Medusa's Heart: A Contemporary Paranormal Erotic Romance Novel Read online

  She used the cloaking sounds of his movements to seize him again, this time by the biceps, claws digging into his arm pit. Yanking him in the air by that hold could have dislocated his shoulder, except she released him quickly. Into deeper water this time, a warning.

  One he ignored. He came out of the water, and was tossed back into it once more. He cursed his slowness, albeit there wasn’t much he could do about an air attack. Especially blindfolded and when he refused to do her any actual harm.

  When she dunked him the fifth time, he detected an odd noise from her as she released him over the water. Replaying it in his mind, he realized what it was.

  A chuckle.

  It startled him to the core, and moved him. Of course. He’d detected the youthfulness in her voice, but as she’d continued to speak and he’d heard more womanly inflections, he’d realized it wasn’t so much a reflection of her physical age as her state of mind. She’d been young when she’d come here, and they’d estimated she’d been here at least five to ten years on her own. Someone to play with was another need, wasn’t it? One that could get buried but might not go away, not if other factors kept the desire for it alive.

  He didn’t come out this time. Once he was where he could touch bottom, he stopped at waist height and listened. She was hovering above him at a…ten o’clock angle. He sent a sheet of water splashing up and out in that direction, and grinned at a gasp. He swallowed a laughing oath, as well as some seawater, when she retaliated with a veritable punch of ocean in the face. Had she used her wing to scoop up and fire the shot? If so, her wingspan was considerable. She followed it up with what felt like a wet hunk of seaweed, splatted in the middle of his chest.

  A giggle and a flutter of wind told him she’d changed positions again.

  Wow. He’d expected a lot of things in his first few moments with her, but this one beat all. He was grinning like a loon, but reminded himself not to get too swept away in it. They were a long way from being BFFs. She might be entertaining herself with a hapless victim, or toying with a viable threat, trying to ferret out his true intentions.

  Yet that giggle charmed him, probably in a dangerous way.

  Slogging back onto the beach, he flopped down on the warm sand, relieved when he wasn’t immediately picked back up and dropped again. A temporary truce. His lips curved as a couple drops of water and rhythmic flow of wind told him she was poised in the air above him. “All wet, my lady?”

  “You’re far wetter.”

  That was true. His tunic, a belted mid-thigh deal that likely came close to the soldier’s garb she was wearing, was plastered to his body with no underwear under the damn thing. Greeks weren’t modest. He didn’t worry much about that either, but he missed his jeans or even a proper wetsuit. He’d tried not to imagine what was wandering around in the water, looking to pinch off dangling appendages.

  “We could go for a swim together and be equally wet. Do you swim?” he asked.

  “Quite often. You seem familiar with it.”

  “Yeah. I’ve had to do some amphibious missions, ones that involve approaching a target by diving gear or boat. Not as much as my buddy Lot, because he’s a SEAL, a type of special ops soldier where water’s kind of their specialty. Gotta say, though, this is far more fun.” He paused, letting the word fun sink in. Maybe it would give him another toenail sliver of access through a cracked door.

  “You mentioned watching sunrises and sunsets, my lady,” he added. “I’ve been known to enjoy those myself. Might be nice to share them with someone else.”

  “I do not need that.” Her voice went taut again. But it was the tension of rope, holding something back stronger than her words.

  “You’ve never wished for company? Someone to share the burdens of life? To laugh with? Cry with? Go to sleep at night knowing another human was breathing nearby? Someone you can depend upon? Trust?”

  Stillness. He curled his fingers into the sand, trying to appear relaxed when everything within him was coiled in anticipation of her next move. He’d heard a hitch in her breathing. Trying to interpret what it meant, what feelings he’d invoked, he hoped he hadn’t hurt her.

  But it might be necessary, because piercing through heavy defenses sometimes required using some sharp weapons. That was something he knew quite a lot about, thanks to the primary way he spent his leisure time. Another reason he’d been considered the best fit for this mission. The only fit, because he wouldn’t have tolerated any other man taking it.

