Pearls and Preoccupations

Trayrock, A few days after the storm

“Okay,” Lyric panted as she and the man staggered to the front door, and he braced his hands against the frame. “Almost there. Just a little further.” She closed the door behind them, as they made it into the hallway.

The blanket had slipped, draping down to reveal that his back was bleeding again and that he had a fantastic arse on him. She pulled the blanket back up hastily, keeping her eyes averted, and definitely not giving in to the urge to see if the front was as well proportioned.

He was not steady on his feet, swaying from wall to wall drunkenly, and she desperately clutched the blanket to him, feeling skin against the palm of her hand. He stilled, breathing heavily from his efforts, and turned his head to look down at her, his eyes glowing and his nostrils flaring.

“Sorry,” she removed her hand from his chest.

He did not move, nor did he break eye contact.

Her heart hammered against her ribs. For a moment, she was so certain that he would kiss her that she could almost taste the river water on his lips, but then she drew in a deep breath. What was she thinking? She scolded herself. The man was bleeding and barely able to walk, and, just fifteen minutes before, had been wearing a tail instead of legs. Fantasizing about kissing him was beyond ridiculous.

She swallowed hard. “The next door,” she told him, reaching past him to open it into Arthur’s room. “It’s a bit…” It was clean, but she hadn’t been in there since… “I’ll get the bed…” She ducked under his arm when he gripped the doorframe and threw back the covers. “Here…”

He sank into a sit, seeming uncertain until the mattress gave a little beneath him. “Ah,” he said, and it was almost a word, the first that he had spoken.

“It’s a bed,” she wasn’t sure if mermaids slept in beds. Fish just floated, didn’t they? “For sleeping.”

He had let go of the blanket and as he adjusted so that he was lying, despite her best intentions, she was able to determine that nature had balanced the excellent arse with a generous piece of equipment.

“Fuck,” she whispered under her breath and willed herself to stop picturing his cock as she pulled the blankets up around him. “I’ll be right back with the first aid kit,” she told him as she backed out of the room and closed the door behind her, leaning her head against the wood.

“For fuck sake Lyric, what would Arthur say?” She muttered and pushed herself away from the door. Even Arthur would have been rendered speechless by a merman, she thought dryly as she made her way back to where she had left the other blankets and first aid kit.

The moonlight caught in the shimmer of scales scattered in a trail from the water to where he had transformed into a man. She collected some into her pocket. A reminder, she told herself, that she hadn’t imagined that tail. They were much larger than a normal river fish’s and their opalescent sheen much more brilliant. There was no way they could be anything other than a Merman’s scale.

When she opened the door into Arthur’s room, the Merman’s eyes flared in the light from the hallway. “Sorry,” she said. “I hope I didn’t wake you.”

She turned on the lights and saw him flinch. “Sorry,” she said again automatically. “But I need to see what I’m doing.”

There was blood on the sheets. She covered him back over and rose. His hand catching her wrist was so quick that she did not see him move. Her heart thundered. “I… I will get a cloth and some water,” she told him. “I will be right back.”

He released his hold reluctantly and his hand dropped back onto the covering.

She was shaking as she filled a bowl with warm water, but it wasn’t from fear, she admitted to herself. That would be a more normal reaction. Fear made sense. This… arousal… Yes, arousal, she forced herself to face it. Well, it made no sense whatsoever. It was almost grotesque. He was injured and… “A Merman,” she said it out aloud, to make it seem more real and reached into her pocket to take out one of the scales. It was beautiful, transparent at the tips, delicate and so light that if she could not see it in her fingers, she would not know that she held it.

Fear would make sense, she repeated to herself as she carried the bowl back into the room. But it definitely wasn’t fear, she added wryly. In the light and spread against the white pillow, the green sheen to his hair was even more evident. He watched as she crossed the room and set the bowl on the bedside table.

He lifted his hand complicity as she folded back the sheets, his eyes on her face. As she used the cloth to explore the wounds on his chest, she flicked glances up, taking in the details of him, the old scars paler in the bronze of his skin, the way the pearls contrasted with the dark silk of his hair, and were echoed by the numerous piercings in his ears.

“You were scraped up pretty badly by the debris in the water,” she said softly. “Was that why you left it? Too dangerous?” There were scrapes all over him, his chest, hands, arms, and shoulders, and she continued her cloth bath, wiping them clean and deciding which needed intervention and which would be all right left to heal.

He didn’t answer.

“I know that you understand me,” she told him. “It’s okay. I’m not… dangerous to you. I’ll just patch you up, and then send you on your way, all right?” There were tattoos on his arms just a couple of shades darker than his skin tone, that were revealed as she washed away the mud and blood. “Aren’t

Mermaids sea creatures?” She asked, though truly she knew nothing more than fairytales. “Though I guess we’re at the mouth of the river here. Maybe the water is salty enough.”

He turned his hand over in her hold and their fingers laced.

She looked up at him in surprise as her heart danced dangerously within her. And then frowned. His face was pale. She pulled her hand free and leaned forward to touch his forehead. He did not pull away, submitting to her touch. The skin was hot and clammy to the touch.

“Shit,” she whispered. “You were in the river. We were in the river,” she amended. “But I don’t think that I drank any of it,” she said mostly to reassure herself. Her upper half had been free of the water, other than that which had dripped from him over her, but she couldn’t recall having gotten any of it in her mouth.

“The water is polluted,” she continued to him taking up her cloth and wiping at his skin again, washing his face. “It is making people sick.” She finished cleaning and bandaging his arms and chest and reached for the first aid kit. “I don’t know how to treat it,” she flicked through the containers. “You are hot, and your skin is clammy. I don’t know if your people go hot or cold when they’re sick. If I give you something to control your temperature and help with the pain, will that make you sicker?”

He reached out and put his hand over hers, stilling her frantic motions. Their eyes met and held, and she released her breath. “You’re right,” she murmured. “I’m having a panic attack. This… You… The tail… It’s very not normal for me. And there are other things. The militia in Trayrock. The water sickness… Something is going to happen soon, and I think it’s going to be bad.”

He released her hand and flicked back the covers, revealing his legs and… Everything else.

She stared at his cock, her mouth falling open. It was hard, displaying the tattoos that swirled up its sides and the pearl-tipped piercing through the frenulum.

His lips curled smugly as he took the washcloth from the bowl and began to wash a gouge on his thigh.

“Oh,” she realized why he had pulled back the blankets. There were wounds on his legs. She prepared antiseptic and tried to keep her eyes off the decoration on his cock and her speculations as to why and… She turned her mind from that thought firmly and concentrated on wrapping the bandage around and around and around… How did a man who barely seemed to know how to use his legs have ones so thick with muscle?

Shit.

“Do Mermen… people… Mermaids,” she stammered as she taped the bandage off and pulled the covers back into place. “Do they have, like, magical powers?” That made normal humans lust after them?

He leaned back against the pillow, and although his face was pale and his forehead beaded with sweat, his eyes were knowing and his smirk smug.