A Story of Seas

Clawing, grasping at the damp black sand, Adrienne gazed back at the graveyard of ships, charred masts sinking into the tropical seas. No victory without cost. She moaned in horror. Overhead the sun sank to the west in a hazy sky, obscured by smoke and damp with heat. Other ships limped away from the battle. None fared well this day. The calm waters of the Verdant Sea lapped at the shores, heedless of the bodies floating upon them.

Standing unsteadily, she searched them out, one by one. Not a thrash nor flutter greeted her desperate gaze. Adrienne stared until her eyes burned. The hollow ache in her chest would produce no tears; the salt water that carried her to shore was to blame for the drops rolling down her cheeks.

So many dead. Yet still she would rather gaze on the watery graves than face her own troubles.

When the Gallant was lost, Adrienne peeled free of her armor and dove overboard, swimming through as much as carted by the tide to the shore. Now she stood on a deserted black sand beach of what she knew to be Isla Tremene. Her linen shift and form-fitted breeches waterlogged and boots stiff around her ankles as they dried beneath the sun. The waves pushed debris to her feet.

She forced herself to turn away. Beyond the beach stretched a lush jungle, rich with treasures and dangers both. Her enemy had no settlements on Isla Tremene to her knowledge; neither did her people. A few independents, perhaps, their positions etched somewhere in her sluggish mind. It hurt to think. She coughed, feeling the wetness in her lungs.

Adrienne looked back to the waters. She might wait here for rescue. Guardian ships had been engaged -- if they could make it here. And what if rescue ships were not hers but theirs...

The splash startled her. Somber reverie broken, Adrienne's sharp gaze snapped to the source, squinting against the sunlight glinting on the water. Just at the point she thought she had dreamt it, some fish playing in the devastation perhaps, she heard it a second time. A survivor fought to stay above water.

To do nothing was not in her nature. Faced with so many feelings and problems dire, she took control in what way she could: she helped. Adrienne waded into the waters, body screaming in protest, until she reached the man, half-drowned, coughing for his last bit of life.

He was taller than her, and Adrienne struggled to slip within the arc of his long arms to get a hold on him. She saw that he had a handsome face, the shadow of a beard a little dangerous, and dark hair slick with the sea. He wore no shirt, affording her a glimpse of a tanned and muscular chest, broad shoulders, and a bloody gash on his right arm that cut to the bone. Her eyes, however, did not linger there. Above the gash was the tattoo of the silver tower, the Altai sigil, allies of those waging war on her people. Her delicate mouth twisted with grief.

For a still moment he looked at her. Captivating eyes the brown of molten copper fixed on Adrienne's face. Then the sea pulled him under once more. His pants and boots, waterlogged, repelled her attempts to keep him afloat. She hooked her hands under his armpits and dragged him with her toward the shore. It hurt. Exhaustion and frustration nearly had her letting go.

Adrienne refused to listen to her heart or to her body and she pulled with what strength she had left until they both collapsed onto the dark sands of Isla Tremene.

***

Dimitri howled in pain. His arm burned. He lashed out wildly, blindly and hit only the air. Sitting up, he gazed into the face of a woman so lovely as to make him lose sight of everything except her -- fair skin, eyes of a pale green that shined like dew on the fields of Sofestra. Her hair was pinned in crowning braids, golden as dawn around her head, soaked with the sea like a mermaid of legend.

"You pulled me from the water," he said, wonderingly, doubting how this creature with her delicate jaw and soft curves had saved him.

She knelt beside him. Her gaze was sharp on his face, still like a doe in the wood, and slowly, helplessly she shook her head. She didn't understand him. In one hand she held a half-empty bottle of liquor. The other hand she raised in a peaceful gesture to show she was no threat to him.

She murmured something he didn't understand in a voice that belonged -- he didn't know where. In a shrine, perhaps. Not on a battlefield. He dragged in ragged breaths, chest heaving. When he didn't answer, she tried again, this time in a language he recognized but knew only a few words of: Endalian.

