The Fish

by S. B. Douglass

1991

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"I've got to attend a meeting today," Doctor Eckert said. "You folks are welcome to visit the North Lagoon, though. You haven't been there, and it's got some nice deep pools not too far from shore."

"Want to?" Mary asked, after we waved to Doctor Eckert as she pulled away from the dock.

"Sure," I said, watching the small hydrofoil pull out of the water and skim through the gap in the surf where the channel through the reef led to the open ocean.

June Eckert was an old friend of Mary's, and when she'd invited us to visit her island lab, we'd jumped at the chance. The island was a small atoll in the Florida Archipelago, about 80 kilometers west of the Miami Polder. The atoll had three lagoons separated by a low sandy island; what dry land there was, and it wasn't much, was anchored against the ravages of the frequent tropical storms by palmetto scrub on the higher ground and mangroves in the low spots.

Half-an-hour after Doctor Eckert left, we were walking along the path to the North Lagoon. We'd been there for a week, and Doctor Eckert had taken us around the island and given us swimming tours of the other two lagoons. We hadn't been into the North Lagoon yet, but it sounded like a good way to spend a day. Our swimming tours with Doctor Eckert had been fun; she made a hobby out of subsisting on raw seafood, and during our tours, she'd made frequent stops to let us taste one or another of the delicacies in her lagoons.

"It's a pretty place," I said, putting a hand around Mary's shoulders as we stood at the edge of the North Lagoon.

"It is," she said, and then kissed me on the shoulder. "Kent, this has been a great week, but with June around all the time, I've felt a bit inhibited. Want to make love before we go swimming?"

I answered her question with a kiss, holding her to me as our lips joined, and then sliding my hands down her long back to her fanny and massaging it as my penis hardened against her. She slid her hands over my back and then up over my shoulders to the back of my neck. I paused to finger her soft brown breasts as she leaned back, hanging from my neck and grinding her hips against me, and then I slid my hands down to support her fanny.

"In the water?" she asked.

"Sure," I said.

We continued kissing and touching as we worked our way down the sandy shore into the water. When the water was up to mid thigh, she lifted a leg over my hip and took me in before lifting the other leg. Mary and I loved making love that way. When the footing was good, I could dance while I carried her, but on the sandy bottom of the lagoon, I just stood there and swayed as she rode my hips.

I cradled her with my hands laced together behind her chest, and her hands were free to finger my nipples. She smiled as she rocked gently against me, and I admired the look on her face and the shape of her breasts while I savored the feeling of my penis in her and her fingers on my skin. After a while, she reached up to lock her fingers behind my neck and let me take a turn touching her.

I slid my hands up her sides to her round brown breasts and across her dark brown nipples, and as I gently circled her nipples with my thumbs, I could feel her contracting around my penis. As we made love, the velvet of her body slowly sliding up and down my penis drove me to the edge of an orgasm, and she held me there until I had to kneel on the sandy bottom to avoid loosing my balance.

The feeling of the water around our joined bodies set me back, briefly, and then she let go of me and let the water carry her weight. Her brown face rose from the water a yard from me; she was smiling, her short straight hair glinting in the sun, and her dark nipples alternately rising above the placid surface of lagoon and sliding back under as we made love.

I could feel it as she came; her vagina clamped down on my hard penis, her ankles clutched at my bottom, and she leaned back and gasped. After her initial gasp, she began massaging me, pumping with her pelvic muscles in rhythm with the waves of her orgasm, driving me over the edge. I pulled at her hips with my hands, straining to drive myself deeper into her body as the explosion swept through me, and then I could feel surge after surge within her as I pumped myself dry.

"I love you," I said, a long time later.

She answered with a lazy kiss, and then drifted free of me and stood up. "I'll go get the swimming stuff," she said, walking away from me.

I watched as she walked back to where we'd left our stuff and picked up our masks, snorkles and flippers. She was a trim, muscular woman, built for running and swimming, and her bare brown skin looked beautiful against the white sand and green scrub behind her.

