Awakening, Page 3

  There was also meat on his plate of some sort, cooked meat. I didn’t know how I felt about that, but he didn’t offer me any. Perhaps because I’d already had fish. When we were both satisfied, he scooped me up out of the water and took me to his chambers again.

  A nervous flutter started low in my stomach, right above my fin, as we entered his room. He laid down a type of absorbent cloth he called a bath towel on the bed and used it to dry me so I wouldn’t get the bed wet with seawater.

  The quick heartbeat started again as he settled in next to me, his hand starting that gentle stroking, the touches that were starting to feel nice and welcome. Especially after he’d shared his breakfast with me.

  I let out a soft sigh as the pads of his fingertips brushed over my nipple. He kept touching and stroking until they were hardened points. The effect was accompanied by the twitch again, and as he smiled at me, it turned into a flicker and then the beginnings of a flame.

  A moment later the door opened, and a portly older woman walked in, smothering the flame. “Master Kyros, I was wondering if you wanted the new linens in the closet or in here.” She looked up from the folded bundle in her arms. “Oh, excuse me, sir, I do apologize. I’ll come back another time.”

  “Leave the linens on the chair,” Kyros said, not taking his eyes from me.

  He was unfazed by his own nudity, even in the presence of this disapproving matronly woman. I, on the other hand, had developed an extreme case of modesty. The look of distaste the woman gave me, as if I were something dirty and wrong, had me rushing to cover myself, but Kyros gripped my wrist, stopping me.

  The servant put the linens down, then sort of … lingered.

  “That will be all, Estella.”

  She flushed and left us alone, shutting the door behind her. Kyros got up and locked the door, an act for which I was deeply grateful. My misgivings must have shown on my face, because he said, “Don’t worry about her. She’s just an old woman who doesn’t remember what it’s like. Or else she’s merely jealous her time has passed.”

  He went back to the stroking and gentle caresses. Then his mouth was on mine, a full-on assault as if he would accept nothing but my utter surrender. I whimpered against him, returning the kiss with equal intensity. I’m not sure if this intensity I gave him was my own fear manifesting as an action I could take to appease him, or if there was something new growing inside me. A new curiosity and hunger.

  After a while of this, he pulled away and lay back on the bed. Without a word, he guided my hands over his body, making me stroke the hard planes of his chest, the musculature of his arms, his face, his eyelids, his hair, his thighs, and finally what was between his legs. When I first touched it, my instinct was to pull back. It stood erect and hard, but the skin was so soft, softer than anything I’d ever felt.

  He helped me close my hand around it and guided me to pump up and down. I blushed, because I knew what I was doing was something deeply intimate and a simulation of the sex act, but I was so fascinated by the whole thing that I kept going, not listening to the twitch and flicker as it started again, not realizing that each moment in an intimate embrace with Kyros moved me that much closer to becoming truly his.

  He urged me on harder and harder until finally something happened. It was like an explosion. I couldn’t hear it, except for the low, masculine groan, but I could see it as something shot out of him, coming to rest on his stomach. Then that frightening and fascinating part of him went limp, as if it were tired.

  While he seemed to be satisfied, I was far from it. I had a new need forming that I didn’t have a word for. It felt like being itchy on the inside with no way to reach it to satisfy the feeling. It was uncomfortable and scary, and I wished I understood humanity more, because it made me feel lonely.

  His lids dropped a little, a smile spreading across his face, his features relaxed. Then he ran a finger through the liquid on his stomach and brought it to my lips.

  “Taste me, Nerina.”

  His intensity scared me, but the command made my skin heat up. I tried to imagine one of my kind asking me to do something so intimate. Even if they had the right equipment, I couldn’t fathom such an exchange ever happening. I couldn’t even imagine being fed by a male, or holding hands.

