Karma.
He jogged down the stairs, gulped some water from the kitchen faucet, picked up a notepad and pen, then set off for the garden shed to fetch the shovel. The rose stem, he left on the sofa. He might throw it away later. The pain of the thorns though… he might need that again.
Now.
How many had there been? Seven?
He’d never asked if they were all here. Merrick had not said, and he’d not asked, preferring to not know. Preferring to think maybe his lover had let them go.
He knew though. He knew. No excuses. What was the likelihood of Merrick doing that? Zero?
Funny how this paralleled what he’d done, except he had actually let Raffaela go.
No excuses.
None.
He’d been as bad as Merrick. Though he used to leave for work and come back to find them gone, he’d also seen where the garden had been touched on those days.
Digging them up, deciding who was who from the clothes and hair color, from what was left of them, burying them again, then making a notation on the map of his property, yes, it was difficult.
By the end of the day, he was done. Completely done.
After showering until the hot water ran out, he headed for the fridge. Something cold and very alcoholic was desired…
Sitting on the sofa with a glass of red this time, he leaned hands on his knees, cupping the glass.
Map done.
Names on it. Probable dates of… taking them. Check to all of it.
Where they’d been found by Merrick in the first place, he left blank for all but one that Merrick had let slip. The rest, he didn’t know.
He went into the study, laid out the map and took a pic, then attached it to the pre-written email.
One more deep breath. His mind felt blank of anything, full of nothing. This was it.
After this he would go.
If the cops read it straight away, he’d have the sirens and the knock at the door in a few hours, tops. A swarm of them, then him handcuffed, taken to the station, interrogated.
None of that was happening.
He pressed the send button.
After picking up the book, he went out the door that led to the beach. He stripped until he was naked, though he kept the memoir in one hand as if it were a bible. In the shallows where the water tickled over his feet and ankles, he stopped and breathed deep, smelling everything, seeing the seagulls whirling above him, the light fluffy clouds.
It was the waves that had been calling him.
They had reminded him of his vow.
Come, the waves said again. Come to us.
He raised the book, the memoir he had so painstakingly written. He drew back his arm, and he hurled it toward the deep. Then he walked in and kept walking until he floated.
And found out drowning himself wasn’t so simple. His mind somehow thought he shouldn’t inhale water. He began to tread water.
A hand grabbed his ankle, and yanked.
He’d been lured.
Lack of oxygen made everything blur as he was towed, molested, made love to, and he connected the dots as he drowned. This was a Ravening.
But he saw a face he recognized.
The light spread, fired up his mind. Brought him out of the darkness.
Water tinkled past his ears. Fish and tails. A gooey circle of light above, radiating down. That was the sun. The distant flowing shadow of a school of small fish, or of large ones? His eyes could not tell. His brain was not functioning as it should.
Underwater. Yes. And I’m breathing.
Wolfgang looked down the length of his body and saw a tail, and it was his.
The sex had been violent, bloody, and likely cataclysmic as well as amnesia inducing, but he was almost certain the pretty lips on his had been hers.
Then he had blanked.
Could it have been Raffaela?
Nothing had happened for a very, long time. Or at least, when he finally came into being and regained consciousness, eons seemed to have passed.
Was he alone? Slowly he spun, turning, turning.
Maybe he had been dreaming?
Either way he was here, and the future was full of grand possibilities. What more could a marine biologist wish for than a chance to see the world of the sea, like this, with the love of his life by his side?
He would find her.
He was a merman – somehow he’d converted – and if he had to search the seas for a year he would find her and make her his again.
A swirl and flick of long fair hair caught his eye and he spun again.
There.
CHAPTER 14
Raffaela zoomed in before Wolfgang could have seen her properly, swinging around his waist, his now very muscular waist. The transformation to merman required the growth of stronger-than-human muscle else they would never be able to swim.
She half-clawed, half-kissed her way up his naked torso all the way to his delicious mouth,
By then Wolfgang had recovered and he took her face in his hands to tongue-kiss her properly. A warm, deep kiss that absorbed her completely until frissons of desire cascaded down her spine, until they shifted and their tails changed into legs.
Arousal had forced them both into human form. Their bodies drifted in the currents. Small fish dodged past, zipping around them. An immense, silvery school of sardines flooded by, shielding them from their surroundings.
Abruptly, his mouth opened wider and he tensed against her. There was a shove forward, then another pair of hands slipped about Wolfgang, over her arms. Big, male hands.
Merrick eyed her from over Wolfgang’s shoulder, his jagged line of teeth converting to human type in seconds.
“Will I fuck your ass or hers, Wolfgang?”
His words had sounded like a purr, quite an achievement underwater.
She smiled and spoke, “Here is my surprise gift for you, my love.” Her lips breathed on and brushed over Wolfgang’s as the three of them pirouetted in the water, spiraling lower.
The ocean here was miles deep.
“Your Merrick survived also. This is how I knew what to do to make you one of us. The more prolonged and intense the lovemaking, the greater the love, the surer the result. We two are now three.”
