Awakening (2 page)

“That’s true. But I want you to say it. I want to hear you call me Master.”

Humans were so odd. It didn’t really matter to me what he wanted to be called. I was too innocent still to understand what he was really asking for, the pact he was extracting from me. Merfolk are pragmatic. We just don’t think in layers like people do.

“Master,” I said. It was no scales off my fin whatever he wanted to be called. I would call him lord of the hazy red clouds if he’d let me swim.

He smiled his dark smile and scooped me up as if I weighed nothing. I thought he was going to take me to the sea because he’d said I could swim, but of course that was silly. It must have been the water loss that was making me think that way. He obviously intended to keep me, and if my fin hit the ocean, it wasn’t coming back. No, instead he carried me to another room with a large, indoor pool and dropped me in the water.

As soon as I splashed, I allowed myself to be taken under, to let the water have me. I’d been so dehydrated that I didn’t notice the discomfort at first, but after a few moments, the realization that this wasn’t salt water hit me hard. Soon I was thrashing about, panicking, trying to get to the edge and out of the pool.

I won’t bore you more with mermaid physiology, but just trust me, the salt is necessary for us.

Kyros stood back, watching. He made no move to help, but neither did he stop me from pulling myself from the water. I lay there for a moment, trying to catch my breath.

“You just said water—you didn’t specify what kind,” he said.

I glared at him. For a moment I was too angry to be afraid. Mermaids aren’t just some legend or myth here. We are an everyday fact of life. Like whales or lobsters. He knew I needed salt water. The bastard.

“Why did you do that?” I spluttered, still spitting out the freshwater, which seemed to have some kind of non-natural cleaning agent in it.

“I wanted to make your situation clear to you.”

But it wasn’t clear at all. And it wouldn’t be until I knew what he intended to do with me. I couldn’t bring myself to ask that question because, if by some miracle he wasn’t thinking about it right now, I didn’t want him to start.

Then he said the strangest thing: “I’ll be glad when you have legs. There are many things I want to do with you that require them.”

“W-what?” I couldn’t have heard that right. He was speaking nonsense.

“I’m sure you know the legend.”

It seemed everyone believed in the legend but me. I shuddered with revulsion at what that meant. He wanted to have sex with me. That filthy thing monkeys do. For a moment I imagined myself with legs, kneeling on his bed while he thrust into me from behind like I’d seen happen once on the beach. I made a face.

“Oh don’t be that way,” he said, laughing. “Believe me, the pleasure will be worth the small indignities you’ll suffer. In fact, you’ll beg me for it.”

“And what if I don’t?”

His eyes turned dark. “Mermaid fin is a delicacy.”

He went out into the hallway, and I heard him give the servants orders to drain the pool and fill it with water from the ocean. I was still processing his words when he returned, picked me up, and carried me back to his room. He laid me out on his bed and began to undress.

I couldn’t think of anything to say now; my mind was too big of a jumble. I felt as if my fate was sealed. Whatever fantasies he had of how we were going to be together, I just couldn’t see it happening.

It wasn’t that he was an ugly man. Aesthetically, he was as pleasing as the most attractive males of my kind. But mermaids don’t think that way. Sexually, I mean. Beauty is important to us. We like to gaze on pretty things and pretty beings, but that’s all it is. Gazing. Looking, but no touching. We aren’t a touchy-feely race. I didn’t even understand the concept of orgasm in the most abstract fashion. I just knew that when someone was having one, it looked absurd.

Even the very little bit I’d been touched so far was so uncomfortable and strange that it almost burned. The only caress I longed for was the cool, trailing fingers of the ocean. A tear slid down my face and he brushed it away.

I pulled back from the small intimacy. “Please, it’s not real. The legend. It’s just a story. Just a scare story they tell us to keep us from swimming out to the shore. You can’t turn me into one of you. It’s not possible. Please take me back to the sea.”

He pinched my nipple hard. “Please, Master,” he corrected.

I cried out at the contact and said it the way he wanted me to. But it didn’t do any good. He wasn’t taking me back home.

