by Tamsin Ley
“You may touch me if you like.”
Flushing, she squatted to run her fingertips over his fin. It twitched beneath her touch, the edges curling up around her hand in a return caress. Her skin tingled at the contact, so innocuous, and yet somehow suggestive at the same time. “I can’t believe I’m touching a real merman.”
“I can’t believe I’m being touched by a real human.”
The deep timbre of his voice seemed to caress her very bones, eliciting a primitive response she could no more have controlled than she could control her heartbeat. She became acutely aware of her bare breasts, of a heat between her legs, of an itch that needed scratched. Like a sailor at sea too many days in a row, she was ready. Yearning to impale herself on his waiting shaft. And this merman was so very male. Broad chest, washboard abs, and those eyes.
Those eyes that beckoned her come hither at this very moment.
She found herself on her hands and knees, straddling his tail as she crawled up his length. I want to see where fish meets man, she rationalized. And his jewelry. She’d always been a sucker for a man with piercings. She kept her eyes on his, drawn forward until she straddled his hips.
Stopping her crawl, she ran her fingers across the mother-of-pearl pin in his nipple.
The merman sucked in a breath, clasped her arms, and drew her into another mind-blowing kiss.
6
The moment the human touched his fin, Rubac knew he had her. Her aura had been pink with interest since the moment he’d arrived, but now it spiked with desire, bright scarlet flashes through the gold of her curiosity. He hadn’t even needed to use his song. She wanted him.
And he wanted her.
But when she’d stroked his vision rod, his desire had spiked into something deeper. It rose with fury like a summer storm. Any control he thought he’d had vanished. Cupping her face with both hands, he delved into her mouth. She tasted of sweet kombu and a hint of coconut, reminiscent of his days as a single merman when he'd been daring enough to swim close to the volcanic islands around the equator.
She settled her weight on his hips, her heat spreading through his sheath and into his cock. Leaning into him, she matched the intensity of his kiss. He let his hands fall to her hips, kneading her soft flesh. The feel of her legs around him drove him mad with lust. Lifting off the deck with one hand, he flipped so he could lie atop her, flattening his hands on the deck to either side of her shoulders. Her small breasts brushed his chest, and she wriggled to match her pelvis against his. She stroked her palms up his ribs and around his triceps, while her heels digging into his backside made his cock surge against its protective sheath, seeking the call from between her legs.
Without breaking the kiss, he slipped one hand over her nipple, tweaking it as he cupped her naked breast. She arched against him in encouragement. He dropped his caress lower, over her ribs to the curve of her waist. Traced the swell of her hip. He slid his hand between where their hips met, finding thin fabric blocking her opening. He cupped his palm over her mound, curling his fingers toward the heat between her legs.
She whimpered, straining against his hand, fumbling her own down to his waist. She pushed the fabric aside and urged his fingers beneath. Her cleft was slick and ready, her clit engorged and pulsing. He circled the nub gently, her heat drawing him down between the folds and back up again. His cock pulsed insistently where it met her hip.
Still kissing him, she rolled her panties down around her thighs, kicking her legs free. Her pink and crimson aura burned with passion. Engulfing him. Consuming him.
Even if he’d wanted to stop, he couldn’t. Her hunger controlled his entire being. What he’d believed would be his triumph had leveled him once again to a slave. His cock was ready, and her legs entrapped him, drew him close. Forced the length of his cock along her slippery opening. Her lower lips seemed to kiss him, promising him the pleasure of her depths. The soft down covering her mound, so different from a mermaid’s utter smoothness, added a layer of sensation that about drove him over the edge.
She cupped his face, guided his head downward to a breast. Her dark areola was rigid, nipple engorged and waiting. Careful with his sharp teeth, he licked her flesh, eliciting a small gasp from her. Her back arched. He took first one, then the other between his lips, careful not to break any skin. She shuddered, the cleft against his cock surging with moisture.
“I want you,” she pleaded.
Drawing back, he allowed the head of his shaft to tease the opening to her welcoming depths. Her eyes met his, the rich brown irises nearly obscured by black pupils. She nodded, the pressure of her heels digging into his backside, urging him onward.
He plunged forward, the ecstasy of their joining a surging tide that rose like a tsunami in his blood, unseen but inevitable in its power. He buried himself deep inside this woman, this human, rising only to plunge again and again. His building climax rose to almost painful levels, awaiting the crest ahead.
She met him thrust for thrust, her aura shifting from scarlet to purple to radiant white as she stretched for climax alongside him. They both seemed to climb the same wave, reaching the top hand in hand to catch the rolling edge that would drive them forward into rapture.
Her heat pulsed around him, milked him of his seed in a shuddering release. He collapsed to his elbows to lie exhausted over her, heated skin against heated skin. Her breathing matched his own, rough and spent with passion.
He pressed his forehead to hers, his mind muddled with desire. “Beautiful,” he sang the word in her language. A yearning to take her beneath the waves and show her this passion again, this time buoyed by the current, rushed through his blood. To show her his nest and fill it with all the treasures and baubles her heart might desire. To sing tales of the sea to amuse her. She had already begun to make him forget how much his heart hurt at the loss of the bond-mate he’d never loved, the child he’d likely never see again. He wanted to defend her and protect her and make her happy. This human made him want to live again, just like his prophetic vision told him.
