The Necklace Read online

  “The air is produced from the water and circulated.”

  “How do you produce it?” she asked, curious as to what he would say next.

  “I don’t know, Marissa. It’s a mystery to me. I’m not a scientist.”

  “So, how did we get here?” she fired back quickly.

  “A transport brought us from the surface.”

  “A-a transport?” she stammered. “Okay, I can buy that.”

  “I don’t have all the answers, sena. I can I only tell you what I know,” he said, puffing noisily. “Believe me, you’ll find out all the pertinent details in due time.”

  Due time didn’t really seem good enough to her. Switching gears, she peered at him, looking deep into the pewter sliver of his eyes. “What did you do with Nyla … I mean the creature?”

  “Nothing, except to bring her back home. She’s here in the province now. I’ll take you see her later. And, she likes the name. You don’t have to worry about calling her that here.”

  Slightly assuaged, she looked away exhaling, trying to figure the best way to bring up the next subject.

  “Did you do something to me that time at the institute?” she asked, rushing the question so the words ran out together.

  “I did at lot of things to you at the institute, Marissa. What exactly are you talking about?”

  Heat rushed to her cheeks and bloomed in waves of embarrassment, her eyes flicked nervously about. “D-did you change me, give me your blood, bite me, or something? Make me different somehow.”

  “I didn’t do anything you didn’t want.”

  Marissa felt her hackles rise, angered by the nonchalance of this tone. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Tylan flounced back against the pillows, sighing, blowing strands of hair from his face.

  Marissa turned away, so she wouldn’t look at the enticing sight of his bare chest, wouldn’t watch the way the sheet draped haphazardly over his hips and legs.

  “Well? What do you mean?” she asked, after a few moments of silence passed.

  “It means that I sensed your desire to mate,” he drawled finally.

  “My desire. I’m not the one who ripped…”

  Mate?

  Tylan arched two golden brows, reminding Marissa of his uncanny ability to read her mind.

  Exasperated, she rose from the bed before recalling her nakedness. Quickly, she dived back underneath the sheet.

  A guttural laugh echoed through the large room, and Marissa shook her head, not finding anything humorous about the situation.

  “How come you can read my mind, but I can’t read yours?”

  “Have you tried?” Tylan asked back, dipping his head and staring at her like she was a small, deluded child.

  “C-can I do that?”

  “Of course. You just have to learn how. Concentrate on trying to feel what I am thinking. Let it come naturally, don’t try and force it.”

  Frowning, Marissa remembered the tracery impressions she gleaned from Jon while she been inside the tank. There had been a moment when she sensed his thoughts, almost glimpsing into his memories. And, of course, she’d always been able to detect Nyla’s emotions. But the feelings were more like intuition. There wasn’t anything concrete about them.

  “You’re not concentrating,” Tylan said, interrupting her thoughts.

  Marissa shook her head, clearing her mind, looking deeply into his eyes.

  She’d never seen pupils that shade before, blue and silver at the same time—

  “You’re supposed to look into my mind, not my eyes, Marissa.”

  “Okay, okay,” she muttered, taking a deep breath.

  A few moments passed, and she figured she was doing something wrong, when suddenly her own blurry face appeared in her mind.

  Blinking, Marissa reared back, moving away from Tylan, grasping the sheets to her breasts. “You,” she said, pointing a finger at him in accusation, “have a very dirty mind.”

  “We’re lying in the bed naked. What else am I supposed to be thinking about?”

  “Anything but that,” she murmured, vivid imagery haunting her.

  Over and over the sight of a dark-haired woman between her thighs, licking and sucking on the most delicate places of her body, reeled through Marissa, warming her insides and bringing a flood of heat to her cheeks. She remembered the feel of Tylan’s lips on her skin. Still heard his soft murmured words of love and devotion, as she lay surrounded in darkness.

  Looking at him, Marissa wished she had more practice with the mind reading thing. The bland expression on his face gave nothing away.

