Awakening Read Free

beings, but that’s all it is. Gazing. Looking, but no touching. We aren’t a touchy-feely race. I didn’t even understand the concept of orgasm in the most abstract fashion. I just knew that when someone was having one, it looked absurd.
    Even the very little bit I’d been touched so far was so uncomfortable and strange that it almost burned. The only caress I longed for was the cool, trailing fingers of the ocean. A tear slid down my face and he brushed it away.
    I pulled back from the small intimacy. “Please, it’s not real. The legend. It’s just a story. Just a scare story they tell us to keep us from swimming out to the shore. You can’t turn me into one of you. It’s not possible. Please take me back to the sea.”
    He pinched my nipple hard. “Please, Master,” he corrected.
    I cried out at the contact and said it the way he wanted me to. But it didn’t do any good. He wasn’t taking me back home.
    Kyros was naked now, and I had to admire the aesthetic wonder of the male human form. When it wasn’t rutting like a pig, that is. I was fascinated by such things as legs and feet and the part of him that protruded out from his body with two round bits of flesh underneath it.
    I knew what men did with that thing. I was comforted, at least, that I didn’t have the right parts for the sex act. How long that would remain a benefit rather than life threatening, I wasn’t sure. The more I looked like a fish to him, the more I looked like food. If I could make my body go along with his plans, I would. Having part of him inside me was far less upsetting than being on an appetizer tray. Like I said, we merfolk are a pragmatic sort. We go with the lesser evil.
    Still, I regarded him with wide, frightened eyes because I knew I’d never be what he wanted me to be.
    He slid under the covers and ran his fingers through my hair. “Don’t fret, my little sea nymph, I can be patient. Your body will surrender to me and transform to my will in time.”
    For the tiniest fraction of a moment I believed him because I felt something when he said those words. Something inside me that twitched an almost imperceptible amount. But then it was gone as quickly as it had come, and I thought I’d imagined it. Or maybe it was just fear.
    His fingers traveled across my body, over my face, my arms, my belly, and my hip where it flared into aquamarine fin. He stroked over the fin, all the way to the tail—only the way he touched me wasn’t like food, like the fishermen. It was like something else.
    I closed my eyes and breathed slowly, trying to assimilate the feel of flesh against flesh. It was strange, disconcerting, uncomfortable. Not completely unpleasant. But it wasn’t anything that was going to make me turn human, not even if the legend were true.
    Then his hands went to my breasts, the one area he’d skipped over in his calm exploration of his prize. He stroked them for a moment, and my face heated. For the first time, I felt embarrassment over my breasts being exposed, because the way he was touching them let me know that every other male who had seen them had wanted to touch them in this way, too. It was too personal and intimate. It made me long for clothing to cover up, to hide.
    A few moments of this touching passed, and then his mouth descended on me, suckling at my nipple. I’d had no young so I’d never had a mouth latched onto my breast like that. I was quite sure other mermaids didn’t experience what I was now experiencing. There was that light, internal twitch again. It flared into a small, steady flame and drew a gasp from me. Then it flickered out like a ghost.
    His voice murmured and reverberated against my flesh. “I’ve always wanted a woman I could build from the ground up. I’ve thought about turning one of your kind for a long time now. I couldn’t believe my luck when you washed ashore. This is my best birthday.”
    He sounded almost kind when he said it, and I wanted to believe him. The party must