Forever Read online

“Hi!”

  “Uh, hi,”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Thayde – what are you doing here?”

  “That’s a really cool name! We’re here on vacation with our families. They always take us somewhere every year.”

  “No, I mean, what are you doing on our dock?”

  “We’ve seen you around a few times. You’re really cute! We wanted to meet you. I like your shorts – they’re a cool color.”

  “Thanks. You know, this is a private dock,”

  “Oh we know! How did you get those scars?”

  I sat up in bed and listened, barely able to see Thayde or the two girls who had wandered onto our dock. Part of Thayde’s muscled back and tattooed left arm were visible from the window. Seawater streamed down his bicep and forearm, dripping off the ends of his fingertips. He’d obviously just come in from a swim. His warm tan made his scars even more visible. When he shifted his stance, I caught sight of one of the girls. She looked thirteen.

  Thayde hesitated. “A fight. Now if you’ll excuse me, this is a private dock.”

  “Wow. That’s pretty bad ass! Scars are awesome. So, what are you doing in Moorea?”

  “I’m on my honeymoon.”

  “Oh! We’re sorry! We didn’t know.”

  “I’m Carly and this is Joline.”

  “Yeah, nice to meet you,”

  I covered my mouth to keep from laughing out loud; Thayde was trying not to be rude but the girls weren’t taking the hint. Their puppy dog eyes blinked innocently up at him as he shifted uncomfortably. Having the gift of The Love was not fun for Thayde. People were constantly attracted to him, practically throwing themselves at him wherever he went.

  Wrapping myself in a sheet, I made my way to the door. The white morning sun nearly blinded me and I raised a hand shielding my eyes.

  “We’d better go Carly,”

  “The good ones are always taken,” Carly said in her best grown up, sexy voice.

  The two girls simultaneously looked past Thayde to me, their eyes growing wide. Carly looked far too young to be dressed in what she wore. The revealing black, one piece swimsuit scantily covered her chest, was open to the stomach, and barely covered her lower area. I wondered how her parents could have let her out of their hotel room looking like that. Even her stance was suggestive.

  The other girl, Joline, was dressed in a white tank top and turquoise shorts – perfectly acceptable for a young teen. It was obvious she was embarrassed and she smiled an apology at me.

  “Okay, we’ll see you around!” She grabbed her friend’s arm, pulling her backwards. “Congratulations!”

  Carly left grudgingly, her gaze remaining on Thayde as long as it could. Thayde released a sigh of relief and I snorted. He turned to face me, clearly embarrassed.

  “Oh honey, you cradle robber you!” I joked and he grew beet red.

  “It’s always been like this,” he explained.

  “You don’t have to explain anything,” I laughed, “you can’t help it any more than Mom can!”

  “Yeah, well it’s a huge pain.” He ran a hand through his soaked hair, pulling the water from it and shook his hand. The droplets splattered onto the dock. I watched his sculpted stomach tighten as he sighed. “I’m sorry,”

  “Forget about it,” I closed the gap between us, pulling my arms and the sheet around him, covering us both. Laying my head against his chest, I closed my eyes and listened to his heartbeat. It pounded against my ear but slowed noticeably as he relaxed into our embrace.

  I don’t want to leave, I thought and his arms tightened around me.

  If you want, we could move here, he suggested.

  Don’t even joke about that.

  I’m not.

  Maybe after we finish school?

  Thayde sighed, his heartbeat beginning to pick up again. You know, I can feel every inch of your body against me, he thought, his hands inching their way around my back.

  Yes, I know, I teased, pushing against him a little more.

  “What are you doing to me?” He voice was incredulous and his fingers moved to trace my bare sides.

  “Nothing,” I answered, my tone completely innocent.

  “Liar,” he slid his hands around my stomach and I pulled away, taking the sheet with me. He stood open mouthed on the dock, his hands still in mid-air where I’d left him.

