The Tied: Possessive Gods, Book Three Read online

  I don’t trust Ned. How could I? He is a stranger looming from the shadows of what I thought was my personal prison. It is safe to assume that he is a liar. But he has sparked a curiosity in me, and more than that, he has relit the fire of self-belief which was snuffed out when Triton dragged me beneath the waves and denied me the chance to save my world many times over.

  “They adore beauty. They worship it. But they do not respect it,” Ned muses, his words coming in uncanny concert with my thoughts.

  “Who is they?”

  “Most of the they’s you can think of.”

  “Who are you, exactly?”

  He sighs. “I suppose I could be called your animus, if you believed in that sort of thing.”

  “What is that?”

  “The side of you which remains unexpressed. The side which knows its way out of here, and which is riled at the notion of being hidden away down here, while our loved ones die.”

  “Our loved ones?”

  His expression intensifies, and his voice lowers to a rumble. “I am you, Lucy. I am the you that can only exist in complete darkness and total solitude.”

  “You’re a man.”

  “Am I? Or am I merely the representation of all you might imagine to be powerful?”

  I don’t know. This conversation has become confusing. I may have simply gone mad in the solitary darkness. This could all be a figment of my mind…

  “It is a figment of your mind,” he sighs. “I just told you as much. But just because it is imaginary, it doesn’t mean it isn’t also real.”

  “Isn’t that exactly what it means?”

  “No.”

  “And who are you talking to, my sweet princess?”

  The rumble of the ancient ocean rushing against the portal to my prison tells me Triton is back before I hear his voice. Has it already been several hours? Have I been entertained by this nameless stranger all that time?

  I spin about to face him and throw myself into his arms with no small amount of relief.

  “Myself. I think.”

  “I am sorry your solitude weighs on you so much,” Triton says, running his large hand over my hair and looking down at me with a tender expression. “And I am sorry we fought, and that I did not tell you the truth about potency.”

  “It doesn't matter,” I reply. I want to lose myself in this beast of a creature. When I am with him, the voices in my head, even the ones with the audacity to step outside it, fall silent.

  “I missed you,” I admit to him. I know better than to ask him to set me free. It wouldn’t be fair on him or me.

  “I missed you too,” he says. “Undersea is not the same without you.”

  His touch is so tender, his caress so gentle, I almost regret my repeated attempts at escape. Almost. There’s still something bigger than either of us, bigger than our love, going on. Something which calls me.

  Triton kisses me, and I melt further into his embrace. His kiss is everything I love him for. Strong, tantalizing, tender, and always dominant.

  “Have you forgiven me?”

  “For lying to me? No. Of course not. I haven’t forgiven you for lying to me. But I’m losing my mind, and touching you is the only thing that feels real.”

  Triton’s gaze wavers. I wonder if I have made him feel guilty. I hope so. He should feel bad for all he is putting me through.

  “My sweet, suffering princess,” he murmurs, capturing my mouth in another kiss. His lust for me is unceasing, and my need for him is just as powerful. I am becoming unanchored from reality in my captivity.

  Triton’s ties return. I feel them winding around my ankles, making their way in slow circular motions up the length of my leg.

  “What have I done this time?”

  “I like you tied,” he murmurs back.

  I can’t admit it, but I like to be tied too.

  I expect Ned to disappear with Triton here, but he does not. He stays in the shadows, his arms folded over his chest, his smile faintly mocking as I spread my thighs and take the ocean god’s great spear inside my delicate sex.

  With him present, I see myself through external eyes. I see my beauty, but I also see my helplessness, my pain. I see how slim and slight my body is compared to the great power of the ancient god who sheathes himself inside me, and uses me as the vessel for his lust.

  Does Triton love me? Yes. I think he does. But his love is as much of a prison as these walls are. It is a love designed to stop me from being what I truly am. It keeps me from being what the world beyond needs me to be.

  I see how he encompasses me, but I also see how I wrap around him. How his manhood is made potent only when it is inside me. I see the power in being the object of his lust. I give myself to him, and he gives himself to me.

  As we approach climax, there is an exchange of energies, a welling of power which settles in the core of me and then draws itself up and in. He is not taking anything from me. He is giving me his essence. He is filling me. Making me more whole than I was before.

  The red-headed devil is still watching, but he is no longer smirking. He is looking at me with an expression which indicates something far more important: understanding.

  “Don’t leave me,” I whimper to Triton when we are done mingling our fluids. “Take me with you. I promise not to flee again.”

  I know my promises mean nothing to him now. The vows we make with our bodies have become empty. What we just did sated his need for me, but it has changed nothing.

  “I cannot, but I will return soon,” he promises me. “Be patient, Lucy. Do not forget I love you.”

  I can't say it back. Even if it is true.

  9

  Triton

  She’s finally contained. Safe. In my control. At any time, and any place I know where she is.

  I should have done this in the beginning, but I wanted to be civilized. That’s always a mistake when it comes to handling gods and their offspring. I have become accustomed to ruling over Undersea and all those who dwell in it. The merpeople are civilized, but those with divine blood never are.

