Awakening (5 page)

He smelled salty, like the sea, and I breathed him in like a substitute to try to soothe away the pain. But we weren’t really together just now. He was in his head; I was in mine.

For a moment my mind went down a crazy track where I thought perhaps my humanity could have been reversed, perhaps my fin would have regrown if we hadn’t breached this one, final territory.

While I hadn’t felt my fin rip apart, this was different.
Two things lost in one night.
After several minutes, he let out a roar and stopped. I had to look into his eyes to determine if it was a good sound or a bad sound, to see if he was somehow displeased with me. But his face looked peaceful and contented.

At least one of us was peaceful and content. I didn’t have another orgasm because my head wasn’t in the right place for it. No one had told me that for a woman, losing one’s virginity could feel like a trauma. I’d never been indoctrinated with any particular views of sex, except that it was some dirty thing animals did, and yet still, this felt like a bigger deal than I wanted it to be. And I hadn’t even been there for it. Not really. I felt like it had happened, and except for the pain, I’d missed it.

For my own pleasure before, yes, I’d been there. But this new activity … sex … it felt more isolating than joining, and I worried it would always feel that way. I didn’t say any of this to Kyros because I didn’t know what he’d do with me if I couldn’t enjoy the things humans enjoyed.

But he didn’t demand a peek inside my head; he just held me cuddled against him while I cried.

“I’m sorry it hurt. I tried to be gentle. You felt so good wrapped around me.” He stroked my hair, holding me close, and I didn’t know what to feel. I only knew that something completely primal and final had been invoked between us. Something sealed in blood. As if to prove the point, I moved my hand between my legs. Just as I suspected. Red.

***

That night was the first night I didn’t sleep in the pool. It wasn’t just that I didn’t, but that I couldn’t. I couldn’t breathe underwater anymore, and so I had to sleep in the bed with Kyros.

It was odd sleeping with someone else’s skin pressed against mine, our limbs entangled. I could feel his erection pressed against me most of the night. It would be so easy for him to shift just slightly and be inside me, since we were both naked under the blankets. But he didn’t.

Neither of us got much sleep that night, me because I was mourning the loss of the sea and the finality of what I’d allowed him to awaken in me, and Kyros because my crying kept him awake. But he didn’t yell at me or hurt me or send me away to another room. I knew he could have done any of those things. His castle was large and surely had many rooms where he could stow me away until morning so he could sleep undisturbed by my anguish.

Maybe he was afraid I’d run away. But where would I run? I didn’t even know how to run.

I had no clothing, and I was highly aware of that fact, as well as what the other men might try to do with me now that it would be so easy for them without the logistical quandary of a fish’s fin. How would I care for myself? Where would I go? He had to know I would stay.

He stroked my back for so long I lost track of the time. He didn’t say anything. What was there to say? I wondered if he regretted it, if he felt guilty for taking so much from me. But all he did was rub my back until I finally cried myself to sleep.

My dreams were of the sea. My family. The entire time I’d been with Kyros, I’d dreamed of him and the great temptation I’d succumbed to. And now I was dreaming of the sea. It seems we always want what we don’t have or can’t have, never what is right in front of us at the moment.

When I woke, Kyros was already dressed, and a cart had been rolled in. There were two plates with meat and many fruits and a couple of flaky biscuits shaped like half of a moon. I sat in the chair that had been brought up to the cart and just stared at the plate and flatware.

I’d watched my Master using utensils, but he’d never fed me that way. When he’d fed me it had been straight from his hand. These smooth bits of silver with prongs were too impersonal, and I couldn’t imagine eating that way.

“Nerina?”

I looked up at him, feeling the tears well in my eyes about to spill out again. I didn’t say anything in reply. What was there to say? He didn’t push the issue; he just got up from the table and went to the closet. He came out with a black silk robe.

“Come here,” he said.

I couldn’t walk on my own without his help, so I went down to my hands and knees. Crawling was easier. I looked up at him about halfway there and was taken aback by a dark hunger in his eyes, and somehow I realized that watching me crawl did something carnal to him.

