Even so, how was she to speak when he did that?
“Talk. Or else I get out my flogger and nipple clamps.”
What? Her eyes sprang wide open.
But she began to talk. “Eighteen twenty-nine was the year I was born. I think? Everything gets hazy after the first hundred years, and my mother was never sure of dates.”
Dredging up memories from that long ago meant sifting through half-recalled images, words, glimpses of things that happened to her. She remembered the hurricane and spewed forth the entire scene. The day she died was engraved on her mind.
“They threw you overboard in the middle of a hurricane? Jesus.” His body tensed. Even the muscles of the arm and hand he used to tease her halted in their mission and stiffened. He found her hand and clasped it, brought it higher so as to kiss her fingers.
“That’s disgusting, terrifying,” he said softly. “No words, I have no words to say what I want to about that. I’m sorry for you. For who you were.”
And who she now was, she supposed. The hurricane was long ago, and she’d forgotten how it had scarred her. Those she preyed on usually spent their last moments in the throes of lovemaking. When she had been taken it was too brief, too thrown at her in the midst of a scene of pain, injury, and horror.
Then he added something in a puzzled voice that seemed pulled from somewhere else, from another realm of conversation. “You have no idea how different this is for me. To be like this.”
Like what? He’d had girlfriends – he had said so. While she had really only had clients and prey. How could this be more different for him than it was for her?
She settled, however, and went on, delved further back to when she’d been a child in the slums of London, begging because her father was nonexistent in her life and her mother a laundress and wretchedly poor.
They exchanged questions, thoughts, and Wolfgang made comments that reminded her he was actually listening to her. No one, nobody had ever done this. Not even when she was human.
Only now did she realize how much of a hole there existed inside her. A person needed this. It was more life than blood. It was food for her soul. Some of her sadness seemed to fade away as they cuddled on the sofa in this human house with human things on the TV and this man wrapped around her.
What else might he teach her?
To her amusement, he kept on teasing her below. It did keep her on the edge, especially with him kissing her shoulder and neck.
After a long while, with shadows slanting over the pool outside and the light out there dulling, his fingers slipped away, hand slackening. He snored.
The change in her happened within a few minutes. She sensed it coming. Then… A wriggle in her body, a blur in the mind.
A rupture where everything twisted.
She had a tail again, but he was snoring. Smiling, she left him alone, waiting until her skin began to dry out before she nudged him awake with kisses on his nose and a slap of her tail on his feet.
“Oh.” Bleary of eye, he sat up on his elbow then levered himself off the sofa.
Without doing much more, apart from wandering to another room and saying he had to get something from the ‘fridge’, he staggered up the stairs with her in his arms and took her to the pool.
She rolled then dived in, slipping through the water, her skin prickling with the coolness and breathing a sigh of its own as the liquid soothed it. A mermaid was meant for the sea.
Wolfgang kneeled and let the second fish plop from the bag into the pool. “You have completely screwed me.” His slight smile said he didn’t hold a grudge. “I’ll make a date with you for tomorrow.”
Standing slowly, stretching joints, he eyed her as she swallowed the very dead fish. It was cold, and she decided he must have kept it cool somehow. Another miracle of these times.
“I’ll bring you some more tomorrow. Fresher.” His head inclined. “Next time we do a cheese platter, antipasto, some wine. I’ll make us a small banquet. I need to feed you. And to think I nearly shot you that day at the beach.” He shook his head, scrubbed his hands through his dark, unruly hair.
Raffaela stared, and not only because of the ripple of muscles over his chest and stomach as he stretched, or the V lines of his belly ridges leading downward. No, not just those pretty parts of him. Idly, she flicked her tail to stay balanced.
On the beach, she’d never seen a weapon.
His words reminded her of how he had been. How brutal he had been. Had tiredness made him unguarded and let slip a fact he never meant to say?
When he headed for the stairs, his gait lurched a few times, and she remembered the shadows around his eyes.
Tomorrow, he would feed her more. This was good. She sank to the bottom, water gurgling about her ears, thinking. Perhaps she should urge him to go slower?
Had the experiment been all that he intended?
She had certainly learned something.
For once he neglected to turn out the lights inside the house and she watched him collapse on the sofa again, legs and arms sprawled out, and fall into another long, heavy slumber. Hours. The TV remained on. The night passed to midnight from the look of the moon and stars, and still he stayed there.
He had not eaten. Or drunk. Not since they had fucked.
Curious.
CHAPTER 9
“You didn’t bite me,” were the first words he said to her on that tomorrow. It was mid-afternoon. “You could’ve have ripped out my carotid with those.” He waved toward her, meaning her teeth, she presumed. “While I was asleep.”
“True.” Raffaela shrugged, knowing the movement would draw his eyes to her breasts as they rose and fell, seen then not-seen as water covered them.
There was a thrill to this. Pursuer and victim, but who was which? It was a game she had played for longer than he had lived. Never on land. That was new for her.
Who would come out on top?