  “You have given me nothing to trust you,” she said woodenly. “Not even your name.”

  “John Pierce Zeus. People call me JP.”

  “Zeus? You are a son of Zeus?” He sensed she’d hopped back a few more feet and was in the air. Before she could take off, he propped himself up on his elbows and spoke quickly.

  “No. Not hardly. Where I’m from, it doesn’t mean that. It’s just a name. One that my very fanciful mother tacked onto me when she left my dad. She said he was like a cheating, faithless god who didn’t care what devastation he left in his wake.”

  His mother had never considered what legally changing his last name might tell her son about how she felt about him, the offspring of that painful relationship. But Mom had been on and off different meds for years. She’d been sane enough to pass herself off as fit for parenting; crazy enough that her kid knew differently.

  Rubbing the water off his face, JP sobered. “My lady, in your position, I would feel no different. You’ve no reason to trust me, but I sense you’d like to. You were maybe enjoying yourself there for a moment. Right? Can we use that as a starting point? You can easily avoid me as I look around and figure out how to be a help to you. Whenever you wish to seek out my company, just give me a heads up and I’ll put on the blindfold.”

  He set his jaw as she said nothing. “If you’re worried about my intentions, I will do as I first said, and strike myself blind for you. Then there will be no doubt of your advantage over me. You just proved it well enough by throwing me in the water. I couldn’t stop you.”

  Well, true and false. If he’d had the sword and had been willing to use it to slice off limbs as she grabbed for him, he might have had a chance, but that wasn’t his purpose here.

  “What’s the harm of giving me a couple days to see if my company is bearable?” he asked. “Yes, you risk that I’m lying, and I’m just a scout stalling until reinforcements get here, but you know this island in and out. You can spend the time making sure I’m telling the truth.”

  “You could have others coming through that portal. I have no ability to prevent that.”

  “Yes. That is true,” he admitted. “You have to trust someone you have no reason to trust. But I’m asking you to do so.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because I’m different.” He said it staunchly. “Has anyone ever approached you the way I have?”

  “Not exactly.” He detected a subtle distress in the response, but she didn’t give him a chance to question it. “Why do you wish to serve me?” she asked. “If I could understand why you were here, it might help.”

  He flashed on his mother, bedtime stories, and dreams too haunting to ignore. None of that would work right now. The simple truth was too simple. Too unbelievable.

  “That’s a tough one to explain up front,” he said, “and you already think I’m crazy, talking about portals and time travel and crap like that. I’ll talk about it now if you want, but I was hoping we could get to know more about each other first.”

  “I think you must talk about it some, because none of this makes sense to me. What I do not understand, I cannot trust. How could you think of me, if you came from another time and place? I know you come from far away because your accent is unknown to me. You speak my language, but your word choices and mannerisms are strange. Foreign.”

  She’d drawn closer. Still prudently out of reach, but he could feel her nearness. He’d practiced reading people when he was blindfolded—including in some very intimate ways
, thanks to an idea Lot had had—but JP hadn’t considered the emotional toll of not being able to look at her and meet her gaze. Get a sense of what she was feeling as she looked at him, if she found him pleasing or intriguing. Or a menace.

  In the presence of the woman he most wanted to look upon, desire was also interfering with that training. If he couldn’t look, he wanted to touch, and that was so not happening right now. She was giving him a slim-to-none margin of error to prove himself to her, a generosity he hadn’t anticipated having this quickly, so he better pull it together.

  “Stories of you have come down through the centuries, my lady,” he said, closing his fingers in loose fists to resist the destructive urge. “Greek mythology permeates our popular culture.” He flashed on the Nashville, Tennessee Parthenon replica with the forty-foot-tall statue of Athena inside it, but decided to hold off on explaining that. That was even trickier ground than he was treading. He needed to distract her before she asked—

  “How do these stories portray me? What do they say or know of my life?”

