Awakening (6 page)

I felt him shrug against me, and it seemed the matter was closed for now. He was more interested in other activities. I gasped as he scooped me up and took me to the bed. My breath caught in my throat and I moved away from him. I’m not sure what I thought I was accomplishing, trying to edge away from him so that he wouldn’t notice what I was doing. It was more an instinct to avoid pain than anything else.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he soothed as he brushed my hair from my face.

“It hurt last night.”

“I know. But that was just the first time. It won’t hurt today.”

I wasn’t sure if I believed him, but I didn’t have much choice in the matter.

“Spread your legs.”

I was still very self-conscious, but I did what he asked because his voice and hands were still so gentle that I felt if I just obeyed him, I could prolong the kindness indefinitely. He stroked me for awhile, and finally he spoke again.

“I need you to relax.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

He gave me an exasperated look. In the sea I’d been independent and strong-willed, but taken out of my element and put in this frightening new environment, I’d lost all my fight. I couldn’t be blamed in the beginning because I’d had a fin and a huge disadvantage.

But now I walked … sort of. I at least had crawling down. And yet, the idea of escape hadn’t spent more than a couple of minutes in my mind. Mermaids don’t do well alone. We need to be surrounded by others. My kind was now forever separated from me and being a part of Kyros’ family was the only option left. My instincts turned to pleasing him so I wouldn’t be alone.

I was perhaps as exasperated with myself and my sudden refrains of
can’t
as my Master, but I wasn’t sure how to fix the situation. While I pondered all this, Kyros settled between my legs, his wet tongue darting out to lick me.

I shuddered the moment his tongue made contact with the sensitive flesh. The discomfort in being touched from earlier in my captivity was a dim memory now as every nerve ending awakened and fired to life with each human touch.

It was said that mermaids had hypnotic magic that lured sailors to their deaths, but in reality, we sometimes liked to sun ourselves on rocks that were safe because of how hard it would be for a human to reach us. It wasn’t our fault the men liked to look and often wrecked their boats and died.

No, the real hypnotic powers rested with humans. With the way they could touch you and make you forget you didn’t like to be touched. How they could create a type of alchemy in a mermaid’s body chemistry that made her want more and then somehow made that
more
possible.

The intensity of the strokes of his tongue were unrelenting as my hips bucked against his mouth. His hands gripped underneath me, hard, pulling me to him. I was sure there would be fingerprints left where he dug into my cheeks. A few minutes later, that now familiar feeling happened, like a flower bud opening.

“That’s it, Nerina, come for me.”

The deep purr of his voice as it vibrated against my clit sent another wave of pleasure over me. A moment later and he was inside me, his cock straining against my walls. It was still a tight fit, but he was right, it didn’t hurt this time.

I closed my eyes against his intense stare. It was too intimate. I was afraid for a moment that he’d make me open them. Maybe it wasn’t enough for him to dominate and control my body, maybe he needed my soul, too. But he allowed me my privacy and didn’t intrude.

Twitch.

My eyes shot open at the sensation. It was a little different than what I’d felt when I’d had a fin. The hint that something was about to happen and change remained the same. This time it came from deeper inside, and yet, it was there. Then the feeling went away and he came inside me.

I thought we were done, but we were far from it. His fingers went back to stroking between my legs.

“Every time I let you come, I want you to beg me for more. I’ll determine when you’ve had enough. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

For a moment, fear cramped my stomach. What he implied was too intense for me. Even with the changes that had happened, I couldn’t imagine having that feeling happen over and over, no matter how pleasurable it was. It seemed like too much of a good thing, like getting sick on too much rich or sweet food.

Time lost meaning as I lost track of the orgasms. My ability to count them failed me past ten; of course I could count higher than that under normal circumstances. There was an odd sort of conflict raging inside me. A part of me wished he would stop this torture. But every time I wished that, my body would recover from the last bout of pleasure and surge upward toward another wave, greedily reaching for more. By the time he was finished, I was wrung out, the sweat a fine sheen on my body, making me glisten in an almost iridescent way.

