by Litte, Jane
The door slid open. He reached for her.
She jerked away, turning to walk out, ignoring the furious shouts echoing from the darkness at her back.
J.K. Coi is a multi-published, award-winning author of dark and sexy paranormal romance and urban fantasy. She lives in Ontario with her amazingly supportive husband and son, and their cat who is the undisputed ruler of the household. Please visit her at www.jkcoi.com, and if you’re a real glutton for punishment, see what she’s up to by following her on Twitter at www.twitter.com/jkcoi.
EACH STEP SUBLIME
BETTIE SHARPE
One
“Pride must suffer pain,” Grandmother says as she prepares me for my first trip to the surface. She says it as she lays a heavy kelp wreath across my shoulders, laces a girdle of abalone shells tight about my waist, and twists black sea-flowers into my silver hair. Three times she says it, and three times I nod. Pride keeps me silent, though I want to scream.
When Grandmother has made me as beautiful as she believes I can endure, my sisters sing to me. Theirs are the same sweet voices that call to sailors in the dark; that lure ships onto jagged rocks and unfriendly shores. Their song is the Song of the Sea. I know it as well as my own heartbeat. I love it as much as my next breath.
I kiss them each before I swim away, but once I’ve turned, I don’t look back. I am too eager to see what lies above the waves—to behold the endless sky and finite land; to glimpse the realms of birds and men.
Up and up and up I swim, into the sunlight filtering down through the deep. Shadows flit across my skin like a school of fish passing overhead. It is a rain of debris. Barrels, casks, trunks, and men sink from the surface, falling slowly, casting darkness on all that lies below.
A form drifts past, trailing dark blood. Its warm hand brushes my cheek like a caress. I catch the body, stopping its descent. It is a male of the human kind, with cloth coverings—clothing—upon his body and two gangly appendages in place of a tail.
I push at his clothing, curious to see what secrets it hides. Beneath, I feel muscle and bone—broad shoulders and hard ribs, just as he ought to have. And down below his abdomen just where his body splits in two, I feel the soft protrusion of a man’s parts.
Except for his legs, he is so like a sea-person that I am almost sorry he will die. But death is not as close as I thought, for when I press the hard muscles of his belly, he coughs.
His eyes spring open. His out-flung hands tangle in my hair. His gaze is dark and dangerous as an animal’s, but it shines with a spark of spirit I cannot deny. I seal my lips over his and breathe. He tastes of blood and salt, a not unpleasant flavor. Holding him thus, breathing for him, I swim to the surface.
The first thing I see when my head breaks the waves is not the sun or the sky, but the human’s face, pained and streaked with blood. There is a menacing beauty to his features—that dark hair against pale skin; those full lips between a prominent nose and square chin.
Reluctantly, I turn my gaze to the world above the ocean. Here is all that I have heard described, but never understood. The sky is blue and endless as the infinite sea. The sunlight warms my skin, even as the air currents chill it. And far off on the horizon, a brown-green lump rises above the sea’s majestic blue. It must be land.
I take the human to a quiet cove beneath a white palace with red pennants flying from its highest tower, and white stone stairs leading from the gardens straight into the sea. He climbs the stairs weakly, pausing to rest when he is but partway from the water. His hand stays tangled in my hair. Our eyes meet. “If you knew what I am,” he says, “you’d have let me drown.”
He pulls my face toward his. His lips are pain and pleasure. They move roughly over mine, spurring an excitement I can barely comprehend. It is foreign, yet so consuming that I don’t push him away, not even when he uses his tongue to caress mine within my mouth. Curious and pleased, I return his caresses.
He coughs against my lips, a burst of blood and breath. His hand loosens from my hair. His eyelids fall and his body goes limp. I cradle his head in my arms and lay it down gently. Though it should not matter to me, I long for him to live. I touch his cheek before swimming away, leaving him to the land.
Two
The human haunts me. I cannot fathom why, except that I liked the rough caresses of his lips and tongue. Since that day, I’ve found myself staring into empty water with my fingers pressed bruising-hard against my lips. Reliving his touch, remembering his taste.
