There was the lick of the ocean on his face, and she tasted like the lover in his dreams. Its cold brine on his cheek was not unlike the sensuous kiss of ice, where one knows it will burn and fade as all things do, but basks in its glory anyway. Her curious tongue traveled up the scarred angles of his face, suckling the wounds that openly bled with gentle fervor. He had sunk to his knees on the worn dock, each languid plank sunken and soft in age, thick nails embedded deep in the wood. A brilliant moon was high and enrobed in a layer of cloud, so that the placid rolls his lover willed onward remained an inky blue-black. Scabbed knuckles caught on the edge of the dock as he leaned dangerously close to the surface again, aching for more than the spray of the sea. His heart was a trembling beast, his mind a terrified man, and he loosed a heavy breath, hanging over the sheet of liquid.
    The sound of raucous laughter was a distant memory in his mind. Had it only been minutes before that he’d been cloistered among other human men, swallowing poison and fighting for their pride? Had it been such a short span that the bruises on his body and blood on his face was still fresh?  Tentatively, he reached a hand to his face, wincing at the stain like wine on the fingertips. Below, the water rippled, then stilled, and his heart tightened. She liked to play tricks, the lover in his dreams. He closed his eyes and berated himself for believing she could love him. For believing a body of water could love him. He was a pathetic sailor, a mongrel laying on the docks believing in dreams of a cleaner, simpler, beautiful world.
He had watched the crew today like an outsider, a child trying to mime their cruelty. He recalled the various raids and attacks he had assisted in, the weaponry he held always familiar and foreign at the same time, each sword a beautiful kiss of deadly art. It was satisfying and heart wrenching to wield, and in a monstrous way, pleased the beast inside him. Each bag of payment he received was enough to sustain his family, and he ached for the simple bitterness of the rest of the crew. Yet as days wore on and the beauty of adventure and open sky trailed into conquest, his dreams became haunted by guilt and injury. The only reprieve was her, and she was the only beautiful, ancient thing that wasn’t tainted.
  He desired to abolish this way of life. He hadn’t asked for this, but he had to continue. His family needed him after all. Yet as he lay there, a wicked part of his mind kept prodding that he might, in fact, enjoy the fighting. That the blood and steel, fear and relief, quenched the savage part of him that he wanted to hide, the part that screamed fangs and prey.
He stretched further towards the water, and dipped a hand in. It was brilliantly frigid, the kind of cold that snaps a mind into immediate awareness. A delicious chill sculpted itself around his body, and he fought the urge to sink himself into her completely. It would be foolish and gratifying all at once, so he gently lowered only his face toward the water. He murmured against the cool glass, as if it would procure the savior he desired. A brittle lash of wind wound down his shirt, and he shuddered in ecstasy, a single tear leaping down his cheek. It moulded seamlessly into the eternal basin of water below, and he stretched his body further, stilling when the clink of coins in his pocket scraped the dock.
Palms wet and shaking, he dragged the sack of money from his pocket, anger emoting from every pore. He was a slave to the listless chunks of metal, and yet, did nothing to stop it. His beast craved it, his heart detested it. Blood pumping, he took the satchel and slowly, carefully, dumped it into the sea herself. He watched the last coin shimmy and slide down the depths, the taste of the last drink he had sour in his mouth. His wet palms itched were the familiar callouses were from the pommels of many blades. The sudden urge to be clean was so intense that he plunged his mouth to the water and hovered there, eyes closed, like someone anticipating a kiss they were unsure would come.
The taste of her was so pure he wept. He no longer cared that he most certainly looked like a madman, as his body was in the throes of glory. She winded her glacial tongue across his canines as if to assure him he was not the beast he imagined himself to be. The wintry salt of her mouth stung as it cleaned his face, her glacial hands cradling his chin and pulling him closer, until he pushed away from the dock and slid loudly into the water like the ungraceful human he was. But it mattered not, because the ultimate stillness lay beneath the surface. She was immaculate, her beauty primal and ancient and noble, and he drowned in her wake. She pressed her chilled lips against his fluttering eyelids, drew a finger down his sharp cheekbones and jawline, and he fought the urge to breathe in, to swallow her, for he never wanted it to end. The beast in him reared his head as he sank further. It screamed for him to open his eyes, to take the woman before him and claim her as his own, to prove his dreams real and drag her from the sea. But he willed his monster away, as the sweet brine he’d loved his whole life massaged his very bones. Willingly, he kept his eyes sealed.
   She made no sound, and yet, every sound, her glorious stillness a gospel of a thousand. She caressed him in frightening ways as only she could, in electric currents and frigid embraces as they slid lower and lower, and he finally opened his mouth and swallowed deeply, as if satisfying a never-ending thirst.
There was the lick of the ocean on his face, and she tasted like the lover in his dreams.