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The orange fish wiggled in my mouth as I clutched it enough to hold but not puncture with my fangs. I wanted to save the blood from my little human to drink. Though crabs were in short supply as I sifted my webbed hands along the sandy ocean bottom.

“Where have you been?” Brizo’s voice echoed behind me. Panic seized my shoulders in the knowledge that I’d avoided my sisters for far too long, keeping this ship and its sole occupant a secret.

I grunted an unintelligible response when Cupida fluttered by me, twirling between two sapphire jellyfish while giggling. “What are you doing to that unfortunate fish?”

Edina swam backwards with a book in her hand, the flick of her fin scattering across the sand and halting my crab search. I stopped with annoyance and crossed my arms. “I’m busy,” I muttered curtly.

Brizo narrowed her gaze, her fin looking a deep shade of green that suited her well. “There’s a new boat coming by tonight. I trust you’ve taken care of the last one?”

I swallowed, feeling her barracuda stare. “It’s taken care of.” Not entirely untrue… I was taking care of the ship and its one inhabitant.

“How’d he taste?” Brizo pressed, giving the yellow fish between my teeth a flick with her claws.

Cupida and Edina eyed me curiously, both distracted enough from their activities to monitor our conversation. Rolling my eyes, I kicked my tail, jolting toward the surface. “I’ll see you tonight at the new boat.” My retreat was swift, as I was very fast. We all had our gifts, my sister sirens and me. Perhaps I wasn’t as beautiful as Cupida, as smart as Edina, or as fierce as Brizo, but my speed was greater than that of a swordfish. And goddess, I was thankful for that blessing then.

Thoughts of the incoming boat schooled through my mind. Another kill, another feeding, would typically send me swimming with happiness. But now it filled me with dread. We’d kill, and convene with the tentacled one, and then what? What would it say?

And then another startling thought trailed the fish-school of questions. Why did we care? Why were we answering to this being?

I passed a pod of friendly orca whales before reaching my sailor girl’s ship. The whales were kind and whistled their warning of an incoming storm. I nodded, blessing them with my touch. A storm was indeed coming, a great one, and the sea rumbled and rose softly in quiet anticipation. It would be thrashing above the surface in several days, and I knew my new friend could not survive it on her own. Her ship was not moving quick enough, was too far from land, and the boat itself wasn’t equipped to take on an onslaught of waves. This was a conundrum that had to be solved quickly and with more than thrown fish and crabs.

Her gorgeous face appeared the moment I’d flung the fish, and her boat stilled, bobbing in the water. “Wait!” She called, and I leveled my eyes with the sea’s surface. I had more to do, more options to explore in keeping her safe. But her voice calling out to me… was this what men felt when I sang their slaughters to them over the night waves?

One leg hitched over the side, then the other, and she unbuttoned her blouse. I arched an eyebrow, but before I could question, she jumped. A smile bloomed across my features as I went under, watching her move her arms and legs, and slowly approach me on her own.

When she reached me, I grabbed her, pulling her warm body close, our noses touching. “You’re swimming,” I whispered.

“I’ve been practicing so that I can swim with you,” she replied.

I pulled back slightly. “You shouldn’t practice without me. The sugar seas are very dangerous.”

“Dangerous because of you?” Goddess, her spots. I wanted to count them all.

“Because of me and other creatures. Some you know, some you do not.”

“Can you tell me about them?” She asked.

My gaze flicked to the boat. I should leave her and seek more aid, somewhere, somehow… but she felt so nice in my arms.

“Hold on,” I instructed, positioning her on my back. “I swim very fast,” I warned.

She giggled lightly. “I love going fast.”

With a laugh of my own, I sped just below the surface, feeling her breasts against my back and my hair tangling in her body as we reached our destination. A rock, in the middle of the tides. There were few of them, and they were only visible at certain times of day, whenever the moon and sun goddesses allowed them to breach the waves. To our luck, it protruded into a flat surface, and my sailor girl climbed atop it. “Sit with me?” She asked, smiling, and I obliged, pulling onto the sun-warmed stone next to her. I ran my claws through her long brown hair, and she did the same with mine.

