I would stop here and gladly fall back to the ground but for her cheerful voice calling out to me. “You made it, Princess!” she says with excitement. I cannot determine if it is feigned or not. “Now turn around and try it again.”
I wait a moment to ready my body and gather my resolve, then do as she asks. The second time is easier; the third is easier still. I fight the urge to collapse against her as I reach her, but the efficiency with which she spins me around and sends me on my way again leaves no opportunity for such indulgences in any case.
I manage two laps to the mast and back without toppling, and am starting on my third when, new muscles exhausted from the effort, I finally stumble the last little distance to the wood and, leaning against it, slide myself back down to the deck. I fold my new legs under me and sigh; but before I can close my lips, my captor is kneeling before me again. She takes my chin in her hand and tilts my face up into hers, her lips capturing mine and stealing another long, deep kiss. The taste of her warm breath in my mouth makes me remember our time last night once more and I shudder, a now-familiar tightening sensation between my legs making me rub my thighs together. Her other hand trails lightly along one of my breasts, and she gently pinches my budding nipple as she pulls her mouth away from mine and straightens up.
I breathe deeply to make up for the breath she has stolen, my hand rising to cup my breast where she's touched it. My face is warm. “Is this how it is to be from now on?” I ask. My voice is quiet even to myself, and I find I cannot look at her.
“While you are on my ship, Princess,” she says, “yes, this will continue.” She has a strand of my hair in her fingers and is rubbing it idly. “Do you object?”
I draw my legs in closer and wrap my other arm around them, still staring at the deck boards. “I feel I am being taken advantage of.”
“But do you object?” she repeats.
To my shame and horror, I find I don't know how to answer her; so, while the seconds tick by, I don't. “I have a name,” I murmur finally.
I can hear her grinning. I don't know how. “And what is your name, Princess?”
I blush deeper and turn my face further away, feeling the tug that doing so makes on my hair in her hand. Perhaps if she would stop touching me for a minute I could collect my thoughts. “It's Lorelei,” I tell the floor.
“Lorelei,” she repeats, slowly. The way my name slides across her voice makes my legs squirm again for some unknown reason. “It's a very pretty name. It suits you.”
My face feels as hot as the sun above. “Thank you,” I murmur. I can't explain my sudden politeness. She probably has not earned it.
She is kneeling in front of me now, and brushes my hair over my ears with both hands. My breath catches a moment, then speeds up, and I shut my eyes against the return of strange feelings that are quickly growing familiar. I can feel my heart pounding in my chest, and my throat, like the rest of me, feels dry. I hate this; but more so, I hate that I don't hate it as much as I should.
“My name is Vineberry,” she tells me, and the heat of her breath does nothing to cool my searing face, nor does her exotic scent calm my nerves at all. “Most who know me call me Captain Vine. You can too, if you like.”
I do not want to open my mouth for fear that I will give away the turmoil inside me, but I also do not want to allow a silence between us for fear that she will fill it herself. “Vine ... berry?” I repeat, my voice a whispered breath. It does not sound so melodious, my saying her name, as her saying mine did to me. “Is that ... like a plant?”
She chuckles her tinkling, musical laugh, the sound no longer as offensive to me as once it was, not very long ago. “A fruit, actually,” she says. “Growing free and unfettered, tight of flesh, but soft to the taste, dripping with a sweet juice...” Her hands have lingered on my face, just above my neck, and now they turn my face to hers, her thumb brushing across my skin. “I’m surprised at you, Princess Lorelei. I didn’t think you’d have such things as berries beneath the sea.”
“We … have vines …” Such a banal comment. Such a strange conversation. Her thumb brushes across my parted lips, stealing a ragged breath as they go. I cannot look at her, yet I cannot look away. I tingle and burn all over. Gods, she is doing it again.
She knows it. She smiles and leans into me, her burning gaze commanding my own. Her lips part, loose a sweet breath like a tropical breeze over my own, which I inhale like a drowning human gasping for air. Her mouth reaches to mine, and as I brace myself for impact, her lips lightly brush over my own for one split second before pulling infinitesimally away. “Open yourself,” she whispers against my mouth, and I almost gasp aloud. My eyelids flutter, and all I see are her eyes, a burning light with a core of unshakeable stone.