We swam out into the lagoon, beyond the sandy beech that was renewed by the frequent tropical storms. There were bright colored fish, green and brown seaweed, and broken coral formations, some white and dead, some brightly colored with life. We passed over a deep dark pool where it looked like the bottom dropped out from under the lagoon for a few hundred meters, and as the bottom rose to meet us and there was more and more coral. We were approaching the reef.

I got Mary's attention and then pointed to the surface and stood up, treading water. I pulled out my snorkel as her head surfaced beside me. "We've got to be careful of the coral," I said. "We really ought to have worn gloves, at the very least."

"Right," she said. "Let's stay away from the main part of the reef."

Suddenly, there was a swirl of water. "My legs!" she screamed, and then went under.

I ducked my head under the surface in time to see some kind of huge fish lunge at her. A shark? What ever it was, it got Mary and swam quickly away with her body sticking out of its mouth. She was gone. I bit my snorkel, blew out the water, and then looked around, my heart pounding. Should I try to rescue her? Should I run away? Was there anything I could do?

Then I noticed a slight cloudyness in the water and saw something floating nearby. I almost wretched into my snorkel when I saw what it was. Mary's legs were hanging there in the water, supported by her floating swim fins. Her legs up to mid thigh were there, cleanly severed by whatever fish had attacked her.

And then it happened to me. I saw it out of the corner of my eye. A grey-green shape came at me like lightning and then a searing pain ripped through my body. My legs! The jaws closed around my hips, and then I felt them chewing, drawing me in as I was torn through the water into darkness.

--

I wondered if I was dead. I felt cold, water surrounded me, my skin itched, and I knew that I was deep below the surface. I was only dimly aware of the daylight above, and then my consciousness faded.

I was aware again, still cold and wet, and it was dark. I was hungry, and then I remembered the shark attack. I wanted to panic, but I didn't have the energy. I passed out.

I had a long series of disjointed memories like that, and then I awoke. The light at the surface was bright, and I ached for air. My head was pounding, my whole body hurt, and every movement made it worse. I needed air! I struggled, swimming for the surface, my lungs bursting with pain as I thrashed through the water, and then I broke the surface and gasped for breath.

I lay on my back gasping for a long time, and then I remembered. Mary, what had become of her? The image of her torn-off legs hanging from her floating flippers was burned into my mind. What had happened to me? I remembered seeing the fish, I remembered feeling the pain in my legs, I remembered the teeth ripping into my hips. How had I been rescued?

I was so hungry I could hardly think, and I'd lost my mask and snorkel. I had enough sense to orient myself, and then I began swimming for the beach. I could tell that my legs were injured, so I swam on my back, using my hands and favoring my legs. With what rational thought I could muster, I hoped to be able to crawl from the beach to the house to get some food.

I didn't realize I was at the beach until my bottom brushed the sand. I rested for a moment, and then gingerly pulled myself up onto my elbows so I could see what my legs looked like. I still had feeling in my heels; I could feel them dragging on the sand, so I thought that my legs hadn't met the same fate as Mary's.

The fish was still there! It's jaws gripped me around the hips, and its pale metallic green belly extended into the lagoon. Two fins broke the water at about knee level, and the the tail was down beyond my feet.

I couldn't sit up! The fish's jaws prevented it. I leaned back into the water with a moan and reached down to see if I could get the thing to loosen its grip on me. I slid my hands down to my waist and onto the slick skin of the fish, then tried to work a finger into the joint between the fish's jaws and my hips. I couldn't do it. I slid my fingers around my hips following the line of the fish's jaws, and I found no hint of weakness except for a gap over the sunken flesh of my belly where I could feel water flowing in with each pulsation of the fish's gills.

Something was very wrong! As I slid my hand down over the fish's side, I could feel my fingers as if I were sliding them over my own skin. I swore as I tried to peel the fish loose, but there was nothing to peel. On the sides of my hips, the fish skin was level with where my own skin ought to be, with no hint of jawbones except over my groin.

