Each Step Like Knives Read online

  She looked down at him, her eyes bright with desire. Her skin had flushed a darker pink on her chest and throat. She bit her lip. Her body convulsed again, less dramatically this time. She sighed loudly and rocked against him one last time. Her inner muscles bore down on him, and his cock spasmed for the final time.

  Helena sank down against him. Their breathing mingled, as did the beating of their hearts. Jeenai put his arms around her. She rolled to the side as his penis softened inside her and she lay with her head next to his.

  "How do you know just what to do?" she asked. "You've turned me into a greedy sex maniac. I'll never be satisfied with a regular man again."

  Jeenai didn't know what a maniac was, but he was happy to learn he had so pleased her. "If I have my way, you'll never have to go to another man again."

  She reached for his hand as he brought it down in the end of his sentence. She caressed the soft, pliant webs between his fingers, one by one. "I'm amazed at how much you communicate without saying a word. I guess it would be difficult to talk underwater."

  She rolled over and peered deeply into his eyes. "You can see in the dark, can't you? You'd have to, all the way at the bottom of the ocean."

  She touched his cheeks, his nose, his mouth. "You look so much like a man, but you're not. The color of your skin, your eyes, your fingers. You look like a man, but you're not."

  He slid his hand back between her thighs and stroked her. She sighed and bit her lip, then put her hand down to stop him.

  "You can't possibly be ready to go again." She looked down at his stiffening penis. "Oh, my God, you are. At least let me take a shower first. I'm sticky. And you could use one, too, to be honest." She wrinkled her nose. "We're both rather fragrant."

  To him, she smelled like pure desire. "I love your scent."

  Helena laughed. "You probably don't know what a shower is, do you?"

  She took his hand and pulled him from the bed. "C'mon, Johnny. Let me show you."

  He managed not to hiss when he got to his feet. Every breath burned in his chest, but he'd gotten used to that. The agony in his feet with every step, however, seemed to grow worse with every step. He expected to see a trail of blood behind him when he walked.

  Helena took him into a small, bright room. "This is the bathroom. There is the tub. Here is the shower. I think you already know about the toilet."

  She twisted a knob on the smaller basin. Water gushed forth from the silver spout. Jeenai reached for it, then pulled back. What had the hag said? Fresh water will do you no harm, but enter the sea, or let even a drop of the sea water touch you, and you'll turn back into what you were when you came into this place.

  How was he to know if this water was fresh or salt?

  He bent low to it and sniffed. Fresh. He put his hands beneath the silver stream and laughed aloud in delight at the familiar sensation. He splashed his face and chest.

  "You like that?" Helena turned off the knob. The water stopped flowing. "You'll love the tub."

  She twisted a similar knob on the side of the big basin. Water gushed into that. She fit a small plug into a hole in the basin's bottom and the water began to fill the basin.

  "You go ahead and get in. I'm going to put a pan of muffins in the oven first. Go on. Make sure to turn the water off when it gets to the top of the tub, or else it will overflow."

  She left him with a flutter of her hands toward the tub. She wanted him to immerse himself? Jeenai did so, and gladly.

  The water felt different on his skin. He felt less buoyant. He settled onto the bottom of the tub and felt cold metal against his spine. The water itself was warm like the temperate seas farther to the south.

  He stared up through the water to the white ceiling. He could hear little but the sound of his own heart beating and the rush of water flowing into the big basin. The tub, she'd called it. This water was different from the ocean, and even different than the river he'd once explored during his youthquest.

  He'd followed that ribbon of water all the way to an inland lake, where he'd challenged the mals and shared the fuck with the fems who lived there. They did not call themselves Carrageenai, and they did not share genetic ancestry with the ocean mammals as his own people did. Those folk were related more closely to the eels that populated the brackish water of the region. Still, he'd had a good time there and made many friends. His penis rose at the memory of the revels he'd shared there.

  The water rose over his belly and chest, then up his throat and cheeks. It covered his lips, and the hollow places of his eyes. Then it covered his nose. The weight of it soothed him.

  He took a deep breath, wanting to smell and taste the water. Instant agony assaulted him. He could not breathe. He had forgotten his gill slits did not work. He opened his mouth to gasp and choke, and more water flooded into his throat and chest. He flailed, his hands banging on the tub's hard side. He struggled to sit, but his body wracked with coughing and choking he couldn't control.

  Helena's face, twisted with terror, appeared above him. She reached for his shoulders and grabbed him up out of the water.

  "...doing?" she cried.

  Jeenai coughed and coughed some more until at last, air filled his body instead of water. Tears stung his eyes from the pain and effort. He tried to explain he'd been resting as she'd expected, but her grip prevented him from speaking with his hands.

  "I thought you were drowning!" She laughed without humor. "But, of course, you can't drown, can you? You're a fish, right?"

  Jeenai coughed to clear his throat again, then tried to gather her into his arms and comfort her, but Helena pushed him away. She backed away from the tub and crossed her arms in front of herself. Her tears had turned her lovely blue eyes red.

  "I thought you'd be able to breathe water," she said."

  "I do, yes. Such is the way of my people." He paused, his throat and chest still raw with coughing. "But not here."

  She watched him, silent, then reached to brush away some hair that had fallen over his forehead. "I wish I knew for sure what you're saying. I wish I could tell for certain who...what...you are."

  "I'm a man," Jeenai told her as simply as he could. "And I love you."

  She shook her head, watching the slow, simple pattern of his hands. She reached out and touched his cheek, let her finger trail across his lips, down his chin, his throat, to his chest. She pulled her hand back quickly, as though his damp, cool skin had somehow hurt her.

  "I think I need to be alone for a little while to think," she told him. Her lovely voice had gone coarse.

  "I don't understand." He used infant-hands, and her eyes followed the slower gestures more readily, but she still didn't seem to grasp his meaning. "Helena, I came a long way to be with you. I want to be with you--"

  "Just stop!" she cried and clapped her hands over her eyes. "I need some time to think, Johnny. This is freaking me out. I'm sorry. But...this is all too strange." She looked at him through the crack in her fingers. "I need you to go away for a while."

  He stood in the water at her words, every one of which he understood completely. A pain split his heart and he put a hand there to quell it. She could not love him.

  "The sex has been fantastic," Helena was saying, "but the rest of it... Johnny, this isn't going to work."

  He got out of the tub and stood, dripping, on her tile floor. He noted with pride the way her eyes swept over his naked body and her nipples tightened. He was pleasing to her, and she couldn't deny it.

  Yet he had learned that for humans, merely being pleasing to the eye was not enough. It didn't mean love. If she didn't love him, he would die.

  "I will go, if you want me to leave." His hands moved slowly with grief. He shivered, suddenly chilled though the room was warm.

  She grabbed up a towel and wrapped herself in one. Hiding herself from his gaze. Now Jeenai felt horribly exposed in front of her and he grabbed a towel for himself.

  "I think that would be best." She looked toward the window and the glimpse o