  I leave my captive princess feeling completely satisfied, but it is not long before my hunger rises again. I am no mortal man. My libido is not based on the simple need to spend my seed and try to breed a female. It is much harder to satisfy. It seeks that which it can almost never have, a divine pleasure of complete joining.

  “You’re back,” she says when I step back into her chamber. She lights the space so brilliantly I can see nothing beyond her glow. Even if there were the most beautiful vista imaginable surrounding her, I would have eyes for nothing but her, Lucy, my beautiful golden goddess kept entirely for my own.

  “I want you,” I tell her, those three words explaining my presence.

  I expect her to be angry, to tell me to leave. I expect to see all the natural imperiousness she has brought to bear, but she does not try to fight me.

  My lips claim hers and she surrenders instantly and perfectly. I realize in that moment that I have finally made Lucy mine. I don’t need my ties anymore, but I’m going to use them anyway. I have them at hand, snaking in their sinuous way, moving with my mind, wrapping about her wrists and her thighs. The charms I have laid on these bindings make them extensions not only of my will, but of my own sense. I can feel it when she tugs against them. I can feel her flesh beneath them, squirming and resisting, and then submitting so beautifully to their will.

  Our connection is made all the more powerful by the fact we are not meant to be engaging in this behavior. I should be keeping her pure and pristine, not entangling her in my lust.

  Soon her body is wrapped securely, her legs spread, her breath coming in those familiar short panting breaths I have come to associate with her pleasure. I have her body wrapped in my ties and her holes wrapped around my cock. Every part of her is mine to enjoy. Lucy writhes beneath me, begging for my body, desperate for my forgiveness, but I will not set her free. Not now. Perhaps not ever. It could be her destiny to remain here, givin
g herself to me in wild orgasm.

  I am not a good god. I was before I claimed her, before her nectar drove me mad and my need to have her for my own overrode all my better impulses. What I am doing now is not what I was asked to do. I was supposed to preserve her and her purity. I was not asked to turn her into a screaming siren begging for thick cock deep inside her.

  She whimpers as my cock slides free of her sex, the puffy outer lips of her pussy so delightfully plump and welcoming, slicked with a viscous desire which clings to them so prettily. The tight little hole beneath calls me. I like to bury myself in both places, claim both crevices, fill her up in two very different ways. While her pussy grips me with muscular inner walls made to milk the rod of man or god, her ass is hotter and tighter, and claiming it is an act of overcoming resistance. One ring, once conquered, brings us both great pleasure.

  Lucy lifts her ass to me, giving me her silent permission to claim her in all ways. I take full advantage. I push myself inside her ass, make that ring stretch for me, make her whimper my name into the sheets she clasps in her fingers. I ravage her with strokes which start slowly and intensify — every thrust harder, faster, deeper, giving her more and more until my lower abdomen is slapping against her, changing the color of her flesh from pale to red.

  Lucy

  I need him. I need the connection his cock brings me, the pleasure which makes my flesh tremble when he completes this dirty, filthy act.

  My wrists are bound to the bed, held snug and tight to the frame. They squeeze from time to time, reminding me that I am held, that I am prisoner, captive. All the things a princess is made to be. There is a fatedness to this predicament I find myself in. I have erased every avenue of pleasure from my life through my actions, every option but this, the carnal use of the ocean god.

  This could be mistaken for giving up, but I am not giving up. I am taking what is mine to take. I am allowing him to fill me with his seed, if not his potency. Instinct tells me this is what I need to do, that my freedom will come through surrender.

  “I love you,” he tells me as he surges deeper inside me, his thick flesh buried in my bowels. “I love you with everything I am.”

  His love is a filthy, carnal, lustful love. It is a love which makes me his possession. When I am caught up in his arms and bound by his ties, I am barely myself. I am a vessel for his need, caught up in his power, my own dear self obliterated in orgasm.

  But it is all temporary. When the pleasure stops, the walls creep closer and my captivity becomes even more apparent, and as lustful as Triton may be, even he cannot keep me climaxing for eternity.

  When we are both sated, I lie in his arms, struggling to gather my thoughts, and for that matter, my memories. There is something about this place which must surely stand outside Okeanus. It does not allow for much understanding of the world beyond. I have to fight to remember where I am, who I am, and why it matters to me to leave.

  “Why so quiet?” Triton asks me the question with a gentle caress.

  “There is nothing left in my head,” I tell him. “You’ve taken it all.”

  I see pain flash across his features. He does not like to hurt me.

  “You’ve hardly been down here any time at all,” he tells me. “A fraction of eternity.”

  “It seems like forever.”

  “Time is relative. But I suppose, from your perspective. Sometimes I forget how young you are,” he murmurs, brushing his fingers over my lips, swollen from his rough kisses. “I have taken much innocence from you, haven’t I.”

  “What do you intend to replace it with?”

