by Hal Bodner
He and Corey had quit unpacking around dusk. They’d managed to manhandle most of the furniture into its ultimate location, except for Tony’s desk, computer and file cabinets, which were still stacked in their cartons in the alcove. The kitchen area – also open to the living room – still needed work, but at least the dining table and chairs had been set up. They’d filled the wardrobe and dresser drawers with Alex’s and Tony’s clothes all mingled together, and so long as they were temporarily out of sight, Alex would deal with sorting them out later. Their possessions that were not immediately essential remained in boxes organized by content on the many shelves which lined three of the curved walls and presumably had once held rare library books.
Alex’s studio space had warranted most of his and Corey’s efforts. He’d decided to install it directly across from the front door, near where the Gemini stood, with enough space between his workspace and the wall so that by simply raising his eyes and turning full circle, he could take in all of the statues without leaving his position in front of the easel.
Corey had left, though reluctantly, to meet his date for the evening. He’d made it quite clear he’d be willing to stay if Alex was amenable to a repeat of the other afternoon. But Alex had begged off with the excuse that he needed to work. Corey took the rejection gracefully but still managed to maneuver his tongue halfway down Alex’s throat when they kissed goodbye while pressing his shirtless, sweating chest tightly up against Alex’s front and groping his ass. Alex smiled at the memory. Corey was incorrigible – and predictable.
Now, Alex stood wearing nothing but his favorite pair of paint-stained shorts, with daubs of pigment smeared across his brow and cheeks from where he’d absently wiped away the perspiration with one of the rags he used to clean his brushes. His chest, arms and thighs looked like he’d been tortured by some Spanish Inquisitor who had a rainbow fetish, with sharp slashes of color running every which way. There was a particularly large splotch of white on his upper abdomen that materialized when, absorbed with the problem of getting the effect of the moonlight reflecting from the water just as he wanted it, he’d scratched a mild itch.
The painting he was working on was very much in his new style – hopefully, Nadine would be pleased. A young man stood on the shore of a rocky beach, his body angled partially away from the water. Typical of a Restin, he was almost nude, with only a few strands of seaweed draped over one shoulder. One of his finely muscled legs was exposed to the viewer, along with the suggestion of a sweep of perfect buttock. His other leg, as well as his genitals and one hip, were hidden – either because of the way the figure was positioned or by an almost waist-high outcropping of rock. Alex had chosen the seaweed and the vestiges of sand clinging to the youth’s shoulder and upper back to lavish with detail, as well as a tiny crab that scuttled along the waterline in the foreground.
It was clear the youth was leaving the beach, but was reaching back with one hand, his face turned to another man just emerging from the water. There was unutterable sorrow on his face – and longing, as if he were obligated to depart when there was nothing in the universe he would rather do than to remain. As for the man still halfway in the sea, his smile confirmed that when the youth returned, he would be welcomed.
Their arms reached for each other; their fingers almost touched and the rocks in the landscape appearing in the background of the empty space between their groping hands sprang into focus in such realistic detail that individual tufts of marsh grass could be seen. The two men themselves were in soft focus, the details of their bodies obscured as if the light from the moon was blocked by a passing cloud.
The painting’s ambiance was sorrow and longing and regret, yet there was a peaceful quality. Though time might pass between meetings, it was clear the lovers knew they would eventually be reunited.
The antique grandfather clock in the far corner of the condo struck midnight with rich, rounded bongs, startling Alex from his concentration. He glanced at it, not having realized it was so late, and grimaced when his view also took in the blink of the digital clock across the room on the bedside table. The move must have screwed up the works of the grandfather; it was actually past two in the morning.
Wiping his hands on a rag, getting more new paint on them than he managed to remove, he decided to call it a night. Rather than mess up the master bathroom, he threw down his rag, quickly cleaned his brushes in the old coffee cans he saved for just that purpose, and crossed to the former wet bar to wash up. Sweat trickled down his back and, combined with the paint smears gracing the front of his torso, made him sticky. The condo had air conditioning, of course, but while he worked, Alex left it off, believing it adversely affected the way the paint dried.