Upon hearing the door open, then his steps, she’d swum to the shallower part of the pool, lying with her tail stretched behind her, the water sloshing from her swift passage. Her palms were flattened on the underwater ramp and her nipples played peekaboo.
His pants already showed signs of being tented by an erection. She smirked until he lifted his eyes.
“Why didn’t you?”
“I was…” With her finger she drew circles in the surface of the water, spawning ripples. Her back felt the nudge of her hair where it drifted. “… as tired as you were, and you would not have been so careless as to leave your doors for me to open.”
“Huh. Smarter than I thought. Yeah, the windows are locked down and the door locks are passworded.” When she cocked her head, he read it correctly as puzzled and added, “Means you need the right combo of words tapped on a keyboard – written down – before it will unlock.”
That seemed crazy. “Why? How?”
“I have things I want kept secret from people and things I don’t want stolen.” He’d turned to rummage in his brown bag. “As for how – it’s complicated.”
If he wanted to tie her up again, would she let him?
It seemed so unnecessary, considering.
“I could have killed you then broken out through a window,” she mused.
His hand emerged holding a chain and a black dog collar.
“Nope. The glass is toughened.”
And what was toughened glass? She could guess. There were so many new things, new words. Walking among humans once yearly had only let her see the surface of what mankind had invented and how people had changed.
He raised the tinkling chain, with his feet set apart and him watching her, as if he wished to see her response.
She was close enough to register the hazel-brown color of his eyes, the wrinkling around them, and a tiny scar on his forehead. Again, he wore a soft shirt that fit him perfectly. When he moved, she could see the heavy curves and ridges on his chest and stomach. At the end of his ill-shaped dove-gray pants his bare feet showed. They looked large when she
thought of her own toes.
Men, she decided, had nice feet.
“Think of this as a compliment.”
She looked up, pretending she had not been admiring his toes.
“No gag, No rope. Just this on your neck and the chain.”
Oh. That was for her not a pet? Raffaela blew bubbles, letting her lower body drift while still holding onto the ramp.
“Why? Why should I let you collar me like a dog?”
“Because it pleases me and lets me control you still, just a little.” He held up finger and thumb a fraction apart. “I like keeping control of my females.”
“Females?”
That was not the proper way for a man to address his lovers. Even she knew this.
“Don’t like that word?” He grinned maliciously. “How about my captive? Better? Because you are that.”
He squatted down, played with the chain, looped it like a snake along the ground then up his leg, over his bent knee. Tempting her.
It did tempt her and was somehow seductive.
A chain and a collar.
For her. She imagined the man placing the collar on her neck, buckling it.
Making her his…
Desires ascended, whispering to her, washing away the centuries of loneliness. Her loneliness had been leeching away her soul. Nevertheless, she had survived, had been her own keeper, carer, and this, living in his pool, was surely fated to fail.
“Come, little captive.” He twitched the chain.
With teeth denting her bottom lip, she contemplated Wolfgang, and thought idly about scaring him. No gun showed, anywhere. Was this a game or serious? When blood was involved calling it a game seemed wrong.
There had been and would be more blood. It was in the nature of her kind.
“Am I?” Asking was fraught with danger – the danger of encouraging something ever more forbidden. Chains and collars were for animal pets, not lovers. This was something her society, her time, would have considered unthinkable.
Memories surfaced of the day before, of their lovemaking. Her mind split between the past and the present. As if he had touched her, her intimate area pulsed with warmth.
Which was odd since she had nothing there until she shifted.
“You are my pretty captive, yes. I have you confined to my pool and at my disposal. The doors are locked to you.” His head inclined. “You are argumentative, today. Come. Let’s do some more research.” He shook the chain, opened the collar. “Come to me.”
That deceitful mouth of his smiled, as if he knew she would obey.
Raffalea swished her tail, languidly, pretending to think in spite of the burgeoning ache within. She prolonged the moment to tease him then swam over.
“Good. Thank you,” he said as he removed the necklace, buckled the collar at the back, then rearranged it and clipped on the chain. She suffered the procedure, unmoving. “Up here.”
After patting the very top of the ramp, where there was no water, he backed away. She shimmied up and lay with her head up and her lips parted.
As always, there was threat in showing her teeth. Before this, he had respected that.
Today?
With his foot, he casually flipped her onto her back and stood on the chain beside her neck, as if victorious. Triumphant. She let him think it was so because she found she liked playing the victim with him.
Besides, one day she might need his mistakes.
Wolfgang looked down her body and sighed.
“Such beauty should never be left in the sea.”
If that wasn’t so flattering, she might have scoffed.
Having kneeled beside her, he trailed his fingers softly down her face, beginning at her hairline, going over her eyes and making her close them, over her nose, her lips. When he reached her mouth and delved in there in spite of her teeth, she was already aroused and squirming. Something about the way his foot pinned her and his casual dominion over her body did things to her. Nice things.
She left her lips parted. Though his hand moved lower and he kept his foot on the chain, his focus was on her face.
He watched her, watching him.
Awareness heightened but she saw only him. As she struggled with arousal, her breathing hitched.