“Within the tides of the sugar seas are sharks the size of your boat, with teeth as big as your hand. Though they stick to the depths, they wouldn’t hesitate to take a bite of you.”

She swallowed, and I continued. “There are fish that sting, impale, and strangle. Then there are the hidden ones, the ones like me. Siren and mer folk, tentacle monsters with insatiable appetites. Beyond those, beneath our city, there are the dark ones. Beings who’ve stolen magic from the goddesses, and it has corrupted their minds.”

Her eyes widened.

“So, to answer your question, yes, there are things in this ocean scarier than me. Well, at least creatures less enticed into submission by beautiful women as me, I suppose. You will not swim alone again; I am commanding it.”

My girl nodded, and the sound of her heart speeding up flitted through my ears. When the salt air breeze blew, I believed I smelt her arousal, and it was a storm that only amplified my own. “Goddess, I want you,” I breathed, inching toward her lips.

She stilled, strands of my black hair falling through her soft little dull and clawless fingers. “Can we?” she asked on a hopeful breath.

“We can and we will,” I answered, pulling her body to mine. My palms found her breasts, my thumbs rolling her hard nipples. We both sighed into our passionate kiss. I flicked my long tongue into her mouth and a she groaned, pushing her hips against my fin. My fin snaked between her legs, all the way to wrapping around her ankle and holding her in place until she was on her knees with me between her. “That’s it, use my fin, my beautiful sailor girl.”

I eased my grip down her sides, carefully minding my claws so as not to mar her delicate, thin skin. She felt like the softest sand on the warmest day under the sea foam. Her taste was like the sweetest dew from the rarest ocean flowers. She held my arms for balance as she thrusted into my fin, and I rippled it in response, moving my scales up and down to hit her sensitive spots just right.

Her soft moan of release rivaled the most pure of my siren songs as her bliss found her. The melody was mine now, for all the days of the sun and sea. My sweet sailor girl mating with her siren, our scents meshing together as one, forever entwined by this moment.

I wasn’t near fed, needing more of her, desiring to taste her. “Take off your clothes,” I ordered. My red-cheeked, spotted sailor girl obeyed, standing on the rock and kicking off her pants, and unbuttoning the rest of that silly white top. How I longed for her to always bare her breasts as freely and proudly as the goddess she was. Slipping my tail and torso off the rock and into the water, I laid back and beckoned her forward. “Kneel over me and let me taste you.”

She hesitated a moment, eyeing my sharp fangs, and I smiled. “Ah, yes, my teeth are pointed, but not nearly as horrid as my tongue.” I unfurled my long, forked tongue and let it drape down my neck in wordless promise of the pleasure it could provide her.

A small gasp escaped her lips before she slowly straddled my face. Taking my hands for balance, she bent her knees, and my tongue did not hesitate. I pierced her entrance, and we both groaned. My sailor girl was wet with need for me. The sweet nectar of her arousal danced over my tastebuds, finer than any ocean flower I’d ever tasted.

“You feel so good,” she panted, rocking over the base, as the forked tip pulsed and devoured her from the inside.

I moved my hands up the sides of her hips when a sound from the water pulled another gasp from her throat. My powerful, long tail propelled from the water and snaked above me, over my head. The tip of my long fin finding her bud of sensation.

Her moan, another melody I’d earned, was beautiful over the rippling ocean. The tip of my fin stroked her, swirling wet salt water over her center, while my tongue worked and spun inside her opening. This time when she came, her own bit of ocean followed after her. Her release poured over my face, and I drank in its sugared waters greedily. She was more delicious this way than if I’d decided to feast upon her organs. Surely, this way, I could feast upon her over and over again.

“You are… the most delicious human I have ever tasted.” I awed when she collapsed into my arms.

Twilight glittered in the calm sugar sea as I slowly brought my girl back to her ship. I let go, laughing as she held tight to my neck and I peeled her grip away. “Try to swim on your own, little strange and beautiful creature.”

She flailed, kicking and smacking her arms against the surface of the water, straining to keep her chin afloat. How sad and pitiful to only be able to breathe above the waves, a whole beautiful world she would never see, my entire pearlescent city she’d never enter. My heart cracked in my chest.

