Chapter 11

ELEVEN

Jesse

I must have passed out when I hit the water. All I remembered was having the air knocked from my chest when my body met the ocean hard. It was as if I’d slammed into a cement wall. The cuts all over my body stung like hell from the salt, a fresh agony I had never contemplated before. And it was freezing.

And dark! I couldn’t see! Was I blind?

Focus on not being dead, first.

I was on land somewhere, and I wasn’t blind. It took a moment to come into focus, but I was surrounded by oddly glowing walls. The more my eyes adjusted, the lower my jaw dropped.

A cave? No, not a cave, a mausoleum! Every inch of rock wall around me was covered by a mosaic of glass, glinting around me in sheens of green, blue, and white. The scenes depicted mermen, which I thought was strange. Where were the mermaids?

The work was beautiful, the subtle shading of the different hued blues and whites forming realistic waves that bordered the top of the cave walls. More works of art surrounded me: chairs made of bone and sea shells, tables, and drinking cups. It was like an artist had closed their gallery and everything had been shoved here for storage. Nonetheless, It felt wrong to have so many beautiful pieces just sitting here in the almost dark.

The next thing I noticed was the sharp, stinging sensation in my feet. I jerked, nearly kicking Merrick in the face.

“MERRICK!”

With a soft splash he rolled into the water, coming back to the edge toward me with only his upper body visible.

“There was glass in your feet. I was seeing to it,” he offered warily, eyes darting from my feet to my face.

Oh. I sat up slowly, noting the large cast of clear gooey stuff down my arms and legs. More of that neat jellyfish stuff, then.

Merrick must have been busy with me.

I closed my eyes, trying to breathe through the flash of panic that came from being stalked in the past. Was I some kind of weirdo who attracted perverts like moths to a flame? I squashed the small whimper that was bubbling up in my throat. Merrick wasn’t like that. He was kind. Respectful. And he had apparently saved me from drowning.

To distract myself from my racing thoughts, I peeled back a layer of the jellyfish bandage on my leg, relieved when there was barely a mark left behind. A small pile of it accumulated by my side as I ripped it all off. I tried not to remember how it had looked, dripping blood everywhere.

“Thank you,” I said softly, knowing Merrick had brought me here and tended to my wounds.

Fuck, it was cold. Goosebumps broke out along my skin and I shivered, trying to curl into a ball and rub myself vigorously to generate heat. My ass was going to go numb in a minute from the ice cold rock underneath me.

Merrick turned and presented me with his back. “Do you mind? I think there is enough left.”

I gasped with shock at the large sheet of glass embedded in his back, up toward his left shoulder blade. Suddenly being cold didn’t seem so important.

“Merrick! Oh my god! Why didn’t you use any of this on yourself? You didn’t need to heal everything on me . Some of them were minor!” I chastised him, even as I carefully wrapped my fingers around the edge of the shard, not wanting any more cuts myself.

“I’ll count to three. Ready?”

Merrick took a deep breath, his hands curling around the edge of the pool, latching onto the rock. He nodded.

“OK,” I said softly. “One, Two—”

“Wait!” he pleaded.

I froze. “What’s wrong?”

His entire body was tense. “Is it on three, or is it after three? Will you pull it out right as you say three, or you go ‘three,’ wait, then pull it?”

This wasn’t an appropriate time to giggle, but I did so anyway. He looked exhausted; he was clearly in pain, and yet I couldn’t help how analytical Merrick was about everything. Even this.

“On three,” I promised.

Merrick nodded, a bit of the tension in his shoulders releasing.

“OK,” I tried again. “One.” I pulled hard, yanking the glass cleanly from his back before he even realized what was happening. Scowling at it, I threw it down against the stone floor, taking delight in watching it shatter. Didn’t want to throw it against the wall and hurt any of the gorgeous art, after all.

Merrick grunted in annoyance at my trick, glaring at me. Giving it right back to him, I bundled up some of the dried jellyfish compound and dunked it through the water once. Like I expected, it had gone liquid again. I slapped it on his back before he could react, then resumed rubbing my own arms as quickly as possible.

Cold, cold, cold.

