“You have no idea.” Reginald spoke back, dire. “Let’s just say I’m glad my father never had any female offspring. I doubt that would have stopped him trying to consolidate his power with them. It’s not stopped him with females in the extended family… most of which no longer live here at Deep Harbor because of him.”
“Icky. Icky, icky, icky.” Layla breathed, repulsed, reminded of old dynasties in England and Spain who had once line-bred their royalty.
“In any case,” Reginald continued, “Leni works with my brother Fury to combine his and her powerfully unique Siren-magics with the latest inventions in the human world, developing deepwater scanning tech. Leni and Fury track orca movements for our entire Lineage in real-time, map underwater fault lines and volcanoes around the world, etcetera. Their work has been a blessing to the clan for hundreds of years, which is why Léviathan has not pushed his suit harder with Leni. Though he’s made it abundantly clear he won’t let her rise higher in the clan unless she beds him.”
“Well, apparently,” Layla spoke, trying to get past the ugliness of Léviathan’s rule, “Leni told Adrian in a voice message that she’s had a breakthrough that might help us locate Hunter. Adrian called me to come check it out, since you weren’t answering your phone.”
“I was busy at the time.” Reginald spoke quietly, his golden brows frowning. “In any case, we must keep this conversation quiet if Leni thinks her tech could locate Hunter. I’ll arrange for you and I to have time soon so we can visit her lab. Please do not mention this issue in public. Or with any of my brothers.”
“You don’t trust them?” Layla frowned, cocking her head.
“I have been home again only five months,” Reginald countered, his gaze a fierce blue now. “I don’t know who among the North Sea Sirens Hunter may have killed and replaced all these years I have been away. The magic of my brothers and father – and Leni’s – call to me. But Hunter has proven artful in mimicking other people’s magic, Layla, not just their visages. If he could so thoroughly become Tempeste that even I might have been fooled had I not known my eldest brother was long dead—”
“Then you don’t know how much Hunter may be able to imitate any of your other brothers.” Layla finished, feeling a queasy churn inside her stomach. “Which was also why Leni didn’t tell you about her invention, but called Adrian instead.”
“Precisely.” Gazing down, Reginald drew her closer in his arms, his strong, stern love providing comfort. “Fear not. We’ll find out what Leni’s discovered and move from there. Though for personal reasons, I am deeply excited to know we might have a way to track Hunter soon.”
“For killing your brother Tempeste?”
“For how much he’s been torturingyou.” Reginald spoke quietly, his eyes entirely blue now, pale and viperous. “Though killing my beloved eldest brother is something I cannot forgive, Hunter’s single-minded and intensely cruel pursuit of you is something I cannot abide. Only one man is permitted to torture my beloved. And that is done sweetly… and with much anticipation.”
Lowering his lips, Reginald indulged their closeness now, moving his pearl-smooth lips over Layla’s in a scintillating play. It caught her breath, feeling the power and danger in him as he thought about Hunter and what he would do to protect Layla. Reginald was a beast of the deeps barely restrained as he kissed her, sliding his power in over her tongue and forcing her to swallow it in a wave of thick heat that went scalding deep inside her. Layla mewled against his lips, but he only kissed her deeper, slower – pulling her tight to himself and flexing his hips so she could feel all the promise they had been denied these past months.
A promise he would consummate soon.
“I want you, Layla,” Reginald murmured at her lips, his body hot now like a volcanic vent in the deeps. “I want you so much my seas boil. I want to seize you in my talons and tear into you, to push you high and higher with my body even as I drown you with my power. I want to ride you and command you like I command the waves, to punish you like I punish the shoals with the tides. I want to make you scream my name like the cries of desperate sailors sinking to Cthulu’s bestial grasp. I want to fuck you so hard you cry for me, but only good cries of need and release. I want to punish you in the way you want it. And then I want to do it all over again until you are nothing but seafoam in my hands. What say you, my Partner?”
“Yes!” Layla gasped, trembling hard from his utterly salacious talk. “God, yes!”
“Patience,” Reginald crooned at her lips. Easing a wave of oceanic power up Layla’s inner thighs, he plunged his strong oceans gently inside her now, taking her so deep it threw her head back at the enormity of him. Turning her, Reginald cradled her in his arms, kissing her neck with his soft lips as he slid his power into her again, slow and deep, making her feel it. Layla cried out, bucking in his arms, but he held her fast, shushing her as he thrust inside her again. Shuddering hard in his arms now, she was so close to orgasm as he cradled her. She keened and felt his wicked smile at her ear, loving torturing her on the brink of orgasm.
Holding her there with his Head Courtier’s patience – knowing the lengths to which he could push her and still not spill her over.
“I know, my love, I know,” Reginald breathed as he gave a dark smile at her neck, vicious and exquisite. “I know what you want because I want it, too. But I want to make you feel how much I’ve missed you first. And I want to feel… how much you’ve missed me.”
“Yes. Yes!” Layla gasped, raising a hand to his neck. “Oh god, yes!”
“Oh goddess, yes…” Reginald breathed, turning her to face him once more. Standing her on her own feet, he gave a dark, sensual smile. His gaze roiled with grey and gold as he stared her down, so deeply that her knees became weak. Only when she felt she might collapse did he reach out, touching her lower lip with his thumb. Pressing it down, he gazed at her lips, easing an ephemeral kiss over them, sliding it gently over her tongue.
But rather than press his kiss inside her again, he pulled his magics back entirely – leaving her heart pounding and her Dragon roaring, her loins spectacularly wet. With a dark chuckle, Reginald watched her, and Layla could do nothing but stare at him, undone by her Royal Siren.
Though he’d hardly done anything yet.
With a lift of one eyebrow, Reginald stepped to the table. Layla could only stare after him, trembling as he unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured her a measure of bourbon. Bringing it back, he extended it, and as he did, his fingers brushed hers. But rather than give her delicious torture now, he washed a soothing current through her body. Layla was quite suddenly relieved of her vast eros as a calming breeze filled her, sweet with the cool scents of the sea. It was relieving, and she was glad as she finished her bourbon and he held out his hand, receiving it.
Even though she loved being tortured by him.
“Better?” He spoke, his grey-blue eyes knowing.
“Much.” She smiled wryly, though some part of her was sad they’d not taken things further. “But why bust up our party when we had such a nice moment going, huh?”
He chuckled, and it was a good look he gave her; sexy and murderous but also controlled as he turned, setting her glass aside. “Because we have a party to attend with my family tonight, Layla. Come. Let us go over your wardrobe.”
And just like that, they fell into a familiar rhythm as Reginald moved to her suitcases in the closet and opened them, taking out her evening gowns and hanging them up. Smoothing them out, his calculating eye missed nothing as he regarded them, then glanced through the gowns his brother Vindaris had put in the closet. Gazing at them all, he ran his long fingers over their opulent fabrics. Glancing to Layla, he regarded her critically as if imagining how each gown would fit, then beckoned her over.
“Let’s see the peacock, the crimson, and the blush.”
“Someone’s nervous for me to make an impression with his family.” Layla joked mildly, moving to the closet and accepting the gowns Reginald handed over. Taking them to the bed rather than dress at the walk-in, she laid them out. The peacock was a gown she’d worn before, an ornate, slinky thing of peacock-feather beadwork that Adrian had bought her in Seattle. The crimson was from Amalia DuFane at the Paris Hotel, a fiery gown of red and gold lace with a wide-starched collar that flared up around her shoulders, a scandalously high slit, and a long lace train.
