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  She tilted her face up to Garnet and his hand circled her throat, holding her still for a rough kiss, his lips parting hers and tongue plunging within. In their element, Kyle brought that powerful tail into play, using it to increase the strength of his thrusts. The ripples of desire were building, the telltale coil in her belly spreading, reaching out tendrils into her nerve endings. Garnet's fingers pinched her nipples, hard enough to spur her with an agony of sensation, and he began to stroke her as well, his long cock sliding up the channel of her ass, rubbing the ridge of his massive head against her rectum, setting off taut fireworks in her lower back and muscles of her backside.

  His hands gripped her waist and Kyle's eyes were on her, crooning to her, soft urgent sounds of encouragement, of praise, of primal, fierce devotion that were easily translatable. His speed was not increasing, though the strain was costing him, she could see it in the tense muscles of his face. She tightened muscles of her own, clamping down on him as he slid half out of her, teasing the sensitive head of his cock by narrowing the channel. He cried out, but did not completely lose control, though his next thrust was more powerful and wild, almost bringing her pain mixed with ecstasy in its force.

  Garnet's cock slid down her channel, and then she felt the silken slap of the broadest part of his tail against the heart-shaped base of her ass as he changed the angle and eased his cock into her with one smooth stroke that opened her mouth in a scream. She had noticed their cocks had a silky slick texture, the way fish scales were to the touch, a natural lubricant aided by the fact she was immersed in water and her body was languorous in its reception to stimulation to every sexual point. Even so, it shocked her, so that she gripped him in all those lower muscles, making the friction of the invasion even more intense. There was sheer sensual overload in the thought of it, the image of one man between her legs and the other ravishing her ass, enough to take her over. She was helpless between them, making little bleating cries of near pleasure, near pain, her fingers clutched on Kyle's biceps, her breasts pushing into Garnet's eagerly kneading palms, jiggling with the seesaw motion of their hard rhythm, in, out, in, out, alternating, now quickening, now together.

  The climax began the way an earthquake did, a slow rumble, a trembling welling up from the earth that abruptly split the firmament with a roar. She was like the water over the fall, shoved into open space by the force of nature's will, propelled fore and aft, and she could not draw breath for a scream. It was too intense. Her pussy contracted as if she was giving birth, her lower cavities squeezing Kyle and Garnet as her body convulsed like an eruption, becoming rigid and then bucking spasmodically, every muscle and nerve fiber out of control, unable to draw away from a shattering precipice. Her abdomen and thigh muscles became silken steel, conducting the electrical energy that slammed through them, sparking into her pounding clitoris and setting off a deeper reaction in her womb.

  She screamed now, her hands grabbing back above her, grasping Garnet's shoulder, her fingers snarling in the hair that fell forward around his neck, her body impossibly bending as he continued to pump within her, and Kyle likewise maintained his aggressive slap into her, the flukes of his tail sliding back and forth along her trembling ankles and heels.

  She couldn't endure it, she was sure. Kyle gave a hoarse cry, and Garnet answered it at the same moment, two sets of powerful hands digging cruelly into her hip bones. As they both gushed their life into her, she thought surely her orgasm would start to die off, shudder into incredible aftershocks, but the spurt of their come set off a cataclysm of explosions deep with her, deeper than even their impressive anatomies could reach. As they jetted, her body reared up, her nipples stiff, breasts flushed, her legs and ass spread to let them pummel her as they would, and she could no longer hold onto any sense of reality. The sparkling water became a wall of flashing lights, the scent of water and males filled her nose, her hands no longer felt as if they lay upon their skin. Instead she felt covered by them, surrounded, obliterating everything, as if in this last, wrenching climax, her soul had launched itself from the shell of her body and now there was only sensation.

  She had never been one of those women who expelled fluids when she climaxed, like men did, but she felt as if she did now, a sudden heat on her thighs beneath the water and a weakening, as if she was expelling life essence. But the weakening was a form of surrender that, instead of relaxing her from the iron grip of the orgasm, gave it propulsion to whisk her limp body straight up another cliff side. It flung her off its very edge with no warning, in one final, climactic aftershock that was more intense than most orgasms she’d had.

  Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she fainted, though in her mind, she was falling. Falling into the gentle hands of two silver, sparkling spirits whose breath touched her face like kisses just before she lost consciousness.

  * * *

  Passion could slow time down, make a woman feel as if she’d lived a full life from the first touch to the last gasp of the climactic pinnacle. Making love to the right man could make a woman into a phoenix, consumed by fire and then rising from the ashes to embrace life. The aftermath was a rebirth, a chrysalis shed, her whole being stepping out, renewed.

  Consciousness returned as if she had woken in a parallel dimension. Indeed, Annie felt as if she had somehow transcended everything she had known, passed a key test to another level of awareness that made everything she saw more vivid. Particularly the concerned face peering down at her, a Renaissance-handsome expression fanned by fluttering silky long hair, and blue eyes rimmed with silver.