He sighed at what I imagined was instant relief and he turned back to face me. He lowered himself to the edge of the pool, resting his head in his arms. My lips thinned as he yawned. He almost looked sick. How far had he swam with me while injured? I tried to put aside the slight bolt of arousal, feeling like a stereotypical damsel in distress for the first time in my life.

It was … nice.

“You … swam me here? How far away from the boat are we?” I had to ask, because I still couldn’t believe it.

Merrick winced at the high pitch of my voice, but I didn’t see how any of this was possible. I was too big to carry like that. And even if I wasn’t, no man would be strong enough to swim far! Not even Michael Phelps!

Merrick shifted uncomfortably in the water “Uh … sea turtles. I found a pair of them and—”

“Let me guess; you lashed them together with hair from your back?” I finished viciously, glaring at him.

He looked incredibly confused. “Well, no. That sounds foolish.”

Obviously he wasn’t a Pirates movie fan.

I looked around. Small bits of sunlight caused the murals and walls to shimmer. “Where did all this come from?”

Merrick twitched, squirming a bit. “This is where I create my art,” he offered lamely, gesturing at the walls. “I used that to practice and get the shapes I want. It’s how I learn.”

OK. So Merrick was some sort of secret ocean artist. That I could handle. It was manageable. But everything else?

“And we are very far from the boat,” he finally answered. “I wanted to get away from them.”

“What happened?” I begged him. “Did you know those guys on the boat? Oh my god, I hope Javi and Mike are all right—”

I closed my eyes and heard Merrick push himself up from the pool. Hands surrounded my cheeks, one finger landing delicately on my lips. He tucked me carefully into his chest, which felt cool against my puffy eyes.

“Hush. They know I have taken you away to safety. The mer—the men won’t bother them further. They have likely slunk away with their tails between their legs.”

Well, that seemed highly unlikely given society’s litigation-happy attitude.

“How do you know that?” I questioned. Then it hit me. “You do know them,” I whispered, horrified.

Merrick’s face grew stormy, his grip on me tightening. “I know them,” he bit out.

Well, that certainly explained the similar accents, then. Just like Merrick. “They came here for spring break then? Like you?” I asked.

His lips thinned. “No. Not like me. They are looking for females to … to have sex with.”

I laughed. Hard and long, the sound echoing around the cavern. Merrick jumped slightly, brow furrowing in alarm.

“Merrick, that’s every man,” I hiccupped, wiping my eyes.

He retreated back into the water, away from me. “You don’t understand. It’s … it’s different.” His face twisted. “I will make them suffer for what they did to you.”

His face twisted with rage, and a warm feeling infused my chest. Right now, he wasn’t my sweet, naive Merrick. He was pissed. Protective. It made my stomach flip and sent tingles through my body in the most delicious way.

I shook my head. He was simply overreacting. Though I had been terrified when that big, black-haired ogre had me pinned against the railing. The more I thought about it, the more nauseated I became. It really was Archie all over again.

I tried to laugh it off. I was strong. I wasn’t helpless. “Stupid shit always happens when you involve alcohol.”

“No,” Merrick argued stubbornly. “They hurt you. I will kill them with my bare hands if that’s what it takes to keep them away.”

His words shocked me, but a warm sensation spread through my chest, and kept moving down my arms and legs, and down to my core. I needed air. It shouldn’t turn me on to hear him threatening other people like that. But God, it did. And I fucking loved it. I needed air. Quickly.

“Where is the entrance? I need to get outside. It’s too dark too—”

“It is underwater,” he began cautiously. “It’s too deep and too long for you to swim yourself, especially injured.”

My hands balled into fists. “Oh, is that so? I was on my school’s swim team, you know.”

Until I’d gotten bullied off for being bigger than the other girls, that was. But still. I knew how to handle myself around the water. I grew up swimming.

Merrick backed into the corner of the cave, the shadows making it difficult to make him out in the water. He ran his hands through his hair, lowering himself into the water until only his head was visible above it, and only if I squinted.

“I would prefer not to have to rescue you twice,” he offered.

I should have been annoyed at the barb, but he looked awful, his skin paler than normal and rings under his eyes.