The fish seemed to be merging with me! I cursed the fish in blind rage, terrified of what was happening. After I'd vented my rage, though, I discovered that I was curious about what was happening to me, and eventually, I calmed down enough to investigate.

Fifteen minutes later, I knew that my worst fears were true. The fish and I were becoming one creature, something like a mermaid, human above the waist and fish below. The fish still had working gills, which probably explains why I was still alive after spending I don't know how long at the bottom of the lagoon. It might have been a long time; I was thin and hungry enough that I could believe that I might not have eaten for weeks.

The amazing thing was, I could control the fish. When I tried to wiggle my ankles, the fish's tail moved, and when I tried to bend one or the other leg at the knee, the fish flopped from side to side. It didn't seem likely that anything was left of me inside the fish; the fish could bend from side to side in a way my legs never could, and if my legs were whole, I was sure that they'd block the fish's gills.

There was no point in staying on the beach, and there was no way for me to leave the water, so I turned away from the shore and pulled free from the sandy bottom. I was hungry, and after Doctor Eckert's introduction to living off the bounty of her lagoons, I knew that I could find plenty of satisfying food in the shallows on the back side of the reef.

--

It was on the third day of my recovery that I saw her. I only saw a fleeting fish-like form, green and brown, but I knew that it was Mary, and I knew that she'd suffered the same fate as I had. I was lunching on some sea urchens I'd found, but I broke off my meal and swam after her.

I wasn't sure which way Mary had gone; it's amazing how big a few tens of acres of lagoon can be when you're exploring it at water level. It took me fifteen minutes before I found her, resting on a secluded bit of beach between the roots of the mangroves that grow along the shore in the more sheltered areas.

"Mary!" I said, swimming onto the sand beside her. "Are you OK?"

"Kent!" she called, and then grinned wryly. "I'm not sure about being OK. God! I see you're in the same boat though."

"You don't know how awful it was when I found your legs hanging bloody from your flippers," I said, hugging her.

"You mean!" she said, and then paused, looking sick. "I remember my legs hurting like hell just before I blacked out, but É" She looked down at her tail and drew a deep breath. "I'm sorry, I'd sort of imagined that I was still there, inside."

"Sorry," I said, feeling lame. "Let me look at you."

She rolled onto her back in the shallow water and relaxed while I explored her body. She was as thin as I was, not as bad as a few days ago, but thin. The fish half of her was noticably longer than her legs had ever been, with a dorsal fin on the back and a pair of pectoral fins below her gills. Her buttocks were gone, merged into a rounded mound of fish, but when I looked for evidence of the fish's eyes on what must once have been its face, all I could find was a pair of small scars.

She took a turn looking at me, and I noticed that I could feel her fingers on as much as half of the fish's body. The other half of the fish was still alien flesh, mostly near the tail and down the middle of my front. The touch of her fingers on the fish's body, when I could feel it, was very pleasant, but it was disturbing when she slid her hands over the numb areas because I could still sense movement but I couldn't tell where she was touching me.

"God, I wish I knew what was happening to me," she said, tracing the line where my flesh joined that of the fish.

She began to cry, and I hugged her, trying to comfort her, and at the same time, trying to draw comfort from her. I was scared of what was happening to me, and I had no answers to offer, only questions. She held me tightly, her head on my shoulder as we rested at the water's edge, and then, after a long pause, she giggled softly.

"You know," she whispered, "if it weren't for this damn fish, I'd be feeling a bit romantic. I could get really horny right now."

I was doing my best to ignore the hint of an erection in my loins. I wasn't sure I even had a penis anymore, and I was scared of what I might find if I let myself feel anything sexual. Mary kissed me gently, and then her tongue entered my mouth and drove away my inhibitions.

I returned her kiss as the pressure of an erection grew between where my legs must once have been. We began fondling each other, kissing, touching, and licking. I kissed her breasts fiercely, she kissed my chest, and then she worked her way down to the fish's jawbone where it still gaped open slightly above my pubic bone.

We were incredibly excited and incredibly frustrated, and eventually the frustration won out. We hugged each other chastely while we cooled down, and then we rested. I guess we fell asleep where we were, half submerged on the beach in the warm Florida sun.