When he reached her lower stomach, he stilled his hand, his relaxed fingers pointing downward like arrows aimed at her sex.
“Not turned on enough, yet?” he murmured. It was true that she had not shifted. “I have a fix. Something I was going to use anyway.”
Wolfgang reached into a pocket in his pants, retrieved a small device then flicked at it with his thumb. It began to buzz.
“What is that—” she began as he pushed it onto her below, where everything was not yet human, where her female parts would appear after shifting. Her sex.
The buzz burrowed in, struck her an intimate and delicious blow, and made her arch into his hand.
Eyes locked on his, she stifled a moan. Her eyes rolled upward. Her hands clenched, her tail tensed, and—
Shift.
She came down to Earth, on her back, and breathing like a steam train. Above was sky. Blue sky.
Had she orgasmed?
In the middle of a shift? No. Couldn’t have.
Certainly, she was panting uncontrollably. A wash of pleasure had ripped through and left her mind a jumble.
He was chuckling. “That worked.”
“No. No,” she found herself saying.
“No?”
She shook her head, gulped. The word had appeared without her assembling it.
“Come. You can walk.”
He unfolded his legs and stood, pulled on the chain until she rolled over and found her feet, pushed herself upward to stand beside him, if a little wobbly.
“Ahhh, naked girl. Much better. I like having bits to play with.”
After a brief kiss and fondle, with his hand clenching onto her butt – the fingers slipping partway into the split between each cheek – he headed for the steps. The chain was in his hand, so she followed.
The existence of her bare feet took a little while to get used. Her middle throbbed but she followed, one hand feeling at the collar, wondering why it felt so curious to wear one. The other necklace was gone, but she supposed wearing both at once would be a problem.
Although every so often he glanced back as if to see if she was still there, she could tell he was simply observing her body.
Which was entirely fine. She wore no clothes, and he was male.
Now if he had been naked…
After he opened the glass door and they passed through, Wolfgang went deeper into the house with her in tow, moving away from the lounge room where they’d spent most of the previous day. Raffaela smiled.
She walked. Had feet. It was always a novelty, an adventure.
That she lived at all was something to celebrate. If not for Wolfgang’s aborted revenge she would have killed herself.
“The kitchen.” He gestured vaguely at the wall before them, which featured a long countertop with timber cupboards above and below, and a tall steel cupboard that hummed. There was a sink equipped with what she remembered were faucets. Those carried water. No pumping was needed. It simply poured out.
He turned to face her and leaned back against a cupboard, then tossed a towel to the floor before him.
“Kneel.”
Then he simply waited, and she had to decide whether to obey. Obeying appealed to her, so she slowly kneeled, adjusting position until her knees did not hurt.
This was strangely sexual.
His erection was clearly poking at his pants, and she ran her tongue across her lips, teasing and eyeing him. More and more she had come to understand that simply by being before him, a siren was the ultimate temptation to man.
He had no chance of resisting her.
She did not need to sing. Or dance. Or be in the middle of the Ravening.
When this close, she only needed to be.
Even so, she thrust out her ch
est. It was fun to see his reaction.
He clucked his tongue. “Be good. I’m restraining myself. Today I have a plan to keep you on edge.” Wolfgang’s lips quirked. “And all without me having to touch you very much. You fucked with me yesterday but not today. I have your measure, as Shakespeare might say.”
Shakespeare, she recalled, but he was still famous? Some things endured. And what was this about not having to touch her? It seemed an insult, though she could not say why.
Insults needed answering, and she knew how to reply.
Smiling, she raised her hands and cupped her breasts, feeling the weight of them before she slipped her thumbs over her nipples and revolving them softly, slowly. The brushing friction instantly stirred her. With her eyelids half-lowered, she concentrated on what she did.
“Why did I have to get a mermaid slut?” His gaze drifted lower, fixating on her female parts, pausing to watch her stimulate herself. “Fuck,” he muttered, drawing in a long breath.
There was power in making him crave her. She raised her breast toward her mouth, sticking her tongue out as if to lick herself.
When almost there, with her tongue straining, he groaned.
He leaned over and grabbed her hair, twisting it, making her slide forward on her knees and the towel slid with her. He fumbled to yank down his pants and let his erection spring free. A drop of liquid glistened at the end.
With no further warning, Wolfgang dragged her even further, to shove her mouth to his cock. “Suck like your life depended on it. Which it fucking might.”
Well then. Raffaela smirked. He’d probably felt her smiling against his cock.
She looked up, and while keeping rigid eye contact, slowly encompassed his cock’s head with her mouth, opening wide, slicking over and licking down, stopping at the end of the cap-like head to let her tightened lips pop over and land on the shaft.
He cursed her quietly, perversely.
Then he roughly pushed her head onto himself, up then down again, making her take most of him in, then stopping dead and holding her in place when he slid to the back.
“Damn you.” He stayed motionless, rigid, groin tilted forward. Stalled, with his dick jammed in her mouth, his fingers tangled painfully in her hair.
Sacrificed to the Sea: mermaids .. monsters .. men Page 8