So, I wouldn’t argue, but no one told me what to do. I dove into the pool.

“Jesse! What—”

I didn’t hear the rest, the water rushing across my body as I dove. Damn, this cave was deep. I tried to open my eyes, ignoring the sting of the salt water. It was pitch black. Stories of cave swimmers being sucked into dark holes by strong currents poked at my mind, and suddenly this didn’t seem like such a good idea. Even if it was to prove a point.

A large hand spanned my belly and tugged. Properly shamed, I let Merrick tow me back to the surface. I flipped my soaked hair out of my eyes, my face heated.

“Well then, Mr. Olympic swimmer, how did the both of us get through the first time—”

Something large and scaly touched my legs, and I yelped. I thrashed wildly in the water, paddling like mad to get back onto the rocky shore and ignoring all of my training and years of swim meets in my panic. I hauled myself over the edge and flipped on my back, rolling and pointing at the water.

“Something’s in there! Get out!” I begged him, my eyes straining in the semi-darkness to make anything out under the water. It was impossible. Every horror movie where the kid gets sucked down by the leviathan raced through my mind.

“Jesse! No! It’s just …” Merrick’s voice was tinged with distress, the cave too dark to make out his exact expression at the lip of the pool. His shoulders slumped in defeat.

“There is no … thing. It is just me. I am tired of trying to hide, and it seems inevitable you will find out.”

“What are you talking about?” I laid down on the cool stone, tracing the ridges and dips of the stone with my fingertips. I could easily nap here if I wanted to. At least that would stop the racing thoughts, and I could pretend everything was fine. Normal. Ha!

“I can explain bluntly, if you wish,” Merrick offered, wrapping his arms around my waist and tugging me toward him in the water. I jerked and dug my heels in, not wanting to head back and encounter whatever it was I had grazed.

“Please just tell me,” I begged, tired and confused.

Merrick’s blond head nudged against my lower stomach, almost like he was nuzzling it as he settled against me, hugging me to him like I was his long lost teddy bear. My hands tangled in his dreads, scraping across a few of the shells that were interwoven in his braids.

One callused hand had a vice grip on my hip, and the other slid up from my knee to my thigh. I was embarrassed by how large my thighs looked splayed out like this, like two large hams at a market.

His sharp teeth scraped my inner thigh, effectively ending my self-conscious thoughts.

“Those men wanted to mate with you,” he rumbled against my thigh. “You call it having sex, right? That is the sole purpose of why they are here.”

It was hard to focus on his words while his hands ran up and down my legs, his tongue tracing the slight pink lines left behind from my wounds. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t scar.

“Y-you said you knew them,” I protested. “Does that mean you want to have sex with someone too?” The very thought had my insides squirm unpleasantly. I couldn’t imagine him with anyone else.

His head nudged my stomach, pushing me down until I was flat on my back, my pelvis held in place at the edge of the pool. Merrick tried to spread my legs further, only to be stopped by the constraints of my dress.

He growled and tore a large rip in it.

“Merrick!” I gasped.

I gripped his hair in my fingers as his hands and tongue slowly, tantalizingly converged toward one spot: one final goal. My hips tried to jerk upward toward him, but he held me down firmly.

“Yes, I would very much like to have the sex,” he purred. “But unlike them, I won’t force you. I won’t bury myself in the first female to favor me. I will only sex you. I will only bleed for you.”

Oh fuck. Something was wrong with me. No one had said anything so hot to me in my entire life. I’d never believed a man before when he was trying to talk his way under my skirt. Even the way he’d said the word wrong was so fucking hot. Sex me, indeed.

The look in his eyes was predatory—deadly serious. I believed him. He wanted me. Only me. And he’d fucking skewer any other guy who came for me. Oh, my god. I was falling for him.

His fingers spread my inner lips without actually penetrating them. Hot air blew over my innermost parts, and my pulse raced beneath my skin.

“F-force?” I gasped out. “Archie—”

“Is not one of us, but if he were, I suspect he’d fit in just fine,” Merrick growled, his voice low and feral.

His nose nudged my center, and I jerked at the intimate contact. Shamelessly, I tried to grind my hips up, but he refused to let me move. He held me down with ease.