  “You coming?” I called, making my way back to the bed. I squealed when he suddenly burst forward in a sprint toward me. My attempts at hiding in the covers were futile and he soon had me dragged from under them. Laying himself lengthwise over me, he pulled my arms over my head and linked his fingers between mine, kissing my face until he ended at my lips.

  “I love you,” he hesitated millimeters from reach.

  “I love you always,” I promised.

  The wonderful thing about a honeymoon is the choices are endless. There’s nothing you can’t do. If you want to throw your plans aside, you can. We had three weeks to do anything we wanted and most of what we wanted entailed staying indoors or swimming in the water. We were getting very good at practicing staying indoors.

  After, we lay on our sides watching each other. Thayde’s head rested on his arm, his bicep making a very nice pillow. Reaching forward, I held the Chi Rho I had given to him for good luck all those months ago in New York. A Jamaican lady sold it to me on the street and it had been she that had told me Thayde would not die. She had been right. I smiled at my love.

  I loved Thayde with everything in me. This honeymoon was all I could have asked for and I was enjoying myself immensely. We made love every day and it was wonderful. But a troubling thought crossed my mind, making me freeze.

  All this time we were on vacation, the last thing I had thought about was using protection! It hadn’t even crossed my mind! What if I got pregnant? We weren’t ready to have a baby! I knew I wanted one with Thayde, but we hadn’t discussed children in full detail.

  Thayde’s perfect face imitated mine in a frown. “What’s wrong?”

  “Babe, we never discussed kids.” I didn’t know how to word it.

  “Yeah, we did. You said we were going to have a little girl.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I scratched my head. “We haven’t taken any type of protection – I’m not ready to have kids just yet! What if we get pregnant?”

  Thayde turned onto his back laughing.

  “What?” I cried, sitting up. He didn’t answer. Instead, he laughed harder, his body shaking.

  “What is so funny?” I pulled the sheet around me. “Thayde!”

  “Okay! Okay!” He held up a hand trying to stop laughing. Struggling, he sat up, occasionally emitting a spluttering of laughter. “Hon, merpeople don’t have children until they both decide they are ready. It’s a choice they make. Didn’t your Mom tell you this?”

  “Obviously not,” I said, feeling humiliated.

  “Oh baby, come on,” he pulled me into his arms. “It’s not that bad,” he chuckled. “When we are both ready to make a baby, we’ll start the process, but until then, we’re fine. Okay?”

  “Even me?”

  “Especially you!”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m not!” I pressed, hoping against all hope he was right.

  “Yes, I’m positive.”

  “Okay.”

  When Thayde began to chuckle again, he was silenced with an explosion of feathers as the pillow burst against his head. The fight was on.

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE OATH

  “Hon, I want to ask you something.” Thayde pulled me close to him, our knees touching. We sat face to face, legs crossed, at the edge of the hotel’s main dock. It was dusk, and the candles the waiters had set about us were growing dim. We’d just enjoyed a delicious lobster meal. To one side, the vast expanse of the turquoise ocean rippled toward us. To the other, the lush, deep green rainforest spread over the top of the towering mountain. Soft music from the open dining room played in the background, perfe
cting our romantic dinner.

  “What is it?” I asked. Thayde’s face grew so serious I knew he was going to ask me something huge.

  “You know Ezen and I have a matching tattoo?”

  That was the furthest thing from my mind. My surprise must have shown on my face because he grinned.

  “I noticed that when I met Ezen.”

  “The reason it matches is because we both went through something that bound us. We’d die for each other.”

  Hearing him utter those awful words made my heart skip a beat.

  “You’d really die for him?” I could barely get the words out.

  Thayde nodded. “We took an oath.”

  “What happened?”

  He shifted, drawing in a sharp breath of air. “It wasn’t some stupid thing we went and did when we were drunk. We didn’t get the tattoo at some tattoo parlor. I know that’s what you’re thinking.”

