It did not take more than ten minutes to reach the port; he docked the boat at the post he bought to tie the boat. The harbor was crowded with people, both passengers and islanders who were saying goodbye to the friends they had made during those few days of festivities.
After tying up the main line and dropping the anchor, he helped Mireilla out of the boat, lifting her in his arms. The young woman was shivering more and more, her teeth chattering as she clung to his neck, passing her arms around him to find a source of warmth to help with the intense cold she felt.
He wasted no time in unnecessary greetings to the islanders he met along the way who looked at him curiously, noticing the precious treasure he carried in his arms.
As he was about to leave the dock, he met Eric who did not miss the opportunity to approach him to find out who the woman was who had so captivated his dour friend that he had taken her for such a stroll through the town.
“Now don't tell me you're in the business of picking up beautiful mermaids from the sea, Nat?”
Nathaniel smiled sideways. A mermaid? Maybe, because even though she didn't have a tail and couldn't breathe under the sea, she had captivated him.
“Are you all right?” Eric asked when he saw that the woman was trembling and looked sickly pale.
“She was in the water for a long time, and the cold has penetrated her body. She needs to warm up.”
Eric nodded, crossing his arms.
“It's dangerous for her to stay in that cold any longer. She has clear symptoms of hypothermia,” he uncrossed his arms and reached into one of his trouser pockets for something. “Here. Go to my house; it's closer than yours. Besides…” he smiled mockingly. “I've heard that your house has flooded. How convenient, isn't it?”
Nathaniel almost blushed when he was caught red-handed. He had made up that excuse to move closer to the woman to find the time to take the diary. The day after his unsuccessful search for the woman in the best hotel on the island, he called the other hotels in town, describing her, but he did not find her in any of them. Thus, he concluded that the only vacant place left was Ethan's old motel, and in order to be near her, he made up the excuse of the flood so that no one would suspect his true intentions.
But as usual, he had underestimated the human who smiled mockingly in front of him.
Eric was a strange case. He seemed to be human who, despite being a human, had the mind of a triton.
“I'd give you the keys to my house, but the water covers the floor of my room,” he broke the silence, accepting the keys his friend held out to him, leaning back so as not to lose his balance and have the woman fall out of his arms.
“Do you keep them where you always keep them?”
“Don't you believe my room is flooded?” he answered Eric’s question with another.
Eric shook his head, his eyes sparkling with amusement.
“Honestly, no. But if it's true, you have a nice couch where I can nap. Do you keep them where you always keep them?”
“Yes. Make yourself at home.”
Eric let him pass, following close behind.
“Well, buddy, don't make yourself at home in mine. I don't want to have to burn the mattress on my bed.”
Nathaniel refrained from answering him, walking briskly toward Eric's house. Before he got there, his friend said goodbye to him and left whistling, after assuring him that he would treat him to a seafood dinner the next day thanks to some money he was going to earn. He opted not to tell him that the bet about the type of woman he liked was finally won by old Ethan.
Nathaniel opened the door with some difficulty as he was still holding Mireilla in his arms, and he entered the house, mentally thanking his friend as he was addicted to the central heating.
Knowing it well, having been there a few times, he headed straight to the bathroom to immerse her in piping hot water. The main thing was to bring her out of the state of shock she was in. Mireilla's body temperature had dropped, and he may have to take her to the hospital.
He turned on the hot water and placed her numb body into the bathtub so she could soak in the warm water.
He was grateful to be able to perceive, thanks to his developed sense of touch, the differences in body temperature as well as the temperature of liquids. It was an ability unique to their race that helped them adapt to the temperature differences in the different oceans and seas.
When the water reached a level of about eight inches, Mireilla slowly began to wake up. She blinked in confusion and looked around with a veil of drowsiness covering her blue eyes.
“We're not on the boat. What happened?”
Nathaniel touched her forehead. Luckily, she was getting warmer, regaining vitality in her skin. The signs of hypothermia had begun to disappear.
“Before we reached port, you passed out. I should have tried to warm you up.”
Mireilla looked into his eyes. He would not apologize, but his tone of voice and the darkness in his eyes told her that he blamed himself for her fainting.
She brushed his cheek, drawing his attention.
“It wasn't your fault. I haven't been much of a sportswoman since I was a child.”
“I should have foreseen it.”
“No. That's absurd. How could you have known I'd freeze a little bit from being in the water?”
A little bit? Nathaniel thought, still on his knees beside the tub checking the water temperature. You almost turned blue.
“It doesn't matter now,” Mireilla continued, waving her hand, “I have so many questions to ask you. I don't know where to begin. Was what I saw real? It wasn’t a hallucination?”
Nathaniel got up and sat on the toilet seat; he would be by her side until he verified that she was completely well.
“No, it wasn’t a hallucination. I am real. My race is very real.”
“And why is there no scientific evidence of your race’s existence? Why does the world think of you as mythological beings?”
