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  Before he was old enough to recognize his growing desires, before he even had a name to put to the emotions that swirled like tidal pools within him, he knew Kellen loved him, wanted him, ached for him. It was heady knowledge the young Dere abused to get what he wanted. His friend followed him faithfully, even to the shore.

  Human in shape, merrows were covered in fine, iridescent scales that caught the sunlight dappling through the water and flashed like galleons winking among sunken treasure. Unlike the fairy tales of mermaids that captured the imaginations of those on land, merrows had two long, thin legs, tapering into twin fins that unfurled like flippers to help them swim. Their scales grew thick along their backs and arms and legs; on their chests and bellies, the scales were soft, pale, sensitive to the touch. Their genitals were also similar to humans’, hidden between their legs by thick curls of hair twined like a knot of seaweed at their crotch.

  Merrows could leave the ocean, as long as they held a talisman that would allow them to return. For Kellen, that had to be the feather he’d tucked into the brim of his hat; Derek figured it wasn’t there for looks. Other merrows had plastic red combs they wore in their hair, or scarlet cloaks covering their nude bodies, or rakish red hats, garnet necklaces, ruby rings. Always something red that tied their blood to the ocean’s flow. The talisman was what allowed them to move between the worlds of water and land; its power protected them in both merrow and human form. If it was lost or stolen, the merrow could never return to the sea.

  But Dere had dreamed of leaving the water behind for good—he knew of merrows who had done that, taken their chances among the humans, and he wanted to be a part of that world. As he grew into adulthood, he would burrow into the sea floor just beyond the breakers, legs apart to feel the grit of the swirling sand tickle over his aching balls and stiff cock, and watch the surfers command the waves around him.

  Kellen stayed at his side, watching him with the same, raging erection pointed Dere’s way. “Theirs is a dry world,” his friend would say, as if he alone could convince Dere to stay among the merrows. He would brush against Dere in what was meant to be an innocent gesture—as they grew older, they both knew there was nothing innocent about Kellen’s touch. “Stay here, with me.”

  The surfers might have been out of reach but, there among the waves, Kellen encouraged Dere to discover his own budding sexuality, and however much he might ache for something else, his body still blossomed at Kellen’s touch. For Dere it was mutual exploration, discovery between friends, getting off to feel good. Nothing permanent, nothing real.

  But for Kellen, it had meant so much more.

  * * * *

  Life as a merrow off the coast of California meant days spent exploring cold waters, outswimming sharks, or floating above the waves for long hours in the warm sun. But Dere wasn’t content with keeping to the depths of the sea; daily he’d chase the currents inland, zip beneath sailboats and outboard motorboats, splash among the surfers in the waves, or sun himself on the rocky cliffs. Kellen was never far behind—he tailed Dere like a shadow, dancing through the water a fraction behind Dere’s legs. When he thought he could get away with it, he’d let his long fingers feel their way over Dere’s scales, over Dere’s back, around his waist and between his buttocks if he could manage it. Dere twisted away from Kellen’s eager grip, laughter tickling through him as the older merrow’s hands slid over his body.

  Some time after his eighteenth year, Dere found himself reluctant to pull away. He liked the feel of another’s skin against his, even if it was Kellen’s. Teasing touches led to games of chase; Dere still outswam his friend, but only just. More often, Kellen managed to catch him, his slim arms encircling Dere’s hips or waist, the weight of his body bringing Dere down to the bottom of the sea, where they’d lie together among the reeds and seaweed and let their hands learn each others’ bodies.

  Kellen was Dere’s first, in every way. Their first kiss was a tentative peck, a brush of lips that sent shivers down both their spines, as if they’d just plunged into an icy current. Kellen touched Dere first, smoothing his hand between the cleft of Dere’s buttocks, his thumb rubbing over trembling, puckered skin. His mouth pressed against Dere’s shoulder, his hand moving lower, fingers fondling the heavy sac that hung between Dere’s legs. A firm grip encircled the thick length that had hardened above the soft skin. Dere gasped at the sensations flooding him, the desire, the need, and one word escaped him. “Yes.”

