Chapter 23 Diving for Pearls
Diving for Pearls
Feeling flushed after another afternoon kissing session, I sit on the stairs inside the lighthouse’s front entryway trying to cool down. Trying to get blood back up into my brain and away from the furnace burning in my core.
The shaded dark steps are noticeably cooler but my body still feels hot.
I laugh remembering how I had pulled Lir around on these steps like a doll when he was weak.
Now, I would easily bend to his every pouty will if he called upon me to do so.
I want to feel even more connected, every day we’ve kissed more and more.
We spend every hour we’re able to together.
I’ve even brought my cot down a few times on clear early mornings so that we can hold hands as we sleep.
When he watches as I wash my body on warmish days out on the rocks, he is full of questions about the differences of our anatomy, but there’s one thing I’ve been avoiding so earnestly.
He says he hasn’t met many other mermaids in his life, apparently there’s very few left and the ones still out there are living solitary lives most of the time.
It really doesn’t seem like he knows how more are made when I’ve tried to ask as casually as possible.
Just that it must be difficult to make more of his kind since there are so few.
He knows what sex is, don't get me wrong, I’m not corrupting some angelic cherub, but his understanding is in more of a scientific view, lacking real world experience.
He’s lived surrounded by animals and sea creatures.
Similar to when I was growing up on a farm, I knew from a young age what other animals were doing in theory, but I didn't connect two and two until much later.
The thing is, I don't want Lir to feel inadequate, as far as I can tell, and it’d be pretty obvious because he’s never been—not naked.
I’ve read some fish just produce asexually or by their eggs and sperm just being out in the ocean water without the two parents ever interacting.
Maybe that’s how Lir was made, or some even more fantastical notion.
With how beautiful he is, it would not surprise me if he emerged from a shell like the birth of Venus.
The door creaks open, once again he looks at me like he’s done something wrong.
He pulls himself up the stairs to sit next to me, and takes my hand, “I feel like you're holding back from me and I know you might be embarrassed about something but—I just desperately want to understand, because whenever we stop touching each other you look so disappointed as you go back to your tower.”
My head hangs, my body curling and gasping from that fever that rises from my stomach whenever he touches me.
His hand grazes up my legs, following the path that leads up towards my inner thigh.
“Do you feel how hot I feel? It’s like I'm burning up with no relief. It’s different from Little Bird’s fever, it’s because—”
“I know.” He says muffled by my neck that he buries his face into. “You don’t have to explain everything to me, Andrea—”
Breathing warmly into his ear I bite my lip through little whimpers of words. “Yes, but—I know you’re being so, so sweet Lir, but I can’t help feeling like I’m taking advantage of…”
His gentle stare lures me in closer instead of pushing him away.
This time I guide his hand between my legs.
“All I wish is to be relieved of this want—of my desires that twist around in me so tightly it’s almost painful.
But—I don’t want to leave you feeling—” His eyes shake back and forth as I struggle to explain, how could he understand all these feelings I have bundled up inside?
The word I whisper out was meant to be for his own sake, but I feel it compacted into the marrow of my own bones. “Inadequate.”
All of my embarrassing thoughts come pouring out from my heart. Lust, embarrassment, societal conventions. They fall all out all jumbled up, but at least I’m saying them. I know he will listen to my words, for if not Lir, I think no one else could understand me.
“Also, is it not wrong for me to feel embarrassed of my body and how strange it must be to you? When we first met we both screamed at what was before us,” I laugh awkwardly.
My voice is full of pausing gasps that verge on tears, but Lir continues his hypnotic gaze, he continues to listen to me.
I turn my head away, and squeeze my thighs.
“Am I using your naivety to please my own desires? I banished myself to this rock for my failures.” Avoiding his stare that I could so easily lose my train of thought within.
I instead, grip into his shoulders, as if they are more solid than the rock which surrounds us.
“Does it make me a sick person, to be so overcome with lust? To want you so desperately?”
“A pervert, Andrea?” His voice gravelly and seductive, but his words scare me, even with the smile poking out in the most subtle dimples at the edge of his mouth.
My cheeks are always flushed from the cold here, so now they must appear almost purple.
I start to move back from him, feeling a wash of the fear and guilt I felt when I tried to tell my husband what I wanted.
I was a prude for denying him and a whore when I reached for him, which only created a deep feeling of bottomless delinquency filled shame. I shake my head and back further away.
“No, Andrea. I only meant to tease you.” He moves down a few steps and clasps my hands. “Take advantage of me! Let me ease your pain and suffering. I only wish to lick your wounds, to heal every part of your heart that I so desperately desire.”
“It has been so often humans falling over railings, grabbing at air and water to get to me. Clambering through crashing ocean crests to capture me—but now, it is I entranced by you.” He holds my hands to his mouth and his warm breath in the cold air is like smoke signals desperate to explain his heart to me.
