Whirlpool

Pressing save, I made sure the edits uploaded to the cloud, then picked up the phone. "Janie, I've finished the initial write up. Can you have a look and add anything you think needs to be done and get back to me?" Hanging up on her voicemail, I sat back and stretched. Knowing Janie, she'd be out partying.

As my arms stretched back over the top of my desk chair, the sweeping caress of a heated gaze flowed straight over my face and lingered on my breasts. Jolting straight, I turned in my chair enough to see Prince Bolt loitering by my open French doors. Stepping through the gauze curtains, Bolt invaded the privacy of my bedroom. Nary was going to rip his barnacle off.

"Forgive me, I know you are not allowed to talk to me, and that I shouldn't be in here, I just needed to tell you, King Kai got your message."

My eyes widened and I had to firm my lips together to prevent questions blurting from my tongue. Bolt took my silence as permission to continue.

"Your locket, it hit me in the head. I was swimming beneath the ship you were on when you threw it, so I received your message. I wanted you to know, I delivered it to King Kai, and after admiring the photos inside, he placed the locket with the others you have sent him."

Taking in his words, I turned further in my chair till I was straight on with the Prince. Smiling in my peripheral, Bolt shook his head. "That's not why I told your mother I was here. It was your message I delivered, it is you I give the assurance he has received it."

All these years, my father had received and kept my messages and photos. Maybe he did care?

"I saw you on the ship. Your beauty captivated me. I came here purely to meet you. I didn't expect your mother to to be a queen, or for you to be a princess constrained to traditions. It's heartening to know that those who left because of my mother's impudence, have found a home and a network of support via your mother.

"My guard are all waiting down the beach. Having used the afternoon to rest, now we will travel home. My initial objective failed on this trip, but, I think I am satisfied it was a success still because I got to meet one of the most enchanting maids I have ever laid eyes on."

Taking another step closer, Bolt smiled. "The rules say you can't talk to me. There is nothing forbidding us to look at each other. Could I request a moment of gazing on your beauty entirely before I leave?"

Frowning, not sure if that was code for seeing me naked, I stood up and lifted my face to meet his. Our eyes met, his violet gaze striated with emerald. Not a pure bred Indigo like I'd first assumed.

As his vision locked with the cobalt and ice blue of my irises, my dream of intimacy hit me like a punch to the stomach. An involuntary sound of impact came from my chest as I bent over a little, but I couldn't break our connection, so I noticed the Prince was equally affected.

Eyes wide, breath short in his chest, Bolt took a step closer countering my subconscious retreat. His hands cupped my cheeks, then his mouth was on mine breathing the sun into the cold core of my being. Stepping into his warmth, our skin met, exchanged heat, pressed together, our hands pulling us closer between caresses of each other's form. My eyes popped open when Bolt grabbed my arse in his hand, fingers slipping beneath my bikini bottoms, and yanked me tight against his swollen bull horn.

Shoving him away from me was the hardest thing I'd done so far in my life. Normally, disengaging was easy, the lack of feeling, of desire, made it easy for me to walk away from a horny Mer, but not this prince. My body cried out to feel his hardness, his heat, to rub against his barnacle.

"My apologies," Bolt choked, his breathing still affected like mine. "You don't even have permission to speak to me and I touched you like a lover. Forgive me?" His words were right, his gaze said he wanted to rip the small material covering my bits from me and impale me to the hilt.

Grabbing a shirt from my bed, I quickly pulled it over my head and covered my body. Looking away, Bolt backed up towards my door, a curse beneath his breath as he grabbed his horn through the material of his pants and squeezed it hard. The action highlighted just how big a bull the prince was compared to other Mer I'd met. "Forgive me." With a bow of his head, he stepped out my doors.

Taking one step after him, I broke protocol. "Thank you." The prince halted. He gave another bow of his head, then he strode around the lagoon towards the beach. Was I really letting the first Mer to ignite my passion walk away from me because of tradition?

Yes, I was. His family were the reason my mother lived in exile. The reason I didn't know my family. He was the son of the most hated maid in the oceans. My parents would never accept him as my husband, but did that mean I couldn't polish my pearl on his barnacle? Yeah, it probably did. Especially with him being so far away.

"Shadow, dinner is ready."

Taking a deep breath, I checked my reflection, pulled on a flare skirt, and made my way to the central part of the house where the lounge and kitchen were located. "Hey, how did it go with the prince? Is he exiled?"

"No, he's trying to mend his mother's wrongs. He's on his way home from petitioning for your father's support."

"Is he planning a coo?"

"No, the prince is much more a long term planner than that. He is petitioning that when his father passes the throne to him, that we will support a meeting of treaty to reunite the oceans."

"Clever, but after all this time, would the clans be interested in paying homage to an ultimate king again?"

"A king of kings, yes. The reason the King of Ocean was clanless was to settle disputes between clans. To make unbiased judgments at a level above the clan king. We need that. So, yes, I think the clans will support the unity. What we will be wary of is that Bolt was raised by his mother, and her deceptive ways may have been bred into his bones. Blood you can drain, but a Mer is nothing without his bone."

Gawping, I threw a lettuce leaf at Nary. "Mother."