  But for Kyros, this request was as natural as breathing. I inched closer, wondering if just tasting him could somehow put out the flame burning through me. I closed my mouth around his finger and sucked the liquid off. Salty. Primal. It was like the sea. Somewhere deep in my mind, I knew he could be my new ocean.

  It was a heady and terrifying thought, that one person could loom so large and be so much to me. I didn’t want to accept its truth.

  He gently grasped the back of my neck, urging me forward to lick it straight off his stomach. As my tongue ran over him, he massaged my neck and played with my hair. Something about the twitch changed until it became a deep throb. I felt as if my fin were electrified. The pulsing feeling was too frightening, too much. I pulled away.

  “No, please, Master.”

  His eyes narrowed, disapproval creasing his brow, and I knew he must be thinking about punishing me, but in the end he merely used the towel I’d been reclining on to wipe his stomach clean.

  “All right, Nerina. I’ll slow down. But you can’t have your own pleasure until you surrender to me.”

  He nestled me against him and rubbed my back for a little while, then took me to the pool.

  A few weeks passed like this, and I knew he was growing impatient. At night my dreams became longer and more vivid. In the dreams, when he took me, I could feel that throb start again. Every time, I woke up before anything happened, before I could find out how that throb ended and what it became.

  He spent endless amounts of time stroking me, kissing me, nibbling on my neck, suckling my breasts, having me touch and stroke him. Each time the feelings that had started to grow got stronger, scarier. They felt like a violent storm brewing inside me, like a disaster poised and ready to strike.

  At each meal he fed me from his plate, his fingers lingering in my mouth so I could suck off the juices from the food, whether it was fruit or meat. Slowly, live fish became distasteful to me. Soon I was eating meat like him and drinking wine.

  The wine made my head a little fuzzy, made me braver. It made me crave him inside me. Such a weird thing to crave. I only understood the concept on the most basic level. If you drew me a diagram I would have gotten it, but only as a theoretical principle. Not as a living reality.

  I knew he was plying me with alcohol to speed the process, to turn me into something he could take his full pleasure inside.

  One night, a little drunk, I lay in his bed while the servants drained and refilled the pool with fresh seawater. He started touching and stroking me.

  “Master?”

  “Yes, Nerina?”

  “If the legend isn’t real, are you going to kill me?” It was the thought that lurked deep inside me, always driving a little buzz of anxiety, making me try to please him a little more to hold off my fate.

  He waited a long time before answering, his voice distant and sad when he finally did. “No. I’ll give it a little more time, and then I’ll return you to your home. Maybe you belong out there. Perhaps it was foolish to think you could ever be mine in that way.”

  Home. Why did that thought not fill me with hope and happiness? Why was it that the only thing I could think about at that pronouncement was never seeing his beautiful face again? Of never being touched again?

  Although the change he’d hoped for hadn’t come to pass, I’d grown accustomed to hands on my body, to warm, close cuddles, to kisses, to passion. I’d tasted the lips of another living being, and he had, in return, tasted mine. To go from that intimacy to the ocean seemed cold and wrong.

  “You wouldn’t keep me?” There was a small catch in my voice when I asked. I wondered if I might plead with him to keep me as a pet.

  “If I can’t make your body want mine, there seems n
o point. Why torture ourselves with this incompleteness? It would only breed resentment in both of us.”

  A tear trailed down the side of my face. I missed my family and the ocean, but I didn’t want him to give up on me and toss me aside. Was that the only value I held for him? As some sexual toy? Could he not find something else to enjoy about me? But I knew I was being irrational. When you desire someone so much and you can’t truly have them, everything else feels like a meaningless void.

  He kissed the tears off my face and gave me another glass of wine. I drank it down to make the fuzzy feeling more pronounced, to feel warm when I was starting to grow cold.

  His cock was hard and erect. Even thinking of that word for his anatomy felt so carnal. It was a carnality that a part of me had awakened to, but the rest still refused to accept could be part of my life.

  This time, he shook his head when I tentatively moved to wrap my hand around him. “No. Use your mouth this time.”

