Awakening

by Kitty Thomas

  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.

  I’m not sure why I’d thought of the pool as a safe haven from him. It wasn’t that deep, and surely he’d been in it before. Why else would he have it? To keep mermaid pets? Definitely not if it hadn’t been filled with seawater.

  He lowered himself the rest of the way in and started to do laps. I was surprised he could swim, and so well. I could understand why they’d avoid it in the ocean. With the sharks and sea monsters, it’s a lot to deal with for someone who doesn’t have to for survival. Or maybe they sometimes swam close to land, and I hadn’t noticed them.

  I watched his legs kicking out as he smoothly traveled through the water. Finally I surfaced to watch from above.

  After about twenty minutes of laps he stopped and stood in the shallow end of the pool, the water coming up to just below his pecs.

  “I might keep the ocean water. It’s refreshing.” He ran his hands through his hair, and I closed my eyes.

  After last night and the way he’d touched me, the way I’d been at his full command, something felt different. And that feeling seemed like a dark threat.

  As if answering the confusing swirl of thoughts in my head, he said, “See, Nerina? You’ll still be able to swim.”

  “It’s not the same.” I wouldn’t be able to breathe underwater. I wouldn’t be able to swim out deep to sea and go underneath it for miles and miles. I’d never be able to go home. For a moment, I fantasized about pushing him under, drowning him. But it was only a fantasy. It wouldn’t free me. His servants would probably cook me for dinner in retribution. I wasn’t strong enough to overpower him anyway.

  Fantasizing made me remember what had happened the night before. The images. “Were you here last night? After I was asleep?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Address me properly.”

  “I’m sorry, Master. But were you?”

  Kyros shook his head. “No, Nerina. I was asleep. Why?”

  I considered not even bringing it up. Whatever it was somehow hadn’t been real. Maybe it had just been my imagination. But imagination had never been so vivid before.

  “Nerina?”

  “I saw you and me. But I had legs. It was so real. Then I opened my eyes in the pool, and you were gone and my fin was intact.”

  He chuckled. “Don’t mermaids dream?”

  “Dream?” It was the first time I’d heard the word for what had happened while I slept.

  “Humans do it all the time.”

  That statement made me cold. First the twitch, now the brief dream. And to make matters worse, it had been about him and me and the thing my kind didn’t do. Sex. Even the word made me shudder in discomfort. No, I was never going to become like that. I wouldn’t allow it to happen.

  “Master, please. You’ve had your fun; return me to my family. Let me go.”

  He swam toward me like a shark, his eyes filled with purpose. I was faster, so I kept eluding him. Finally he stopped swimming, realizing the futility of the chase.

  “Nerina, if you don’t come to me right now, I’ll order the pool drained. Then we’ll see who is the fastest.”

  Fear quickened my heart, starting a flurry of palpitations. I believed him. Short term I knew there would be some type of pain for not obeying. Long term, I was afraid he wouldn’t refill the pool. I didn’t want to awaken the part of him that might be cruel and do awful things to me, so I slowly swam to where he stood waiting in the shallow end.

  He wrapped his arms around me, lifting me when I reached him, holding me steady since I had no feet to stand. The fingers of one hand stroked through my tangled, wet hair.

  “Does your kind never leave their family?”

  I shook my head. What did he mean leave our family? We lived together, all of us in a large school, like fish. I should have figured out humans didn’t do that. I just assumed everyone was somehow part of the same family here. Obviously not.

  “Well, my kind does. Women often leave their families to go with their husband. Sometimes hundreds or thousands of miles away. Sometimes they never see them again.”

  The revelation was more than I could assimilate. “That’s awful. What is wrong with your kind?”

  He silenced my protests and railings with a kiss. I knew what he was doing. I might not know everything about their culture, but I did know one thing: if he could take my fin away, I’d have no choice but to stay with him. Then he wouldn’t be the bad guy. It would be my own body that had betrayed me.

  I sobbed into his mouth because I was afraid he was right. I feared he was awakening me from a long slumber caused by all my years living deep in the ocean, where maybe we didn’t dream because it was all a dream down there. Everything from my time in the sea somehow felt unreal and fuzzy in his arms. I couldn’t think with his mouth moving over mine like that. The way he held me. His possessive, proprietary kiss.

  He made a sound against my mouth that for a split second almost undid me. It made me melt against him. My breasts, still wet from the pool, pressed against his equally damp chest.

  Twitch.

  If I didn’t fight these feelings I might lose myself to him. I’d thought the legends weren’t true, but with the feeling he was awakening in me, paired with the dream, I was no longer so confident. I told myself I still wanted to get away, but one thing gave me pause.

  If I went back to my family they would love me, but they wouldn’t touch me in any way. Somehow in the space of one day, I’d grown almost fond of my Master’s careful touch. Now that I’d experienced it, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go back to a place where no one would ever hold me.

  My kind would admire me for the beauty we all had, but no man would sear me with his gaze in the way Kyros did every time he looked at me. My only lover would be the sea itself. Was that enough?

  He broke the kiss. “Are you hungry?”

  I flushed because something had twisted the tiniest bit in my mind. Hungry. Was I hungry? Yes, but not for food. I quickly shook myself out of his spell and pulled away. He let me go and I swam around the pool, reassuring myself I still had my fin.

  As he climbed out, I tried not to watch the water rolling down his perfect, nude form. I tried not to be curious or think about the thing that would take away a major part
of my identity. Mermaids are very proud of who and what we are. To be stripped of that, to become one of these human animals—it was more than I could stand.

  I swam laps again, even though I was starving and all the swimming only made me feel weaker. He returned a few moments later, fully clothed—thank the gods. He had a pail of fish and tossed them into the pool. They were still alive, which was good, because that was how we ate them. Bigger fish eat little fish, and in a sense, mermaids are bigger fish.

  I was surprised he knew what we ate. Humans are always romanticizing us, making us into a type of fantasy that would never eat a live fish. I guess that’s not attractive to them. I knew Kyros in many ways saw me as the fantasy because of his belief in the legend and his determination to turn a mermaid. I still didn’t understand his build-a-woman-from-the-ground-up statement.

  He brought his breakfast in and sat beside the pool to eat. I didn’t know what he was eating, but he offered me some, feeding me from his hand. The act was so intimate, his fingers brushing over my lips, the gentle caring in the act. It created a new feeling. Not the twitch, but a kind of warmth that suffused my entire being.

  The first thing was red and sort of triangular. The flavor burst over my tongue.

  “It’s sweet. What is it?”

  “Fruit. Specifically a strawberry. And this is a grape.” He pressed the oblong purple fruit into my mouth, his finger lingering for just a moment longer than was necessary. When he pulled his hand away and I bit down, I was surprised by the sudden burst of juice. More than the other fruit. “Now try this one, it’s an orange wedge.”

  The last was sweet, but then bitter and rubbery. I spit it out.

  “Oh, no, Nerina, not the rind.” The next orange, he peeled the bad part off for me. This time it was sweet and perfect all the way through.

  Then he handed me a small cube that was yellow in color and firm, but also a bit soft. “This is cheese.”

  I must admit, the contrast of the cheese and the fruit was exquisite. And for just a small moment, I wasn’t homesick. This new world of flavors made me dread going back to eating fish and seaweed. It was as if my taste buds were awakened to new, exotic things I’d never known existed, and my former diet paled in comparison.