Her Contract Enatails

Henry chanced a look into his mirror, supposedly checking out the flow of traffic, but in reality flagellating himself with another stolen glance at the occupants of the back seat. Aubrey Lister sat back on the leather like a king reclining on his throne, his face a picture of self-assured crapulence as he draped one arm over the shoulder of his favourite pet, the other lost beneath the fabric of her tight denim skirt.

Carla, who had been gazing out of the smoked window with the interest of a child a moment before, reacted to the attentions of his fingers with immediate effect. She began to wriggle in her seat, grinding her buttocks into the upholstery and reaching under her tube top to massage her own breasts. She moaned as she pulled her tail up towards her chest, making a show of trying to crawl into his lap in a desperate attempt to bring herself as close to him as possible.

These outings into the bustling traffic had become one of Lister's favourite pastimes in recent months. They would ride around whatever location they found themselves in, with the mermaid concealed in the back seat so that he could revel in the act of enjoying her in a public place while preserving the secrecy of his beloved pet.

Often he allowed her to lower the windows, looking out onto the landscape passing by as if she were an ordinary woman, thrilled at the fact no one could see her scales and fins as they drove by. The illusion was aided by the fact he had come to be aroused by the act of dressing her in conventional clothes as far as her form would allow, reminded of the fact that she had once done so in her former life before he gained possession of her totally. He garbed her in evening gowns, business suits, summer dresses and even a the regalia of a bride before her took her, thrilled by the fact that he had deprived her of the life in which she could have worn them by her own choosing.

But his favourite by far were the outfits that he imagined she would have worn had she been a prostitute of some kind. He was inspired by the women he saw in the most chauvinistic music videos of the time, where the women seemed to be there for little more than display and arousal no matter if they were in the background or the supposed artist themselves.

By these standards, the combination of a denim skirt that was barely able to cover her groin and an aquamarine top that strained to accommodate her breasts was relatively tame. But topped off with excessive jewellery and her hair done in thick ringlets, she could have been mistaken for a common trollop were it not for the sight of her tail.

Henry tore his gaze away and tried to keep his attention on the road.

He had grown used to the driving while all manner of things went on behind him, but today he was faced with the additional problem of a stop on the way. Lister occasionally fitted a business call into his rides and in those circumstances he left his driver in the company of the mermaid while he took care of the matter at hand.

When he was left alone with her like that, Henry felt as though she bored holes in the back of his head with her eyes, penetrating his skull with her accusatory stare.

But he was not about to disobey his orders, and so he took a deep breath and pulled the limousine off the road and into the gloom of a subterranean parking garage as he had been told. As the car came to a halt, he heard Lister whisper something to Carla before he stepped out of the door. The sound of a battery-operated toy filled the air and informed him that whatever had been said was less than clean in nature. Probably an instruction for the mermaid to keep herself prepared for his return or something equally as lascivious in nature.

Perfect, he thought, now I have to sit here and listen to that as well.

It came as a surprise to him that the sound of the vibrating toy ceased only a few seconds after Lister had left the limousine and was far enough away to be out of earshot. The silence that was left in its absence seemed heavier than ever, and Henry could hear his own breathing as though it were as loud as a jet engine.

"Henry?"

Of all the things he could have imagined to break the silence, the instantly familiar voice shocked him utterly. He froze in his seat, unable to turn his head or even glance up at the mirror, afraid that he was moments away from being judged for the sins he had burdened himself with for years now.

"Henry," she was closer now, almost up to the hatch between the two halves of the limousine. "Please don't freak out...I know this is weird, for the both of us. But I need to talk to you...I need your help."

With a gargantuan effort, he turned in his seat and looked into her face as she clung onto the rim of the hatch with both webbed hands.

He could not have put it into words, but there was something different in her eyes and her expression, a depth of emotion that had seemed to be lost when she was transformed from a human being into a mermaid. For the first time he could remember, Henry was able to perceive the same woman she had been in the surgically tweaked face of the mermaid she had become.

"I'm sorry," it was short and pathetic as well as a thousand miles away from the intensity of the guilt he was feeling, but under the circumstances it was all he could manage right there and then.

"I don't need you to be sorry," Carla shook her head, "I need you to help me get away."

"From him?"

"Who else?"

"He'll kill us both," Henry turned his head away from her as she started to pull herself though the hatch, breasts struggling to make it through the small space.

"I don't know about you," her voice was strained as she pulled her tail through after her and fell onto the seat beside his, "but I look at myself as I am right now and I can't help thinking that I'm already dead as long as I stay put."

Carla was struggling with herself even as she spoke to him, trying to hold together her sense of self in light of the seemingly random flow of memories and knowledge that was filling her mind unwanted and unbidden. The patchwork of images and recollections was not her own, but rather that of the other woman who shared her name, the human female who she was being forced reconcile with the radically different creature she thought herself to be.

