Nine
SHE'D woken before him, just before sunrise. So when she'd slipped from the bed and watched the sky become gray, then shades of pink laced with the traces of gold heralding the sun, she also watched his wings slowly disintegrate and then vanish, leaving a handful of feathers scattered across the bed and her floor. Though his torso altered somewhat, she was still captivated by the long, bare length of leg, his sex at rest, his testicles a dark shadow curved on his inner thigh.
He had been inside of her. She'd felt the shift of his biceps against her flesh as he held her, the line of his jaw pass over her cheek as his lips feathered over her skin, teeth taking an unexpected, fierce nip, rousing an equally fierce response from her.
All silent wonder, she knelt next to his hand, lying loose and open on the covers. Those long fingers had touched every inch of her flesh, teasing, caressing, gripping . . . Now she placed her own hand into the cup of his palm, carefully straightening her fingers, one by one, holding her breath so she didn't wake him. She wanted to see again how delicate her hand was against the elegant power of his.
Tilting her head to gaze at his face, she found his eyes had opened. Dark, dark brown, the human whites so odd to her even though she'd been used to his true appearance such a short time. She liked figuring out his emotions from the tone of his voice, the shift of his body. Watching the fire flash through the solidly dark eyes from desire.
"Good morning," she said softly, and then wondered if he'd consider it good, considering he was waking to it in this form.
HER hair had fallen forward, brushing his forearm. That's what had woken him. That, and a very strange sensation. He knew the ways of humans, had moved silent and unseen among them for a long time. But seeing human appetite and hearing it rumbling in his belly were entirely different. It sounded alarming, as if an animal were in there and would soon rip its way out if he did not appease it.
The second thing that confronted him was a cat. Sitting on the footrail just beyond her, peering at him with half-closed yellow eyes that opened a tad wider when he raised his gaze. He contemplated the two things--cat, empty stomach--and didn't feel any particular pull toward consuming the feline, so it apparently wasn't what his stomach craved.
He turned his attention back to Anna, for his reaction to her was much easier to understand. Under the guise of sleep, for the past few moments he'd just watched her playing with his hand, like a newborn discovering a fresh revelation with everything touched and seen. Her guilty flush and the way she drew back told him she was embarrassed.
"Can you change on land? To a mermaid?"
Her brow puckered, but she nodded. "Not for long. I need the water to move of course, and to keep my gills and scales wet." She arched a brow. "Why, my lord?"
Because he wanted a visual reassurance that neither of them was truly human. He didn't have the words to explain that. But then, why did he have to?
"Is that why you have the pool up here?" He gestured.
The loft bedroom contained only two objects. Last night the only thing that could claim his attention was the bed. This morning he noted the walled pool, a lotus-shaped creation with sandstone block walls to form a seating area around it. It explained the extra reinforcement beams under the balcony. Several baskets were placed on the edge of the sandstone wall, and they contained soap shavings shaped and scented like rose petals. There were floating candles in the pool, apparently lit by her in the night, for they were still burning in this dawn hour, casting a gentle light over the dim room.
"I don't like to be too far from the water, my lord."
"Change for me," he murmured. "I want to see."
Anna seemed to consider that. Then she withdrew from his side, her eyes lowering so her thick lashes swept her cheeks. She'd donned one of the human garments, the gauzy skirt from yesterday, but she'd put on the black T-shirt he'd been wearing. It pleased him to see her wearing close to her skin what he'd had close to his. She dropped the skirt first, then slowly drew the shirt over her head. Not for the first time, he thought how beautiful her breasts were. Small and firm, tipped with delicate pink nipples that made his mouth suddenly moist. As he swallowed, she stepped over to the pool, taking a seat on the edge.
Jonah sat up, watching her. "Anna, why can't you look at me? You liked looking at me a moment ago." He injected a teasing note in his voice and was rewarded with a slight smile, but she kept her eyes down.
"It's an intimate thing, my lord. I . . . I've done it in front of Mina, but we both do it, so it doesn't seem as significant to shift before one another."
"Well, for the time being, I'm a shapeshifter, too, you know."
Her silence told him it was different, that his change was forced, involuntary and unwelcome. And temporary. It tightened his mouth to even think of it, though he tried to soften his expression as he noticed her hands tensing, wringing the fingers together nervously.
"Anna."
She raised her gaze, a fraction at a time.
"I command you to shift," he said quietly. "Now."
Her eyes went to half-mast again, like the cat, who'd moved to the doorway and lay on his side, lazily watching them both.
Her toes curled. Uncurled. Small pearls of flesh, so pale, and then suddenly his eye was drawn to a purple and blue streak spreading across her legs, like ink marking all the veins beneath, only the iridescent color was widening, the texture of the skin changing beneath it. Flashes of silver sparkled over it then, replacing the flesh in a blink, scales overlapping, her lower body shuddering, elongating when she leaned back on her arms. She arched in sensuous display as her lower body twisted, writhed and altered. The blue and purple lines snaked up her upper body, over her rib cage, their delicate tendrils tattooing her abdomen, following the outsides of her breasts and ending in elaborate curls over the roundness of her shoulders.
The overlapped scales gave the womanly shape of her hips an even more lush outline, now that he could compare the difference between her human and mermaid forms with more accuracy. His attention traveled back down the length of her tail, where the scales became smaller and smaller until they were like jewels in a delicate maid's shield of armor. The fronds of her caudal fins unfurled like feathers, the various shades of purple and blue highlighted with tempting glitters of pink and silver.
When Jonah rose from the bed, he could tell the part of her that was instinct, bound to the sea and its laws, immediately became apprehensive, knowing how vulnerable she was in this form with no ocean to provide her grace and speed. He would not have her suffer a moment's fear.
"Sshh . . . " he said, coming to one knee beside her. As petite as she was, it put them nearly eye to eye. He curved his hand beneath the weight of her hair, traced the sensitive crescent of gills that hid along her throat, a different type of beauty. Just like his current form. A different way of surviving. He needed to think of it that way.
Lifting her, he stepped into the pond, lowered himself and her into the clasp of the water, the familiar touch of an element they both knew. Her hair floated around them as he settled in, finding out it was roomy enough he could put his back to the side and hold her between his thighs, pressing his attentive cock comfortably against her lower back as she slid down into his embrace.
Turning her in his lap, he rested his arm over the bend of her tail and perused her at his leisure. "So"--he let his gaze travel down her body, lingering with particular pleasure over her breasts, his fingers passing over the ornamentation embellishing them, feeling the slight raised texture of the intertwined colors, registering her tremor--"where do I find your . . . ?"
The inflection, the trailed-off sentence, told Anna what he meant. She flushed. Would she ever stop doing that? He'd had his mouth on her, his body fully inside hers, and yet, when his gaze pinned her like this, she felt warm and hot, and was so conscious of the way the water moved over her . . . in her.
Lifting his right hand from her breast, he extended it, held it before her. "Take me there. I want to tou
ch you like this. You're beautiful, Anna."
It gratified her to hear it. She'd worried that, because he had legs, he might find her mermaid form unappealing. But she'd been born a mermaid. The human form was just a disguise. Although she used it often enough it had become more comfortable to her, there were physical limitations she had that could not be overlooked. Hence, Mina's sharp warning that she needed to head back to the sea at a certain point.