Kyros was naked now, and I had to admire the aesthetic wonder of the male human form. When it wasn’t rutting like a pig, that is. I was fascinated by such things as legs and feet and the part of him that protruded out from his body with two round bits of flesh underneath it.

I knew what men did with that thing. I was comforted, at least, that I didn’t have the right parts for the sex act. How long that would remain a benefit rather than life threatening, I wasn’t sure. The more I looked like a fish to him, the more I looked like food. If I could make my body go along with his plans, I would. Having part of him inside me was far less upsetting than being on an appetizer tray. Like I said, we merfolk are a pragmatic sort. We go with the lesser evil.

Still, I regarded him with wide, frightened eyes because I knew I’d never be what he wanted me to be.

He slid under the covers and ran his fingers through my hair. “Don’t fret, my little sea nymph, I can be patient. Your body will surrender to me and transform to my will in time.”

For the tiniest fraction of a moment I believed him because I felt something when he said those words. Something inside me that twitched an almost imperceptible amount. But then it was gone as quickly as it had come, and I thought I’d imagined it. Or maybe it was just fear.

His fingers traveled across my body, over my face, my arms, my belly, and my hip where it flared into aquamarine fin. He stroked over the fin, all the way to the tail—only the way he touched me wasn’t like food, like the fishermen. It was like something else.

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, trying to assimilate the feel of flesh against flesh. It was strange, disconcerting, uncomfortable. Not completely unpleasant. But it wasn’t anything that was going to make me turn human, not even if the legend were true.

Then his hands went to my breasts, the one area he’d skipped over in his calm exploration of his prize. He stroked them for a moment, and my face heated. For the first time, I felt embarrassment over my breasts being exposed, because the way he was touching them let me know that every other male who had seen them had wanted to touch them in this way, too. It was too personal and intimate. It made me long for clothing to cover up, to hide.

A few moments of this touching passed, and then his mouth descended on me, suckling at my nipple. I’d had no young so I’d never had a mouth latched onto my breast like that. I was quite sure other mermaids didn’t experience what I was now experiencing. There was that light, internal twitch again. It flared into a small, steady flame and drew a gasp from me. Then it flickered out like a ghost.

His voice murmured and reverberated against my flesh. “I’ve always wanted a woman I could build from the ground up. I’ve thought about turning one of your kind for a long time now. I couldn’t believe my luck when you washed ashore. This is my best birthday.”

He sounded almost kind when he said it, and I wanted to believe him. The party must have been a celebration of his birth, and I was the unexpected gift that had come in with the tide, wrapped in black netting.

It occurred to me that maybe he’d never wanted to dine on mermaid fin. Perhaps it was all bluster and show. I’d heard that about human males. The seagulls liked to gossip, and I always got my fair share of intriguing human information that way.

Kyros laid his head on my chest, holding me against him. Something caused me to reach out to him. I don’t know why, but I ran my fingers through his hair. Some part of me tried to believe that if I could make him care for me, he wouldn’t kill me when I couldn’t respond and change into a human. Maybe he’d care enough to return me to the sea, or if not that, at least not harm me here.

“Master?” I knew it was pointless to address him any other way. And if I wanted something, approaching him with any other word would work against me.

“Yes … ” he paused, at a loss. “What
is
your name, by the way?”

“Nerina.”

“Nerina. I like it.”

I hesitated a moment, then plunged on, my voice quiet, a whisper. “Will you please take me back to the water?”

“When the pool is ready for you, yes. You can sleep there until you don’t need it anymore.”

I didn’t argue. I was always going to need it because I was always going to be a mermaid. His fervent belief wouldn’t change reality.

Time began to hold no meaning as he held me, as if his skin against mine could bring something new inside me to life. Slowly, he ran his hands over me until I began to relax and just let it happen, just feel. Then his lips went everywhere his hands had been. I shuddered as his warm, wet tongue moved up the side of my throat. Then the licking turned to kisses that moved across my jawline to my lips.