--

I was startled awake sometime in the late afternoon, and when I opened my eyes, I found that I was lying a few inches below the surface. For a moment, I forgot about what had happened to me and tried to sit up in the shallow water, and then I fell back onto my elbows. I almost passed out, but after a few deep breaths and a bit of swearing, my eyes came into focus and I saw that someone was leaning over me.

I focused my eyes on a pair of chocolate brown breasts with almost black nipples, blinked, and recognized Doctor Eckert. "Glad to see that you two are up and about," she said. "You really shouldn't sleep on the beach like that, the warm shallow water hasn't really got enough oxygen for your gills, and you could be stranded if the tide was on the way out instead of coming in."

It took me a moment for what she'd said to sink in. "My gills?"

"When you fell asleep, the tide was on the way in. Your oxygen demand falls enough when you sleep that you naturally stopped breathing when the water covered your mouth, but it's not good for you. If you're going to sleep under water, you should choose well oxygenated water or a cool deep spot where your body temperature can fall to lower your oxygen demand."

"June Eckert," Mary said. "How the hell do you know so much about what's happened to us."

"I guess I should explain," she said, stepping back out of the water. She put her hands on her brown hips and smiled at us. "Fifteen years ago, I began to dream about how humankind could reclaim the continental shelves that we've lost since the polar caps melted. Ten years ago, I realized that my work on genetic engineering could support that dream, and I set out to solve the problem. Five years ago, I bred my first experimental simbiotic catfish, a little one, just right for making a mermouse, if you'll pardon the name."

She paused to look us over, and then went on. "There were a few bugs, but I worked them out, then did some experiments on dogs and worked out more bugs. As you see, it works. You're the first functional merman and mermaid in human history."

Mary coughed and then spoke in a bitter voice. "It doesn't seem particularly legal or ethical to do this to us without asking first."

"It's too late to worry about ethics," Doctor Eckert said. "As to the law, on this island, I'm the law; the government ceeded the atoll to me personally a decade ago. What's done is done! Right now, you need to know a bit more about what's happened to your bodies so you can face the future, right?"

"I'll admit I'm curious," I said.

"You're half fish, half person," she said. Over the month or so that you were out after the fish got you, your body has merged with that of the fish. The changes aren't over yet, but the big changes are done. Your circulatory systems merged the fastest, within minutes of the time the fish tried to swallow you. Your skeletal systems merged more slowly, and your nervous systems will take the longest to finish joining to that of the fish."

"Do you mean to say we were out for a month after the fish got us?" Mary asked, her voice tinged with anger.

"Yup. The fish instinctively recognized you as its target, from your smell, bit your legs off, and then lunged, trying to swallow you whole. When it couldn't get any more of you in, it instinctively sought the deepest coldest place it could find so it could digest its prize at its leisure. Of course, my fish didn't know that you weren't ordinary food. Your circulatory systems were linked to the fish's through your legs, and the fish's gills kept you alive for that month."

I was about to ask a question, but she interrupted. "I really must be going! I've got visitors from the institute! See you tomorrow."

--

She didn't see us the next day. That night, a storm blew up, and the normally calm lagoon was a chaos of spray and waves. I was scared that we'd be smashed against the coral by a wave if we stayed near the reef, and I was afraid of being driven up onto the beach if we stayed near the shore.

"Stay over the deep pool," Mary yelled, trying to be heard over the roar of the surf. We were holding hands so we'd avoid getting separated in the dark "Stay under as deep as you can, and come up only for air."

She was right, so I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on her hand, and dove for the bottom.

In normal weather, it's fairly quiet underwater. Now, it was noisy. The sound of the storm wasn't the same as it was on the surface, but it was there. I could hear the impact of the surf on the reef, I could hear the whitecaps blowing on the lagoon, and I could hear the groan of coral boulders torn from their resting places by the storm currents.