  His friend’s weight settled onto him, a stiff erection poking at his buttocks. Dere arched against the body above him, legs spreading in invitation. Cool lips kissed the back of his neck; Dere writhed beneath Kellen, rubbing his body against the seabed, against the sand and the tight fingers rubbing his length. “Please,” he sighed, as Kellen’s cock rimmed Dere’s flaring hole.

  “Please,” as Kellen’s kisses trailed over one shoulder, his teeth nipping at Dere’s scales.

  “Mananan and all the sea gods below, please,” loud enough to scatter a passing swarm of silvery krill.

  Then Kellen dove into him, spearing him like a fish on a hook, Dere’s name kissed into the scales of his flesh. They moved together as one, Kellen above, Dere rolling back against him time and again. Sand churned up in small eddies and seaweed danced around their coupled bodies, hiding them from view. Above, pale sunlight refracted down through the water to play over their clasped hands, their entwined legs. “Tiu cariad,” Kellen whispered.

  I love you, spoken so softly Dere could pretend he didn’t hear it.

  * * * *

  After that, it became harder and harder for Dere to refuse Kellen’s advances. He liked the sex and the attention, there was no denying it, and he liked aggravating the older merrow to the point of distraction. “I can’t live without you,” Kellen would whisper into Dere’s skin as he trailed tiny kisses up Dere’s arm, over his shoulders, across his neck. “Stay with me. Be mine. I need you.”

  It had to be love, Kellen insisted, the desire that burned through him, but Dere wasn’t so sure. His heart belonged on shore, not trapped beneath the waves or pinned on a merrow such as Kellen. He was a good friend, true, and they’d known each other for years, but Dere ached for so much more.

  In the evenings when the beaches were bare, he would entice Kellen to follow him past the breakers, where the tide rolled in. They would lie on dry sand that crusted to their damp skin, the fins on their legs dangling in the white-tipped waves, their bodies exposed to the air and each other. Kellen would clamber above him, murmuring nonsense, love and want and please, just please, let me…

  Separating Dere’s legs with his own, guiding his cock into Dere, hands fisted in the sand as he pressed his lips to the gills along Dere’s throat. His gasps matched the thrust of his hips, over and over, driving him into Dere as the waves pounded the shore around them.

  Dere kept his head turned, his gaze averted. His body reveled in emotions that didn’t penetrate his heart. Through the tangled mess of Kellen’s drying hair, he stared at the cliffs above and thought of the surfers he watched during the day, their tanned bodies taut and dry. He imagined any one of them on him instead, loving him, sighing his name into his gills, coming deep within him in a briny rush that wasn’t Kellen.

  * * * *

  Each time they coupled, his friend grew more controlling. Now when he told Dere he loved him, the words were no longer hesitant—they were a challenge, one Kellen refused to relinquish. “Tell me you don’t feel the same,” he demanded.

  When Dere looked away, Kellen swam into the line of his vision, turned his face toward his own, stared into Dere’s eyes as if trying to read what he wanted to see in their inky depths. “All the times we lie together, every kiss, every touch. Tell me they mean nothing to you.”

  Dere couldn’t go that far. “It feels good,” he’d say, and once he even admitted, “You’re the only one I’ve done this with.” But they weren’t words of love—they were selfish, petty thoughts, and as Kellen grew more adamant about his de
sire, Dere found it easier to just hide away. From his friend, from the pod, from his own twisted feelings. He loved Kellen’s attention, yes; he loved the sex, and the touches, and the kisses, yes.

  But he wanted more.

  When a sudden summer storm swept in off the coast, drenching the beach and keeping the surfers away, Dere hid from Kellen among the breakers. Half-buried in the shifting sands, he let the waves wash over him as he weathered out the storm, lost in his own brooding thoughts. Lightning struck the water, and dark oily smudges marked the tide line where dead kelp and seaweed had washed up along the shore. The sea rushed over Dere, violent, angry, its roiling waters as tumultuous as his own bitter heart. He wanted a reason to leave this ocean-borne life of his behind. He wanted someone to energize his staid existence, the same way the lightning charged the water that swirled around him. Someone he could give himself to, body and soul, and put the merrows—and Kellen—behind him for good.

  Then he met Tad.

