Page 44 of Song of the Abyss

Touch me everywhere, she thought. She wanted him to slide that hand up her side. She wanted to know what would happen if he cupped her breast, or if he would use those claws to rip through the fabric of her clothes.

These were dangerous thoughts. Terrible thoughts. She knew there was probably a special place for deviant women who looked at a monster and wondered what he would feel like between her thighs, but... Fuck. These were where her thoughts were.

His hand moved, but only to cup her cheek and jaw in that massive palm. “So many thoughts running through your head right now. I wonder why.”

She couldn’t tell him what she was really thinking. He’d... maybe do something neither of them could come back from.

“I just don’t understand why you don’t like what you look like.” She tapped the side of the droid on her head. “I wear this. You’re missing an arm. But I don’t think less of myself because I can’t hear what people are saying.”

His brows furrowed. “I have no interest in talking about the loss of my arm.”

“I’m not asking how you lost it. I’m asking why you hate it so much.”

She was pushing him. Too far, considering the coiled tension beneath her, that only made her think about what it would be like if he was tense for another reason.

The frown on his face was one of his tells, but so were the bunched up muscles of his traps. Anya blamed sleep deprivation for the reason why she wanted to run her fingers over that strange, gray skin and see if it was as soft as it looked.

Instead, she used her fingers for something else. Something to distract the both of them. Flicking her fingers and twisting her hands in a repetitive motion. A word, a name, words that needed no sound.

He watched the movement with narrowed eyes. “I have seen you do this before, but not often. What does it mean?”

“That meant... uh... Big man,” she said, her cheeks burning. “Or, Daios. I suppose.”

“What is the language?”

“Sign.” She shrugged. “It’s hard to remember all of it. Like any language, the less you use it, the less easy it is to remember. There are only a few people with hearing issues in Alpha, and most of us have a droid like Bitsy. But I remember a lot of it.”

She signed with every word that she said, watching as his eyes flew with her fingers.

He watched every single word with rapt attention before saying, “It is a beautiful language.”

Anya grinned. “I think so, too. I like talking with my hands.”

“I would ask you to teach me, kalon, but...” He released his grasp on the side of her cheek and lifted his single hand between them.

But no, that wouldn’t do at all. She grabbed his fingers in hers and gently lifted his knuckles to her lips. With a soft kiss on the back of those deadly claws, she met his dark-eyed gaze and said, “You can still sign with one hand.”

He looked up at her like she’d told him that she could give him back his arm. Or maybe, just maybe, that expression meant that he was grateful to her for not making him feel less than.

She didn’t know. All she knew was that it made her squirm on top of him until he grabbed her thigh once more. Those thick, broad fingers squeezed hard before he growled, “Show me.”

If she had to spend the rest of the night teaching him the basics of sign, she would. Because right now, in the darkness of this abandoned facility, all she wanted was to spend time with this curious man who had captured her attention.

17

Daios

He didn’t know when he became so comfortable around her. It was probably the first moment when he saw her in the water and realized how weak she was. The achromos were dangerous creatures who could surprise him with their violence. But Anya?

Anya didn’t have a violent bone in her body.

Not even when she’d leapt on top of him, and he was quite certain she wanted to hurt him. He had, after all, kidnapped her from her home. He’d dragged her down into the frigid depths where she shivered every night.

Instead, she’d asked him to touch her. Even thinking about it made his cocks press against the scales that held them in place. He’d fisted himself multiple times to the memory of her twin tails on either side of his stomach. He’d felt the heat of her between her twin tails and it...

He couldn’t think of that now. Not when he was about to see her again, and he had no way of knowing what he might do. Daios wanted to pull her over him like she’d been before, but this time he wanted to use his muscles to grind up on her. He wanted to yank her into the water and show her why the ocean was so much better than being in the air.

He wanted to taste her. Not just to lick her skin, but to draw her scent into his gills and drown himself in every flavor she might give him.

---