  His gorgeous grin didn’t last long as he began to recall the events that had occurred. “We pledged an oath after it happened and when two merpeople do that, it’s written on their bodies.”

  “Who writes it?” I asked.

  “No one, it just happens.”

  “What do you mean? It just appears?” I must have sounded unbelieving because he smirked.

  “Yes.”

  “Really?”

  “You want to try it?

  My mouth dropped open. “What do you mean? What could we possibly pledge?”

  “To be together always and forever.”

  “We did that when we got married.”

  Thayde nodded. “That we did, but we didn’t do it on our own, to each other, binding ourselves, did we? As merpeople?”

  My heart pounded in my ears. “Do you choose where it goes?” I whispered.

  “No.”

  “So it could end up on our face or something?” The thought was frightening.

  “It could,” Thayde was being very nonchalant about the whole thing. “What are you afraid of?”

  “What if it looks terrible? I mean, what if it’s all over our faces and it’s green and we look like, I don’t know – frogs or something?”

  Thayde stifled a laugh. “It won’t make you ugly.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  “Oh! Well, that’s comforting.” I shrugged my shoulders in sarcasm.

  “It’s alright,” Thayde averted his blue eyes, “you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, Morgan.”

  “Thayde,” He looked back to me and I leaned forward to make sure he understood I meant what I said. “I know that. I’m just nervous, okay? I love you and I do want to do this. It’s just something new.”

  He reached for my hand and I gave it to him. “We can do it some other time.”

  “No, let’s do it now.” I stood, pulling him to his feet. “What do we do?”

  A sly smile crept onto his face. Without a word, he gently shoved me into the water. The warm seawater closed over my head and I dropped several feet until my feet touched the sandy floor.

  Darn it Thayde! I’m going to kill you! I was wearing my best dress!

  A light splash, the clearing of a curtain of bubbles and a joyful grin made me change my mind. Thayde was clearly elated. Ripping off his white linen shirt and black dress pants, he phased.

  “Come on, you have to phase for it to work.” He urged, practically giddy with excitement. He lunged for the surface, throwing his wet clothes onto the dock. By the time he was back, I had changed. There was one slight problem though: not expecting to swim, I had not brought my bikini top.

  “Um, so what do we do about this?” I asked, covering myself with my long hair.

  Thayde attempted to stop from smiling. “You do what we used to do in the old days babe, you go au-natural!”

  “That’s not fair!” I complained, although the feeling was really nice against my skin.

  “What? You’re with me!” Thayde reached for my hand.

  “Yes, but I’d like to remain decent.”

  “But I’m your husband,” he pulled me closer.

  “Say that again,” I ordered in a playful voice.

  “I’m your husband,” he repeated.

  “Mmmm…” I relished the thought and enjoyed the way his deep voice ran through my body. Closing my eyes, I relaxed into his arms and lay my head against his chest. This was home.

  “We don’t have much time left tonight if we want to do this.” He whispered into my hair.

  “Okay,” I agreed. “What do we do?”

  “Follow me.”

  We swam until we reached a cliff that plunged straight down, a few hundred feet. My stomach dropped out from under me as we perched over the edge.

  Thayde looked up at the pinkish glow of sunset that trickled through the water. “We need to drop about fifty feet more.”

  He pulled me over the side of the cliff and my grip on his hand tightened. We could still see quite far, but I knew it was getting darker by the minute. I hated dark water.

  When we reached the depth he needed, Thayde stopped and looked around. We were alone. Not one solitary fish accompanied us.

  Now what?

  “This is a love bond,” he began, “so we entwine our tails,” he wrapped his tail around mine, “and I hold onto you like this,” he placed both hands under my arms, sliding them up my back, cupping his hands over the top of my shoulders, “and you drop your hands around my waist.”

  I clasped my hands around his waist and we hung in the water, feeling our love circle us. The red glow of my aura began to surround us, but then, something strange happened – something that had never happened before. A dark blue glow appeared.