  She lay in his arms as he sat on the earthen bank of the pool, his back comfortably situated against a tree trunk as he patiently awaited her return to consciousness. Seeing him dry was like seeing a sculpture fired and glazed into perfection after having seen it wet and sleek in the process of creation. The tattoos were gone, though, and the gills. Her fingers fluttered up to his neck. Smooth arteries, pumping a bit fast.

  Annie struggled to sit up and his arms loosed her, but still kept her in their cradle, and she braced her hand on a long thigh. She glanced down, startled, her fingers clutching just above the knee in spasmodic reaction. He jumped, pulling her hand away. A crooked smile crossed his face.

  "Ticklish," he managed in a hoarse voice. "I’d forgotten that. Like I’d forgotten what a smile was, until I saw you do it. Mermaids smile with their eyes, not their mouths."

  She stared up at him. "Did I--"

  "No." He shook his head, and even if his words hadn't confirmed it, the warm glow in his eyes would have. "You didn't dream it."

  "Your friend…" Annie looked around.

  "My brother-in-law and best friend. Gone."

  She brought her head back around, blinked at him. She saw the shadows of sadness in his eyes, but also a peaceful acceptance. And, more reassuring, a tentative happiness, like he was trying out a feeling he hadn’t had in quite awhile and wasn’t quite sure how to experience it. "You're wearing clothes." A faded T-shirt, comically with a Power Rangers design, and an old pair of jeans, well-fitted. Hiking boots.

  He nodded. "I left them in a waterproof knapsack behind that bush over there, forty years ago. The jeans are a little tight. Somehow the muscle tone I built up as a water creature came with me when I transformed.” His eyes sparkled in a very appealing way. “I had somewhat of a gawky build, before." He glanced down at himself and continued speaking, as if he knew she needed some time to organize her thoughts. “The T-shirt was a gift from my nephew right before I went on this hiking trip alone. He was worried about me being safe, and he told me the Power Rangers would keep me safe.”

  "I thought… it was the fairy tale." Her thoughts were swimming in mud, nothing coming out clearly. His caressing, reassuring touch along her jaw confirmed that her distress was transmitting itself to him.

  "I suppose it is," he said. She heard the nuances of his real voice beneath the rustiness, a quiet, rich tone that elicited the same reaction in her that she suspected a cat had to having
its fur stroked in the right direction.

  “But you’re young. How can you…”

  “Merpeople age differently. Most live to be two or three hundred years old, so at sixty-five, I’m about your age, in their years.” His eyes smiled at her again, then darkened. "Tess. She was here when I found this pool. She gave me the choice to belong to her, and be one of her people. When I willingly accepted her, I transformed. The same way I was able to transform back, when you accepted me. Chose me. It's a strong bond, between human and merperson. You can hear one another's heartbeat, when you listen for it. You share many thoughts together. But most of all, you feel you cannot survive without one another. At least, that’s what I thought, that it was some type of magic special to mermaid pairings. I didn’t know that humans, all beings, are capable of it, if they learn to love that way. One of the many things the merpeople taught me. I can hear your heart beat even now.”

  His eyes came back to her face, focused in a way that made Annie hold her breath. She felt like he was seeing everything she was and would be, drinking in everything about her as the world passed by, unnoticed around them.

  “When Tess died…” He paused, and the grief passed through his gaze, but something else did as well. It told Annie that what he carried in his heart was no longer a wound, but the memory of a gift well cherished. “I thought I died, too. But you see, merpeople are not like us. They are so deeply connected to one another, as a community, they would not let me languish. Like schools of fish, they communicate in a way you wouldn’t call telepathy. It’s more emotional than that. They stayed with me, helped me find myself again, though it took many years. It was my brother-in-law, Garnet, whom I love like a brother in truth, that helped me understand that my time with them was over.”

  A frown crossing his face at the memory. “It was difficult. I accused him of trying to expel me, but he consulted their Seer, and she said that I had a dual life path. That Tess had been reborn, was growing up, and would come to me on two legs, that I must go to her on two legs. That she would be the key to the full healing of my heart.” He cupped her chin, lifted her face. “For you see, after having a love like I had with my Tess…” He brushed his lips over her face. “My Tess,” he murmured again, and Annie felt the name fall upon her ears as if it were in fact her own, as if he had said ‘Annie’, the two names becoming one in her mind.

  “I couldn’t live without such a love in my life again. I thought, as I said, that it was unique to mermaids. The Seer told me no. It was how soulmates felt about one another. Tess accepted me. She was so open to her Path, that she knew I was her destiny from the first time we saw one another.”

  Annie recalled the sadness in his eyes when he had thought she was choosing Garnet, and the sudden wrenching pain in her own heart when she thought he felt that way.

  “So the Seer told me to go back to the pool. That I had to believe that the woman who would draw me back to the human world would eventually come to this secluded stream. It did not matter how far apart our strands were, they would cross in the web here. For it is all woven by the Creatress who knows what paths are meant to be together.”