  Wondering how to broach the subject she’d been shying away from since she first awakened, she sighed, knowing there wasn’t an easy way. “When and how did you marry me? Because we are married somehow, right?”

  Tylan nodded, peering at her intently. “At the institute, I recognized you as my mate. Your body also recognized me. It’s why you felt such … overwhelming urges.” He sighed, smacking his teeth. “I do not think I can explain the how properly. Once an Eritrean comes into contact with their pair bond, the need to link mentally and physically is unstoppable. It’s a merging, Marissa. Not a ceremony.”

  “So, I take it there is no such thing as a legal divorce?”

  Tylan laughed breathlessly. “True pair bonds mate for life.”

  Marissa looked down, fiddling her fingers, picking non-existent dirt from her nails. “Are threesomes a normal part of the marriages here?”

  “For some. Yes. But not for ours.”

  Marissa nodded, relieved by his answer.

  She couldn’t deny that she enjoyed the feelings the mysterious woman inspired. Only a dead person wouldn’t have liked it. But she couldn’t imagine living within a triangle like that. It was bad enough dealing with one person’s emotions.

  For better or worse, the path of her life led directly to Tylan, to this place. There was no use denying it. No use playing the wounded, theatrical prig. No use crying aloud anymore. She didn’t totally accept her lot in life, but she was strong. She would try and deal with it.

  Turning her head away, blonde strings of hair catching in her mouth, her gaze fell on the long dining table dominating the corner of the room.

  “You have wood?”

  “No. There are no trees or plants here. We import all the necessary items from the surface. Except for fish. We have plenty of that.”

  “And you guys … Eritreans … live down here full time?”

  “You say Eritreans like you’re not one.”

  Marissa glanced down at her legs, half expecting her fin to materialize at any moment. “I wasn’t saying it like that,” she murmured.

  “You are Eritrean, Marissa. It’s why you have the ability to shift into the mernia and have heightened powers of the mind,” Tylan said, gently turning her face, his fingers caressing against her cheek.

  “Mernia?”

  “That’s a female Eritrean,” Tylan clarified.

  “So, what is a male Eritrean called?”

  “A mern.”

  Nodding, Marissa wished she had “the convenient Victorian-era memory loss capability,” heralded in too many romance books. She would have loved to awaken with no realization, the strangeness of her life fading away with predictable ease. But there was no use denying it. She could no sooner forget her transformation than she could forget a painful root canal.

  “I still don’t understand how Jonathon and my mother could have kept this from me,” she whispered, truly horrified to discover the range of deceit they had been willing to undertake.

  “I’m sure they did it for your protection, Marissa. I don’t believe they were out to harm you.”

  “Yeah, but to find this out…” She shook her head. “It’s just so crazy. I really don’t understand how they were able to keep it from me all these years.”

  “Probably very easily. By keeping you away from the ocean, the latent senses of your body were dulled. Only seawater can trigger the shift.
It was your close proximity to the sea while on the Suzy that elicited your natural reactions.”

  Marissa frowned. “You know it’s really disconcerting to have you know all the small details of my life, especially when I don’t know a thing about you.” Her voice dropped low, imitating Tylan’s dulcet accent. “Excepting, of course, that you’re the Emperor of your own underwater kingdom.”

  Tylan laughed. “Saves us a lot of time, leethil. We don’t need to spend a lot of useless moments rehashing. And there will be plenty of time for you to discover every little thing about me.”

  “Yeah, but I still don’t like you inside of my head.”

  “Don’t worry. You’ll have a long while to get used to it,” Tylan said heartily, attempting to pull the sheet from her chest.

  Rolling away from him, she grimaced, as her body tangled in the thick coverlet.

  “And you and I are mated for life, like wolves or something?” she asked again, trying to direct her thoughts elsewhere, but hopelessly failing because at the word mate Tylan’s lids lowered with seductive intent.

