The Naiad's Thrall

I've always thought of a forest as a series of rooms, and this 'room' was a grove flooded with sunlight. It was well-proportioned as if designed by an architect. A canopy of birch, hornbeam and hazel trees framed a carpet of thick grass, glowing electric-lime in the midday heat. There were high walls of lush flowers with intriguing names: Pink foxgloves, stitchwort, campion, cranesbill, and dozens of others I couldn't identify. It was a wild place, and apart from a couple of rotting logs that had been positioned as benches, there was no sign of human activity.

At one end, there was a stream that widened into a pool of dark, fragrant water, the surface covered with pollen and scattered white petals. It looked cool and inviting. I considered going for a swim, but first I needed to rest and be alone.

I'd brought a towel with me, which I flung to one side. I sat in the shorter grass by the edge of the pool and listened to the birds and the soft breeze. It was sweltering today. Between lulls in the birdsong, I could just about hear my friends' music on their oversized Bluetooth speaker, and someone who might be my best mate Julian hollering about getting the fire going. They were camping a short distance away, but I'd only stumbled on this grove by ducking through a hole in the undergrowth that had probably been made by foxes—I doubted the guys would be able to find me if they went looking. If they even noticed I was gone, which seemed unlikely.

'You look sad.'

I sat up with a start. I didn't recognise the voice.

The woman was sitting on the opposite bank of the pool, running her legs through the water. She was tall, as tall as me, curvy and tanned, with long, wavy auburn hair tumbling down over her chest. She had a kind, freckled face and piercing blue eyes. My swimming towel was wrapped around her, but apart from this, she was naked.

And apart from my swimming towel, I only had a pair of boxers on.

I instinctively went to cover myself, but obviously I couldn't.

'How'd you get that?' I managed, aware that I was now blushing from head to toe.

The woman cocked her head innocently. 'Get what?'

'My—my towel...'

'Oh, this?' She laughed. Her laugh was bright and musical, and made me smile without meaning to. 'Sorry, I'll give it back.' And with that, she flung the towel across the pool and into my arms, and dived into the dark water. I tried not to look at her nude body, but she didn't seem embarrassed at all. Once she was in the water, there was something

gorgeous

about the way the sunlight played off her submerged skin, imbued her curves with a pale, luminous quality.

I forced myself to stop staring, and focused on a woodpecker that was darting from tree to tree over her head.

She giggled again. 'You don't have to pretend I'm not here. Look at me.'

There was a warmth in her voice that made me feel a little less self-conscious. I looked down at her, keeping my gaze firmly on her face. 'Sorry,' I said. 'It's just...'

'I know, I know.' She drifted through the water towards me. 'I shouldn't go skinny dipping when there's people around. My fault.'

'Are you camping out here too?' I asked. 'Or do you live nearby?'

'I live here,' she said.

'Lucky you. It's a gorgeous part of the world.'

'I'm glad somebody else appreciates it,' she said, smiling. Her hair fanned out behind her, russet, sustained on the rippling surface of the pool.

'Hang on,' I said, 'where are your clothes?'

'I don't usually bother with clothes,' she said. 'Or a towel. The sun is enough.'

'You must live

really

close by.'

'Yeah. And this place is so secluded, the perverts can't find it.

Most

of the time.'

I felt myself blushing again. 'I didn't know you were here...'

'I'm

joking

,' she said, reaching my side of the pool. She extended a hand. 'You may call me Calypso.'

'Nice name,' I said politely, and went to shake her hand. 'I'm—'

'No, no.

Kiss

,' she said sharply, and held out her hand again. 'I believe in old-fashioned good manners when a gentleman meets a lady.'

I laughed, in spite of myself. If she wanted chivalry, I'd give her chivalry. I bent down on my knees by the edge of the pool, took her hand in mine, and kissed it. I couldn't help but notice how soft her skin was.

'Good,' she said, and stuck her tongue out to show she was only having a laugh. 'Now why don't you join me for a swim, kind stranger.'

I protested a little, saying I was tired, but even as I spoke I found myself stepping into the pool. I was still in my boxers. The water felt pleasant on my thighs—surprisingly warm for England, even in high summer, but then the sun had been shining directly onto it for most of the morning. I waded further in, sinking up to my waist. I felt mud and pebbles beneath my feet. 'There's no needles or broken glass or anything, is there?' I said.