When I can bear it no more, I swim to the stone stairway. It’s night, and the moon is but a sliver. Any human who sees my pale head above the waves will think it only sea foam.
He stands on the stairs with the ocean lapping his boots. His dark hair is dry and tousled by the wind. His fists hang clenched at his sides, and on his face is a look of such harsh desire that I both fear and long to be its object.
“Come back.” He speaks the words to the wind. Almost, I obey.
For all that he is human, he is like the sea—deep and dark and dangerous; unfathomable and unforgiving. And like the sea, I know that what he takes, he will keep. If I go to him, I will be as lost as a sunken ship upon the ocean floor, lost to the world that birthed me. Lost to everything I have ever known.
For the second time, I leave him to the land. But he will not leave me.
In my dreams, he says, “Come back,” and I go. In my dreams, I am conquered. In my dreams I am free. I savor those dreams, and spend my waking hours reliving them. During the day I am distant and distracted. Come nightfall I am far too eager for sleep.
My family has begun to worry. “Perhaps she is ill,” my eldest sister says as she huddles with my grandmother one afternoon in the gardens.
“I know of no ailment marked by such blank stares and breathy sighs,” my grandmother replies. “She’s cursed. We must employ the witch to free her from this spell.”
The next day, they bring me to the mouth of the forest of grasping polypi. The polypi are vines like serpents with a hundred heads and a hundred arms. What the forest catches with its white, clutching hands, it holds forever. The sea-witch lives beyond it, in a house of bone.
I brought treasure with me, but the witch wants none of it. “I don’t crave riches.” Her aged voice is rough and brittle as dead coral. “I want something you hold dear.”
“Anything I have. Only free me from this.”
“I can’t free you.” Her voice sinks to a whisper, and her tail undulates like the polypi in their forest of death. “You’ve fallen in love. Magic cannot create love, nor counter it.”
Her words sting like a sea nettle. “What am I to do?”
“You must go to him. I’ve a potion that will give you legs.”
I fold my arms across my breasts. “At what cost?”
“Each step will feel like the point of a knife.”
I shake my head.
She snakes her scaled arm about my shoulders. “Love must suffer pain, child.”
“I thought that was pride.”
“They have more in common than you’d think,” she rasps. “Your answer?”
I cannot ponder the matter long, or else I must surely refuse. “Yes.”
The witch’s smile shows double rows of jagged teeth. “Now, about my fee . . .”
“My pain is your payment.”
“Oh, no.” Her smile widens. “Your pain is but a consequence of the potion—one I do not think you will mind nearly so much as you should. The price for my help is your voice. I’d like to have it for my own.”
I imagine myself voiceless, never to speak or laugh or cry again. Never to sing ships onto rocky shores. “No.”
“Come now, if you win his heart, you may have it back.”
I hesitate.
“He’ll find another girl who loves him as much as you.”
Panic rises in me. I cannot stand the thought of longing for him while he lives happily with another. He must suffer as I do. I hold out my hand. “Give me the potion.
”
“Know this,” the witch says. “If he returns your love, you win your voice, but if he breaks your heart, you will die. Your blood will turn to saltwater, your body to sea foam. All who ever loved you will forget your name.”
“He will love me.” I will make sure of it. “Give me the potion.”
“Payment first.”
I open my mouth to dispute her. She plucks out my tongue like an oyster from the half-shell. Pain sears me, scarring my senses wide open, sealing the moment in horror cold as a cage of ice. I watch, helpless, as she raises my struggling, severed tongue to her lips and swallows it whole.
Too late to stop her, I regain control of my body. I touch my mouth, expecting a hot flow of blood to match the pain of my missing flesh, and find my tongue right where I left it, warm, living, and now useless.
The witch speaks with my siren-sweet voice. “Drink this.” She hands me a crystal vial.
The thick, bitter potion slithers down my throat as smoothly as an eel into a crevice. It coils round the base of my spine, and sparks a fever that cleaves me in two.