His tongue speared inside my mouth, and I jerked away, surprised. Then a dark connection formed in my mind. I might not have all the proper parts for him to get inside me, but his tongue darting in and out of my mouth made me aware of what else he could put in there. I started to struggle.

On land, my fin was a confining bondage, making me feel wrapped tight like a mummy. It had never felt unnatural before, like something that shouldn’t be there. But now all it did was close off my escape even further.

Kyros pulled away, giving me a hard, displeased look that made me wither and sink back against the blankets.

“Don’t resist me. I’m going to mold you into my vessel, and you’re going to thank me for it with obedience.”

Twitch.

The way he spoke was offensive. I’d never been treated in this manner before. It was as if I were a thing to him. A toy or a pet. And yet, when he did, that little flicker happened. I wanted to feel that flicker again and see where it would go, what it might turn into.

“Do you understand?”

He looked ready to deliver more pain, so I quickly answered, “Yes, Master.”

He nodded and went back to kissing me. I was beyond the discomfort of being touched. After the way the pinching felt when he’d intentionally brought me pain, everything else started to feel good by comparison. I ignored the voice in my mind that said I was starting to welcome his hands and mouth. That voice sounded too much like a human female. Like a slut.

We were interrupted a few moments later by a knock on the door. “Master Kyros, the pool is ready for her.”

***

I tensed when he dropped me into the water again, not quite convinced I wouldn’t be met with that awful, chemically altered freshwater. My muscles unclenched as I realized it was part of the ocean. I swam around in little circles and surged out of the water like a dolphin before splashing back in again.

I knew Kyros was watching me, but I didn’t care. Let the human watch the only real pleasure he could ever give me. I wondered if he would become jealous of the water, how it made me come to life and caused bliss to spread across my features. Bliss he would never be capable of with his own hands. I was sure of it.

I looked up to find him standing over me. He was still naked, without a shred of modesty. Maybe like me in that way. Or like I’d been before, when having bare breasts was innocent and natural. Certainly nothing dirty or sexual. His legs were solid and unmoving like a tree.

My gaze panned up. His arms were crossed over his chest. Finally my eyes reached his face. There was an amused grin there.

“Enjoy your fin while you have it, Nerina. I will seduce, and I will win. Rest well.” With that pronouncement, he left. I tried not to watch the sinewy muscles bunch and release as he went away. It seemed such curiosity would only lead to the thing I feared losing the most.

His parting words took a bit of joy out of swimming. I sank beneath the water, trying to imagine that I was back in the sea. The real sea, not this artificial sea that had been created with only a small piece of the ocean. I’m not sure if I was crying. It’s impossible to tell when underwater. But I felt like I must be.

It was at that moment that I finally got out of my own head to realize my family would be missing me. They might never know what happened. They might imagine all sorts of awful things, like a shark or sea monster attack. I was known for wandering off in places I shouldn’t go. Even so, my mother would never believe, after her warnings about men, that I would be on land, the captive of one.

What if Kyros won? What if the legend was real and he could make my body feel whatever it had to feel to make the transformation happen? I looked down and watched my fin fluttering about in the water. How could he take that from me? How could I let him?

I swam to the deepest corner of the pool and curled up to sleep. The next day I would find a way to get him to release me and go back to my life in the ocean.

That night as I slept I saw pictures in my mind. The images were brief, small, like the embryonic form of something that would grow larger over time. It was just a quick snippet of him and me, and I had legs, which were draped over his shoulders. It was vulgar to me. And yet …

Twitch.

I woke immediately, fear causing me to lose the fuzzy vision. My fin was still there, and I was alone. But the images haunted me. Not only because of the content, but because I’d seen them at all. It was so real.

I swam laps back and forth in the pool, as if my fin might somehow split in two to form legs at any moment. I felt that if I just kept swimming, I could stay a mermaid forever. It was what I wanted most. Wasn’t it? I finally drifted, exhausted, back to my corner. I wrapped my fin around me and slept, unmolested by further disturbances.

Morning came too quickly and I sensed a presence beside the pool. I opened my eyes and swam to the surface. Kyros still wasn’t clothed. He sat on the concrete edge and dropped his legs in.