Jewel Of The Nile

Chapter Twelve

It was Thursday afternoon before Hermione began to fully consider the ramifications of her brief encounter with Bill, the Sunday previous.

He’d come over to ask her out on a date - that much she’d gotten, in between ducking his kisses and shoving him out the door - and not just for dinner, either; no, if she remembered correctly, he’d had something special in mind, and he’d been quite specific about what she was to wear, what she was to bring.

But damned if she could remember what it was. In between her embarrassment, her intense desire to have him gone, and that startling furl of slow-curling heat that suckerpunched her whenever they kissed, she’d lost the particulars of what he’d said.

She went across the hall to ask him when she got home from work, but he didn’t answer the door.

“He went for a swim,” Maxie volunteered. “Up on the roof.” She raised an appraising, heavily-penciled eyebrow. “Now there’s a man who knows how to fill a Speedo. If I were ten years younger … and three-dimensional …”

“A swim?” Hermione blinked. “There’s a swimming pool in this building?”

Maxie, looking pleased to be the source of new information, nodded smugly.

“Never seen it myself, of course,” she said. “But the staircase -“ she jerked a thumb over her shoulder - “is right over there. Straight up to the roof. You can’t miss it.”

Oh, Christ, that sounded like a good idea. She’d been jonesing for a swim ever since her visit to the hammam on Monday afternoon.

“Thanks,” Hermione said, and in return for the tip, conjured up a Bottomless pitcher of iced tea and some glasses on the piano bench next to a slumped-over Dave. (Lester, in particular, looked dangerously wilted. And the Guy Without a Name didn’t look much better.)

You knew it was hot, she reflected as she started toward the stairway, when even the walls started to feel it.

**

The stairway led all the way straight up to the roof, as promised - Hermione pushed open the trapdoor at the top, emerged blinking into the bright afternoon sunshine, and surveyed the pair of striped-canvas cabanas, one to either side of her, with surprise.

Dressing rooms, no less. Well, that was the wizarding world for you - never do the simple thing, when it could be ornate. She ducked into the cabana marked Witches and pulled back the flowered curtain to the nearest changing cubicle, intent on Transfiguring her hot, heavy robes into an appropriate bathing suit.

What she found hanging in the cubicle changed her mind completely.

The suit, it seemed, was already provided for her - and what a suit it was! Someone, apparently, had been entertaining Ariel fantasies when they designed it; the coral-coloured bikini bottoms were matched by a conch-shell brassiere and complimented by a sarong-style wrap with a fishtail hem, in a shining fluid fabric that seemed fashioned of tiny varicoloured metal links.

Voilà - instant mermaid.

Hermione, who had entertained latent mermaid fantasies since the age of eight, and who still knew all the words to Part Of Your World, felt her fingertips tingle.

She had to try it on, she simply had to.

It fit like skin - whether this was a miracle of magic or simply of Spandex, she didn’t know. There was even a starfish clip for her hair; smirking, she tucked it behind her ear and adjusted the sarong’s narrow drape over her hips.

Oh, perfect.

But what was happening to the floor?

It seemed softer, not as solid. Looking down, Hermione could have sworn that she’d seen it shift, seen it sparkle.

It’s almost like - well, it’s almost like water … she thought, beguiled by that deep, changeable sheen, that mutable hint of mystery.

And then she was sliding, feet-first, into what felt like home.

**

Holy shit, was her first thought. I’m underwater - I shouldn’t be breathing! But there was something … something new, at her neck … Wonderingly, she brought up both hands to touch the tiny pulsating frills of skin directly under her ears.

Gills.

She had gills.

She looked down at her feet, and gave a little yelp of excitement. Look, Ma, no legs! - sure enough, she had a tail, a long graceful silver sweep flaring out into a double-wide fin. The tiniest of flickers - a movement of muscles rather like pointing her toes - and she was gliding lazily through the heaven-cool water, almost too caught up in sensation to look around her.