  He shook his head. “I say these things, but I won’t compel you to be with me, Annie, not out of pity or a sense of obligation. That would be worse than having died. She told me this, too, that though you may be Tess, your spirit may have things to accomplish that cannot include me right now.” There was a sudden fierceness to his expression and his arms tightened on her, in contrast to his forceful words. “Or, it may be your spirit does not completely recognize me, and I am rushing you too fast. I do not wish to drive you from me. I know how things are in this world, how magic is doubted. I know that the things I tell you may seem fantastic, a world that has made fairy tales into nothing more than children’s stories.”

  He carefully lifted his fingers, and she felt how much of an effort it took him to ease his grip, as if the ache were in her own chest. “I understand now what the Seer was telling me. Just by this moment, feeling this sense of connection to you, I know that I can heal fully, and live. My heartbeat, my blood, tells me she is right, that you are the other half to my one soulmate, my Tess, two women of the same body, blood and mind. While I may be ready to embrace that, you may not be. This may not be our time or life together. It is enough to know you exist, and that our time will be again. I simply ask if I may join my destiny to yours for the time we are meant to share, and then when you wish it…” He swallowed, and he stumbled over the words. “I will let you go.”

  Annie looked into herself, into the deep place his words were touching. He had just described the way she had learned to conduct her relationships, joining her destiny to someone else’s until Fate told her it was time to let go. It had made her open to listening to Fate, to believing in Her Wisdom. While it had been harder at some times than others to obey Her suggestion, Annie had learned to do so, and had never regretted the choices. She saw this same reluctant acceptance in Kyle now, bracing for her response.

  Just as the mind could be taught to listen to the physical body to know just the right way to care for it, the right food and exercise, so too could the soul be taught to listen to the Lord and Lady’s guidance.

  Their Voices were telling her quite clearly that, while Kyle was nobly giving her a choice, her choice had been made when she’d obeyed her heart and gone on this quest, seeking to reconnect with herself, with what she wanted for her life. With whom she wanted for her life.

  The spiritual part of her understood. The woman wanted to draw out his anticipation a few more moments, to give her time to adjust to the idea.

  “And your brother-in-law’s…participation. Was that part of the Seer’s wisdom?”

  A tentative smile curved his lips, catching her breath.

  “Merpeople fascinate humans. So my brother-in-law was here to make sure the choice was a true one, and not just the spell our presence may have laid upon you. You accepted us both. Sensual, insatiable creature that you are." The grin grew wider. "But your heart chose me."

  The hoarseness was definitely fading. His words were like music, and she closed her eyes. He said several more sentences, but the lyrics and their meaning receded, as her mind chose to absorb the hushed stillness surrounding each perfect note. Then the music and words blended, creating the whole symphony of meaning and purpose. As her eyes opened, she saw his lips were not moving. She wondered if that was the telepathic connection he had talked about mermaids sharing, and if he had brought that gift back with him…along with his excellent muscle tone.

  Smiling, she reached up, cupped his jaw. Watched in awe as he turned his lips, not to her palm, but to the jumping pulse in her wrist where life ran hard and strong beneath the fragile veneer of mortality. Strength and vulnerability, the base definition of love in all its forms, whether at its beginning, middle or end, or the Mobius Strip all three made.

  “So you would let me go, just like that, if I said no?”

  He looked at her, and there was an expression in those eyes that made her shiver, made heat pool in her lower belly and her nipples tighten. He brought his lips down close and her own parted involuntarily. He paused a breath above them, looked at their openness, and his lashes lifted so he was staring directly into her eyes.

  “Just like that, Annie. But know this. If you accept me now, I won’t make it easy for you to ever ask again.”

  She rose unsteadily, naked in more ways than one. She was cognizant of his gaze coursing down her, to the narrow small of her back, to the flare of her hips, the length of her legs, and back up again. Annie found her clothes, lifted them in her hands, then turned, met his eyes. She saw the concern there, and a flash of all-consuming hunger so potent it staggered her, though he masked it a blink after she turned. But it was there, below the surface. Wanting her. Not just the breasts and legs, ass and pussy, though there was that raw need there. He wanted more than that, everything underneath, the soul that animated the flesh.

  Annie wet her lips,
and a tremor went from her heart to the fingers she clutched on the clothes. "I can't tell where my flesh ends and yours starts," she whispered, watching with joy as his eyes darkened with emotions. "So I think…” She straightened her back, proudly displayed her body before him, letting the clothes drop to the ground. “No, I know. I’m yours, and you’re mine, until Fate wills it otherwise."

  He was up and in front of her faster than she would have imagined for a man just getting his land legs back under him, but when he gathered her closer, his arms possessive and strong, he was trembling like a newborn.

  "Then may Fate be kind, for as long as we both shall live."

  THE END

  Joey W. Hill writes epic fantasy, mainstream fiction and women's erotica. For more information about her published and upcoming works, log onto her website at www.storywitch.com.