“Nerina?” he prompted after my last orgasm.

“Please Master, may I have more?” I prayed silently that he would end it so I could rest. He’d only fucked me the one time so I couldn’t imagine what he was getting out of this beyond the thrill of the power of manipulating my body, playing it like his instrument, figuring out which touches would make me create which sounds. Perhaps he was writing his own music.

“No, I think you’ve had enough,” he said.

I sighed, and I’m sure the relief was evident on my face. He chuckled and then mounted me again. I don’t know if it was because I’d been so wet and aroused, or because I was so sensitive from so many orgasms, but as his cock pushed deep inside me, the twitch turned into a full and growing flame.

His smug smile made it clear that he’d seen the change on my features. Something was building, something new and more terrifying than the other orgasms I’d already grown accustomed to. As he pounded harder, something inside me opened up and let go. It was like an endless fall.

I grabbed on to his shoulders, burying my face in his neck, clinging to him. I felt warm, hot, tingly. This time the pleasure came from deep inside, so strong it was almost an ache. I felt my hips thrusting in tandem with his, trying to take him deeper still, trying to crawl inside of him until the feeling exploded. I was sure if his arms hadn’t been wrapped around me that I would have literally come apart.

“Now we’re done,” he said as I shook against him. “You can go take a bath if you like.”

When he moved off me I attempted to get off the bed and my legs immediately turned to jelly. I caught myself on the floor with my hands. I couldn’t walk yet unaided under the best circumstances, and even crawling was proving difficult at the moment.

Kyros laughed, a deep, rumbling chuckle that was more garden-variety mirth than mockery.

I shot him a dirty look, but he’d already closed his eyes and lain back on the bed. I did want to sit in water. Even if it wasn’t salt water, it was centering somehow. I crawled to the bathroom and turned the faucet on. Living in the sea had given me a tolerance and preference for cooler water, so I kept it cooler in what I now privately thought of as the rain box.

That night I slept more easily. The silky sheets whispering across my legs were almost equivalent to the comfort of the water I’d slept submerged under before the change. My dreams were muted, a series of images that never seemed to crystallize into a storyline. The lack of anything solid to hold on to in my nocturnal adventures made me feel unsteady somehow. As the wispy tendrils of images receded, I reached out for the comfort of Kyros’ body, wanting to cling to him in my first moments of wakefulness because he was solid. Real.

But he wasn’t there. There was a note on his pillow for me saying he’d been called away to take care of some business and he’d return in a few hours. A toga was draped across the bed with a golden sash. The breakfast cart was rolled next to the bed. I couldn’t believe I’d managed to sleep through all this activity around me, especially when my sleep hadn’t felt very deep.

I hated eating alone, hated not eating in the pool with him feeding me, but I slipped the fabric over my head and ate anyway. I caught my image in a reflecting glass and smiled. I looked very much like the images of Greek goddesses in the paintings on the walls that my Master seemed to admire so much. I felt a warmth in my stomach that he would pick something for me to wear that made me look like his paintings.

I lifted the silver tray from the cart to find eggs, fruit, and the half-moon shaped bread I was coming to love. There was a glass of milk instead of juice this morning. I’d never had milk. Well, besides mermaid milk when I was a baby, which I don’t remember. This, I was sure, didn’t come from a mermaid or a human. I decided I was a fan of this beverage and would ask Kyros if I could have it more often in the future.

After I ate, I decided to practice walking. First I sat on the bed, just moving my legs, flexing my feet, wiggling my toes. I grabbed on to the stone wall, using the crevices for a better grip, to help steady myself. My balance was woefully wobbly, and I feared I’d never be able to walk like a normal person, but as I moved, watching my feet and how they reacted to the ground underneath me, I slowly became more confident. Not confident enough to let go of the wall, but confident enough that I almost felt like I was moving normally.

I was still a little sore and weak, but my lower limbs were getting used to movement and becoming surer of their increasing abilities.