  “I’m not a Lycan, sena. But, yes, we are mated for life. We are true pair bonds”

  Marissa ignored the Lycan comment, not even wanting to know. “How have you … guys,” she said, pausing and flicking her eyes upward, still unable to think of Tylan as other than human. Well that seems really stupid since you already know you're half fish. “How have you remained a secret?” she finished.

  Tylan laughed briefly, rising from his prone position. “Not half fish, Marissa. Eritrean. It’s not a dirty word. You can say it,” he whispered, trailing his long index finger along the slope of her sheet-covered breasts. “And, to answer your question, we have not always been secret. Thousand of years ago we did live above the ground. It took many years, but we learned to exist harmoniously with our surroundings, as you can see. And, as of yet, human technology is not equipped to find us.”

  “So this is like Atlantis or something, right?”

  “Atlantis is only a myth, sena. Though I wouldn’t doubt some of the legends are based on our civilization.”

  “Fascinating,” Marissa murmured, perplexed.

  She wanted to ask more questions, grill him longer, learn more about the society, and the culture, but the hand roaming against her aching nipples distracted her from further conversation.

  Swallowing nervously, her body began to warm perceptibly from Tylan’s heated look. Marissa may not have understood and she might have wanted to forget, but she definitely wasn’t a Victorian prude.

  Sex, especially sex with Tylan, always seemed to figure prominently in her mind.

  Flipping her easily, so she lay on her stomach, Tylan’s hot breaths teased against her cheek. “Good. I think we’re done with the talking anyway, sena,” he whispered, his lips close to her ear.

  Quickly untangling her from the mass of sheets, the silken flesh of his cock eased along the wet parting crease of her buttocks, his large, mushroom head caressing the damp tissue of her pussy with forceful demand.

  Opening her mouth, wanting to breathe and taste the air at the same time, his lustful scent assaulted her senses, and she moaned loudly, tremors shaking her body.

  How she went from inquiring minds to ready and willing to fuck was beyond reasoning or questioning.

  “And I’m going to fuck you all day, Marissa, and all night. I don’t think I’ll ever be able get enough of you.”

  Gasping incoherently, suddenly happy with the way of the world, she bucked beneath him. Telling him without words how she wanted to spend the rest of the day.

  Tylan lifted her hips high, splaying her bent legs so he could position himself between them, her breasts smashing against the silken linen of the bed.

  “Your pussy is like pink perfection, hot and slippery wet for me.”

  Marissa gurgled a sound deep in the back of her throat, her mind reeling from his carnal words and the long finger tracing against her clit.

  When the thick, hot length of his cock eased into the tender flesh of her body, she ached, remembering the fullness. Moaning breathlessly, she arched her back so her buttocks rose higher and her pelvis tipped forward.

  A sense of sexual pride rippled through at the sound of Tylan’s indrawn breath.

  “Gods, you feel so good, leethil.” Like silken desire.

  Marissa wanted to tell him how good he felt, how good his cock felt inside her pussy, but she couldn’t manage more than whispered pleas, begging him not to stop.

  Over and over, Tylan plunged deep into her body, his large hands caressing her back, pausing every once in a while to frame her hips, to hold her steady for his forceful thrusts.

  Marissa could feel every pulsating inch of him sliding in and out of her body; feel the slap of his testicles against her clit.

  Screaming into the pillows, she felt like a castle ready to fall after a ten-year siege.

  The first orgasm rolled through body, blooming from the pit of her stomach. She tried to move, her limbs going limp in a matter of moments, but Tylan growled loudly, grabbed a fistful of her hair, yanking her head sharply to keep her from shifting again.

  The pain from her scalp felt slight, but the barbed sensations of the pleasure moving through her were enough to push her off the cliff of bliss once more.

  Tylan was true to his word.

  He fucked her for hours, never once relenting and sustaining his erection through inhuman, if not unholy, stamina.

  After what had to be her umpteenth orgasm, he finally collapsed with a groan loud enough to wake the dead, his hot semen flooding her pussy.