'Oh, of course not,' said Calypso, gliding in graceful circles around me. 'It's safe, I promise you. I've been swimming here for years, I'd know if anybody was littering.' She leant back against the branch of a stooping tree that projected out over the water. 'Did you say you were camping?'

'A couple hundred yards that way,' I said, pointing back in the direction I'd come from, which was a wall of bright green foliage. I could faintly hear Mac DeMarco, drifting on the breeze. 'My mates have been playing music really loudly all morning. And last night too. Sorry if it bothered you.'

'Ah, so that was

you

,' said Calypso, but she didn't seem particularly annoyed. 'Yeah, we get all sorts of people coming through here. As long as they tidy up after themselves, I don't mind. The forest is for everyone.'

'Well, I'll make sure they don't litter.'

'Good boy.'

There was something about the way she said

good boy

that made me nervous. Not in an anxious sort of way, but in a butterflies-in-the-stomach sort of way. It was a pleasant sensation, actually. I sank down further into the water, up to my chest, and let the sun bathe my upturned face.

'This pool is bliss,' I murmured. Closed my eyes. My eyelids were suffused with golden light.

'You seem sad,' said Calypso. I could hear her splashing about in the water close by. 'What's up?'

'I'm fine,' I said, instinctively.

'No,' she said, and there was almost a sternness to her voice, this time. 'Tell me. You're in pain, I can see that.'

I opened my eyes. She was only a couple of feet away from me, now, staring at me with that piercing gaze. Normally, I would never in a million years have confessed my problems to a random stranger I'd just met, even someone as gorgeous as she was. But there was something about her, the easygoing way she teased conversation out of me. Plus the sun and water had relaxed me, eased months of built-up tension.

'I had a bad break-up, recently,' I said.

She tilted her head and pouted in sympathy, indicating that I should continue.

'It was painful, and I lost my flat and had to move into my mate's spare room, and work is making me anxious and—' I stopped myself. 'Sorry. You don't want to hear any of this.'

'No, no,

darling

,' she said in a soothing voice that brought back the fluttering sensation in my stomach. 'You can talk to me.'

'My mates invited me on this camping trip,' I confessed, 'but I just want to be alone, but I feel guilty for not enjoying myself, and...'

It all came pouring out. My recent bouts of depression and severe anxiety, my trust issues, all of it. I don't know why. I just needed it off my chest, and this seemed, bizarrely, to be the perfect time to do it: in this quiet woodland glade, in warm water, swimming on a summer afternoon with Calypso, a perfect stranger, as they say. It wasn't even the tragic stuff that made me cry—it was

now

, it was

here

, the sheer beauty of my surroundings and of

her

, that made me eventually start to bawl my eyes out.

She moved towards me, wordlessly wrapped her soft arms around me and let me sob into her shoulder. She smelled of lilac and jasmine and fresh grass. Her hands ran through my hair, sending goosebumps down my neck. I don't know how long we stood there, pressed against each other. At some point she kissed my neck, just below my ear, and whispered something in a foreign language, words that sounded like a gushing stream.

--

The next thing I remember is the whirring of insects and the feel of the sun on my skin.

I found myself lying in the long grass some way from the water's edge. Calypso was reclined next to me, propped up on her elbow so she could lean over me. She was humming what sounded like an old English folk song—it had that lilt to it—and stroking my face as she hummed. Her touch felt electric, and yet reassuring. Her eyes bored into mine. I felt like she could see into me, into my soul, and she liked what she saw. There were whole rivers and lakes in her clear blue eyes. They were absolutely bottomless. I wanted to dive into them. I couldn't look away. Her hair fell in soft, red, sweetsmelling tresses around my face.

We stayed like that, gazing at each other, for a long time.

When I went to kiss her, I saw a smile spread across her face.

It was the best kiss I'd ever had, better than my first teenage make-out session. I know I'm gushing, but she really was that good.

'Fuck me,' I whispered, as her lips explored my neck and collarbone.

She grabbed my hair, then, hard enough to make me wince and turn my head with the movement of her hand. I didn't mind. With her free hand, I felt her squeeze at my boxers.

'Hard already,' she said, approvingly. 'Good boy. Get them off for me.'