“One last thing,” she says as I writhe in pain. “Your prince is no prize. His own people believe him a monster. His past lovers declare him heartless.”
Trapped, like the polypi’s prey. What a fool I was to take the witch’s bargain.
She bares her white teeth and pushes me from her home. “Go. Try to make the monster love you. It is your only hope.”
Three
My first step from the sea is agony; the second, torture. The third step brings something like a revelation. It freezes the world in a crisp, crystalline shell of pain—a miniature eternity in which I notice the black night clouds limned with silver moonlight, the jewels of dew on each shadowed blade of grass. I taste the sea on the air and the sun beneath the horizon. Almost, it seems, the world’s every mystery will be made clear to me, its every secret revealed. And then, I pass out.
He finds me at sunrise, fainted on his lovely stair. He is dark as the night past, clad in the colors of midnight. I am pale as the stone beneath me, wearing nothing but my silvery hair.
I stir when he touches me, my eyes burning with the morning light, my breath coming fast from the fever of pain. His touch is torture, cool and soothing. It contrasts so perfectly with the sensations that rendered me unconscious that it becomes, of itself, a new and different agony.
“Who are you?” He brushes my hair from my face. I exhale a silent sigh but do not answer. I have no voice, no name he could comprehend, and no way to reveal what brutal magic brought me to his side.
I meet his gaze with my heart in my eyes, everything about me soft and willing. Whatever words he meant to voice die on his lips as they part, exhale. His pupils widen. His hand is hot against my wind-chilled skin.
“You need help. Clothes to cover you, medicine to heal you.”
You, I say with my eyes. You must cover me. You must heal me.
“No.” Regret and hunger war in his expression. “I warn you, I am no good for care or comfort. I would bring you only pain.”
Then bring me pain.
Eyes haunted, he shakes his head. “You saved my life. You deserve better.”
He moves to pull away from me. I catch his wrist. It’s strong and thick; my fingers cannot close around it. Please.
“You will regret it,” he says. “They always do.”
He scoops me into his arms and ascends the stair in long, swift strides. He carries me through a scented garden of blood-red flowers with soft petals and vicious thorns. At last we come to the palace. A thousand glass windows reflect sea and sky. Within are rooms dressed in polished wood dark as black pearls, and jewel-toned fabrics softer than a seal’s pelt.
He lays me on a padded bench and bellows for his servants. A woman comes, old and round, with silver hair darker than my own. Her lined face falls when she sees me. “So delicate, she is. Looks like a kiss might bruise her.”
“Yes.” His voice is hungry.
The servant’s black eyes turn hard as volcanic glass. “The rumors were bad enough after the last one left. You know you cannot keep her.”
He nods.
No! I force myself to my feet. Pain spirals up my body like a choking vine. With my next step, it blossoms into bloodred beauty, sweet as the flowers in his garden, hot as the pressure of his lips.
His breath catches. I meet his eyes and cannot look away. They are so very dark, iris and pupil almost the same shade. His pupils widen as he watches me. I glimpse my reflection in his gaze; my pale body twined with the thorny vine of pain, kissed by the scarlet blooms of ecstasy.
In the corner of my vision, his servant drops her head, cheeks pink with shame at the sight of us. She clasps and unclasps her hands. “I’ll prepare a room for her.”
“Don’t bother. She’ll sleep in mine.”
Four
The servant leaves and my wits scatter like a surprised school of fish. Much as I crave my human’s touch, the intensity of his attention frightens me.
He circles me. I clasp my hands to stop them from trembling.
His laughter seems as gentle as a mild tide lapping at a sunny shore, cold contrast to the cruel hunger of his smile. “Beware your wants, love, lest I satisfy them.”
The witch called him a monster. Almost, I believe it. Yet I remember the rough press of his lips. The taste of salt and blood. The feel of his body tangled with mine.
“Come,” he says. This time I obey, each step a joyous agony.
He touches my lips. “I was your first.”