I cannot disobey eyes like that. Of my own will, I spread my legs beneath her on her deck and expose my new warmth to her desires. And without hesitation or cruelty, she takes it.
It is just as powerful the second time. More so, perhaps, now that I know enough of what will happen to me to anticipate its arrival. I melt into the floor beneath her and spread my whole body to the sky, wrapping my arms tight around the mast to keep them from trying to wrap around her. Everywhere her skin touches mine, I burn and ache, yet when she pulls it away, I yearn for its return.
I do not notice the moment in our joint writhing when she removes what little cloth covers her, but I feel its ramifications. A soft, burning heat slides its way up my thigh as she intertwines her legs with mine, her own thigh pressing against the warmth whose name I still have yet to learn. Her legs are firm, strong, graceful; they glide against me with surety and purpose, trapping and arranging me as easily as her hands. In the wake of my first walk, my own muscles were still weak and trembling even before she began this play of hers, and the contrast between her body and mine I feel unquestionably.
She feels it too, I am sure. She is feeling everything. By now, I think, she surely knows me better than I know myself, the voracity of her exploration is so great.
At last I begin to shiver uncontrollably despite the heat, my whole body clenching to hers as she moves on me. My breath skips and falters, and I feel my mouth open in a wordless cry that cuts to silence as soon as it is released, though I feel the force of it release from me elsewhere. In this same moment she presses her entire self to mine, her arms encircling my body with ease, her fingers tangled in my hair and gripping it tightly as her lips crush to my neck above my collarbone and her teeth hold what little flesh they can between them. She shudders and bucks against me, the strength of her hold increasing as her muscles go taut as the ropes above us, and I know now that she is experiencing the same sensations as I.
We lie like this, enwrapped in one another in mutual ecstasy, for what seems like a short eternity before our bodies slacken and collapse, mine beneath hers, hers atop mine. With the release of tension, breath returns, and I suck it in greedily; thanks to these sensations my captor puts me through, I am already exponentially more comfortable using my lungs than I am my legs. My chest heaves in time with hers, her head buried in my cleavage rising and falling with each gasped breath I take. Her hair is splayed in such a way to give my breasts some semblance of modesty, my still-burning nipples, still wet with her attention, hidden beneath her disheveled locks. Her own breasts are two warm mounds that squish against my abdomen, the points of her own nipples tickling my stomach as they trace short lines back and forth in time with her heavy breathing. The only sound I can hear, besides the thunderous beating of my own blood, is our mutual panting — even the constant crash of the waves around us is muted to me now.
Yet somehow, I become aware of another, softer sound that doesn't fit with the rest. A single, choked breath with a short, quiet moan behind it, muffled against my chest. A sob. I glance down through the glaze in my eyes and realize that she is crying softly, quietly, into the valley of my chest, that some of the wet warmth I feel there is a small leak of fresh tears.
I cannot explain it. If anyon
e should be crying at this moment, I think, it should be me, and yet I find myself less indignant of my situation as the moments tick by. My Captain, however, with her easy smirk and her confident movement and her certainty of speech — behind all of this, I realize she is hiding something from me.
I should be shocked, as this vulnerability does not suit the image she has been showing thus far. Instead, with difficulty, I unwrap one of my arms from the mast behind me and, with ease, lay my hand on her head, gently stroking her hair with what strength I have left. I feel her flinch at the touch, but it lasts only a moment; the next she is settled even more languidly against me, her breathing deep and even, the only evidence of her moment of weakness my own memory of it. She does not acknowledge it, and for once, I do not question. For once, I do not worry inwardly that I do not hate this woman as much as I think I should for stealing me away from the comfort of the familiar.
We lie like this together until the sun drops about half an hour down the sky behind us, neither of us speaking a word. Occasionally I glance down at her, but she does not look back. We lie, and we breathe, and I alternate between speculation and memory. It is not altogether unpleasant.