“I’ll take that as consent then, my little siren.”

The way his voice vibrated against me was criminal. His tongue stroked the length of my slit, and I pulled his hair while holding in my moan. I felt his answering rumble in my core.

“No, you won’t distract me,” I panted. “Tell me more about those guys. Tell me what I just felt against my goddamn legs. Tell me what you want, following me around like you have.”

His tongue delved inside of me, and I couldn’t contain my moan. He chuckled darkly, squeezing and stroking my thighs as his tongue moved in and out. In and out.

“They are my kinsmen. You felt my tail. And I want to hear you scream.”

I only got the first part of that. Because it was the only part that made sense in my brain, or because his tongue switched from delving inside me to licking slow, languid strokes on my outside edges and who the fuck could think with that going on?

He added one finger, and I thought I might die. My black dress was ruined, the edges frayed and split with white streaks of dried salt painted in random places. The front was ripped all the way down my chest, showing my bra. I didn’t care.

Well, until another annoying, intrusive thought popped up in my head.

“Did you … did you say something about a tail?” I asked warily, desperate that I had simply misheard him.

Merrick opened his mouth to reply, but I cut him off.

“You definitely said tail. And kinsmen.” My eyes shot to his waist, out of view beneath the dark water.

“Get out,” I commanded, my voice shaking. “Let me see.”

I expected him to laugh. To tell me I was paranoid and exaggerating, because that’s what every other motherfucker with a penis had always told me. There was no fucking way he was serious. Right?

No such luck. Merrick dove into the dark water like a dolphin, the large tail arcing in the air as it followed his body. I stared. The cave was dark, but not dark enough that I was hallucinating a fucking tail.

It was longer than the upper part of his body, and a gorgeous shade of green-blue. As he waved it around in the semi-darkness, the edges of his scales glinted gold at me. He raised his hands and face to the surface, holding them out. Webbing appeared between his fingers, and even his ears were different. After only a few seconds of them being above the air, the extra features faded away, making him appear human.

It was beautiful. He was beautiful.

Merrick backed up to the far side of the cave, his face twisted in anxiety.

“Get back over here,” I demanded, my voice hushed. “I want to see it. Really see it.”

Mermen were real? Mermaids were real? This was a marine biologist’s wet dream. I tried to quell my racing, nerdy little heart.

Merrick cautiously came back toward me, a slight look of wonder on his face. “You aren’t afraid?”

I laughed. “Do you know how little humans actually know about the oceans? Finding out mythical creatures exist within it isn’t so much of a stretch. I feel … wonder. Excitement. I want to know everything about your life! Come up here so I can see you properly!”

I paused, realizing I was treating him like an experiment; a very hot, kind, touch-her-and I’ll-kill-you experiment.

“That is … if you don’t mind,” I added, remembering ethics in the nick of time.

Merrick hesitated for a moment, then, with a push against the edge, hefted himself out of the water and next to me. I tried not to stare too openly as his gorgeous tail slid next to me. I put one hand out to feel the texture of his scales, but before my hands landed, the scales faded into human legs.

And then there was his quite visible, quite aroused dick. That had scales. I wanted to examine it more, but embarrassment had me flinching away.

Merrick’s head tilted to the side, a mischievous grin on his face. “I thought you weren’t afraid,” he whispered, voice laced with desperation as he slid back into the water .

“No! That’s not it at all. I’m just not used to seeing … uh, so much.” I gestured to his waist so my meaning was clear.

He huffed and rolled his eyes. “Humans are very strange about their clothing.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “So you’re saying you never wear any under the sea? At all?”

Merrick gestured nonchalantly. “Sometimes hunters wear protection around the chest and back and shoulders. The jellyfish sap is quite effective, but stings hurt. Or if we must travel through an area known for sharks. As a people we do not war with each other. Every life is treasured.”

Well, that was certainly progressive for a race that lived in the wild.

“Hold out your hands,” I demanded.

Merrick held his palms out, shooting me a wry glance. I jumped into the pool, grabbing onto him as he automatically brought me to his chest. Feeling rather confident about his obvious interest in me, I boldly reached my hand under the water and stroked up and down his tail.