  I ask him the question without irony. He is right. He has taken much from me, and every time we are together in this dark place, he takes more. I should probably tell him about the red headed man, but that feels like a secret best kept to myself. If Ned is my ticket out of this place, I will not turn him in before I have a chance to use it.

  “One day, I may give you my potency. We might become true mates. Progenitors of new life.”

  He may. One day.

  But he may also not, and in the meantime he will continue to tie me up and ravage me as much as he pleases. My body aches from his attentions. I bear the marks of his lust and remnants of his bindings on my body and I bear the weight of his possession on my soul.

  I love him.

  I think I have loved him since the night of my eighteenth birthday, when it became clear that we were fated to be together. But I feel a darker side to him now, and part of me wonders even if the war were over, would he free me from this place? Or would he keep me down here, where there are no distractions to keep me from his lust?

  “What about my freedom?”

  “What freedom?”

  The question is a valid one. What freedom have I ever had? I was born into royal captivity, and now I am kept in a different kind. All my divine powers seem to be linked to glowing and being pretty, though I swear I feel something greater inside me. I am the daughter of the sun, Helios, and my other father, Ragnar tends Yggdrasil and keeps the dragons at bay. There has to be more to me than being an object of desire, but if there is nobody sees it and I am starting to lose faith myself.

  “My innocence,” I say. “It should be replaced with experience. With the scars and wounds of life.”

  Triton scowls at the words. “I do not want to see you wounded, or hurt in any way. I want to keep you precious and perfect.”

  “You want to preserve me, like a doll. Never let anything happen to me besides what you want to do with your ties and your cock and your…”

  My words are cut off as one of his ties moves across my mouth, gagging me. Triton does not want to hear my words. It is my body. The shell of me. I wish I were like the crabs I saw in Undersea, the ones capable of shedding their shells and going and finding new shells which fit them better.

  My pain comes from not fitting inside myself.

  “One day, this will be a memory,” Triton tells me. “Perhaps even a fond one.”

  “If you keep me down here forever, it won’t be a memory. Every day is the same as the one before it. There are no days. Just this over and over again.”

  “Some would give anything to have one perfect moment over and over again.”

  There is something sad in his voice, a longing wistfulness which makes me wonder if these moments in the dark might be his perfect moment.

  He is my captor, my protector, and my lover. I do not know which of those three things he is first and foremost. He is all of them combined, and I think I love him for all of them.

  But I know in my gut that what makes him happy keeps me small, and that I will not stay down here forever. I am a seed, planted in the dark, watered with his essence. He may be denying me his potency, but I have my own potency. And it will not be denied.

  10

  Lucy

  “Bad day?”

  “Go away. I don’t trust you.”

  The redhead is back. He comes and he goes of his own accord. He tells me that I can be free if I will listen to him, but I am tired of listening to gods with secret agendas, even if, maybe even especially if, those gods are me.

  “You don’t trust me, but you like to talk to me,” he says, leaning against the wall with an easy smile.

  “You were watching again, weren’t you. When Triton and I were together?”

  “I have other things to observe besides your little trysts, princess.”

  Of course he was watching. He doesn’t seem inclined to try to seduce me himself. He wants something else from me. I’m not sure what, but I can sense it in his eyes and in his every word. He says he is me. I don’t know if that is true. I also don’t know that it is not true.

  He is my only company. He is some part of me, split off from myself and made separate. He watches. He hints at what could be, but he never tells me specifically what to do.

  Triton has gone, and once again I am left behind in the dark, to suffer until he comes for me once more. I feel so many things. Sadness.
Loss. But mostly, anger.

  “You can leave any time you please.”

  “You say that, but what’s the proof?”

  “The proof is in the eating. You just need the courage to take the step.”

  “You think I don’t have courage?”

  “I think you have laid down in the dark and let this happen to you.”

  “What choice do I have, Ned?”

  He gives me a dour look. “Literally the choice I’m giving you.”

  “I feel like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “There are untold fathoms of things I am not telling you,” he smiles. “All you truly need to know is this: there is a way out.”

  I sit and I think. Pondering what leaving might mean. I could lose Triton, perhaps forever. He might not forgive me for making another escape. He might give up on me completely. Or, his worst fear could come true.

  “I could be hurt.”

  “Oh, you very likely will be,” Ned smiles broadly. “There’s a war going on out there, a brutal, bloody thing that will not end until it has taken all it must take.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “What does it sound like I’m saying?”

  “It almost sounds as though you’re trying to tell me that I need to be involved. Maybe even that the war cannot end until I make my appearance.”

  “I could be saying that,” Ned muses. “There’s really no way to tell.”

  “You’re an asshole,” I sigh.

  He smiles merrily, unconcerned by my concerns, or by the real promise of death. We have had this conversation many times before, and it always ends the same way. Triton returns, his lust is purged and I am left alone.

  I am trapped in more than a dungeon. I am trapped in a loop of thought and deed, and there is only one way to break it.

  “Fine.”