Resigned, he reached for the bottle in her hand. He moved slowly, not wanting to scare her again nor to dispel this too welcome mirage. She relinquished the bottle. He drank deeply from it -- rum -- then resumed his inspection of this woman.

She held out her hand to take back the bottle. Instead he gripped her. He had to touch her. He had to know she was real. The wound on his arm had been earned. The man or woman who gave it to him, dead. As was their ship. And his. War was not kind. And yet, this woman couldn't be real. Because war wasn't kind. It wouldn't have given him such a rescuer. Unthinking, he lifted his uninjured arm and lashed a sea-hardened hand around her wrist.

The angel's head jerked, pale eyes snapping to first his hand then to him. She pried free his hand -- hers was smaller yet insistent and he was still half-drowned. Dmitri granted her that. But not her hand. He gripped, the callus of his thumb finding her wrist. Real. Flesh and blood and warmth, a few grains of sand rough between them.

His eyes never left her.

He saw her confusion, then her incredulity. He saw too her intention seconds before she dug her free hand into the wound on his arm. Sick with pain, Dmitri relinquished her. His angel had steel.

She resumed her work, but again and again her eyes sought out his. She said something else.

"I don't speak Endalian," he answered huskily in his native tongue. Despite serving with them, he had never learned. His people the Altai had been convincingly bought by the Endalians to join their war against the Avi. Dmitri sat up, the last bandage tied around his arm. The world tilted, but he would live and live well on Isla Tremene if his memory was correct. Unknowingly, his assessment of their predicament was no less than Adrienne's had been minutes earlier.

He studied his companion and between them exchanged a helpless look. They could not understand one another.

Some of the haze cleared from his vision. She bore no sigil to identify her, but surely he would have known if she were on his ship, on any ship within a thousand leagues. He guessed her to have been armored before this. Dmitri's eyes travelled lower, past the line of her collarbone to where her linen shift clung transparently to her breasts, curves outlined in their fullness, the subtle peak of pink nipples.

He stared like a sailor who had never seen a woman. She folded her arms across her chest. The view was gone. The memory was not.

Sighing, Dmitri again met her eyes, caught by their directness, the level confidence in the way she looked at him. A feeling stirred in his gut that he ignored. He pointed at his chest. "Dmitri."

They would start at the beginning it seemed. She answered him in that same voice from before, the one that belonged with the Great Lord and Great Lady, They Who Created All.

"Adrienne." She pointed to a small, damp leather bag, or rather to the circle, half white, half red, stitched upon it. The guardians' sigil, a sign of neutrality -- or meant to be, although the observance of that neutrality was somewhat in question. Perhaps she wanted him to know that she was no threat. She did not seem to fear him, with her saintly voice and steady scrutiny. His arm ached where she had stitched him.

His Adrienne rose, sand cascading in gray streams from her, and with one arm still protecting her modesty, she offered the other to him. She asked him a question, hand held expectantly. Help, maybe. Or stand.

Dimitri took his time. He had nearly died today. He saw no reason to hurry now. Adrienne's breeches clung to her legs like a second skin, the curve of her hips beckoned a handhold far more interesting than her lovely hand. But the hand he took, gripping to rise -- unsteadily, to his irritation. He loomed over her. Tugging on her hand, he pressed it to his mouth, smiling at her resistance.

He recognized the voice of command in her tone, the obstinate lift of her chin that expected obedience.

He traced the skin of her palm with is lips, then teeth. "I'm afraid I don't understand you, water lily."

He smiled at her. Her pale eyes narrowed in answer. Her cheeks glowed pink.

He was going to enjoy making her eyes glassy with pleasure.

***

If this Altai pirate, if this Dmitri knew who she was, who it was that he ogled and manhandled so Adrienne would have problems greater than his audacity. She could almost admire his affable cham. But there was a devil in those dark eyes. Eyes that knew what he was doing. Again she tugged on her hand and again was stymied by the grip of his fingers. She was tired, yes, but this was more. Strength, casually applied.

The Altai who called himself Dmitri tugged again, his beard scraped against her wrist as his lips lowered to the soft skin of her forearm. Adrienne stared, staggered by disbelief. Her awareness extended to the broad and muscled chest now inches away, the curl of dark hair, the heat that sizzled where sea water dried.