Every time she said

good boy

, it made my heart do a somersault. Fuck, it made

me

want to do a somersault, if that would get her to say it again. I wriggled and kicked to get my boxers off, eager to do as she said, and she jumped on top of me, teasing my cock with her hand. I've never been particularly vocal, but something about the way she had me pinned to the ground, with one hand in my hair and the other pumping my dick up and down, made me moan. Extremely loudly.

'Louder,' she whispered.

'Someone will... hear us...' I managed, between gasps and hungry kisses.

'Nobody's going to hear us. Moan louder,' she said, and yanked at my hair again.

I'd been trying to hold the next noise in, but her pulling my hair like that was more than I could stand. I moaned like a fucking pornstar for her. Over and over again. She clearly enjoyed it immensely, enough to make her stop tugging and savour the sound. Her thumb traced circles around the head of my penis, which was so swollen with lust, so sensitive, that I literally screamed out and begged for her to stop. It felt too good.

'Okay, that's enough noise,' she said, giggling, and shoved a couple of fingers into my mouth. She didn't stop caressing my cock, though; no, she kept me like that, writhing and making muffled noises into her hand, for what seemed like an eternity.

'If I fuck you,' she said at last, 'there's no going back.'

I tried to ask

what do you mean?

But by this point I was no longer really capable of forming sentences, and anyway, her fingers were in my mouth. Instead I just moaned again, in an inquisitive way.

'Do you know what a Naiad is?' she asked, softly.

I saw something cold and imperious in her gaze, something that frightened me a little. I shook my head.

'When I told you I lived here, I literally meant

here

.' She bent down and whispered in my ear. '

This stream is my home. The water, and everything in it, is mine.

'

I moaned, this time in confusion.

'I am a goddess,' she murmured, 'and I expect to be treated as such. If you let me fuck you, there's no going back. Not to your old life. Not to your spare room in your friend's flat, not

anywhere

beyond the reaches of this forest. Do you understand? Nod your head

yes.

'

I nodded my head

yes.

'It is not a decision to be taken lightly.'

I thought of my single bed in Julian's damp spare room, of the rainy commutes into work, of all that I'd been through in the past three months.

'If you give me your seed,' smiled Calypso, teasing my prick again in a way that made me physically buck my hips, 'you belong to me now and forever. You will be my lover and my servant, you will give up your name and take one that I bestow on you, and in return I will teach you the inner workings of the world. I'll show you things that you never dreamt of seeing. And I'll make you feel good. Do you understand, boy?'

I nodded.

'Good. Now'—she tightened her legs around me, her fragrant hair spilling over my face—'make your choice.'

I believed her. I believed every word she said, about her having magic powers, because it was so obviously true. It was magic, how she spoke, and how she moved through the water, and how she made me feel. I made up my mind before she'd even finished speaking. I didn't want anything but to be close to her.

'Yes,' I whispered. 'I'll do it.'

She sat up, on top of me. Her eyelids were heavy with arousal, her lips slightly parted and damp with my kisses. I could feel another wetness between her legs, slick against my groin.

'Repeat after me,' she said, in a voice that trembled with pure pleasure.

'Yes, Goddess...'

'Yes, Goddess,' I said.

'...I pledge myself to Thee.'

'I pledge myself to Thee.'

As soon as I said it, a shudder passed through Her body. She bit Her lip, hard, and let out a noise that I can only describe as fierce satisfaction.

She took my head in Her hands, pulled my face up, and kissed me fiercely, assuredly. I swooned. I'd never really understood what swooning was, but now I realised that this was it. My whole body, Her whole body, seemed to fill with a kind of thrumming electricity as we kissed. Heaven, bliss. My soul overflowed with the smell of her, with the hungry sounds she made as she kissed me.

When I opened my eyes again, I realised with a jolt that I was lying in a shallow corner of the pool, Her water lapping at my skin and through my hair. We'd moved a dozen feet while my eyes were closed. She was still on top of me, Her gorgeous full breasts and sweetsmelling hair all in my face as She reached for something. I didn't have time to ask what it was—didn't really feel like speaking unless She wanted an answer from me.

She held a small, white flower in front of my face. It had four red stamen protruding from its petals.

'Open your mouth,' She said, and of course I did so. She placed the flower on my tongue and gently closed my mouth for me.