  Too late. “They are myths, my lady,” he said carefully. “A lot of dramatic embellishment for storytelling purposes. Plays, books.” He wasn’t going to give her a rundown of Clash of the Titans, either version.

  Solitude could impose a dulling melancholy on a prisoner of extreme circumstances. But she’d sustained herself with the resources of the island and figured out how to protect herself from invaders, so isolation could also hone the mind willing to put in the hours to sharpen it. She’d already proven she had that kind of discipline, and she underscored it now by demonstrating she was no fool.

  “A monster. A bedtime story to scare children.” She paused. “If you truly are not here as a foe, you have bought into the beginning of the story. The young, virginal priestess, raped by Poseidon and cursed by Athena, the Goddess she’d committed her life to serve. So you come to be brave and manly, defy the gods to rescue me from…what? If you come through time, John Pierce, you’ve arrived too late. A story is a story, as you said. Distorted past recognition.”

  “So it didn’t happen that way?”

  “Humans embellish,” she said, with barely concealed bitterness, fragile and sharp.

  “I am here to do you no harm, my lady. I’d fall on my sword before I’d make that an untrue statement. Nor will I let anyone else bring you harm, not while I have breath to prevent it. What I said about company—”

  “I seek no one’s company,” she reminded him edgily. “It is why I’m here.”

  “With respect, lady, I think you have fled the kind of company no one would want. One that offers no kindness, mercy or forgiveness, no warmth or love, no laughter or friendship. You chose isolation, as anyone would. But that really isn’t a choice, is it? You can choose my company.”

  “I can also not choose it. Or are you refusing to heed my wishes? If so, it makes you a poor servant.”

  “I said I came to serve, my lady. Not be a servant. There is a difference.” When he purposefully injected an edge into his tone, her sudden startled quiet, that little catch in her breath again, sent a promising signal. Unfortunately, that included a stirring in his cock. He quelled it. Way too soon to focus on that.

  “How about we set a deadline? Give me three days. If you don’t want me here in three days, I’m gone, back through my portal, poof. Like I was never here.”

  “You said one day.”

  “Three is a luckier number, better for balance.”

  “We’ll see.” Though she sounded suspicious. “I reserve the right to change my mind.”

  “I’ve never known a woman who didn’t.”

  She touched him. Even with his enhanced senses, he hadn’t heard her approach. She must have crossed the ground on silent feet, for when she used her wings, he could hear their movement. Every muscle stilled as she explored the blindfold, the way it molded over his face. He felt her fingertips, but he also felt the press of the sharp claws along his forehead. She moved her examination to the lacings on the back.

  “How curious. Take it off and give it to me. I will return it to you.”

  If I don’t decide to turn you to stone first, was implied. Either she wanted a closer look at it, or she was testing how willing he was to trust her. He could answer that easily enough. “Very well, my lady. As I’m exploring, I assume you’ll announce your presence so we don’t find ourselves eye-to-eye. Unless that’s your intent.”

  He wanted her to understand that he wouldn’t be trying to hide his gaze from the possibility of her popping up in front of him. He was going to trust his fate to her hands.

  Removing the blindfold in the subsequent silence, he kept his eyes closed as he extended it. She plucked it from his grasp without making contact with him. The beat of her wings heralded a spray of water, what had collected on her wings during their splashing. Then she was gone.

  Christ, what did it say that the loss of her presence, even after this one brief encounter, was like a blow to the chest? The reminder of their water play made him smile, though. He was sure she was feeling far less pleased, likely plagued with doubts and suspicions. He wished he could alleviate those in some instant magical way, like with a wave of the wand they were all sure Maddock was hiding somewhere with his pointy hat and blue robes.

  Maddock had once told him human emotions could be manipulated with magic, but not ethically, even if the intent was for good. “People have to work their own shit out,” he said often, and bluntly.

  JP had no assurances that she might not still drop him far out to sea as she’d threatened. Or save herself the trip and turn him to stone. As he opened his eyes and dropped to his heels, he noted the evidence of her presence. Footprints in the damp sand and a series of marks that suggested where her wings had touched. So they were long enough to reach the ground.

