A Mermaid s Kiss

by Joey W. Hill

  She was already nearing his mouth, but before she could say whatever unthinkable thing she was going to say, he closed the distance. Oh, Goddess. The sea had brought strength back to her physical body in a miraculous matter of minutes, though as he'd sensed, her spirit was still recuperating from its near separation. But the passion she gave him now overrode it, that mortal reaction when the body brushed too closely to death. The desire to connect. To live and create something more than itself.

  It pulled an answering response from him, which shouldn't surprise him, because she'd roused desire from him the first time he'd touched her, sinking down into the Abyss. But now it surged forth on a wave of frustration and despair so strong he knew he couldn't inflict the violence of it upon her.

  He forced it back to focus on her. Maybe he could make this moment even more than what she expected. Maybe he could use her pleasure as a powerful magic of its own, to create and convey to her a credible semblance of what he might have once been able to give to her. And if he did it right, maybe she wouldn't realize the magic all came from her. As it had from the beginning.

  Goddess knew, she deserved something from him, with all he'd put her through.

  Maneuvering them to the edge of the spring, their mouths still joined, he broke the contact only to lift her up onto a flat rock shelf. He kept most of her tail immersed, since his knowledge of mermaid biology told him her sensitive scales were the primary conductors of the healing effect of the ocean waters. He'd brought their pack and now searched through it as she watched curiously. He chose several of her shells, two small round ones and one oblong angel wing she'd had wrapped in tissue to protect its more fragile structure. Knowing her odd sense of humor now, he suspected she'd deliberately chosen it for the journey.

  As he took them out, he placed them on the shallow platform of her belly to hold them, increasing her amusement.

  "What are you doing, my lord?"

  "Giving you something to think about other than mermen," he said.

  While she quirked a brow at him, the shells dipped in a slight movement, revealing the quiver of response running under her skin. It made his own blood heat. But again he tamped it down.

  "I've told you about the Privy Man," he said, moving the shells again, this time placing the two small round ones on her breasts, one fitting over each nipple snugly enough to stay there, letting her sensitive tips feel the texture of the shell inside. "Tell me something I might not know about."

  She studied him, her eyes growing brighter with arousal. He wanted to watch it grow and consume her, confirm for him that not just her body but her soul had a firm hold on life again.

  "You've lived so long, my lord. I can't imagine . . ."

  "Try," he said quietly, picking up the angel wing, caressing her stomach with his fingers.

  "There's an underwater cave near Mexico," she said at last. "It tunnels from the ocean beneath a riverbed. There are rock formations in that cave over a million years old. They crumble if you touch them, so you have to swim slowly. In places the water is a brilliant crystal blue."

  As she remembered, her eyes seemed to become more vibrant as well. Jonah watched her face, studying it so hard, trying to find the secret of it, why it'd had the ability to hold him in such close proximity from the first, seeking something he didn't want to give, but still couldn't tear himself away from. "At one time, there were openings in the riverbed, to the surface. The tribes of Mayans that lived along the river area used to dive down and leave pottery, as gifts to the Goddess Ix Chel. I found them there, huge mounds of pots beneath the water. The stalactites and mites are like columns in a temple."

  She settled her head back on a rise of rock, careful not to dislodge the shells. As she did, her breasts tilted upward. When his gaze followed their movement, a flush of response heated her throat. He was grateful for the cooler water, helping keep his body motionless, bound by her voice.

  "Deeper in, I found a statue of Her, as tall as two of you. She's sitting cross-legged, and when I went to Her base, I couldn't help but touch Her, just a tiny part of Her foot so I wouldn't do much damage. But She was solid, didn't crumble at all. As if being in the water all this time only enhanced Her strength. And so"--her breath drew in as his fingers glided up her stomach, between her breasts--"I curled up in Her lap, which was this perfect curve for my body, and I slept. Oddly, it felt like my gift to Her, keeping Her company that way. My lord ..."

  "Be still, little one. You've traveled far in the sea, haven't you?" His finger traveled left, followed the curve of her breast, his eyes stilling on her face in that way that made Anna's tongue feel like it didn't work properly. "The first time we met, you told me your family was used to your absences. You've spent much time alone."

