50_shades_ultimate Read online

  “Why doesn’t Marissa take you out if you…belong to her?” I didn’t like the way he said that. I didn’t like the idea of Caspian belonging to Marissa with the creepy stare.

  “She has the others to see after. My brother and sisters.”

  “So the others I saw in the tanks…they’re sirens too.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Yes.”

  I watched his eyes for anything dangerous or devious. I also knew from books that sirens were good at lying and were known to eat human flesh. At least in mythology. “All right. So why me?”

  He looked me over as if he was thinking of eating me for real. Or something. “I like you,” he said only, as if that should be explanation enough. “And you like me, or you would not have mated with me when we were in the tank.”

  I blushed once more. I had never blushed this much until Caspian.

  His eyes were suddenly desperate, hungry, and very, very male. “I promise if you’ll take me out in the world, I will obey you, Nadine. I will do everything you ask. And you may do anything you want with me. I’ll service your sexual needs in any way you like. And besides all that, it’s only two days. Will you give me two days of your life?”

  I thought, What do you do when a gorgeous siren asks for two days of your life and offers himself up as a sex toy?

  The answer, if you’re a lonely enough girl, is to always say yes.

  * * *

  I quickly found out that TV and the movies weren’t very accurate where merfolk—or, rather, sirens—were concerned. Their tales did not mystically turn into legs when they dried off. And when I said as much to Caspian, he thought that was wonderfully funny and said he’d seen the same movies and television shows I had—in fact, television was his window to the world—but that story was no more true than humans growing a fishtail when they entered the water.

  As I aided him into a wheelchair and carefully wrapped his tail in a large afghan to help disguise it, I couldn’t help but wonder how we would fair over the weekend. Would he only be able to speak in TV clichés? Would he think the whole world was like a movie? I borrowed a T-shirt from one of the other studs in the gym, then carefully combed back his hair and secured it with a rubber band so he looked civilized and just a little less outrageously gorgeous. I could do nothing about the aquamarine streaks in his hair, but in a place like Miami, no one would notice that.

  “Where would you like to go first?” I asked as I pushed him through the employee entrance and into the club’s parking lot.

  His eyes glinted and he seemed to be trying to see everything in Miami all at once. “It doesn’t matter to me. I just want to see more than the club.”

  I pushed him down the sidewalk of one of the busiest streets in Miami. He strained to see the cars passing in the streets, the couples walking hand in hand toward restaurants, clubs, movie theaters, all the places couples went to have fun. He watched the parents with children, and the kids walking in packs, looking to get in trouble for the night. He watched them and stared almost longingly at their long legs as they strode passed us. Up ahead the neon sign of a fast food oyster bar glinted. He immediately inhaled deeply. “That smells good.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Oh yes. What is that?”

  “Fried oysters. You live in Florida and you’ve never had fried oysters?”

  “Marissa only feeds us organic food from the ocean to keep us slim. Can we get some?”

  I bought him a sleeve of fried oysters and some onion rings. He was like a little boy eating them, like he’d never tasted anything so good, and again I had the disquieting feeling that Marissa wasn’t a very good siren-keeper, or that, at the very least, Caspian wasn’t happy with his situation.

  We walked down the boulevard, and I pointed out shops, boutiques, and novelty shops. We stopped at my favorite movie house and watched a romantic comedy together while Caspian slurped soda and ate popcorn, Goobers and candy bars. Afterward, he was very interested in a little trinket shop that catered to tourists and all the snowbirds that came down here from New England every year. We went inside and he marveled at all the shiny, cheap junk on display while the college-age clerk marveled at him. The fact that my boyfriend was in a wheelchair didn’t even seem to bother her much as she flirted shamelessly with Caspian.

  “What do you think?” I said, modeling a long string of fake pink pearls for him.

  He made a face. “You deserve so much better, Nadine. You deserve real pearls from the sea.”

  I giggled at that. “Well, this is all I can afford.”

  He looked sad and that ended our shopping trip. He asked to see where I lived.

