Page 50 of Lagoon

“Do you think you won’t be able to stop?” she said, and her voice had taken on a teasing sort of lilt. They were flirting, she thought, flirting as they discussed whether he was going to fuck her to death.

Okay, very disturbing.

“To be honest, I have no idea,” he said in that same rich voice. He came closer to her. “I want to try it, though, very much. Ever since you sucked my finger up into your body, I’ve been craving it. I think the ovipositor is made to fit right up in that hungry little cervix of yours. Don’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes,” she murmured. “I do.”

“Made by whom, though, Dr. Stine?” he breathed, reaching out to trace her jawbone with one of his webbed fingers. “Made by chance, is that it? Or made by me? Did I engineer it in some way, subconsciously?”

“I don’t think so,” she said with a shrug.

“But I thought you were pretty,” he said. “I wanted you on that video call, all the way back in the beginning.”

“Me too,” she said. “I thought you were… I had a little daydream about the two of us, working together, being together, maybe having a family together? I thought it would be perfect if it worked out. We want the same things, we could understand each other, and—”

“Really?” He was surprised. “But I’m not…” He looked down at his body. “Well, now I’m abundantly unattractive, but then—”

“No,” she said. “You weren’t unattractive then, and you aren’t now. But I like the way you look. Take off your pants now, Dr. Greyson.”

“I thought we were going to record it,” he said huskily, lowering his face to hers.

“Mmm, right,” she breathed.

And their mouths met, and his tongue was just like a normal tongue and the kiss was just like a human kiss, except that it was more intense in some way, and it tasted like sex in the way that he smelled like sex. She liked it.

He pulled her into his arms.

She sighed into him, locking her arms behind his neck, running her fingers over his scales there. He had gills now, in hisneck. She wanted to touch them, maybe kiss them, maybe… was that strange?

He ran his nose over hers. “You smell like bliss, Riley,” he breathed.

“So do you,” she whispered, leaning up to capture his lips again.

Which was when the lab door opened and Luther and Angela came into the room.

She and Jonathan broke apart immediately, moving so that there was four feet of space between them.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

ANGELA HURRIED OVERto position herself between Riley and Jonathan. “Did he get to you, too?”

“Hey, I didn’t ‘get’ to you,” said Luther, vaguely sullen, from the doorway. “You put a gun to my head and ordered me to show you my junk, so—”

“Shut up, Thompson,” said Angela, still gazing at Riley. She was confused about whatever had happened outside Nancy’s cabin. She felt a little off-balance even now.

Had she ever found Luther attractive before?

Well, he was the only one of the guys that she worked with who didn’t seem like a total asswipe, so that didn’t hurt. Also, he had those arms of his. Those tree-trunk-sized arms with the bulging muscles and the deep, dark skin and the broad chest and…

He was an objectively attractive man and he was a nice guy.

Sure.

She’d thought about it.

But she’d never done anything about it. When she’d first arrived, she’d thought Nathan Robinson seemed like a nice-ish guy, but then they’d had sex and she’d realized he was a total jerk. Maybe she was afraid of a similar transformation in Luther.

On the other hand, a transformation had absolutely happened in Luther, and in her, too, and well… well…

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