Antonia floated into the private throne room, where her father, Atlantian, ruler of the sea sat in his enormous chair. With his foam-white hair swirling about his head, he growled in menacing annoyance.
“Where have you been?” Atlantian thundered, causing waves.
His green eyes appeared as mere slits in his wrinkled face. His face exhibited weathering the power his rule wrought. Like every other merperson, Atlantian’s chest was nude except for a sprinkle of equally white hair. On his head, a crown and in his fist, his trusty trident.
“Triton visited again, Father. I must go to him.”
His father looked at her and then away.
“Is he worth it? Is he worth you leaving home, perhaps forever?”
Antonia swallowed the burning emotions in her throat. “I love him.”
“So be it, but know this, Antonia. If you do not return to the sea within four days, you may be stuck on the surface for eternity. Just as he is.”
Her father reached inside his throne and removed an aqua scroll with peach-colored shells dangling from each end. Emblazed on the outside, a silver trident, Atlantian’s symbol. He extended it to Antonia.
She understood her father’s reluctance, but her goals lay on the surface, in the arms of Triton. Hardly the girl she once was, Antonia would do whatever she had to do to make those plans reality. Even if that meant leaving her father’s house and establishing a home of her own—on land.
Leaving the sea.
It pained her to go, and her stomach knotted with the bitterness of it.
Atlantian’s face crinkled into creases. “Do you hate the sea that much?”
“No, Father. I just love him that much more.”
Her father smiled, but she saw the sadness her decision caused him. It lit up his stomach like bioluminescent fish.
“So be it,” Atlantian boomed, spooking a pool of passing fish. Scattering, they fled the court in a burst of bubbling water. “You long to leave the sea. You ache for land. For Triton. Now go. Live among them. See for yourself. This I command.”
Singing her goodbyes, Antonia swam off, his father’s quiet grief in her wake. She needed to put some distance between herself and her old man for now. Going to the surface didn’t have to equate to death. The scroll still clutched in her hand, she swam harder to the surface. On she swam, out of the castle’s gates and through the gaggle of seaweed up toward the surface. Urgency pushed her on, propelling her like a torpedo. She kept going until she reached the heated sunny rays on the water’s surface. Already the three slits on her neck beneath her ears, her breathing gills, began to seal. Her large fanlike fin split as she broke the sea’s surface, gasping for oxygen.
Crawling up the wet sandy shore, Antonia’s very human legs and feet formed into hardened muscles and lean calves. The slits became indigo tattoos on her skin, and she clutched the scroll tight in her hand.
“Triton.”
All she could focus on was getting to him. She pressed her body to move up the rocky shore to her temple turned beach house. Smelling of seawater, sardines, and salt, Antonia strolled into a square-shaped building. Local women often served as priestesses to her under the guise of being housekeepers. She had some sway with the town and a temp agency from her previous little visits to the surface. Her father knew none of this.
She entered the temple, and found a man there instead of her usual priestess.
“It’s you! You’re here!” he said, rising up from his knees. He’d been seated outside the door. Dressed in dark blue jeans and a collared white shirt, Triton’s beautiful hair had been tucked into a low ponytail. His eyes shined but confusion remained.
“It’s me.” She smiled as he took in her nudity.
“Um, you’re naked.” He began to unbutton his shirt. “Where…why aren’t you wearing clothes?”
“Follow me.” It felt like a team of seahorses galloped inside her belly. She wanted to say so much, but instead decided to remain silent.
“Seriously, you’re real! And where are your clothes?”
He crossed the tiled pathway from outside to the warm wooden flooring inside the cabin. He thrust his shirt at her. She stepped through the open door into her sanctuary.
“I’m real, and I’m not wearing clothes because I don’t have any. Clothes are for surface dwellers. Remember?” Creeping closer to the thin, fishnet curtain, she stopped short.
“No, but I had dreams.”
“Memories.” Her voice trembled.
What if he doesn’t remember any of it? Our life before?
“Memories. Right. Listen, I don’t even know how I got here. I got a call to deliver a pizza to this address, but when I got here I couldn’t leave.”
Pizza?
She shook her head. “The goddess works in mysterious ways.”
“Can you please put this on? Your uh,
skin
, is distracting.” Triton rubbed his head and averted his eyes.
“Distracting? My skin? Triton, do you remember
us
?”
She stepped behind a fishnet curtain used to segregate her from her priestesses. Through the sheer curtain she could make out his shadow figure. Out of arm’s reach, her lover waited, his breathing shallow and sharp, ready for all of his questions to be answered.
How can he not remember?
“I thought those were only dreams.”
Her mind craved his body and hungered for his embrace. Its long memory of their good times could not be quieted. It had been so long since the sea took him from her, and spit him out onto the shore. She needed to feed her ravenous appetite for his touch.
Goodness knew she’d been too long without him.
“I feel like I’ve known you forever, but I just met you today.” Triton put his shirt back on, but he didn’t button it.
