The image posted here is courtesy of Selina Fenech's website. I hope she doesn't mind the liberty I took in sharing her amazing artwork. If you have never checked out Selena's work, please do yourself a favor and do so. Everything I've ever gotten from her site has been absolutely stunning. She's also fighting breast cancer, and she certainly could use all of our support.
So here's today's excerpt for the "Do you STILL Believe Contest, the rules of which are on my previous post, here. Let me clarify that entrants need to compile their answers for all the excerpts into a single email, sent to starmuse23@gmail.com under the subject line: I still Believe. That means you won't be emailing me before Christmas Eve because I'm a flibberdajibit and no way can I keep up with five answers from everyone whose playing LOL.
I hope you enjoy this little snippet from my novella, Heart Storm, coming to Secrets, Untamed Pleasures next July. I know I sure had fun writing it. :)
The questions for the day:
1) What sort of creature is Sirenia?
2) Why must she coat her body with oil before entering the open sea?
Heart Storm excerpt:
What in Triton’s name was I thinking? Sirenia squinted against a rush of tears. Her impulsive nature had not only led her into trouble again—she’d also managed to indenture herself into a life debt.
To a land-walker, no less!
"Do. Not. Dally," she said. That was the urgent advice Mar-ala had offered earlier, while Sirenia slathered her arms with coconut oil, preparing a barrier against the dehydrating salt of the open waters. "Promise me again, Sirenia, that you will swim an unbroken trail to the Mother’s Mangrove."
She had bristled as soon as Mar-ala spoke. "What could I possibly find in Open Waters more interesting than The Lost Son?" Deep down, she knew her history provided ample evidence to warrant concern. Too often, one impulsive investigation led her to the delighted discovery of another. More than a few times, she arrived home just in time to greet her outbound search party.
Sirenia shuddered, imagining the torment she’d face if she dragged this stray back to Maidenhead. The Elder’s would likely banish her—and her land-walker—to Open Waters as food for the sharks. And they’d be within their rights.
By the time the emerald cap of the Mother Mangrove crept above the horizon, she had devised a hundred reasons why she must take the human right back where she’d found him. "He’ll likely die anyway," she tried, but each new glance at her human inspired a thousand fresh reasons why she must see him to safety.
Hours spent pushing the delirious man in front of her had taken its toll. Her stressed fins burned with exhaustion. Breasts heaving, she gulped against air running thicker than silt. A rushing school of sea jellies hastened past. Their agitated behavior mirrored the anxious prickling of her dorsal fins—all signs that the storm would break sooner than she’d hoped.
Riding out a hurricane was no big deal for a mermaid. Traveling alone, she could simply seek shelter below, in the arching network of prop roots that supported the Mother Mangrove. That’s where she’d been going anyway, to seek the carvings Mar-ala had spoken of—before the land-walker had threatened her plans.
"Saving you, changes everything I might have done." Sirenia lifted her hand from the water, raking it through the curls that clung to the unconscious man’s forehead. Even if she carried him to the deeps with her, sustaining him with breaths from her reservoir lung, he’d not survive long enough to weather the storm. He needed dry land. Shelter. Fresh water and plenty of nurturing. All requiring the one resource she couldn’t afford—time.
"Why now?" Sirenia rolled her pleading stare up to the brooding sky. "If you had to drop a half-dead man into my arms, commit me to his life debt, couldn’t he at least have been merkind?"
Lightening flared, leapfrogging the inky clouds. In its wake, thunder rolled, chasing a colony of gulls inland. The fine hairs at the back of Sirenia’s neck bristled, and dread uncoiled in her gut. She felt that Triton himself was warning her that life debts—even to humans—could never go ignored.
A wailing wind lifted the wet coils of her hair, slapping them against the land-walker’s angular face. The lush fan of his lashes fluttered against prominent cheekbones. Growling, his brows knit above glazed, g olden eyes, creasing his forehead with agony.
"Shush, now," Sirenia said. She smoothed her palm against the human’s cheek. He raged with fever. "We must get you to shelter and soon." Though logic bid her to get moving, concentrate on getting him to safety, her rebellious body vibrated with longing. She wanted to stop, admire, ruffling once more the rich, chestnut waves capping his forehead.
A fresh lightening bolt ignited the clouds, blazing a trail deep within the mangrove. The foreboding thunder that followed renewed Sirenia’s sense of urgency, but such overt expression of Triton’s will did nothing to help her sprout the legs she’d need to navigate the mangrove—with her delirious land-walker in tow. She’d have to pause, invite her change to visit here—in full view of any predators that might lurk nearby.
Sweeping her fins deep, she puffed out a sigh when they rasped against the sandy sea-bottom. They’d reached the shallows. If she hurried, she might yet get the human to shore before she fell blinded to reason by passion-swell.
Drawing a deep breath, she closed her eyes, preparing to release herself from the water’s call. Lower body thrumming with sensation, her change crept upon her. Barely able to move as fin and scale relinquished to flesh and bone, she curled the human’s hand into her own so that the swirling rip currents would not drag him away.
The Lost Son should be half so beautiful, she thought, trolling her gaze along the muscled planes of the sleeping man Triton had seen fit to drop into her arms.
Dipping her eyes to his beautiful man parts, her fist curled, and then clenched against the desire to touch him there. Breath catching in her throat, her ovaries began to thrum with the taut, aching need to mate—and soon.