He still felt grungy and sweaty but he was tired from his long hours of concentration, so he didn’t want to bother drying off after a shower – no matter how quickly – before tumbling into bed. Instead, he ducked his entire head under the faucet, closing his eyes so as not to get water in them, and blindly fumbled for a towel. Before he could lay his hands on one, he was aware of a sudden coolness pervading the room, something damp but not unpleasant, as if he’d left a window open on a rainy night. With a start, he sensed a presence behind him. Blinking to clear his vision, he was turning away from the sink to confront the intruder when he felt moist, cool hands gently grip his sweaty shoulders.
He stiffened in panic. The fingers stroked softly, easing the tension from his muscles, and able to open his eyes at last, Alex saw that the mirror over the sink reflected no one but himself. Frightened, he whirled around and stopped. His jaw dropped.
CHAPTER 4
The man before him was a paragon of physical perfection. Long and lean, with the body of a swimmer or diver, his chest was lightly muscled but the shoulders were broad and corded. His face was exotic, foreign, and he had a small but well-formed nose, with just a hint of the Asiatic in the almond-shaped eyes. Cool, long fingers rested on both Alex’s shoulders and, unable to stop himself, Alex reached out to hold the intruder, resting his hands on either side of the man’s naked waist.
Alex gasped at the contact. The man’s skin, which appeared so smooth, so unmarred at a distance of less than a foot, was actually pebbled, as if by microscopic goose bumps. Alex could feel the tiny protrusions in the pads of his fingers and in the flesh of his palms, and there was a sleek oiliness to it, not unpleasant – strangely erotic, in fact – as if his hands could glide over the body of this exquisite creature for hours and feel no friction.
With his intake of startled breath, Alex took in the man’s scent. Briny sea water and the tang of ocean vegetation, with the underlying smell of maritime breezes and a scintilla of the clean, fresh smell of just-caught fish which, Alex knew from childhood summers spent by the shore, was not at all fishy or pungent. Fascinated with the skin texture, Alex moved his hands lower, seeking to trace the line of the man’s hips, or to move his palms around to cup the firm butt, which he somehow knew was as perfectly formed as the rest of him
For an instant, Alex frowned at the change in what he felt. At first, his mind couldn’t grasp the meaning of the rough yet slick surface sliding beneath his fingers. He glanced down, but even before anything registered, he already knew. From the waist down, there was almost nothing human.
The tail’s scales were an intoxicating mix of cerulean blue and iridescent green, shot through with flakes of gold, each scale moist and glistening. Unlike the torso, it was bulging with muscle; it would have to be for this veritable god from the sea to balance so casually upon it. As Alex brought his eyes back upwards to focus on the dick, fully erect and thrusting proudly from the rounded triangle of human flesh that punctuated the creature’s groin at the top of the tail, his artist’s eye took in the faint greenish hue of his skin, an odd but weirdly attractive color, so subtle he’d at first failed to notice it.
Pisces leaned forward and stopped, his lips poised so close to Alex’s that the artist could practically taste the salty tang of his breath
. It evoked raw clams, dug from the beach at twilight and slipped onto the tongue and down the throat with nothing but seawater as garnish, and the buttery sweet taste of crab, sucked from the claw with gluttonous abandon. Alex could practically hear the distant, high-pitched, piercing cry of sea gulls roosting on flotsam out on the open sea and smell tendrils of seaweed washed up on the beach at night, a scent reminiscent of a vast, open vista stretching like the ocean onwards toward forever, punctuated only by the soothing rumble of waves rolling into the shore.
The flavor, when their tongues met, was everything it had promised to be and ever so much more.
