Chapter 14: The Merman's Return
The week had been a long, grey ache.
Yamato had tried. He’d gone to the tavern the night Taichi left, his warning a frantic, half-drowned mantra on his tongue. Old Man Harris had just clapped him on the shoulder, reeking of ale. “Poor nets, boy. Just poor nets. Storms. Not… fish-men.” The other fishermen had laughed, a cruel, dismissive sound. His words were the ravings of a lonely musician who’d spent too much time with the gulls. He played his sets to hollow applause, the coins in his case fewer than ever. The silence in his cottage was louder than any storm.
So he returned to the cove. Every night. Not the one where he’d released Taichi—that felt too exposed, too final. A different one, a narrower cleft a half-mile down the coast, accessible only by a dangerous scramble he was sure no one else knew. He’d bring his guitar and play to the empty water, the melodies turning somber, laced with a longing he didn’t fully understand.
On the seventh night, the moon was a sharp sliver of bone in a cloudless sky. The black sand was cool under his thighs. He wasn’t playing for anyone. He was playing for the hole in his own chest.
A soft progression of notes drifted out, dying against the rock. He stopped, fingers resting on the strings. Hoping was a form of self-torture.
Then, a ripple. Not a wave. A purposeful, cutting motion twenty yards out.
A flash of vibrant, moonlit orange sliced through the inky water.
Yamato’s breath seized. He watched, heart hammering against his ribs, as the shape circled once, twice, just beneath the surface. Then it broke through with barely a sound.
Taichi.
He floated there, his upper body gleaming, water sheeting from his brown hair. His amber eyes caught the faint light, fixed unblinkingly on Yamato. The scars from the nets were silver lines on his skin. He looked powerful. Whole. And utterly alien.
For a long moment, they just stared across the water. The silence was a live wire.
Then Taichi moved. He swam closer with smooth, silent strokes until he was in the shallows. He didn’t speak. He reached up, his clawed hands finding purchase on the rocky ledge, and hauled himself out of the sea with a powerful flex of his tail. Water cascaded from his scales, pooling around him on the flat rock. He was closer than he’d ever been on land, his feral scent of deep water and salt filling Yamato’s senses.
“I couldn’t stay away,” Taichi rasped. The sound was less raw than before, but still strange, layered like waves over gravel. His gaze burned.
Yamato’s guitar slipped from his lap with a hollow thud he barely heard. Every warning, every thought of tribes and war, evaporated. There was only this: the merman before him, alive, returned.
He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and cupped Taichi’s jaw. The skin was cool and smooth, the bone beneath firm. Taichi’s slit pupils widened. Yamato leaned in and kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a collision of hunger and relief, salt and need. Taichi made a low, rough sound in his throat and kissed back ferociously, his mouth opening under Yamato’s. His tongue slid in, and it was like tasting the ocean’s core—salty, sweet, and charged with something electric. Yamato felt a jolt, a warmth spreading from his gut, a sudden, dizzying surge of pure want. The healing saliva, he realized distantly, but the thought was swallowed by sensation.
Taichi’s claws dug into Yamato’s shoulders, biting through the thin fabric of his shirt, anchoring him. Yamato’s hands moved down, over the hard planes of Taichi’s chest, through the cool water still slick on his skin, tracing the line where human torso fused into magnificent tail. His fingers found the place he’d only wondered about—a vertical slit, hidden where the scales softened at the base of his spine.
He pressed a fingertip against it. Taichi gasped into his mouth, his whole body jerking. The slit gave way, hot and impossibly slick inside. Yamato pushed a finger in, then a second, crooking them. The inner flesh was velvety and clenched, a tight, wet heat.
Taichi broke the kiss with a ragged gasp, his head falling back, exposing the line of his throat. “Yes,” he hissed, the word a command. “More.”
“Tell me,” Yamato breathed, his own voice thick. He scissored his fingers, feeling the fascinating, hidden anatomy grip him.
Taichi’s amber eyes blazed down at him. “I need you inside me. Now. Fuck your fingers into me. Fuck your cock into me. I don’t care. Fill me.”