  I walked him back to my car and we headed back to Lauren’s house. I explained that I didn’t actually own the house; I was just watching it for my friend. But I knew he would love it. Plus, Lauren had a heated, indoor pool, and I knew that would make Caspian a very happy siren.

  The pool was one of the things that had most excited Lauren about the house. Not only was it covered in a glass dome that could be darkened for privacy, it had also been designed by a professional architect from France who specialized in what Lauren called “lagoons,” or realistic pool settings. Lauren had an irregular-shaped pool that seemed to go forever, with an honest-to-god waterfall and the bottom and sides lined with rocks and real shale.

  I pushed Caspian’s chair to the edge and he looked over it with starry eyes. “This is very nice. Is this what the sea is like, Nadine?”

  “You’ve never been to the sea?”

  He shook his head sadly, then dived from the chair into Lauren’s pool, cutting through the water so he barely made a splash. When he surfaced, looking wet and happy, he said, “I’d like to, though. Could we go to the beach tomorrow? I’ve always wanted to see the ocean with my own eyes.”

  I kicked my sandals off and sat down on the ledge of the pool, letting my feet dangle in the water. “We could do that,” I said. I was feeling strangely shy again. I had never felt so shy with a man in my entire life.

  He looked at me in that sultry way he had at the club. “Why don’t you come in, Nadine? The water feels good.”

  I swallowed hard. “I can’t swim.”

  He smiled like that amused him. “A siren who can’t swim? I don’t believe that.”

  “I’m not a siren.” I kicked at the water. “Legs, see?”

  “You taste like a siren. Perhaps you’re a halfling. Did you know your parents?”

  “My mom was human. She’s gone now,” I said sadly. “And my dad was some one-night-stand she had.”

  “Was he human?”

  “Of course. He was a sailor, my mom said.”

  “So he came from the sea?”

  I looked at him, feeling offended for no reason. My mom had never talked much about my father. She wouldn’t even tell me his name. After she’d died, I was angry with her for a long time because of that. I used to think how if only I could find him, find my dad, at least I’d have a family again. But you can’t hunt for someone when you don’t even have a name. “He wasn’t what you are,” I told Caspian sharply, and he looked hurt by the force of my words, like I’d told him he was repulsive. “He was just some jerk…and I don’t want to talk about this anymore!”

  With that hurtful expression still on his face, Caspian disappeared beneath the surface of Lauren’s pool. I waited a few moments, then got up and went inside.

  * * *

  The following morning, I went out to the pool to find Caspian sleeping at the bottom of it. But after I’d sat down on the edge, I saw his tail flicker and then he surfaced. He left distance between us as he faced me this morning.

  “I’m sorry about last night,” I told him. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s not your fault.”

  He thought about that and nodded. “We won’t talk about your past or your parents if it disturbs you.” He swam closer. “Are we still going to the ocean today?”

  “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t we?”

  “I
thought you were angry with me. Marissa often grows angry with us, especially when we ask a lot of questions or want to see the ocean.”

  I felt a tinge of sadness. “Marissa doesn’t take very good care of you, does she?”

  “Could we please see the ocean now?” he asked to change the subject.

  I fetched his chair, wrapped his tail, and helped him into his T-shirt. Then I walked him the half mile down to Lauren and Miguel’s private stretch of beach. It was very secluded, surrounded on both sides by ancient volcanic rock, and I had decided it would be better than going to one of the many public beaches where someone might see Caspian’s tail.

  My siren was in heaven, staring up at the blazing blue sky and the seagulls wheeling far overhead, looking for fish. He looked out longingly on the white sugar beach alive with funny, sideways crawling fiddler crabs and the white-capped waves as they rushed in and left seafoam all along the edges of the beach. I pushed him to the end of Miguel’s boating dock and knelt down to unwrap his tail.

  “Will you come with me?” he asked.

  “No,” I told him. “I don’t go into the ocean.”