At last, she unwraps her arms from me and pushes herself up to her knees, running her fingers through her unkempt hair and smoothing it back out. She gazes down at my body, but not at my face. Her tears have long since dried from her face and my chest, but I see their memory in her eyes as she stands and walks slowly about the small space of deck in front of me, collecting her discarded clothing. She does not put them back on, but instead folds them up in her hands and then stands there, naked and unashamed, staring out over the railing at the sea. “Are you tired?” she finally asks, and her voice is a quiet ghost of its former brazenness.
I push myself to a sitting position against the mast and draw my legs in. “A little,” I answer honestly, “but not enough to sleep. I've done enough of that already.”
“Yeah,” she mutters away from me. She takes a deep breath, exhaling audibly, then finally turns to face me. Her expression is not unkind, but her smile is gone. “Are you hungry?”
Food had been the last thing on my mind since waking up here, but now that I am reminded of it, I realize how long it has been since my last real meal. “A little,” I say.
She nods. “I have, uh, fruit. And vegetables and herbs. Planty stuff.” She looks away out to sea again, and her apparent embarrassment shocks me anew. “Or I could catch some fish if you’d rather. I don’t actually know what merfolk eat, tell the truth.”
Something about her now charms me in a completely different way than the forcefully intoxicating persona of before, and I find myself fighting a smile. “I like kelp and oysters,” I say, resting my chin on my knees. “I eat fish too, of course. I’ve never tried a surface plant before.”
She turns back to me then, her expression hopeful. “Would you like to?”
“I suppose,” I say, and she disappears through a door to the back of the ship, a large wooden box growing out of the deck with two doors in front. The small windows on them tell me that one of these is the door behind which I awoke bound and wet and confused. That must have been earlier today; I remember the sun blinding me through that window, and it still hangs in the distance now, less harsh for the shade on my head and my growing familiarity but achingly bright nonetheless, the edges of the horizon only just beginning to tint pink. Soon the sky will glow softly with the beautiful pinks and oranges and reds of a dying day, visible currents of distant air like a wall of coral above empty space and the gentle swell of dark water. Sunsets and sunrises used to be the only time I cared to breach the surface, when the ethereal beauty was worth the alien sensation of open air. Even then, I remember the dimming light hurting my eyes after too long; now I think back on the discomfort and marvel at how worrisome I thought it at the time, how petty it seems now that I have seen the full power of a day at its peak and lived through it easily.
My Captain returns then with a cloth-wrapped bundle in her hands, which she sets down and spreads out to display a variety of strange plants in all shapes and sizes. Some of them I recognize somewhat — thin green leaves that resemble misshapen seaweeds or fuzzy lumps that look vaguely like anemone fronds — but most are foreign and new to me, and a few look more closely related to some sort of crustacean than to any plant I have ever known. She picks one up, a round, green, fist-sized lump with a shiny outer shell covered in dimples, and bangs it against the deck beneath her twice before it cracks open to expose a glistening orange core. She breaks the thing in half, then hands one of the halves to me. “Evening melon,” she says as I take the fruit from her hand. “They grow wild and easy where I come from, and they’ll keep for months if the shell stays undamaged.”
Hesitantly I take a bite. The flesh is crunchy but yielding and drips its juice down my chin as it breaks, and the taste is both salty and sweet. My satisfaction must show on my face, because my Captain smiles at me as I eat, looking more her previous self for it. The first swallow wakens my stomach, and suddenly I feel the full weight of my hunger.
“You like it, then,” she says, sounding pleased. I nod and dig in, momentarily unconcerned with the constantly changing atmosphere around me while I satiate my appetite.