“That's exactly why. Your mentality, your desire to know everything made us hide, moving away from the coast and the surface. Before, when there were no such machines that you use to dissect and see every part of the bodies you murder to quench your thirst for knowledge, we went to the surface without fear.”
Mireilla remembered the scene in the Odyssey where the protagonist ordered his men to tie him to the main mast of the ship so that he could listen to the sirens' song without succumbing to it.
“Does it hurt when you change?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
Nathaniel tried to play down the intense pain he endured every time he lost his tail. It was a pain that lasted for minutes as he had to adjust to the force of gravity.
“It's more of an itch that runs through my tail or my legs when I start to change.”
Mireilla was about to ask more questions when Nathaniel decided it was time to leave her alone and take a shower. Her face had already regained its color and was sporting a lovely blush that appealed to him. The beautiful faces of mermaids did not show that human characteristic, which only appeared when they got hot or embarrassed about something.
He got up and walked to the door.
“I'll leave you alone so you can finish bathing. Take as long as you need, but come out when the water is cold. You can't get cold again.”
Mireilla pursed her lips in discontent, a gesture that had been with her since she was a child. She looked like a little girl sulking at the loss of her new toy.
“All right,” she agreed, leaning back and lying down in the tub, enjoying the chin-deep bath. “I'll leave you alone. But tomorrow, you will answer more questions.”
Nathaniel opened the bathroom door and got out, but not before answering,
“We'll see.”
While she was in the bathtub enjoying the warmth and calm of the clear water, Mireilla thought about everything that had happened.
And in the end, she had to accept it.
She was attracted to a man;
no…she had to correct herself…to a triton who could walk on land. Every second she spent at his side, Nathaniel was entering her heart, healing her.
I must take a chance. I've been running away from myself for too long.
Years of self-imposed celibacy and distrust of the male gender brought her nothing good. It threw her into an endless spiral in which she withdrew from everyone and became bitter inside at being alone.
The time had come to get out of the pit she had dug herself into to run away from the pain. I’ve been a coward, she thought.
Nathaniel was looking at her with desire, or at least, it seemed to her that he was looking at her that way; if she didn't want to lose him, she would have to take the risk. She would take the first step. It was a new millennium where women and men were fighting for their rights and equality in the workplace and in society, so why should she wait for him to take the first step?
Letting out a joyful laugh, she got up from the bathtub and undressed, throwing her soaked clothes on the floor. After soaping up and cleaning herself under the shower stream installed over the tub, she grabbed a towel and wrapped it around her body, ready to go out to meet him.
She would emulate the first encounter they had, to look for desire in the man's gaze, just as it happened the first time.
Before leaving the bathroom she looked carefully at herself in the mirror moistening her lips.
“Girl, you're going to kill it tonight,” she said to herself, smiling a little nervously. It was one thing to be sure of doing something and quite another to know that her plans were going to come to fruition. “Or at least, I hope.”
She found him in the living room, drinking a beer while he watched the baseball game between two second division teams without paying much attention. He had changed, no longer wearing the clothes he had hastily put on in the boat before she passed out.
She remembered when she first saw him completely naked, after the change. Her mouth had dropped open, and not only because of the shock of seeing that tritons existed but because as a man, he was awesome.
If she remembered correctly, more than 9.5 inches and with a thickness...
Mireilla felt hot, and she was dressed only in a short towel, which she chose to avoid long the bath towels. If she had wrapped herself in a bath towel, it would have looked like she was wearing a blanket, hiding her body completely.
It's time.
Seeing that he was oblivious to her presence, she cleared her throat loudly, throwing her shoulders back.
Nathaniel had been waiting for about fifteen minutes. To avoid the thought of going into the bathroom and taking her against the wall, he sat down on Eric's old couch to see if anything good was on TV. He kept flipping through the channels until he found a baseball game on rebroadcast. After the nights he spent with Eric in the bar having a few beers, he got used to this particular sport in which strength, cunning and agility prevailed.
So engrossed was he in watching the game, his mind blank to avoid thinking about his current obsession, that he didn't hear the throat clearing.
Mireilla cleared her throat again but got the same result.
“This can't be; tritons are just like men. When they have a TV on, they don't attend to anything else anymore.” She found it so funny that she burst out laughing.
Nathaniel was startled and turned around when he heard her openly laughing.
He was speechless. The woman was wearing only a tiny towel that barely covered her. Her hair was loose and frizzy from the humidity and saltpeter that she had not yet shampooed out.
Mireilla smelled of sea and woman, an aphrodisiac mixture that left him petrified staring at her. His cock grew instantly hard, and the lust against which he fought hard so as not to scare the human female, won the battle.
Mireilla smiled inwardly as she perceived the man's hungry gaze. She had succeeded. Her purpose of luring him innocently, had been successfully accomplished. He looked tense and aroused, his nostrils flared as if he could smell her, and his lips were parched as his mouth was ajar.
Well, now there's the last touch left, and you're mine, she thought, taking a step forward with her best innocent face.