  “What is that?” I whispered.

  “It’s my aura, Morgan.” He whispered back, watching our auras meet in a semi-circle around us. “Repeat what I say: I, Thayde, do bind myself to you, Morgan. You are my love forever and always. To you I shall be true.”

  “I, Morgan, do bind myself to you, Thayde. You are my love forever and always. To you I shall be true.”

  The moment I finished speaking, the auras combined and Thayde leaned forward, placing his soft lips against mine. I closed my eyes against the heat of my fire as it battled his icy blue aura. They created a tornado effect in the water around us, picking us up into its funnel, lifting my hair straight up, twisting and tugging it. We held on together through the storm until there was complete silence. Not sure of myself, I stayed in Thayde’s arms and waited for him to make the first move.

  The release of bubbles scared me into opening my eyes to a group of giant spotted rays and a dozen dolphins. Fifty or more of the enormous rays gathered at the edge of the purple circle that had formed around us. They hovered like eagles on the wind, elegant and fluid in their movement. The dolphins remained behind the rays, most of them female with their babies.

  “Oh my,” I said, not able to find the words. Thayde rested his head against mine. There were no words and we watched them watch us until our aura began to dissolve. It was only when the aura had vanished that the rays decided to move on, slowly diving and swimming away together. The dolphins followed suit, reminiscent of a royal procession.

  When they completely disappeared, I remembered that somewhere on my body was a brand new tattoo. I pulled away from Thayde, expecting some huge, grotesque black sludgy looking thing to be plastered onto his chest. There was nothing.

  “Where is it?” I asked, circling him, looking at his back, but it was completely bare.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Can’t you feel it?”

  “Can you?”

  “No.”

  “That’s right. These tattoos don’t hurt. Come here.”

  Gently, he took my waist and searched me, starting with my fingers, my arms, my stomach and my back. There was nothing.

  “It has to be here somewhere,” he said, twisting me in the water.

  “It’s not on my face is it?” I groaned, trying to pict
ure walking down the street with a hideous black or green ink blotch on my forehead. That would make Mom really proud.

  “No, that’s the thing, I can’t find it!”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means it didn’t take, but I don’t understand! Everything else happened correctly!” He pulled away from me, trying to get a better look.

  “Maybe it’s on our scalp?” I offered.

  “It’s never hidden like that.” Thayde frowned. “I don’t understand!” He looked down at the ocean floor a few hundred feet below us.

  “Maybe it can’t happen with me?” I was out of suggestions.

  Deep in thought, Thayde crossed his arms and covered his mouth with one hand. I was quiet while he thought. When he looked back to me, he did a double take and smiled.

  “It’s on your fins.”

  “What? Where?” I bent at the waist, trying to get a look. Thayde swam forward and, taking my left fin in his hands, lifted it up so I could see. Sure enough, there was a white tribal looking line running the length of my fin.

  “It’s white!” I exclaimed feeling the rush of relief and shock run through me at the same time.

  “That it is,” he nodded and flipped his tail up to me. I caught the end of it and rubbed my hand over the matching tattoo.

  “I thought it would be black!”

  “It’s pretty rare to have tattooing on your tail – it’s not something you see every day. In fact, I’ve never seen it.”

  “It looks really cool, Thayde.” I said, noted how beautiful the white stood out against the dark blue.

  “Yours is lovely,” Thayde’s voice was filled with love. I looked back to my fin.

  “It looks like a Christmas gift.” I muttered.

  “What?”

  “It does! Why don’t we just add a green bow and I’ll be all set?”

  Thayde began to laugh, dropping my fins and wrapping his arms around me. “You’re such a dork,” he said, “and I love you.”

  “I love you more.”

  “Na-uh!”

  “Ya-huh!”

  Thayde lifted me into his arms and held me as he swam back to the dock. I leaned my head into his neck and closed my eyes. Would that this could last forever.

  He stopped swimming.