Alex’s right hand moved from the creature’s ass to grasp the back of his head, urging him forward, ever forward, while Alex desperately probed deeper with his tongue to devour the salty essence, savoring the taste of him. He felt the puckered clumps of seaweed tangled in Pisces’ hair, hard rubbery nodules that were a larger version of the bumps on the slick, cool skin of his torso. His other hand slid from Pisces’s waist, fingertips brushing at the sharp edges of scales before the surface changed and Alex was able to experience the more-human wonder of the taut-muscled ass. Alex gripped it tightly, pulling his otherworldly lover’s groin closer into his own, letting up only when he felt feathery wisps of something trailing dangling from the small of Pisces’s back and ticking the backs of his hands. Curious and with some reluctance, he halted his exploration of the fish-man’s butt and moved upwards to encounter clusters of tiny shells – cockles maybe – trapped in a silky webbing of mossy tendrils, still moist from the sea.
The pulsing of the mollusks as they opened and closed their shells, hunting for oxygen penetrated Alex’s sensitive fingertips, traveling up his arms and across his chest. He felt his breath and heartbeat alter to match their rhythm, and when at last all was in sync, he knew the inner peace of the seas, the comfort of a liquid womb which he had not experienced since just before birth.
He broke the lip lock and stepped back, coming up short against the sink, wanting to take in every detail of this strange and exquisite creature. But Pisces seemed to have another idea in mind and would not be denied. He gently took hold of Alex’s hand and with a firm tug drew him forward across the room until they were standing atop one of the canvas tarps Alex had spread out earlier to protect the marble floors from errant drops of paint. With inexorable force – not violent but so strong Alex could do nothing but give in to it – Pisces bore him to the floor. The artist lay on his back as the merman poised above him, a fold of canvas clinging to one shoulder with the tackiness of partly dried paint.
Pisces smiled down at him, a secret smile of anticipation, as if he was about to bestow a delightful and unexpected gift – as indeed he was. Alex reached up, wanting to pull the fish-man in for another kiss, but Pisces shook his head. Firm muscled forearms with long, slim lengths of membranous flesh along the outside – fins, Alex thought – grasped his wrists and placed them firmly back at his sides. Alex remained still, waiting, feeling completely powerless. He felt he should have been frightened; instinctively, he knew he was about to be ravished, but he suspected it would be with excruciating tenderness. The throbbing pulse in his temples, the echo of the sea, calmed him.
Pisces’s fingers rested on Alex’s chest just below his collarbone, barely touching him. Alex longed to arch forward, to press his flesh into the pebbled pads of fingers, to feel their moist coolness against his hot and flushed skin, but Pisces seemed to sense the intended motion and, with another smile – this one mischievous – he shook his head.
Slowly, so slowly that Alex could scarcely bear it, the fingers moved inwards, meeting just below the hollow of his throat, and then moved down. Where they passed, the nerves beneath the artist’s skin came alive as a thick, oily fluid oozed from the fish-man’s fingers, penetrating the flesh and sparking the neurons beneath. For a moment, Alex wondered why he wasn’t uncomfortable; being covered with some kind of alien slime was not an erotic experience he’d ever fantasized about, much less experienced. But the effect was that of some sense-heightening drug absorbed by his skin, and as Pisces continued to stroke and softly knead his torso, Alex found he had erotic zones where he’d never known it was possible to have them.
Inside Alex’s shorts, his penis engorged and strained against the zipper, bulging with the most magnificent erection he’d ever had until he feared it would burst right through the cotton. He’d always had sensitive nipples – his “high points,” Tony had called them – and anyone who teased the hair of his armpits was rewarded with Alex’s moans. But who knew the skin along his ribs could experience such ecstasy? He’d never before thought he might cum merely from the touch of someone’s hands tracing the lines of his upper stomach where his six-pack became an eight-pack. And when Pisces moved lower and began sweeping his fingers and palms along both the inside and outside of Alex’s thighs, he began to fear he might pass out from the intensity of the sensual torment. Tingles shot through his calves, and seemed to bypass his groin to flush his chest and elicit gasps of pleasure before moving back down his torso and belly and shooting up through the shaft of his penis to home in on the tip of his dick. By the time the fish-man concentrated his efforts on the soles of his feet, fingers weaving between each toe with languorous teasing, Alex thought he might go mad.