In the cool depths of the lagoon, the sound of the storm lost its terror, and I held tightly to Mary's hand in the darkness as I listened to it. As I relaxed, I began to grow puzzled. I didn't feel anxious for air. A slow trickle of bubbles escaped from my mouth while I wondered what was going on, and then I realized that I didn't need to breathe because of my gills. They really were mine! I hugged Mary to me, and we fell asleep there at the bottom of the lagoon while the storm raged over us.

I woke up sometime during the next day. Daylight shone through the water, and the lagoon was calm. I felt lethargic and cold, but I swam slowly to the surface and looked at the weather while I drew a deep breath of fresh air. We were in the eye of the storm! A wall of storm clouds towered around the horizon, obscuring all but a circle of hazy blue sky above.

Mary surfaced beside me and drew a deep breath, and then grinned at me. "Good morning Kent," she sighed, and then drew another deep breath. "What a night!"

"I think our gills barely provide enough oxygen," I said.

"That must be it," she said, and then yawned. "Still, it's nice being able to stay under so long."

"Especially during a tropical storm!"

She kissed me, pressing her breasts against my chest, and we hugged for a while before I pulled free. "I need some exercise and a meal," I said. "Let's take a swim."

"Tag, you're it," she said, laughing as she lunged away from me.

We took turns chasing each other for what might have been fifteen minutes. By then, I'd learned enough about swimming with my fish tail that I thought I was pretty good, but it took work to catch up with Mary. She cut through the water, and I followed, using my arms mostly to help manuver and pushing myself forward with a strong undulation of my tail.

Mary broke the surface and leaped high into the air, and I followed, diving back into the water behind her. She landed with a belly flop, and that slowed her down enough that I was able to tag her. I lunged away as she turned to give chase, and I dove deep and then tried another leap. I did better than on my first leap, and after a few more leaps, we both got pretty good at it.

Eventually, we quit the game and began gathering meals for ourselves. I got two good handfulls of a delicious seaweed while Mary went after urchens, and then we rested on the beach and ate our breakfast. The water was high, a storm tide, and we were resting on a new beach where there had been a stand of mangroves before the storm.

"It just struck me," Mary said. "We've been living in salt water for an awful long time. Why don't we need fresh water?"

"I guess the fish take care of that for us," I said. "Anyway, I sure liked that game of tag."

She gazed at me while she finished a mouthfull, and then grinned. "Me too, but I hate to admit it. God I hate what June did to us."

"I'm starting to enjoy what's happened to me," I said. "I hate the fact that she did it to me, I'd like to see her in jail and I'd like to see her pay through the nose to straighten out the mess she's made of my life, but I can imagine that I might even have chosen to become a merman voluntarily."

"Mabe you're right," she said. "If she'd offered a choice and given us time to prepare É"

"But she did give us some pretty good preparation," I interrupted, and then paused to crack a sea urchin. "She went out of her way to teach us how to feed ourselves and to introduce us to the lagoon environment."

"I guess so," Mary said, leaning back in the shallow water.

I finished my urchen, tossed the shell into the water, and looked at her as she relaxed beside me. "You're beautiful," I said, and then rolled over to kiss her.

She responded warmly, pulling me to her. As we hugged and kissed, I felt whatever had become of my penis stiffen. It felt good to press the belly of my fish against hers, and I enjoyed tracing my fingers down her back and onto the fish skin over her fanny.

We aroused each other to the frustrating limit; I wanted an orgasm and I didn't know how to have one. I wanted to give Mary an orgasm and I couldn't. We hugged, kissed and touched in the shallow water, driving ourselves as close to orgasm as we could, but we couldn't get there. In the end, frustration won the battle and we held each other. Mary cried softly against my shoulder, and then we rested, listening to the slowly growing sound of the surf as the eye of the storm began to pass.

--

"You two are quite beautiful when you play," Doctor Eckert said the next morning, interrupting our breakfast.

The day after the storm was a beautiful clear day, and Mary and I had just finished a game of tag after a night on the bottom. I looked up at her as she smiled at us from the edge of the water. "What do you want," I asked.

"I just thought I'd stop by to see how you survived the storm," she said. "I see you're OK, and I see your gills are finishing their metamorphosis."

