy clamping around my fingers tightly enough to bruise.

And then I bite her.

Her whole body goes tight and tense, her blood salty on my tongue. I don’t take much, just a few pulls, just enough to ensure that her orgasm keeps going and going.

Just enough to ensure that she’ll never get over me.

I don’t know where that thought came from, and I refuse to examine it as her hands tighten in my hair and she wrenches me back to the surface to kiss me, hard and messy. I can’t stop touching her, gripping her big ass, stroking up her spine to clasp the back of her neck, hooking her thigh around my waist so we can get closer. Did I really think one orgasm was going to be enough? Normally I’m not such a fool.

“You make me crazed,” she says between kisses. “I’m trying to comfort you.”

I smile against her lips. “I’m feeling incredibly comforted right now. Aren’t you?”

“Lizzie.” Her growl makes my nipples tighten. And then her hand is between my thighs, stroking my pleasure the same way I stroked hers. It’s hard to tell because her eyes are naturally so dark, but I swear they darken further. Her lips curve as she relaxes against the side of the tub. She tilts her head to the side, baring her neck to me. “Bite me again.”

“Maeve.” Since we came aboard the Serpent’s Cry, she’s been eating better than she was in that little sad excuse for a sailboat, but that doesn’t mean she’s at full strength after going days without food and water in the wake of the storm. She doesn’t heal the way a vampire does. If I drink too much, I will harm her.

“Please, Lizzie.” She presses a third finger into me, scrambling my thoughts. “Do it when you’re right about to come. I want us to go over the edge together.”

I make a sound that’s almost a laugh, but it feels like desperation. Does she understand what she’s doing to me? I can’t focus enough to ask. I kiss her hard, even as her clever fingers tease me closer and closer to that edge she promised. Apparently Maeve learned my body just as quickly as I learned hers. Enough to ensure that she knows exactly what I need to orgasm.

She presses her thumb to my clit. Hard. The barest edge of her nail causing a spike of pain that sends me hurtling into oblivion. In that moment, when I’m poised before falling, I strike, biting her neck. Too hard. Too deep. But I can’t control myself as I’m spasming through an orgasm. I try to unclench my jaw, but she just keeps stroking me, her cries of pleasure ringing in my ears.

On and on it goes, one orgasm bleeding into another and another. Finally, I’m able to wrench my mouth from her skin, but not before her blood colors the water around us. Too much. Far too much. The cleaning spell can’t keep up with it.

What have I done?

“Maeve.” Her head lolls as I gather her into my arms. There’s a smile on her face, but what the fuck does that mean? “Maeve. Maeve, talk to me.”

“Too loud,” she murmurs, her voice fading fast. “I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

I don’t believe her for a minute.