Yes. My eyes answer him, though I haven’t a voice.
He trails his hand down my body to trace the seam of my sex. I shiver at this liberty, but do not deny him.
“I will be your first.”
Yes.
Though I am yet an innocent, I’ve heard whispers of what transpires between the sexes. My sisters use words like “taken” and “ruined” when they speak of maids who let love lead them to a fall from grace. I’ve no illusion I can escape that fate. This man will take me. He will break me and remake me. A maid no more, I will become a most exquisite ruin.
I raise my face. He takes my mouth with his. Feeling floods me; his lips, his tongue, his hands. My heart hammers, as if in panic. My breaths come short and shallow. I am a sailor lost at sea, dependent on the fickle mercies of an element far greater than myself.
He touches me all over, making free with my body as though it exists only to please him. And yet, he pleases me, too. His hands seek out my secret spaces without shame or hesitation. Unerring, his fingers find my hidden pearl, toying and teasing until I scream, silent, at his touch.
Without warning, he slips his questing fingers into the channel of my sex. My muscles clench at his invasion, but he breaches me easily, hastened by the slick heat of my desire. Slowly, he spreads his fingers, testing me, stretching me.
“There will be pain.” A slight smile plays across his lips.
Love must suffer pain. The memory of the witch’s words stirs eager heat where I should feel the cold weight of fear. There must be some flaw in me, to make me crave his touch whether it brings pain or pleasure; to make me happily surrender what other maids hold sacrosanct until their wedding nights.
He puts his lips to mine again, pressing hard and delving deep. His hands toy with me, raising a tide of pleasure in my body that crests and drowns me between one breath and the next. I shudder in his arms, my new legs unwilling to support me. He catches me, holds me; his strength supports my soft and yielding form.
When the wild tide has ebbed, he sets me back upon my feet and frees his manhood from his clothes. It is not as it was that day in the ocean, soft and small enough to fit within my grasp. Now it is thick and heavy. When he places my hand on its heated length, my fingers cannot close around it. I try, though, squeezing gently, stroking lightly at the searing softness of his skin.
He trembles, much as I did when he caressed my pearl. It makes me bold to know I can cont
rol him thus. I stroke until his hand encircles my slender wrist and twists it behind me. I offer the other, making myself his willing prisoner. He holds my arms pinned and walks me forward.
Each burning step wraps the world in glass, delicate and breakable. My senses become acute, aware, perfect in their perception, from the cool play of air across my skin to the harsh sound of his breaths as he bends me over the padded arm of the bench.
Roughly, he thrusts his hands between my trembling legs. He parts them and he enters me. There is pain as he promised, but it is no punishment. It is precious, sharp, and fleeting, never to be known again.
He moves, rhythmic, restless as the sea before a storm. Against me, within me. My body gives like a soft shore, shaping itself to his movement, welcoming each violent meeting, mourning each slow retreat. At last he crashes into me and spends himself. He clutches me tight, whispering praises in my ear.
Later, he carries me from that room. Each step takes me farther from the sea. He ascends a curving stair to a room with a wide, curtained bed. The pillows smell of him, of fresh water and human skin. I burrow into them, sighing at the softness.
He laughs. “Enjoy your pleasures, do you?”
I nod, shyly.
He catches my chin and forces my face to his. “It’s too late for modesty, poppet. Not when you’re naked in my bed. Not when your virgin’s blood is drying on my cock.”
I meet his eyes, trembling, wondering what he wants of me.
He holds my gaze for several long moments. “I belong to everyone—my family, my people, my country—but you belong to me.” He grasps my shoulders hard. “Mine—every bit of you.”
Shock must show in my expression, for he flashes his cold smile. “I told you, you should have let me drown.”
I bow my head, but before I sink too deep in regret, servants come and set a metal tub beside the fire and fill it with bucket after bucket of warm freshwater. When they have finished, my lover carries me to the tub and eases me into the sweet, steaming water. With the lightest hand, he washes the salt from my skin and his seed from my thighs.