Fathom: Depth Charges

The crisis was averted, but the tension had only increased. Vana was dead—her plot to resurrect her son Taras by sacrificing Cannon Hawke thwarted—which left a grateful Hawke alone on his luxurious yacht with his three beautiful rescuers.

Sara Pezzini stood on the bow, resting her weight on a safety railing and looking out at the lovely ocean, so far from home. She had stripped out of the heavy clothing that had given her so much warmth in the Arctic Circle, now wearing only her tanktop and her boxers, with a borrowed sarong giving her some modesty.

The air was balmy and warm, the dipping sun giving off just the right amount of light for the dappled clouds in the sky, and the waters were calm, their endless shades of green and blue shedding a calm ambiance over the boat that Sara didn’t quite feel.

She was a detective. She knew people. All of them, all four of the people she’d been forced together with, were clearly used to life and death crises. But this tangled web of sexual desire, subtle as it was—Sara doubted any of them had much experience with navigating it. They’d either shied away from such things or barreled straight into them to take what they wanted. Lara was the latter. Aspen struck her as the former. And Sara had done both, depending on the point in her life and how much alcohol she’d imbibed.

So here they were. Sara was hardly innocent. She had a thing with Lara, but it was casual—until it wasn’t. After all, she had risked life and limb to save Lara, or at least prevent Lara from being too heavily maimed while she got herself into trouble. But Lara had a thing with Hawke as well; that was perfectly clear. Was it serious? Were they exclusive?

And then there was Aspen. At least she hadn’t slept with Lara—not yet, at any rate. And she had some kind of bond with Hawke. Normally, Sara would judge that they were attracted to each other—unresolved sexual tension—but despite their looks, their very good looks, neither of them was even human. So she couldn’t rightly say. The only way things could get more complicated was if she wanted to sleep with Aspen.

“Sara?”

Sara turned: there was Aspen and she was absolutely naked, wearing only her necklace. But to preserve her modesty, she had shifted her chest and her groin—from her lower belly to her inner thighs—into water. The clear liquid was sculpted into the precise dimensions of her nude body, continuing the exquisite lines of her bare belly and long, slender legs—all of her flesh taut and toned, both athletic and sensual, belonging in a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue back when they had actual athletes.

The fact that her mons, her breasts, even her nipples were made of translucent water should’ve given Sara a moment of creepy pause, but instead it sucked her in. She wasn’t embarrassed or flustered by Sara’s nudity, she found herself staring at the sheer elegance of her physique—some neurochemical reaction in her brain not firing to tell her she was gazing at a naked woman, that there was anything untoward about how she admired Aspen.

Aspen grinned, seeming to take a definite measure of enjoyment in how Sara was admiring her—stunned by her. Sara didn’t know if the woman was simply pleased that her showing off had had the desired effect or…

“Yes… Aspen?” Sara asked at length, trying to look away from this modestly immodest ‘bikini’ of Aspen’s, even while its sheer strangeness demanded her eyes.

“I’m going for a swim. No need to worry about me, but I probably won’t be back for a while.”

“That’s fine,” Sara nodded, still feeling numb. Lara would’ve had a dry quip on hand—she felt as though she were in the middle of foreplay. “I’ll tell the others.”

“Yes, please. If they ask; you don’t have to bother them. I wouldn’t want to get in the middle of Lara and Hawke’s thing.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Sara asked, before flushing bright red. She’d gotten so engaged in controlling her eyes—or not controlling them—that she’d forgotten entirely to watch her mouth.

Aspen’s reaction was adorable; ducking her head to hide a blindingly bright smile, red standing out on her cheeks. “Questions like that are why I need to cool off. Would you like to come?”

“Come?” Sara repeated blandly, now feeling absolutely blindsided. Had Aspen just…?

“Swimming with me. Look at the water. You can’t tell me you don’t wanna dive right in.”

Sara gulped. Her throat was dry. She wanted to drink a tall glass of water… and she wondered if Aspen’s water had salt in it or not. “I’d better not… I just ate a few minutes ago.”

“Oh, did Lara feed you?”

Sara felt another pang of arousal—a pulse of actual physical pleasure—flutter through her womanhood. It wasn’t her doing it; not just her. She felt the hand… or at least a tendril… of the Witchblade at work.