She kept one arm pressed across her chest, humiliated by the sight she made -- one which he clearly enjoyed, the scoundrel. To make him stop his playful -- how could he be playful at such a time, her mind screamed -- exploration of her arm, she would need to bare herself again.

Adrienne adopted a bored and impatient expression to discourage him. But she had no artifice in her and the look only drew a smile from him, the curve of his lips scraping higher up her arm. Her gaze left his, seeking shelter on the seas. There were no cries for help. No masts on the horizon. She was alone.

Nearly alone, her mind corrected as his teeth nipped at her sensitive skin, forcing her attention back to him.

"You will stop this," she said, knowing he didn't know the words but certain he understood her regardless.

"Adrienne," he breathed out mockingly into her arm. She jumped when he gripped her waist with his other hand. The effort had to hurt him, she knew, but she saw only delirious pleasure in his expression. His thumb swirled against the hem of her shift, bunching it, drawing it higher.

He was toying with her. Didn't he know their situation? How could this be on his mind? Here? Now?

Enough.

She moved like a dancer, revealing her breasts outlined so perfectly beneath that clinging fabric to his wanting gaze. Her fingers clasped the deadly hairpin buried still in her braids and this she brought to his throat. She still didn't hurt him.

"My patience is exhausted. Yield."

Dmitri froze. A near drowning. An injured arm. But above all the taste of her, the lure of her being drawn closer, then the sight of her baring herself to him. To die pierced on her blade would have been an acceptable death. His throat bobbed as the slender blade scraped at his neck. He liked her steel.

Amicably, he released her arm. It was a ruse, in the second that her posture relaxed, he bent the wrist that held the blade, pain forcing her to release it. His heroine had some talent for combat, he learned. She had training. The fair Avi retaliated with a blow to his groin that would have levelled him had he not anticipated it. Yes, she had talent. But he was better.

He deflected her knee then with an easy swoop of the opposite leg, dropped her onto the sands with a thud while she was off balanced. He pinned her, thigh between hers. Arms over her head, out of reach. He supported his weight on that one good arm and admired her. Great Lord above, she was beautiful.

As she continued to squirm, he pressed his thigh harder between the juncture of her legs.

She gasped. The sound, irrepressibly feminine, broke him. The roar was not the ocean, it was the blood in his veins, the rush of desire that had him claiming her mouth. She tasted of the sea. Dmitri's mouth moved on hers, pressing her harder into the soft sands beneath them. Still Adrienne struggled, every gasp and outraged cry muted against him. This was madness; the thought shared by both. He tore at the pins in her hair, freeing long strands of hair from her braids, gripping the satiny strands between his fingers. It was all his injured arm was good for. His cock strained for her and he stopped, panting.

His guardian struggled less. She was exhausted and, now, afraid. Pinned by the man she had saved, vulnerable and helpless beneath him. Still this was not enough for him. A muscular thigh ground against her through the tight breeches, willfully wanton. Worry furrowed her brow, a new kind of panic that Dmitri reveled in. He pulled on her hair so that she could not look away from him. He wanted her fear and her pleasure, the way her hips lifted against him. Bending his neck, he found the peak of a nipple, brazen beneath her shift. He sucked it between his lips, soaking the fabric, lapping at it with his tongue.

The sound she made was not all outrage.

"No, you will not," Adrienne whimpered, knowing that he didn't understand her, knowing that he wouldn't care if he did. Her limbs burned with exhaustion. And a different fire burned where his thigh ground against her. Her lips tingled where he had kissed her and now her nipple ached, the softness of his mouth against the rougher fabric, the sensation heady.

She might have borne a crude assault. But this seduction was a thousand time crueler. Even as she squirmed to escape him, Adrienne didn't want to believe the gasps, those quiet, strangled whimpers were hers.

Dmitri left her nipple tender and hard, popping it free from his mouth so that he might kiss her again. He murmured something into her mouth, looked apologetic. Then his injured arm pressed against her throat.

