Page 60 of Whispers of the Deep

But then, impossibly so, she pressed back into him. Those hips rocked, and oh, he was going to embarrass himself. He had never once released his cock without intention or purpose. And yet, here he was, about to reveal just how different they were because she fingered his fins and rocked against him.

Sliding her wetsuit down, he skimmed the backs of his fingers down her ribs and the soft plane of her belly. Unlike his own kind, she was the softest thing he’d ever touched.

And, oh, he wanted to look.

It would take just the slightest shift for him to peer over her shoulder and see what she looked like. If she was just as pale over her entire body.

It was a temptation he could not feed. But she did not understand a word he was saying, so he shifted them a little closer to the heat and wrapped an arm around her soft waist.

“When I first saw you, I was certain you were monstrous. Your people are so different from my own kind. With your two tails and your strange, white eyes, there was nothing I thought I could find tempting about you. But then, every day that you have been with me, I have found something new to admire.”

He swallowed and froze when she stroked her hand down his arm. He stopped moving forward, keeping her hovering where it was warm enough for her. And here he was, boiling alive.

“The graceful sway of your hips. The way your eyelids widen and then droop halfway closed when I do something you like. I wish to touch all of you. To find every part of your body that makes you gasp or hiss. I want to know the sounds that come out of your mouth when I pleasure you. When you realize that the ocean itself would guide me into you, and set a pace that neither of us could deny. My people believe that lovemaking is the purpose of the sea.”

Then he drew her scent deep into his lungs. Tainted only slightly by the sulfur of the vents, but he could still taste that sweet scent of her again.

“I can smell how excited you are,” he groaned. “I draw that scent into my gills and tuck it underneath my scales for times when I am not by your side. Kairos, Mira, I grow so weary of seeking release in my hand.”

Again, that scent bloomed, far stronger than he’d ever scented it before. He knew it was only because she was warm, finally, when she had been so cold for such a long time. And yet... Oh, he enjoyed pretending that scent was for him.

Twenty-Three

Mira

She hadn’t expected it to go that way. Of all the things he could have growled in her ear, all the threats that her people likely deserved. Instead he told her how beautiful she was. How much he wanted to touch her and then he... had. His fingers lingering on her ribcage, his thumbs just barely brushing the underside of her breasts... It had taken her breath away.

Even now, as they headed back to the cave from the hot springs that had finally warmed her to the very bones, she couldn’t get her mind to stop whirling. He wanted her. He had proven that there was some kind of link between the two of them, even though that was likely the strangest thing that had happened in centuries.

They were... What? She didn’t know.

Her mind whirled as he carried her back toward the cavern, and she felt the shift in both of them as the icy waters sank into the small hole in the back of her wetsuit. With that touch, her thoughts slowly changed from heated to cold as well.

What had they done?

They shouldn’t be interested in each other. It shouldn’t even be possible that they were interested in each other. They were too different. Barely fit together. They were puzzle pieces from two separate boxes and no matter how hard they tried to jam themselves together, it wouldn’t work.

He could breathe underwater. And her? Mira needed air.

Nothing they ever did would fix that. They would never be able to be anything other than two people who wished they could be together. And that would break them, eventually.

When the cavern came into view, the dark shadows swirling before her eyes, she wondered how long they could keep this up. He wouldn’t be able to hide her from his people forever. In fact, he would need to bring her to them if she never told him the secrets he thought she knew. And she would try to flee. Escape. Hide from whatever it was they wanted with her.

Byte had already alluded there was more that she did not know. The sudden stiffness in his arms suggested he might be considering the same thing. This was doomed from the start.

They had indulged themselves a bit. Forgotten that this wasn’t their world to mold and shape into what they desired or wanted. Once they returned to the cave, everything else would come crashing down around their ears.

They were too different.

Life did not want them together.

Neither did their people.

He released her from his arms a little too early, and she dragged herself back into the cave by touch alone. Water brushed against her sides, pushed by his tail as he moved into the opening as well. Only Byte’s dim light illuminated her path to the surface.

Once she broke through, she pulled off her rebreather and gently set it on the rocks. Holding onto the edge, she ripped off her goggles as well. “What if I hadn’t found the way back into the caves, Arges?”

His eyes seemed to darken. And for the first time in a long time, she saw the same undine who had threatened her people. The undine who had been locked in the tube with her, and wanted to kill as many of her kind as he could before he died.

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