“Ummm.” When she turned to him, she caught him looking at her nude body, his focus cruising lower to the join of her legs where the female part of her existed. As before, she’d grown a triangle of light red hair.
In his hand was a white, slithery gown he’d fetched from a table by the entrance, and also a towel.
A smile broke onto his lips. “I apologize, but you entrance me, at times.” The smile was that mysterious one she’d seen before.
A second before, his expression had been different. Unused to deciphering human faces, she wasn’t sure what it meant. It was not simply lust.
She must relearn this. Body language. If she hadn’t listened to humans as avidly as she had, she would be totally lost.
“Put that on, then let’s eat.”
He helped her to dry herself, then to lower the gown over her head. It slipped over her body, falling into place on her breasts and other curves.
“Beautiful.” Wolfgang urged her forward with his hand at the small of her back, above where her rear swelled. Funny, how that placing of his hand stirred warmth, desire.
Desire was much of the purpose of this night.
When they were seated at a table made of rich, brown timber, with chairs of what seemed to be glass, he began doling out food from several boxes of white paper. Plates, yes, those were here, and metal things to spear the food. The smell made her stomach rumble.
“I thought tonight we could have an intimate meal. The town has loads of cafés and restaurants but those we can try another day.” His smile came and went. “Now, what are you worried about? I can guess.”
Raffaela blinked. Sitting at a table, on a hard chair, sitting still, without water on her skin, it felt so very wrong. As if someone had frozen her in mud. Stifling.
His question, though.
“I am afraid this will not work.”
He poured something red into a goblet. Wine, she reminded herself. Though she’d never drunk from anything so fine. The goblet was a piece of glass perfection.
“That making love to me will not cause you to become human, permanently?” He finished pouring into the glass in front of her, placed the bottle on the table.
Bluntly said. “Yes.” That had reawakened her anxiety.
“Don’t. What will be will be. Fate will decide this.”
Truth. She inhaled deeply. “And if this fails?”
“Then you return to the sea, and we think on this some more. There might be a trick to it?”
She nodded. Would she go back to the sea? The change always gave her forewarning, and she had intended to stay here, to die. Now? It seemed ridiculous to lose all hope when Wolfgang believed in her.
“Let’s eat. I’ll bet you’ve not had wine for…” His eyebrow crooked upward. “Centuries.”
She smirked. “A woman should not reveal her age.”
“Ahhh.” He raised his own glass that sloshed with a clear wine. “To becoming human.”
She lifted hers. “To being human.” Her first sip had her grimacing. So tart a taste.
He laughed at her and picked up a knife and fork, indicated the food. “Can you use these? If not, fingers are okay. It should be cool enough.”
“I think I can do this.” She frowned at the hard feel of the metal as she turned a fork in her hand, then she poked her food.
The food was delicious. The wine fogged her mind somewhat, but soon after they finished eating, he led her to a bedroom. The luxuries humans possessed now, and so casually, it was stunning. No dirt, no bugs, everything clean.
Without further talking, he took the necklace from her neck and placed it aside, then drew her dress upward to her waist and pushed her to the bed. She was aware enough to know his seduction was as workmanlike as that of men who had bought her in the past. They had humped her against walls in alleys, then they went home again, or they had gone back to drinking. Pay her and move on.
This economy in his seduction surprised her but she felt too sleepy to worry. Protesting would be silly.
When he was finished, he withdrew from her, left the room, then returned a few minutes later. He switched off the miraculous light on the ceiling and lay with her in the bed.
That he didn’t quite lie down was odd. The love-making had been so rough she’d hurt at times. She should talk to him.
But…
Her eyelids were heavy, her yawns frequent, and the room was gradually blurring.
This bed was terribly soft. What if I don’t feel the change?
The worry roused her for a moment, but it was not enough to truly stir her. Sleep came with little warning.
She woke to something shifting, to her body moving, then drifted back to sleep. Too tired. Too dark and heavy.
She woke again, and her eyes refused to focus. Had she become a sloth not a human?
The third time she surfaced, she lazed about in water, lying prone and slipping to and fro. There was a ceiling above. Something rumbled.
Raffaela shifted and found herself somehow fixed inside a tube that was open above, like a small tunnel. She had been in underwater caverns and tubes. This was not that. This was wrong. Alarmed, she shook her head. Water sloshed under her shoulders and something had been jammed across her mouth.
Her tail lumbered, moved, swished and smacked the sides.
Tail… She hadn’t changed. She coughed and felt sludge in her throat, swallowed, blinked away the last of the stuff making her vision blur.
Where was she?
She flopped about, curving upward at the waist, finding her hands trapped behind and under her. Wriggling achieved nothing except to make this canvas tunnel sway, and she slapped her tail down, hard, in anger.
Everything lurched. The rumbled ceased. There came a great, long, echoing slam. Then a light switched on above. As she squinted upward and around her, she heard someone grunt, then a face appeared above.
Wolfgang. He grinned at her.
“Awake, are we?”
Clearly, she was not of human form.
“Wha—” She managed to say, tongue hitting metal. The rod fastened across her mouth and between her teeth made speech difficult.
“What am I doing with you? Where are you? All of that?”
Wary, anger growing, sure he had betrayed her, she nodded. Water gurgled against her ears.
“This building is where we do marine research. Small place and at night nobody comes here. So. Just us. Me. You. All my equipment for holding the marine life, studying it, dissecting it… knives, big hooks.” He eyed her, piercingly.
She blinked. Bad, this was bad. Why was he doing this? “Why?” she whisper-gurgled.
“You killed my friend, or likely it was you? I doubt there are many mermaids in the area. My lover, my best friend, and you fuckin’ killed him.”
Reality dawned on her. Now she knew what that smile meant. His teeth showed. It was an evil smile. Predatory. Nasty.
“In the name of science, I’m going to study you, fillet you, dissect you, and eventually kill you. And guess what, since you are not human, nobody will give a damn.”
The vehicle shifted when he vanished from view, and she heard a door open then shut, heard his footsteps.
She’d meant to die. Just not like this. Maybe… she blinked away the sudden tears, maybe this was what she deserved?
Her heart had sped up and was banging away at her chest and temples. Maybe.
The rear doors of the vehicle were flung open, one after the other, and she looked past her tail to the light, past Wolfgang to where chains hung from a high ceiling.