Float

The boat floated, becalmed and stinking, under a blank hot sky. Ned stood on its aft deck somewhere between the old world and the new, staring into the seam of ocean and air. Most of his crew was dead. Some had run mad before dying, driven by despair and thirst, by the heat and the total lack of wind. One man had thrown himself into the depths screaming that he would be cool once before he died. Nothing to be won by wasting their strength hauling him out further dehydrated by the salt water, they had watched him drown, flailing at the air, cursing the water.

Ned gazed into it now. Gods, this was about the spot the man had sunk, the boat had moved that little on the still sea. He looked again. Surely he hadn't just seen flesh beneath the swells. His eyes weak from salt and sun, he strained them into the darkness below him. He knew he had seen a human form and the dull shine of skin. Perhaps he was slipping into madness himself. He knelt, looking hard into the water. A glimmer of eyes looking up at him from beneath the keel, rising slowly; Ned was suddenly afraid. Eyes and then a face, a woman's face, red lips, bare breasts just visible as her head broke the surface and she smiled into his astonished eyes. She floated, her face and shoulders above the water, beautiful green hair flowing down her back, the swells of her breasts buoyed, bobbing gently in the ocean.

'Who are you?' Ned hear himself ask, his voice barely a croak with disuse and wonder. She laughed- a woman's laugh, a sound Ned didn't realize he had missed in the weeks at sea, and was suddenly gone, her arms lifted dripping from the water only to arc back into it, in a leisurely dive that brought first her back above the water, and then her bottom, beautiful and full, but strangely bluish and unending. Ned gaped as he realized what he saw. Her legs were joined, blue, and tipped by a flipper. She had no legs. She had a tail. A mermaid.

He could not breathe, waiting for her return, doubting his vision. 'Come back' he whispered to the still ocean surface. He could see her beneath the surface moving with an astonishing grace through the water. Breasts, hips, belly, lips, he'd glimpse darkened hints of her flitting beneath him, beneath the boat, out into the open water, and yet he knew she could not hear him call. Once, away from the vessel, she'd jumped, her body arching away from the water, breasts lifted to the sky, her back bent impossibly backwards. Beautiful. Her hair moved in the air the way hair does in water, each strand floating.

Ned had never seen anything so astonishing or lovely in his life. He wanted to tell someone, started to call out but stopped. No, he would keep this vision to himself. She shimmered through the water, lithe and fluid and he understood why he would not share her. He desired her, wanted her more even than he wanted wind or rain. He could see the rose of her lips and nipples, the white of breast and belly, the deep green of that magical hair, and the shimmering blue of her hips, her full ass, each buttock ripe and smooth tapering into her long slender tail. The way she moved through the water was the way a woman moves beneath her lover. Her motions were slow, her eyes were closed, the water was touching her, sliding over her skin, awakening the flesh, slipping over her throat and across her breasts. He watched her face, the lips parted, the flush rising.

She knew he watched her. Knew he wanted her, and she allowed her body to roll in the water that way because it pleased her. She floated upwards towards him, her face raised. She opened her eyes and looked into his. There was absolutely no difference between her eyes and the ocean. He leaned over the railing, holding his arms out across the water and saw her leap. Ned staggered back a step. He had caught her in his arms and held her. He felt her naked back against one arm, the other crooked beneath her tail, supported her where knees would be on a mortal girl, but rather than bending only in that one spot, she wound over his arm and around his leg. He fell to one knee and the tail unwound and wrapped about the other way, pressing gently against his thigh. He was supporting her ass with his leg and he could feel it undulating against him, sinuous and snake-like beneath surprisingly human blue skin.

He bent his mouth to hers and kissed her. She tasted like water, not salty, but clear and cool and clean, like the water from a well, like nothing he'd tasted for weeks. He could not bear to take his lips from hers, sucking, licking, tasting them. He placed her body gently on the deck and stretched himself beside her. Her green hair billowed out across the boards and floated above them. He ran his hand up her arm surprised at the way water seemed to cling to her skin, she was still so cool and moist beneath his touch.

Beneath him, she moaned into his mouth as he kissed her, her ocean deep eyes closing and one hand winding itself into his hair pulling him closer. He moved over her and felt the dampness of her flesh press against him. It reminded him of a summer pudding his mother had made once- white bread soaked in berry juices until it was saturated and spongy. As he pressed his spoon against it, it would yield little wells of sweet juice floating and sinking back in. His kisses grew deeper, more demanding and she turned her face from him gasping a little and he sank his mouth into her throat. Her hands trailed down his back pulling at the rough fabric of his shirt. He felt he could truly drink from her, her skin was so sweet and cool, his mouth forcing a deep pink from her flesh of her neck.

He sat back as she pulled the shirt over his head and looked down at her. Her breasts were buoyant, rising high and full off her chest, tipped with tiny knots of coral. His hand looked too rough to touch them but she shivered as he ran his palm across her shoulder and over the beautiful swell. He lowered his mouth to her, touching the nipple first, tasting it with his tongue, lightly licking it, so small, so maddeningly hard and smooth. He wanted to bite it, to sink his teeth into the unutterable softness, but only opened his mouth against her, taking as much of her breast as he could in, tasting the water that seemed to well from her skin, sucking hard. She cried out surprised at the demanding mouth that claimed her breast, and her back rose from the deck, bringing her body closer to his. He slipped an arm under her back and rolled onto her. She clapped him to her, her hands pressing down his back, her belly lifting to him. He filled his mouth with her, his other hand caressing the unsucked breast, grazing it with his fingertips, pinching the nipple, squeezing the unearthly softness.