Then he remembered his quest. Now that he’d seduced her, he had to finish things. Her warm scent filled his head as his fingers tightened into helpless fists against the deck. He was not supposed to feel this way. Killing was supposed to be the easy part.
Muscles trembling, he forced himself up, cursing the weight of his own body. She stared at him, a small crease denting the skin between her eyebrows. “What is it?”
He couldn’t face her now. Look into her eyes. Know he was about to betray her. Nerves on fire, he grabbed the nearby gunwale and launched himself back into the sea.
7
Madison rolled over, body suddenly chilled without his warmth, and struggled to her knees to look over the side. Gone, like the stereotypic man after a one-night stand. Was that all he’d wanted? Her chest ached.
So much for scientific research. Her photos were gone. She hadn’t gathered skin or blood samples. What was wrong with her?
Her pants lay in a puddle near the engine compartment. Heat flushed her as she remembered sliding them down her thighs, seducing him in. The wind prickled her legs with goose bumps. Get your head on straight, she told herself. First things first, get dressed. Thinking would be impossible until she established a baseline of comfort.
She picked up her jeans. The wet denim would be worse than being naked. Ducking into the hold where she’d been sleeping the last three days, she pulled out a clean pair of panties. Halfway into them, she paused.
She hadn’t taken tissue samples, but there was one bio-sample she had access to.
The warmth still trickling down her thighs.
Her throat felt tight as she opened her biopsy kit for a sterile swab. How could she be so stupid? Unprotected sex? Who knew what kind of diseases mermen carried. And what about pregnancy? Was that even an issue? Her brain spun with questions she had no way to answer.
She ripped open the sterile swab and hesitated. Somehow taking a sample off herself felt like a be
trayal. Like she was claiming rape after having completely consensual intercourse. Plus, how was she going to explain the procedure she’d used to gather that sample? I seduced a merman onto my boat and ravaged him to gather semen for sampling. Talk about a laughingstock.
Yet the sample would be legitimate whether he was man or fish. Hell, it might be her only sample.
She swabbed herself and placed the sample in an isolation tube before stowing it away. The thought of using her sex life for scientific purposes made her nauseous. He might come back. The thought was silly, she knew. Like waiting for a call the next day that never came. But there was always a chance. Never before had she felt a connection like this to a man. And Rubac had really seemed to be into her, too.
She only had the boat until tomorrow. Should she wait here for him to return, or was she being stupid? Her scientific brain told her to cut her losses. But her heart told her to wait until tomorrow. Nobody had mind-blowing sex like that and just moved on, right?
Rubac had to come back.
The sea cooled Rubac’s heated skin and calmed the blood surging through his veins. How could he go through with killing her? That’s why it’s a quest, he told himself. It’s not supposed to be easy.
But if he killed her, he’d be no better than the mermaids he detested.
He couldn’t bear the thought of the human’s—Madison’s—blood on his hands. She wasn’t a deadly predator. She was a seeker of knowledge, like he was. A guest in his ocean. And her aura was as compelling to him as the cleft between her legs.
He floated without purpose, allowing his thoughts to float with him. His time on the surface had dried his skin, and the sun had left behind an uncomfortable prickle. He lifted his arms and spun a lazy spiral through the water, reveling in the current against his skin. The weight of his aura was lighter than it had been in decades, since before being trapped in the mate-bond. He suddenly felt like he could enjoy the sea again.
Sucking refreshing water through his gills, he raced toward a school of señorita fish, circling them until they formed a small silver ball. Diving to the rocky bottom, he teased a flounder from its resting spot in the sand before turning sharply upwards to tickle a sea bass on the belly. It rolled over begging for more.
He’d never felt more alive.
He rolled to his back and gazed upward at the dark speck of the boat at the surface. He searched for any remnant of longing for his dead mate and found nothing. His aura truly felt free. Did he really need to kill a human to break the mate-bond? Or had intimacy been the key to it all?
He felt free. Therefore he was free. The idea brought a smile to his face, and he picked up speed to head back to the kelp beds. Perhaps the whale oracle had purposefully misled him. If the quest had included only seduction, Rubac would have likely never even pursued it, fearing the end would be impossible. Making the seduction merely one step toward a goal had given him a different finish line to focus on and allowed him to complete the task.
Which hadn’t really been such a task after all. His cock stirred at the memory of Madison’s soft curves and her inviting deep brown eyes. He might even consider engaging her again. He stopped swimming and stared at a dark rock jutting from the sea floor.
Despite his depression when his mate used to leave him, he’d never looked forward to reuniting with her. Sex with her, although pleasurable, had always been a chore. The encounters left him drained, his soul weak and fragile. After her visits, he’d taken days to recover. Mermen believed the post-coital weakness was merely loneliness and yearning for a mate who’d left. But what if it was something more? What if his mate had consumed a small piece of his soul to fortify her own every time she’d visited? Chipped away at his life force until he could no longer survive without her? Had this human encounter renewed his life force?