I try a few more of her samples, nibbling at the stranger ones until I can determine whether I like them or not. The spiky brown thing that looks like an urchin is too grainy and bitter, and there is a weirdly pungent kick to some of the leaves that I am not sure sits well with me; but most of her offerings are sweet and juicy, and the cavalcade of new tastes and textures makes me feel as if I am an honored dignitary in a new land. For my Captain’s part, she talks little but to tell me the names of the things I next put in my mouth, then studies me while I eat as if to memorize my reactions. As hunger wanes, my thoughts turn partway back to the situation at hand. I wonder, fleetingly, if perhaps it is unwise to accept strange food so readily from this woman. But then, if she wanted to do me harm, she has already had plenty of opportunity to do so, so a poisoning now would make no sense. Indeed, her attention to me now seems more curious and fascinated than anything.
I feel it most at the end of our meal, when I select a handful of small pink fruits each the size of a pebble, with taut, soft skin on the outside and a deep, glistening red flesh inside that explodes into a mouthful of sweet, creamy juice when I bite down. They feel slightly warm somehow sliding down my throat, and my Captain grins hugely watching me. They are my favorite so far, and apparently it shows.
“So?” she asks expectantly, leaning forward over the cloth.
“They’re delicious,” I answer. “But you didn’t tell me the name.”
She laughs quietly in her throat before saying, “Those are vineberries.”
“Oh.” I stop eating and look down at the little pink fruits in my hand. Their juice is coating my lips right now, I know. I lick them clean self-consciously, and my Captain watches intently as I do so, charging the air between us again. “Um …” I can feel the heat rising to my face once more as her gaze takes on that now-familiar look of predatory lust. So strange and so quickly these changes now — she had seemed so friendly during our meal that she began to remind me of one of my sisters, but now that look in her eyes and the recent memories it conjures makes me think of her in ways I have never thought of any of my sisters before.
I tense up with a small gasp as she suddenly leans across the blanket of fruit, bringing that warming gaze and that now-familiar smirk closer. Her full breasts rock forward with the movement, almost brushing my fingers as she reaches her hand to mine and lightly plucks one of her namesakes from my palm. Her eyes arrest mine as she puts the fruit to her lips, clenching it between her teeth, somehow making even the act of eating seem like a guilty secret.
Then she leans in further and captures the back of my neck with her hand, and I gasp again just in time to catch the small bud of fruit as she presses her lips to mine. My heat returns in one swift wave, cras
hing over me from within; and as she bites down into the berry, I feel the sweet liquid heat of it wash over our kiss, coating my tongue and lips anew and loosing a single drop down my chin. When she pulls away again, her tongue slips slowly out to trace the line of escaping juice and lap up its trail. I partially stifle a groan, half of a berry hanging in my lips, as she pulls back with a grin that sends my insides fluttering. “Mmm,” is her only comment as she licks the glistening juice from her own soft lips, her cheeks flushed slightly to match my burning face. I am sure I am as pink as the vineberries now, and once again every part of me feels filled with liquid heat.
I say nothing as we watch each other now. She has the look of a mischievous predator waiting for its prey to make a move, like a dolphin toying with a squid before devouring it. I can only imagine the look I must have now, surely pink to the roots of my hair and staring in wary embarrassment. The potential danger of my situation comes back to my mind again. What happened to that chagrined sorrow from earlier? I wonder. It occurs to me that, with mood swings like this, this woman may not be entirely mentally stable. I gulp nervously at the thought, reflexively taking my half of the berry the rest of the way into my mouth, holding it on my tongue while its juice slowly leaks out.
But then she simply smiles and stands up. “C’mere,” she commands, turning half away from me toward one of the ship’s doors. “I’ll show you your room.”
“My room?” I repeat around the berry in my mouth.
She nods and crosses to the farther door. “I’m not gonna keep you in that closet for the whole trip, and the deck isn’t very comfortable to sleep on, I’m sure. Since you’re royalty, I figured you deserve deluxe accommodations.” She opens the door and beckons inside. “So I’m giving you the only bed.”
“Bed?” I ask. Warily and wearily I try to stand, but succeed only in rearranging my legs beneath me and wobbling on them precariously.
She smirks and leans against the doorframe. “You’re like a little pink parrot, y’know that? It’s kinda cute the way you just repeat the last words I say as if you’ve never heard them before.”
O Captain, My Captor Page 3