He went rigid like I’d just grabbed his now non-existent dick. One had clenched my wrist in a vice-like grip, his eyes nearly popping out of his head.

I withdrew my hand. “What’s wrong? Did that hurt?” Leave it to me to assault the poor man just because it was my first merman tail!

He took a couple of deep breaths. “You’re going to make this very difficult if you do things like that.”

Oh. OH!

I held in my snicker only because he looked honestly distressed. He got turned on just from a stroke? And he’d been hard even before that! I felt like a sea goddess. A badass. Someone who mattered to someone. A sexy, desired woman.

I held one of his hands underwater with me, gently stroking the webbing between his fingers. It felt rubbery, but incredibly smooth.

“Jesse,” he growled at me, his voice going darker than I’d ever heard it.

“Hmm?” I murmured back, as if totally disinterested. I hopped out of the water and awkwardly climbed back onto the rocks, and patted the spot next to me.

“What are you—”

“Come here,” I ordered, sounding way more confident than I felt.

Merrick gave me a look, but easily lifted himself out of the water and next to me, the cords of muscles on his forearms flexed as he moved.

I watched with fascination as the tail disappeared and faded into two muscled legs with his very … different equipment.

I reached out and Merrick gave a long shudder as my hand touched him and explored his length with one long stroke. He wheezed at the sensation, unable to speak.

“I guess hand jobs aren’t a thing under the sea,” I muttered back, amused and flattered that I could make him feel this way. I glanced down, taking the time to examine him as he groaned with appreciation.

It was a dick, but clearly a special edition dick. While the rest of his legs and body looked normal, his dick was dotted with the same scales of his tail—a deep green-blue color that flashed gold depending on how the light hit it. The scales felt rough and textured as my fingers glided against it, but the underneath and tip were much smooth.

I wasn’t interested in any of that, though. I couldn’t take my eyes from the flared shape of the tip. I couldn’t help but wonder how that would feel inside me. If Merrick was near catatonic with my hand on his dick, what would he do if I put my hot mouth on him?

Before I lost my confidence, I dipped my head down and took him as far as I could into my mouth. He hissed and dug his fingers into my hair, pulling roughly with no warning. Like the rest of him, his dick was cool in my mouth with sharp edges around the scaled bits that flattened obediently as my soft mouth covered them.

“Yes …” he growled, thrusting into my mouth viciously, unable to control himself. I didn’t flinch, loving how I gagged. I loved how he took control, moving my body as he fucked my mouth, losing his mind as he turned into a feral beast. The flared tip of his dick made it easier to keep him in my throat. I fucking loved it.

I glanced up at him with hooded eyes and a mouth full of dick, and he lost his mind.

With one hand, he pulled me off his dick with a ‘pop’ then yanked me up and smashed me against the wall, my hip harshly pinned to the stone. His other hand wrapped around my throat. His nose nuzzled against my cleavage as he moved up and down, inhaling my scent. His entire body shuddered, and he reluctantly pulled away.

“We must stop.”

I jerked, immediately letting go as shame overtook me. Merrick didn’t want me to touch him. Had I forced him, then? I didn’t think I’d imagined his desire. Was I any better than Archie or those crazed mermen on the boat?

“Sorry,” I whispered, my throat tight with emotion.

Merrick reared back, confused. “Siren, you have done nothing wrong. I just … you don’t understand everything fully yet. I won’t … I won’t take advantage of you until you do. It’s important you understand because the others wouldn’t wait. They wouldn’t give you a choice. ”

I took this in. “The … others? There’s more of you. Oh! You mean the assholes on the boat?” I gasped, putting it all together.

Merrick nodded solemnly. “They are here for the spring break. They will try to find siren-born females like yourself. They will impregnate you, then abandon you and wait to see if the child is a girl or a boy. If it is a girl, they will leave you alone. If it is a boy, they will steal the child and raise it among our clans.”

I stared at him, waiting for the punchline to come or for him to smile and tell me he was joking.

He didn’t. He just … waited for me.

I leaned over the side of the pool and threw up.