  Their bodies were drenched in sweat, and the middle of the bed was wet with perspiration.

  Thankfully, the mattress was really large, and Tylan rolled with Marissa in his arms, moving them to a dry spot.

  Exhausted after the marathon session, her eyelids drooped with tiredness, her breathing beginning to slow with the telltale signs of sleep.

  At least I’ll know where I am at when I wake up.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “…thanks for joining us. Our top story of the evening is the mysterious disappearance of the sea creature found nearly seven month ago by the Hearder Institute of Aquatic Studies, one of the largest marine research facilities in the nation and located right here in San Diego.

  “The creature, who has yet to be named or classified, had been the subject of a lot talk since it was discovered off the coast nearly seven months ago. The center has not yet confirmed the disappearance, but Channel Nine has learned the police are already involved trying to solve this baffling crime. Our very own Michelle Tasagi is standing by at the facility with the latest. Michelle, what can you tell us?”

  “Thanks, Jim. I’m standing here in the deserted parking lot of the Hearder Institute, where things tonight are very quiet. But, early today, this reporter heard a story that could have come straight from the X-files…”

  * * * *

  Brian glared at the television screen, the image flashing to a man dressed in a security guard uniform.

  His stomach bubbled, and he knew in the morning he would be sick. Taking another swig of the bitter liquor, he figured being ill was the least of his concerns. Tomorrow he’d be unemployed.

  Alcoholic anger rolled through his mind, and he stood suddenly, tossing his drink at the large 36” television. The glass bounced against the screen, rivulets of thick fluid running down, distorting the image of a Chinese woman holding a long black microphone to the mouth of a guard Brian instantly recognized from the institute payroll.

  “You lil’ fuckin bitch, Marissa,” Brian slurred, shaking his head, staring angrily at the screen.

  Pacing, he wished he could get his hands around the little bitch’s neck.

  That slut had ruined all his plans, made him a laughing stock and joke.

  After a lifetime of clawing, fighting, and sometimes backstabbing his way to the top, he’d been on target to become the youngest director of one of the largest re
search facilities in academia history.

  That is until she came on the scene, Jonathon Nash’s fucking protégé, Marissa Redmond.

  The pussy stepped in, and a couple years later unearthed the find of the century, discovering and locating a brand new species. Brian wanted to strangle her. He should have strangled her. Yet, who knew the weirdo girl with the strange affliction was actually some fabled species, a fucking mermaid, no less.

  Jeeze, she might as well be a unicorn.

  Brian still had a hard time believing it, but having witnessed the proof with his own eyes, he simply couldn’t deny it.

  Now the creature was gone, Marissa was gone, and all his dreams for success had vanished with her. He would be out of a job in less than twenty-four hours. Nash had already been reappointed as director, after his own four-day venture with the title.

  The writing blazed from the walls.

  And considering there was absolutely no proof to substantiate his claims, since Jon, Shannon, and that little pussy Jillian refused to validate what they all knew, he was left in the cold, swinging like a useless dick in the wind.

  Why didn’t I have more people around when I was about shoot that stupid dolphin-thing?

  Shaking his head, Brian glared at the television.

  Marissa, the bitch, had a lot to answer for. He just wished he could find her without the stalwart protector at her side and settle the score.

  Yet, just thinking of Tylan Kamis caused a shiver to run down his spine. Glancing around, fearful and half expecting the tall, blonde man would appear in the middle of his living room, Brian wandered back toward the couch.

  He might want revenge, but he was no fool. He had absolutely no desire to tangle with someone like that, someone with extraordinary, inhuman powers.

  He’d never be able to explain what had happened exactly, but possessing a healthy dose of self-preservation, Brian consigned his loss to one of the few in the “L” category.

  Snarling at the world in general, Brian turned away from his black leather couch, stalking toward the kitchen. He had a half full bottle of ‘56 Cognac and many more glasses in his cupboard. He would drink himself into oblivion.

  I can find another job. I got a damn doctorate!