“The same way those sailors threw themselves into the unknown, I drag myself across the rocks for a glimpse of you, Andrea.” He whispers, pressing his face into my stomach, into the clumping of fabric that separate us.
His unwavering determined voice is broken by the shakes of his own fears.
I wanted to keep him from feeling defective, but it seems I have managed to do the opposite.
“Am I also a burden on this rock with you? Only a pet in a cage captured by chance? Or a man, who you saved—” Dragging upwards, he pushes his head into my chest, “Please, I beg you—stop talking like you don’t matter to me!
Like I couldn’t possibly love you…or make love to you… ”
Those final words hang heavily in the air between us.
Both of us exhaling a long sigh of relief to get our feelings off our chests.
His head tilts in opposing tangent to mine and his mouth hangs ornamentally parted just a whisper distance from my own.
No sooner than my mouth and hands beckoning him into me does he then reach down pulling my clothes away from accepting embrace.
He unbuttons my trousers and pulls them down the stairs.
Throwing them like a balled up piece of paper behind his shoulder.
He grasps my thighs and pushes with his weight to spread my legs open.
His eyes twinkle in wonder, a desperate hunger sparking from the flint strikes of his lashes.
I am glowing red hot, my face feels like I’ve stuck it straight into the fiery embers of his gaze.
He glides his hands down my fleshy thighs to then hold and support my lower back while he reaches towards my underwear.
“I want you, Andrea.”
“Is this the place you desire me?” His clawed hand circles around my sternum and I nod in reply. Then he gently drags down my stomach, across my navel and then gripping so lightly into the short tuft of hair. “Here?” I nod, my lips are tight so drool doesn’t fall from my mouth.
I could melt down these stairs and straight into the ocean. His hot breath circulates around me as I feel him pull my thin covering to the side, I squeal in quiet delight. He breathes hard and raspy as if to focus on a microscopic task with precision and caution.
Lir gently pulls my lips apart, “Oh.” He sighs, “…It’s so beautiful.” I feel myself dripping just from his hot breath blowing across me. “It’s like a fresh oyster and the most delicate pearl.”
He gently runs his fingers across and I shiver in delight. “I agreed with you before, not to put my mouth on you without your permission. This just looks too—“ His mouth hangs open a little as if I am dangling food just out of reach of a starving man. “I might not be able to stop myself—”
I can see him fighting against his internal desires to devour me.
“No, Andrea—” He clears his throat. “I will wait—but.” His face twists between his conflicted emotions, between excitement and desperation…
between having any self control left and full on panting.
His warm breath bellows around my parted legs and shudders in tantalizing contrast with the cold air against my skin.
All I can do is nod wantonly. Though he says he lacks self control, he still waits for my response.
I am able to gasp out a singular desperate, “Please.”
That is all the permission he needs. He doesn't go in gently like I expect him to. I thought he’d be so unsure, but he fills his whole mouth with my every fold.
He really is seeing it as an oyster, slurping and fondling each crevice with his tongue, trying to suck out all the meat and leave no crumb of delicacy within the shell.
My fingers become lost in the tangles of his hair, using them as reins to pull him into me. “That’s so good.” and repetitive variations of the words, “Oh.” and, “God.” is all I can repeat as my head falls back from my shoulders, fusing to the steps beneath.
I thought he would need more guidance, a chart even, all the details I’ve been searching for on his end, all my worries and concerns, but those have all melted away in his mouth.
I scream and shake as he holds my thighs down into his devouring gulp.
His eyes usually framed with heavy blasé lids, instead now look animalistic.
Their golden hue piercing through my chest and pulsating with my heartbeat.
Is this what it’s like when a predator eats its prey?
Once I am in his mouth I know I’ve lost, that I must go limp and give it all over to him.
My flesh, body and boiling blood now all belonging to this man.
Probably a little too firmly, I push his face into me while I am heaved over crying out in pleasure, my legs held open by the stairwell’s walls. I can’t think, I can’t breathe. I can only whimper in ecstasy as I shake in completion.
“No more, no more!” I shake my head, I can feel every nerve ending in my body rejoicing, they fizzle like sea foam reaching the shore.
His tempo slows and matches my thumping heartbeat, eventually he pulls back, a string of wet pearls connecting us drips down my thighs.
He smiles devilishly. I have awoken a beast who lives just outside my front door.
His nails grip into the fleshy softness of my thighs, all my muscles melting into his hands. Lir rubs his face into my soft stomach, breathing, inhaling me in. His voice is so ragged and I desperately wish I could bring him to the same climax his mouth so diligently sherpaed me to the summit of.
Wiping the corner of his mouth with my thumb, I look deeply into his still hungry eyes. “God, I want to make you moan Lir.” He reaches forward, crowding over me, so that I am completely guarded in the holy cathedral of his body.
He leans in, holding my face, and he moans my name into my mouth, “Andrea.”