Strangling her.

Adrienne thrashed anew, a primal strength she didn't know she had. And still he pressed. Patient. Strong. Watching her. Her lashes drooped over green eyes dark with her arousal.

Dmitri released her at the last moment and sat up entirely. Adrienne gasped in air and twisted away from him but, as intended, lacked any ability to do more to aid her escape. She merely dragged in air while he tore her shift over her body, pulled those breaches down her legs. He soon loosed his own, shoving them over his hips and found his place between her thighs, cock tracing her humiliating wetness. Gently, Dmitri kissed away her tears, those that had sprung loose in the aftermath of being strangled.

"Adrienne," he murmured into her mouth as he claimed her.

His cock pushed into her, a steady and unstoppable force, until he was buried to the hilt. Adrienne stared at the sky, aware of every inch of him, horrified by her body's ready compliance, wanting pain and only finding cruel pleasure and want. His grip on her wrists did not abate as he levered into her, a fucking as systematic as the way he lured her to him.

"Adrienne." The possessiveness in his voice made her shiver. She mewled at the heat building in her, her body's rebellion for the man pleasuring her here, where they had both survived war. His grunts, becoming growls, lost to pleasure. Dmitri's pace quickened. He couldn't resist her, the heat, the wet, the way she clenched him unknowingly.

He came with a ragged cry, naked body falling atop her. She felt him softening and squirmed, pleasure making her skin spark. Dmitri kissed her, mouth, neck, breast, and forehead. Cherishing. Worshipful.

His desire simmered in dark eyes, but the twist of his mouth was wry. "Look what you've done to me, water lily." Already his cock stirred again at her thigh. The heat in her eyes, her wary, hateful regard. He liked her steel. He wanted to melt it.

The wry and mocking smile stayed. Idly he used the hand of his injured arm to find the wet heat, to drape itself lazily in that telling sign of her arousal that must so humiliate her. If he could taunt her, he would. A pity she couldn't understand the words. So Dmitri lifted the fingers, traced them along her bottom lip. She twisted her head away so in plunged a finger, ensuring that she taste her own need and want.

He kissed her, a low and smoldering kiss, enjoying the taste of her on her lips, the anguish in her knit brow, as again his finger traced her slit. He found the nub of her clit and circled, no stranger to working his will on a woman's body, however reckless this particular one made him.

Her hips jerked. He liked the sound of her pleading -- he wasn't sure if she was pleading but he imaged she was -- and the skittish beat of her heart. He pressed his mouth to her pulse, kissing away the pain from where he'd had to hurt her. As he did so, Dmitri slid a finger deep inside of her. His cock hardened again and he groaned.

He forced himself to fuck her indolently, thumb not letting her clit escape him. She quivered beneath him, muscles taut with the effort of resistance, futile. Useless. "My Adrienne," Dmitri cooed to her throat as he added a second finger.

He kept going, relentless, stubborn in the face of the pains shooting up his injured arm, gritting his teeth as the pleasure of it all, this perfect woman beneath him, so soft and lovely and kind. So strong and now so broken.

Adrienne lost herself to his hand. Her hips ground as wantonly as any dockside whore for him, the man who had forced his cock inside of her. And still he denied her a release. Above her, the sky seemed to spin. Whoever she had been, whatever she had wanted no longer mattered. Her pleas rose in pitch and urgency, afraid of the pleasure twisted to this man's dark unyielding will. Desperate for it.

Dmitri tugged free his glistening hand and won a beautifully anguished cry from her, only to fill Adrienne anew with him, hard and firm. When her eyes closed against it, the blinding pleasure he'd wrought upon her, he let her.

And still he grinned as he fucked her, grinding into her to the hilt until she broke, crying out, soaking him with her wetness. Every clench was ecstasy to him and he found the will to hold, pressing against her, giving her no respite from the pleasure. She was his. He waited until her eyes drifted opened, humiliated. His eyes were laughing at her in the silence.

Then Dmitri fucked her again, straining over her until he came a second time, covered in her wetness and Adrienne's unwilling body pliant beneath him.