"What?" I asked, looking down my stomach. There were tears in the skin along my hipbone, right at the joint between my skin and the fish's. I could see the tears open and close with the pulsation of my gills, and there was another tear in the numb skin on the bottom of the fish's jaw.

She smiled. "Your new gills occupy a good chunk of the volume of your pelvis and the old fish's skull. The six intake holes will form a vee along the line where your fish skin and human skin meet. You'll see the whole vee shape when the fish's lower jaw finishes sloughing off."

"How do things work?" Mary asked.

Doctor Eckert waded into the water and squatted by Mary. "See how your gills pulse slowly? You've got something like a second diaphragm run by the fish's jaw muscles; it pumps water through your gills. Your gills aren't supposed to give you enough oxygen to stay active under water, but they're enough that you can sleep on the bottom."

She stood up. "I've got to go now; the folks from the institute are ready to tour the West Lagoon. You'll meet them in about a month, I've already set the fish loose."

She started to wade back towards the shore, and on the spur of the moment, I tripped her. "Mary!" I yelled. "Help me pull her into the water."

"What?" Mary asked as the doctor rolled over and sat up, sputtering.

I'd managed to turn my tail towards the shore, and I took the doctor's hand as I spoke. "Doctor Eckert? I'm going to do my damnedest to see that you meet those fish of yours."

"No!" she screamed.

I thrashed with my tail in the shallow water, pulling her by the arm into the deep water. She fought, kicking and scratching, so as soon as the water was deep enough, I pulled her under. That stopped her, and by the time I came up to let her breathe, Mary had taken her by the other arm.

"You can't do this to me!" she screamed after she'd caught her breath.

"I don't see why not," Mary said. "After all, you did it to us."

We silenced her protest by ducking her under, and by the time we came up for another breath, we were at the reef. We abandoned the doctor at the edge of the reef, letting her fend for herself while we scouted out a passage, and then we towed her out to sea and to the west around the atoll.

The doctor was pale and exhausted by the time we found a way into the West Lagoon. She still tried to protest when we let her surface for air, but we didn't want her to struggle too much, so we never let her stay up for long.

"Keep her away from shore," I said. "Let her alone now that we're here. Just herd her to the deep pool we saw back when we were snorkeling; that should be where her fish are."

We herded her, watching from under the water as she swam, and grabbing her by the ankle and pulling when she tried to break for shore. I watched the water around her as much as I watched her, looking for the fish.

I didn't notice them at first; there were two of them, grey green monsters the same color as the ones that had gotten Mary and I. The two fish swam at a distance, hovering just above the bottom, and then one of them lunged, snapping off the doctors legs in one swift bite and then spitting them out as it circled for the kill. It streaked upward at the bloody stumps of the doctor's legs, opening its mouth at the last second and engulfing her struggling form up to the hips, then turning and carrying her into the dark depths.

Mary and I followed them down to the sandy bottom and watched as Doctor Eckert passed out. I felt awful as I watched the tiny amounts of blood drifting from the gills of the fish, but at the same time, I felt satisfied. Even smaller amounts of blood seeped from between the doctor Eckert's hips and the fish's jaws. I watched until I was sure that the fish's gills were working, drawing water through the gap between its green lower jaw and the doctor's stomach, and then I swam away.

"You're hurt," Mary said as she surfaced. "I guess June fought pretty hard."

"At first she did," I said, and then turned to swim towards the beach. While I swam, I thought about what we'd done to Doctor Eckert. Given that there was no law on the island but her own, what we'd done seemed just, or as close to just as we could hope for. The only injury she'd received was from her own fish. Even so, I had the nagging feeling that I was simply rationalizing an act of revenge.

When we got to the beach, Mary pulled my attention back to my injury. "Roll onto your back, I want to see what's happened to you."

"How does it look?" I asked as Mary examined my belly.

"You've got a little scratch, and your fish's jaw is broken and pulling loose. It looks like it's dead; do you want me to see if I can finish pulling it off?"

