Page 37 of Song of the Abyss

“So, is the heat on or not?”

The words this time were underlined as Bitsy tried to make her point. “Yes, the heat is on. This is the capacity at which the facility can run.”

Great. Just great. She was going to freeze her ass off down here, all while trying her very best to stay alive in the middle of the sea. Why had she thought this would be better?

Her skin prickled with the sensation of being watched. Which was crazy. She was losing her mind down here too now. Bending to pull the rest of the wetsuit off her other leg, she struggled to get it off and then tossed the offending suit as soon as it popped off her foot. Even though it was still cold, she was surprised at how much better she felt without the wetness pressed against her skin.

She must have torn a hole in it while they were going through those sharp corals. That’s the only explanation for her being wet inside a suit that was rated for these depths.

For some reason, she turned back toward the tunnel and the room she’d originally been in. She didn’t know why, perhaps it was some sixth sense because when she looked up, all she saw was red scales.

Red scales that connected to a dark black body and soulless eyes that watched her with a sense of hunger she hadn’t seen in them before. His eyes were wide, his claws digging into the ground as he looked her up and down.

With a strange garble vibrating her throat, she pressed the suit against her breasts. He had been looking at her. Staring at her.... wanting her?

No, that wasn’t possible. He was an undine. He was probably looking at her body like it was strange and uncomfortable, not intriguing. And that heat in his gaze was just because he was surprised to see her. And the way he licked his lips as he looked her up and down. That was just because he was... hungry. That was it.

But she couldn’t help her own reaction to that expression. Clenching her thighs together, she grit her teeth against the unnatural reaction to him, as well. She was human. She shouldn’t feel this way about a monstrous creature who had kidnapped her.

Her eyes still skated down the bulging muscles of his shoulders and the powerful flexing of his chest and ab muscles as he braced himself on that single arm. Those abs twitched at her stare, and she swore he flexed them just a bit harder.

Spinning, she turned herself beyond his sight and stepped away toward the lockers. Grabbing onto the fabric there, she shoved herself into the utilitarian body suit, and then grabbed a blanket off one of the bunks for good measure.

But, as she made her way down the tunnel back toward him, she couldn’t help but feel like she was putting on clothes to stop herself from feeling anything. It wasn’t a shield against his eyes. It was a promise to herself that she was covered, and coverings made it harder for her to want his eyes on her.

Because maybe she was a deviant who wanted him to look again.

Blowing out a long breath, she shook her head before stopping before him. “I didn’t know when you were coming back.”

From this angle, she was taller than him, but not by much. That massive arm still held him almost halfway out of the water. His serpentine tail disappeared into the dark, dingy water behind him. But from this angle, she was staring down into his face. He was so close she could see the water dripping off his hair and rolling down the mountains of his shoulders, pooling in the hollow of his collarbone.

She wanted to know what that pool of water tasted like.

Damn it, Anya, she told herself. Mind of out the gutter.

He nodded toward something to their right.

“Oh,” she whispered. “You brought me a fish.”

Bitsy highlighted an area beside her, bringing her attention back to the undine before her. And when she looked, she could see that his gaze was trailing down her body once more. Almost as though he were remembering what she’d looked like without her clothing.

A black tongue darted out as he licked his lips, and she couldn’t look away from it. For a second she swore she saw bumps on that tongue, and it took everything in her to not squeeze her thighs together again.

Deviant. Wrong. She shouldn’t be affected by a creature who looked like this. Not when she knew how sharp those teeth were and how much he had fought against her own people. He’d killed humans. Probably killed a lot of them. She was an idiot for even thinking....

He shoved himself forward. She watched as that thick tail coiled underneath him so he could loom above her. It was a slow rolling of his body, his face so close to her, and then it was miles and miles of hardened muscles dotted with scars.

His hand came up between them, those claws gently trailing up the fabric she now wore. She could feel the pull of the claw against every single button that it dragged against, each one sending a little popping jolt throughout her entire body as they snapped back against the fabric.

Finally, his claw eased up her neck, feather light and sending more goosebumps scattering wherever his touch lingered. With a gentle tap against her chin, he forced her to look up at him.

“You are pale everywhere,” he said, his voice a low rumble that moved through her body with a white hot heat.

“Humans are usually the same color everywhere.” She cleared her throat, feeling like it was a little hard to breathe. “We don’t have patterns like...”

She didn’t finish the sentence, because she’d focused a little too hard on the black lines that went from his collarbone and disappeared into the darkness of his tail. Because within those patterns were the gills on his ribs, and they were moving. Gently. Just a little.

Was being out of the water difficult for him? Could he even breathe?

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