It shocked her to hear Wolfgang’s first somber words to Merrick, “Do not ever hurt her, or I will feed you to a fucking shark.”
Merrick laughed and kissed his back. “You know I would never do anything like that.” He winked at her. “Thinks he owns you, huh? Wait until I tell him how many ways I’ve had you while he’s been sleeping.”
It was true. And somewhat blushworthy. The newly made merman was a lover to rival Wolfgang.
“The fuck you wouldn’t.” A threat again? Though the sigh that came from Wolfgang and the higher pitch of his words alerted her to Merrick doing something dirty to him.
She kicked her legs – even without a tail, negotiating the sea was easy. If he was screwing Wolfgang from behind, she wanted to watch this…
And also volunteer to be the filling in a sandwich made by their bodies.
The future was looking wonderful, and definitely not lonely.
Then Merrick grabbed her and dragged her into the middle. “Come here, my mermaid fucktoy.”
The sandwich was happening sooner than she’d imagined.
Wolfgang took little prompting, or none. His hot mouth descended on hers, his tongue swiping deep into her mouth, playing her, taunting her as he held her breast as if it were essential to life. She uttered tiny shocked noises at his shifting grip, at the twisting of her nipple and the crueler kissing. While Merrick… Merrick enthusiastically explored her back all the way down to her ass with hands and mouth. Then he reversed his journey, biting and kissing from her inner thighs to shoulders.
Some were large, shudder-inducing, bites of possession.
If the ocean was wet, she was far wetter.
Fingers slipped inside her, fucking her.
Still kissed, still held, t
hen opened wider, with her legs spread by knees and hands, she whimpered, turning, writhing.
They swathed her in lust, thrust bare cocks at her ass or slid them along her slit. Her legs wrapped over Wolfgang and about his waist, she clutched him to her.
Until…
His hand clutched about her throat then Merrick impaled her at the rear, the head of his cock popping in, making her hold her breath, her heart thudding at the abrupt and somewhat painful intrusion.
He speared further, growling nonsensical curses, sucking his cock out, thrusting in, firmer, deeper. Wolfgang laughed into her neck, then leaned back. His eyes, she glimpsed those through the whirl of her hair while he stared at her face, probed at her pussy with his cock, and pushed at her.
In…
Both of them. The double penetration was mind-rending for the first few seconds.
She bowed her back, shut her eyes.
Someone latched onto her breast. And sucked at her.
With both of them kissing her, biting her, pistoning in, and with their hands on her everywhere, up and down became irrelevant.
Hurled into her first climax, she wrenched at someone’s back with her nails, cutting into skin.
The taste of mer-blood entered the sea.
Sharks would not dare interrupt this wild, ecstatic embrace. They were not prey.
Enfolded again, murmured to, loved, stirred to new passion, she sighed in their grasp, groaned at the licking of her intimate places – such devotion in the use of warm tongues and mouths – at the delirious climb into fresh arousal.
She found a man and kissed down him, bit his thighs, only to be fucked by whoever was at her ass – they were slow, yet rough and forceful, and it was glorious.
The sea surged, caressing them all, and likely murmuring dirty words in her partner’s ears.
Wolfgang and Merrick were inventive, and every hole on all of them seemed to be candidates to be fucked. She licked her way up and down cocks that were plunging into someone’s ass or mouth, had hands wrapped in her hair or clawed at her butt while they made her do things she’d never thought to do.
The two of them managed to be inside her pussy for a sliver of time – it was the only time she blurted out a no.
And the sea washed them clean and slurred more filthy suggestions whenever calm befell them, then the passion would rise and rise, as inevitable as the tide. They were each enamored of the others’ bodies, tasting, licking, tongues and cocks inserting, bodies bucking.
Upside-down was likely how they were oriented when yet again, both of her males speared inside her in unison.
Her hair twined about her like seaweed, blinding her.
Someone took her wrists, trapping them, fisting her hand about a cock. She jerked someone off, compelled to, as another fucked her mouth.
Leaked come streamed past, tracing their slow downward path.
Still they did not halt in their obsession with fucking her or each other. Not yet. The mindless abandon of a near-Ravening seemed to have taken them all past what was normal, sane, or stoppable.
They swapped places, over and over, circling her with wet, voracious kisses, nibbling her breasts, her belly, kissing each other, with their strong male muscles flexing. Biceps bulged, wrapped about each other’s necks. Captivated, she watched them kiss until they hauled her back into the circle.
Merrick engulfed her nipple with heated mouth then fingered her below. Fingers in each hole.
“Ass and cunt,” he assured her, smiling at her expression, pumping in and out. He seemed fascinated. She did not think she could come again, but…
With her thigh muscles trembling with fatigue, she watched him climb down her to eat her out with that determined tongue. When she squealed at the sensitive places he found, he held her hips to keep her against him, then… then Wolfgang moved in to screw him from behind.
