Oceanborne (17 page)

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Authors: Katherine Irons

Tags: #Romance, #Paranormal, #Fantasy

BOOK: Oceanborne
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Elena allowed Orion to lead her back through the tunnel. She would rather have walked to wherever he wanted to take her than to allow herself to be buffeted and tossed in those dark canyons again, but she was in no condition to argue with him.
What had just happened?
They had intercourse, certainly. But
making love
didn't encompass the feelings she'd experienced. Her body still vibrated with the sweet sensations, and visions of the sights and sounds she'd perceived remained more real than the sight of this beautiful man beside her. Never had anything come close to the satisfaction she had known, and never had she felt more alive. As dreams went, this had to be the Super Bowl of fantasies.
But something troubled her. If this was her dream or nightmare or coma, which it obviously was, why hadn't Orion told her that he loved her? She wasn't certain what she thought of him—she didn't know him well enough to feel that she was
in love
. But what kind of fantastic dream lover wouldn't declare himself? It would have been perfect if he'd just come out and said he loved her and there was no other woman in the world for him. Straight out of an old romance novel, maybe, but it was what a woman wanted to hear. Even her.
But still … Thinking about what they'd done … the way his bare skin had felt against hers … the way their bodies seemed to fit perfectly together, almost as if they'd been lovers for years. Remembering made her muscles go weak and her heart flutter. Her breasts felt swollen and tender; she could feel the moisture gathering between her thighs….
She wanted to do it again … wanted to make love to him … wanted to touch him and stroke him … wanted to savor the same bitter-sweet ecstasy he had given her… .
She was jerked unpleasantly from her musings as a hatch opened and they were sucked into the blast. The force field seemed stronger than before, or maybe it was that she hadn't been expecting it. Her arm scraped along one wall, and she was tossed this way and that.
Abruptly, she was tumbling over and over. She tried to catch her breath, but the pressure in her chest was overwhelming. She opened her mouth to scream, but she had no air left in her lungs. Worse, she had lost her grip on Orion and was torn away from him. He had her by one hand, but she was certain that he couldn't hold on. She slammed against a wall, knocking herself giddy, but then when she thought that she was lost, that the nightmare would devour her, Orion's strong arms closed around her.
They turned and twisted, now upright, now facedown but always moving, swept along in a powerful current, until at last, Elena saw a flash of light, a door swing open, and they splashed into water. They plunged down; her foot touched bottom, and then Orion was swimming up and pulling her with him.
Her head broke the surface and she gasped for breath. She heard Orion coughing and sputtering as well. Her vision was clouded by the water, but she blinked, wiped her eyes, and stared around.
This was no ocean, no endless sea of salt water. They'd landed in what appeared to be a tranquil woodland pond. All around the edges were grassy slopes and beyond that towering trees of every shape and kind. She recognized firs and pines, oaks, beech, dogwoods, and chestnuts. The sky was a brilliant blue without a single cloud. In the distance, Elena could see low grassy hills and snow-capped mountains.
“What … what is this place?” she sputtered.
Orion paddled lazily beside her. “I told you. This is Eden, land of the fairy folk.”
A few strokes took them to a shallow bank, and they waded out and sank down on the thick grass. Bees buzzed overhead and birds flitted from tree branch to tree branch and sang sweet liquid notes. Blossoms of every color peeped from the grass and filled the air with a riot of perfume. As far as she could see there was no highway, no buildings, no power lines, no bridges or towns, only tranquil nature.
“It's another part of the dream, isn't it?” Fairy folk, her eye! Not even in a dream would she conjure up brownies, elves, leprechauns, or any other of the silly imaginary beings that frequented tall tales and children's stories.
The grass was sweet and soft, and the air smelled fresh and clean. Elena flopped back and looked up at the sky where flocks of geese and ducks rode the air currents. Once, when she was fourteen, her mother and one of her mother's boyfriends had taken her camping in the Canadian Rockies. The mountains there had this untouched and primitive atmosphere.
Jack McGregor had been pleasant, with the good sense not to try to be her
best friend or substitute father
. He'd realized that she'd wanted to be left alone with a book, and she didn't want to see him and her mother all smoochy and acting like sex-crazed teenagers. She hadn't wanted to go, but the trip had been a great success. Jack had promised they'd go again in the fall, but unfortunately, by then, her mother had married someone else. What she remembered about that one trip was the sense of peace she'd discovered in the wilderness.
She felt it here. Wherever her dream had taken her, this was a good place, a safe place where nothing could go wrong.
CHAPTER 16
O
rion stretched and yawned and smiled down at Elena before dropping back to tuck his hands under his neck and join her in staring at the blue canopy overhead. It was a relief to relax his guard and take a moment to catch his breath, and the artificial sky here was magnificent.
He wondered if Elena realized that engineers and scientists had put hundreds of years into perfecting the illusion that Eden was a paradise on earth. And it was; it simply occupied the space in the planet's hollow center. And the same technology that had provided an outer earth appearance had provided the fairies with an oxygen level similar to that which sustained humans. Elena would be able to breathe naturally here.
Orion could feel his body making the adjustments necessary to switch from breathing underwater to dry land. He'd been born with the ability to survive for longer periods than most of his kind among the earth walkers, but he never found it easy or particularly pleasant. The force of gravity was stronger and there was a constant barrage of rays from outside the planet's atmosphere. No wonder humans had such short lives.
He never felt those problems in Eden. Technically, this was land, but it was a different kind of terra firma. Here at the earth's core, many natural laws seemed suspended or, in the case of time, worked opposite to that on the outer rim of the planet. It had been just this irregularity that he'd counted on when he'd left Atlantis and his command to bring Elena here to safety.
In legend and in fact, there had always been tales of humans or Atlanteans who'd fallen in with fairies, lost track of time, and returned to find it was a hundred years later. That may have been true when the fairy folk lived on the earth's surface. Here, time for humans and Atlanteans worked exactly the opposite.
Each hour Orion spent in Eden took him backwards on the Atlantean clock. If he was careful and judged correctly, he could get back to his command a few minutes before he'd left, and no one would ever realize that he'd been away. He was less certain on the subject of time for the fairies themselves. Perhaps they existed, as they always had, devoid of the concept or outside its law.
But for a few short hours, he could be with Elena without feeling guilty for not being somewhere else. When the war with Melqart was over, if he survived, he'd return her to Crete, hopefully close enough to the time that they met there that no one would realize she hadn't returned to her companions. At least he would if he could be assured that Melqart wouldn't find her and destroy her later. There were a lot of
ifs
, but he couldn't think of that now. He would face that problem later.
