Mistress of Siren Cove

Chapter 8: Seeing Andrew Again

Elysia's return to the island, after a month in the United States, was emotionally difficult. As time went on, she had gotten used to being back in Chicago, visiting her adoptive parents, showing Antoinette all the places she knew, and eating all kinds of ethnic food. It was like a vacation, except for all the legal hassles.

Returning to the island meant reentering a world where she was a novice. She did not know what was expected of her, and she knew very little about the activities in which either the Mistress or the other island women were engaged. She had only hints of these activities, from Antoinette, about sirens controlling men around the world. The purpose of these activities, according to Annie, was to quell the violent and aggressive tendencies of men, which harmed others as men vied for supremacy.

Still, she wanted to come back. She had spent only a short time with her mother before being packed off to Chicago to settle Andrew's estate and save his fortune for him. She wanted to see her mother again, have long talks with her, let her know what she was like, and tell her all the other things a daughter wants a mother to know.

Perhaps, most of all, she wanted to see Andrew. She missed this handsome husband of hers. She knew he had been regularly sleeping with the siren women on the island, and although she did not like it, she had given him permission to do so. She gave him leave to sleep with them because she knew he did not have the strength to resist their magical charms, and as long as he thought she approved, he would not have to walk around feeling guilty. She accepted that this was the way of the island. The women did what was natural to them. She knew that they were like wild things who instinctively preyed on men who had no natural defenses. The fact that, once seduced, men could experience the most exquisite pleasure imaginable, did not change the huntress/prey relationship.

Elysia was only beginning to know what she was. She had only one experience of taking a man and using her powers to bind him, and her prey in that case was a poor specimen, Andrew's brother. But as she thought of it, the capture and entrapment had been sweet. She had used her power, which she believed was so far mostly untapped, and she wanted more. Antoinette told her of women who controlled powerful men, and after her first experience of bending a man to her will, she had begun imagining how it would feel to control a truly worthy man, a powerful man.

But she did not want to try to control Andrew. On this island, she knew she could not keep him to herself with so many sirens casting their nets for him. At most, she could take him to her bed and enjoy him. If she could enjoy him now and then, maybe that would be enough for her.

She had a lingering question, however. It was one that kept bothering her all the time she was in Chicago. Did he love her? In the past, he had told her that he did, many times, and she believed him. This was before she knew of her gift (or curse?). A man will believe he loves a siren who has entrapped him, but that may be only the working of the power. Andrew might have believed that he loved many of the women of the island that he had lain with. He might truly have felt love for them.

Elysia wanted to know whether Andrew truly loved her, or whether he was only responding to her gift. She made no conscious effort to entrap or bind him as she did with his brother. But given her initial attraction to him on their first meeting, her ability may have spread a net to capture him all by itself.

She was going to try to find out the truth of his feelings for her when they were together again. She guessed what she would learn, though, and this saddened her. Still, she eagerly looked forward to the pleasure he would give her. During her sojourn in Chicago, she could have taken pleasure from many men, who she could easily have attracted with her power, but she did not feel comfortable pursuing men while she was so involved in legal matters. She came back to the island, therefore, hungry for what she had missed.