Page 58 of Song of the Abyss

He shook his head, not sure if he was denying that anything about him was beautiful, or just that she had pulled away from him.

Her lips were swollen and stained as red as his scales. He couldn’t stop looking at those lips and this woman who surprised him so much, when all he’d expected from her was hesitation. But then again, she’d let him touch her. And that memory was burned into his brain so much that he would never be able to forget it.

She took a deep breath, her eyes looking him over, although her gaze always ended on his mouth.

She wanted to kiss him again.

Claws clenching in the back of her clothing, he gave himself a thousand reasons to not tug her back into his arms. She was too delicate. He had no way of knowing if achromos had to rest after.... kissing. He wasn’t sure if he could break her with his affection. He should have asked Arges far more questions when his brother had offered his advice, and instead, he was forced to hope she would take the lead.

This was not how a warrior would act. It was how a mate would act, though. The stark difference suddenly chilled his passion and froze him to the very core. He had always been a warrior. Not a lover. And certainly not a mate. He wasn’t sure he knew how to be anything else.

She traced her finger over his lips, such a delicate little digit that he could so easily break with just a snap of his sharp teeth.

“Thank you for that,” she whispered when he did not reply to her original words. “I didn’t want to die without knowing what it was like.”

He nipped at her finger, then forced himself to release her. Though his hand trailed slowly from her body to nudge the little droid down her face so she could hear what he was saying. “You are not going to die, kalon.”

“You keep calling me that. It’s not my name.”

“I know it’s not your name.” He flashed the hand motions that she had given for him. “Big man is not my name either.”

She tsked, the sound cut off by a violent shiver that ran through her body. “That’s the name I gave you.”

“Kalon is the name I gave you.” Daios scooped the wetsuit off the floor and handed it to her. “You’re going to freeze if you don’t put this on.”

“But what does it mean?” She took the wetsuit from him, though. At the very least, she was following his directions. “You know the meaning of the name I gave you.”

Grunting, he ignored her question and waited until she gave him a look that said she wanted him to turn around. But this time, he wasn’t going to listen to her.

He didn’t want to turn around. Not after that kiss. Not after hearing her sweet moans and feeling that soft, wet heat. No, he wanted to look, and he wanted her to trust him.

Anya turned the wetsuit this way and that in her hands, her breath fogging in front of her face as she gathered herself. He could tell she wanted to tell him something. She always looked like this when she had something on her mind.

Finally, she blew out a long breath. “You said I’m not going to die, but the mask is broken. Bitsy can’t fix it.”

When she looked up at him with those sad, blue orbs, he felt like he could have fought off the entire sea for her. Even though he’d told himself he wouldn’t fall deeper into this mating madness, he sighed, “That’s fine.”

“That’s fine?” She tossed her arms out at her side, the wetsuit flopping against the metal floor. “I can’t breathe underwater, Daios!”

“I know you can’t.” He reached for her, trailing his fingers down the side of her neck where his tentacle would sink into her skin. “But I can.”

“You make no sense,” she grumbled. But she still turned her back to him and started yanking off the fabric that hid her from his gaze.

For a time now, he thought he’d imagined how she looked. That those long limbs and shadows in between the muscles of her back had been his imagination. No achromo could ever be pretty. But he was wrong.

All that pale skin was revealed with a quick jerk that showed every inch of her to his hungry gaze. And by all the gods of the sea, was he hungry for her.

Her back would look so pretty, with red lines from his claws running down it. He knew she would welt. He could already see the marks over her hip bones that he’d left just from pawing at her. At the sight of them, he wanted to create more. He wanted to rake his nails down her sides just to see the red lines that would linger for days after he was done with her.

A low growl echoed in his throat as his gaze trailed up to her shoulders. That lovely golden hair swayed against her spine, and he wanted to wrap it in his fist. He wanted to tangle his fingers in those pretty locks and turn her neck to the side so he could bite her. He wanted everyone to look at her and know that she was taken.

That she was his.

But then she bent at the waist and any thoughts completely disappeared from his mind. Those tails. Legs, he corrected himself. A man would commit murder to catch a glimpse of those legs.

Long and lean, he wanted nothing more than to have her straddle him again. This time without the layers of clothing that kept the sight of her skin from his eyes. He wanted to wrap his hand around them, to see what it looked like to have his claw points pressing into the tender flesh there. He wondered at the kind of sound she would make when she felt him pressing to the point of breaking skin.

Perhaps he was too violent for most of his kind, but he had a feeling he was the right kind of violent for her.

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