Orion slipped an arm under Elena's shoulders and pulled her closer. He wanted to make love to her again, but he wanted this time to be special for her, and he had a feeling that she would love the enchanted forest pool. “There's a waterfall at the other end of the pond, through the trees. If you'd care to wash the salt water off …” He couldn't imagine wanting to rid himself of the smell or sensation of salt against his skin, but Elena was human, and he supposed she might feel differently.
“That sounds heavenly,” she answered. “My hair's a sticky mess.”
He nuzzled the back of her neck. “Seems perfect to me.” He turned and kissed her. “You seem perfect,” he murmured. She did.
He tried to tell himself that his feelings for her were what he usually experienced when he was attracted to a desirable woman, but he knew this was something more. In truth, the intensity of his affection for Elena frightened him. She was human; he was Atlantean. That should have been the end of the subject, but it wasn't, and the reality of that was becoming more evident to him with every hour he spent with her.
His brother Morgan had fallen in love with a human woman. They had faced down Poseidon and all the obstacles that prevented the two races from intermingling. Morgan had been willing to trade his destiny for Rhiannon, and in the end, they'd discovered that she had been born of an Atlantean mother. Orion doubted if he'd be that lucky.
He didn't trust his feelings. How could he? He'd been infatuated with many females over the centuries. In his own way, he'd loved Sjshsglee, and she was a mermaid. That relationship was almost as impossible as this one. And yet, Elena was different. What if she was the one he'd been searching for and he let her go because he wasn't strong enough to fight for her?
“Mmm, you taste good, but …” She sighed. “I'd still like to see the waterfall.”
And I'd like to see you naked in the sunlight
, he thought.
Would she be as desirable here as she'd been beneath the sea in my world?
Directing the sun's rays into the center of the earth wasn't an illusion but a feat of engineering. Atlanteans had designed and implemented the system. Engineering had never been his strong suit, but in theory, the plan involved gathering sunshine from the highest mountain ranges, such as the Andes and the Himalayas, and using crystals to redirect it through underground caverns, light wells, and tunnels to be redistributed here in the core.
The sun and moon here were replicas as was the sky, but very good replicas, powered by materials from a planet outside the earth's solar system and left here by the star travelers long ago. Few of the original fairies found fault with their new kingdom, and the generations that had been born in the last thousand years accepted the oddities of Eden as natural. This was home to them, and it was a far kinder place than the surface had ever been. It was rumored that a few solitary fairies still roamed the quiet corners of Europe and Iceland, but Orion suspected that it was more wishing on the part of humans than fact.
Elena caught his face between her palms and turned his head so that she could look directly into his eyes. “You promised me a waterfall,” she reminded.
“I did, didn't I?” He rose, pulled her to her feet, and led the way to a narrow path that followed the shore of the pond and then turned off to follow the rocky stream that fed the larger body of water. Here, the brook rushed merrily, the banks were verdant green moss, and the trees on either side were more evergreen than hardwood. The limbs and boughs of the giant pines and hemlocks intertwined, forming a roofed and shadowy passageway with a thick carpet of pine needles underfoot.
Almost immediately, he could hear the rush of the waterfall ahead. “You'll like this,” he promised.
They walked a few more yards and stepped out into a sparkling glade that formed a perfect setting for a fifty-foot cascade that tumbled into another smaller pool ringed all about with woods' violets, lilies of the valley, and clusters of curious little plants known as jack-in-thepulpits. The glade was enchanted in more ways than one, and Orion wondered if Elena felt the power radiating from the water as he did.
She clapped her hands in delight and turned in a slow circle. “It's wonderful.” It seemed like something out of the old movie
Brigadoon
, a place that time forgot. The warm air was misty and sweet with the fragrant scent of the delicate flowers. “It is Eden, isn't it?” Laughing, she stripped away the rags of her remaining clothing and waded into the pool.
Orion followed. The water was warmer than the air and seemed to possess a particular ability to ease every ache and strain. Water so clear that it seemed translucent rose to his chest; the bottom was blue cobblestone covered over with fine white sand.
When Elena ducked under to wet her hair, he plucked a few leaves from a thornless cactuslike succulent that grew at the water's edge and crushed them between his palms. A thick, juicy, sudsy oil with a delightful smell came from the leaves. “Here,” he said, holding out his hand to her. “It's called
oriana
. I've been told women like to bathe and wash their hair with it.” He'd also been told that it triggered an intense sexual need in females, but he wasn't certain he needed to share that much information.
“Just women?” she teased. “Are you sure you haven't tried it?” She took the liquid and massaged it into her scalp. “If my hair falls out from this, I'll know who to blame.”
“Close your eyes and lie back,” he ordered. “Trust me.” Not only did this pool have curative powers, but the water was more buoyant than most so that Elena floated almost without effort. “Let me.” He used the remaining oil that clung to his hands to work up a lather and rubbed it through her hair.
“Feels good,” she murmured. “But, if it works so good on my hair, maybe it would be nice on my skin.”
“An experiment?”
She laughed.
Gently, he soaped the back of her neck and shoulders. Elena was floating on her back, and he took particular care with her arms and hands, stroking and massaging each finger before moving on to her throat, breasts, and nipples.
“They must be very dirty,” she teased, still keeping her eyes closed tightly.
“Filthy.” He splashed clean water over her breasts, washing away the suds, then leaned close and kissed her nipples. They puckered into tight pink rosebuds at his touch, and the taste of her made him hard.
She sighed and lay back in his arms. “I think perhaps my belly …”
“Just getting to it.” He didn't bother with the oil, but continued kissing a trail down over her flat stomach to the triangle of curls at the apex of her thighs. The tension in his groin was growing and he could feel his blood racing.
“Not that, too?” she teased as he stroked her thighs and the folds that hid her sex.
“I'm afraid so,” he said. “A terrible case. He was breathing heavily now, and it wasn't from the gravity or the oxygen. He wanted her badly.
Laughing, she twisted out of his arms and splashed his face. “Not so fast,” she said. “My turn.”
“But I was just …”
“On your back,” she insisted. “Wait … Which leaves do I pick?”
He pointed to another plant growing out from under the bank.
“Lie back. Close your eyes,” Elena said.
“I don't think your legs are clean yet.”
“Shh. My turn.”
He did as he was told, and she began to shampoo his hair as he had done hers. “I don't think—” he began.
“Hush. Fair is fair.”
He quickly came to understand how pleasant a bath could be. Elena had a talent for knowing just where to touch him, and her feather-light caresses, the light scratch of her fingernails, and the feel of her breath against his skin soon had him moaning for relief. And when she pressed her lips to his phallus and began to stroke and caress him, it was almost beyond his ability to control his desire.
“No,” she said firmly. “Be patient.” And when she used her tongue and teeth on him and finally took him in her mouth, they heated the pool to a boiling point.
 