Over the past few days the speed at which she had been uncovering these alien memories had become ever faster, filling her mind with awful realisations that she was only now able to absorb. With every new revelation she had become more certain that she was somehow akin to this other woman, that they were linked in a manner that she could not quite understand.

It was never a case of their being two distinct voices in her head, the mermaid that she had become was the entity that she remained. The feeling was more akin to discovering hidden doorways inside a house with which you were familiar, opening them to find whole rooms that revealed new aspects that had laid unseen for who knew how long.

Carla had found that she had little choice in the matter as these new elements of her mind became one with the whole. She was not becoming the woman as she absorbed her memories, the process felt to her as though aspects of the other woman became her own and were coloured by their mixing with her persona. She had become a gestalt of two different women, one seeping into the other and both changing as a result.

She suspected, or more honestly feared that she might have once been the human woman in her new memories. But the thought of being something other than she was now did nothing but upset her, make her gaze at her tail and try to tell herself that it was not true. Even now that she understood for the first time that she was being exploited and abused by the man she had seen as the centre of her world, she was still happy in her body and did not desire to be anything other than a mermaid.

This new blending of her persona with that of the other woman had left her still more of a mermaid with human traits than a human trapped in the body of a mermaid. For that reason she found that she could not simply talk her way into gaining Henry's trust and cooperation, but was compelled by her instincts to ensure her success by other means more in keeping with her nature.

Carla stretched out and crawled on her belly across the seats, her weight pressing down on his thighs as she came. Her hands gripped the lapels of his jacket and pulled her up his torso as she twisted her own lower half to sit in his wide lap. All the time he was as still as a statue, petrified by the feeling of her body against his.

She knew that Henry found her desirable, even the human woman had known as much. For the human woman it might have been enough to trust to her impassioned words as she sought to turn the man's loyalty away from his employer and towards herself.

But there was little chance that the mermaid would be satisfied to do the same, convinced as she was of the power that could be wielded through seduction and desire as a result of her intimate experience in such matters. Carla knew that if she could bind a man with her sexual allure, then there was almost no way he could deny her what she asked of him afterwards.

On a deeper level, the structure of her altered mind associated such things with a fundamental sense of security, forever linking the concepts of sexual attraction with those of her status and ability to trust the relationships she formed with other individuals. No matter how she tried, there was no way that she would be able to truly place her trust in another person when she was in a position of such need unless she had the reassurance of knowing that they were enamoured of her charms.

Carla was a siren in both body and mind, and as such there was nothing she could do to stop herself trying to seduce the man she needed to aide her in her plans.

She could already feel the effect she was having on Henry's body, the swelling in his lap below her buttocks and the labouring sound of his lungs as his pulse began to race. Whether the largest part of his stirring was on account of his reaction to her own attentions or his fear at their being discovered and the consequences she could not have said. But regardless of which it may have been, Carla was sure that she could steer the man according to her wishes with little chance of failure.

Deftly her hand opened his flies and found his member, not a difficult task under the circumstances. Henry was a large man and it seemed that his body was in proportion down to the last detail as she found a considerable amount of him gripped between her fingers.

Carla allowed herself the cruel thought of the comparison in so called manhood between the quiet mountain of a man and the vulgar individual who employed him. She had spent so long in what now seemed like insane worship of Lister that any chance to indulge herself with a man that was not him was the ultimate act of rebellion.

While it was undoubtedly true that she did need Henry's help and she was unable to think of securing it without this display of wanton sexual appetite, a part of her revelled in the fact that she was finally going against the will of Aubrey Lister. Carla realised in that moment that while she may have been settling into the idea of herself as a melding of the human woman she remembered and the mermaid that she had become, she was by no means as meek or retiring as the former had been. There was a streak of pure and unashamed independence emerging in her character and she vowed that she would never be put in the position of helpless dependency that the two elements of her personality had fallen into.

Henry had one arm gripped on the top of the front passenger seat and the other braced against the door, as though he was expecting to be thrown about inside the limousine by some unknown force. His eyes were wide and there was already sweat beading on his forehead, but he betrayed his true emotions towards what Carla was doing by making no attempt to stop her or voice an objection.

Carla gripped the steering wheel with her free hand and guided his penis beneath her skirt with the other. The size and state of his member meant that it had little trouble in pushing the skirt up and off her buttocks as it approached the silver flesh of her vagina.

She moved her backside in practised motions, an expert at the art of arousing a man after years of devoting her mind to contemplating little else. The lips of her vagina brushed against the head of his penis with the delicate touch of a gentle kiss, each contact making him shudder and building the anticipation of the inevitable next step.

When the moment came, Carla took him by surprise, pushing herself backwards onto him with a force that came out of the blue after her teasing foreplay. He was broad and well built, making the muscles of her body stretch and move to accommodate him until she could spare no more room. Filled to her capacity, she held still for an extended breath and simply allowed the sensation of his body entering her own wash over her before she began to move slowly forward and back again.