Merlin in handcuffs - there were fish. And coral. And sea-horses. This wasn’t a swimming pool, it was a bona fide lagoon.

How cool was this?

She twiddled her toes again and shot through the water like a baby seal, like a delighted torpedo. Oh, look - look at the light on the surface, all greeny-gold and dappled, so warm and inviting … she should shoot up through that sunlight-warmed silk, leap and dive again in a flashing flicker of mysterious silver tail … Or - looking below her now - should she dive instead, deeper into that cool mysterious beckoning blue, shimmering and reflective as the heart of her sapphire?

Oh, she couldn’t decide, she really couldn’t.

“Hey, Madison.”

Oh, right. Bill. She’d almost forgotten why she’d come up here in the first place.

Almost.

There, he’d made up her mind for her - she couldn’t hear that sexy amused voice and not turn around and look. The question was, was he …?

Oh, yes.

Yes, he was.

Sleek and bare-chested and leanly, strongly perfect, a naked Adonis with a gleaming, muscular column of scales that sheathed him from the hips down and flared into a fin just like hers, but somehow more … um, masculine. Hermione just stared at him, hoping in some dim recess of what remained of her lust-crazed brain that her tongue wasn’t hanging out.

Jesus, Granger, did you acquire an extra sex drive, to go along with the tail? “Hullo,” she managed weakly, and then wondered why his gaze kept flicking south.

And then she remembered: real mermaids didn’t wear that silly seashell bra. And she was most definitely a real mermaid, at least for the moment.

Part of her wanted to cover her breasts with her hands. The other part wanted to hold them out to him in offering. Instead, she blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“If we start kissing, will we drown?”

He’d been looking just about as shell-shocked as she felt, but that got a smile out of him.

“Don’t know,” he said. “Never tried.”

Hermione, suddenly way beyond false modesty, flipped her tail and felt the lazy current rock her another couple of inches toward him. Half-closing her eyes, she raised a hand to straighten her starfish, and summoned her best Bombshell Pout.

“Want to?”

**

Did he want to?

He couldn’t think of anything else.

And at the same time, it frightened him just to look at her - she was so beautiful, so natural and primal and perfect, that he could see for the first time how the old sailors’ myths about mermaids had gotten started.

Lure me overboard, Hermione. Let me drown in you. I promise you, I’ll die smiling.

It was getting very hard to stay objective about this girl. He wrapped an arm around her waist to tow her in, closed his eyes, and took what he wanted.

She was sleek and wet in his arms, all cool smooth skin with a banked fire burning underneath. Kissing her, Bill thought, was like being locked in silence, like swallowing a desperate sacrament in a watery green cathedral; like a journey, at once both homage and desecration.

A Baudelaire poem. An opium dream.

And, ultimately, an exercise in frustration.

Though his human body ached unbearably for her, though beneath the layers of enchantments fusing his legs into a tail he was acutely aware of his penis - presently in a state of three-alarm emergency - the fact was that until he left the water, he was trapped in the body of a merman. And merfolk were half-fish, after all, and reproduced not by live birth, but by the laying and fertilisation of eggs.

In other words, he couldn’t have it both ways.

He could kiss her for hours - he could nuzzle her naked torso underwater and never need a breath. He could fondle and torment those perfect little breasts with their shy pale-pink crowns until she bit her own lips and begged him for mercy, and not suffer so much as pruney fingers because of it.

But as long as they both had gills and fins, Sex Itself was out of the equation altogether.

A man could only take so much.

“Come on, Madison,” he said into her ear, and felt her lips curve against his cheek. They watched the same movies, apparently; yet another good sign. “Let’s give those flippers a workout, shall we?”

She blinked langorously. “And do what?”

Minx. He unwound his arm from around her waist and took her hand with his. “Explore - what else? There’s a Spanish galleon just around the corner.”

“Really?”

She looked so dazzled that he couldn’t help kissing her again.

“Really,” he said. “And that’s not all. I want to show you the dolphins before the light goes.”

They swam off into the sunset, hand in hand.

**