  "No." She shook her head, her fingers curling at her sides, trying to obey his command to remain still even as feelings spiraled wildly inside her, all coiling in toward that single touch. "Even that day. Ix Chel was with me. Then there are whales . . . stingrays . . . fish and sea life of every description. Even the cranky blennies."

  "But no one who can do this . . ." And the small shells were moving, a slight elevation, like the movement of a hidden creature beneath as her nipple tightened, lengthened, responding to him.

  "If you were in your human form, I'd put this one"--he passed a hand over the angel wing shell still resting on her stomach--"over that sensitive flesh between your legs, just over the wet opening to your cunt. I'd watch the way you'd react to the barest of pressures there."

  She could imagine it vividly. Like when on the shore of her own familiar ocean, how she placed the sole of her foot on the wet sand, waiting for that first tiny lick of foam . . . that barest of touches . . .

  Like when he'd first placed her in this water. The soul holding the moment, overwhelming the body's base need for mere survival. Giving the mind a powerful lesson in the importance of stillness, of savoring the overwhelming flood of significance of what that one touch, one feeling, meant. Even if the next moment took it away.

  "Can anyone else do that to you, little one?"

  "Well . . ."

  He stopped, his gaze shifting to her, hot and possessive in a way that arrowed heat straight to her cleft, swelling her tissues such that it was as if the shell compressed her in fact. She let out a little moan.

  "No, my lord. Definitely not." But when he looked at her like that, like he considered her exclusively his, it did such marvelous and terrible things to her soul, shredding it. Tearing open the thin membrane holding the joy of new life, but all her vital, fragile organs as well, a jumble of agony and pleasure at once, just as new life would face.

  She slid back down into the water, beneath it, sending the shells floating. When Jonah bent, she reached for him. She let just her face come out of the water, the reach of her arms, bringing him down enough he could taste her wet lips. Then she drew him down until he sank below the surface, lying upon her. Her mouth gave his human body air, as a mermaid could do, making it possible for him to breathe, even as his heart pounded up behind his ears and his cock got deliciously harder.

  As she pressed her breasts against him, Jonah felt the smooth line of her stomach against his, the artful layering of scales in a vee down her lower abdomen, making him think of what was hidden there. But for the moment, there was just the incredibly intense pleasure of her mouth.

  Maybe the battle had given him the same reminder of the fragility of life as the dehydration had to her, stimulating them both. Or maybe that magic he wanted her to conjure was affecting him as well. Regardless, he was hyperaware of her fingers pressing into his shoulders, flexing into the muscle. The arch of her body, the line of her ribs he now followed with his fingers, like ripples in the sand left by tides. It made him think of her pixie wings, which appeared shaped by the water, and he wondered if the sea, the spiral of Her, was within Anna, such that when she opened herself like this, all the sensual mystery of the ocean's turbulent waters engulfed him and that was why he couldn't seem to ho
ld on to any cynical resolve. Selfish bastard that he was, had he started this for her pleasure, or his comfort?

  Does it matter?

  He didn't know if that soft whisper came from her mind, unconsciously responding to his conflict, or something far larger he wasn't prepared to face.

  They were surfacing. He trapped her between his body and one of the larger rocks that shaped the spring's banks. He briefly noted there were carvings on the rocks, more protections, but it also reminded him of the dragon fossilized in the first cave, where Anna had brought him to save his life. A life he'd cared little about saving.

  While he didn't see much value in it still, with her teasing about the mermen, he found himself thinking about who would take care of her. Make sure all that beauty and gentle but miraculously enduring passion for life was never diminished. She was only twenty years old, and he was as ancient as history. Yet there was something so precious in her, something that almost gave his life meaning. And, with the wisdom he couldn't deny, he knew not just his own. Whatever it was, he could only equate it to the quality of the Goddess Herself. If Anna wasn't alive, existing, then life as a whole would be less, for everyone. And wasn't it the height of irony that she'd said almost the same thing about him?

  Such things add up in the subconscious of the world, my lord.

  You are a gift to all of us . . . We need to know you're there, protecting us.