  * * * *

  After the squall had passed, a man came down to the shore. Slightly built, waifish almost, with a strong aquiline nose and cheekbones as defined as the cliffs above. Dark straight hair pulled back from his face and tied in a sloppy ponytail that hung down his back, strands of it wisping around his face, softening his features. His dark eyes stormed like the sea, and there was a restless energy about him that piqued Dere’s interest.

  Though he wore a flannel shirt and jeans, the baggy clothing accentuated the narrow jut of his hips, his lanky arms, his narrow chest. He carried a pad of paper whose pages fluttered in the stiff breeze that blew in from the sea, and he picked his way among the driftwood and sea trash until he found a spot that suited him. Dropping to the sand, he raised one knee and set the pad against it, pen in hand, intent on sketching the ocean’s fury.

  But when he looked into the waves, his dark gaze pierced through the water and seemed to pick out Dere among the white-capped foam. For the first time in his life, Dere felt a connection form between himself and another. That look shot down his spine to coil in his groin, stirring his blood, innervating him. A hand clenched around his heart; each beat pulsed through him like sonar, awakening him, invigorating him.

  Without hesitation, Dere pushed away from the sandy bottom and swam to shore. The man on the beach never lowered his gaze from Dere’s, and showed no surprise to see the merrow rise from the waves. The cool breeze soothed his damp skin as his scales fell away in iridescent drops like the water dripping from his lithe frame. As his body dried, his gills closed and his lungs filled with air. Feet formed from his flippers, and the fins along his arms receded until they disappeared. Around his neck, a red shell hung on a thin, black cord, and burned as his body changed from merrow to human. As he approached the man on the beach, the shell glowed between them like a small sun, giving Dere’s skin a warm, healthy glow.

  The man looked up, his gaze a palpable touch on Dere’s naked flesh. He felt that stare on his thighs, his cock, the flat of his stomach, the muscles on his arms and chest…by the time it reached his face, he had bent down to the man’s level, kneeling before him. When he spoke, the rich baritone startled Dere into arousal. “Hey.”

  Dere’s reply was a demanding kiss that stole the stranger’s breath. The sketching pad fell to one side, discarded. The buttons on the flannel shirt parted beneath Dere’s eager fingers, and soon the shirt followed the pad, tossed away. Each touch of the stranger’s mouth made Dere hunger for more—he moved above the man, hands tracing over dry, sandy skin, every nerve of his body on fire. The jeans were unbuckled, unzipped, pushed down, and without a word, Dere moved into place above the man’s thick erection. “Please,” the man murmured, his hands grasping at Dere’s buttocks to spread them wide.

  Slowly Dere sat down, taking in the stranger’s length inch after inch, until he sat on the man’s hips, his legs draped on either side of him. Dere felt the cock in him throb with a foreign heartbeat, and the slightest movement sent delicious shivers cascading through him. He cried out, a wild sound, dug his hands into the sand as he rocked above the stranger, rubbing his own length in the dark, kinked hair at the man’s crotch. As they fucked, the guy watched Dere through hooded bedroom eyes that seemed to stare into the merrow’s very soul. “Yes,” Dere gasped, and for once he meant it, body and mind, every ounce of him wanted this, and this, and this, yes yes YES.

  When the echoes of his orgasmic cries faded away, Dere lay with the human, limbs entwined together, bodies still joined as one. Gentle fingers toyed with the shell around Dere’s neck, which fell in the hollow of the man’s throat. “I’m Tad,” he whispered, nuzzling aside Dere’s drying red curls to kiss the smooth skin of his forehead. “You are amazing.”

  “I’m…” Dere hesitated, unwilling to connect his life in the waves with this tender moment on shore. Burying his face against Tad’s neck, he murmured, “Derek. And I’m all yours.”

  Chapter 3

  With Tad, Derek left the ocean behind. The transition into human life was so easy, it seemed meant to be. Tad was a quiet, shy man, so unlike the domineering Kellen—he was quick to blush, and Derek began to anticipate the color that rose into those pale cheeks, the self-conscious duck of Tad’s head, the fall of hair obscuring his delicate features from view. He was a beautiful creature, something Derek saw as his own, as if he had captured the man in one of the fabled “soul cages” his mam used to sing of when he was a small gup.