When I reached him, I could see his erection tenting his pants. He gripped underneath my elbows and brought me to stand, then helped me into the robe. He tied it around my waist, and I tried to memorize the way he did it with the loops and wrapping the belt around them, then pulling it tight into a bow. In the sea we didn’t have anything we tied like that.

“Go to the pool, I’ll be right behind you.”

“I … ” Did he expect me to crawl? What about the stairs? I reasoned that I’d slithered on my belly to get down a set of stairs the first night when I’d still had my fin, but that was different. I lived here now.

“Crawl.” he said.

He’d been holding on to my waist, steadying me after he’d tied the robe shut. Now he let go and stepped out of my reach. I went immediately to my knees, too unsteady to stand and walk without assistance. I imagined with a wall nearby I could have started learning to walk, but at the moment, a wall was too far away and the fierce look in Kyros’ eyes stopped those thoughts in their tracks.

Obediently I turned and started to crawl from the room. I heard a sound catch in his throat, and I knew this turned him on, and that whether I could walk or not, he’d ask me to do this again. The slow, answering throb between my legs made clear that he wasn’t the only one who found this somehow erotic. I tensed, wondering if he’d lose all control and fling the robe up over my back to kneel behind and take me.

I didn’t know how I felt about that. Despite not having an orgasm during sex, there was an odd sort of comfort in being possessed by someone.

I could hear his footsteps behind me as I made my way downstairs. I let my arms do most of the work on the descent, much as I had that first night. When I got to the room with the pool, I crawled to the edge and waited, my body humming as I sensed his approach. He shut the door softly and brought the plates over to the edge.

“Get in and swim.”

I stared at the pool for a good minute. I’d been mourning the loss of the sea and now that I was looking at a piece of it, being allowed to swim in it, I didn’t know what to do. With a fin and no ability to drown, it had been natural. Now I wasn’t sure.

“I don’t think I know how.”

He raised an eyebrow at me. “You’ve swam your whole life, and you’ve watched me. Get in and try.”

“I … can’t even stand well.” As a mermaid the idea of not being able to stand in the water, of even standing at all, had been so foreign it had been laughable, but now I was desperate for my legs to work because I needed them to support me.

“Nerina. Do as I say. I won’t let anything bad happen to you.”

The look in his eyes was so fiercely protective that I became more afraid of disappointing him than of the water. I eased myself in and gripped the side of the pool for balance. I could stand in this depth but still feared falling and going under. I was torn between crying and laughing over the absurdity. Me, afraid of water.

“You’ve watched me swim every morning. You know what to do,” he said, his legs now in the pool, brushing against my hip.

“What if I can’t? What if I go under?”

“Then I’ll come get you.”

I knew he would, but even so, I didn’t want to risk it.

The door opened and a servant walked in. Her eyes widened when she saw me in the pool, obviously with legs now. Or perhaps it was my nudity that startled her. Like Estella, the woman who had brought linens, this woman, though younger, seemed equally prim and proper. She held two glasses of juice, sat them beside the plates, then averted her eyes from me and left.

I can’t recall how I moved my arms or how I breathed or held my breath, or how I kicked out. I just did it. I didn’t think. It was as natural as it had been in the ocean, which made me feel silly for worrying about it. The water was my true home and always would be. Legs or no legs.

Even so, the salt water wasn’t a necessity for life. We were now two separate things, Nerina and the water. Where before we had been one, blending and merging together until I could never tell where I ended and the sea began. Once I got past this new sensation, I got used to the way my legs sliced through the water, so different from how I’d moved with a fin, but no less enjoyable.

Finally I swam back to Kyros. When I gripped the edge of the pool for support, he pressed a strawberry into my mouth. For the first time since I’d lost my fin, I smiled.

I assumed after breakfast that he’d go off and leave me for a while. Maybe in the pool, or maybe in the bedroom. Surely he had other business to attend to besides seducing me. But instead he left the plates and glasses behind for the servants to clean up and ordered me out of the water. When it proved impossible under my own steam and I started to panic, he lifted me out, then wrapped a towel around me and led me to the stairs.