  He did remember Ronin's laughter. His heart had been struck from him when that was lost . . . But had he lost it, or let it go in the numbness of his grief?

  Her body was trembling, pressing insistently to him. "Do you want me, Anna?"

  She nodded, her cheeks flushed. "I don't know if I can . . . but I need you inside of me, my lo--"

  "Jonah." Cupping her face, he passed a finger over her moist lips. "Call me by my name, little one. I need to hear you say it, know you understand that it's just the two of us here in this moment. And know you understand that I'm the one on my knees, worshipping you. Needing you."

  She swallowed, her emotions naked as the early emotions of the Earth, all lines etched out in perfect detail on her face, everything there for him to read.

  "Jonah. My lord."

  He closed his eyes and she said it again, her hand reaching up and passing over his hair. At that gentle touch on his head he remembered a haunting line from an Irish song David had struck out on a drum one night. After the battle where Ronin was killed.

  And his sword will strike ne'er more.

  Now he wondered if David had played it as a comfort rather than a dirge. To lay one's head down in the lap of a woman, and your sword need strike ne'er more. She was safe, and he was home.

  "This one time, my lord. Please. Raise the magic with me, make it a part of what we do together, for both of us. Don't make me feel as if I'm alone in it, forcing it upon you, that it's a separate thing from the pleasure we can feel from each other."

  It was a long moment, but then Anna felt it, a warm wave like the comfort of the water itself. More than the water. All of it. The sun, the sea, the earth and the wind . . . She closed her eyes, feeling it wash over her. Angel magic, even though he was in human form. Goddess, if this was a halfhearted attempt, his full strength might make her delirious with bliss, never to recover her wits again.

  At last she understood, in a way she hadn't before, why doing the Joining Magic by herself had left her with such an empty ache in her heart. Bringing together their bodies brought together the elemental wish of every being, to be fully inside the heart and soul of someone else. It was divinity and mortality at once, the searing regret and joy that could hold a soul suspended in time.

  She knew all beings feared change. Change meant nothing was guaranteed. But for some reason, this felt so still, so permanent. It would be hers, never changing, never altering, long after he was gone. After she was gone.

  Finding the strength then, she could tell she surprised him by transforming to human and lifting her legs to close them over his hips. While she felt most like herself as a mermaid, she wanted to see his face, be breast to chest like this. Physical form no longer mattered when the soul was so close to the surface.

  Jonah held her, knowing she wanted his body inside of hers. Needed to see his face while he took her. But for a moment he needed, too. To hold her like this, her hand against his chest, her soft cleft pressed against his groin. He discarded the battle skirt and clutched her bare buttocks beneath his hands as he took her to the bank where he could lay her down on the wet earth, paint her with soft traces of silken clay, dark and gray and some red, over the lines of her breasts. She arched up into his touch, gasping, and desire surged, hot and pure. He bent, kissed an earthy nipple, and then pulled it, slow, into his mouth, tasting her and the earth, rolling the soft peak which became small and tight.

  When her hands fell to either side, the unconscious surrender inflamed him, her instinctive submission to him. He had an unexpected, overwhelming need for it now, the surge of feeling that the evidence of her trust and acceptance of his possession brought.

  Water and earth, air. She was all of those things, and since she raised a fire in his blood, it made them complete.

  He hadn't realized how much he needed something to call his own. A sanctuary, a place that seemed created solely for his heart and soul to find rest there. For his eyes to find endless pleasure, his mind eternal stimulation. In Anna, he'd found all of those things, and while she met all those needs, he found an equal desire to know all of her, be that place for her. To be a home for each other.

  He couldn't pursue such insane thoughts, and not just because the ability for rational thought was slipping away. He worked his way down her body, spreading the clay, molding her curves in his large hands, wondering at the fragile but resilient perfection of her. At length, goaded by the impatience of her arousal, she reached for him.

  Not myth, but real, female, wanting him, the musk of her in his nostrils as he tortured her further, bending between her legs to nuzzle there with his mouth. He tasted her slick petals as she cried out and tugged at his hair, dug her fingers into his shoulders as an anchor as he tasted, penetrated her with his tongue, that narrow opening waiting for his cock to stretch her, to pull him in.

