Page 4 of Dry as a Fish
I reached out, trying to remember the breaststroke I'd learned in high school swim lessons.
Burning hot fingers wrapped around my ankle.
I kicked hard, then sucked in a breath as the lake water rushed in to cover my head. His arms were around me, pinning mine to my sides as he pressed his warm body against mine again and began to swim. His tail rocked against me, moving against my lower body with powerful rhythmic strokes as the water rushed over us. He was taking me somewhere, moving fast through the water. Every motion of his tail bumping against me sent shivers through me, and I squeezed my legs together against the sudden urge to open them and wrap them around his incessant thrusts.
Every so often, he would pause, just as my need to breathe was clawing at me, and press his lips against mine in the darkness. Something inside of me would melt and scream at the same time, the conflicting chorus of yes, I want this and no let me go colliding as I accepted his life-giving breath even as he stole me away through the dark waters.
When he finally lifted me up out of the water, placing my back down against a soft mossy surface, my eyes focused on the ceiling up above me that looked like glowing teal rock, carved with images of people with tails like fish and dolphins, mermaids frolicking in water. I didn't have much more time to focus on the room before I felt warm flesh pinning my bare legs to the ground, and he shifted above me, his tail draggingagainst me causing a strange need to burn in me as he covered me, lifting my wrists and pinning them down to either side of my head with his own hands as he hovered above me, his hips pressing against mine.
I took in the sight of him.
He was beautiful, and strange, at least half of him was humanoid with gills cut into the sides of his muscular necks, and leathery-looking black scales that slid down from his forehead, framing his white humanoid skin. He had short hair that was dappled with colors of dark green and blue, with flickers of highlights, like sunlight moving through deep water. There was a small trickle of blood running down the side of his neck, and I could see my fingernail marks had cut ragged tears into the gills on that side.
The sight made me feel proud of myself, even as the fear and desire smashed into each other like hummingbirds fighting over a feeder.
He blinked, an inhuman set of membranes closing in from either side of his eyes before opening up again as he stared down at me.
I could feel a vibration in his body, like a hum, and that insane orchestra in my heart dragged the bows across the strings.
"Let me go," I said, keeping my voice flat and even.
I wasn't going to cry, I whispered to myself, ignoring the fact that I didn't feel the least bit like crying. I knew I should want to cry right now. He just abducted me. The fact that I had already been kidnapped by the devil school that was too good to be true didn't make this any less of a kidnapping on its own. He kissed me. He touched me. He was pinning me to the ground and staring at me like the stars had erupted in my eyes, and he couldn't believe I was real. My body was reacting tohim, but that didn't matter. That was natural. The dampness pooling between my legs with the heat that flared at the press of his body was a normal, protective response to minimize injury, no matter what was going to happen next.
I'd learned that by reading books in the public library, I couldn't risk bringing home.
"Don't run," he said, his voice smooth like the deep roar of the ocean as he ignored the spit as it dripped down off his cheek and splattered back onto me. "You are my heartsong."
I nodded and gave him a smile. "I won't run," I said, doing my utmost to sound convincing.
He released my wrists, putting his hands to the ground to the side of me as he shifted his lower body to the side, freeing my legs. I felt the prickle of blood flowing into them as I realized his bulk had reduced my circulation. I sat up and looked at him. The black, scale-like skin that ran down the sides of his face, neck, and shoulders also covered his back and the full length of the backside of his tail, while the white skin went down his front side, his belly, and the bottom half of his tail. His tail ended in a huge, gorgeous fin.
I tucked my knees under me.
Then I yeeted myself away from him, springing up from the ground like a quail ping ponging her way to the top of a fence.
I'd seen a video of that once, I was allowed to watch online videos about anything to do with farming, and the image struck me as accurate to my feelings as my numb tingly feet stumbled over the soft moss and I half fell to the ground, catching myself with my hands and shoving back upwards without missing a beat in my survival driven need to get the fudge away from the mer-orca-man that had kissed me so thoroughly I was afraid my sexuality had changed from heteronormative to mermen included.
Whatever the case, my cunt didn't take priority over getting the fudge away from him.
I grinned to myself as I thought the word I would never risk saying.
Cuuuuuuuuuuunt.
The ridiculousness of my own thoughts tugged at me as I ran away from him. Why wasn't I scared?
The hum of music in my heart swelled.
"Wait!" he called out, but I didn't wait. I took in the details of the room as I ran away from the water's edge on feet that were still numb and tingly. The entire floor of the room was covered in a thick moss, and the carved rock walls curved around us. There was a plain archway at the far end of the space, made out of the same glowing rock. My exit.
I rushed through it and bounced off another unfortunately muscular chest.
"Oh ho, careful there, little mundane!" a male voice called out as my tush hit the kush.
I looked up to see that my way was blocked by a group of bipedal men who looked rather similar to the merman in the water, but they had legs. They had the same skin color, black on the back and white on the front, as the tailed one in the water, and were wearing short sarongs tied around their hips. One of them was holding an additional sarong in his hand.
I scrambled backwards away from them and up to my feet.
That was the problem with weight differences. Even if I was strong and sturdy in my opinion, running face-first into someone who weighed an extra fifty pounds meant that I would be knocked down unless I was prepared for it, and he wasn't. Even so, there were limits to preparation. No matter how much I prepared to body slam the fresh gelding my dad gave to me, that quarterhorse wouldn't so much as grunt.Sometimes he would take a step to the side and flick an ear at me, or occasionally slap me with his tail in response, but pound for pound, I couldn't do much when it came to weight. Not that I was trying to knock the horse down. The horse didn't seem to mind, just like I didn't mind when he decided to act ridiculous on the end of a lunge line until I yanked him off balance. I got to give him hugs, he got used to people, and my dad got more money when he sold him off again without warning me.