Her body arched and rippled, her entire length undulating beneath him. He grabbed her by her tiny waist, feeling the hardness of her hipbones and the smoothness of the blue skin. He lowered his head to look at her, his hair grazing her belly, her breathing trembling and ragged. The whiteness of her belly faded to the lightest blue growing darker and he bent his mouth to kiss the gorgeous blending of color, kissing lower, following the darkening blue, until him mouth rested in the center of her, just where legs would separate if she had them. He pressed his tongue against her there. Above him, it seemed miles away, she moaned and a quiver ran through the length of her body. He kissed her again, and it seemed to him he could feel a nub beneath the surface, a hardening that shook her like a clitoris buried a quarter inch below the skin.

The idea of it, of the little pleasure-giving kernel buried seized him and he kissed her again, harder, licking with long deep strokes against the smoothness. She moaned again and raised herself to him, her hands grasping at his hair, pulling him closer. He felt almost mad with the wanting of it and attacked her with his lips and tongue, burrowing his face into her, feeding on her, hunting for that small hardness beneath the skin. He could feel the water rising from her flesh and slurped it thirstily, drawing more and more of her into his mouth, feeling her giving way beneath him. He was eating into her, creating an opening for himself. She cried out again, somewhere between pleasure and pain and he knew he had found it, found the seat of her sex, the bud hidden beneath. He reached one hand up to her breast, twisting the nipple as he licked and sucked on the tiny spot beneath him. Her body was twisting, arching, and her breath came in hoarse bursts.

He tightened his lips around the tiny hardness and flicked at it with his tongue. She was close, he could feel her body so tight that he knew she would have to come soon. He felt driven by something deeper than lust or thirst, slurping at the spot deep in her that so twisted her. Her hips lifted off the planking and smacked down again. He would not stop. He kept stabbing at the little spot with his tongue, again and again, relentless, until suddenly her breath caught in her throat, her hips froze; he sank his fingers into her ass and felt the pulse of her orgasm pound through her. His mouth filled with the water that came from her. As the last spasm quaked through her, with a tremendous effort, he felt her tail split in half beneath him.

She was momentarily limp, panting, the two halves of her tail like blue legs sprawled on either side of him. He bowed his head to her body again and began to gently lap the space between. She murmured something he could not understand, her hand weakly trying to pull his head away from her, but then relaxing. He licked slowly, uncertain if the newly formed places hurt her, but they seemed not to. In fact, her breath was quickening again, her eyes drifting closed. She wrapped her divided tail around him, the halves entwining across his back, smooth and muscled against his bare skin pulling him closer. He kissed her clit again gently and then dipped lower, pressing his tongue into her. The very smoothness of the space between drove him on, tormenting him. He wanted her so badly, wanted to feel the entire length of her spread beneath him. He ate at her as she moaned, arching her body up to him. He felt wild, desperate. He had to have her. He was making the opening he must soon posses, making it with every lick, every stroke, with his lips, his tongue, his teeth.

Her tail was wrapped hard around his back and she used it and her hands on his arms to pull him up towards her. He held his body over hers as she worked quickly to free his aching cock from his sailor's pants. Beneath him her body writhed, white and pink and blue, her nipples lightly grazing his chest, her mouth on his neck, nuzzling, biting. Her flesh was so cool, still dripping sweet water, that just to lie over her in this way was ecstasy.

Between the halves of her tail his mouth had made an indentation, no more than a dimple really, but it was to that spot that her hand guided his cock. He pressed its tip against the spot and she wound herself around him, hands moving down his back, her tail twining around his legs, and she pulled him into her. He felt the flesh beneath his cock stretch and give way, yielding to the pressure of his hardness and hunger. He could feel the flesh opening and knew that no man had ever been there before, knew that with a mermaid every time must be a first.

She cried out as he pressed the full length of his hardness deep into her. She was still. Ned didn't move, waiting for her to accustom herself to holding a man inside her. He could feel her entire body soften beneath him. He hadn't realized she'd tensed with his entering. He looked at her face, looked into her water-blue eyes, so exactly the color and depth of the ocean beneath them. She was so lovely. She smiled, her lids slid closed and her body rolled beneath him, undulating beneath his weight and around his cock. He knew the motion, it was the heave and ebb of the waves. He'd felt it all his life, but not like this. Now it rocked for him, held his cock in the roll and pull of it and he dropped his face to her throat, shuddering, surrendering to the motion and the pleasure of it. He was fucking the ocean in a pussy made only for him, made by him, made to pull and suck and tug like the tide.

Her body seemed to have no bones at all, to wrap around and over and beneath him. He pounded against her, diving deeper and deeper into her, breathless, frantic, driven. Her body arched and rolled and he could no longer feel the deck beneath his knees. She was above him, her tail under his ass her breasts pressed against his chest, pulling him up. Her body was twisting- almost struggling. He felt pounded by it, driven faster. He would come soon. He could barely restrain it. Her body was maddening, moving, quaking beneath, above, all around him.

Suddenly, with a mighty wave that racked her frame, she and he were off the boat. In the air a moment and then the water, their bodies plummeting through the depths. He struggled madly, his cock pumping, his hands grabbing. He couldn't breathe. He was drowning. He pounded into her, his mouth over hers sucking. Water filling his lungs, sinking, he came into her, his cock hammering with the pulse beating in his ears. The orgasm thundered through him violently. He would have screamed, coming and drowning and dying in her, hard and shattering and knew that with a mermaid every time must also be a last.