With a wink, she ate the lettuce leaf, then continued eating her dinner of a chicken Caesar salad. After living in Antartica for two years, my diet always swang to land based animals on my return. "What did you think of the prince?" Nary prodded after a few mouthfuls.

"Young, headstrong, rebellious, but smart."

"I asked you to describe Bolt, not yourself."

Ignoring my mother's tease, I continued. "He didn't bring his envoy to approach the house. He left them at the beach to be less threatening and not announce his title at the onset. That was a smart move."

"When he thought he was approaching an exiled maid, yes. Not for coming to see me. That prince came here with the intention of rubbing his barnacle on a clanless maid then setting back home before he even knew if he'd spawned an heir."

"Oh, now you object to some Mer plunging his horn in my depths for fun and pleasure?"

Considering me, Nary's eyes narrowed. "No, I'm not. He would be a good choice for a princess of two clans to find her rapture. Did you think him appealing, Shadow?"

"What I saw of him, I think he could make the average maid swoon."

"But, you are not an average maid."

"No, I'm not. Hence, why I didn't swoon."

"Good. While he may be good for a frolic in the waves, he is not the prince to marry. If he can't prove himself a good king, he will bring an end to the ocean royalty. That is not an anchor you want in your harbour."

"Metaphorically speaking."

The cheek made my mother smirk. "That Mer is the spitting image of his father, except for his hair. I understand the appeal, Shadow. I expect you to honour your clan."

"Meaning?"

"If Bolt returns when I am not here one day, if the temptation to take a swim with him rose, make sure that swim ends on your clan's shore, not on the King's Isle."

"I'm almost surprised you are not encouraging me to find myself with his heir growing in my womb, then you could raise the next king of the ocean instead, and usurp Bolt when Rai returns to foam."

"That is not who we are. I have raised a king already. You take your pleasure where you will and choose the father of your children like we all do, once you are mated. As an Ice Mer, once you find the Mer who thaws your heart, you will not want any other."

"If that's true, why has father never come back to you?"

"He has his duties."

"Don't feed me whale poo mother. He could still visit. You could visit him. You let him leave and you ended things, why?"

Gathering our empty bowls, Nary stood. "One day, you will be hurt enough to say horrible things to the one you love, and you will realise afterwards that those words can never be unsaid. Your father was hurt I refused to live in the ice trenches. His words were shards of ice in my heart, and they cut the tethers of our love till it was set free in the storm of the ocean and lost."

"That doesn't mean it can never float back to harbour."

My mother's violet eyes blinked away the turmoil of the sea. "Nothing lost to the ice ever re-emerges, Shadow. Our love is as lost as the titanic. Let it sit undisturbed in its watery grave." Walking back to the kitchen, mother left the dishes for the housekeeper.

"So he destroyed things with you. What about me? I'm his daughter, and he never came back for me. He took his heir, raised him in a clan, but left me."

"You were a baby. You needed your mother."

"That worked for the first decade of my life, mother. But for the last decade, I have lived in the ice. All those years I have been within easy swim of him and my brother, and they've ignored me. Why? Why wasn't I worth knowing?"

Meeting my mother's gaze, she flinched and looked away.

"Am I not his?"

"What? Of course you are?"

"Then why wouldn't he want to know his daughter?" My voice snapped out, thirty years of abandonment escaping with it.

"Shadow..." My mother's eyes went to the table. Following her line of sight, I saw the water in our glasses and the jug in violent whirlpools.

Getting up from the table, I walked away. Even out by the lagoon my temper was causing a storm in the water. Not as obvious, but if anyone went in right now, they'd struggle to surface again until I'd calmed down. Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I took off running, through the trees, to the beach, then along the sand.

Waves crashed, the ocean reaching towards me, wanting to soothe my hurt. Water rushed up the sand higher than it normally reached during high tide, caressing my ankles, compacting the sand beneath my feet, giving me a better footing for running.

The sun was setting over the trees as I reached the rocks at the end of the beach some kilometres away. Not stopping, I climbed the fallen boulders seeking out the platform that hung over the ocean before the cliffs barricaded the coastline against ocean entry.

Tiptoeing the edge, I stared at the churning sea below, plunging wave after wave into the undersea cave beneath. Like the bodies in my dreams, the ocean flowed into the cave violently, filling it, pounding it, before withdrawing, leaving it empty and yearning, only to repeat the motion on the next flow.

The heat of Bolt's kiss filled my mind, the wondrous feel of his hands on me. A tear escaped knowing I wasn't permitted to feel his desire again. The ocean lurched forward and caught the tear as it fell, a small splash, barely noticeable in the onslaught of the sea's passion for the earth, then it carried it away.

Teetering on the edge, I watched the waves below. As the next surge rushed towards the cliffs, I weighted forward and let myself dive. The cold power of the sea caught me and carried me away in it's passion, plunging me into the visible darkness of the cave, heaving me up onto the shelf above where the water stopped its intrusion at low tide.

Gaining my feet, I walked deeper into the cave where the cascade of overflow filled an underground pool. Dropping into it, I sank to the bottom and released my heartache to the trapped ocean water. At high tide, the ocean would smother the cave and refresh this pool, leaving it clean again. For now, it contained the turmoil of my emotions from others.