He held out a hand and squinted to observe his own aura. The usual deep gold-orange spread in a wide band over his skin, veined in strong violet pulses of vitality. Never had he seen his own colors with such clarity. He let out a burst of happy song, startling a nearby school of gobies. He’d broken the bond!
Then another thought occurred to him. This rejuvenating power had to come from somewhere. He hadn’t made his soul whole again all on his own. What if he’d stolen this supplemental life force and left Madison as empty and exposed as he’d felt every time his mate left him?
Had this been what the whale meant when it told him to sacrifice the human?
The joy of realizing he didn’t need to kill Madison soured. If what he imagined was true, he’d been no better than the mermaids he detested, leaving a lover drained and broken.
The boat’s shadow was nowhere in sight now, the once-bright sky deepening over the surface. He recalled the magnificent colors of the human’s aura, the bright orangey-yellows that told him she was a seeker like himself. Anxiety twisted his gut, a protective feeling flooding through him like he’d only ever felt for his children. He didn’t want to be like his dead mate and the other mermaids, leaving lovers empty and suffering.
Letting out a stream of bubbles, he swept up toward the rolling waves, tail fin thrashing as fast as his muscles allowed. He had to be sure Madison was all right.
8
Madison adjusted the radio and went to set the anchor. Damn rental place. Keeping the boat another night would forfeit part of her deposit in return for the delay. How she was going to pay next month’s rent was beside the point. This had to be the most foolish move she’d ever made—even more foolish than believing in Steller sea cows. But her heart couldn’t accept another defeat.
She brought her sleeping bag up from the hold, kicked off her shoes, and arranged a folding chair so she could keep watch over the ocean while she munched on a protein bar and downed an energy drink. She didn’t like the things, but she needed to stay awake. The sun was falling into the ocean, creating brilliant neon colors across the horizon. Luckily the moon would be over half full tonight. With her camera gone, she’d have to rely on her phone camera to document images. It only had basic low-light capabilities, and she’d be lucky to get any decent images at all.
She hadn’t entirely decided how to proceed if the merman showed back up, but she wasn’t about to regret not being ready. One of the biopsy darts rested in her lap, and her phone was on a strap looped around her neck. No way was she risking losing that. She settled into the chair with the sleeping bag bundled tight around her to ward off the evening chill.
Her forehead ached where she’d hit it against the boat, and she had to stop herself from fiddling with the scab. To keep her hands busy, she unloaded and reloaded the dart gun. Took a flash selfie to double check the camera was working, then erased it and turned the flash off for night distance photography. Zipped and unzipped her sleeping bag around her feet to find the perfect temperature balance.
The ocean gleamed blackly beneath a gajillion stars, awaiting a moon that, at the moment, was only a glimmer on the horizon. Today had been a long day, first rising early to chase those dolphins, then the excitement with the merman. What had happened to those dolphins? She wondered if the merman had scared them off. What did mermen eat, anyway?
The thought brought a naughty alternative to mind, and she wondered what his mouth would have felt like eating her out. Her body heated with the thought. Damn, she wanted him. Again. She slowly licked her lips while her nether regions tingled at the memory. This was going to be a long night.
A splash brought her out of her chair. Her heart revved up a notch at a thump against the hull. He’s back. Breathing hard, she took a step back, aiming her phone—and tripped against her sleeping bag. Her legs went out from under her, and her rear-end hit the deck in a painful jolt. The biopsy dart flew from her grip, but at least the phone remained around her neck.
The moon’s low position against the horizon outlined the shadow of a man’s head and shoulders peering over the boat’s side.
Cursing herself for turning the flash off, she fumbled in the dark with the settings. She
hadn’t anticipated getting him this close so fast.
A baritone voice cut through the night. “Your aura is pale. I apologize.”
Her finger hovered over the camera button. “Apologize?”
“That I took from you.”
She lowered the phone, not wanting to scare him off with the flash. If she took a picture now, all she’d get was his human half over the gunwale, anyway. “What did you take?”
“You do not feel it?”
She shook her head. “Feel what?”
“Your aura is diminished. I do not wish to leave you damaged.”
Aura? What the hell was he talking about? She unzipped the sleeping bag and slipped free, never taking her eyes from the merman. His head dipped below the gunwale like he was about to leave. She reached out a pleading hand. “Please don’t go!”
He slowly rose back into view, the deck heaving beneath his weight.
Rolling onto her knees, she crept closer. Keep him talking. “How many of your kind are there?”
“Few.” His voice grew husky at her approach. It reminded her of their earlier encounter, weakening her legs with remembered bliss.
“Will you come back on deck?”
He hesitated, his shadow motionless in the moonlight. Then he vaulted over the edge as he had this afternoon, sending a shower of seawater over her head.
She could barely breathe. Her hands were locked around the phone and yet seemed unable to move. He’s four feet away, for Christ’s sake! Take the picture! Still she waited. The thought of scaring him away with a photo made her feel hollow inside.