  He didn’t ask for explanations this time, but I added, “When I was five years old, I went sailboating with my mom and her boyfriend at the time. While we were about a mile out, I saw something in the water. It looked like a giant fish, so I leaned over the edge to get a better look, and it grabbed me by the wrists and pulled me overboard. I almost drowned.”

  Caspian thought about that. “Do you know what it was? Or what it wanted?”

  “No,” I told him. “But I guess it wanted me. Since then, I’ve been too afraid to go into the water.” I stopped, looking up at his handsome face, the sea breeze blowing strands of his bi-colored hair against his face. “I guess that sounds crazy.”

  But he didn’t give me the look that everyone that I’d ever told that story to did—like he knew something. I thought about what he’d said about my father and said, “You don’t think it was…one of you? Like someone from my family coming to get me?” My hand rested on his lap. I looked again at the shallow webbing between my fingers, the same as his. “Could I really be like you, Caspian? A…halfling?”

  “I don’t know,” he told me honestly. “Some of the halflings I’ve heard stories about could walk on land, but I don’t know if those stories are true. Marissa never tells us very much.” He gave me an encouraging smile then. “I guess you won’t know if you belong to the sea until you dive into it.”

  And he did just that. He slipped away from me and dived sleekly into the ocean, leaving me on dry land, alone.

  * * *

  I stayed on the beach all day as Caspian swam and played in the waters offshore. I kept expecting to see my siren disappear and not return, but like clockwork he returned hourly to the shore as if afraid I was feeling too lonely by myself. I wasn’t lonely; I enjoyed watching him have a good time, though I had to admit to being a little bit jealous of his bravery out there amidst god knew what-all.

  I laughed at my own cowardice. Who had ever heard of a Florida girl who couldn’t swim?

  I left briefly in the early evening to buy some steamed crabs from a vendor up the shore, along with more of the fried oysters that Caspian liked, and brought everything in a picnic basket to the edge of the water for us to enjoy. I spread a blanket for our picnic and set the food out on paper plates, along with a bottle of wine I had found in the wine cellar of Lauren’s house. Lauren, who was a total sweetheart, had said I could drink anything I found down there.

  Caspian came ashore and curled his tail around the edges of the picnic blanket while we munched on the crabs and clams and shared the bottle of wine. “Are you sure you don’t want to come in with me?” he offered, giving me a very sexy smile.

  I shuddered. “There are sharks in that water.”

  He laughed at that. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you.” He flicked water at me teasingly with his tail and I screeched like a little girl.

  “Don’t! You’re making me wet.”

  “I like you wet,” he said, and I knew he meant something else. He put his hands around my hips and pulled me against his upper body, against the hard muscles of his chest, and I opened my mouth for his kiss, the deep-throated probing of his tongue. He tasted like wine and sea, sweet and salty. Soon I was beneath him in the warm sand, and as he kissed me and traced the seam of my lips with his tongue, his hands swept down over my body and under the hem of my short yellow sundress. I felt myself melting inside for him, becoming all sunbaked, honey wetness that gathered in my belly and moved quickly to my pulsing, empty pussy.

  Caspian noticed. The sun was setting and the night tide moving in, water sloshing up over our picnic blanket, around our plates, and wetting my long hair as Caspian pushed my hem to my waist and lost himself in the wetness between my legs. His tongue tracing an electric path from front to back, his teeth nibbling along the slick, inner lips of my labia. I opened my legs further to him and he yanked me beneath him with a fierce growl of satisfaction, hooking one knee over his shoulder. He sucked ardently at my wet opening, his tongue slithering around my clit, up into my cunt and briefly into my anus. He held me down against the sand as he worked me wetter, his hand splayed possessively across my belly as if those parts of me belonged to him, as if he were the only one allowed there.

  He sucked on my clit as if it were a ripe berry, teasing yet more wetness from me. I mewled as he nibbled and plucked at my swollen bud. “God, yes, fuck me deep,” I told him.