  What started out between them as tentative and unsure strengthened as the seasons passed, until Derek couldn’t imagine any other life but the one he shared with this man. Infatuation sank beneath the surface of Derek’s heart to mingle with emotions that caught him off guard. Just seeing Tad’s smile pulled his own lips into a quick grin; the briefest touch made Derek’s chest swell with something he could not define.

  Sex, once so casual between them, so unassuming, began to take on an undercurrent of mixed feelings that, at first, Derek struggled to hide. It wasn’t so much getting off but pleasuring Tad—the man became the focal point of Derek’s life, and for the first time he wanted to please someone else, not just himself. Tad taught Derek how to touch him, how to make him gasp in delight, how to make him weak with desire and, by doing so, how to find his own happiness in Tad’s release. With Kellen, sex had been nothing more than mutual masturbation but with Tad, even the simple act of looking at him set Derek’s blood racing. A soft word or gentle touch brought him to his knees. A kiss became orgasmic.

  Days faded into weeks, then months, then years. Lust deepened into something more, something real, a love so strong it took Derek’s breath away if he let himself dwell on it. After a lifetime spent keeping his heart unencumbered and free, he found it tethered in Tad, caught in a web so strong, Derek didn’t want to break free. When they coupled, it transcended sex, and five years after he’d left the ocean, he surprised himself by whispering loving words into Tad’s flesh, the silky skin between his legs. “Tiu cariad,” as he trailed kisses over the fuzzed hair on Tad’s thighs. “Tiu cariad,” in the flat plain of his hip, in his navel, in the hollow of his throat.

  The words felt foreign on Derek’s lips—he’d never said them to another, never meant them before now. “I love you,” whispered into Tad’s mouth, passing between them for the first time like the very breath they shared.

  * * * *

  As the years passed, Derek imagined his love for Tad as a chambered nautilus within him, growing larger each year, encasing his heart in layer after layer of precious nacre. He forgot the sea’s siren song—the merrows beneath the waves, Kellen, a naive and petty boy called Dere, they all seemed like images from some childhood dream, ethereal and barely remembered upon waking. His only tie to that life was the red shell he wore on the cord around his neck.

  On their tenth anniversary, he gave the necklace to Tad as a symbol of his devotion to the man he’d come to love. Without that talisman, Derek could never return to the sea, but without Tad, he never wanted to go back. Fastening th
e cord around his lover’s neck, he’d told him, “Now I belong to you forever.”

  Less than a year later, they went out on a sailing sloop with a couple of coworkers, just to splash around the bay. Whose idea it’d been to round the tip of Point Loma and head out into the choppy waters of the Pacific, Derek no longer remembered. Why they hadn’t heeded the rough current warnings posted, why they ignored the threat of a coming storm, he couldn’t say. It was a stupid thing they’d done, running that little boat out into the dangerous ocean, but at the time, it had seemed like fun.

  There were only two lifejackets onboard, and Derek sat on one of them to cushion the bumpy ride. He held Tad in his lap, the two of them laughing into the wind as it whipped around them, laughing at the purple clouds brewing above, as if laughing in the face of the gods. With his arms tight around Tad’s waist, Derek buried his face in the gap between his lover’s neck and the open fluttering collar of his jacket. The red shell warmed between their skin as if alive. Sea spray dampened his hair but his nose, his eyes, his mouth were full of Tad’s scent. By the time it started to rain, they were so far out, the shore looked like a line drawn in the water, and the cliffs seemed to rise from the sea itself.

  A sudden squall throttled the boat. “Whoa!” Derek teased, hugging Tad tighter when his lover threatened to slip from his grip. In response, Tad’s laughter washed over him as he reached for the rail behind Derek and hung on with both hands. Nuzzling against his lover’s neck, Derek murmured, “Where do you think you’re going?”

  The next rough wave that struck the boat nearly unseated them. The lifejacket slipped from under Derek; he let go of Tad to pull the awkward bulk off his seat, and for the briefest moment, the thought of putting it on flashed through his mind and was gone. Tad stood aside, one hand casually holding the rail, his large brown eyes watching Derek get settled as he waited to resume his seat.