"OK," I said, looking down my belly as she fingered the torn fish skin.

It stung a bit as she began to peeling the skin away, but it came off in a single piece, including the old fish's jawbone and teeth. As the doctor had predicted, what was exposed was a vee of brown human flesh. The ridges of my hipbones continued down the sides of the vee, and there were two more gill openings where the fish skin over my hipbones met my skin.

"Well I'll be damned," Mary said, sliding her fingers down the skin of my belly where it extended into the vee. At first I didn't know what she was talking about. Looking down, the thing that struck me the most was that the skin she was touching was slowly pulsating, moving in and out with the flow of water through my gills.

I understood when I felt Her fingers slide onto my penis; she touched it before I saw it, and then she lifted it, and then she chuckled. "I'd almost given up on finding this again."

"Me too," I said, looking down at my penis as she kissed it. There was a shallow groove between the bony ridges at the base of the vee of my belly, and my flaccid penis rested comfortably in it. "Want to see if you've got anything to match?"

She rolled over onto her back in the shallow water, and I began to investigate. She giggled when I began peeling the dead skin off her gill openings, saying that it tickled. It came away easily enough, a bit like the way a blister peels off when the skin under it has healed. When I was done, I'd exposed a vee of smooth brown skin between her six gill inlets. It pulsated like mine, but my attention was on the vertex of the vee. Where I had a groove that fit my penis, she had a ridge; above it was a soft-lipped groove in the skin of her belly, her vagina.

"I love you," she said, sighing as I stroked her new belly skin.

"Want to try making love?" I asked.

"I think it'd work best in deeper water," she said, taking my hand.

We swam, hand in hand, out into the center of the lagoon, and then swam circles around each other, kissing, touching, and fondling as my penis grew erect. I made a pass and grabbed her around the waist, kissing her on the somewhat relocated lips of her vagina. She took my erect penis into her mouth and gently toungued it, driving me towards an orgasm, then broke away.

I surfaced for a breath of air, and then kissed her full on the mouth. She held me around the neck while I fondled her breasts, and then I slid my hands down her back and pulled her to me. As our hips came together, she reached down to guide my penis into herself, and then we fell together with a firm and unexpected thud. The pumping of our gills was locking our bodies firmly together.

Her warm body surrounded my penis as we kissed deeply. I could feel the constant gentle pulsations of her gills around my penis. The motion was felt exquisite, as good as anything I could accomplish by thrusting my hips. I slid my hands down to the small of her back, and then we came up for air.

Mary leaned away from me and smiled at me as we floated. Her nipples were on the surface as I traced their outlines with my fingertips, and as the look on her face grew intent, I gently squeezed and pulled at them.

The pulsations of our gills were synchronized. Each pulse drew my penis out of her and then thrust it hard into her. Each pulse loosened her vagina and then clamped it down hard. The feeling was so intense that I felt like bursting, and then my orgasm hit me like a lightning bolt. I could feel it as a surge of power focused on my groin, and then a pulsating pleasure so intense that it was almost painful swept through my body as I came.

She moaned ecstatically, and then pulled me to her and kissed me hard on the lips. We submerged ecstatically, sharing our joy, probing with tongue and penis, sucking at each other, both filled and fulfilled.

"Hello!" a distant voice echoed over the lagoon as we broke the surface to breathe.

I looked towards shore and saw someone there waving at us. "Hello" I called, waving back. We were still locked together below the water.

"Time to face the world?" I said, feeling uncertain as I spoke in a low voice.

She gave my hand a squeeze as she looked towards shore, and then turned back to me. "Should we give whoever it is a show on the way over?"

"What do you mean?"

"We'll have to let people know what's happened to us eventually, so why not have fun while we do it? I'd bet whoever that is was supposed to be June's next victim."

We pulled free of each other and then dove under as we began swimming towards the beach. We held hands as we swam, and when the water was deep enough, we lept, giving whoever it was a good look at us. We lept twice again before the bottom approached too closely for safety, and then we raced for the beach.

The Fish copyright 1996 by S. B. Douglass.