“I didn't know tritons liked baseball. I thought you were more into water polo or sailing.”
Nathaniel swallowed hard.
Answer her, don't stare at her like a stupid, mindless human. She's innocent; don't scare her with your base mating instincts.
“Yes, I find baseball interesting.” But right now, I'd turn this human invention off to get my fill of you.
Mireilla took another step and stumbled.
Nathaniel quickly got up and reached her before she fell to the ground.
Mireilla seized the opportunity; the causal stumble did not fail, and she dropped the towel, lying completely naked in his arms.
Nathaniel followed the path of the thin, rough cloth, then looked closely at Mireilla's tanned, beautiful body.
He let out a guttural growl and murmured hoarsely.
“You are lost now, woman. Tonight you will be mine.”
Mireilla smiled sideways, resting a hand on his arm.
No, it is you who are wrong. Tonight you will be mine.
CHAPTER 11
Nathaniel kissed her, seizing her lips with a passion that was about to burn them both. Desire and passion blinded them, as they both gave in to that simple act with all their hearts.
What little control he had over his body evaporated the instant the towel hit the floor. From that moment on, his sole purpose was to make her his, to plunge inside her with strong thrusts, to enjoy sex the human way for the first time.
He held her by the waist, crushing her against his body, gently sliding one of his hands down her buttocks, trying to encompass it with his touch.
Mireilla let out a guttural moan as she felt his hard, aching bulge against her belly. She needed to feel his skin against hers, to burn next to him, to be consumed in pleasure and reach the longed-for climax she had refused to feel for years as she was gripped by the pain and bitterness of betrayal.
Nathaniel's body burned with intensity, as if molten lava was coursing through his veins, throwing him headlong into the madness of uncontrolled lust. He adored the woman's lips, but he wanted to savor her thoroughly, so he cut the kiss short and ignored the moan of protest that burst from her lips to concentrate on licking her neck, inhaling the sweet scent of saltpeter the female gave off, intermingled with the floral musk that moistened between her legs.
“Ah, your scent may undo me,” he admitted hoarsely, without acknowledging himself. He sounded desperate. And truth be told, that's how he felt; if he didn't enter her soon, he would cum without even touching himself, just by feeling her warm body against his.
Mireilla looked at him with eyes glazed over with pleasure.
“I just took a shower. I can't smell anything.”
“Yes, you smell like coral.” He licked the hollow between her collarbone and shoulder, causing Mireilla to shiver softly as she became sensitive in that spot.
“Oh, God. I need you now.”
Nathaniel lifted her in his arms, watching her passionately, pausing at her perfect breasts which were just the right size to embrace in his hands.
Perfect, he thought laying her down in front of the television that was still on broadcasting the baseball game, but neither of them cared about that little detail.
The carpet covering the floor in front of the couch was rough and somewhat sticky, but Mireilla didn't spend more than two seconds at the thought of how dirty it would be, forgetting all concern as she felt his heavy body on hers.
He covered her completely, settling instinctively between her thighs. Mireilla gladly opened herself to him, aroused as she had never been before. Before, she needed at least half an hour of foreplay to get aroused before penetration and to reach climax with her ex at the same time. But with Nathaniel, as if he was the man who broke all her self-imposed rules, it was the opposite. In less than ten minutes, a
nd after sharing a few torrid kisses, she was already wet and eager to feel him inside her, plunging in until he engulfed her completely.
Nathaniel ripped off the shirt he borrowed from Eric's closet and threw it on the couch. He lay on top of her and gasped as he felt her erect breasts against his. He couldn't take his eyes off her, admiring every nook and cranny of her body, memorizing the little things that made her unique. Her race possessed no hair on their bodies except for the hair on their heads. They were hairless. But the woman possessed a fine layer of blonde hair that was lovely, soft. He ran his hands along her arms and felt a slight tingle that, contrary to what he once thought when he saw human women in bikinis on the beach, he did not find repulsive at all.
Mireilla lifted her hips and unabashedly rubbed herself against his cock, smiling inwardly as she heard his hoarse moan.
“By the god of the sea, woman. You are a sorceress.”
“Wasn't I your princess?”
Nathaniel let out a hoarse laugh. At a moment like that, and the woman was capable of joking. She was perfect, soft, fiery, giving herself blindly to a man she barely knew and with a simple humor that was attractive to any man.
“You are unique, Mireilla. And tonight, you will be completely mine.”
“I need you inside me,” she said roughly.
Nathaniel let out a curse in his native tongue. He was trying to gently make her his, but the woman prevented him by speaking to him in this way, stirring beneath him.
Tense to the max, he roamed her body with his sturdy hands, lightly squeezing her breasts, marveling at the color of the aureole surrounding her nipples.
As he ran his hand between her legs, he smiled slyly as he sensed the wetness she exuded and how swollen she was to the touch, throbbing. Following his instinct to drink from her and taste her to find out what she tasted like, he slid down her body, depositing small, warm kisses until he reached her pleasure center.
The King Triton Page 6