For Carla the experience was almost a joyous one, not for such a crude reason as the size of Henry's penis, but more for the sense of liberation that it inspired in her. She could not escape the fact that she was a sexual being who would need to be satisfied in order to be truly complete. And yet in this act she had proven that she could overcome the way in which she had been programmed to throw herself at the feet of just one man.

It was the very difference in the nature of the sexual act with another man that gave her hope, the unique way in which her body had sunk onto a formerly unknown member and come alive with pleasure. She had feared that she was incompatible with another partner. But she had proven to herself that not only was she capable of breaking free of her former master, she was also able to initiate intercourse with a new partner and gain something from the coupling that was hers alone.

Carla found that her enjoyment of the experience was abruptly cut short however, when Henry buckled and came no more than a minute or two after she had taken him inside her.

It did not matter, she told herself.

She was sure that his premature climax was the result of his nerves and the fact that he was being seduced by a seasoned professional.

That was another new characteristic to note, she was not in the least bit shy or humble about the power that she held or the desirable qualities of her body.

Why should she be?

A quick glance over her shoulder told her that she had him, the exhausted nod that he gave her almost surplus to requirements.

"Two weeks," he gasped between breaths.

"Two weeks?"

"He's flying to Miami on business," Henry explained as his breathing slowed. "That's the earliest we can take a shot at getting you away from him."

His face turned serious.

"I don't suppose you've thought of where you want to go?"

Carla had pondered trying to rediscover her old life, make a fresh start in a new country or even asking him to take her back to the place where it had all begun and begging Dr Pickford to change her into a human so that she could blend into the masses. But the life of the Carla Largo who had been human was gone, destroyed by the machinations of Aubrey Lister. There was no way she could have begun anew as a mermaid amongst the millions of humans in any country on the planet. And she could not contemplate becoming another creature, she had apparently done so once before with the consequences being nothing but traumatic.

"The sea," she replied after a long pause. "Just get me to the sea."

The setting sun had turned the sky into a riot of colour as it inched below the horizon, vivid bands of yellow, orange and crimson made all the more striking by the effect they cast upon the churning waters of the ocean beneath them. Lingering warmth still carried on the breeze was the final memory of the heat which had characterised the day that was now past, making the night a balmy and pleasant place to be alive and awake.

Carla watched from the window of the limousine, able to appreciate the beauty of such a sight on her own terms for what seemed like the first time in her life as defined by the strange course her existence had taken over the past few years. The change that had come over her as she regained a sense of control over her own mind in the past few weeks had been ever harder to contain as the time approached for her chance to escape.

Where she had previously been little more than a simpering pet, forever clammering for the attention of the man whom she had perceived as her master, now she was fully able to see for herself just what that same man had done to her. It was a cruel irony that for the sake of preserving her means of being free of his clutches, Carla had been forced to maintain the illusion that she was still his wiling and obedient plaything.

For a period of two weeks, she had lived a lie which only served to remind her of the things that she had lost as well as the depths to which she had been taken. Aubrey Lister was by no means tired of his mermaid and made regular use of her body, requiring her to bury her hatred for him behind the adoring mask of the creature that he had turned her into.

Carla found herself wrestling with the urge to strike some kind of blow against him as she was made to degrade herself, stabbing for his eyes with a sharp object or biting down upon his penis when he forced it into her mouth. But the thought of her freedom always stayed her hand, keeping her focussed on the possibility of being finally released from her bondage rather than basking in the glow of violent revenge that would inevitably lead to savage retribution soon afterwards.

The only other human being with whom she had contact in that time was Henry, snatching moments here and there in which she was able to speak with her own voice and express her own opinions.

Carla found that she was able to distract herself from the attentions of Lister by taking the opportunity whenever it arose to make love to his most trusted bodyguard. The dual blow that the act struck, at once betraying her supposed position of his personal property and doing so with someone so close to him, soothed her anger to a degree and gave her the strength to carry on from one day to the next.

In her position, the average woman would have rejected utterly the very idea of pursuing a string of sexual encounters while at the same time being subject to the abuse that she was enduring. But as Carla had come to accept, she was not a human being and neither was she an average woman by any means. Sexual desire and the consummation of the lust that she was capable of inspiring in others was a fundamental element of her being and she would use it to both fend off the horrors of her treatment and at the same time keep intact her plans to escape.

And she had done just that, holding herself together until the arrival of the allotted day.

Henry opened the door and gazed inside, his broad face a picture of anxiety and urgency as he tried to keep his emotions under control. Not even the weeks of careful planing that had brought them to this point or the knowledge that his employer was more then six hours away by plane could reassure him that he was safe.

As she looked him in the eye and gave him a smile that she hoped would be some kind of balm for his paranoia, Carla could not help thinking that had the man been able, he would have picked her up and pitched her into the sea like a shot-putter simply to have the whole thing over with sooner.

"Ready?"

Carla nodded and swung her tail out of the limousine, stretching her body in anticipation of the challenges that awaited her.