  I’d known this was coming and was surprised he hadn’t demanded it sooner. Each day in his room, I’d expected him to take advantage of the one warm orifice he had access to. His self-control had only heightened my anxiety as the threat loomed larger.

  Now his command started the twitch and flicker and flame. My heart beat faster. I did want him. I knew if enough time passed between us that eventually his pronouncement about seducing me, of winning, would come true.

  But there was always the part of me I held back because I was trying to stay in both worlds at once. I knew that wasn’t possible, and that I had to pick. Even though I was beginning to dread the cold fingers of the sea, imagining his warm, solid fingers in their place ... I still fought against closing the door of choice completely.

  I closed my eyes and took him into my mouth. The new experience felt wicked, but it wasn’t distasteful as I’d feared it might be. The memory of the couple having sex in the sand came unbidden, and I looked past the undignified nature of the act to see something that could be beautiful. A low moan came from my throat as I imagined limbs entangled and that look of surrender on her face.

  The flame grew, and the memory morphed into a fantasy. Now it was me rolling in the sand with Kyros. He continued to stroke me as I licked and kissed and sucked. I felt myself let go and be in the moment. I surrendered, and for that brief minute or so I belonged completely to him. Not just physically stuck on land where I couldn’t get back to my home, but in every cell of my being.

  I didn’t really feel what happened next. It wasn’t painful. It should have been but it wasn’t. Or maybe it was and I’ve just blocked it out now; I’m not sure. But what I remember was the sound. It was like thick cloth ripping. I jerked away and looked down.

  It was happening; there would be no more swimming with my family. He’d held out the hope in front of me, and I’d relaxed, let my guard down. And now my body had decided for me. I watched in fascinated horror as the transformation took over, as my fin ripped down the middle and everything folded and reknitted, like clay being molded into a new design.

  I shut my eyes because I couldn’t watch my scales smooth into skin or the color change to match the top half of me. I buried my face in Kyros’ chest as he held me and told me things were going to be okay. How were they going to be okay? They weren’t ever going to be okay.

  Several minutes passed before the change stopped. His hand cupped below the curvature of my waist, this new body part I had. It felt obscene, so wrongly intimate for him to touch a part of me that even I had never touched.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he said.

  He helped me out of the bed and guided me on the walk to the bathroom. Walk. On land. I was moving on land. My new legs hurt. They were sore and achy, and I hoped that was just because they were new. If he’d let go of my waist, I would have fallen. I could barely propel myself forward as it was. The instinct was for everything below my waist to move as one unit swishing back and forth. This constant separation as one leg moved in front of the other was so disorienting, a wave of dizziness came over me.

  “You’ll get the hang of it,” he said.

  I’d expected to be put in a tub like before, but instead he took me over to a clear box and stood me up. Then water poured over me like rain. I cringed reflexively, waiting for something bad to happen as the freshwater flowed over me, but nothing. No salt. And yet things were fine.

  Kyros braced my hands against the wall and then got in behind me, lathering me up with soap all over. I cried the whole time.

  “Shhhh, Nerina,” he soothed as he moved down to my waist and that new place between my thighs that throbbed every time his rough voice rumbled over me. This place felt like the new epicenter of me.

  He spread my legs and looked at me with new fascination. His thumb stroked over what I instinctively knew was a private area. So weird to feel that way, after being indifferent about my own nudity for so long.

  “I wonder if you’ll grow hair here,” he murmured, more to himself than to me.

  Why would I grow hair there? Did women have hair there? Somehow that idea struck me as very vulgar. But then I’d heard that humans grew hair in odd places. Like under their arms and even on their legs. Merfolk didn’t do that, so maybe I’d stay bare below my waist. I very much hoped so, not only because I didn’t like the idea of hair but because I wanted there to still be something about me that made me the old Nerina. Something that felt like home.