The raw need in the merman’s voice undid Yamato completely. He pushed Taichi back onto the smooth rock. Taichi went willingly, his tail twisting, its powerful fluke slapping the wet stone with a wet thwack. Yamato fumbled with his trousers, shoving them down past his hips. His cock sprang free, already painfully hard, leaking. The cold air and the heat of Taichi’s gaze on him was a blinding contrast.
He knelt between the spread v of Taichi’s tail. The merman’s slit was glistening, open for him. Yamato guided himself to the entrance, the head of his cock nudging against the slick, heated furl. He looked up. Taichi was watching, his chest heaving, claws scrabbling for purchase on the rock.
Yamato pushed forward.
The tightness was shocking, a fierce, velvet clutch that made him see stars. He groaned, a raw, animal sound, as he sank in inch by exquisite inch. Taichi cried out, a sharp, wordless keen that echoed off the cove walls. His inner walls fluttered wildly, adjusting, then clenched, pulling Yamato deeper.
“Fuck,” Yamato choked out. “Oh, god, you’re so fucking tight.” He was buried to the hilt, their bodies joined in an impossible, wet heat. He stayed there for a thundering heartbeat, feeling Taichi pulse around him.
Then he drew back and thrust in hard.
The rhythm was brutal, necessary. The rock was unyielding beneath them, the slap of skin and scale, the wet, rhythmic sound of penetration, was obscenely loud in the secret cove. Yamato fucked into him with deep, driving strokes, each one punching a ragged gasp or a moan from Taichi’s throat.
Taichi met every thrust, his hips rolling, his tail thrumming with tension. His claws raked down Yamato’s back, sharp, searing lines of pain that fused with the pleasure, heightening it. Yamato felt the skin break, felt warm blood well. It didn’t stop him. It fueled him.
“Is this… what you wanted?” Yamato grunted, hammering into that divine, clenching heat.
“Yes! Harder. Deeper. Breed me, you fucking land-walker,” Taichi snarled, his voice breaking on the last word. His hand fumbled between their bodies, claws retracted, fingers rubbing furiously at a nub of sensitive flesh just above where Yamato was spearing him.
Yamato’s pace became frantic, pistoning into the merman’s willing body. The coiling tension in his gut was a knot about to snap. Taichi’s breaths became sharp, pleading cries. His amber eyes were wide, unfocused, locked on Yamato’s face.
“Yamato—” The name was a shattered plea.
Taichi’s body went rigid. A raw, guttural scream tore from his throat as he came, his inner walls seizing around Yamato’s cock in a series of intense, milking spasms. The sensation was too much. Yamato’s vision whited out. With a final, desperate thrust, he buried himself as deep as he could and let go. His orgasm ripped through him, hot seed pumping in deep, endless pulses into Taichi’s clutching channel.
He collapsed forward, catching himself on his hands, his body shuddering. Taichi’s arms came up around him, claws gently carding through his sweat-damp hair. They stayed like that, joined, panting into the salt-tinged air. The waves shushed gently against the sand, a mundane counterpoint to the cataclysm that had just passed between them.
Slowly, sensitivity returned. The chill of the air on Yamato’s sweaty back. The sting of the claw marks. The incredible, warm weight of Taichi beneath him. He softened, slipped out. A trickle of their combined release leaked onto the rock.
Taichi’s hand came up, turned Yamato’s face toward his. He kissed him again, slower now, deeper. It tasted of exhaustion and salt and something like possession.
“They are planning,” Taichi murmured against his lips, his voice low and serious, all passion spent. “My father. The warriors. The nets that took me were not an accident. They were a declaration. Your village will not listen to warnings.”
Yamato’s stomach, so recently molten, turned to ice. “What do I do?”
Taichi’s amber eyes held his. “You come back. You meet me here. You are the only bridge left.” He traced a claw-tip down Yamato’s cheek. “And I am not the only one who watches these coves.” He shifted, beginning to pull his heavy tail toward the water’s edge. “Three nights. I will be here.”
He slid into the black water, silent as a shadow. With a powerful flick, he was gone, leaving Yamato alone on the rock, covered in blood and salt and the profound, lingering heat of what they’d done. The weight of the secret was now a physical thing, lodged deep inside him, as real as the seed he’d left in the merman prince’s body.