The horny little deviant would just love to see her with Aspen; she’d whetted its appetite by letting it push her towards lesbian experimentation with Lara, and now with Aspen flouncing around, looking the way she did... And even Hawke, tall, dark, and handsome, with broad shoulders and a chiseled musculature that stayed rigid on every inch of flesh Sara could see. She knew the Witchblade was male, but she could still feel its jittering, pressuring spikes of desire when she was near him.

Sara wondered if Hawke, with his tall, muscular physique and obvious endowment, was the kind of man the Witchblade wouldn’t mind seeing her mate with. She knew enough about men to know they were into more than lesbianism when it came to their viewing pleasure—that they enjoyed watching a certain kind of men pound a willing partner into screaming ecstasy. Maybe, with his overt physicality, Cannon Hawke appealed to some kind of cucking fetish the Witchblade had.

“Feed me?” Sara asked, trying to ignore how the Witchblade pulsed with heat at her wrist, stroked the skin under her clothes with its metallic tendrils, and bombarded her mind with images of lust and need, desire and debauchery. Many of which had actually happened—Sara couldn’t pretend she wouldn’t enjoy that kind of depravity when she and Lara had practically gotten themselves addicted to it, when she still remembered how good it felt to share the Witchblade and be shared by it…

“Her cooking. I thought she was going to make dinner. Maybe she hasn’t started on it yet…”

And Sara followed Aspen’s eyes to where Lara was stepping out of the pilothouse. Lara made the two of them look like schoolmarms—she wore only a sky-blue set of bikini bottoms. Sara was stunned by Lara’s body, as she always was. Long and lean, slabs of muscle and coarse scars doing nothing to detract from her ample femininity.

Lara wasn’t shy about either; her bottoms were just a brushstroke of blue over her pubis, between her plump buttocks, and she showed off her full breasts as if justly proud of them. Her long auburn hair was set into a braid, twitching behind her just like her cleavage jiggled, like the muscles under her creamy skin rippled with every supple step. Lara knew how to show herself off, and Sara didn’t know if Lara was courting her gaze or simply expected to have it… preened to give Sara something to look at.

“Blimey,” she chirped, giving Aspen a look over her round sunglasses. If Sara was unable to look away from Aspen’s breasts, Lara did not even try. “I’ve heard about saline implants, but don’t you think that’s going a touch overboard, love?”

“Don’t you think you’re going a little far in avoiding tanlines, ‘love’?” Aspen replied.

“Not hardly,” Lara said, cocking her hip. “It is just us girls, after all.” She gave Sara a look. “Nothing we haven’t seen before, I’d say.”

Sara flushed so hard, her ears burned hotter than her mound.

“What about Cannon?” Aspen asked.

“Oh, is he about? I haven’t looked.”

“Suuure you haven’t,” Aspen replied. She turned her head to Sara. “Let me know if you change your mind, officer.”

With perfect form, she dove into the water, not so much splashing into the surface as merging with it. Sara saw a sort of silhouette, a suggestion of her form adhering together inside the rolling waves, then she was gone. Except for the glint of her medallion, still being buffeted around… even as water, Sara didn’t think Aspen would let it go.

“Americans,” Lara observed. “Well, Pezzini, shall we?”

“Shall we?” Sara repeated, still a little out of it.

The Witchblade kept on rubbing and massaging and stroking, driving her crazy, and with Lara right there, the visions the Witchblade was giving her of their sordid sex life were more vivid than ever. Sara remembered, with perfect clarity, how it’d felt to push the Witchblade’s tendrils inside of Lara… to let the Witchblade feel the ecstatic pressure inside her, and pass on that sensation to Sara… to feel it herself, as the Witchblade probed inside her, fucking the both of them as much as Lara and Sara were fucking each other…

“Tan?” Lara added. “You’ve kept yourself cooped up in those horrid rags for long enough, darling. Why don’t we work on our tans together? I’ll put your tanning oil on if you put on mine…”

Sara’s jaw locked, nearly swallowing her tongue as Lara’s innuendo washed over her. The Witchblade kept tingling all over her skin, so energetic in its efforts that all the stirring must be visible through her clothes. Was Lara ignoring it… or was that why Lara was hitting on her?

“Hawke might see us,” Sara demurred.