  A moment later his finger prodded at my opening, and then he was pushing it just inside my entrance. I gasped at the feeling, for a moment forgetting about everything I’d given up for this.

  As soon as his finger was moving inside me, my brain started to catalog the new sensations. The twitch, the throb, the flicker, the flame. It was all part of a sexual symphony. I didn’t know how the symphony played for a man, but I knew it built into something amazing, something I might be about to experience.

  I finally understood why women were willing to debase themselves for this. I knew my mother would be absolutely horrified, but I didn’t care. All I cared about was that Kyros didn’t stop touching me. My legs hurt and were weak, still my hips arched reflexively toward him, moving in tandem with his fingers.

  He sat in the clear box, his mouth on the bits of flesh I hadn’t even gotten a good look at because they were so tucked away. And he was there, running his fingers along the folds of skin, followed swiftly by his tongue.

  “Nerina, I’m going to fuck you, but first you’re going to come for me.”

  I felt my face flame over this pronouncement. Never had he used the term fuck with me. It was so coarse, real. He’d been holding something back, something that had previously been too wild for me, that would have had me pulling away from him so that the transformation couldn’t happen.

  Now it occurred to me that with no ocean home to go back to, I was truly dependent on him. Without Kyros, where would I go? What would I eat? How would I survive? I felt desperate now to stay on his good side, which was strange because he’d never shown me his bad side, not really. He’d been so careful with me, and I wondered if that was about to change now that he had what he wanted.

  As his tongue delved inside of me, devouring me like the appetizer I’d feared I’d become, my sexual innocence started to melt away. After all, how much innocence can one really claim with a man’s tongue in her inner sanctum?

  I gripped his shoulders for support. I felt like a jellyfish, my legs all spongy and unable to stand upright without assistance. He was too lost in me to notice.

  I didn’t understand at the time that he was playing with me, teasing me, drawing things out so that it would be better in the end. I thought this was the main event. Imagine my surprise when his tongue swirled over the spot where all the nerve endings came together.

  Sounds started coming out of me that would never have come out of my mouth before: moans, gasps, groans, keening sounds. I wasn’t sure if he was killing me or giving me pleasure. When my first orgasm finally swept over me, I thou
ght I had died for a minute.

  I rode the feeling as I would have ridden the back of a dolphin over the waves. I would never get tired of this or anything he did that would make these sensations happen. I felt like an addict, and I’d only had the first hit. I became lost for a moment thinking of what he could turn me into with this much pent-up desire in me. What would I do to feel this feeling?

  Anything.

  “My naughty little sea nymph,” he whispered against my skin.

  “I’m not a sea nymph anymore,” I said, coming back to myself, remembering the awful finality of what I’d done, what I’d allowed myself to feel with him. I started crying again.

  Kyros shut the water off and carried me back to the bedroom. He wrapped a towel around me and laid me on the bed. His pace was leisurely. He had all the time in the world now.

  He was hard again, and I knew exactly where he wanted to put his cock. A sticky kind of wetness flowed out between my legs. I would have been disgusted by it, but Kyros seemed intrigued and pleased.

  “Tell me you love me, Nerina.”

  I was taken aback by the request. Is this how it worked for humans? I’d always been intrigued by the concept of love. I’d heard about it, but it’s not an emotion my kind can feel. We just aren’t made that way. All of our emotions are more muted. More steady. We don’t experience a lot of extremes, and love is an extreme.

  But I’d been with this man long enough to know that all he wanted from me was my surrender, and although I didn’t feel the feeling, I wanted to give him what would make him happy. So maybe it wasn’t all a lie when the words passed through my lips.

  “I love you, Master.” The utterance tasted like dark chocolate on my tongue, warm, inviting. Sinful, decadent. Words I wished were truer. I’m not sure if he cared that they weren’t true. He only wanted my obedience. He wanted to wring the words from my mouth every day until they hypnotized my mind into submission.