  He ripped my dress and bikini underwear out of his way and spun me around in the wet sand so I was naked and he was atop me, holding me down with the considerable weight of his body. The tide was coming in much faster and deeper now, the water well over my chin. I felt a spike of terror—my old ingrained fear of drowning—but Caspian’s talented tongue licked along my ear and he said, “The next wave will take us out to sea. Do you trust me, Nadine?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him with a shiver. “Don’t let me go.”

  “I have no intention of ever letting you go, Nadine,” he said, and true to what he had said, the next wave of seawater was much, much deeper, enough to carry us into the shallows. Caspian wrapped his arms around my waist and together we dived into the ocean, a place I had not been in since I was five years old. I had a very bad moment when I thought for certain I would swallow a mouthful of seawater and die, but once we were under and I could hold my breath no longer and finally let it out, the seawater flushed through me, through my lungs and body, but I found myself able to breathe nonetheless, slowly, steadily, as a stream of bubbles poured from our mouths.

  Together we darted off into the clear, aquamarine water, past retreating fish and the odd, geometric patterns of surrounding reefs. I was surprised by how clear everything was underwater, and decided there had to be something to Caspian’s claim that I was some kind of half-siren.

  I’m apt to agree with you, Caspian said in my mind because, obviously, we could not communicate verbally with one another down here. He swam with a silky smooth, undulating motion, and with each stroke I could feel his lovely, hard cock sliding along the small of my back. I could feel the fullness of his testes pressing against me. Shall we try something new, my little mermaid? he whispered in my mind and then added a sharp, brief bite to the back of my neck.

  Yes, please…I’m all yours, I answered as I submitted myself completely to his playful bites and kisses.

  His hands slid up to cup my bare breasts and his fingers closed over the nipples, working them steadily to sharp peaks. I heaved a deep breath, filling both his hands with my aching tits. His cock slid heavy and full against the seam of my ass. I wriggled against his invasion, challenging him to hang onto me, but there was nowhere I could go with him holding me so firmly.

  He bit at my earlobe with those sharp teeth as he anchored himself more tightly against me, then the thick, meaty head of his cock parted my folds and lodged deep inside of me, filling me and stretching me at t
he same time, and it occurred to me that that beautiful, extra-thick cock probably served an important function. I had a feeling that sirens mated this way, swimming together like so many sea mammals did, and that the couple was likely wedded together for long periods of time while the male buried his seed deep inside his mate.

  I moaned both in my throat and my mind at the delicious friction of his enormous member rubbing and stretching my tight cunt. I felt him buck in and out at me at first, his thrusts sharp and focused as he concentrated on our mating, and the feel of our bodies undulating through the water, rubbing and merging that way, made the pressure of my mounting orgasm all the sweeter.

  My back squirmed against the hardness of his pecs and he released one tit to rub at my clit while he fucked me with increasing aggression, all but growling against the back of my neck. All my stomach muscles tightened as I felt myself come in his hand. He kept his hand there, moaning into my hair as he experienced my body spasming for him, reacting to him that way.

  I trembled in the afterglow of my release as we continued to coast along, Caspian’s cock buried deep inside me, his hands stroking over my belly and breasts. Each undulation of his body made a shockwave like a little orgasm flutter through my belly so that by the time we found ourselves in an underwater forest of flowering plants, I was too exhausted to do anything but let him carry me through the kelp that brushed past my face.

  We slowed down and Caspian pulled some kelp loose and used it to bind my hands in front of my body. I turned to look at him, my red hair drifting across my face, but he said, Do you trust me, little mermaid?

  Yes.

  Trust me.

  When my hands were tight enough to make them immobile, but not so much they hurt, Caspian started carrying us up to the surface of the ocean. We broke through moments later, but we were far, far from shore. I couldn’t see a single land mass around us, and I wondered how far we had swum from shore. Despite the lack of land, some large rocks loomed ahead of us. Above lurked a darkening sky as a summer storm moved in, clouds scudding across a full, yellow moon.