'Swallow.'

I swallowed. For a few seconds, nothing happened, and I just gazed up at Her, but then my whole body seemed to explode with a tingling sensation. Every inch of me became terrifically sensitive, and almost sore, in the way that the head of my cock was sore from where She'd been teasing it.

Her whole body, and all the water around us, seemed to glow with a beautiful warm light. She cupped a handful of water in Her palms, and raised it to my lips.

'Drink.'

I drank gratefully. I'd never been so thirsty in all my life. The water tasted almost sweet, like honey.

'Good boy.' She scooped up another handful of water and let it run between Her fingers and over my face, and with that, grabbed my cock and guided me inside of Her.

You know when you're just on the brink of coming, when your head is totally empty of anything other than anticipation and pleasure? That's what fucking my Goddess is like, for the duration. For the first time, and every time since.

That first time, She rode me for literally hours. She must've climaxed dozens of times. I would've counted, but I no longer had the presence of mind to count, or indeed to think about things like:

why haven't my friends come looking for me yet?

I just bucked my hips as She told me to, buried my face in Her breasts, sucked and kissed at Her nipples, worshipped Her with my mouth. It was Nirvana.

It was dusk, the air cooling and turning lilac-coloured, when She finally let me cum. I was a hyper-sensitive, drooling, sweaty, moaning mess; She bent down, bit my ear, and hissed: 'Cum for me.

Now.

' I couldn't have disobeyed if I wanted to.

I stared into Her eyes, and they swallowed me whole.

'That's my good boy. Shush, shhhhhhhh...' and then words in that gushing, riverine language which I didn't speak, but could understand, words that sent me down into a dreamless, peaceful sleep.

--

I woke up on a bed of soft reeds, surrounded by thousands of tiny cuckoo-flowers. It was dusk, but still warm, and I could hear birdcalls, evening crickets, and the sound of running water. The crackle of a nearby fire.

I was lying on my chest. I rolled over, and found myself in a kind of nest or grotto formed from woven reeds and interlocking bushes. Through gaps in the leaves, I could see a dark, clear sky pierced with stars, and a full yellow moon directly overhead. It all seemed to sway above me. I was still naked, and, as I blearily recalled the day's events, I suspected I was going to stay that way.

The floor of the nest was about the size of a double bed, and garlanded with cuckoo-flowers and periwinkles. At the far end, just past my feet, there was an opening which had a curtain of willow branches strung across it. I sat up and parted the hanging branches.

The nest I was sitting in was floating on water—that was the reason the stars and moon were moving, as the nest drifted in lazy, gentle circles, up and down the length of the pool it was sitting on. This wasn't the pool where I had met Calypso, although I could just about make out the opening of that one, and the grove beyond it, further downstream. This pool was even more secluded than the first one. It was completely surrounded and overshadowed by willow trees. Behind the trees, on both sides of the pool, the thicketed ground rose up in a seething wall of green. There was a small stretch of sandy soil protruding out into the pool on my left, and here Calypso, my Goddess, was reclining naked by a fire, eating some berries from a twig with one hand and idly caressing Her nipple with another. My heart skipped a beat, looking at Her, and when She noticed me She seemed to experience something similar. She beamed at me.

'Come here, thrall,' She said in her soft, melodious voice. 'I'm trying to think of your new name.'

Eager to obey, I stepped out of the nest and into the water, which was much deeper here. I sank beneath the surface and floundered as I rose up again.

Calypso giggled and made a strange motion with Her hand. The water formed a kind of wall that thrust me forward and up onto the soil, where I was deposited neatly with my head between my Goddess's thighs. They worked well as pillows. She stroked my hair, and fed me a few berries, singing one of Her eerie, beautiful folk songs. I realised I was hungry; She only fed me five tiny berries, but they filled me up. They tasted lovely.

I was just drifting off again when She tugged at my hair, indicating that I should sit up. I did so, and stared into Her dreamy blue eyes.

'Welcome to your new home,' She murmured after a while. 'Do you like it here, thrall?'

'Yes, Goddess,' I said.

'Good boy,' She said, and clicked Her fingers. 'Now show me who you belong to. Kiss my feet.'

As I bent down to kiss Her bare feet, massaging them with my hands, I felt a rush of an unfamiliar sensation which I eventually recognised as contentment.