The weird hum that came from Merrick then, with his lips glued to her clit. His tongue flattened, halted in place, seemed to become a part of her, then he licked. One long swipe, and he kept licking, sucking. A grunt as Wolfgang slapped in, behind him.
“Oh. Oh fuck. Fff…” She grabbed at Merrick’s hair, undulating.
Insatiable. The orgasms were relentless, and sometimes painful, as relentless as her men, her mermen.
Their leisurely spiral to the mile-deep bottom became a chaotic swirl.
It ended with them spinning through the last fathoms, with a cock in her mouth while the other one pounded at her, driving in then stopping deep, before he slammed in again, his cock feeling so large inside her pussy she thought she might burst.
Her cries were lost to the deep. Their violent lovemaking muddied the bottom with flying sand as they reached it.
Spent. Finally, peace came to them.
She lay entwined with her ear to Wolfgang’s neck just below his ear. Arms around her, legs around her.
The ocean currents surged, pushed them.
Merrick was tangled about her limbs but up the other way, drifting and swaying, while he cradled against her legs.
“Thank you,” she whispered to Wolfgang.
“Hmmm.” He turned to press his lips to her nose, then to cup her face with his hand. “I have to say something. A confession, I suppose.”
“Yes?” His pretty brown eyes regarded her from an eyelash away and she smiled. “Whatever you say, I am happy. If Merrick had not found me, I would never have known what to do. He helped me. He helped me figure out how to make you into this, one of my kind.”
“I’m sure he did, but…”
“Yes?”
“The bad things I did, it was with Merrick. We killed girls, fucked them silly after we caught them. Fucked them for days, sometimes, used everything in that room you saw, and more. Then … Merrick killed them, buried them. I dug them up before I walked into the sea and sent an email to the cops so they know.” He grimaced as if tasting something awful. “I’m a bad man. The fingers with the flesh falling off… some were mostly bones. Some…”
“Shhh.” She placed her finger across his mouth. “You cannot comprehend the madness of this worry of yours. When your Ravening comes you will understand.”
His frown deepened into a ravine between his eyebrows. He was amusing, cute.
“Oh, Wolfgang, my wonderful lover… I have killed a thousand humans, and together we will kill a thousand more. It is what we do. You and him? You are amateurs.”
Then she smiled with her mermaid teeth. “This is why these are sharp. We are predators. Invisible, unseen, unstoppable when we want to be.”
“Monsters.” His eyes were wide.
“Mmm. That too. Now rest, my love.”
“Tell me about you and Merrick. How did he find you?”
“He waited near your beach. He had dared to question other merfolk and they told him it is the depth of the passion that helps to transform a human. For over a hundred years, I stayed away from my kind. Because of him, I could hope. He is why you survived. Merrick is brazen and courageous.”
“I guess it comes with being a truly evil bastard.”
“Shush. I like him.” She pressed his eyes closed with kisses, making him sigh, then she snuggled in against his chest. “When you are ready, I will show you my world.”
Once upon a time, she had wanted to kill herself but not anymore, not when she had these two. Loneliness had been banished.
The ocean gently rocked them, making their beautiful tails move in the currents, as if it approved of these three precious beings, these pretty, pretty killers.
The End
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An Excerpt from
CLOCKWORK STALKER follows
What if the storybook hero becomes the villain?
She is my arch enem
y’s niece.
I’m an arrogant, controlling bastard, an excellent detective, and women are turning up dead and bound, with strange marks on their bodies.
This is the least appropriate time for me to fall in lust with the enemy.
Obsession is the sign of a man who is losing control.
Be punctual for this appointment Miss Moriarty.
I have things I need to do. Filthy, perverted things.
This is an erotic Sherlock Holmes romance with a hint of Cthulhu and horror.
With his shoes barely making any sound as he placed them on each tread of the stairs, Sherlock descended the last two steps. From the top, he’d seen what was down here—Willa, nude, blindfolded with red cloth, and bound to a rectangular table. Her hands were tied together at the wrists and above her head, while the ropes leading from her ankles pulled apart her thighs, for they were tied to separate table legs.
This threatened to take his breath away, to leave him swimming in lust like some uncontrolled beast. He was a man, not an animal, and a better example of a man than most of those outside on the streets.
Yet her presence had swallowed him and the room.
Nothing existed except her and the warning drumbeat of his heart, and so he made himself stop and look.
The house above was safe. He should be deliberate and precise, he had plenty of time.
No one would be coming to disturb him.
He made himself take in everything here, as if this were an average crime scene: the stains and moisture on the plastered walls, the small, waist-high table, the healthy pinkness of her feet and hands…
The coolness of the air that made her nipples jut upward in the center of her areolas.
The neat triangle of her scarlet pubic hair, and the line of her slit where even now moisture glistened… and the smallness of her toes.
Sherlock inhaled, exhaled, and shut his eyes. Listen to the beat of the blood. Make the body obey. Turn the eyes elsewhere.
Sacrificed to the Sea: mermaids .. monsters .. men Page 12