  While feathered wings would leave a brushlike stroke, these marks were short, decisive crescents, like what would be made by a finger. Or a claw, he surmised, recalling the contact along his knuckles and face. Were the tips of her wings barbed like a dragon’s? Would it surprise her to know he’d seen a real life dragon? Pissing-oneself close, too.

  He squatted to place his fingers in the foot print. Small. Perhaps a size five or six. When he’d grappled with her for the sword, he’d determined she was a small woman, but one who was extremely strong and flexible, like a sleek mongoose. As he traced the outline of the sole, he imagined the shape of her arches, the way her ankle would feel in his grasp, the smooth muscled curves of her calves…

  He shut his eyes again to increase the potency of the imagining. Through his lids, he could tell the sky was still lit by twilight, something he hadn’t been able to surmise with the blindfold. The eye mask did an excellent job of putting the wearer in total darkness. Not only could he not see any details around him, he couldn’t determine the time of day except from the degree of sunlight on his face. Once laced in place, it didn’t shift and it couldn’t be quickly removed.

  Being an experienced sexual Dominant with access to lots of dungeon paraphernalia had its perks. And that was another reason why Maddock had been sure JP was the perfect guy for this job.

  JP had dreamed of her for too long to believe anything different. He prayed to any gods worth a damn that he wasn’t wrong.

  Medusa was strong and dangerous, with an underlying fragility that called to him. She was a well-shielded, high-powered and damaged submissive soul, the ultimate test for a Dom who craved that challenge. Who craved her. Go big or go home.

  He wasn’t going home.

  Chapter Two

  Though he was too revved up to be tired, he decided not to explore the island in the dark. She’d be suspicious if he did, and he might be interfering with her sleep. Birds did tend to roost after sundown.

  As he stretched out with a smile on the sand to study the million stars in the sky, he reviewed the day’s events. He’d started the day sitting in a quiet corner of Central Park with a Starbuck’s coffee and a paper ta
lking about a bunch of stuff he didn’t give a shit about. He’d scanned articles without reading them, his mind brimming with anticipation about this. Now here he was, on her island.

  He’d met the woman behind the legend, something that interested him far more than the myth. He’d touched her, inhaled her scent and spoken to her. She’d spoken to him. He thought of her tripping his Dom radar with that little erratic breath. He could say he was making too much of it, but he didn’t embellish what his senses fed him. In the jobs he’d had, there was a vital distinction between reasoned deduction and fatal wishful thinking.

  One little breath wasn’t irrefutable evidence, but he had other things to support his theory. He hadn’t talked about that part of things with the think tank, but he had with Maddock and Lot, both Dominants themselves. They thought he was right. Probably.

  “If you’re wrong, she’ll likely castrate you,” Lot had said cheerfully. “Then you won’t have to worry about it anyway.”

  JP thought of the blindfold he’d brought. He’d laced it on plenty of willing female subs at the BDSM club he frequented back in Tennessee. Sometimes he’d done it in the small dungeon room he’d set up in his home, on those few occasions he’d had an ongoing relationship with a sub. One who wasn’t interested in getting too serious and setting up house with him.

  By donning the mask himself to practice being sightless, he’d been learning how to serve her. It might sound twisted around thinking for a sexual Dominant, but not one who knew exactly what his goal was. He’d had several of those seasoned, lovely submissives help him conduct sessions while he wore it, so he could be certain he knew how to pick up their cues with touch, hearing and intuition.

  Initially, he hadn’t been sure it was a good idea. Despite his gut feeling about her nature and his own, too many variables were unknown, and he always ruthlessly evaluated his mindset as a potential flaw. Even though Dominant and submissive cravings had existed since the beginning of time, Medusa had been a virgin in Athena’s temple, delivered there when she was little more than a child. His experience with subs, for the most part, was with those who had already embraced what they were and what they wanted.