Page 66 of Guarded By the Vodnik

I nodded, wrapping a tentacle around her middle to keep her close as we waited a distance away from the shanta tower, another mixed group passing a bit overhead with a laugh.

“Well, vodnik scientists agree that tens of thousands of years ago, the vodnik race was on the brink of extinction. They speculate about the possible causes, but that’s not important. What matters is, a huge evolutionary shift happened, equipping vodniks with something that’s called the mate adaptation process.”

She nodded slowly. “Let me guess. The special cock juice is part of that.”

Someone above us laughed, a male vodnik shooting us a grin before he swam away.

“Are you doing it on purpose?” I asked her, and she smiled innocently.

“You should know by now that I have no filter. Unless there are kids around. You’d never hear me say ‘cock’ around children. I did say ‘fuck’ a few times, though. But not many.”

I leaned in to kiss the top of her head. “Of course, sweet thing. And yes, special cock juice is an essential part of that, but not the only one. For example, remember how I kept you warm?”

She nodded, but then her eyes flitted away.

“Oh. Is it… moving?”

I looked at the shanta tower, a shiver sliding down my back. No matter how many times I saw it, I still felt the same awe as when I witnessed it the first time.

All along the tower, twenty-foot long elements gently pulled away from the base, opening slowly like umbrellas. The thin membranes on which shanta was cultivated stretched open, wider and wider, glittering and half-translucent. Around us, people stopped to admire it.

“It’s called brushing,” I explained softly, gazing at Zoe’s face filled with childlike wonder. “Twice a day, the sheets have to open so all debris and waste are washed away. These structures are incredibly intricate and fragile, and it’s forbidden to touch them when they are open.”

“It’s beautiful,” she breathed, gasping when the spire opened fully, a line of glittering, light purple umbrellas all along the base.

I smiled and nodded, tipping her face to me. “Yes, you are.”

She blinked then smiled playfully. “I didn’t have you pegged for a romantic, but I love it.”

“I watched a lot of movies and TV focused on relationships and family life,” I admitted with a self-conscious shrug. “Sort of… Tried to learn. When I was older, I realized a lot of that was idealized and filled with cliches.”

She wrapped her arms around my neck and brought her mouth to my ear. “Give me all the cliches you’ve got. I love romantic gestures and love stories. And just for the record, what you said made me incredibly horny.”

That startled a laugh out of me. “It was supposed to make your heart melt.”

“My heart and pussy beat as one,” she said with a mischievous smile, making me swallow with difficulty. “But you were saying about how you made me warm.”

“Yes.” I welcomed the change in topic, because a strange, hot unease pulsed in my stomach, and I had no idea where it came from. “It’s another part of the mate adaptation process. Now, you have your fancy suit to keep you warm, but thousands of years ago, it was impossible. Vodniks needed to develop a way to keep a human mate warm under water so they wouldn’t die of hypothermia.

“The goal of these two traits, so my ability to make you breathe underwater and changing my body temperature to keep you warm, is to help you survive and thrive in the lake. The evolutionary goal was to produce offspring, and of course, baby vodniks can’t go to the surface. That’s why we have to keep our mates down here.”

“And you can just turn it on?” she asked, curious and impressed.

The shanta umbrellas closed, and Zoe looked at the spire, smiling faintly.

“No,” I said at length. “It’s all based on hormonal reactions. I mean, sex is easy, it sort of releases the hormones naturally, so every time I come, it potentially has that effect. But changing my temperature… it took a bit more.”

“More what?” She turned back to me, her brows pulled into a slight frown.

“Affection, I think. Devotion. A need to comfort and protect. A… a desire to commit.”

The unease inside me grew, and I bit back the urge to growl at myself, because what the fuck was wrong with me? Here she was, safe and happy by my side, and there was no reason to feel this sense of foreboding.

Zoe smiled, asking softly, “You mean love?”

And there it was.

I turned my face away so she wouldn’t see my expression as cold currents rose inside me, suffocating and slimy. I didn’t understand that dread and loathing in myself, didn’t comprehend where the terror had come from.

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