“I hate this,” she complained, spitting, and bobbing as I circled, learning her movements. This gorgeous spotted human was mine now and I would learn how to care for her. Even if we came from two different worlds, even if her skin was dainty while mine was hard. Her dull teeth could never saw through fin or bone. The nubby fingers on her hands were without fins or claws. My poor, sweet creature. How would I save her?

“Perhaps with practice you will swim better,” I encouraged. “Some of your kind were able to dive to the ocean floor for oysters and crab. Many men were fair enough swimmers before I killed them.”

She shrieked before giggling and reaching for me. I took her in my arms then, wrapping my fin around her protectively.

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because you’re mine.”

Her cheeks reddened. “You’re purple again. You’re purple a lot with me.”

“I never notice my own shades. My sisters are much prettier than I am.”

“You have sisters?” She asked inquisitively. “Can I meet them?”

My jaw tightened as if I’d crunched a fish bone. What would become of this ill-fated union between a sailor girl and a siren that cared for her? My ocean community, my sea family, wouldn’t understand such a love. I suspected Edina would be cautious with her vast knowledge of humankind. Cupida would be curious… but Brizo… I shuddered at the thought of Brizo ever learning of my newfound mate.

Cradling my sailor girl in my arms, I kissed her neck, inhaling her scent and marveling at the melody of her sigh, stopping outside her boat. Thunder rumbled overhead, and she held me tighter as the waves answered the sky’s call. “Please?—”

“What is this?” A sharp voice interrupted behind us. I swirled around, pulling my girl onto my back and pressing her against the hull of the ship. My hair couldn’t hide her. It was too late, as Brizo and my sisters swam closer.

Brizo clicked her long serpentine tongue against her pointed teeth. “You’ve lied to us. You’re harboring the remaining man.”

Edina and Cupida gasped, cornering us.

“Climb onto the boat,” I whispered, feeling my girl tremble upon my shoulders.

“I don’t want to leave you.” She gripped me closer, burying her little face into the crook of my neck.

“You must,” I urged, holding my palms to my sisters. “Not a man, never a man. This is a female.”

Brizo’s glare was harsh and deadly and it raised both fear and fury in my soul that she’d dare stare at my mate in such a way reserved only for our prey. “One of their females,” she bit out. “The reason the ship could not be claimed.”

“Why do we care if a ship is claimed by a monster? Have you asked yourself that, sisters? In my days away from the lagoon, these thoughts have become clearer. Since when do sirens aid unknown creatures? We do not need them, but what do they need of us?” My family only gazed over my shoulder as my girl finally obeyed, climbing over the side of her ship.

At the last moment, Brizo lunged, and my girl screamed. I intercepted my sister, grabbing her hand and hissing in her face. “Don’t you dare. She is my mate.”

The sirens gasped.

I continued. “I’m keeping her. She is mine, and you will not sing to her, nor touch her. Say you understand me?” I pleaded in the furious and terrifying face of Brizo, who looked as if she wanted to rip out my eyes.

Brizo glanced up at my girl before snarling. “They take our fish and they tarnish our ocean. There is a reason the goddesses bestowed the honor of the siren upon us—and this is how you repay their gift? By saving one, by mating with one?”

“A woman.” I held her shoulders, begging her to hear my words. “Never a man, not one of them.”

Brizo’s glare softened only slightly as lightning cracked the sky and a scream tore amongst the darkening waves.

Two screams.

Brizo gasped, pushing us apart as a spear shot between us. My girl shrieked, and a knife pressed to her neck. I hissed as a man held her tight, surveying us.

“No!” Brizo shouted, pointing. Pulling my gaze from my girl, my heart and fins frozen in panic. Cupida hung by a net, several men reeling her in as she tossed and fought.

“Those are the men you fight for!?” Brizo growled in anger as Edina held onto my arm in fear.

My voice shuddered as I beheld my girl in horror as she tugged against her captor, and my sister twirled and tangled in her net, hissing and clawing as men leered at her.

“Not men,” I breathed in sorrow. “Pirates.”