Elena supposed that they'd slept before awakening to make wild, passionate love again at the base of the waterfall. A curtain of mist surrounded them, making it all seem ethereal, and the sound of the crashing water nearly drowned their mingled cries of passion. Afterwards, they floated together in the pool, and he kissed her over and over and told her that she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.
All her life, Elena had considered herself a private person. She supposed that she'd withdrawn into herself after her father's death. When he was alive, he was the one she'd always talk to; it was never the same with her mother. She'd share her secrets and her dreams with her father, and he'd always listened. He'd never offered advice the way that most adults did with children, and he'd never pointed out how her plans were unrealistic. And once he was gone, she never opened her heart to anyone in the same way again, not to friends, not to her mother, and certainly not to Greg.
Here, in the aftermath of their lovemaking, Elena found herself telling Orion things she would never have revealed to another soul. It was as if she had always known him, as if they had always been part of each other.
“You can't imagine what it was like,” she said as they lay drying on the soft bed of moss beside the pool. “I'm good at what I do, but all my professors could see was that I was Randal Carter's daughter, and assume that I'd destroy my reputation as a scholar in the same way my father did.”
“Sometimes it's difficult for us to separate ourselves from a famous father.”
“I think I share some of his imagination. I just have to remember to keep it from running away with me.”
“Such as?”
She laughed. “Since I was a child, I've dreamed of finding Alexander's tomb. It was believed to be destroyed by Caesar's troops when they burned the Roman and Egyptian fleets, but some scholars disagree. Caesar revered Alexander's memory. The body was said to be preserved in honey and encased in an airtight casket of crystal. The casket and the sarcophagus may lie intact at the bottom of the harbor or be buried somewhere in the Valley of the Kings. I'd like to be the one to find it.”
“Alexander's tomb? A long shot.”

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