“Well, since we were kids.”
“So, you’re telling me that the emotions inside me, these feelings I have for you, are real?” He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Do you not remember?”
“Not all of it. Will you tell me, please?”
“Take the scroll.” Antonia stepped out from behind the curtain and held it out to him.
“What’s in it?”
“Answers.”
“We were married.” Triton said it like he was tasting it for validity.
“We are married, and very much in love.”
“I know,” he croaked.
Antonia could tell by the heat of his words, he did.
Triton’s eyes ran over the aquatic blue tiles and over to a round, raised bathtub adjacent to the curtain blind. Even from here, he could make out floating seashells surfing the ripples without a care. Beside the tub, candles lit orange ovals against the falling dusk’s vibrant smears of pinks and purples. Windows placed high, near the ceiling, let in the last brushes of daylight.
With the scroll still tight in his fist, he watched Antonia’s silhouette move to the tub and then as she sank into the waters disturbing the shells. Antonia’s thick hair, big round brown eyes, full sensual mouth and a body that could bring men to their knees would make his long commitment to abstinence just to spend a brief life in her arms, her bed, and her heart all worth it. Triton stood on the other side of the curtain and tried to withstand the blinding urge to rip it away, march up to Antonia and snatch her naked and wet self to him. He remembered how her breasts pushed gently against the fishnet curtain, her nipples snagging and poking through the minute squares. The dreams hadn’t done her beauty justice at all. In the flesh, Antonia was riveting and she was his wife.
The dreams tormented him, but now, the only solace he would receive would come in her arms.
Something stirred in his mind, but was gone.
Groaning, he tried to stay his burning lust for her. Right then a duel between his logic and his lust waged on.
To open the scroll or join Antonia in the tub.
She stood up. “Are you afraid to open it?”
Triton looked up and took in her curvaceous hips. Quickly averting his eyes, he couldn’t even remember what she’d said. “Uh this is a strange time to take a bath. Besides, you smell incredible.”
He swore, but it was true. She smelled so wonderful, like the ocean.
She laughed. “Usually, our kind uses soap to scrub off the scent of the sea. Seems only merfolk find it appealing.”
“So, am I a merman since I can’t seem to resist it?”
“Are you?”
Every time she spoke, his cock rose higher, like a pole.
She lowered her smoky eyes at him as she stepped out of the tub. With Antonia’s single step toward him, his heart sped up. Almost in an instant, she was more than in his personal space. In two more steps, she’d locked her arms around his neck. She leaned in and took his bottom lip between her teeth. Sucking it gently, Antonia kept her eyes on his face, gauging his response. His body jerked and his arms wrapped around her, feeling her skin’s silkiness glide under his hands. Cupping her firm cheeks, rushes of memories flickered through him.
Antonia draped in emeralds at a wedding celebration. He’d pledged to her father that he would honor her forever.
Antonia and him at their official union. Tons of merfolk. Their chariot pulled by seahorses off to their honeymoon. An uninhabited tropical island where they spent time on land and in the sea.
Antonia frolicking with him in the surf. Kissing him under a full moon’s light.
The expedition into a lower cavern far from the castle, and an unexpected tsunami tossed him and several others onto land miles away from home.
The images flickered on in his mind like a slideshow.
“Your fins, your beautiful scales.” His hands sought them out but found only soft flesh instead of the smoothness of her scales. Shivering, with his desire growing steadily tighter, he tried to think beyond his need. Antonia nibbled around his mouth, and Triton struggled to reel in his rampant hormones.
“I traded them for flesh. I had to get back to you.”
“You’d do this for me?”
“I love you,” Antonia whispered then kissed him hard on the mouth.
Triton closed his eyes and lost himself in the rushing warmth of her love—their love.
“Yes…I
¼
love you…too!” Once the words were out of his mouth, his heart exploded in a shower of warmth. Now uncorked, all the memories of his life as a merman flooded him. He held Antonia tightly to him as wave after wave of realization rocked him emotionally.
Triton’s eyes opened. Cramps knotted in his abdomen echoing his sentiments. Here was completeness and unity. Now, Triton was whole.
Antonia reached for his belt, and fumbled to get rid of it. “Remove this contraption, lover.”
Triton released her and stripped out of his clothes and shoes. Cupping her face, he brushed his lips across hers. She caressed her hands along his back, and tossed her hair away from her naked shoulders. He shuddered as she took his full length in her hands. Up. Down. As she cupped his balls, he groaned, throwing his head back, shutting his eyes.
“Antonia!”
She kissed his neck, alternating between bites and kisses. Her fingers glided over his ridges, over his puce head and down to the furry base of his cock. As she pumped with passion, he relished the sensation of finally feeling her hands once more.
“I’m so glad to be home.” Triton held her closer. He couldn’t believe his dream girl was real.
Laughing, Antonia kissed his cheek. “We’re landlocked forever now.”
Triton nodded. “Yes, but I bet you’re a very good swimmer.”
The End
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