Seduced by Moonlight (Merry Gentry #3)(52)

His hand met the ring as he pulled me up, and he froze in midmotion, a look of startlement on his face. The guards who were new looked around for another threat, because they felt the magic. My guards felt it, but they knew it wasn’t another attempt on my life. I heard Frost say, “Consort save us,” and Rhys say, “Shit.” Then the room was gone, swallowed in a blink of magic. The water was warm as a bath, warm as blood. Barinthus was beside me, helping me tread water. The nearly invisible webbing between his fingers had flared to life, one strong arm stroking the water, while the other held me against his body. We were both nude, and it had been the warmth of the water that had kept me from noticing. Which meant the water was the exact temperature of my body. I could feel his legs moving, keeping us afloat, keeping us in the middle of a vastness of water that was as blue as his hair, as green as his hair, as grey as his hair. His hair streamed down his shoulders into the water, and where it touched, it was as if each strand became a current, like a melting of color that swam away from us, until I couldn’t tell what was hair and what was water, and still his body was solid against mine. Part of his body grew more solid as our bodies bumped against one another in the warm, warm water.“Merry,” he said, “what have you done?”
I opened my mouth but it wasn’t my words that came out: “I bring you back your ocean, Manannan Mac Lir, come take it from me.”
He touched my mouth with his hands, and for a moment only his strong legs kept us afloat. “Do not say that name, for I am not he. I have not been that for long years.” He looked stricken, as if hearing the name had hurt him somehow.
I realized in a distant way that I wasn’t entirely alone in my body, nor entirely in control of it. The thought should have frightened me, but it didn’t. The power was so so soothing, so safe. It was like being wrapped in peace.
“Come, drink of me, and hold me to your lips.” My body entwined around his, wrapping us together in the warm water. It was as if I’d known that he would try to push me away, but there was no way to break free now. My small, rounded arms were like gentle chains, my legs around his waist solid as the mountain’s root. Strangely, I knew that he could not free himself of me. He could deny me, but he could not cast me aside. My body’s weight forced him to glide onto his back, his head only barely above the quiet waves.
His eyes flashed white. “You are not Merry.”
“I am Merry,” and I knew it was true.
“But not Merry alone.” His arms and legs fanned the water, pressing parts of him against me in a way that we had never been.
“No, not Merry, alone.”
“Danu,” he said, and his voice was the rushing whisper of waves on some distant shore.
I slid my hands behind his neck and raised my body along his, until my mouth hovered over his, and the tip of him caressed against the opening of my body. The feel of him touching the edge of me brought me back into myself, chased her soothing presence back, just enough. I said, “Barinthus.”
“Merry, do you agree to this? The Goddess and God mean well, but I have seen them use people, and I no longer believe that the end justifies the means.”
I raised back enough to gaze down at him. He floated underneath me, his hair flowing out in a halo of blue, green, grey, navy, turquoise, and his face caught like a flower in the center of all that color, all that movement. Everything around us was water, moving, flowing, slapping in tiny waves. His body was the only solid thing in all that moving vastness. But I did not cling to him, I rode him, and he held me, but there was no fear. I felt in him the same sense of peace that I held within myself. They say the ocean is a treacherous place, but sitting there staring into his blue eyes as the sea rocked us, feeling the press of him against my body, long and solid, where only the flexing of his hips or mine would close that last distance, I saw nothing but gentleness in his eyes. He would pass this by, all this, give it up, yet again, if I but said no. 
I put my face next to his so that a hard breath would have made us kiss, and said, “Drink of my lips.” My lips touched his, and the next words were mouth against his own mouth, as if I ate the words and gave them back to him. “Let me feel the strength of you inside me.”