The merman, with no legs or feet of his own, seemed fascinated by Alex’s. He lavished attention on them until Alex – who’d never understood foot fetishes, much less had one of his own -- involuntarily curled and uncurled his toes with heels drumming lightly at the floor, back arched, his hands clutching at the canvas as he cried out, begging Pisces to take pity upon him, to stop and grant him release. But Pisces seemed to possess a hint of harmless sadism, and instead he brought his mouth down to the big toe of Alex’s right foot and enveloped it.
Alex screamed, an inarticulate sound of consummate pleasure, trying desperately to absorb the sensation. His hands released the canvas in favor of slapping at the floor – anything to divert himself from the delicious waves of erotic torment rippling up from his toes, past his ankles, along his thighs and onwards. One by one, each toe of both feet was suckled in turn and then – oh, the delicious agony of it! – the merman’s tongue attacked the soles of his feet with long slow licks from heel to toes, each calculated to pierce any remaining reserve in the artist’s body and reduce him to a quivering mass of raw and stimulated nerves.
When he seemed satisfied that he’d pushed Alex well past the point when any human could withstand the sensual overload, Pisces paused for a long moment, admiring his handiwork. The odd marine lubrication covered the entire front of Alex’s body, except for the parts still concealed by the shorts. Leaning forward in a push-up position along the length of his helpless victim, Pisces lowered himself with tantalizing patience until the two men were pressed together chest to chest. For Alex, it was like an electrical current ran from the fish-man’s skin directly into his own wherever their flesh made contact. Tiny waves ebbed and flowed against him, their throbbing establishing synchronicity with his dick. His hips bucked; he could not stop, thrusting upwards, seeking friction to allow release where no friction was to be had.
While Alex cried out, begging to be freed of the confining shorts, pleading with Pisces to allow him to stroke his hard, pulsing cock, the merman’s hands and body were not idle. He wriggled his chest, trying to grind himself against Alex and succeeding only in depositing more of the gelatinous sensation-heightening slime, slipping and sliding atop him while his hands slid along the artist’s arms. Finally, he grabbed onto the firm flesh of Alex’s lats, holding him flat against the floor, and with strong, rippling, bunching and cording motions of his tail, began to pump his groin up and down against the shorts, slapping their stomachs together where they clung for an instant, only to be separated with a moist sucking sound.
A deep, guttural gasp built up in the back of Alex’s throat – mindless and wordless yet unarguably the vocal emanation of a physical passion driven beyond th
e limits he could stand. It erupted in a harsh cry, primal and strong, and the instant he gave voice to it, his dick exploded, pumping his cum into his shorts like a tsunami. The thick milky semen soaked through the material almost instantly, its volume so great that a portion of it oozed past the waistband of the shorts to pool in his navel.
He shot for what seemed a very long time, his arms slapping the canvas, his feet thrashing against the marble. When his twitching dick had expelled the final droplets of sperm, his body shuddered and he collapsed backwards, lying with limbs akimbo, exhausted.
Alex didn’t know how long he lay there, but when he finally found strength to open his eyes, Pisces was gone. Alex sat up to find the statute on its pedestal – from his prone position, he could look straight up at it – but his tantalizing lover of only moments before had vanished.
Wondering if it had all been some weird erotic daydream, Alex laboriously hauled himself to his feet. Though he could scarcely walk, he knew he had to drag himself into the shower or risk covering the bed with gunk. Under the steaming water, his nerves eventually settled and he blushed shamefully at the lengths to which his creative libido could go, spinning fantasies of such imagined realism. By the time he had dried himself and was wrapped in a fluffy towel and ready for bed, he had convinced himself the entire incident was caused by paint fumes. True, it was only acrylic, but he’d noticed earlier that the new condo had little ventilation and the mild toxins must have built up and affected his brain. He resolved to find a way to pry at least some of the windows open as soon as he had the chance.