I tried the door. It wasn’t locked. I don’t know if I expected it to be. In his note, he hadn’t given me any orders about staying in his room, so I used the opportunity to explore.

The castle was enormous and fairly dark in the hallways. I almost felt as if I needed some kind of fire or electricity to find my way. Thankfully a few doors were open that led to other rooms, allowing the sunlight from their windows to spill out into the hallway, creating small patches of brightness to light my way.

As I walked, I tried to take a few steps here and there without touching the wall. After a couple of hours of wandering and practicing, I was walking without much pain and without need of the wall for balance. Whatever magic had made my legs had made them fully functional and properly muscled. Nothing had come to me atrophied or in disrepair. I simply had to get oriented and used to moving in this way.

At the end of one hall was a set of spiraling stairs that went up into a tower. This new challenge was almost enough to make me turn around. I wasn’t sure if I could walk up stairs, especially so many. But the steps were solid and stone, with walls on both sides and a rail to steady myself. It would be great practice.

The tower was many stories high and quite a struggle to climb, but I made it to the top. I gaped at my surroundings when I reached the tower. What I’d always believed about the nature of Anostos was untrue.

While Anostos is characterized by hazy red clouds with no real determinable night or day, what happened high above those clouds many stories up was a different matter. The large room at the top of the tower was little more than a domed glass window. A section of it opened, allowing something on a tripod to nestle there. The object had a lens on both ends. I wasn’t sure what the nature of this object was, but it seemed to have something to do with exploring the sky.

I laughed. I could look at the sun and the moon and the stars again. It was another of the things I’d thought I’d lost forever when I lost the sea. I could imagine Kyros and I laying on mats and blankets up here under the stars. Someday I would work up the courage to ask if we could.

The sun shone on me, and I wanted to live in this room. It brought back memories of sunning myself on rocks in other parts of Meropis. I stood in the warmth of the sun for a long time, then finally made my way back down the stairs.

When I reached the floor with all the bedrooms on it, I checked Kyros’ room to make sure he hadn’t returned. I didn’t want him angry with me for being gone, but I was excited to show him my progress.

There was no evidence that he’d come back from his business, but the tray and scraps of leftover food had been removed. Perhaps by Estella. Or maybe by the woman I’d seen the other day at the pool. Maybe someone else entirely.

I went back out into the dark hallway and was faced with two choices. One was a large, curved stone staircase that would likely open out into some main entry hall, and the other was the back set of stairs that I’d gone down the first night during the party. The back stairs would open out near the kitchen, which I was sure would be occupied by servants.

I wasn’t sure which set of stairs would be better to avoid running into someone. The quietness of the castle after the food’s removal indicate that no one was frantically looking for me. Surely everyone here must be aware of my presence and who I was. Maybe that was what bothered me the most, the idea that if they saw me with my new legs, they would know how I’d gotten them—they probably already knew. The change marked me in a way that was more exposing than my kind was accustomed to.

Finally I decided on the main staircase. If this was going to be my home, I wasn’t going to hide in it like some mouse. My bare feet made no sound over the cool stone steps as I descended, holding on to the railing for support.

The main entry hall was empty, but I could hear a soft din of female voices in the distance, I assumed the kitchen. I moved away from the voices and discovered the room with the pool that had served as my room, and then a ballroom, and a library, and a few other rooms whose purposes I wasn’t exactly sure of. On the main level toward the back of the castle was another set of stairs that went down.

Much like the tower had, these spiraled, but there were fewer steps. Downstairs was even darker than the hallways. I felt along the wall for a source of light and found a switch. The switch didn’t make it much better. It certainly didn’t make it bright. Hundreds of smallish wall lights illuminated all at once, enough to see what was down there, but not enough to read by.

Strange contraption after strange contraption filled my vision. I couldn’t begin to guess what all of these things were for, but they seemed in some way meant for humans. They seemed like torture devices of some sort. The kinds of things mermen liked to tell stories about to scare the rest of us.