Page 8 of Female Fantasy
I sink to my knees, ever so unbecoming of a lady, and stare at him, mouth agape. He is beyond my comprehension. A miraculous sight. Dark heavy locks glued to his head by thick beads of water. His golden eyes flicker like falling stars. He is nude from the waist up. I drink in his strong forearms, his sculpted chest. Dark and defined, all of him. The vision is almost too much to take in all at once.
And then my gaze wanders below his abdomen.
My mouth dries up.
A glorious tail the color of squid ink, practically obsidian, but shimmering as he moves like the sunlight reflected on thecrest of a wave. The texture appears sturdy, like the skin of a dolphin or whale. But the whisper of small scales, similar to pearls strung together on a necklace, robs me of my next breath. He is magnificent.
And utterly terrifying.
I open my mouth to speak, but words fail to fall from its trapdoor.
Ryke throws his head back and laughs.
I am in disbelief.
A shock so pure it is chaste.
“You,” I try again. “You are a…fish.”
His upper lip curls up at the corner as if dragged by a hook.
“Mer,” he corrects me. “I am mer.”
But it is not possible.
It cannot be.
“Mer,” I repeat. “Like the sea monster? From our bedtime stories?”
He shakes his head. “I am no monster, Merriah. In this world, I am but a man, same as you. I walk among you. Eat as you do. Drink as you do. Fuck as you do. But in the next…”
His explanation lacks sense.
Even as every hair on my body stands up straight.
“There are multiple worlds?”
“So many—”
“So many questions?”
He grins.
Behind him, his tail slaps against the pool of water, splashing me.
But somehow, I do not mind getting wet.
“Little minnow, there is so much about this realm that you do not yet understand. That you have not dared allow yourself to dream about. There is a world that sits above the clouds in the sky. And one nestled beneath the ocean floor—that is where I reside. Or, rather, where I once lived.”
I raise my hand to my forehead, as if to check for a fever, and wipe away the ripples of water falling to my lips.
“Do you mean to tell me that beneath the sand beds and dunes, in the darkest depths where salt water meets seaweed, there is a hidden species of man with…tails?”
The entire notion sounds so ridiculous, I could convince myself it was but a ruse if not for the evidence in front of me.
Taunting me.
Flesh and blood and water.