“What about the robe?” I asked. It still was crumpled on the stone floor next to our abandoned meal.

“Leave it. You won’t be needing it.”

This made me apprehensive. I was well aware of what he intended to do with me if I wouldn’t be needing the robe. I still wasn’t sure if I really
liked
sex. I liked all the things that had led up to it, and the pleasure he’d produced in me, but sex itself had hurt and I was afraid it would continue to hurt every time we did it.

This time he helped me walk. It was slow going, but he was patient. I watched my feet the whole time. For the first time since the transformation I was able to bring myself to look at them. Really look at them. They were a marvel of bio-mechanics. I’d always thought my fin was special, but I couldn’t comprehend the number of bones and muscles that must make up the human foot. Maybe I could learn to appreciate my new legs and feet. There were so many new things I could learn to do. Walk, run, climb, dance. Then my mind started to go down less pure paths, imagining all the different positions Kyros could get me into now that I had legs.

When we got back to his room, he looked me over, assessing. “Are you cold?”

“No, Master.” I blushed because while I was aware of the faint trembling that had started in my limbs, I’d thought I’d successfully kept it concealed from him. Now, my first full day as a human, I was even more afraid than I’d been back when I could be put on the dinner menu.

After several days with him, I’d convinced myself I wouldn’t become human and he might not kill me. I’d go back to the sea eventually, so the idea that being with Kyros was going to be a long-term situation hadn’t really entered my mind. When events had played out in my head, it was always a few weeks at most. Either I’d be killed or released when he got bored with hoping I’d change into something that could never be.

But now that it had happened, it was finally sinking in just how permanent my living arrangements were. I was keenly aware as his erection pressed against my skin, that he had every intention—and in his mind, every right—to use me for his own pleasure as often as he wanted.

Since having breakfast in the pool, I still held out a hope that he wasn’t going to turn vicious now that he had what he wanted: access. But that still didn’t mean I’d like all the things he did to me.

He finally spoke again. “Are you afraid of me, sea nymph?”

I couldn’t be sure whether or not he was mocking me with the endearment. I didn’t answer the question because I wasn’t sure what the answer was. I was afraid, I just wasn’t sure if it was him or something more nebulous and hard to pin down.

Instead I said, “I miss my family. I’ll never see them again.” It wasn’t the answer to his question, but it weighed on me considerably.

His grip on me tightened and for a moment I thought he intended to squeeze me to death. After a minute or two, he seemed to realize what he was doing and loosened his hold.

His mouth was next to my ear, the warm puffs of his breath on my skin sending another shiver through me. “I’m going to make you forget them.” Lips grazed my throat and then across my shoulders as his hands moved to cup my breasts. I sagged against him, rendered unable to stand by the electricity in his touch.

“Tell me you love me, Nerina.”

“I love you, Master.” It still wasn’t true. I wasn’t sure if it ever could be. And yet the idea to disobey a direct order wouldn’t even form in my brain. He had the power to turn me from an innocent mermaid into a sexual animal. What other powers might he possess?

His fingers stroked down my belly, moving between my thighs to part moist folds of flesh. Moisture that wasn’t from the pool.

After a long stretch of silence, he said, “I’ll inform your family that you’re all right.”

It wasn’t unheard of for humans to try to communicate with mermaids. They often dropped smooth large stones in the sea with messages, or sometimes put messages in bottles that were weighted down so they would go beneath the water.

A legend of my people is that merfolk were so curious about the messages dropped into the ocean that they learned how to read and decipher their meaning.

We’d find these messages and laugh over them. Often they were of a sexual nature, which both fascinated and disgusted us. If Kyros sent several messages about where I was, would someone from my family find it? Would they believe him?

“What will you say?”

“That you’re human now and living with me in the castle on the hill, and that if they want to come see you, they will not be harmed or held against their will.”

“They won’t believe you.” We aren’t a very trusting sort. In all likelihood, even if they found the message, they would think it was some sort of trap. Mermaid fin
was
a delicacy, after all.