  She was bowed toward his mouth like water held on the curve of a powerful waterfall, wanting to crash like creamy foam on the slick rocks below. He cupped her bottom and straightened, holding her where he could see her face as he slowly, slowly impaled her on him. Her legs clamped around his back, her body open to him as he put his hand between them and stroked the stretched lips, the swollen clit as she rippled, so close. But he wasn't letting her go just yet, because he was mesmerized by her response, even as his own body surged dangerously close to that precipice.

  "Jonah . . . my lord . . . please . . ." She surprised him again by heaving herself upward. As he caught her to him by reflex, her hands dug into his arms, clawing up to his shoulders until she'd brought herself full against him. That angle took her down deep on him, such that she sucked in a breath and he saw the moment of pain at the adjustment turn to wild pleasure in her eyes.

  Putting his palms flat on her back, beneath her heavy fall of hair, he curved his thumbs around her sides, feeling the hint of breast in their rhythmic movement against his chest, the hardened nipples dragging, teasing his own skin. He couldn't hold out anymore. As he pushed her down, brought her back up, she held on to him as if he were a boat she was riding through a storm, her head thrown back, wet hair trailing so he knew it was caressing the delicious shape of her backside. He had the fleeting thought that he wanted the time, years maybe, to lay her on her stomach so he could press light kisses on those quivering curves, see her smile, grow taut with desire again, overflow with it as she was doing now.

  "Ahhh . . ." Her eyes, desperate, turned up to him.

  "Hold on," he commanded without mercy, but his own muscles were quivering. He let the magic build, build, felt it surge forth in her, and knew she'd been right. Even i
f he didn't agree with her about the use of the Joining Magic, the intense pressure of it building within him, reaching eagerly for hers, told him he'd been wrong to deny her this, to make her feel as if her effort was solitary and unappreciated.

  Spiraling, spiraling. The magic began to fit itself to hers, much as their bodies were interlocked, arms, legs, sex . . . and it was his turn to be amazed by the weight and shape of it, the pure scope as it built around them. Dazzling silver light mixed with the blue of his blood, joined by that rich purple that had been part of her tail color before she shifted and which still lingered in the faint markings along her arms. He'd noted the tattoo pattern changed every time she shifted, positing a wild array of creative tracings for his mouth, his fingers.

  When his cock hardened further at the thought, he wanted nothing more than to release inside of her, feel her squeeze down on him as she was now. His sultry innocent who knew no restraint with him, had never been bruised by a lover such that she'd learned self-consciousness, and she never would, because he could never bear anyone else to touch her . . .

  He lost the thread of that unlikely and unexpected thought as the climax roared over him, taking her with it. Their magic came together like the creation of a universe, exploding and pulling their bodies together, an irresistible gravitational force, his face buried in her neck, her hair streaming down his arm, her arms locked over his shoulders as she worked her hips on him, slamming down, taking him fully to the hilt, gasping out her release, a soft, whispered word he knew she thought he wouldn't hear.

  Yours.

  He didn't know if the word applied to him or her. It didn't matter. The magic washed over them both, and the poison cowered in his soul before the power of it, ducked beneath the hard rock of his fears and doubts as it swept by, swept through him, making him want nothing more than to be the person she most needed him to be.

  He could do this for her, go see this shaman. Maybe, just maybe, everything would turn out all right. If it didn't, at least he would have tried. For her.

  At last, they came down, in almost the same cyclical path, for he felt a sense of dizziness he saw reflected in her silly smile, a young girl's shyness. He couldn't help but smile back, but he also saw the weariness she'd kept at bay close in. The waters had restored her, but the healing process had been draining, as most healings were. On top of that, her demanding lover had seduced her into a mind-altering coupling that pushed her right back into the arms of exhaustion, whether she resisted it or not. So now he turned her in his own arms, wishing he could wrap his wings around her to hold her in her sleep. In a gratifying way, she seemed as comfortable as if he were doing just that. Snuggling back against him, she fit her body so tightly to his he knew he would likely wake with as raging a desire as that which he'd just released. He looked forward to it.