“All the more reason to,” Lara purred. “I’ve noticed you looking at him. Take it from me, it’s a good bit of fun to have him for an admirer…”

“I… I… I have to use the head.”

Lara’s eyebrows raised. “I suppose it’s best you do it before our little water nymph comes back. She may take it personally.”

Lara watched her go, then spread out her towel on the gleaming white hull of the yacht and laid down on it. She unstitched the sides of her bottoms, sweeping the laces between her buttocks to keep them out of the way of her and the sun. Before she could reach for the tanning oil, though, Hawke’s deep voice resonated, so thick it was almost inside her.

“You should let me attend to that. Seeing as you are my guest.”

Padding her forearms underneath her chin, Lara gave Hawke a look. Normally, she wouldn’t bother, but the man was worth a look. Trite as it was, Lara loved the sight of his thick arms, broad shoulders—even his big hands seemed to spell out voluptuous delights. The same too much is never enough excess that Lara had to admit had made her a sex symbol as well. Though she doubted a man with Hawke’s musculature had to put up with much of the unsavory attention she’d had to deal with.

“Short for houseguest,” Lara commented. “Is that the proper term for when we’re aboard a boat? Perhaps it should be passenger—to signal how you’re giving me a ride.”

“Only a rubdown at the moment.”

Heedless of the fact that she hadn’t actually agreed to it—with that unspoken, bone-deep confidence that wasn’t showy enough to be obnoxious—but was just obnoxious enough to turn Lara on—Hawke collected a bottle of tanning oil and went to kneel at Lara’s side. He knew she would agree to letting him oil her up. The man’s read on Lara was almost annoyingly precise, and he wasn’t polite enough to pretend not to know she wanted his hands on her body.

Somehow, Hawke made even the splatter of the oil into his hand smooth. Then came the brisk, wet sound of his palms rubbing together, smearing the oil between them, and then—Lara was surprised at the simmering sense of anticipation she felt—his hands were on her, big and strong, poring over the supple musculature of her back, enveloping all of her soft skin, somehow avoiding the soreness of stitched up scars and fading bruises without seeming to leave any of her untouched. His fingers, clever despite how big and blunt they were, dug into her knotted muscles and unwound them in deft fits of warmth and pressure. Lara cooed and relaxed into the cushion of her arms, content to allow Hawke to have his way with her—whether the occasion turned to sex or not. She did trust him, after all… either to pleasure her or to simply ensure she didn’t get a sunburn.

“There’s something I must confess,” Hawke said, his quiet voice somehow sounding deeper when it ran down into being a whisper.

Lara worried at her bottom lip with her teeth. “If it’s that you’re having dirty thoughts, I can hardly blame you under the circumstances, mate.”

“Nothing so prosaic,” Hawke said huskily. “You know what Vana was trying to do? What she kidnapped me for?”

Lara let out a single laugh. She didn’t chuckle too much—if she kept her mouth open much longer with his hands working over her lats, she was liable to make an embarrassing sort of noise. “I’ve been at this too long not to keep my exposition straight, love. Yes, she wanted to resurrect her dearly deceased boy in your boy toy body. A touching display of maternal fidelity, though I’d venture she would’ve been better served actually raising him not to be such a murderous psychopath in the first place.”

“Yes. Quite,” Hawke nodded. “But I think it worked to some extent. I felt Taras’s mind—inside of mine. I could touch his memories and he could touch mine. I believe he saw the details of our… encounter.”

“My. How vulgar,” Lara said in a dry voice. “But, seeing as the man is already dead… would you mind relocating those marvelous hands lower? I do enjoy them on my back, but remember you’re getting me ready for a tanning session, not glazing me to go in the oven.”

“Of course,” Hawke agreed, sweeping his hands down to trawl over the backs of Lara’s firm thighs. For now, his fingers only skated along the flanks of Lara’s hips. “It was interesting—in an intellectual way—to see what he made of our coupling. How you responded. What it said about your nature.”

“My dear Cannon, please tell me you’re not treating that thug Taras as your sexual advice column—your own personal agony aunt. I admit, I’ve never met the man, but judging from the pedigree…”

Hawke’s hands wrapped around Lara’s throat, but only to dig his thumbs into the base of her skull, fending off headaches she hadn’t even started to have. “That’s just it, Lara. As perverse as the man is—was—I know you too well to think you’d be totally uninterested,” he said leadingly.