He drew back just enough to speak. “It will not be all it could be, for you are mortal, and might drown.” With that warning, his mouth came up to meet mine, and as our lips touched, he thrust into my body. Power poured out of my mouth and spilled into his as his body pushed into mine, and it was as if the magic flowed both from me and into me. We became a circle of mouth and body, of magic given and received, of life and small death, of his strength holding us above the waves, of my softness bearing us down. It was almost as if one magic were trying to keep us afloat, and the other sought to drown us. In the midst of life, death; in the midst of joy, danger; in the midst of ocean, land. The earth itself called to me, leagues and leagues below us. The land rolled underneath its blanket of ocean, and I felt it. I felt the earth turning under us, spiraling around, and it was as if the earth felt my thoughts, and stirred in her bed.
I felt the wave of power coming up from underneath us, like some huge, dark creature, swimming up fast and faster, sleek and dark and deadly. It hit us in a wave of power that threw the sea into towering waves, and boiled the land underneath us so that steam filled the air. The water was no longer warm but hot, hot enough that I cried out and jerked my mouth free of his. I saw his face, felt his hands on my hips, felt his body thrusting up into mine, and it wasn’t just the hard length of him. It was as if the miles and miles of ocean underneath me were rushing between my legs, spilling into me, through me, over me, and we were pushed into the air on a column of water that glistened like crystal, and glittered with bits of burning rock, like melting fire. I understood now why he’d asked my permission, because I wasn’t a goddess, I was only Merry, and I could not hold all that he offered. I screamed, half in pleasure, as he brought me, and half in fear, because I could feel no end to it.
Over the sound of the ocean boiling underneath us, I heard him say, “Enough!”
I was on the floor on the dais with Barinthus half collapsed on top of me. We blinked up into each other’s faces, and I watched my own confusion chase across his eyes. I knew where I was, and I knew what had happened, but the change was—abrupt.
I saw my Doyle and the others who were mine standing around us, facing inward, hands spread, touching one to the other so they formed a circle around us. I could see the power in that circle that they had thrown up so desperately to contain what had happened. The guards who had come with Barinthus were staring in at us, and the police were screaming, “Get her out of here!” Seconds had passed, no more.
Barinthus got to his knees and reached for the hand that did not hold the ring, to help me sit up.
That seemed to be signal enough, because they all lowered their hands in unison. The circle went down, and water surged outward, a miniature flood that soaked the dais, and the chairs nearest us, and all the policemen. Frost’s pale grey slacks were soaked to charcoal; Rhys’s white silk trench coat, ruined. Only two people stood in the center of that spray of water and stayed dry—Barinthus and me.
Major Walters came up brushing water out of his eyes. “What the fuck was that?”
Doyle started to say something, but Walters waved it away. “Fuck it, get her out of here before something else goes wrong.” When they all looked at each other instead of moving, Walters leaned into Doyle and said in a voice that would have done any drill sergeant proud, “Move!”
We moved.Chapter 24
I stumbled on the way out, and it was Galen who lifted me in his arms and crawled into the middle limo on his knees. There’d be a picture the next day of me with blood on my face, looking very frail in Galen’s arms. Which meant that some bravely stupid reporter, instead of taking cover when the guns and magic came out, had trailed us to take more pictures. I guess you don’t win Pulitzers by playing it safe.
I was actually in the limo, still in Galen’s lap with the other guards piling in, when I realized it wasn’t my aunt’s personal car. It was just an ordinary stretch limo. Which meant it was actually bigger inside than the Black Coach, but not half so scary.
The door shut, someone slapped the roof twice, and we were moving. Doyle walked over everyone’s feet and made Galen scoot down so he could sit on the other side of us, against the far door. No one argued with him. Rhys and Kitto were on the half seat across from us. Barinthus was on the swiveling seat that faced us. The seat left a sort of short hallway for others to reach more seats even deeper into the limo. When they said stretch, they meant it.
Sage and Nicca were there in the next open space, on the last two swivel seats so they could sit sort of sideways with their wings. Usna was curled on the far side, with his legs tucked under him, trying to squeeze water from his calico hair. He looked disgusted with the whole arrangement. Maybe he just didn’t like being wet.
I realized dimly that Galen’s pants were wet and it was soaking into my panties. I pushed off his lap, and I could almost stand normally, one of the pluses of being short. “You’re getting me wet.”